Kirk was on the bottom and was being pounded by the masked man. Isis stepped forward, and ran toward the man who was attacking her man.
“Try picking on someone your own size!” Her voice was dry and filled with venom. It hurt to speak, but right now, she couldn’t feel much of anything. Her face felt hot, her good hand clutched the fat cleaver, and when the masked man turned at her voice, she was on him.
***
Mooch hit Kirk in the face once, twice, three times. Kirk was ruining all his plans. He couldn’t, for once in his miserable life, play by the rules.
“I hate you! Die, you piece of—” He heard a snap as Kirks nose broke and his head went limp. He knocked him out. Now who is the man? Not so tough now, are you!
He was breathing heavily and he looked at his bloody fists. They were shaking.
“Wake, you fool, she is coming.”
“Try picking on someone your own size!”
Mooch turned to see Isis rushing toward him and holding the cleaver. He didn’t even have enough time to lift his hands in defense. She slashed in a downward swing, and the blade came across his face. He didn’t feel anything. She kicked him in the neck, and he tumbled backward.
The concrete floor met his head with a hollow thud. He could smell piss as he voided himself. What was going on? This was all wrong. She was supposed to die, and Kirk was supposed to live a long life consumed by guilt and grief.
He would not go down like this. Struggling to his feet, he swung at nothing and fell on his face. He felt the next blow as Isis hacked him in the back. Mooch grunted and saw a dark shadow cover his vision.
He could see a hole open up. On the edges of this open pit were winged demons and creatures clinging to the sides from roots and the legs of screaming people. He screamed out and tried to clear his vision, but the pit of hell gaped open wider, and he could feel the force of it pull him, suck him in toward the massive maw.
“No, no…No!” He clawed backward and was kicked in his ribs. All the air in his lungs burst from his mouth. He tasted the rust flavor of blood, his vision cleared, and he was staring up into the face of the beautiful Isis.
“Any last words, freak?” Her eyes were black and dead. Mooch was scared, and the humming of the stone was dull in his head, like a low rumbling deep in the earth. At once, he knew what it was. It was his mark, the one that would send him to hell.
He tried to speak, to respond, but looking at her made him want to die. She was outlined by a huge bulb giving her a glow that framed her head in a halo. But behind her was some sort of darkness, and he knew that darkness.
She nodded as if reading his mind and came down on him with the bloody cleaver.
CHAPTER 30
ONE MINUTE, I WAS walking with Kreios, and the next, I couldn’t breathe. I sucked in a hard breath, but no air filled my lungs. A firm pressure kept my chest down and kept me from breathing in. I opened my eyes to see a huge man, or was it one of the Brotherhood men, half-demon? He had to be over seven feet tall, and he had one huge hand on my chest holding me down.
He was not looking at me but focused on something else. Beyond us, in a room that looked like a dungeon with low, stone ceilings, and torches instead of electric lights bathed the room in a low orange light.
Clawing at his hand, I tried to pull his fingers back, but it was as if he wasn’t there, or maybe… this was a glimpse.
I stopped struggling and found that I was fine—no air needed. But how was I in a glimpse? Was this different from a dream? It seemed that this was a look into the future where a full-on dream could create a new future or reality.
This had to stop.
Focus, Mark. What do you see?
Small room. Three, no, five men. Wooden table in the center—it was a meeting of some sort. They were talking in some other language, not one I could even place. The floor was dirt, so we were underground or in some very old building. I looked up to see if there were cables or plumbing—something to tell me what kind of building we were in.
I couldn’t find any pipes or wire, so I looked around again and could feel the glimpse start to fade. The room began to fog over, but at the far end was a door, a large, wooden door with carvings on the face of it. I squinted to try to clear my vision just enough to see what it was, some sort of—
***
Kreios looked at me standing on the corner of 30 and Lexington as if I was crazy. People moved around us without a second look.
“Are you all right?”
“—Uh, yeah. Just had a …er, I think I just had a glimpse.”
“Just now?” He seemed confused, which was not normal for the master of self control.
“Yeah. How long was I out?”
“You were not out at all. You just stopped for a second, and you looked like you were sick.” Kreios took my arm and pulled me off to the side so we were not standing right in the middle of the sidewalk. “You mean to tell me that you just had a glimpse? You can dream as you walk?”
“No… I think they are different. I dream when I fall asleep, but most of the time, I wake up out of one. These glimpses can hit at any time and don’t steal real time. I don’t think they create new worlds, just let me see into the future of the one I am in.”
“What did you see? Was the book there?”
“Can’t you just read my mind?” I rubbed my hands over my face, pressed my temples, and let the pressure center me.
“No, I can most of the time, but you are blank now—I am getting new thoughts, but it is as though whatever you saw or wherever you were is covered in a shadow.” He did not seem happy about this, and seeing this side of him made me feel better. He really didn’t know everything or have all the answers. I don’t know why this was better than thinking he had all the answers. Maybe I just didn’t like feeling lost and alone. At least I knew he was in this with me.
“It was a room, underground, and there were five Brotherhood members—or what looked like them—having a meeting. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. It was in some other language.”
“Was there anything to give you a time or place? A clock or something dated to see if it was going on now or in the past?”
“No, I think all my glimpses are of the future, so it will happen. I guess I am supposed to find this room. It did have this wooden door. It had these engravings in it…” I patted my pockets, found my keychain sharpie, and drew on my hand. A circle, and in the center was a three point flower-looking thing.
“Like this, or kind of like that, anyway. And all around it were carvings of eagles and a waterfall. Does that mean anything to you?”
I could tell from the look on his face that he knew what the symbol meant. “Yes, it does.” He turned and walked across the street. A cab honked at Kreios, and the cabbie swore as he flipped the bird out the window.
“Yo, come on, you can’t keep doing this to me!” I ran after Kreios and grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around. “What? Tell me what you know!”
***
Kirk rolled to his knees and coughed, sending a burst of pain through his ribs and up into the base of his neck. He spit out blood and wiped at his mouth. Isis wrapped her arms around him, and he could smell her hair mixed with salty sweat. It was the best thing he had ever smelled.
“Kirk… are you okay?” Isis held him tight and kissed his neck. His heart felt heavy and at once, he wanted to cry.
“Yeah… you?” He turned his head and looked into her dark eyes. Pools of blackness and mystery. Who was she? Why would she love him; it didn’t make any sense. “Your hand—”
“I’ll survive.”
Kirk sat on the floor, and his senses began to return. The room was hot. He and Isis were soaked in sweat, and both were covered with blood. Some was their own and some of it wasn’t. He looked up at Isis and saw tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Come here…” Kirk reached out and brought her to him. He wrapped her in his arms, and she folded into him, and her tiny frame seemed to melt in
to nothing. She shook as she cried. Kirk ran his hand through her hair and kissed the top of her head.
“It’s okay, I’m here, and we’re alive. I am so sorry Isis, this is all my fault. He wanted me; I pushed him to this.” Kirk’s voice cracked, and his swollen tongue made the words hard to say.
Isis turned her face up to him, and with her good hand, stroked the side of his face. “I was so scared, what were you doing to yourself? I thought you were dead, that you were going to kill yourself to keep me alive!”
“Isis—” Her name was all he got out before she pulled his head down to kiss him. Her lips met his, and a shiver rushed down his spine. For a moment there was nothing, no blood, no pain, no fears or memories. Just her lips and his.
She kissed him three times softly. A surge of warmth took over, and he pulled her face to his and pressed hard, kissing her hungrily. She responded with just as much force, and time seemed to stop. For once in his life, something was the way it should be.
“I love you, Isis—” His voice was gruff, and his words meshed into one word. “I-love-you-Isis.”
“I love you, too, Kirk… I love you so much!” Kirk smiled at her, kissed her on one cheek, and then on the other, taking away her tears.
“Isis, I fell for you the first time I saw you. I tried to fight it, but I can’t get you out of my head.” She smiled at him and nodded.
“I know. Me too. Thanks for saving my life.”
Kirk laughed. “You too!”
A scraping sound of metal on concrete brought Kirk’s eyes past Isis, and before he could react, Isis’s body jerked at the same instant Kirk heard the gunshot.
CHAPTER 31
KREIOS SPUN AROUND AS I turned him, and his eyes flashed. “I do not have the time to explain this to you! I am here, trying to save your life, and it is plain to see that we will not only not find the book in time, but you get captured by the Brotherhood.”
“Hey, calm down.” Kreios was shaking and seemed about to lose it, and I did not want to be around when he lost his temper. “I’m trying. I don’t know what you want or what to do. If I have to go and kill my other selves to keep this thing from going crazy, I will do it. But I don’t know how to not dream, I don’t know how to stop all of this outside of changing it in my book so that I’ll be unable to dream.”
“If we do not find the book, then you will keep creating worlds, and I am out of time. This attack on us is just the beginning. You will be hunted through time and in every dimension.”
“You tell me, Kreios, where is this book? What does the symbol mean? You know something.”
Kreios sighed, turned, and walked away. I followed and walked next to him as we headed toward Brooklyn.
“I was given six days. We are out of time, Mark. I have no choice but to kill you. If you die, the rest go with you. It is the simplest way to re-adjust things. I am sorry, truly, I am.”
I stopped and stared at him. This had to be wrong, there had to be another way. I was not going to just lie down without a fight. I wanted to live, to be with K and Sam. I knew now what I really wanted, and it was K. She was always the one, the first and only to make me complete.
“You are just going to kill me? We can fight them together. You saw how we beat them. Let them come, and we will do the same to all the Brotherhood. You have to give me another chance!”
“No, Mark, there is no more time. That was just two. Next time, it will be four, and six and a host, until you and I are both dead. I will let you say goodbye to K and Sam, but that is the extent of what I can do. I am sorry.”
This couldn’t be it. I thought of the WJA. Could I get everyone together, stand, and fight? Then we could hold them off, maybe all look for the book and find it quicker. But how could I when I was the only one who could go from one world to another?
“You said the book was here, in this world. We are so close… Why are you giving up now?” It didn’t make any sense.
“I was wrong. Your mind is broken, taking you to random places where you have unfinished business. I do not know what you need to do here, but that room you saw, that symbol is only found in the realm.”
“The realm? Where is that?”
Not on this earth, and it is not somewhere you can go if you are alive. If you were there or are going to go there, you must be dead. One more reason that I have to kill you, Mark. It may be the only way for you to find the book and maybe fix all this.”
“But it won’t matter. When I die, it is all over, anyway. What is the point?”
“I do not know. Even I do not know all the answers.”
This was it, the end of my luck. I survived so many things and had these abilities that I couldn’t explain, and I knew that I was connected to Kreios somehow, but there was no outrunning my own fate.
“Take me home, Kreios. I need to see my family.”
***
Isis gasped and looked into Kirk’s eyes. The spark that hid in the darkness flickered, and she mouthed something. Kirk pleaded with her with his eyes. No, please, no!
“I love you… Kirk Weston.” It was a whisper but clear. She reached up, pulled him to her, and kissed him. Her lips were wet, and he felt her body tense and release.
“I love you, Isis, more then you will ever understand.” Kirk held her tight, but she was gone. Body limp and no movement or breath on his neck. With eyes closed, he let the moment soak into his mind. He would not forget, never forget this.
“Now you know, Kirk Weston! You know what it feels like to have the one you love ripped from you! I hate you, Weston. I hope you suffer for the rest of your life!”
Mooch gurgled, laughed, and struggled to his feet. Blood gushed from his neck where Isis cut his throat. He clutched a .45 in his right hand.
Kirk laid Isis down gently and stood up. His head swam, and he just about fell over as the room spun. He was beyond angry, past rage, and all he knew was that Mooch was going to die.
“Don’t move, Kirk Weston.” Mooch raised the gun and leveled it at Kirk. “I will kill you, but I don’t want to. I want you to live a long and miserable life and suffer for what you did.”
Kirk stepped toward Mooch and clenched his fists. “Go on, Mooch, shoot me. I am going to kill you, so you better kill me if you want to live.”
“I am dead already. You killed me once, but I lived. You can’t kill me again; he won’t let me die. We are invincible!”
Kirk looked at Mooch, who was grinning like a demon. Mustering his remaining strength, he charged Mooch.
“I told you—” Mooch fired twice but Kirk didn’t stop.
Hitting Mooch in the chest with his shoulder, they both went down to the concrete. Kirk landed on top and pushed himself up as the gun went skittering across the floor. Mooch grunted and lost hold of his neck. Blood poured from the large gash across his throat.
“You killed her! You killed her!” Kirk was screaming and crying as he punched Mooch in the face. It was like punching a wet sack of golf balls. He did not feel his hand break, did not feel his broken ribs or the two bullet holes in his left lung. He was going to kill Mooch, and that was that.
Mooch was laughing, blood splattering left and right with each blow, spraying a pattern on the concrete floor. The sound of him laughing made Kirk hit harder.
Mooch coughed and tried to fight back, but Kirk would not let up. His laugh turned into a bubbly scream. Fear filled his smashed face, and Kirk stopped when Mooch’s head went limp. He had passed out or was dead, but he was not dead enough. Not dead enough for what he did.
Kirk crawled after the gun and took it, checked the clip and slammed it back into place. Standing up, Kirk dragged himself over to Mooch’s body. He kicked him in the ribs, and Mooch woke with a start. He rolled over on his side, coughing up blood.
“Time for you to die, and this time I am doing it on purpose. Rot in hell!”
Mooch turned to look through swollen eyes at Kirk.
“No!”
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop. Kirk shot Mooch in the head, not messing with the body. He didn’t want to see his face ever again. Blood and brain twisted into each other, and Mooch lay on the floor looking more like a movie prop then a person.
Kirk went over to the small rolling table and took the biggest knife he could find. After cutting the head free, as well as all Mooch’s limbs, he found gasoline and lit the body on fire. He knew he was dying and would not make it much longer. His breathing was raspy and wet. With the hospitals full from virus victims, he was already too far gone to be helped.
Sitting down on the floor, he watched the body of his friend burn. He held Isis and cried. Stroking her hair, he kissed her one last time and closed his eyes.
He thought of his life, of his failed marriage. How he was so cruel to his wife and how he didn’t blame her for leaving him. He was a jerk and was constantly in a foul mood. Then, the case that changed his life forever. David’s Island, and the inmates all dying of poisoning. It led him to the WJA and to Isis. He thought of her, and how he would melt when she talked. How she saw past his mask and saw something different in him. She loved him, and that was enough, he was happy. Imagine that, he was a happy man, knowing he and his love would be together somewhere beyond. He was loved.
“Goodnight, baby, I’ll see you soon.”
CHAPTER 32
K STOOD ON THE back porch, looking at Sam play in the sandbox. I came up behind her and kissed the side of her neck. She sighed and turned to kiss me. I drank in her lips and skin, knowing that I would not see or feel them again. This was the end, but for her I was still me and would come home just like always. I couldn’t tell her that I was already dead.
“Hey, babe.” She smiled and her eyes sparkled.
“Hey, you look amazing.”
“Aw, thanks, you charmer. I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Want to sit?” I led her to the porch swing.
“Sure, Sam and I read books all day. Not much else to do with no power and all.” The thought of them being alone through this collapse made me sick inside. But if I stayed, I risked the chance that the Brotherhood would kill them to get to me.
IN YOUR DREAMS (Mark Appleton #3) Page 18
