by A. L. Knorr
Seeing him like this made me feel a little better about not immediately recognizing him at the airport. He was a ragged shadow of the handsome, arrogant creature that had been responsible for so much pain and chaos last year.
I met Sark’s baleful stare and could read the hateful reaction to my scrutiny, but the threat from Jackie kept him quiet. I let my metallic sense run over him; first checking that he hadn’t used his own powers to weaken his bonds, and then just seeing what he had on him. A handful of coins were in his coat pocket, and in the band of his stained pants, I detected a folding knife with a two-inch blade. It was little effort to call the coins and the knife out of his clothes, though Sark hissed protest or pain, I wasn’t quite sure.
I looked at the knife first, opening it to look the blade over, noting the chips and curls along the cheap steel. This surprised me because with a little mental squeeze I could smooth out the metal and make a clean, sharp edge, and though Sark was weaker than me, he should be able to do the same. With his metallic powers, even this blade could be as dangerous as a handgun, but Sark didn’t seem interested in using it that way. Its disrepair suggested it was an abused tool of convenience, nothing more.
The coins were another story.
They would’ve been easy to dismiss except for the blood that had dried across them in dark, crumbling smears. The knife was his tool, but these were his weapons.
I stared down at Sark again. If he’d come to hurt us, why hadn’t these been part of his opening salvo?
I heard Jackie come back in and close the door as I squatted next to Sark, the coins and knife still floating in mid-air. He shifted away from me, then winced as he came down on his elbow. I noticed that the arm the elbow belonged to seemed twisted, uneven with his other arm. His lips peeled back from his stained teeth, a grimace of pain tightening his malformed face, but his eye stayed fixed on me.
“Ibby, what are you doing?”
I looked up at Jackie standing in the kitchen doorway, frowning.
“We still need to get the blood off the floor and rug before the cops show up,” she prompted when I didn’t respond. “And he needs to go in the pantry.”
I kept my eyes fixed on Sark and leaned close enough to make his eye widen in fright. I raised a finger and pointed to the coins above.
“You’ve killed people with those,” I said, a statement not a question. I paused, and he nodded his head slightly, maybe thinking the acknowledgement was what I was looking for.
“Why didn’t you use those on Jackie?” I asked, then turned my hand so my finger pointed at his face. “You can answer, but try to scream or doing anything else stupid, and I’ll choke you with those coins.”
Sark’s eye burned, but he nodded slowly again. When he spoke, his voice was a hoarse whisper. “I didn’t come here to kill anybody.”
Jackie snorted and took a step into the kitchen. “Convenient when you just got your arse handed to you,” she spat, before turning to me. “Ibby, seriously, we need to clean this up. Shove his lying arse inside that closet and let’s get to work.”
I saw the strain on her face and wondered if it was fear of the police or Sark. I wanted to give her what she wanted, but things weren’t adding up, and I felt that information was more important right now. I turned back to Sark, but I could feel her glaring at me in angry disbelief as I went back to questioning our nemesis.
“If you didn’t come here to kill anybody, what did you come here for?”
Sark’s eye drifted over my shoulder to Jackie, and a fresh spike of rage and hate raced across his expression, but it was short-lived. His eye closed, and his whole body shuddered. When he opened his eye again, he was looking at me, and I was surprised at what I saw. He looked like he was about to cry. Desperation and fear swirled across his face, chasing each other. When he finally spoke, his voice was raw and thick.
“I need help.”
5
“You came to the wrong door then,” Jackie declared before going into some very colourful and ungracious descriptions of Sark’s person and parentage.
I was too stunned to say anything, Sark remained adamant.
“I need your help,” he said looking at me. “Something has happened. They’re coming for me, and I need your help.”
I maybe thought that if I just kept staring at him, he was going to start making sense, and I’d know the truth. Jackie took a different tack.
“Well, if you want to sit here and let a crapsack fill your ear with shite, be my guest.” She threw her hands up in disgust. “I’m going to do my part to make sure we don’t get arrested tonight.”
Jackie stormed out of the kitchen and went to the hall closet to get cleaning products. I stayed where I was, looming over Sark, still trying to see the hidden agenda behind his words.
“You’ve got three minutes before I shove you in there,” I told him with a nod toward the pantry. “Make ’em count.”
Sark’s eye roved my face, then he cleared his throat to speak.
“Last year, you and that bitch put me on the run,” he snarled, unable to keep the animosity from his voice.
“Calling Jackie names cost you a minute, Sark,” I warned, my voice flat and low.
“Not Jackie,” Sark growled, agitated and shifting uncomfortably on the floor. “No, I’m talking about that thing that saved you in the alley. The one who used to work for me.”
“Daria?” But, I knew she had to be who he was talking about. “Way I heard it, she worked with you once upon a time, not for you.”
“Tomayto, tomahto,” Sark wheezed. “Point is her leaking all that information left me running from the bobbies and Winterthür as soon as I left Greenwich.”
“I’m feeling all kinds of moved for you,” I snorted in disgust, remembering all too well the horror and ruin he’d left me to wrestle with when he’d lost control of Kezsarak. “Tick-tock, chap, time’s almost up.”
I gave the copper bands a little nudge, and Sark slid closer to the pantry.
“She came to me,” Sark blurted, voice breathless and trembling. “The one you call Daria came when I was on the run and offered me a gift, a chance to get back onto Winterthür’s good side.”
I knew I shouldn’t react, shouldn’t give him anything to use to manipulate me, but I scowled. “Bollocks.”
Sark groaned, and his head lolled back on his knobby neck.
“She did, and what she gave me was … it was big. I couldn’t believe she had it, but once I knew what she’d given me, I couldn’t not take it to Winterthür. You understand? I had no choice.”
I still didn’t believe Daria would give anything to Sark that wouldn’t put him in the hospital, or possibly the morgue, but I wanted to keep him talking. He might reveal something useful.
“What was this big thing?” I did my best to sound bored.
Sark hesitated, and that same hysterical look came into his eye. I couldn’t deny that these expressions of terror were starting to win me over, though I knew Sark was a liar par excellence. He could be faking, but if he wasn’t, I ignore the fact that something that scared him this much should have my attention.
“It was a key,” he whispered, raising his head from the floor, his eye darting about suspiciously. “It was the key.”
I stared back at him dumbly. I wasn’t sure which bothered me more: my not knowing what he was talking about or his assumption that I knew what he was talking about. Neither boded well. “Key to what?”
Sark watched me for a second bewildered, and then with a little, disbelieving shake of his head: “The key to Heaven’s Barrow,” he hissed, as though the words might sting. “The key to Ninurta’s Tomb.”
That name I did know.
Ninurta was supposed to be the very first Inconquo and the slayer of Asag. Asag, father of a thousand gallu, had been some big bad demon warlord and baby-daddy, who threatened to wipe mankind from the face of the earth. According to Lowe, Ninurta, after cutting a deal with Kezsarak, one of Asag’s friendlier children, had u
sed his metallic powers to kill Asag and then slaughter his army of offspring. Asag was the founder of the Inconquo as defenders against supernatural evil and a hero. When he killed Asag, he broke his deal with Kezsarak, and that betrayal was what created the world-ending monster I’d gone toe-to-toe with last year.
In my book, Ninurta kind of breaks even.
“Okay.” I shrugged. “An archeological treasure, but how does that put you here, begging for our help? Do you expect me to go all Indiana Jones and rant at Daria that those relics belong in a museum?”
As a matter of fact, I did want those artifacts in a museum, and I wanted to be the one to put them there. My job had vastly improved, but the discovery of a find like that is what––besides bringing Uncle Iry home––I’d been living my life for. Still, I was pretty sure that Sark hadn’t come here to help realize my life’s ambitions.
“You don’t understand.” He licked his lips with a swollen, discoloured tongue. “It’s not the relics, or the information, or even the technology they wanted. It was Ninurta; it was the First Inconquo that they wanted. His tissue, his remains, hell, even his dust.”
There was something odd about that list, but I couldn’t settle on it at the moment with the peculiar revelation of Winterthür’s interest in a corpse thousands of years old.
“What would they want with Ninurta’s remains?”
Sark shuddered at the question. “You’ve no idea the things they are capable of, the things they are so close to achieving!” The look in Sark’s eye had become frantic.
“What did they want his body for, Dillon?” I pressed.
Sark wasn’t looking at me anymore, but through me, his lips quivering as his teeth began to click together.
“Shutup!” he snapped, but the effort of the outburst reduced him to a whimper. “It doesn’t matter what they wanted; it only matters what they found. The only thing that matters in this whole miserable mudball is what was in that tomb?”
The madness in his voice, the way he said tomb with a sneer, and he began to giggle and gibber …
My skin prickled with gooseflesh.
Sark laughed then, a high, broken cackle that made my stomach twist and heart seize.
“Ninurta is alive!”
---
“So, he’s crazy then?” Jackie asked, her expression desperate for my agreement. “He’s either lying, or he is stark raving mad, right?”
Sark had gone into the pantry quietly enough – though occasionally we heard a whimper. I’d helped Jackie clean up the blood on the floor, and we rolled up the rug and hid it in a closet. We moved a smaller area rug from our room to the doorway. It clashed horribly, but at least this way the worst thing we could be accused of was bad taste.
It had been unnerving listening to Sark’s muffled mewlings as we cleaned, but we gritted our teeth through it, and soon he’d fallen silent. I guessed he’d fallen asleep, but I didn’t much care so long as he was quiet.
Now Jackie and I were back where we’d started after dinner, sitting in the living room together. Exhausted, but skipping off to bed was impossible after everything that had just happened.
“Maybe he’s crazy,” I admitted cautiously, knowing that right now both of us would be prone to fraying tempers and hurt feelings. “But just because he’s crazy doesn’t mean he’s wrong, and I don’t think he’s lying.”
“I didn’t think he was lying either.” Jackie’s words were cold and bitter.
I looked in my friend’s eyes and saw equal parts of anger and shame.
“He can’t get to us now,” I soothed. “I wove the bonds with silverware. Given the power he’s shown, it will take him hours to untangle that mess.”
Jackie nodded, but she was only half paying attention.
“We’ll need to keep watch,” she muttered, looking over her shoulder at the pantry. “I’ll take the first round.”
Keeping watch was a good idea, but I wasn’t sure that Jackie going first was the best idea.
“I can go first,” I offered, but Jackie shook her head emphatically.
“I’m still keyed up from the fight,” she said without looking at me. “If I try to sleep now, I’m just going to lay there and think. I’ll go four hours, then wake you, and we can switch.”
“Okay,” I surrendered, not feeling good about it but not sure I had a better option.
I looked down the hall toward Uncle Iry’s room, with a distant weariness. I was going to have a hell of a time explaining myself tomorrow.
“If Sark stirs,” I began and then stifled a yawn, “wake me up. Don’t try and handle things yourself.”
Jackie grunted the most unconvincing affirmative I’ve ever heard.
“Hey!” I said sharp enough to draw her gaze. “I’m not kidding. I won’t sleep if I think you won’t wake me up.”
She took one look at me, and a touch of her old self shone through in a smile. “Liar.”
I gave a weak laugh but reached out to take her hand. “Promise me anyway. Promise you’ll wake me if he starts giving any signs of trouble.”
Jackie met my eyes, looking ready to argue, but she relented.
“All right,” she said quietly. “I promise.”
“Good,” I sighed. “Very good.”
I sank down onto the loveseat, wrapping myself around a plush pillow.
“Aren’t you going to go to bed?” Jackie asked from somewhere that was moving farther and farther away.
“Way ahead of you, luv,” I mumbled, and then everything was the soft, lightless comfort of exhausted sleep.
6
Jackie woke me thirty minutes after she should have, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t savour every one of them.
Before konking off on the couch, Jackie told me Dillon had been quiet but that the voices and footsteps she’d heard in the hallway were the police and paramedics. To our surprise, no one had come to our door to ask questions. We counted ourselves lucky.
I kept myself awake by running my awareness over not just the bonds on Sark, but every metal object in our flat. If Sark were, or had been, manipulating metal in our apartment, I would know, because over the last year I’d grown accustomed to the shape and song of every aura. Even a little manipulation would change the tone, especially if done by someone whose powers were as rough as Sark’s.
The first light of day slid through the shades, and I realized that I should have been using the long hours to figure out what to tell Uncle Iry. No doubt, he expected a few culture shocks, but learning we had a badly beaten man who looked and smelled like he lived on the streets would surely be a bridge too far. Sark was quiet now but couldn’t stay in the pantry much longer. How were we going to keep Uncle Iry calm, and what were we going to do with Sark?
The obvious answer to the second question was to turn him over to the police, as far as I knew they were still looking for him. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. Sark knew quite a bit about Jackie and me, and even if he couldn’t prove I had powers or had been part of the “strange incident” that collapsed an ageing industrial complex in Greenwich last year, he could get us put under scrutiny. That might mean confused detectives asking questions we couldn’t answer, or it could mean the Group of Winterthür taking note––which would be a lot worse. Turning Sark in became less and less attractive.
Clearly, letting him go wasn’t an option and nor was killing him, for obvious if inconvenient reasons. My head hurt from thinking, my sluggish brain protesting at being called to work so hard with so little sleep. I alternated between staring numbly down the hall and at the pantry, hoping for some divine spark or bolt of inspiration.
Uncle Iry stirred, and after rustling and groaning sounds, he emerged, blinking owlishly. He spied me staring at him, waved, and then pointed to the bathroom. I gave him a thumbs up. Smiling, he bobbed his head gratefully and then ducked inside, shutting the door behind him.
I had minutes to think of something to say, maybe less.
Scrambling ove
r pillows to reach the couch, I shook Jackie awake.
Jackie came to fast and hard and on full alert. She gripped my head in both her hands in an instinctive move and started to squeeze. I gave a squeak that was part fear, part pain as she seemed ready to twist my head clean off. Jackie blinked rapidly and let go, muttering an apology as I massaged my temples.
“Just go and start the coffee,” I pleaded as I checked to make sure everything in my head was where I’d left it. “Uncle Iry’s up and I need something to ease him into a very awkward conversation.”
Jackie blinked one more time, then got up and headed for the kitchen. Halfway there, her body language shifted as she remembered what was in the pantry, but to her credit, she didn’t even pause.
---
“We need to talk.” I took a sip of strong, dark coffee. My hands shook a little, worried about how Uncle Iry would react, but I savoured the drink and its many blessings upon my sleep-deprived brain and body.
“I am listening.” Uncle Iry set his steaming cup down. Jackie had poured two mugs before disappearing, with the rest of the pot, into our room. In the few moments we had, we’d agreed I had to tell Uncle Iry the truth – all of it – and it would be easier if I talked to him alone.
His expression was serious, but his posture was open and welcoming. That was a small encouragement and was just enough to keep me from losing my nerve. As my mind sifted through possible words, they echoed like the ranting of a madwoman. However, I’d crossed the threshold, and if I tried to play this off as something minor, he would know I was lying. I wasn’t a very good liar to start with, and, just like my father, Uncle Iry was not easily deceived.
“This is going to be hard to believe,” I began quietly. “But it is important that you believe and trust me, even if that seems impossible at first.”
Iry looked at me levelly, his brow knotting as he studied my face.
