Department 18 [02] Night Souls

by Maynard Sims

  Schwab was taken away in an ambulance, his gunshot wounds needing surgery.

  Dylan was worked on by the paramedics, but there was nothing they could do. His heart had stopped some time ago and there was no brain activity. The hundreds of puncture wounds on his body were septic already, but it wasn’t those that had killed him. He seemed to have died from severe shock to the nervous system. He had just shut down like a bank of lights in a power wipeout.

  While formalities were taken, his body was removed to a local funeral director the department used occasionally.

  There had been no sign of Rachel Grey.

  “Harry, here, drink this.” Crozier had poured a large measure of whiskey into another glass and pressed it into Bailey’s trembling fingers.

  “There were too many of them,” Bailey said.

  “You can file a report later. Don’t worry for now,” Crozier said.

  “The Grey woman…she became…”

  Pike put his hand on Bailey’s shoulder. “I asked Rachel Grey to fight fire with fire. She reverted to…well, let’s just say she changed so she could fight them better.”

  “She turned into a breather,” Carter said.

  Pike looked at him. “She is a breather, Mr. Carter. She cannot turn into one. She took her natural form so we could defeat them.”

  “How did you achieve that?” Crozier asked.

  “By a mixture of mind and body. Brain and brawn. Also Rachel and I have the advantage of being like our attackers. It helped.”

  Carter held out his glass for some more Macallan. “Where is she now?”

  “She left before your team arrived. She has to go through a metamorphosis process before she can re-enter her human body.”

  “She’ll be joining us?” Crozier said.

  Pike shrugged. “I’m not her keeper, or her friend.”

  Crozier knew it was time to assume command. Setting his emotions about Dylan and Bailey to one side, he drew upon his reserves of strength and addressed the room. “What we have to do now is decide on our next move. What dangers does the country face from Holly specifically and from breathers in general? What does the department need to do?” He felt the effects of the whiskey as his head began to fuzz, but this was no time for weakness or resting.

  Carter was the first to speak. “Let me tell you what I know.”

  Chapter Fifty-five

  But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.

  —Oliver Wendell Holmes

  The grounds of Faircroft Manor, Hertfordshire, England

  What looked like an owl floated softly on a gentle downwind, its ghostly white under feathers reflected in the half moon that was suspended in a flawless dark night sky. So silent was its flight that it might have been the only wave in an otherwise smooth black sea.

  It swooped and rose, as the breeze and its hunger dictated. It cried out just once, as it plunged into a wild meadow on the edge of some trees, its plaintive sound ending abruptly as it gripped its victim. Then the creature it believed it had captured turned and became the captor.

  John Holly rose from the meadow, the blood of the owl staining his lips and his clothes in ragged splatters.

  He had flown back from Zurich almost moments after killing Alice. He regretted having to kill her, but the death of his father had to be avenged and that was all there was to it. He felt slight regret but nothing more.

  Centuries of life had modified what emotions he may once have possessed.

  He stripped his ruined jacket off and threw it to one side. One of his people would collect it tomorrow. As he undid his tie, he was thinking of the lives he had led, the places he had been, the oceans crossed, the people known.

  He could tell stories of his life, but few would believe them. His kind had existed since prehistoric times when man first learned to walk. Breathers had invented evil, though were adept enough to allow others to take the glory or the blame.

  He dropped his tie to the ground and began tearing at shirt buttons in his haste.

  There was excitement at the plans that were progressing well. The specimens he had brought back from Switzerland were perfect and would just about complete the embryo phase. Amidst the success, though, was a new and nagging feeling that was unfamiliar.

  Constantly these days his thoughts were tending to veer to the past. He understood the death of his father was part of the reason, and he hoped that now he had dealt with that he could move on. Somehow he knew it was more than that.

  He kicked away his shoes and pulled off his socks, enjoying the cool grass beneath his bare feet. Payne and Czerwinski had been brought back safe and sound, and were carefully locked away within the basement of the manor.

  He could tell stories of his life, but most of it would be sad. There was a melancholy about him recently that he was finding hard to shake off. That worried him, as it made him vulnerable.

  The night was a fine one, with a slight wind rustling the tops of the oaks and beeches. He could see the roof of Faircroft Manor ahead of him, though he had delved deep enough into the grounds that he knew he couldn’t be seen from the house.

  It felt good to walk on the damp grass and smell the night air. He was attuned to the sounds of the night. The small animals out foraging, the fox, badger, stoat. Each one hunting for something.

  Which was exactly what Holly was doing. Hunting.

  Myths and legends about his kind populated every culture. At many battles throughout human history reports were heard of black shadows seeming to inhabit soldiers of one side, and those soldiers being infused with a strength and a ferocity for fighting that was supernatural.

  In some primitive cultures when the thirteenth child was born in a community it was left outside the perimeter as an offering to the creatures. Though few had seen them, no one dared disbelieve.

  Some thought they were vampires, the ferocious feeding of the soul through the fingertips misleading many, so that the myth of drinking blood through fangs was born. Because of the shadow appearance some had mistaken them for ghosts and believed they were haunted. Werewolves, once a dominant tribe in parts of the world, had been wiped out by breathers as they were becoming a threat to the food supply.

  Although the prime reason for feeding from humans was the sustenance of the soul, many breathers had evolved over the centuries to enjoy the taste of the human body. Many enjoyed this sexually, in a kind of ultimate auto-eroticism, while others feasted on the flesh itself, especially the delicate internal organs.

  Young breathers were primarily in shadow form, often acting in groups, swooping like bats, which was another reason for the vampire connection. These often ill-disciplined groups would inhabit buildings, existing until they were able to feed. Many reverted to shadow form at the end of their life span.

  Once feeding had taken place, many breathers, but not all, would take the form of the human from which they had fed. That allowed them to live among people, unrecognized. In their natural state they would be too terrifying.

  Holly dropped to his knees as the moon fell behind a cloud. His father was in his head. Memories and images crowded his mind, forcing out all thought. His brain was overloading, filled with a history he wasn’t certain he had lived or learned.

  There was movement, but it was uncertain, and then he was swimming. There was a vast desolate landscape where mountains soared in the distance, marking the horizon of this yellow barren land and the dark troubled sky above it. Smoke rose from small campfires over the prairie, showing the locations of the few wandering tribes of nomadic peoples that were the human race. In the hills a large tribe of men and women lived, hunting by day the wild herds of pigs, setting traps for the giant mammoths that grew scarcer with the passing of each snow. The women were coarsely clothed in bearskin or pig-hide, their faces painted with the colored dyes they made from the berries they pulled from withered trees higher in the hills. The men dressed in bearskins like their women, except for a handful of fierce warriors who clothed their apeli
ke bodies in the dried skins of the long-toothed tigers they had fought and killed single-handed, armed only with the flint axes and the short throwing spears they used.

  The tribe quarreled and fought with the neighboring peoples over the rights to drink at the solitary water hole that bound them all to this wasteland. Arguments were settled with grunts and scuffles, with the hill people allowing the others access. They were a wild and primitive early people who killed the game for food and shared what comforts they could with the other tribes. Mostly they kept to their own territory in the hills. When nightfall came they huddled around the fires, cooking the fresh meat from the kill, drinking the berry juice they made in scooped out wooden bowls. It was a time of fear when the huge fire in the sky hid behind the mountains far away, and the cold pale light of different shapes came in its place. The night had sounds of its own that even the bravest of the tribes warriors flinched from facing. There were cries and howls that were not heard by day, and the women moved closer to their menfolk and waited for morning.

  One morning when the false dawn brought the first light into the hills the warrior on lookout at the highest point of the camp called out in the primitive language they understood that there was movement in the desert. Other tribes were moving toward the hills in a single group, and at their head was a stranger. The women took the young ones into the caves where the food and clothing was stored. The men armed themselves with the weapons they used to kill game and went to the lower slopes to meet the men of the other tribes. Although the combined plains tribes outnumbered the hill tribesmen, the peaceable settlements they had made before had been reached with ease, and they had no fear.

  The stranger at the head of the tribesmen could have been from a different race compared to the shambling hair-covered men. He walked erect on his two hind legs, not using his arms for support as the ape-men did. His hair was black and swept back from his white forehead; his skin was smooth and pale, not darkened by the sun and the wind. They could not see his face. Even when he and the tribesmen reached the massed hills-people his face was shielded by shadow, or by shafts of sunlight. He took a rock from the barren ground and handed it to the leader of the plains tribesmen. Without words he indicated that the man should throw the rock. With as much force as he could the tribe leader threw the rock at the nearest of the hills tribesmen.

  It was the first act of war the men had ever known. The rock struck the head of the man, and he fell to the ground, while his companions drew back startled. The stranger motioned with his arms and the other tribesmen fell upon the fallen warrior and beat him with rocks and axes until the blood flowed into the dust. The stranger turned away from the sun, his face clear of shadow…

  Holly tore off the rest of his clothes and lay prostrate on the ground. The coolness of the earth, the damp grass and wild flowers did nothing to stem the hot flame of unrest that was flooding his mind. His thoughts were in turmoil, uncontrollable, as if someone else was plugged into his brain and was feeding him limitless supplies of other people’s thoughts and memories.

  He surfaced in a clear blue sea with water lapping around him, his eyes blinded by a fierce white heat and his throat burning. His limbs were heavy in the swell of the sea and his brain screamed to him that he was drowning, floating into unconsciousness. There was feasting at the gates of Rome as the legions were returned from the sacking of the cities of Arabia and the treasures were glorious; gold and silver and precious stones as large as a fist so it was rumored. Cloths woven in every color, slaves brought into the city blacker than any shadow; they had to be clothed in white togas so they could be seen in the darkness of the night. There were horses with fine intelligent faces, with spirit and strength that would pull the chariots of the racers in the next games. The wild animals in the cages were proud, fierce with anger at their capture; lions that would rip the flesh from the captives in the show ring. The young girls were light brown and soft, with dark flitting eyes that promised passionate fire. That night there would be celebrations throughout the city as the soldiers drank and sated, shouting their pleasure to be home again to mother Rome after the battles. They would shaft their women folk until their thighs dripped blood and the wine and the meats drugged them into coma.

  In the Caesar’s palace the commanders of the forces were taken before Caesar to report the final victory that added to the glory that was Rome. Shadows entered the palace with them, seeming to follow them through the scented gardens, past the open courtyards into the interior of Caesar’s private rooms. The man on the throne was Caesar, but there was someone with him, whispering into his ear; it was a man but his face was diverted. He leaned into Caesar as if he was becoming part of him. Caesar’s voice held scorn despite their brave news, his voice selfish, mocking, holding no praise for the commanders for their victories, no interest in their prizes. The men searched his eyes for understanding but there was none; the cold blue eyes were like the vastness of the ocean, deep and unforgiving. The commanders shuffled their feet in their confusion and longed to get to their wives who had waited for them through the six long months of the campaign. Still Caesar would not release them from their torment; he began to berate them for cowardice, threatening them with punishment for their behavior. As the man at his side continued his whispering so Caesar escalated the catalog of imagined crimes and the irrational insults grew in bile.

  Suddenly Caesar stood from his throne, seemingly propelled off it by the whispering man, and moved to a side of the room where red velvet drapes were pulled across an archway. Caesar pulled the drapes aside and the men wept when they saw what lay inside. Their wives were tied upside down on immense stakes thrust into the ground, their skin flayed from their bodies and left hanging down from their torn and bleeding shoulders, falling over their faces like strands of pink raw hair. Their voices were the exhausted mews of drowned kittens. The commanders turned to Caesar and began to exact revenge. They did not notice the whispering man slip away unseen, his face hidden behind a jester’s mask. For a moment it seemed the mask would slip, but it stayed firmly in place, until the man got to the edge of the room when he tore off the mask…

  Holly could not cope with the montage of images filling his mind. He knew he was seeing breathers at work, whispering in the ear of Caesar, corrupting his thoughts, causing the first death in a peaceful world. He tried to drag himself to his feet. He hated being out of control. But he was drowning.

  And then he was swimming. He struggled for air, but there was none below the surface. The clear blue waters closed over his head and he fought the pressure on his lungs; there were lights above the surface, but he was falling into darkness. He opened his mouth to cry for help, but there was only water; he swallowed and felt the cold enter his mouth like a release. Ahead his blinded eyes saw a single beam of light, and he pushed his tired limbs toward it.

  There was a train moving over rusted tracks, and he was on it. There was a cattle car enclosed on all sides, and he was wedged against a rough wooden door. The stench of the car was appalling, crowding into his senses. The car was filled with men and women and children huddled together in mute despair, clothed in tattered rags, some even naked. They mumbled incoherently to one another in a language he couldn’t understand. Some stood, but most sat or lay where space allowed, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, unable to move. Eventually the train rocked to a halt and the wooden door was flung open revealing the harsh sunlight of the day outside.

  Soldiers in gray uniforms herded the people from the train, into lines along the track, separating the sexes and the ages. Then they were loaded onto open trucks and driven into a bleak countryside, along roads pitted with craters and strewn with the debris of bombed vehicles. The trucks pulled up outside the gates of a large wire-fenced compound where armed guards stood alert in watchtowers, and shabby wooden huts awaited their next occupants. As he stepped from the back of the truck, Holly realized where he was. The gates were open, and the soldiers marched the prisoners into the compound where they stood in ragged l
ines for inspection. Holly was in the front row. He watched the soldiers stand at attention as the camp commandant approached, the bristle of fear and respect apparent in each of them.

  Holly had no wish to meet the cold blue eyes, or even to see the face. How did he know the eyes were blue? Would he see the face at last? He broke ranks and began running. Shouts echoed in his ears as he ran, he heard shots fired and dogs began to bark, but he ran until the blood pounded in his head and his legs began to falter. Then he saw the water ahead, the clear blue sea. He ran to it and dived in. As the water enveloped him, the shouting and the pursuit stopped. He surfaced moments later and felt the relief of floating on crystal-clear water. He closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet air; he floated for hours it seemed.

  When he awoke, there was the stench of decaying flesh in his nostrils. He looked around and saw with surprise but little fear, that the water was crowded with floating bodies; as far as he could see the dead and moldering corpses bobbed up and down on the waves, the whole surface of the sea covered with bodies, each one facedown. In the distance a thick black cloud was rolling over the waves, moving with the grace of a bird inflight, but he knew that the smoke held…

  The black cloud was filled with breathers. He knew. He was tired. The events of the past few days had been important, but he was under immense pressure.

  Suddenly the cloud lifted and the moon lit up the meadow as if Holly was under spotlights. He knew he had to complete the work his father had started. It was a risk; there were many who opposed him. He would deal with them in time.

  Tonight he had an irritation to deal with.

  It was just the kind of diversion he needed to relax him.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  The grounds of Faircroft Manor, Hertfordshire, England

  Albert Wellington dragged himself carefully to his feet.