Eidolon Avenue

by Winn, Jonathan

  Having lived a life without consequence, Lucky believed herself invincible.

  As she stood in the warehouse facing Father, having not caught the scent of sacred incense in the air or seen the incantations on the floor beneath her feet, she’d yet to realize how very wrong she was.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In the warehouse, shamans chanted and priests prayed. Scented smoke filled her lungs and somewhere someone was splashing Holy Water. In the shadows, Father and the Uncles stood.

  They were trying to take her shadow from her.

  It was working.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think clearly enough or quickly enough to fight. Every word they said lifted the dark. Every prayer they prayed peeled the shadow from her flesh. Every mutter and murmur and sigh stripped the shade from her soul.

  And it was agony. Her insides clenched. Her skin shrank to the bone. She fell forward, her arms wobbling as they supported her. Her face tensed. As if her eyes were being pulled from their sockets. Her tongue was swelling and her mouth tasted of blood. Her teeth felt like they were being pried from the safety of their homes. Her head was filled with the sound of a great wind, or a great ocean. A keening cry from the earth and the sky as she felt her flesh drawn inward and down and her bones grow cold with an unbearable chill.

  “You are nothing now,” Father was saying. He stood, cigarette in hand. Safely tucked outside the circle where the priests kneeled and the shamans bowed and those anonymous men who bent low, their faces to the ground, clutched burning sticks of incense in their fists, he watched.

  She tried to move again. She failed.

  “You believed it was ancient and all-powerful?” Father said. “You thought it would have no weakness? That it could destroy without doubt or pain?”

  Lifting her head, she blinked, searching for him.

  All she saw were robed silhouettes surrounding her.

  Fight, she silently said to her dark. We can’t lose.

  It gathered strength, clinging to her. Wrapping so tightly around her skin, it turned her bones to ice.

  The prayers increased, the water splashed, and the shadow lost its hold again, slipping further away.

  She wanted to weep, but didn’t have the strength.

  “You have much to answer for,” Father said.

  I will give you anything, she silently said. If you can fight, if we can win, if we can leave and escape, I will give you anything. Anything for as long as you want.

  It returned, swooshing in, gathering strength as it burrowed into her center.

  Yes, she thought. Take from me what you will.

  Her insides lurched. She was sure she was going to die then. The pain was too immense. It was too much. She could feel the end coming. It felt light. Like the most gentle of breezes could simply lift her away into the sky, into the air, into the night.

  She couldn’t swallow. Her throat was too tight. She couldn’t breathe.

  They’d come closer, the shamans and priests and strangers. Seeing their success in her struggle, they’d grown confident her end was near.

  They were wrong.

  It moved up her spine, the dark. Stripped from her what it needed as it rummaged through her body and dug into her flesh and stomped on her bones.

  She fell, her arms giving out.

  They stood above her. Holy water splashed and incense smoked and useless words from stupid men did nothing to quiet the anger her shadow was now feeling.

  She rose, lifting on her elbows.

  They drew back.

  A moment later, it began.

  Thrown and tossed, the shamans landed against the wall with a sickening crunch. The priests, those who ran, were tripped, their legs shattering with a crack before their skulls were crushed, the blood shooting from their noses and bursting from their ears and splashing from their mouths.

  “Not Father,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  The other priests, those who prayed, knowing they’d failed and their ends were near, fell forward, the backs of their heads sinking under the weight of unseen footsteps that stomped and crushed.

  The doors had locked, so the Uncles could not escape. This was who she looked for now. The callous men who would rather enrage an ancient evil than see a woman with power.

  Let them die.

  And make it hurt.

  Jaws were stretched until they popped and split. Eyes were plucked from skulls and necks twisted until they snapped. Bodies fell and blood ran and Father stood, untouched, in the middle of the carnage.

  Lucky could breathe again. She flexed her fingers. The tightness had eased. The pain had ebbed. She rose to her knees. The agony of her shifting insides had lessened. She put the heels of her hands to her eyes and took another breath. All around, men cried and screamed and begged as they fell. The most powerful leaders of The Triad being slaughtered in the space of an evening.

  This would make her infamous. And untouchable.

  Taking her hands from her eyes, she scanned the room for Father.

  He stood weeping.

  She rose and stumbled toward him. Found her feet heavy and her steps slow and thick. A living skeleton lurching its way toward the pitiful man who waited in a sea of steaming red.

  Seeing her, he fell to his knees.

  The Father on his knees, she thought. She allowed herself a smile.

  She’d won.

  “Beg.” Her voice was almost too quiet and no longer her own.

  “Please,” he said, his hands clasped to his face. “It was to save you. It was only to save you. You don’t know—”

  “Save me?” She felt weak, her head too light. She couldn’t catch her breath. She feared she’d faint.

  His hand was on her, helping her. She sank to her knees. His palms, gentle and soft, held her face. “Lucky, there is much about this you don’t know. We only wanted to take it from you.”

  “But you said—”

  “What was said was to it, not you.”

  She looked at him. Looked into his eyes.

  There was no malice there.

  I’ve made a mistake, she thought. A horrible mistake. And not just here, with this. She looked around at the flat skulls leaking red and grey. The chunks of flesh and bits of bone. The fathers and sons and husbands and lovers who lay twisted and torn, their eyes open, their mouths silenced mid-scream. But a mistake with the Madame, as well. The tea. Those seven sips. Welcoming this unknown dark in exchange for strength.

  It was wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t . . . ” She stopped, the enormity of this massacre too great for mere words. She grabbed Father’s hand. “It can’t be taken from me. You know that, yes? It needs to, I know, but . . . ” She fell quiet as a silent fist punched through her chest, grabbed her guts and twisted, taking her breath away.

  Father was speaking, but she couldn’t catch the words. The ocean was in her ears again and a great wind rushed through her head.

  “Father,” she tried to say, but her tongue was too thick, her teeth pulling, her throat swelling. “I’m sorry. Please—”

  “Lucky,” he all but shouted. He was gripping her face. Shaking her. “Lucky.”

  She lifted her head and looked at him.

  A shadow fell over his face.

  His eyes turned red and blood bubbled from his mouth to run down his chin.

  “What have you done?” were the last words he said as the dark tore her away from him.

  And as Father fell, she was dragged back across the floor, pulled across the room, through the shattering glass of a window, down the street and up, up, up into the sky, into the air, into the night, sleep coming as the world grew cold and the black of the ocean spread beneath her, Father’s worry echoing in her mind, again and again.

  What have I done?

  CHAPTER TEN

  This was in Paris.

  “She was small,” they’d say. “Chinese or Japanese. Asian, definitely. I think.”
<
br />   “Her hair was sort of dark, maybe,” the other witness would remember, the officer jotting the useless tidbit down.

  “Was she younger? Older?” he’d say, pen in hand. “What age range would you say she was? Any idea?”

  A shrug.

  Twenty years after Hong Kong, twenty years after the leaders of The Triad had fallen in one fell swoop, twenty years after Lucky had entered the warehouse a victim and emerged a legend, she’d become the woman seen, but never remembered.

  “Yes, it was a woman,” one witness after another would say before stopping in confusion. “But I just can’t . . . I don’t . . . ” and they’d give up, unable to clearly recall the assassin who’d stabbed and sliced and slaughtered in broad daylight.

  Back in Hong Kong, the Triad was in chaos. Uncles on mainland China, in Canada, even in the United States and as far away as Eastern Europe were all angling to be Father now, everyone at the mercy of bloody plots and cruel schemes and dangerous plans.

  “I can’t go back,” she said to the dark from her new home. She’d woken to find herself in Toronto, in Canada, far from those who’d try to kill her on sight. “It was wrong, killing Father. I loved him. I miss him. He protected me.” The dark moved. Pulled close to her. “He protected everyone. Without him, more blood will spill, more lives will be ruined. Brother will fight brother and father will kill son.”

  She closed her eyes and swallowed the regret sneaking up her throat.

  A life without consequence?

  What other lies had she been told? she thought.

  The shadow wrapped around her. Cursed with a never-ending appetite, it was hungry. Knowing her reality, she knew what she had to do.

  From her one bedroom apartment, she put out feelers to judge the situation. Learned she was no longer just Lucky, but something more, the carnage in the warehouse solidifying the myth already surrounding her. Within days, discreet introductions were arranged and silent agreements made. Lucky the Legend quickly became Lucky the Killer, Lucky the Devil, Lucky the Shadow.

  Politicians eager to assassinate an opponent. Corporations desperate to kill the genius behind a rival patent. Greedy families hungry for more even if it meant wiping out the older generation. Anyone wanting a kill that was clean and quick.

  For the right price, Lucky would do it.

  And the shadow would feast.

  Stepping out of invisibility, she chose to cloak herself with the dark when she struck. Seen, but not seen was more exciting. More of a challenge. The details of her and her crime growing fuzzy, like a half-remembered dream, the more it was thought about and shared. Only the basics captured and recorded.

  The authorities around the world forever on the lookout for a woman with two eyes, a mouth, a nose, two arms and legs, and darkish hair of indeterminate length.

  She made a fortune.

  For ten years, she ruled from her one bedroom in Toronto, leaving for bloody East Berlin when she grew bored and restless. Rome, London, Zurich, Amsterdam followed. An endless parade of butchered bodies and broken dreams trailing her as she, the assassin no one could see, stole away unnoticed and anonymous.

  Her ledger in the black, always in the black, she then came to Paris where she settled.

  And then stopped.

  “My name is Samuel,” he’d said. She’d taken his hand in hers and, together, navigated their way through the puddles dotting the rue Mazarine near Boulevard Saint-Germaine. He was Swiss. German Swiss, to be exact. “Dinner?” he’d said. She’d nodded. “A walk?” She’d smiled and agreed. More dinners followed. Phone calls and meetings. Laughter over afternoon cups of coffee. Shared smiles and lingering looks.

  His scalp was smooth, his brilliance evident and unapologetic, and his voice could calm her with a single word. He stood tall and straight, offered easy smiles and patient approval, and had a touch that took her breath away.

  “I love you,” she said as they strolled the Seine. He smiled, his lips pressing close to linger on her cheek.

  “Leave him be,” she said to the shadow. The shadow paused.

  “He is precious,” she said as, bouquet in hand, she walked the hall to the judge who would pronounce them man and wife. The shadow stirred.

  “What will it take to give him a long life in peace?” she said as she watched her beloved sleep, the comforter brought to his chin. “Whatever is needed, it’s yours.”

  Two months later, the first child was taken from her womb.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  She couldn’t stop crying. The tears trailed down her cheeks and onto her chin, the tissue soaked and useless from wiping her nose.

  “There will be other chances, yes?” Samuel said in his heavily accented English. He kneeled in front of her, his hand calmly stroking her thigh as she sat on the edge of the bed. “And if no, then, perhaps an adoption could be best, I think, no?”

  Lucky shook her head. No. No children. She would never risk it. The seven children the shadow had stolen over the past four years hadn’t been enough. She could feel it. The dark wanted something more. Something rich with experience.

  Simple death isn’t what fed this ravenous dark. It savored surprise and regret. The awareness of the end approaching. The panic growing as the limbs became weak and the vision clouded. The overwhelming stillness of the eternal silence as the world grew quiet. The darkness demanded tears, confusion, dread. The last moments of a life lived.

  A child who was still safely in a womb, who’d yet to take its first breath, couldn’t give that. It couldn’t offer the experience the shadow was craving. A fetus hadn’t laughed and loved, discovered and cherished. It felt no loss when its soul was swallowed. Or at least not enough to satisfy an appetite eager for the succulent sweetness of final despair.

  She’d been a wife for five years now. Lucky the Killer, Lucky the Devil, Lucky the Shadow was now Lucky the Cook, Lucky the Dishwasher, Lucky the Doting Wife and Eager Lover.

  She would never be Lucky the Mother. And that was fine. As long as her beloved was safe.

  Something told her he was not.

  Drawing the sleeves of her cardigan down to her wrists, she pulled him in and held him close. “It’s okay,” she said. “I have you and that’s enough.”

  He answered with a kiss.

  “Brandy?” he said over his shoulder as he walked to the other room.

  “Yes, in a minute. I’ll be right there.”

  She stood and closed the door behind him and then removed her pants. In her cotton underwear, she walked to the side table by her bed and opened the drawer. A moment later, the small blade in hand, she closed the bathroom door behind her and sat on the edge of the tub, her feet on smooth white porcelain.

  No more children, she said silently to her shadow. I will give you this and only this. I know it isn’t much. I know you want more. But this flesh will be a taste until . . . well, until it is enough.

  She held her foot in her hand and sliced the flesh from between her toes and along the instep. Bandaged and wrapped, Samuel never noticed her wounds if she wore socks, which she always did. Besides, the pain was bearable if it kept the dark distracted enough to prevent it from hurting him.

  The slivers of skin held in the palm of her hand, her feet bleeding onto the white porcelain, she watched as the dark fell and the flesh disappeared.

  Somewhere Madame was smiling. Somewhere Madame, who had warned her of a life without consequence, was nodding her head and laughing. Somewhere the little Lucky who’d been foolish enough to take seven small sips was stopping at three and welcoming death while the brazier glowed and Yin Ying slobbered and a dragon finally caught its tail.

  Somewhere there was a Lucky who wasn’t suffocating under horrible secrets.

  “Here,” she said as she pressed her palm to her mouth to quiet her sobs, her cheeks growing wet again. “This is all I have. This is all I am.”

  And the darkness drank her tears.

  ***

  Samuel slept. The newspaper on his lap, the em
pty tumbler of brandy on the side table, he snored in the flickering light of the TV.

  Outside, the moon sat high. The gentle swoosh of cars passing below stole through the open window along with the breeze, a hint of autumn in the chill and the scent of impending rain. Outside, Paris gently welcomed a quiet night.

  Lucky stood in her underpants. She didn’t remember leaving the bathroom. She didn’t remember walking through the bedroom to open the door. She didn’t remember walking down the hall and discovering Samuel here, asleep.

  She didn’t remember choosing to bring the blade.

  Later, she wouldn’t remember approaching her beloved and watching his chest rise and fall as he dreamt. She wouldn’t remember lifting the knife. Or her hand, not her own, slicing his throat once, long and deep. She wouldn’t remember him waking. Or realizing he’d been wounded. Discovering the gash and seeing the blood on his hand. Looking at her with such a look of exquisite sadness it punched through her fog and ripped her back into reality.

  On those nights when the pain was greatest, she’d almost remember the bubbles of blood gushing from the cut as she pressed on the wound. Almost remember him trying to speak. To tell her he loved her. And ask her

  Why? Why this? Why me? What have you done?

  Why?

  On those nights when the agony was so relentless she begged for death, she’d torture herself with the memory of kissing him as he slipped away. The sticky warmth of the blood on his hand as his fingers gripped her hair.

  And when the foundation of her delusion would crack and the guilt would rise like rancid sick, the warmth of that last sigh against her lips is what she’d punish herself with. His eyes, his kind, gentle eyes, losing focus as the end came.

  She knew she could not speak. She knew she could not move. She knew there was a moment, a brief moment, that night when the thought of stabbing her stomach, in and then up and to the side, seemed logical and right. But the knife had been taken, the shadow insisting she feed it with the sharp misery of endless mourning.

  She was not there, she’d insist to herself. This wasn’t what she wanted to do, she’d cry. This killed me, she’d scream.