Of Saints and Sinners

by Erik Lynd

  Silas hunched his shoulders, thought for a moment that helmet laws might not be a bad idea, and slammed into the window. The bike shattered through the glass in a hail of sparkling shards and slid sideways on the slick floors and glass. He felt small slices across his unprotected face and scalp. He stayed on the bike until it stopped against the far wall of the mall.

  Late night shoppers scattered away from the bike and broken window, screaming. Directly across from him, elevator doors opened to reveal oblivious shoppers, their mouths dropping open in shock.

  The hell hound plowed through the window next to the one Silas came through. Its claws clicked on the smooth floor as it tried desperately to stop itself before slamming into the marble wall and creating a cloud of plaster. Silas didn’t wait for it to recover.

  He gunned the bike and headed straight for the open elevator. The shoppers inside tried to run. At last moment he spun the bike backward and slid into the elevator. A family was pressed up against the wall of the car, looking as if they were trying their hardest to disappear into the side.

  In front of him, the hound was getting to its feet and shook its head a couple of times. Its eyes found Silas in the elevator.

  “Sky bridge please,” Silas said to the man standing by the elevator buttons. The man didn’t move, he just looked at Silas like he was the hell hound. Silas pointed to the buttons.

  “Sky bridge level and you better be quick if you don’t want to be puppy chow,” Silas said.

  The man looked out of the elevator and saw the recovering hound. He screamed and started hitting all the buttons, including the sky bridge level. The hound, sensing its prey trying to escape, started running at them. The man screamed harder and started slamming his fists into the buttons.

  Silas willed the doors to close. He didn’t like being in the enclosed space. Having him, this family and an enraged hell hound in the tiny elevator would be like hanging out in a giant food processor. They weren’t going to make it, the hound would reach them before the doors closed. Silas grimaced, there was only one thing he could do.

  He twisted the throttle and leaped off the bike as it bucked underneath him and shot forward into the chest of the hound. It yelped as seven hundred pounds of steel slammed into it knocking it back. Silas joined the man on pushing the buttons. The doors shut before the hound stood up.

  The entire family cringed in the corner as the elevator rose, except for the boy, who pulled away from his sister and stared up at Silas.

  “Cool bike,” he said.

  Silas heard him through the ringing in his ears.

  “Yep, it was,” Silas said promising himself that he and Mephisto would settle up some day.

  “Who are you?”

  “David, you leave the nice man alone,” the boy’s mother said and pulled him close to her. “He doesn’t mean to bother you…”

  “Listen kid, I’m what happens when you skip school, stop listening to your parents, listen to rock and roll, and do drugs.”

  It was the closest Silas had come to a public service announcement. The boy’s eyes grew wide.

  “Cool!”

  Silas smiled, “Yeah it is.”

  Ding.

  The doors slid open. Silas poked his head out; the family appeared to have no intention of leaving the elevator. About a hundred feet away was the sky bridge. He looked both ways, no hound. People were gathered by the windows looking down at the mess he had made below. In the distance sirens were approaching.

  He was about halfway to the bridge when a door behind him burst open and the slavering dog came through.

  “Shit.”

  Silas ran. The hell hound had grown to the size of a large horse. Silas’s running caught its attention and it charged after him. He ran down the sky bridge as shoppers dove out of his way, screaming. Some fell in front of him and he had to hurdle them. He wouldn’t be able to out run the hound on foot.

  Through the lower window of the sky bridge he saw a familiar motorcycle rolling up the street. He went through the large double doors on the other side to the parking garage, plowing through a woman. Designer clothes boxes went flying as the woman screamed. Silas ran down the aisle of parked cars as the hound crashed through the glass behind him. He could feel the beast’s breath on his back. He veered toward the parking garage railing and without looking he jumped, hoping he had timed it right. I mean, if cowboys could do it?

  He missed. He jumped the three stories and landed on a moving car just to the right of the motorcycle. He slid across the roof of the car and fell to the asphalt a few feet in front of St. Abigail.

  St. Abigail slammed on her brakes and came to a stop inches from Silas.

  “You do know how to make an entrance,” St. Abigail said.

  Silas got up with a moan and limped to the back of the bike. He could hear her even with her helmet on; his ears must be getting better.

  “How did you know where I was?” Silas asked.

  “Mortimer. He traced your cell phone GPS.”

  “Son of a Bitch.”

  Silas thought of the phone in his pocket and wondered how often Mort followed him. He did not have long to think about it. Above him the hell hound peered over the railing and looked straight at them. Silas hopped on the back of the bike and hoped nobody he knew would see him.

  “Hold onto my waist,” St. Abigail said.

  Silas did as he was told and put his arms around her, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

  “Silas, those aren’t my waist.”

  Or maybe not. Silas sighed and lowered his hands.

  With a roar the beast sprung from the parking garage with a lot more grace than Silas had.

  “Now would be a good time,” Silas mumbled.

  St. Abigail twisted the throttle and the motorcycle surged ahead. To Silas the bike felt like a toy between his legs, but he had to admit it was fast. They zipped ahead as the monster crashed to the ground. St. Abigail slid the bike out onto the main arterial street through a red light. Traffic was much lighter and in seconds they accelerated to over sixty miles an hour. Any cops in the area were probably congregating on the other side of the shopping center. Silas looked behind them.

  The hound loped after them, but it was drifting further and further behind. After a few turns and side streets they could no longer see it. Abigail finally pulled up to the curb by the river. She pulled off her helmet as Silas got off. He kept an eye behind them; hell hounds were not always easy to lose.

  “So those were hell hounds? Nasty pets your kind keeps.”

  “Well they’re good for hunting. I don’t think they were really hell hounds though. I suspect they were something else transmogrified by Mephisto. He is an expert at that.”

  “They seemed pretty real to me. Why do you think they were fake?”

  “It was too easy to escape them.”

  “Too easy? You look like someone took a baseball bat covered in razor blades to you and you called that easy? I would hate to see what you consider hard.”

  Silas shrugged. Sometimes it just paid to be mysterious. She got a serious look on her face.

  “Look Silas, I want to thank you for what you did back there. I know that you could have just left me. You had what you needed, but you saved me.”

  “I would never have heard the end of it from Morales if I have lost you. Besides, you are proving more useful than I had thought.”

  St. Abigail smiled.

  “Okay Silas, we’ll play it your way. Either way, I owe you one.”

  “You could sleep with me,” Silas suggested.

  “Do you actually practice saying the absolute worst thing you can think of at exactly the wrong moment?”

  “No it’s just a natural gift.”

  St Abigail sighed and put her helmet back on.

  “I’ll meet you back at that rat hole you play at,” she said.

  “What about me? Aren’t you going to give me a ride?” Silas asked, then smiled when he realized what he had just said.

&nbs
p; “Take a cab,” Abigail said and pulled away from the curb.

  “What? What’d I say?” Silas asked loudly.

  St. Abigail didn’t answer as she roared off down the street.

  8

  St. Abigail was waiting for him on the curb as Silas pulled up. He moaned; she looked bright and chipper while he was hung over. Whose idea had it been anyway to meet at ten in the morning? Who in their right mind gets up this early? Last night after the meeting with Mephisto was a little blurry. They had met back at the bar with Mort to go through what they had learned. He had started ordering shots and it had kind of gone downhill from there. He remembered the discussion of going to Webb’s apartment and St. Abigail had said going during the day might be safer especially after what had just happened. But had he really agreed to ten in the morning? The driver of the black Cadillac limousine got out of the car and opened the back passenger door, allowing Silas to stumble out.

  “A limo? Really?” St. Abigail asked.

  “Hey, I lost my bike in the line of duty. I’m expensing this until I get it back or they find me a replacement.”

  St. Abigail shook her head in exasperation. “You look like shit, Silas.”

  “It was your idea to meet at ten in the morning,” Silas said.

  “It’s almost noon.”

  “Whatever. Can we get on with this?”

  “What about him?” Abigail nodded toward the driver. “Isn’t he a civilian?”

  “Right, good point. I’ll take care of it,” Silas said and walked over to the driver.

  “Is this the correct destination, sir?” the driver, who couldn’t have been more than twenty five, asked.

  “Um yeah. Listen, just wait out here for me to get back. I might be a while. Oh, and if you hear gunfire, screaming or explosions just sit tight; that kind of stuff happens all the time around me.”

  “Sir?” the driver’s face dropped into a worried look.

  Silas patted him on the shoulder and glanced at his name tag. “You’ll do fine, Sam.”

  “Steve,” the driver corrected him.

  “Your company does provide medical insurance right?”

  “Well, uh…” Steve started.

  “Forget it. Doesn’t really matter. See you in a few.”

  Silas left the stunned man standing by the car.

  “You really think he will wait?” Abigail asked when they were out of earshot of the driver.

  “I think so. You’re really good at spotting the goodness, compassion, love and all that crap in a person, right?”

  “I suppose that is a benefit of being what I am.”

  “Well, just think of it as me being good at spotting the bad-ass in people.”

  Silas turned away from St. Abigail and took a good look at this apartment building. It was big and obviously abandoned. Paint was peeling, windows were cracked, and part of the roof even looked like it was sinking in.

  “Uh oh… this place is off the grid,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s an abandoned apartment complex in the middle of New York, but there is no one around, no city signs condemning it, no signs showing that a developer snatched it up.”

  “I can feel it too, as though the Pale covers it.”

  “To most humans this place doesn’t even exist. It’s slippery for the eyes. Anything could be in that building and it has had free rein for years. I don’t think even the Inquisition has this place on its radar.”

  The Inquisition had one of the largest databases on supernatural locations. If they didn’t know about it chances are nobody else did.

  “What floor was this Webb supposed to be on?” Silas asked.

  “Mort said room 502.”

  “Great. Top floor. Think there’s any chance the elevator is working?”

  “About as much chance as there is for you to get in my pants,” St. Abigail laughed. “Have a plan?”

  “Naw, let’s just go knock.”

  Coth watched them enter the apartment building from the shadows of the alley across the street. Somehow they had found it. He didn’t know how, but somehow they had discovered this sacred place. His master would want to know. He pulled out his cell phone and held it awkwardly to his misshapen head.

  “Hello,” said Mister Webb on the other end. The connection was faint and cutting in and out. His master must have been in the Undercity.

  “I have found them. It looks as if they have discovered your old home, before you had the revelations.”

  “Ah, they are moving quickly. Have you discovered who they are?”

  “The man is called Silas Robb, but that’s about all we have on him. The woman we can’t find any information on; it’s as if she doesn’t exist. Actually finding data on either of them is difficult.”

  “I expected no less. These two are not your average investigators.”

  “What do you want me to do? They are defiling your birthplace.”

  “Don’t worry Coth, there is nothing there for them. Our work is much greater than an apartment. They will only find the lesser children, the ones I told you about. The ones that weren’t strong enough to join me in the Undercity. All that is left for them are the broken and weak. They will learn nothing.”

  “Watch them for now. Who knows? It has been a while since I resided there, there might be some interesting surprises for them. However, I would not be opposed if you see an opportunity to take care of them quickly.”

  “I understand.”

  “I knew you would, Coth. You have always been my favorite.”

  Coth hung up and looked back at the building. The two strangers had entered. He was trying to think of what to do next when his eyes found the limo and an idea started to form. A grin spread across his reptilian features.

  The inside of the apartment building was as run down as the outside. The building, however, was hidden by the Pale, so there was no graffiti, no empty beer cans or drug paraphernalia except what might have been left over from the tenants. Unlike a normal abandoned building, this one had not been taken over as a crack house or squatters’ home.

  They stood in the darkened entrance breathing the stale air. Dust motes danced through the shafts of light coming from the window in the door. The walls were stained brown with mold and in a few places the plaster had flaked off, exposing wood underneath.

  “You feel that?” Abigail asked.

  “Yeah, there’s something here, and if it’s in this kind of place it’s nothing we want to meet.”

  “Normally I’m kind of in tune with life--comes with being a Saint--but this place feels…”

  “Dead?” Silas interrupted.

  “No, not dead; just lacking life,” she said.

  “Does being wacko come with being a Saint too? How can lacking life not be the same as dead? Unless you’re talking about vampires ,or maybe zombies.”

  “No, not vampires, just a feeling that’s hard to explain. Let’s just head up.”

  Silas caught her arm as she stepped on the first stair.

  “I was just thinking his apartment might have been 502, but he owned this whole building. And by owned I don’t mean he bought and paid for it. I mean he controlled it. Even if he was the strongest supernatural in the building there was no way he could have pulled this whole thing beyond the pale unless he was virtually in control of the other tenants.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying that despite what Mephisto might have told us about his abilities, or lack thereof, he must have had some sort of strength. And that strength flowed through the entire structure, so we might have a bigger area to worry about than just his room.”

  Silas took the lead on the stairs. They were half way up when the thumping started.

  Whump! The stairs shook beneath their feet.

  “What the hell was that?” Abigail asked.

  “Whatever it is, it’s pretty active for lacking life.”

  Silas was rewarded with an annoyed scowl. He kept walking
up the stairs, hoping maybe it was nothing.

  Whump!

  This time plaster broke loose from the walls and rained down on them.

  “Keep going. Whatever it is, I am sure we will be seeing it soon enough,” Abigail said.

  Silas nodded and kept climbing the stairs. Scratching sounded from overhead, like a thousand rats running around on the floor above them.

  “I hate rats,” Silas mumbled.

  Mixed with the scratching sound was the larger sound of heavy foot falls. Thumping and running sounds were coming from all around them, and every few seconds the loud, ground-shaking whump would rain plaster down on their heads.

  “This can’t be good,” Silas said.

  They started to run. An arm burst through the wall next to them, and a groping hand clawed onto Silas’s shirt. The hand was dirty and misshapen, but it grabbed him tight. He grabbed the thing’s wrist and snapped it. There was an ear-piercing scream and the hand immediately let go.

  Silas looked at St. Abigail and shrugged. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  Suddenly, hands and arms began bursting through the wall up and down the stairs. Hands, some ending in claws, grabbed at them and caught hold of cloth and flesh. Arms shot up from the stairs, wrapping around their ankles. The arms varied in size and shape as though creatures both large and small were trying to get a piece of them. Silas pulled away from a hand only to have three more grab him one step further up the stairs. He was stronger than these clawing creatures, but it was like walking through molasses. His skin was tearing in dozens of different parts of his body as dirty razor fingernails gouged his flesh. St. Abigail wasn’t fairing much better. Hands grabbed at her hair and tried to pull her against the wall. So far all that was coming through the wall were appendages, but what would happen when a face, perhaps with a mouth full of teeth, decided to push through?

  Silas grabbed another piece of Abigail’s hair and pulled her away from the wall in the other direction. She screamed at the indignity of this tug of war. Her blades slashed out and sliced into the pale flesh of the arms entangled in her hair. More screams from beyond the wall as a severed hand fell to the ground. Silas broke two more wrists and Abigail sliced at a dozen. There were more screams and some arms retreated.