by Nick Cole
To him, glaring contemptuously, they are nothing but stray dogs.
The men standing under the hellish orange light and swirling fog look bleak and afraid. They have no intention of challenging anyone. They’re clearly aware of which way the wind is blowing and that it’s blowing against them.
Even though the night is hot and still.
Rashid shouts at them in Arabic. It’s harsh and guttural and I understand none of it. But I know things will not end well tonight and I suddenly just want to drive away because there’s really nothing I can do about what’s going to happen next.
I know it.
And I hate myself for knowing it.
There is nothing I can do about it.
Which is a feeling you never actually think you’ll feel. And when you do, you understand how cruel the world really can be. You understand like you never did before. And you’re forever changed after that moment. The world’s a little darker after that. Maybe even a lot darker.
A moment later the men are being pushed against the wall of the building. Above their heads the Cyber Warfare Center’s shimmering neon lettering drips with night moisture.
Rashid turns to me.
“This is the clan that screwed everything up tonight. Pigs.”
I wasn’t aware of any clan that screwed anything up. But Rashid’s face is imperious with disgust. In the orange hell-light of the parking lot, his face is the opposite of the haunted faces I see behind him. He nods toward someone and a command is barked. Again in Arabic. A few soldiers rush into a line and stand shoulder to shoulder. Weapons at port arms.
No. I do not like what is about to happen.
I know they are about to shoot these men with their backs to the wall. To murder them.
How many people have I shot online?
I’ve never seen it happen in real life.
And I instantly know I never want to.
But Rashid is staring right at me. Like he knows everything. Knows about Irv, Kiwi, Chloe. Knows how badly I want out. His eyes are dull and somewhere else.
Like a shark.
Rashid doesn’t live here anymore.
He nods only slightly, and that other voice barks a command I don’t understand and don’t have to. Bolts are pulled back and rounds locked into place within the assault rifles. The men with their backs to the wall begin to scream and cry and I know they’re begging for their lives.
Then one word from that other voice. One word. Even though it is Rashid who gives the actual orders. It is all Rashid. The Arab prince who will never know anything but what it is like to live in luxury, to have everything that he has ever wanted. And to order the killings that he wants done…
The soldiers fire.
Chapter Forty-Three
I think I walked to the Porsche after the execution. I distinctly remember the feel of the fob in my hands. Pulling it from my pocket as though that were the most natural thing in the world. The brass casings that had fallen to the ground seemed to still be tinkling in the night though the firing had stopped minutes before.
It isn’t until I start the engine and realize its massive growl is replacing the sound of the falling brass shells on the pavement that I really begin to think about those now-dead men across the parking lot.
I sit behind the wheel.
Rashid is getting into his car. They brought it around to the front, near the steps that lead up into the building. The dead bodies are still lying off to the side. The soldiers are organizing themselves into some kind of work detail to pick up the dead. Everyone is going home, except them. They will stay and clean up.
And me. I’m not going home either.
I have no home.
I think about the sailboat. If I knew how to sail, or even turn on the motor, I’d take it and head out to sea tonight. Straight into the dark and the fog. I don’t care.
Anything to stop hearing the sound of all that falling brass as the rounds tore through bodies like sacks of wet cement. The screams that had clearly been pleas for mercy stopping suddenly once the firing began. The quiet moaning in the silence that followed. One of the soldiers walking forward and firing with a rifle into each body. He had to reload halfway through. Short staccato bursts. No pistol. No coup de grâce. Somehow the short bark of the AK was worse than the initial killing.
Much worse.
Like it was saying there are no second chances. That death is here.
I pull out of the parking lot behind Rashid. No one is on the street. Just the two of us and the fog. And the night.
I stare at his red taillights ahead and I want to…
My fingers grip the wheel. The knuckles are bone white.
And what?
What do I want to do?
And if I did it, how would I ever get out of here alive?
He turns at the next intersection. Beeping his horn twice. A cheery counterpoint to…
… like he didn’t just murder twelve…
… people.
And then it’s just me cruising north along PCH, following my high-beams through the fog. Looking for a way out.
Wondering if there is one.
Chapter Forty-Four
I find myself back at the sailboat. For a moment I just watch it from the dock. Watch the dark water around it along the harbor become a mirror, the fog swallowing everything the mirror doesn’t reflect.
The sailboat is a world unto itself.
And on it things like what happened in the parking lot never happened.
That’s why I came back here.
That, and I’m pretty sure there’s no way I’m getting through the border. Rashid will never let me go. I know that now.
On the boat, I dial her number. The one she called from.
“Hello.”
Her voice is soft. Like I’ve just woken her from some dream.
“Hello?” she repeats.
“It’s me,” I say.
There is a long pause.
“It’s late. I saw the streams. Big finish. But that was two hours ago. Where are you now? Where have you been?”
“Driving. Along the coast.”
“Did he give you one of his cars?”
“Yeah.”
“I hate him.”
I listen to the silence that follows her confession. Then…
“I do too.”
And then there is a longer pause. Me realizing what I’ve just said. Her expecting me to say more.
“Did he do something bad tonight?” she asks finally.
I swallow hard. Hear the brass shells hitting the pavement of the parking lot. I want to scream at the night.
I pull a glass out of a cupboard in the galley. Fill it with two cubes from the ice chest. Splash some Clevinger’s across the cubes, then think better of it and go ahead and drown them.
I stare at the glass.
“Yeah.” My voice is dry. Or at least that’s what I tell myself when I lift the glass of bourbon and toss it back.
I close my eyes and wait for her to say something.
“Things are getting bad out there,” she says softly.
I think of the helicopters patrolling the rest of Calistan. Beyond the Gold Coast. I saw them on the way into the Cyber Warfare Center. And after. I’ve been seeing them all along. Ever since I arrived.
“I’m getting out of here,” I tell her suddenly. “You should come with me.”
“I barely know you.”
And…
“This is my home.”
I pour more of the Clevinger’s. Hold the glass and sip.
“This is no kind of home. It’s a nightmare.”
“I know.”
I want to be next to her. In bed. Wherever she is. I suspect some rich Arab prince’s house. Or an apartment someone is keeping her in. Their own private plaything.
This is dangerous. I tell myself I should drive to the border and wave my passport and hope somehow I get lucky and get across. Get out now. While I still can.
And I also ho
pe she’s in some normal house. Someplace that’s ordinary. I imagine lying down next to her like I did that night she tried to stab me. Falling asleep with her touching my face. The opposite of now.
“You’re beautiful,” I tell her.
“That’s not why you called.”
She’s right. And now it feels like I used the memory of her body like some kind of cheap defense to paint her as something cheap, something similar to Rashid.
As if there could be anything else like the devil.
She murmurs into the phone, “Say it.”
Except I don’t know what to say.
That I feel something for her? Feel some connection that has been missing in my life with a girl who tried to stab me in a bordello somewhere on the neon side of the third world.
“You were there that night…” I begin.
I’m saying this over an open line. Who know who’s listening. The CIA. Rashid’s secret police.
But I continue anyway because maybe at two o’clock in the morning everyone who listens is taking their coffee break. Maybe they’re tired and waiting for the sun.
“… to…”
I wait.
“Yes,” she says.
And…
“I was.”
I listen to her voice. I want to know everything about her. Because I’m sure everything I know is some kind of lie.
“You’re not really one of those kinds of girls.” That could be either a question or a statement. In my heart it’s a statement.
“Does that matter?” she says.
I sip the Clevinger’s. It burns like harsh wood smoke. Somewhere out in the night, the foghorn guarding the harbor wonders if anyone is listening to it.
“No,” I answer. It doesn’t matter to me.
“We should meet,” she says, then adds, “Tomorrow. I mean…” And she gives a sleepy little laugh. “… today. I’ll pick you up.”
“Where?” I ask.
“At your boat.”
Chapter Forty-Five
In the dream that seems like another life, I’m standing in the grand dining hall where the vampires were about to feast. The corpses of the once-nubile vampire brides hidden beneath their hijabs have turned to dry dusty old bones, each with its own smiling rictus that seems to laugh at me.
And the vampire is gone.
But the house, this castle, this… and I know this is the right phrase deep inside my consciousness… this old pile, seems to await my next move.
I leave the opulent dining room and enter a hall of gothic grandeur. The high walls are alive with stone gargoyles and dragons that seem to watch me. I blink once and find myself back in that inn somewhere in a haunted forest. I’m sitting across the table from Death. All across the table I see the castle in miniature. Rooms are alive with the undead. Vampires, zombies, and unquiet ghosts prowl ornate halls and shadowy passages rendered in malefic beauty. A tiny me, a samurai in miniature, stands on the lowest level of this impossible castle, a thing straight out of some madman’s nightmare.
And now Death speaks, and I recognize the voice. It’s that smoky barrel-aged bourbon and dry leaves voice that’s been constantly narrating my journey since this, whatever this is, began.
“Which way will you go, Samurai?”
I watch the living hell beneath our eyes. Every path leads to a certain and horrible death. And I wonder if in that instant it will be me watching miniature me die… or me actually dying.
Because I’m not all that sure what this is. And what the stakes are.
“Will you pursue the vampire deeper into the depths of the castle, Samurai? Or has he perhaps gone on for some meeting, some appointed rendezvous?”
I feel frozen, and that is not good. Beneath me the statues above the tiny samurai come to life. Dragons and gargoyles move like liquid clay. Fantastic beasts made fantastically real. I marvel and know that I’m doomed.
Death pulls its bony hand out from within a hanging sleeve. Between finger and thumb bones it’s holding a figurine. I look closely and see the murdered angel.
He leans forward, and I can hear his bones grinding one against the other. He places the figurine next to the tiny samurai.
Enemy or friend?
The tiny murdered angel comes to life.
“Up,” I whisper, hearing the husky, dry grate of my own voice.
And now I’m back in the grand opulent gothic hall of living statues.
I turn to see the murdered angel. She’s beautiful and familiar, but I can’t tell who she was, or why she might even be tagged as familiar inside my mind.
Her face is a swirling mask of anger, pain, and victory as she pulls a blazing sword from a sheath on her hip. Her gray robes and raven hair swim and undulate as though she is underwater. She turns to me, eyes wide with terror, indicating some urgent message I can’t understand.
The blurred movement of gargoyles coming at us like angry wasps fills the corners of my vision and I wonder if we will be okay. If we will live. If we will be all right on the other side of all this.
“Not at all!” she screams in some ethereal battle command, and then we are in battle, back to back, slaughtering flying demons coming at us from the heights of the room.
I pull Deathefeather in one swift motion and lop the arms from the first flying gargoyle to come at me. The screeching abomination goes flying past and two more come weaving and bobbing like crazed insects, except the size of a pit bull with wings and teeth and razor-sharp claws reaching out.
At my back I hear the angel’s blade pass through the air on high soprano notes as though it is singing some song not meant to be heard in this mortal life.
Within seconds the battle turns desperate and the two of us are hacking and slashing for all we’re worth. Cuts and slashes appear across my body and torn robe, and a long-bodied dragon circles the room above us.
The bodies of the dead gargoyles turn to crumbled stone pieces at our feet and we are left with the menacing dragon. And then it turns to black smoke and streaks off into other chambers.
In the yawning silence, the angel turns to me and beckons with her sword that we should go on. And up. Her face is one of desperate pain. And incredible beauty.
So I follow.
We go upward through winding stairs and moonlit galleries. Haunted enigmatic rooms where lone candles burn and corridors that seem an endless trek through a mirrored eternity. We fight corpulent spiders and shadowy specters. We pass a murdered woman lying in a grand bed. A book rests on her chest above the gossamer of her nightgown. Her face is ghostly pale as though she has been frightened into death.
We climb high into the dark reaches of an ancient tower, following stairs that seem as though they will forever climb upward and never end. But they do end. And at the top they open out onto a parapet atop a lesser tower. We are high above the surrounding forest, yet still merely at the base of the main tower that reaches its spindle far above. A tiny door leads into it.
It is here that a coven of witches cackles and gives battle on the scant space of the lofty parapet. Swords and spells do battle one against the other, and the clash is nothing short of titanic. Black cats screech and cross along the limits of the place with careless abandon as we trade blows and enchantments. The height on which the battle takes place is daunting, as though daring us to strike too hard, to rush too fast at the spider-webbed witches… and over we go.
It’s a long fall after that.
The angel cleaves a witch, and the hag shrieks with unholy torment as it shrinks down into its shrouds. The other two come at me with brooms turned to sudden smoking torches, and I sense my moment. As though an opening has been granted, or some special ability unlocked in the dreamy game of this reality. As though it is time for me to reap.
I see autumn grain. Full and waving beneath a harvest moon. All of this transposed against the bloated moon of the midnight battle against witches atop the tower.
I embrace this moment of harvest and step forward between the two hove
ring witches whose faces are masks of wicked glee, voices muttering like the insane… and I harvest.
They barely move as first I give one cut.
Then two.
Three.
Four.
Five and six.
In the space of the upper lid of an eye falling toward the bottom, in the unmeasurable time it takes for just that and nothing more… I’ve delivered so many cuts with the remorseless Deathefeather—and I have so many more to give—that the witches have lost their arms and legs. One more strike clean through and I’ve severed both their throats and only the first black spurts of pumping blood have arched into the still air between us before I give them six more cuts from the razor blade that is Deathefeather’s edge. I don’t just kill them. I dissect them before one of them can even finish the final syllable of the first word of her muttered and final damning curse.
Deathefeather passes through its final arc as I draw a line from east to west across the curvature of the world. And when I am finished they are dead and dead. Dead. Dead. Very dead.
Some old song I heard long ago, in another life not this one, begins. Like rats or ghosts tapping on furniture in some distant room while I sit sleepless and waiting out the long night.
Something about someone being dead dead dead.
And as fast as the fleeting memory of something half remembered comes… it’s gone.
I look out over that haunted forest I came through and nowhere in it is anything familiar. It is as though I’ve gone into another world. All I see is a vast dark ocean of twisted trees clutching like fingers at the mist and moonlight. Far below, mean torches gutter at the gate to the tower and the manor house I came through earlier in the evening. But that seems like a long time ago.
I turn to the angel, the murdered angel, who floats just above the stone of the parapet, her clothes still undulating as though she is swimming in a sea that isn’t there. Looking at her and the dark forest, I wonder if there are indeed other worlds than these.