The Vessels

by Anna Elias

  Wind carried the faint sound of a distant helicopter. The Rogue’s white glow pulsed red, and he slipped deeper inside the remains to stay warm. Spirits shriveled and weakened without a human cocoon, and would return to Elysium once the flesh around them died. But he would not go back, not until he found Mary and made her pay. Thanks to this hiker, and the authorities he’d undoubtedly called, the Rogue would soon have his choice of corporeal replacements.

  CHAPTER SIX

  TAL

  Tal swirled the milky dregs of ice cream in her cup as she walked through the large open-air mall in downtown Pittsburgh. Delicious smells of bread, soup, and other lunchtime fare wafted by on the river breeze, and laughter drummed in her ear from the locals and tourists walking past. She stopped at one point along the decorative iron fence that paralleled the river, near the dancing fountain, and stared at the city’s skyline one last time before her flight. This former train station-turned-marketplace was located a few miles south on the same Monongahela River as the steel mill where Jake had died. The rare, north-flowing current connected them even now.

  Tal scanned the skyline, pausing on the black glass spires of PPG Place. As a kid, she’d slid across the outdoor ice-skating rink every Christmas. Her father would hold her hand and let her clop around. It was her favorite Christmas memory.

  Tal ran her spoon around the cup. She knew this city and these streets better than anyone, as a kid and as a cop, and she loved calling Pittsburgh home. But now, even the most familiar bridge and building seemed different and strange, as if she’d crawled into a nightmare of her life.

  She savored the last taste of Darden’s favorite ice cream treat—cake batter with chocolate chips and colored sprinkles. He’d ordered it every time, from every ice cream and yogurt shop they’d found, with no bias toward the company, brand, size, or server. The sprinkles’ creamy, multicolored residue reminded her of Darden, too—bright, sweet, cheerful, and always leaving behind a happy harlequin mark. A smile bent her lips. If only the same had been true for broccoli. But Darden had been equally unbiased in his dislike for that vegetable, no matter where she’d gotten it, how she’d made it, or what favorite dish she’d served it with.

  The April air blew cold, and Tal zipped her jacket tighter around her neck. She threw her empty cup in the trash and caught the lighted, dancing waters of the nearby fountain. It “performed” to loud pop music, drawing the attention of passersby. Tal turned her back and looked out over the river.

  She grabbed her phone and opened the photo app. She did not take many pictures and avoided being in them if possible, but grateful tears welled as she scrolled through the images of a few personal milestones. Her graduation from the police academy, her wedding to Owen, Darden at every birthday, and the single photo of Darden’s grave that a friend had taken one day after his funeral when she’d driven Tal out to visit. Tal had balked at first, but it turned out her friend had known best. The image still brought closure and a strange and macabre comfort.

  Tal spun through recent pictures from last year’s tailgate party. Her heart skipped at the one of Jake grilling burgers, wearing his Steelers shirt, and wielding his spatula like a trident.

  Their first “date” had followed soon after, at this very mall, after a successful raid on the notorious South Side Gang. The whole squad had turned out to celebrate, and, as the evening wore on and more people left, she and Jake had slipped away. They’d shared ice cream and walked along this same stretch of fence by the dancing fountain, holding hands and soaking in the majestic view of the river and downtown. Her body tingled remembering his kiss and his gentle touch, which had rekindled passions she’d long thought dead. She’d wanted more that night. Jake had, too. But she’d stopped them and he hadn’t pushed.

  Six months later, he’d died.

  Tal’s chin trembled as she spun through more pictures on her phone. Jake was one of those rare people with an intoxicating joy for life—a complete contentment about who, where, and what he was that lit up every smile.

  Another grave I created, Tal thought. Another life gone thanks to me. Tears raced down her cheeks.

  A text dinged. Her Uber was waiting by the entrance.

  Tal sighed and turned the phone over in her hand, pondering the countless times she’d used it to text Jake, call Owen, and let Darden play his favorite games. Though an old model, it was the last phone Darden had touched so she refused to get another so long as it still worked. None of that mattered anymore.

  She wiped her tears, anchored her feet, and chucked the device as hard as she could, sending it over the old train tracks and into the river beyond. She straightened her shoulders and walked off to meet the waiting car.

  Tal landed in Reno seven hours and twelve minutes after leaving Pittsburgh. She leaned back and looked out the window as her cab sped from the airport toward the flashing lights of downtown. The taxi streamed alongside lanes of cars and trucks like mechanical blood in concrete veins.

  Headlights cut the darkness as the cab exited on a ramp west of downtown. Tal knocked on the divider and the driver pulled to a stop. She paid the fare and climbed out, then watched as the car sped through the same intersection where Owen and Darden had died. A distant, dancing light caught her eye, and she spotted the hotel where she’d been staying, its neon name still glowing above the lobby doors. Goosebumps tore up and down her skin inside her jacket.

  She walked along the curb until she found the spot where Owen’s car had caught fire. The burn marks had faded over the seven-plus years and nearby saplings had grown into small trees, but one bit of evidence remained—a tiny cement scar in this city’s spider web of interstates, overpasses, and streets. Tal knelt to touch the weathered spot where two souls had launched from earthly bonds, leaving a tortured wife and mother behind.

  Tal swallowed hard and closed her eyes as memories gushed back, ghosts of crunching metal, screams, sirens tearing the air, and a blazing inferno that still seared her to the core.

  She’d come to Reno for that year’s police convention. She and Owen had been separated at the time but wanting to work things out. Owen had agreed to bring Darden, and Tal planned for some time off right after the convention. They would be together again as a family, in a brand-new city with all new sights and sounds. She and Owen had both hoped this change would be the medicine they needed to mend, and she’d hoped Owen would see how much she could love him and her work in equal measure.

  Tal looked back up at the hotel three blocks away. The bright circus-themed lights still flashed, but the red and pink hearts were missing. The last night of the convention had coincided with Valentine’s Day Eve. Owen had picked up the rental car at the airport and, as he’d neared the hotel, four-year-old Darden had gotten on the phone, all laughs and giggles.

  Tal had walked out of the lobby as they talked, eyes trained on the exit ramp three blocks away. The rain had stopped, and sun broke through thick clouds. She’d trembled with excitement.

  “The lights are sparkly,” Darden had said through her phone. “The airplane was bumpy. But don’t worry. Me and Daddy are okay.”

  “I can’t wait to see you, baby,” Tal had said.

  “Daddy, too?” His innocent voice had grown serious.

  “Daddy, too.” The thought of being a family again had made Tal happier than she’d been in a long time.

  Moments later, Owen’s red car had taken the exit ramp and stopped at the light. Tal could just make out Darden’s little head poking above the car seat behind his father, and her whole body had tingled with a mother’s joy, excited to hold him, hug him, and kiss his sweet smiling face.

  “I see you, baby. You and Daddy are almost here. Better hang up now. I love you.”

  “Okay. I love you, Mommy,” Darden had said and hung up. The light had changed, and Owen had barely pulled out when the SUV slammed into them. Both vehicles had skidded across the wet road, and Owen’s rental had flipped twice before spinning to a stop on its roof.

  Time had swi
rled in a nightmarish fog. Tal had no longer felt her flesh, the ground, the air, or the people around her. “Oh my God, no. No. Please, God.”

  Owen’s car had burst into flames.

  “Darden. Nooo.” She’d sprinted toward the inferno.

  Strangers had grabbed her and prevented her from diving in. “My baby’s in there. Please, God. My baby!”

  Rescue vehicles had arrived. Firefighters had grabbed hoses and pumped water as police officers held back the growing crowd.

  Tal had lunged for the car, again and again, swearing she could hear Darden scream for her from inside. Three officers had to hold her down before she’d finally given up, dropped to her knees, and vomited out her insides.

  Tal took a deep breath and forced her mind back to the moment. The coroner had told her Darden had died quickly, but her mother’s heart heard him screaming for years afterward.

  She touched a kiss to the marred curb and stood, hugging her arms to her chest, wondering how many other places like this existed in the world—spots stained forever by those who’d been flung from this life into the next. It must be in the millions, counting wars, train wrecks, plane crashes, terrorist bombings, and genocides.

  Tal gazed at the stars with puffy red eyes. Line them side by side, how many times would those souls circle the earth? Smells of gasoline, exhaust, and asphalt churned her stomach. What a waste humans make. Of the world. Of themselves. Of each other.

  Tiny weights of grief filled her again as she tried to imagine whom Darden might have become had he lived. It had been devastating enough to lose Owen at the age of twenty-nine, but she could not accept this crash as Darden’s natural end, or believe that four years was all God had planned for him.

  She clenched her fists. As a cop, she’d witnessed the worst in people—cutting short what should be, what could be—by taking matters into their angry, greedy, or selfish hands. Like the woman who had run the red light and crashed into Owen and Darden, flipping their car into a burning hell because she’d been texting.

  Humans.

  Cold bit through Tal’s jacket and nipped at her skin. She shoved her hands into her pockets and turned on the sidewalk toward downtown.

  It didn’t take long before Tal found herself among the drunks and vagrants of Reno’s inner city. Wind whistled around thick columns supporting another overpass, bringing with it the stench of soured trash, urine, and the rot of human despair. A garbage truck rumbled past, its orange lights flashing across a tattoo parlor, two stores advertising slot machines, and a small pawnshop with barred windows.

  Tal stepped inside the pawnshop, nostrils flaring against the stench of stale cigarettes and musty old carpet. She surveyed the gold, jewelry, and electronics, as well as two glass cases filled with guns and knives, wondering which items had been stolen and pawned for cash, and which had been hocked by desperate owners. As a cop, she knew every pawnshop in Pittsburgh and had found stolen merchandise at most. This one reeked of the same desperation.

  “Looking for one in particular?” a man asked, his voice coated with nicotine.

  Tal jerked up to see the tall, beefy, bald owner standing across from her. One piercing studded his tongue, another accented his eyebrow, and several lined his ear.

  “One what?”

  He pointed to the knives inside a glass case. “You a collector or something?”

  Tal didn’t realize she’d been staring at them. Then again, buying a knife was the reason she’d come. “Got a DJ Quick Flip? Or a Klaw?”

  “Lady knows her knives.” He smiled and a shiny gold tooth caught the light. The barbed wire inked around his neck appeared to tighten as he wrapped thick fingers around one tiny metal Klaw.

  “Lightweight,” he said, dropping the pocket-sized knife into her palm. “Three-inch blade. 440 stainless steel. Fast, too. And shit-ass sharp.”

  Tal fingered the tooled holes in its handle. She placed her pinkie into the largest and pressed her thumb against the top lever. The razor-like blade whipped out.

  “See?”

  “Sold.”

  “Twenty bucks.”

  “Ten.”

  The owner studied her puffy eyes. “Cash.”

  Tal plopped a ten on the counter, her last bill.

  “Have a nice night.” He grinned and stuffed the money in his register.

  Tal had to laugh. This gruff, pierced, and tattooed stranger would be the last person she’d speak to in life—a man who made his living on the sale of human suffering. Fitting, she thought.

  The door’s bell dinged her exit and cold air burned her cheeks. She zipped her jacket again, catching her reflection in the window between iron bars. A frightened woman stared back, one praying for another way out. Tal’s grief ran like oil in her veins and poisoned whatever desire for life she had left. She turned her back on that woman in the glass and strode off to finish what she’d come here to do.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LINK

  Javier Gomez dove for cover inside the hulking remains of an abandoned SUV as a police car turned the corner. Weeds grew through holes in the vehicle’s frame, and the broken, open sunroof had become a portal to the elements, souring the seats that rubbed against Javier’s clothes. His shoes slipped across a floorboard of rotted trash. He ducked as the cruiser drove by, his every nerve on edge until it passed. He peeked between the steering wheel and dashboard and watched it stop at the end of the block. Two officers inside spoke with a homeless man, their voices carrying enough for Javier to recognize his own description.

  Pain shot through where he’d slammed his jaw against a brick alley wall. Dried blood crusted his lip and his tongue toyed with the hole left by a missing front tooth. Creating that gap in his mouth had hurt like hell, but that, along with cropping his black hair with a chipped razor blade, had gone a long way in disguising his looks.

  The homeless man shook his head, and the cruiser disappeared around another corner. Javier emerged from the gutted heap and hurried to the sidewalk, losing himself among the lost of Reno’s inner city.

  Hunger gnawed without mercy. Javier hadn’t eaten so much as a cracker in two days, but he didn’t dare beg, and every dumpster crawled with maggots and reeked of disease. Rain started to fall and Javier crouched in the doorway of a closed appliance store. He’d shed his prison jumpsuit after the escape, snatched dirty clothes from some homeless man’s shopping cart, and rolled them in street scum to keep people away. It had worked. He could barely stand to smell himself.

  Javier caught his reflection in the barred window and a stranger looked back, one even he would not recognize, save the hard, hazel-brown eyes. Changing them would require a whole lot more than different clothes and a missing tooth.

  A string of homeless men and women shuffled past, some talking to themselves and others pushing carts. One man stopped to pilfer trash scraps for his dog. Javier locked eyes with the mangy animal, its ribs showing through dull, flea-bitten fur. The mutt licked his master’s hand before accepting some scavenged morsel. Javier’s stomach churned thinking how loving and loyal the dog was in contrast to how his gang had targeted men like this—knocking them senseless for whatever coins or crumpled bills might be stuffed in their pockets.

  How could he have been so stupid? So heartless? Gangs wielded nothing more than a perverse sense of power; slamming kids into adulthood without letting them grow up. His gang had sucked him in, promising to be the home and family he’d never had. Instead, they’d sacrificed his innocence on the altar of their survival. They’d sentenced him to life on the streets until prison locked him into life behind bars, for a murder he hadn’t committed.

  Most of the homeless people lined up a block away, outside the metal door of a four-story brick building across the street. A modest sign over the building’s front entry read, “Samaritan Resource Center” and featured a bronzed St. Francis-looking monk offering food, medicine, and clothes in outstretched metal arms. Javier caught a whiff of meat and potatoes and started to drool. His stomach
groaned and his legs stood on their own to move in that direction.

  He stopped, scanning the line for undercover cops. But those in line were obviously regulars, staring straight ahead and unflinching in the light but steady rain. Hunger tore at Javier. His mind screamed no but his body’s desperate need for food drove him forward. He spied a gap in the line, a small niche in the building where an iron fence met one brick wall and created a hole that would make him less visible to the street. He scanned the area once more, then held a flattened garbage bag over his head and hurried toward the small gap. He stood behind a gaunt man sucking on the nub of a cigarette. The man’s street-stained pants bagged at his hips. They would have fallen off had it not been for the rope cinching them around his bony waist.

  Javier trained his eyes on the sidewalk, tilted the bag over his head, and turned his face from the crowd.

  Until a police car pulled up.

  His heart leaped and adrenaline flooded his system. Every muscle tensed, ready to run, but his mind forced them to ease. He slipped closer to the thin man ahead of him, sharing his garbage bag and talking as if they’d known each other for years. He made himself act unconcerned while, from his periphery, he watched the cops scan the crowd. One stopped to look at him, eying his size and height, his street clothes, his cropped hair and missing tooth. Javier feigned laughter with the smoking man, praying the cop wouldn’t recognize him. His lungs burned and his heart threatened to crack his ribs.

  The rain fell harder and the policemen drove away. Javier waited until they were out of sight before dropping to his knees and heaving in a breath of fresh air. A few heads turned, so he dropped a coin from his pocket and pretended to pick it up. That act was well understood in this crowd and gave him time to let his heart slow and his dizziness subside. When he stood again, the thin man offered the last of his smoke. Though Javier knew the gesture was meant to share comfort, the thought of that bitter taste made him nauseous. Javier thanked the man and ducked across the street to throw up. Nothing came out except sour bile, but it squelched his hunger.