Paradigms Lost - eARC

by Ryk E. Spoor

  “Sylvie, it’s not there! Where else—you?!” As Elias turned, he caught sight of me. I’d never seen someone’s jaw literally drop before. He stood there for several seconds, just staring.

  “Hello, Elias.” I raised the gun.

  “Wood? Wood, what the hell are you doing? How did you get away from Domingo? We were worried to death about you!” He started forward.

  I gestured with the gun; he stopped. “No, I don’t think you were worried at all, Elias. You were sure that after I called Domingo he’d cancel my ticket for you. Save you the trouble.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t try it, Elias; I can see you thinking about moving. It must’ve been a shock to you when you came in and saw all those vampire books on my desk. You knew right then that I was closing in on you. You also saw your one chance to send me on a one-way chase after the wrong guy: that negative. All you had to do was call my attention to it; you could rely on me to imagine the rest.”

  I shook my head. “Even then, you almost blew it entirely by pointing out that SLR—Single Lens Reflex—cameras show exactly what’s in the picture. You see, SLRs use mirrors to send that image to the viewfinder. I knew that, but with everything else I didn’t think of it at the time. Anyone taking snapshots of a vampire through an SLR would’ve known something was funny…if, of course, he wasn’t a vampire himself.

  “I don’t know if you even realized you’d made a mistake there, but whether you did or didn’t the whole thing was fantastic control on your part; you must’ve noticed the books as soon as you came in, and you never gave a sign. And your shock at seeing them—only after you’d made sure I knew the significance of the photo—oh, that was perfect. But Domingo isn’t quite the ruthless guy you think he is.” I clicked the safety twice, so he knew it was ready to fire. “There’s only one thing that puzzles me, Elias.”

  He dropped the pretense. “What, Jason?”

  “Well, two, really. How’d it happen?”

  Klein shrugged. “I don’t really know, to tell the truth. I was on a job a while back, got jumped, put into the hospital, remember?”

  Now that he mentioned it, I did. About half a year ago; he’d been taken out of a regular hospital to some rehab facility.

  “Yeah,” he said, still watching my hand with the gun. “So I actually don’t remember much for a while after the accident. And when I came back, I knew what I was, and that there was another one here. One that I couldn’t afford to have around. But if I took the right course, I could get rid of Domingo and clean up the streets. Get the drug traffic shut down, and at the same time make sure Morgantown’s undesirable population went…down.”

  Undesirable population? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Klein hadn’t ever talked that way before. “What the hell, Elias? Why?”

  He sneered. “It just seemed a lot clearer. People like Lewis, and that Corrigan woman—wastes of space. And since I needed something to eat…”

  “But you didn’t…I mean, does it have to be human blood? And do you have to kill?”

  His hands twitched aimlessly. “Human blood has…more of a kick to it, I guess. And when they die, you get this incredible rush, a feeling of such power…” He’d been looking at his hands. When he raised his face, my guts turned to ice. Deep in his eyes was a hellish red glow. And as he spoke, I saw lengthening fangs. “Besides,” he continued, and now his voice had an edge of hysteria, “besides, they had to die. They saw me, you see. And it wasn’t as if they were anyone important.”

  “Not anyone…Elias, they were human beings!”

  “You always did take the liberal view, Jason.” His face was distorting, somehow shifting before my eyes. “I really liked you, Jason…But now you have to die, too.” He smiled, and there was very little of the old Elias in that deadly smile.

  “Don’t, Elias. I don’t want to kill you.”

  He started forward slowly. “Let’s not pretend, Jason. You can’t arrest me, and I need blood.”

  I backed away, trying to make myself pull the trigger. But, Jesus, Elias was my friend! “Stop, Elias! For God’s sake, you’re…addicted, that’s what you’re talking about! Think about it! A big rush, something you need, something that you’re going after for that rush…”

  He laughed. “That’s funny, Jason. Should I go to AA? ‘Hello, my name is Elias, and I’m a vampire’?” He shook his head. “I don’t want to kill you, but I have no choice. Neither have you. It’s a shame that you can’t do anything about it.” He was barely human now, a Hollywood vampire straight out of Fright Night. “Good-bye, Jason.” He rose straight off the floor, a nightmare of fangs and talons.

  My finger spasmed on the trigger.

  There was a roar of thunder.

  Elias was hit in mid-descent. The force of the round, as it mushroomed within him, hurled him back over my desk. He rose, only a scorched bullet hole in his suit showing he’d been hit.

  “So much for silver,” I said as I sprinted out the door. I almost bowled over Sylvie as she came running back. “Go, Syl, go!” I heard jarring footsteps behind me, whirled and fired the second bullet.

  The bullet caught him square in the chest; Elias’ scream shook the windows as white flame exploded from the incendiary bullet.

  “Wood! You bastard! That hurt!” As I backpedaled away, I could see the burns healing. “I think I’ll break a few things before I kill you!” He ducked away before I could get another clear bead on him.

  “Crap. Anne Rice failed me too. I should have known better than to trust a book with a punk vampire.” I glanced around nervously.

  If I were a vampire, where would I come from next…?

  I whirled in time to see Elias coming through the wall like a ghost. I leapt through the doorway to the kitchen, but Elias’ hand caught me just as I reached the side door. “Gotcha!”

  I tried to pull away, but I might as well have been pushing on a vault door. He bent his head toward my neck. I screamed.

  Then it was Elias who screamed, a yell of utter shock and agony. I fell to the floor and rolled heavily away, looked up.

  Sylvie stood there, holding a large ankh before her. “Back, Undead! By the power of Earth and Life, back!”

  The incantation sounded silly; Elias obviously saw no humor in it. As he turned away, trying to get around the looped cross, I saw a black imprint on his back where the ankh had hit him. I raised the .45, fired the third bullet.

  The heavy shell hit him like a sledgehammer, spinning him completely around, smashing him into the stove. He put a hand to his chest, where a red stain was beginning to spread. His expression was utter disbelief. Then he fell.

  “What did you shoot him with?” Syl demanded, her face pale.

  I looked at the body. “A wooden bullet. Thank you, Fred Saberhagen.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He wrote The Holmes-Dracula File; that’s where I got the idea.” I holstered the gun and started out of the kitchen—I didn’t want to look at the body while I tried to figure out what I was going to say to the cops.

  Elias’ hand shot out and grabbed my ankle.

  I felt myself lifted like a toy, smashed into Syl, sending her ankh flying. Then there was a crash and I felt slivers of glass as I was hurled out of the window. I remember thinking vaguely that I’d gotten the genre wrong. It wasn’t a mystery novel; it was Friday the 13th, where the psycho never dies.

  I landed badly, barely rolling. I heard the gun skid out of the holster. I scrabbled after it; but then a leather-skinned hand closed clawed fingers around it. “You almost had me, Jason,” said the thing that had been Elias Klein. “Too bad you missed the heart. It still might have worked, but you must’ve used an awfully tough wood; most of the bullet went right on through.” He squeezed. The barrel of my gun bent.

  I got up and ran.

  I didn’t get twenty feet.

  Talons ripped my shirt; he pitched me the rest of the way across the street and through a storefront. A shard of gla
ss ripped my arm, and my ankle smashed into the edge of the window. I looked up, seeing Elias approach me, the inverted neon letters above lending a hellish cast to his distorted features.

  Neon letters?

  I scrambled away from the window, limped towards the back of the store, grabbed the doorknob, ducked inside.

  It was a tiny room with no other exit. I was trapped. The door opened. “A dead end. How appropriate.” Elias smiled. No reluctance now, he was happy to kill.

  I tried to duck past him; his hands lashed out like whips, lifting me clear of the ground. He turned while holding me. “Trying to get out the door?” He shoved me through the doorway, pulled me back. “It’s over, Wood…and I am hungry.” He bent his head again.

  Suddenly, the crystal hammer went warm against my chest. Elias cursed and dropped me. “Damn that bitch! She made that, didn’t she?”

  I didn’t answer. I hurled myself towards the switch by the door.

  Elias caught me with one hand. But I swung my body and kicked the switch up.

  The tanning booth blazed to life, uncountable rows of sunlamps flooding the air with concentrated sunshine. Elias shrieked, dropped me, threw his arms across his face. “Shut it off! Oh, God, shut it off!”

  I took a limping step back.

  “Please, Jason, please!” Elias stumbled blindly towards me.

  I swung my right fist as hard as I could.

  He was off balance already. He fell backward onto the tanning bed. “Oh God oh God I’m burning alive Jason please!!”

  Blisters popped across his flesh. There was a stench like burning meat. I felt my stomach convulse and I turned away.

  “Oh I’m sorry I’m sorry oh just help me Jason!”

  “I’m sorry too, Elias,” I choked out. I put my hands over my ears but I couldn’t drown out the sound of frying fat.

  “HELP MEEEeeeee…”

  Slowly I uncovered my ears. Then I opened them and turned around.

  On the tanning pallet lay a blackened, scorched mummy, mouth gaping wide, revealing razor-sharp fangs. One hand was frozen above the clouded eyes, clawing the air in a vain attempt to fend off the radiance, blistered skin drawn tight over bone. As I watched, the skin began to peel away and turn to oily smoke.

  I managed to make it just outside the door before I was violently sick.

  Chapter 7: Unwrapped Wrap-Up

  “So what are the police going to do about this?” asked Sylvie.

  It was the next evening. I was lying on my bed with my left ankle’s cast propped on a pillow. “I was lucky. It was Renee Reisman who got there first. Between us and the ME, we faked up a story that should hold.”

  “So what’s the official line?”

  “Klein was running a sideline of drugs and protection and was going to set Domingo up to take the fall. The victims like Lewis were connections who knew too much. When I was called in, I got suspicious. Klein decided I had to be removed too, came after me. In the fight, we ended up in the salon, where he swung his gun into one of the lights and electrocuted the crap out of himself.”

  Sylvie looked at me like I was crazy. “Are you nuts? No one will swallow that yarn for a second! One look at that body and any layman would know there was something fishy…once he stopped tossing his cookies.”

  “First, no one is going to see that body. Second, most of that department are hard-nosed realists. They don’t want to believe in vampires and are not going to reopen the case if that is the direction the investigation will take them.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Nope, there is one more thing.” I nodded my head in the direction of the door.

  Verne Domingo stepped into the room.

  Sylvie’s eyes widened.

  “Greetings, Ms. Stake. Thank you for inviting me into your home, Jason.”

  I shrugged. “I figured I should return your favor.”

  “I am the final reason the ruse will work, Ms. Stake…or can I call you Sylvia?”

  “Uh…call me Sylvie; you can understand why.” She looked at me. “Jason, are you sure this is safe?”

  “Syl, if Mr. Domingo wants my ass, he doesn’t have to do it himself.”

  “Exactly, Mr. Wood.”

  “So just exactly what are you doing to make this silly story work?”

  “Beings such as myself have many talents, Sylvie. One of them is a degree of mental control. I have exerted this ability so as to make the people involved believe the story as presented.”

  “You hypnotized them?”

  “Something a bit less crude and far more reliable, Sylvie. It is obviously in my interest to make this story work, as you put it.” He bowed to me. “An excellent bit of work last night, Mr. Wood. Congratulations.” With that, he simply…faded…away.

  It was several seconds before we stopped staring. “Wow,” Sylvie said finally.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I blushed a little. “Uh, Syl…I didn’t say thanks. You saved my life twice last night. First with that crazy stunt with the ankh, then with the hammer charm.” I pulled it out and looked at it. “These things are only supposed to work with faith. I don’t have much of that. Yours must have been enough for us both.”

  She flushed to the roots of her hair. “Don’t sell yourself short, Jason. It was made for you; any strength it showed came equally from your own spirit.”

  “Okay. But still, I didn’t make it, and you were the one who insisted I wear it.”

  She smiled. “All right, Jason. I’ll take the credit. And you’re very, very welcome. I just wanted you to come back in one piece.”

  “Which I pretty much did, if a little cracked,” I agreed, looking at my cast. Syl laughed.

  I looked at the thin air into which Verne Domingo had vanished. “So tell me something, Syl…”

  “What, Jason?”

  “Do you think…it’s over?”

  She smiled…and then her face suddenly went serious, her eyes got that strange distant look as though they were looking through everything around her. “No,” she said after a long moment, and the tone in her voice sent a faint chill down my spine. “No, Jason, it’s not over.

  “This isn’t the end; it’s the beginning.”

  Part II: Lawyers, Ghouls, and Mummies

  May 1999

  Chapter 8: New Client, Closed Case

  For some reason, Syl’s words echoed back to me at odd hours in the next few weeks. I did find myself glancing at shadows out of the corner of my eye more often, looking at mist-fogged streets with a different perception, but for quite a while nothing of any note happened.

  The only real reminder of the strangeness in my life was the lack of strangeness when I talked to Renee Reisman. She had volunteered to forget the truth—it would make the deception easier and more convincing—but that meant that she had literally no recollection of the most frightening and bizarre episode in both our lives. It was difficult, at first, to go to our usual Thursday bowling night without expecting the subject to come up, and to not bring it up. But after a couple of weeks I adapted to it, and things were back on track.

  I glanced at the clock. Four-fifteen. I keep WIS open until five every day, but a lot of the time no one comes in for hours. More than half my clients I hardly ever see, just hear over a telephone or get e-mail or faxes from. I had just looked back down to the package I was preparing for IntraScience Technologies—prior art research on a patent they thought they could get, but probably wouldn’t if they couldn’t get around the prior art I’d found—when the door chimed.

  The boy coming in looked vaguely familiar; about five-foot-seven, maybe fifteen, skin with the dark complexion of the Middle East, a narrow face that Syl would have described as hawklike, a slender build, and eyes of a startlingly clear gray I could see from my desk.

  I could also see even darker circles under his eyes, and he was walking with the heaviness I associated with someone near the limit of exhaustion. “Mr. Wood?” he asked.

  “That’s me, yes. Welcome to Wood’s In
formation Service, Mr.…?”

  “Ross. Xavier Ross.”

  Oh, that poor kid. Once he said his name, I knew who he was. I’d actually seen him a couple of times in the news before the lastest disaster—he was a star of the local martial arts scene and had just come back from an overseas tournament of some kind with medals. But the big news hadn’t been nearly so cheery. “My sympathies, Mr. Ross. I was familiar with a lot of your brother’s work.”

  “Th…thanks.” He hesitated, then sat down on the red leather chair I had in front of my desk for clients. “Um…how much would it cost me to have you do something for me?”

  I grinned. “Depends on the something, I’d say. What do you want me to do?”

  He looked embarrassed. “Sorry, that was stupid. I…” Xavier sighed, looked down. “You work with the cops, right?”

  “Sometimes. I can’t talk about or give you any information on whatever they give me to do. Just to warn you.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t want that. But you’re not part of the police yourself?”

  Well, this is an interesting conversation already. “No. But if you want me to do anything criminal, I don’t do that.”

  He shook his head violently, long black hair twitching in the ponytail he wore. “No, no, I wouldn’t ask you to do anything like that, Mr. Wood. I just…you know they’ve closed the case?”

  I started to get some idea of what he might want. “I’d heard. Drug-related killing. Your brother was a freelance investigative reporter and photographer; he must have seen the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

  “I don’t think so,” Xavier said, and I was startled by the venom in his voice. The conviction in those words was also impressive. “Sorry. Not your fault. But…they sent back my brother’s laptop.” He reached into a bag he was carrying and brought out a Lumiere ToughScreen 97E—a very nice computer for anyone on the go. “I’d like you to check it out for me.”