Exile

by Peter M. Ball

  Darius had a flat, but he dressed down to deal heroin and spend hours listening to the ramblings of the craziest of the burnouts. It wasn’t unusual. It’s a phase most aspiring sorcerers go through, not long after they realize the world contains more secrets than they suspected. A lot of them theorize that contact with the Gloom is the source of many off-kilter rants heard on street corners. It’s rare that they’re right, and even on the occasions they are, there are more lucid sources than those poor folks broken by unprotected exposure to the Gloom.

  We spent the two weeks on surveillance, waiting for the full moon and the night of his rituals. I squatted in the passenger seat of the van, doing the final watch. Langford sat behind the wheel, working her way through a pack of Winfield Blues.

  “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I kinda hate this guy.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, eyes never leaving the park. Darius was talking to a sixteen-year-old girl, a blonde with matted hair and a grubby blue Quicksilver jacket. “Third time our friend has talked to her in a week. Dollars to donuts, that’s who he’s hoping to take home for a sacrifice.”

  “Could be courting a new customer.”

  “Please.”

  I peered at him through binoculars. “She represents a break in his pattern?”

  “Big enough,” Langford said. “Ordinarily, by this point, he’d have stopped by, sold, and moved on, burned through his spiel about the glory of whatever pissant entity he’s lucked into worshipping. Then he’d head further down the bank, where he can listen to Old Mate rant a bit, see if he can learn anything.”

  She pointed to an elderly bloke who camped out on a patch of grass by the swings. Darius kept glancing his way, but didn’t move over. His attention was on the girl, laying it on thick.

  “You got a handle on his defenses?”

  “Sure.” Langford finished her cigarette and unearthed the pack to forage for another. “They’re basic wards. You could break them, if you put your mind to it. You got a plan to take him out?”

  “Figured I’d make all his dreams come true.”

  Langford lit up. “Risky choice.”

  “It’s neat. It takes care of the body, and Sabbath wants these looking accidental.”

  Langford sucked on her cigarette, free hand toying with the end of a dreadlock. “Any other job, I’d tell ya we need more lead-in,” she said, “but this guy’s a lightweight. I’ll give you ten bucks on him shitting himself the moment a portal opens.”

  “You reckon we can pull it off?”

  “So long as you hold up your part,” she said. “Keep watch on our friend here, and I’ll go set things up.”

  * * *

  Eddie Darius rented an apartment in an old motel. The sign out front identified the place as Palm Cove, but it hadn’t been lit up in over a decade and there were no signs of palms or coves anywhere on the property.

  The layout offered several good entry points: two stairwells leading up to the second floor landing shared by three separate units, a narrow balcony on the far side accessible from a badly positioned picnic table. No working lights in the rear stairwell, no defenses over the external parts of the block. Darius focused security on his apartment, basic wards. Langford was right: I could tear them down myself.

  “Dark stairwell’s your way in,” Langford said. “Nobody’s used it after sunset for two straight weeks, so it’ll give you somewhere to hang if we cloak your presence. Wait for this fuckhead to leave, and you can stroll past his protections with no trouble.”

  “He won’t sense me?”

  “If the timetables right, he’s going to be focused on the girl he’s courting for the next sacrifice. Small-time fuckers already convinced himself he’s damned unstoppable. No way Darius is expecting anyone to jump him.”

  “Might not wait for him inside, then,” I said. “Better to keep the sacrifice out of the apartment.”

  Langford shrugged. “Your call, trigger.”

  * * *

  I settled in around nine o’clock, waited a few hours for Eddie Darius to return. It’s the hardest part of the job, sometimes. The loiter, doing nothing, making sure you’re not spotted. I busied myself with a minor charm Roark taught me, one that encouraged people not to see you if they glanced your way. It gave me something to concentrate on, instead of pacing the narrow stairwell. The tether marks on my forearms hummed, drawing power fro the Gloom.

  Eddie Darius reappeared at 11:05, homeless girl on his arm. Her features matched the sacrifice he’d been grooming in Langford’s surveillance photographs: blonde and street-skin thin, big eyes and a wide mouth. Her instincts proved stronger than his, clocking my presence as the target fumbled with the keys. She backed away when I emerged from the shadows.

  The target kept talking to her, not really paying attention. I got halfway along the landing, produced the SIG and held it against my side in a calm, steady grip. “Mister Darius?”

  He startled at his name and glanced down at the pistol. Put two-and-two together real quick, for a moron like him. “Oh man,” he said.

  I gestured to the girl. “Miss, you may wish to leave now.”.

  Darius whipped his head around just in time to see her retreating. He turned back to me, eyes narrowed. Moving past the shock, Darius stumbled into the phase where he was trying to calculate what my presence meant.

  He glanced down at the SIG again. The part he couldn’t work out. Most newly-minted users of the Gloom expect their enemies to fight magic with magic.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said. “We can talk in private.”

  For a moment I saw hope rise within him, but it died when he realized Langford had disabled all his wards. Darius stepped into the kitchen. I followed him, closed the door behind me. There wasn’t much to his apartment. Shitty kitchenette. Shitty lounge room. Where most people had a couch and TV, he had a big square of granite, a ritual circle carved into the dark stone. He’d devoted a lot of effort to the boundary of his summoning space. Four feet wide, candles at even points, dried blood in the center. The knife looked like a prop from a B-Grade movie. Amateur shit, all of it. That didn’t surprise me. The Gloom responded to concentrated emotions and beliefs. Newly minted warlocks and sorcerers treat the trappings of their rituals like training wheels, unable to shape the Gloom without all the horror-film aesthetics to bolster their confidence.

  Darius edged close to the granite. Tried to hide the way he glanced down at the knife.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  He stopped. Waited for my next move. I still had the SIG pointed at the floor, held in a steady, two-handed grip. Darius whet his lips, mind whirring. “Listen, man,” he said. “I don’t have nothing worth stealing, right?”

  “Bull.”

  “Come on, dude. Look at this place. What in hell do you think you’re getting?”

  “Everyone’s got something valuable enough to take.” I lifted the SIG to cover him and whispered one of the first spells Roark ever taught me. The twelve candles spread around the circle caught alight in unison. “Don’t shit me, Darius. I know what you do here.”

  Darius stepped away from the altar, an easy smile forming on his lips. “Well,” he said, “I suppose that changes things, somewhat.” He dipped his knee, approximating a bow without ever lowering his hands. “Welcome, brother, to my san——”

  “If you say sanctum, I’ll shoot you where you stand,” I said. “It’s a goddamn lounge room, kid. Invest in candles and blood all you want—this shithole will never be a sanctum.”

  Darius closed his mouth. Gnawed his lower lip. “If you knew what I did here—”

  “I know,” I said. “I can even guess exactly what good you’ve done with it. Week after week, trying to open a portal. Killing those kids, carting off the bodies. Lazy work. Unimpressive.”

  “Lazy?” He couldn’t quite process that. I almost felt sorry for him. The kid had learned the basics from someone, figured out enough to put together a ritual circle and contact one of the entities that lay in
the deep Gloom. With tutelage, he could have been a solid sorcerer. As it is, he remained a goddamn menace to those around him.

  “Lazy,” I said. “All that blood. All these fucking props. You’ve got no idea how any of this shit works, do you?”

  “I’ve learned enough,” Darius said.

  “Yeah?” I slipped the SIG into my waistband, picked up the gaudy knife he used in his rituals. “Well Darius, I guess it’s your lucky day. I don’t want to hurt you—not my job. I’m just here to stop you from making another mess. So you show me how much you know, and if you can get through this without dumping a corpse in the river, I might not have to put a bullet in your skull.”

  Darius whet his lips again, glanced down at the circle. “But—”

  He cut himself off the moment I looked up. “Yeah? But?”

  “I need the girl,” Darius said. “A sacrifice. Mother Tiamat demands it, before she’ll grant me—”

  I grabbed his wrist and sliced the gaudy knife across his palm. For all his faults, Darius kept the blade sharp. Blood pooled, welling out of the wound. He swore three or four times, but my tight grip held the drips over the carved granite and charged up the ritual circle. His breath caught as Darius felt the first surge of power.

  “Blood’s easy,” I said. “Make contact to bolster it.”

  Darius slapping his palm down on the circle. Left a long, crimson smear over the older, darker stains. “And now there’s a sacrifice. Lesson one: a thimble’s as good as a bucket, when you’re dealing with the Other.”

  Darius nursed his bleeding hand, pressing it against his t-shirt. It didn’t stop the injury from leaking, but it left an impressive stain. I cast the knife aside, pulled the SIG again. That got his attention. “Don’t focus on the pain. It’s only temporary.”

  “I don’t...” Darius fumbled over the words. Fear robbed him of the ability to finish the sentence.

  “Kneel,” I said.

  He knelt.

  I stepped back from the granite, gave him plenty of room. “Go ahead. Introduce me to your goddess.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can,” I said. “Deep breaths, concentrate on what you want to achieve.”

  He wanted to object, but I raised the SIG and trained it in his direction. The gun seemed to give him focus, clarify the world so he understood the two options available to him. He knelt by the altar, dripped blood from his palm over the circle. Slowly, quietly, he started to chant. I didn’t recognize the words, but I recognized the rhythm.

  Nervously, desperately, Eddie Darius reached out to the far side of the Gloom and tried to contact his goddess. I held my breath, waited, let the unsteady cadence of his voice fill the room. The temperature dropped as thickening shadows spread through the circle, seeping free like a stream of dark tears.

  Darius hesitated, startled by the unexpected result. “Don’t,” I said. “Keep going.”

  He swallowed and resumed the chant, eyes wide. The darkness congealed, thickened. Became something more as it touched the Gloom. Eddie Darius faltered, unable to look away from its depths.

  A tenebrous tentacle stretched from the Gloom and caressed the side of his face. More of them reached along the edges of the circle, testing for restraints, found none. Darius retreated, hit the wall. He kept trying to go back, like he hadn’t noticed he’d run out of room.

  “What the fuck?” Darius whispered, over and over. “What the fucking fuck?”

  Part of me pitied him.

  I put a bullet in right leg, just above the knee. Eddie Darius shrieked, what little self-control he still had shattering in that instant. The tentacles shivered, feeding on his shock and the sudden rush of agony. As one, they reached for Darius and wrapped around him, dragging him into the circle with cold, implacable purpose. Eddie Darius screamed for a few short seconds, then he disappeared into the depths, drawn into the place on the far side of the Gloom.

  I kept my breathing steady, did my best to feel nothing at all. Waited a full minute before I risked moving. The older entities of the Gloom, little-worshipped and mostly forgotten, were easy to placate. Offer them a brush against our plane of existence and a terrified victim to snack on, and they’re content to lapse back to their dormant state unless you keep goading them into consciousness. Whatever goddess Darius worshiped probably didn’t even wake out of her slumber after she took him.

  But you never assume that, not once there’s an open portal in play. I let the darkness thin in the center of the circle, made sure there was nothing but granite underneath it. Then I collected the shell from the single shot, slipped it into the pocket of my jeans, and locked the front door behind me.

  DOWNTIME

  I spent a few weeks falling into a routine, despite my best intentions.

  The safe house’s design encouraged repetition. The tall, thin rooms encouraged horizontal living. All the furniture pressed against the western side of the building, leaving a clear path along the windows that faced out towards the horizon. They weren’t even windows: the east-facing wall comprised glass panels, capitalizing on the downhill view of gumtrees, beach, and sea. Visually spectacular but damned inconvenient. When daylight broke, the sun beamed into the bedroom and slapped me awake. Ensured a regular wake-up and made it damn near impossible to get back to sleep.

  In theory, I was okay with that. The hours spent unconscious are the enemy when you’re hiding out. You’re at your most vulnerable, forced to trust your defenses will keep you secure. In practice, I minimized slumber in the worst possible way, devoted my mornings to the free-weights I found in the bedroom wardrobe. Gave my afternoons over to taking care of the place, staying tidy. Double checking my protections and keeping an eye out for trouble. Cleaned the SIG on the glass-topped coffee table, like a ritual.

  Once a week I’d pull out the small wooden box I stashed beneath the floorboards under the bed. I lifted the defenses and flipped the lid, checked the bullet with Michael Wotan’s soul sat exactly where it was meant to be. Afterwards, I closed everything and reinforced the wards. Slipped the whole deal back under, tucked into my go bag, and slid the floorboards back into place.

  I ordered in groceries from the nearest supermarket, alternating the hour and day of each delivery to avoid establishing a pattern. One smart thing, at least. In the evenings I put the television on for the noise. That ended around ten o’clock, when anything worth watching was over-and-done with. Most nights, I’d listen to the waves. Re-read Persuasion for the second or third time. Killed the days while I waited for Roark to call and end our exile.

  It didn’t help. Not really. The part of the job where you sit tight and wait ground my nerves to paste, left me feeling unsettled and ready to hit something. Staying in one place wasn’t in my nature, not anymore. Sixteen years I’d worked jobs with Roark, drifting from city to city. We’d put down demons, fey, and sorcerers. We’d done the work that needed doing. Routine killed every target we hunted, before Roark first started his rituals and I first loaded a gun. Routine gave us the tools to pick apart their defenses.

  Everybody developed routines, and smart killers hijacked them. All they required time, patience, and a rock-solid conviction the effort involved was worth the rewards.

  * * *

  I met Wesna in the McDonald's up at Burleigh Heads, discussed the details in a quiet booth in the restaurant’s corner. She slid the envelope across the table, gave me a one month timeframe before the target needed to die. She watched my face, smirking, hoping for a reaction. I kept my cool, nodded. Told her it wouldn’t be a problem.

  I put a few blocks between us before I started swearing. Called Langford from a payphone down by Burleigh Beach, organized to meet with her an hour later.

  The park wasn’t a bad place to wait. Unlike most of the Coast’s beachside parks, Burleigh deserved the name: a broad, green expanse that ended at the dunes, lots of tall pines that sheltered flocks of lorikeets in the afternoon. You could hit a cricket ball without fear of it going into the street.
Families spent the day up there, during the holidays. The local feral tribes used Burleigh for drum circles and fire twirling every Saturday night. Surfers gave the shore a wide berth, preferring the break on the far side of the headlands.

  I beat Langford there by twenty minutes, so I claimed a table for the wait. Langford showed up with two cups of coffee, slid one across as she sat down. It smelt good. Better than the cheap instant I resorted to at the safe house, and a huge improvement on the McCafé garbage I’d been drinking a few hours earlier.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Langford shrugged. “You sounded like you needed a decent caffeine hit.”

  Her smile dared me to deny that, but there wasn’t much point. I sipped my coffee, stared at the dark horizon. “The next target is Nora Otto,” I said. “She runs a club in Broadbeach, right under the Demon’s noses.”

  “The Hell Bar,” Langford said.

  “You know the place?”

  “I’ve done business on the premises, from time to time,” she said.

  “You ever met Otto?”

  Langford shook her head.

  “I have,” I said. “We used to be friends.”

  “Friends, or friends.”

  “The second one.”

  Langford thought the implications over. Sipped her coffee. “All right,” she said. “You had to figure that was coming. You make a deal like yours with a demon who’s holding a grudge...”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I figured he’d twist the knife.”

  “And?”

  “Still a surprise,” I said. “Nora didn’t know about the Other, sixteen years back. Not sure how she ended up on Sabbath’s radar.”

  “Ah,” Langford said.

  “Yeah, fucking ‘ah’.”

  “And how does that change things?”

  “That depends,” I said. “How rotten is the bar?”