by N. P. Martin
“Did you recognize the man, or his ghost or whatever you saw?”
"His apparition was like a more twisted and grotesque version of the man," I said. "Obviously I didn't recognize him because he didn't want me to. I'm calling him Mr. Black for now. Seems apt.”
“So what did this Mr. Black say then?”
"Not much," I said, looking down to see that I'd stepped in blood. With a small sigh, I wiped my boot across the floor, leaving a red streak behind. "He said I'd caught up to him before, which I knew anyway. He also said he wouldn't be stopped."
“What’s his endgame? All these crazy fucks have an endgame. What’s his?”
"Not sure," I said. "But I got the sense that he wanted to somehow plunge the world into darkness."
"Don't they all?" Brentwood huffed.
"Yeah, but this guy could actually do it. He has the power. My guess is that he's trying to bring Rloth here, probably by opening up a portal."
“Jesus Christ,” Brentwood said, sounding like he could have done without hearing that. But tough shit because it was the truth.
“How are we going to stop this maniac?” Leona asked.
"By finding out exactly who he is first," I said, glancing over at the bodies again. "And as he seems to have stepped things up, he's probably nearing whatever endgame he's got going. Which means…"
“We don’t have much time,” Brentwood finished.
I nodded. “Exactly.”
Brentwood sighed and thought for a moment, during which time my eyes drifted to Leona and her tight fitting trousers, the perfect curve of her buttocks and her—
“Creed.” Leona was throwing me sideways glances.
“Yes?”
“Stop.”
“I—”
“Alright, Creed,” Brentwood said in his frighteningly deep voice, startling me slightly, and for a second I thought he was going to admonish me for eying up Leona, but he didn’t. “Lawson tells me you helped us with cases in the past. Is that true?”
“It’s true,” I said, smiling over at Leona, causing her to look away in near embarrassment. “I’ve offered you my services before.”
Brentwood nodded. “Fine. Since you seem to have a connection to this case, you can work it with Lawson here.”
“Sir,” Leona said. “I don’t think—”
“You have a problem with that order, Lawson?” Brentwood demanded.
"No, sir."
“Good. Find this motherfucker before he kills anyone else.”
"Yes, sir."
“I need some time first,” I said, just as Brentwood was about to walk away.
“Time?” Brentwood said, confused and clearly irritated that I wasn’t playing ball the way he would have liked, which is to say that I didn’t immediately jump to it. “What for?”
“I have something important to take care of first.”
“What the hell is more important than this?”
“My soul,” I told him.
27
Partners
LEONA AND I left Brentwood and his team of suits back at the scene of the latest murders and went outside, but only after Brentwood had pulled Leona aside for a quiet word, probably telling her to keep a close eye on the weird magick guy, which would be me, in case you were wondering. (How many other weird magick guys are out there? Yeah, you're right. Too fucking many.)
"What did Sergeant Major want?" I asked Leona as we walked to the Lincoln, the agent who almost shot me earlier giving me the hard man stare as I walked away as if I'd actually done something on the guy. I tell you, those ex-military types, they have chips on their shoulders the size of Mount Everest. The ones I keep meeting do anyway. All that action they see in foreign lands, it fucks with their heads. At least that's what Leona told me in one of her more vulnerable moments (vulnerability being like a disease to Leona--something to be avoided at all costs, but sometimes it gets to you no matter how good your defenses).
"He told me to keep an eye on you," Leona said, wearing her mirror sunglasses now against the bright sun, looking like a sexy secret service agent. "But you knew that."
"Of course. I've known Brentwood longer than I've known you. He could never bring himself to trust me, or even like me for that matter. I think he views me as part of the problem he thinks he's fighting against."
“And what problem is that?”
“Magick of course, even though magick is not the problem.”
“What is then?”
“People. The problem is always people.”
“You’re saying there’s not bad magick out there?”
"Sure, but it's people who try to use it."
When we reached the car, I leant lazily on the roof, like I hadn't a care in the world. Leona tended to have that effect on me, her very presence making me forget about my worries. She was so damn beautiful and poised, so confident and self-assured, that all I wanted to do was bask in her magnificence. Leona had her faults, of course. She could be cold at times, uncaring if she were in a dark enough mood. She also had the annoying habit of removing cups and plates before I had finished the contents. Like if she was finished eating or drinking, then so was I. It was the clean freak in her.
Leona opened the passenger side door, hovered there as she looked across at me, her face unreadable with those shades on, which I'm sure was the point. "Alright, Creed," she said like she'd been waiting to ask this since we left the warehouse. "What were you talking about in there? What is it you have to do? Something to do with getting that curse lifted?"
“Precisely,” I said. “And as we’re partners now and everything, I thought you could help me.”
Her head cocked to one side like it did when she was about to put me straight on something, which she often did. “Let’s get one thing straight, Creed. We’re not partners. You’re just helping out on this case. I don’t do partners.”
I nodded. “I know, you don’t like the idea of being responsible for anyone else, not since Iraq.”
She stared across at me, and I stared back into her black mirrors. “I hate it when you do that.”
“What?”
“Pull stuff like that out. It’s like you’re reaching inside my head. I don’t like it, and it’s really fucking weird not being able to remember you.”
“How do you think I feel? No one remembers me, except the psychopath who cursed me in the first place, and trust me, I wish to hell he didn’t know me.”
Leona looked away for a second as if she knew the situation was weird and unprecedented, but also knew that she would just have to live with it for a while longer. “Alright, Creed. So what is it you have to do? I thought the demon you summoned was supposed to fix this?”
“It wants payment in return. Souls, to be precise.”
“Souls? How many?”
“A hundred, but I’m just going after one.”
“One?”
I nodded. “One dark soul that’s worth a thousand souls to a demon. I’m hoping anyway.”
“Belonging to whom?”
"A psychopathic Warlock with a soul as black as this car."
"Another psychopathic Warlock?" She shook her head. "Are you attracted to these fucking freaks or something?"
"Attracted? No, definitely not. But unfortunately, my path crosses with many undesirable people. Magick is like any power. It corrupts absolutely."
“Are you corrupt, Creed?”
I looked away for a second, felt the magick in me pulse and swirl. It was a feeling so familiar to me, and it felt as essential to my system as the blood that coursed through my veins. As far as answering Leona's question, I could have said something like, "Sometimes I wield the magick, sometimes the magick wields me," or, "My moral code is shifty, like most people's," but neither of those answers would satisfy Leona, who wasn't really one for ambiguities. So I decided to ignore her question completely and hope she accepted that as some sort of answer. "Hans Belger is the name of the Warlock whose soul I will try to steal. He lives on an island of
f Morgan County. The plan is to go in there, get what I need and get out again so I can give the demon what it wants and fix this mess I'm in. I can't do it alone, though."
“You want me to go to this island with you?”
I nodded. "Yes."
She gave a short sigh but nodded back. “Fine, Creed. I’ll go with you, make sure you don’t get killed, if only because Brentwood wants this killer caught and I happen to think you’re the only one who can do that.”
Thanking her, glad she was going to be with me on the mission (but also worried now in case something happened to her), we got inside the Lincoln. “And FYI,” I said, starting the engine.
“Who says FYI anymore?”
“FYI,” I said again, ignoring her. “We are actually partners, though not in any official capacity. We’ve worked a fair few cases together, you and I.”
“And that makes us partners does it?”
“In a way, yes.”
“You can’t tell me that I sanctioned any such partnership. I would never do that.”
"You didn't," I said, driving off now, through blocks of warehouses and shipping containers, heading for Worthington where Leona's apartment was because I knew she would want to gear up before breaching the island with me.
“I don’t do partners.”
“You said.”
She threw me a look, her sunglasses still on, even though the sun had now disappeared behind gray clouds. “What’s this island called?”
“The Devil’s Playground.”
She couldn't help herself and gave a small chortle. "The Devil's Playground. Are you serious?"
"Deadly," I said. "Though not nearly as fun as it sounds. Let me fill you in…"
28
Gearing Up
"SO," LEONA SAID as we entered her spotlessly clean apartment, which I was in just a week before for a particularly intense lovemaking session before she tossed me out afterwards, claiming she needed sleep even if I didn't. Not that she would remember that now. "You're telling me we are going to this island run by fucking Sauron and we have no clue as to what we're walking into?"
"Sounds about right," I said, enjoying the familiar smell of Jasmine in the air. Leona's apartment always smelled agreeable, unlike the sometimes offensive mixture of scents in my Sanctum (like the scent of a dead body, for instance).
She stopped in the middle of the living room, next to one of the only pieces of furniture in there, which was a nondescript black leather sofa. Also in the room was a TV I knew she barely watched and a large book case, every shelf stuffed with paperback novels and personal development books, plus a few books on magick that at that point she didn't even know I had given her shortly after we first met. "That's crazy, Creed. I don't like going into situations blind, especially where magick is concerned." Something flashed in her eyes, and I wondered if she was thinking about the cave in Iraq where her brother died.
“I get it,” I said. “Look, you don’t have to come with me—”
"I'm going with you. I'm just saying I don't like surprises."
I nodded. "Let's hope there are none." Wishful thinking, I knew.
“I’m going to get changed.”
Leona walked into the bedroom, not bothering to close the door behind her. I went to the bookcase and stared at all the books, most of which would have been purchased new from Amazon as Leona didn't like to read used books. She said you never knew whose fingers had been on the pages and that she couldn't bear the thought of holding a book that some guy had held straight after masturbating or while he was wiping his ass on the toilet. Consequently, nearly all of the books on the shelves were shiny and new, the spines unbroken on some of them where they hadn't been read yet. Leona was a big fan of Jack Reacher, and she had all of Lee Childs' novels in a row on the top shelf, the spines well broken from multiple readings. She also read detective novels, techno-thrillers and the occasional noir novel. Mixed in with these were self-development books and books on martial arts and fitness, both of which Leona was heavily into, as well as books on guns and general combat tactics.
Out of interest, I took out one of the books on magick I had given her, which languished on the bottom shelf like some dusty and forgotten tome. Inside the book there should have been an inscription that I wrote when I gave it to her, saying simply, Know Your Enemy, and then my signature underneath. When I opened the book, there was just a blank page where the inscription should have been. I shook my head sadly and closed the book before I got too depressed, putting it back on the shelf.
Almost out of habit, I walked to the still open bedroom door and leant casually on the doorframe, the way I often did when Leona was changing, so that I could chat with her. She was standing over by a teak open wardrobe that was filled with mostly dark clothes, her back to me as she stood in nothing but her black underwear, the kind she preferred, the kind that looked like shorts and which perfectly accentuated the shape of her hot fucking arse, that quivered not an inch when you were mounting her doggy, due to the manicured tightness from all her pelvic floor exercises that she did. Despite the fact that I had last seen her naked only a week ago, I still found myself struck by her angelic form and by her long, lithe body. By the muscle tone in her back and arms, and the way her thighs were built up (though not too much) on her smooth-skinned legs. As I stood gazing at her, my belly tingled, and there was an uncontrollable stirring in my groin. Then she turned around and noticed me standing there, instinctively putting one arm across her firm breasts. There was also a fleeting flash of something in her eyes, like a deep connection she was hardly aware off, perhaps a recognition of how things used to be between us. But it was only fleeting and her hard stare soon returned. ”What the fuck, Creed?" she exclaimed. "Are you perving on me?"
“You make it sound so dirty,” I said, unable to keep the smile off my face. “We used to do this all the time.”
“In your reality maybe. Not in mine. Get the fuck out and let me finish changing.”
I took no offense at her forcing me away. She hardly knew me after all.
To take my mind off the sudden desire to make love to Leona, I went and sat on the sofa and tried to focus on the mission ahead. Tactically speaking, I didn't have much of a plan. So far, it was just to go to the island and see what happened. But even I had to admit that as far as plans went, that one sucked big fat hairy donkey balls. If I wasn't to get myself or Leona killed, I would have to come up with something better than that.
When Leona finally emerged from the bedroom ten minutes later, she was dressed in full tactical gear, black from head to toe as if prepped for some special forces mission. I was going to tell her the plan I had just come up with (such as it was), but instead, I said, “You look awesome. Badass.”
She threw me a sarcastic smile, still put out by my spying on her earlier, even though that wasn’t what I was doing (alright, I was spying on her, but so what? It may have been the last time I got to see that perfect body in all its glory). “You come up with a plan yet?” she asked as she tightened the velcro straps on her body armor.
“Yes, actually. We’re going in stealthy.”
She couldn’t help laughing at me. “Seriously Creed. You crack me up, you really do.”
“No really. I have a spell that will make us invisible.”
Her head tilted to one side as she raised her thin eyebrows. “Invisible?”
I nodded. “We can sneak on the island and move around without being seen. It’s the best option, believe me.”
“I’m still taking guns.”
“Of course. Everything on your person will be invisible under the spell.”
She walked over to the corner of the living room to a large steel cabinet. That’s where she kept her guns. I got up and followed her over, hovered conspicuously beside her. “I’m going to be honest here,” I said. “I seriously want you right now. Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but I can’t help it.”
Leona stopped just as she was opening the doors of the cabinet, sta
ring straight ahead a moment like she was afraid even to look at me, which I should've known because saying what I just said probably wasn't the best thing to say to a person who I knew would have walls on top of walls around herself. I knew that because I spent the last three years doing my best to dismantle those walls, with some success, I might add. "Look, Creed," she said, finally looking at me. "We may have had some relationship going before, but the fact is, I barely know you. I have no memory of you. We haven't long met, for Christ's sake—"
Propelled by some force or latent desire, I quickly leant in and kissed her, a kiss which lasted exactly one second before I found myself gripped and slammed against the hard metal gun cabinet, Leona's forearm like an iron bar pressing against my throat, though thankfully with not much pressure. Under her steely glare, feeling like a cornered criminal, I waited on the inevitable tongue lashing. Which is why she surprised me by smiling instead. "You always this pushy?"
“Hey, you kissed me the other day, remember?”
She nodded. “I remember.”
“So…”
“What? You think that gives you permission to go full steam ahead?”
“No…yeah…maybe…”
"It doesn't. Things are weird enough right now without this." She leant in closer so her soft lips barely brushed against mine. "Patience. At least wait until I remember who you are again."
"But you know who I am." I sounded like a love sick teenager begging his first crush to go out with him. Not very dignified, I know, but I just wanted her so badly.
"No, I don't. I just know you're a magickslinger with a smart Irish mouth and a big fucking wolf for a pet. You probably drink too much as well."
“See, you know me so well.”
She smiled, shook her head, let me go. “Outta the way. I need my guns.”
A cheeky smirk appeared on my face. “I know you do.”
Roughly pushing me aside, Leona opened the doors of the cabinet to reveal an impressive array of weapons inside, mostly guns, but also a few scary looking knives, a Katana and a black truncheon with a steel ball on the end of it. She put a custom Beretta in her leg holster and one underneath her body armour. Then she looked for a minute at the rack of automatic weapons before selecting a high tech looking rifle that I had no idea of the name off. I'm not big into guns (owning only one, which I had on me) but the rifle looked military grade. She checked the weapon with the swiftness and assurance of one who has done so countless times before. As marksmen went, Leona was easily in the top ten percent in the country. A two thousand yard shot wouldn't have been a stretch for her.
