by Erik Lynd
"I think the stink is coming from whatever is down that tunnel. I suggest we take the stairs, before we end up in sewer sludge. These are new shoes," Dark Eris said.
At the top of the stairs was a rusted metal door. It creaked loudly as Christopher pushed against it. It wasn't locked, but it felt almost rusted in place. It eventually popped and swung free with a grating sound.
"Not used very often," Christopher mumbled.
"Could be some of the Beast's old magic keeping people away. Like a subtle deterrent," Dark Eris said.
Beyond lay a semi-collapsed hallway. One side was mostly caved in with just enough room for a single person to squeeze past the rubble.
"And no one is stupid enough to try and take shelter in a tunnel that is about to collapse."
Christopher reached out, touched the debris, and gave it a shove.
"Watch it!" Dark Eris said and backed toward the door, eying the ceiling nervously. "What the fuck are you doing?"
Christopher shoved again, nothing moved. "Just as I thought, cosmetic. The tunnel is stable, but made to look like it could collapse at any moment. My predecessor was pretty clever."
He squeezed past the rubble, Dark Eris following. The hallway beyond was short and he could see light from ahead. "I think this is the exit."
It was a doorway that opened onto a street. A street like none Christopher had ever seen. The first thing—like a slap in the face—was the overpowering smell of rotting trash. It littered the streets, piles of garbage lumped up against a wall. He saw a handful of people sleeping against another wall, the homeless in the slums. The buildings themselves were little more than large sheds stacked atop each other. There were larger structures: long-abandoned mansions, now overrun by tenants filling each room.
Noise and lights moved in the structures. Apparently, the slums were awake through the night. Christopher could hear laughter, yelling, and sobs in the distance. The sounds of mothers yelling at their children and men laughing echoed through the streets. In some ways it felt more alive than New York. But all it took was one whiff, and Christopher realized it wasn't home. There was death in the air, a constant cloud of it hung over this town.
He could smell the spiritual corruption too. Evil hung over this place, but it mixed with a strange kindness and happiness. There was a strong sense of wrongness here, but it was simpler and distinct from the good. It was different from New York, or even Mexico City proper. Christopher could only guess it was evil born out of survival.
But the darkness was there, and suddenly Christopher felt the hunger to hunt. Almost subconsciously he started to reach out to the shadows, began pulling them toward him. Shaping them into his jacket and hood. A hand reached out and clutched his arm.
"What are you doing? This was just reconnaissance," Dark Eris said. "You can't go off hunting and killing right now."
She was right, Christopher realized. He started to nod when he caught a new scent. It was a putrid soul stink that he recognized. It wafted faintly down the street. It was the soul stench of the Demon Collector. Instantly, the Weapon was in his hand. But before it could change and flare to life Dark Eris grabbed his arm again. This time wrenching it and spinning him around. Then she slapped him, not a human get-your-attention slap; this was a full-on demon bitch slap. Christopher reeled back.
"Don't go rogue on me now Chris. Get your shit together," she said.
Rage surged through him, but the pain cut through it, and he was able to push it back down. He let go of the shadows and put away the Weapon, and then leaned against the wall.
"Thanks. I don't know what happened. I caught the scent of the dark soul, and the next thing I knew the power jumped at me, almost like it was excited."
"You mean the dark soul controlling the demons? You were able to get his scent?
"Yeah, he's here, somewhere in these slums. I need to go after him, get to him before he strikes at us again, or is able to pull off whatever this Day of Chaos is."
"What you need to do is get to the Library and see if you can get any information. The last time you saw him, you were almost overrun by an army of demons. Unless you know something we don't, there’s no reason to suspect it would turn out any different this time. Hell, it could be a trap."
"I hadn't thought of that," Christopher said quietly. "Thanks for stopping me."
"No problem. Usually when you go off like that, you cause us a lot of trouble. I'm just glad I was able to stop you."
It was true, Christopher realized. She had slapped him and he had calmed instantly. In the past when the hatred and anger overtook him, he was either overcome or he was able to push it back with great effort and a much longer struggle. He had thought it was just the pain of her slap that had brought him back, but now he was thinking it was something more…or rather less,—her touch. The pain of the slap just completed the job.
"Let's get back to the lair so you can go off and visit your Library and maybe get some answers," Dark Eris said.
And before he could say anything, she had disappeared back through the rusted door.
17
This was not her room. The one she liked was back at the hacienda, but Golyat had told her this one would do for now. And she should not question Golyat, he made her hurt when she did that. Still, he was better than the horrid woman who had kept her locked up in that basement. At least he gave her things, clothes and food, let her sleep in a bed. He was good to her when he wasn't being bad to her.
She wasn't sure why they were here. Something about finding ancient artifacts. Something in these ruins was important for the Alliance. Some sort of power. Golyat had said they’d found it, and even now it was being shipped out of here to some place far away. He said they would have to stay much longer.
She didn’t like it here; this room was not a good place. Its ancient stone walls seemed to press in on her. It gave Grace a slight panic like she would turn to find the doorway gone and she would be trapped forever. She had screamed the first time he had left her alone in here…until he had hurt her. It was her fault, with all the screaming. She deserved it.
The room was small, but big enough, she supposed. The bedding was very simple—a mattress with a sleeping bag on it—but it was clean. A table stood against one wall, her work station Golyat had called it. Various metal tools were spread across it: vials of obscure, and in some cases mythological, substances sat in a rack. Stacks of books, almost all of which she could not read, were on the desk and stacked against one wall.
All of this Golyat had obtained for her, telling her it was the tools of her trade. But she had no idea what her trade was. They told her she was a witch, a soul shaper, but they never told her what exactly that meant. She knew she was very important, but not as important as the glowing vile resting gently in her palms—the vial that contained the soul shard of the one they called The Hunter.
And her task was to master it. She didn’t know exactly what that meant, but she was learning. She sat in a chair and stared at the shard cradled it in her hands. She reached out with... something. Her mind, her soul, she didn't know; she just did what felt right. Some part of her reached out and wrapped itself around the essence inside. She caressed it.
Like she had done so many nights before she gently probed it, poking at it and watching it react. She could sense that it was protecting itself. The soul was no easy thing to understand, its complexities far beyond anything she was ready for. But Golyat had made it clear she must understand it as soon as possible.
She continued her examination, working instinctively. Her own special magic, backed by emotion, seemed to have the biggest effect on it. So she had started feeding her power—her probing tool as it were—anger, hatred, and fear: big emotions she could easily access. They came to her naturally. They were a part of who she was, and she understood these primal emotions better than anything else.
And so it was these feelings she injected into the shard of the Hunter's soul. Most of the time it didn't work, finding a chink in t
he armor he had built around himself was difficult; but every once in a while, she succeeded and a little part of her power seeped in before the shard could block her once again.
It had gone on like this for days. She searched and searched, poking the soul. It would defend itself, ever shifting. But each time she was able to insert a dark thought or hateful emotion, it weakened just a little bit. It became just a little bit easier to find that next chink in its armor.
Though she did not understand how, she knew that when she weakened the shard, the corruption reflected back on the rest of the soul. The part still in the Hunter. When she damaged this shard, she struck out at the Hunter. And that pleased Golyat, so that pleased her.
She was winning. She just needed time. Unfortunately, that was not how Golyat saw it. He needed her to master her soul-shaping as soon as possible. He was afraid. She could feel it in his black and blighted soul.
He wouldn't say it and she never would mention it, she had felt his anger and his beatings too many times, but he was afraid of this Hunter.
And that made her curious. What could cause such fear in one as powerful as Golyat? She did not know exactly what he was, but Golyat had a dark power at such depths she couldn't even fathom.
She poked again at the soul shard, hoping to make another hit. Though Golyat had been patient so far, Grace knew that he would soon want her to demonstrate progress.
She thought she might have some glimmer of control now. She gazed deep into the soul shard trying to see into it with something more than her eyes. Then she felt it.
"He's close," she whispered. Perhaps Golyat would have his demonstration sooner than she had thought. And she would finally see the Hunter in person. She would see how he matched up against the little piece of him she had now. "Come Hunter, let me see the full you."
18
Christopher arrived standing at the Library. This was a first. Usually he was so disoriented when he crossed over, he ended up flat on his face. It was also getting less painful, both physically and spiritually, when he traveled to the Library. He wasn't sure that was a good thing: did it mean he was becoming used to the power, or was he becoming more jaded? In the past it had felt like a cleansing of the soul; now, it was just another piece of his new life.
Whatever the reason, he had arrived standing, not on the ground looking up at a smug Librarian. Speaking of which, Christopher thought, where was he? If he isn't here to see this for once...
Christopher turned and immediately ran into tall, dark, and shadowy. Apparently, the Librarian had been standing right behind him. Christopher cried out in surprise and tripped over the edge of rug and went down, landing on his back.
"Don't do that! You scared the shit out of me," the Librarian said.
"Scared the shit out of you? God dammit," Christopher said getting to his feet.
"God doesn't damn, you do," the Librarian said. "Or they do it to themselves? There are all sorts of ethical theories on the subject we could discuss. So, did you come here to discuss philosophy? I assume it isn't for another round of training so soon. You were badly beaten up the last time."
"Thanks, but really if you’re not planning to take a career as a motivational speaker, you should at least write a book."
Christopher rubbed his tail bone. "I wanted to look at the Hunter's Journal. I need some information on a new dark soul that I just encountered."
"Certainly," The Librarian turned and floated away. Christopher trailed after. He might have been able to find the journal room by himself, but he'd rather not take the chance of losing himself in such a vast space. They passed through several large rooms the size of cavernous stone warehouses, and walked down a long hall finally ending up in front of the door only he could open.
The door was large as though made for giants, and black: not a painted black, but a darkness so deep no light could reflect off of it. He was used to the sense of vertigo it gave him every time he approached it, but that didn't make the entrance any easier. When he walked toward it he felt like he was falling into something. Something not right. It opened instantly at his touch.
Inside was the room that held the journal of his predecessor, the Beast. The walls were lined with past volumes of hunts, thousands of them. He had read through some, discovering his predecessor was truly ruthless, but also smart and well versed in his job and it just confirmed what a noob Christopher really was.
In the center of the room was a pedestal, and on it lay the current Hunter’s Journal. It was open and Christopher suspected he would find it turned to the page he needed, the page of his latest dark soul. It was always disconcerting to look in that book. It was like a history of evil laid out in one place. While not all of humanity’s woes were chronicled here, the vast majority of significant horrific events had a dark soul as its source, either before the soul had descended to Hell or after it had escaped.
Christopher approached the journal. He expected to see what he always did: merely faint outlines and little or no text describing the prey. The Librarian had told him the journal was supposed to be a sort of background on who, or what, he was hunting. It was a way for the Hunter to learn about his prey, what made them tick. The idea being he might find some insight into killing the dark soul, some weakness.
The only problem was that it didn't seem to work for him. Whether it was because Christopher was mortal, new to his role, or just plain didn't know how to turn the damn thing on, the journal gave him no background. It only captured notes on what he had done in his hunting, no history of the dark soul.
So, he was stunned when he looked down at the book and saw staring back at him a fully detailed drawing of the dark soul he had encountered in the streets of Mexico City.
"Well, fuck me," Christopher said quietly.
It was all there: the priest clothes, the wide brimmed hat, his short, slightly paunchy body topped by his round face, and the sunken, black rimmed eyes. He could see details he hadn't seen before; the priest raiment looked old, anachronistic. Wire glasses and an old bag that seemed out of place in modern time.
There was only one picture. It seemed he looked the same before and after escaping Hell. Only his inside had changed for the worse. Above the picture was a name: Fredrick Bailey, aka The Demon Collector. There was more text also; it appeared to be a snippet of his life story.
"Well that's more like it," the Librarian said from over his shoulder. "I knew you could do it."
Patronizing tone aside, the Librarian was right. It did seem like the journal was finally giving up its secrets. Despite all of his screw ups Christopher was progressing. At least, whatever powered the books thought so anyway.
"It even lists his alias," Christopher said to himself.
"Yes, what part of “all the information in the universe” did you not get?" the Librarian said. "If it is knowledge, it is somewhere in this Library."
"Really? Can you direct me to the knowledge on how to make a metaphorical Librarian shut the fuck up?"
The Librarian said, "I'll be outside in the hallway if you need me."
Then he turned abruptly and floated out of the room. Christopher almost said something. Almost. Then he let it go. He needed to read through these notes on the Collector, he didn't have time to coddle the Librarian. The book in his hands was calling out to him. He quickly read through the short passage. It read like a cross between encyclopedia entry and horror novel. It even had a title: The Damnation of Fredrick Bailey.
Fredrick Bailey was born 1831 and raised in the Old Brewery in the Five Points area of New York. From the moment he was born his life was a constant fight for survival, a fight that he was in no condition to win. He was a pale, sickly child who should never have made it out of infancy. At the time, the New York slum rivaled London’s own decaying urban sprawl. Overcrowding and incredibly unsanitary conditions led to rampant disease and suffering. Death was everywhere.
Into this the Collector was born. Smaller than average and weaker than the others around him, no one expect
ed him to survive. But he did, day by day. Early on he did this by staying away from the worst elements of the neighborhood.
But it was not always enough. Even he could not keep away from the hell that was Five Points. He was regularly beaten and raped. The slum, the bottom of the vast pond of humanity, was where the worst of the scum eventually settled. Everyone started out as a victim in Five Points, and everyone had a choice: remain a victim forever or evolve into something more.
The Collector chose the latter.
Eventually he was pulled into the gangs; service to them was the only way to survive. He never rose high in the ranks, staying a low-level errand runner. He didn't have the strength to become any sort of leader. However, despite being weak and small, he never got sick and he never turned down a job. He earned a reputation as being smart, efficient, loyal, and best of all, submissive.
"No wonder he’s such a freak," Christopher said out loud. His early life read like he was the poster boy of serial killers.
The first major turning point happened when he was eleven years old. A priest had come to the Old Brewery. He came to save he said, he came to teach, but he also came to satiate his unholy lust. This priest had a taste for the exotic: pain and suffering as well as the occasional sexual dalliance. By day he lectured and taught the children who ran on the street, giving them something to hope for. He destroyed those hopes at night.
The Collector was drawn to him, listened to his words, and tried to understand what kind of god would create this world. The priest took him under his wing, gave him food and knowledge with one hand, and took his pleasure with the other. It was the story of the Last Supper that caught The Collector's young mind. It was the idea of eating the body of a god to gain some insight into the world, to be saved, and for The Collector that meant power.