Signs of Portents

by Lou Paduano

  The bales were on their way down the street when the winds shifted. Not the actual winds, as there had been little of the cool breeze that typically struck the city when the sun went down. The winds that changed were that of a different kind. Winds that turned the loud cackles and the wry smiles of citizen and leader alike to quiet looks of confusion.

  In the midst of the change, one of the two large bales of hay and the cart carrying it erupted in flames. The eruption shot fifteen feet into the air and the shockwave from its ignition threw back the half dozen men surrounding the cart. Hundreds of eyes shifted to the flames, the heat searing their senses. Even the shadow that called itself a man was taken aback by the sudden flickers of fire. It illuminated everything around them; the Square was a series of shadows along the buildings on all four corners. All but one remained in a fixed position, staring at the bright beauty of the flames. One shadowy figure shifted among them toward the large wooden stake. Eyes that flickered with the same red as the flames watched the man untie the claimed witch. She raced into the night but the man lingered, keeping a guard over her while she escaped the justice of the city. The stares of the citizens returned to life after being lost for mere moments in the distraction of the flames. They shifted back to the empty stake, their angry focus now gone from sight.

  In the corner, a single pair of eyes remained fixed on the man who had freed their prize. Eyes that pulsed with vengeance watched the man raise his hands, pointing toward the second bale of hay. The eyes never left the man as the second bale erupted into flames the same way the first had mere minutes before. No, the second bale did not pry that pair of eyes away from the man who had somehow willed the bale to explode with nothing but a glare and a small object wrapped tight within his grasp.

  A stone of grey.

  The stranger vanished in the darkness of the city and the man who would one day rise again as a shadow never saw him again. However, he never forgot about him or the stone. Even at the end of his days at the center of the city, he remembered that night and the stone that created flames with but a thought from its bearer.

  Now it lay before him.

  In the center of the room, on the floor of the large cavern it sat. As he reached into the hovering orb of light searching for the man who had become a shadow of his former self, that shadow found the object he had waited centuries to obtain. The object that foretold the end of his journey, the final chapter of his story.

  In front of the man was a stone of grey.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Ruiz snapped, slamming the door to the rear stairwell behind him. The aggravated captain quickly shuffled Soriya and Loren out of the hallway, away from the prying eyes of the stationhouse. There had been enough drama in the department. Soriya knew it was coming the second she opened her mouth, but it needed saying anyway. Ruiz was always pushing things he failed to reconcile with to the side, forgetting the face of the city while spouting the fact that he was born and raised within the city limits. He had known the truth years ago, had even been called an ally by Mentor on rare occasions (though only while drinking alone in the darkness of the Bypass domicile when he believed none could overhear his ramblings). Still, Ruiz’s inability to come to terms with the dichotomy of the city forced the ugly out of her, which in turn brought it out of him. It was a hate-hate relationship that worked for them. Even when it didn’t, it was the only one they had.

  “Where then, Ruiz?” she shot back, jumping up to the railing along the staircase. She took a seat on the cool metal. “Where would you feel comfortable with me being?”

  “I have plenty of options for you, like straight to h….” Ruiz stopped, his eyes wide in anger. If they burned any deeper at the young woman, they would have seared two holes through her. He took a deep breath. His hands found his hips as he did so, looking away to find a new focus.

  “Every time,” Loren muttered, more to himself than anyone else. He glanced over at Soriya. She knew it was coming. She turned away from him on the handrail to put it off as long as possible but when he stepped down to the first floor landing below, he caught a glimpse of the large welt that covered the left side of Soriya’s face. It was a deep red mostly, but around the edges of the wound, a purple and black bruise was already forming. Loren’s eyebrow rose slightly. He casually sipped his coffee and looked away but the question was there for her to answer. She felt her hand softly graze against it, holding back the wince, and wondered when she would learn to just walk away from things.

  Soriya and Loren had parted company outside the apartment complex before any other officers arrived. As she slipped into the shadows of the city, she realized there were little options left for her. Mentor was in the Bypass chamber digging up his own answers, and for her to walk in with another failure, to show up with tears dried on her cheeks and another friend dead, was unacceptable. He needed to see her succeed. She needed him to see she was strong, that the responsibility was meant for her. She needed validation and it was never going to come after that night.

  So she ran. Alone, cold, and tired, Soriya Greystone fled deeper into the city of Portents. Her city. Despite that her vantage typically came from the ground up, she knew every rooftop, every fire escape, and every connection that kept her above it all as she traveled through the night. The cold wind bit her uncovered skin. It stung her eyes, but she never blinked. She ran faster. Urg was dead. Vlad was dead. She ran faster through the night, remembering them, trying to put them aside as Loren would during an open investigation. She needed to see past them. She needed to figure out the puzzle laid out before her. Every instinct made her want to cry out. Mentor would know. Mentor had answers to questions Loren had yet to conceive…but not her. She was stuck on the faces of two men lying on metal slabs in a morgue. So she ran through the night until the day began to creep over the city.

  With daylight approaching, she found a quiet alcove, a no longer functional bell tower that sat atop Saint Sebastian’s Church. There she slept for a time, fighting dreams of friends no longer with her.

  Dusk was her alarm clock and she woke refreshed with only a minimal amount of deep rest. Mentor always asked where she was during the days when her room in the small domicile was not occupied. She never answered. The city was hers and hers alone when she needed it most. He stayed cooped up underground for so long it was hard to remember a time he saw the sun rise in the sky. Soriya was more of a sunset person and as she waited for the glowing orb to fall behind the horizon, she started moving once more through the city. This time with a purpose. She headed for the docks and the Town Hall Pub.

  The air populating the bar was stagnant, muggy from being closed off from the world. Few people sat around; all but a handful remained dismally focused on the beverage before them. The pub was built over the remains of the city’s first town hall. The citizens of Portents burned it to the ground when the mayor was discovered to be involved in a series of heinous acts in the shadows of the city. That was the story they painted for visitors, which were fewer and fewer each year. The pub was a reminder of those long lost days, a dark and depressing glimpse at the city that was and how little things had truly changed.

  Soriya sat alone in the back corner of the bar. She had ducked under the police cordon that did little to assuage the customers of the establishment. The taped outline of Martin Decker remained around the last stool at the far end of the bar. It was roped off with police tape but someone had placed balloons on the tape, making it more a toast-worthy celebration for the patrons of the bar than a deterrent for what could happen there.

  Decker was a shifter as far as she knew. Mentor, over the course of her years with him, did his best to prepare her for the city and that meant knowing the people within its borders. Decker was once a colleague and informant to the old man and she easily understood him.

  A typical shifter could change appearances on a dime to look like anyone. Decker was not that skilled. His abilities were left to his hands. They could be the world�
��s sharpest blades or the key to a locked door. The skills he developed with his fingers led him to an illustrious career as a petty thief for a number of gangs, but his skill was only meant for survival in his eyes. Profit equaled exposure, which was never the goal of one of his kind. People like him, hidden in plain sight within the city that Soriya did her best to protect, needed the cushion of anonymity. Of the mundane. Decker wanted a life and he was good at the one he had drawn. For a time. The deceased spent much of his final years on the stool that sat in front of Soriya, a quiet lonely spiral until the end.

  His hand was the prize, the tool used to murder Vlad in the abandoned warehouse. Each victim led to the next and the next and the next. But Urg’s death was meaningless. No trophy was collected. The skin of the orc was lost in the chase. A pointless death, except for the sign left behind.

  Decker’s sign was similar in nature to the rest, scrawled in a deep crimson barely discernable along the faded wood trim that covered the walls. Though the forensics team had collected all of the evidence and taken photos of every inch of the scene, no man was stationed on the site to watch over it. The bar was not closed; the owner had refused the order, with the help of a friendly call to the mayor. So the sign sat above piss and puke from the few disheveled patrons that resided more in the pub than their own homes.

  Although she recognized that she’d seen the letter before, Soriya did not recall the language the letter belonged to. She chalked her memory lapse up to exhaustion, mostly physical and emotional, but she knew it to be more. This was her job and she was failing at it, the pressure of Mentor’s approval bearing down on her at every step.

  Her thoughts were cut short by a hand slapping against her shoulder. He hugged tight to Soriya’s shoulder, six inches taller than her, with thick black hair styled perfectly in place. He wore a smile to match his physique, big and bold, with pearly whites that reflected the overhead lights along the ceiling.

  “Name’s Ed.” His voice rang loud enough for everyone to hear. “Buy you a drink?”

  “No thanks.” Her reply was curt and she was quick to remove his hand before turning back to the scene of Martin Decker’s murder.

  “I don’t think you mean that.” His breath reeked. His hands balled into fists as he fought to maintain his smile.

  “Pretty sure I do, slick,” she said, not looking at him but at the small puddle of dried blood beneath the stool where Decker bled out. Where Decker died and no one noticed the man’s passing.

  “Like I said,” Ed replied, his hand coming back down on her shoulder. It slammed against her harder this time. “I don’t think you do. So a drink and a game of darts. Maybe more if you’re lucky.”

  “My dream date.” She smiled back at him. The message was clear—Ed wasn’t going away. He turned to see the reaction from his friends. As he did, Soriya reached up and took his hand from her shoulder. She twisted it hard and the man yelped in pain. He tried to turn to face her, his other arm flailing to grab her. Her hand snatched his wrist and sent the gripped arm up behind his back. She brought her leg up and slammed it into his backside. At the same moment, she released her grip on his arm and Ed went tumbling into a nearby table. The patrons of the bar turned but remained silent. Ed’s friends quickly raced to his side but he waved them away. He spit the floor in front of him, rose to his feet, then turned back to Soriya and her widening grin.

  “Do you know who I am?” he screamed at her.

  “Ed, right?” she mockingly replied. “Last name, Dickhead?”

  “Hilarious, lady. You have no clue. This is my bar. Hell, this is my city. They should have damn well changed Portents to my name!”

  “I don’t think Dickhead works well as a city name.” She was ready to leave. There was nothing more to see here and she needed to find Loren to see if anything else had occurred while she was sleeping. She moved for the door but Ed stood in front of her. She shifted to the side and he followed suit. Soriya licked her top lip. “You should let me leave.”

  “Make me,” he sneered.

  He did not see her fist. If he had, he would have ducked, blocked, or at least closed his eyes to the impact. Instead, he did nothing but take it. It shattered bone; it bent his nose until there was a crunching sound. Her fist carried him off his feet and flat on his back with a crash. Ed did not get up.

  The patrons of the bar simply watched. There was no reaction other than the occasional sip of their beverages. The brawl was a mild distraction from their evenings, nothing more. As Soriya looked over to make sure Ed was still breathing, she failed to see the fist coming at her. It slammed against her left cheek and she spun around from the impact. She did not fall, instead stumbling on her heels to regain her center of gravity.

  Her focus returned and she immediately caught sight of one of Ed’s friends standing before her. He held his fists high in defense.

  Soriya’s eyes narrowed as she stared down the unconscious man’s friend. Her cheek burned from the impact but nothing was broken. She felt her chest heaving, threatening to break open and release her anger upon the man. Instead, she simply glared at him. Her hand balled into a fist once more, readying her small frame. Ed was still on the floor, unmoving except for the slow rise and fall of his chest. Slowly, his friend’s hands fell to his side and he stepped back. He kept his hands in clear view, fingers wide and spread. His eyes were conciliatory and she accepted the act.

  She left without a word.

  Loren was still locked on her bruised cheek when her thoughts returned from the night’s events. She turned away, still feeling the anger toward her attacker but now had a better focus. Ruiz.

  “You keep hoping it’s all a bad dream,” she spat. “That I’ll just fade into the shadows with the rest of the nightmares. Somewhere you don’t have to hear about us or think about us. You’ve known about Portents for years and you still refuse to acknowledge it.”

  Ruiz’s eyes were sullen. He looked to his watch, time slipping from him as assuredly as his temper. “How can I live with it? How? I tuck my daughters in their beds and pray to God that the beasts you let roam the streets don’t take them from me? There is a monster out there right now ripping the hearts out of people, skinning them, for Christ’s sake!”

  Vlad’s image met all of them differently but all fell silent at the thought of the young man, dead on the floor in the abandoned warehouse. There was no justice in it. There was no forgetting it either. Each of them felt some pang of guilt over the open case that sat before them. It was written before them. Loss of family. Loss of friends. Children, lovers. For Loren, it was most assuredly Beth. No matter the victim, no matter the place or the circumstance, Loren saw Beth in the dark. For Soriya, though, it was Vlad. Alone and broken. She should have called him, instead of waiting for him to come to her, as was always the case. She should have been there even if he wasn’t always reliable in return. They held their images in their minds but all felt the pang of failure over his death, deserved or not.

  “Tell me how I explain it to my six-year-old, who wants nothing more than a perfect score on her spelling test?” Ruiz continued. He stood at the top of the stairs looking down at Loren and Soriya. His eyes, once filled with fire, looked solemn. Loren stepped in front of Soriya before she could answer.

  “Ruiz,” he said plainly, and the captain nodded. There was more to say—there always would be. However, there was more to do as well, and in the end, that always had to win out.

  “I have a meeting with the mayor and the commissioner. And Mathers. Latest victim today was better connected and less inclined to have flame breath or grow wings, so of course his death will be my fault. Be lucky if I’m not asked to clean out my desk…let alone your temporary one.” Ruiz’s words were cold in the dark of the stairwell. He pointed to Soriya and then to the small window that looked out to the neighboring park and the city streets. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be out there.”

  Ruiz opened the door to the second floor of the Rath Building. Immediately, the
sounds of the hall filled the stairwell. The conversations of dozens echoing in the dark. The aging captain stood silent, the light behind him throwing his tired frame into shadow. His eyes cut through the darkness, finding Loren’s.

  “This needs to be over. Now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Loren paged through the case file Ruiz slipped between his own notes. Notes that had split them apart on the case at hand. Soriya paid him no attention, instead looking out to the city past the small ledge of the parking garage. Both remembered the conversation only three months earlier. It was meant to be a goodbye, not a “see you soon” for another case of murder and mayhem. Loren hoped that was what it would be, anyway, but he had the feeling Soriya was much happier with the current results instead.

  The file was thick. New photos and evidence piled up during the day, a day he lost to nightmares. The amount of new information, including another death, took Loren by surprise. He paged through each new item quickly, unwilling to lose any more time, to see anyone else fall at the hands of the madman among them. Silently, he catalogued each new piece of information for future reference, adding them to the existing photos locked within his methodical mind.

  When he looked up, Soriya was seated on the ledge just as she had been the night Loren left. This time, instead of sorrow, there was rage in her stance, evident from her balled up fists to the furrow of her brow. The bruise on her left cheek was more substantial than she let on, shifting darker and darker with each passing moment. Still, Loren saw it in her eyes. He knew that look very well. She wanted another fight. And soon.