DarkWalker

by John Urbancik

  No longer content to walk, to wait for whatever else lurked in the dark, Jack ran. His first steps were stumbling; his muscles had almost given up on life.

  A sudden fear struck him: if these things attacked Jack, how did Lisa fare, alone in her apartment?

  With all his belief, every ounce and fiber of it, Jack knew he was the target, not Lisa. She was fine, sleeping, maybe, and dreaming beautiful things, daytime things, puppies and dandelions, windmills and roses, diamonds and seashores. Logically, there was no reason to go after her. He was the watcher, the DarkWalker, the eyes in the night. She was a bystander. Innocent.

  Though he knew this, he ran.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1.

  Half way back to the apartment where everything began, Nick Hunter paused. He was on the sidewalk, same side of the street as the lake, when the smell assaulted him.

  He hadn’t been looking for it. Tonight, he stalked a human quarry. But there was no mistaking the horrendous vampiric stink. Most people would attribute the odor to bad gas, or dog shit in the gutter. Nick had lived with that smell for years.

  He looked left and right, then scanned the tree limbs above him. So strong a smell meant the beast was near. If it saw Nick, he lost his most important weapon: surprise. Vampires expected to live forever. They never seemed to realize someone might come after them with a stake and an attitude.

  Slowly, Nick reached for his gun. He heard only the crickets and the wind.

  He followed that breeze toward the lake, and the source of the stench.

  Half way between the street and the path, amid a sparse plot of trees, a vampire, crouched alongside the lake, looked at something on the water. It was male, ashen but not the alabaster of the type he’d slain the night before, with a full head of hair and decked out all in black. Ears like a cat’s, folded back, twitching.

  Nick aimed his gun. Certain vampires were more resilient than others. The gunshot had given him plenty of time to stake the nosferatu beasts; this type, a prince of a man complete with cape and, likely, a false Transylvanian accent, generally did not fall easily.

  One of its ears snapped suddenly back. Muscles tensed. It heard Nick. Slowly, it turned its head. When their eyes met, Nick pulled the trigger.

  The bullet struck the vampire’s forehead. The force knocked it backwards, into the lake with a splash.

  “Shit.” Nick surged forward, drawing a stake.

  The vampire floated on its back, next to the zombie’s body. Its eyes were open, looking up at Nick, and its teeth were bared. Hideously deformed canines dominated its smile.

  Nick leapt into the water, stake first, and plunged the wood into the beast’s heart. Its grin turned sour. A fountain of black blood erupted.

  The water, here, was only thigh deep. Nick dragged the vampire back to the edge and, with some effort, shoved it over the artificial lake wall and onto the grass. Climbed out himself. Pulled a lighter from his jacket. It started on the second try.

  The vampire flared and, despite being wet, was quickly reduced to ash.

  Nick looked around, and saw that he’d been seen. No people, not yet. Owls. Rats. Cockroaches. A cat. They’d paused in their movement, as they’d all been headed in a singular direction, and turned their heads to watch.

  “It’s done,” Nick told them.

  They didn’t listen, didn’t acknowledge him, and continued when they were ready—cat first, but not in any sort of procession. Knowing where they headed, Nick followed.

  2.

  Not much further.

  The apartment’s vestibule came into view as Jack rounded the corner. Forty feet. Thirty. Maybe less.

  A black limo stopped in the road, directly in his path. The rear door opened and a blond man beckoned with one finger. “Quickly,” he said.

  “No.” Jack raced around the side of the limo, over the curb and under the awning of the apartment. The car door closed, but Jack did not look back. He keyed his way past the double glass doors, ran past the elevator and into the staircase. He was tired, but he wasn’t going to give away his destination via floor indicators in the lobby.

  Large black numbers announced each floor: 2, 3, 4, and finally 5. He burst through the door, half expecting the corridor to be crowded with ghouls and goblins.

  Nothing.

  Emotions raced through him. Fear, anxiety—was Lisa safe behind that door? Regret and guilt at Claire’s second death—she’d wanted to tell her story, he’d refused it, and now she’d never get the chance. Anger, too, but without direction. Something, someone, was responsible for this shift. It could not be what he thought. Relief, at having reached Lisa’s apartment. The door was shut tight, locked, just as he’d left it. Was it a sanctuary? No. He’d be no safer inside . . . and Lisa would be endangered by his arrival.

  Jack paused a moment to catch his breath. He looked right and left, left and right, then up, down, and behind him, checking for sudden apparitions and silent arrivals. None. No one. Nothing. He wiped a line of sweat from his brow, took a deep breath, and inserted the key.

  3.

  After Jack left, Lisa Sparrow waited, then stared out the window a while, tried reading, and finally settled into a mindless exercise routine. She was in the middle of a long, low stretch when she heard the key in the door. Her stomach twisted, rose to her throat. The coating of well-earned sweat chilled. Her heart pounded so hard, she thought it might break her ribs.

  She rose too quickly, almost losing balance. She grabbed a towel off the kitchen counter and wiped her face. Lowered the radio as the doorknob turned. Only two possibilities: Jack Harlow, or something else—not someone, she no longer feared the unknown man in the shadows, just the shadows themselves . . .

  Jack Harlow entered, locking the door behind him. He smiled broadly when he saw Lisa, but she caught something before that: a sliver of fear. Whether it was fear of what was outside, or of Lisa (and all the associated possibilities), she didn’t know. She shared both, but neither would overwhelm her. Not now. Blood pumping, adrenaline and endorphins flowing, dopamine and serotonin, nothing could bring her down.

  He hugged her. Tight. For a long time. He trembled—with something other than anticipation.

  “It’s going to be a long night, isn’t it?” Lisa said.

  “It already is.”

  When Jack released the embrace, grudgingly, he set the laptop on the kitchen counter and turned it on. Opened screens, scrolled through them, searched for particular pieces of text. Imp. That’s what he looked for first. Then he tried other words, and read what he found, Lisa looking over his shoulder.

  The words on the screen began to gel, to make a weird sort of sense they should not have. This wasn’t a horror movie. Ghosts existed in films and books and campfire stories, but not in the modern world. Lisa never truly disbelieved; it wasn’t hard accepting that things like phantoms and . . . zombies? . . . existed. But who was Jack Harlow, that he had this on a computer?

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  Jack paused, but didn’t answer immediately. She understood, too: how to explain what he was, what he was searching for. She put a hand on his arm, kissed him lightly, and whispered, “It’s okay. I don’t care how.”

  “I don’t know how,” Jack finally said. “It’s . . . it’s a long story, I think, but I don’t know it.”

  “The short version, then.”

  Jack nodded. Swallowed. Lowered his eyes. “You know how, when it gets dark out, shadows obscure what you see, hide things that tend not to even be there?” Lisa nodded. “I see through those shadows. I see the dark.”

  “In the dark?”

  “That, too,” Jack said.

  Lisa rested her head against his shoulder. “I won’t pretend to understand,” she said, “but I do. A little.”

  “The thing is,” Jack said, “they’ve always seen me, too, and ignored me. Like I was supposed to see, and they didn’t really care.”

  “And now?” Lisa asked.

  “
Now,” Jack said, “I’m a target.”

  “And me?” Lisa asked. Jack pulled away from her, returned to the computer. “And me?” she asked again.

  “The catalyst,” he said.

  No.

  That couldn’t be right. Lisa understood him completely, if not the details. Her life had changed when Jack Harlow stepped into it—but could she have changed his life that drastically? No way. Not a chance.

  “It’s got to be something else,” she insisted.

  “Something,” Jack said, “but I don’t have it. Nothing.”

  “The . . . the thing that attacked me?” She shuddered; just mentioning it revived images of chomping teeth and razor claws. Cuts all across her body burned in remembrance.

  Jack nodded, but turned away from the computer. “I’ve never seen anything like it, or a lot of the things I’ve seen tonight.”

  Lisa smiled. “Not all bad, I hope.”

  “No,” he said, stepping closer to kiss her. “Not all bad.”

  “So now what?”

  “Now,” Jack said, shaking his head, “I don’t know. I don’t think you’re safe with me, and I don’t think I’m safe in your apartment.”

  “Maybe you are,” Lisa said.

  He laughed. “Maybe. But I doubt it.”

  “Where are you safe?” she asked.

  “Different places for different things,” Jack said. “I don’t know of any one place from which I can hide from everything.” He sighed. It wasn’t much of a stretch to say he’d been hiding, running, from himself, from the thing he was. “I don’t really want to spend my life in hiding.”

  “Then don’t,” Lisa said. “You’ve been seeing these things for long enough, haven’t you? Don’t you know how to fight them?”

  Jack nodded once, but closed his eyes. “Some.”

  Someone—or something—knocked on the door.

  4.

  Nick Hunter returned to the apartment building. From across the street, he’d watched Jack run into it (around a limo, its door open—something else chasing him?—which pulled away when he went inside). He picked the lock to get inside.

  Jack hadn’t taken the elevator, but that didn’t matter. Nick climbed in, let the doors open on every floor until he noticed a spot of blood on the tile. Fifth floor.

  The trail didn’t lead specifically to a door, unfortunately, but left him just five from which to choose, which made it easy: only one had any noise inside, a radio playing softly.

  He knocked.

  He didn’t have to. The locks here were simple, the doors flimsy.

  He glanced up and down the hall. No responses, no creatures hiding in the corners, no strange scents or sounds, nothing to indicate he wasn’t alone—which meant nothing.

  Jack opened the door cautiously. Nick might have pushed it open at the first sign of movement, smashing Jack in the face and maybe knocking him out. Despite the urge, he didn’t.

  “Hunter,” Jack said.

  Nick grinned. Met Jack’s brown eyes. “You got lucky with that truck.” Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped in and shut the door.

  “Who?” the woman asked. The thing had scratched her pretty badly, Nick noted, but not horribly, nothing that would scar.

  “Nick Hunter. We never got a proper introduction downstairs.”

  “Lisa,” she said.

  “So,” Jack said, locking the door. “I hate to say this, but I’m not safe to be around.”

  “I noticed,” Nick said. He winked at Lisa. “I thought I’d steal some of the glory.”

  “An errant zombie, ogre, a living shadow,” Jack said. “So far. That’s just a beginning. There was a ghost, too. Claire. She’s gone now. Took out the shadow.”

  “So you have allies,” Nick said. “Good.”

  “Had an ally,” Jack said. “I don’t know what to do next.”

  “Isn’t that obvious?” Lisa asked.

  Nick glanced at her, fairly certain of what she was about to say. “What?” Jack asked.

  “Stay here,” Lisa said. “Wait until the sun comes up. It’s . . .” She looked to a clock. “It’s after two.”

  “Almost five hours before sunrise,” Nick said. “Long time.”

  “First,” Jack said, “I need to know something.” He looked at Nick with steady eyes, fearlessly, a man who had seen too much to be frightened by it—worried, yes, but not for himself.

  “Of course,” Nick said. “I’m gonna help.”

  “Help?” Lisa asked.

  “I’m a hunter,” Nick said. “Makes my job easier, if they come to me.”

  “I haven’t seen a vampire yet,” Jack said.

  “I’ve decided to expand.”

  “You said you didn’t like my spotlight.”

  “Right,” Nick said. He nodded toward the open computer. “These other things out there, I know nothing about them.”

  “And you just want to kill them all?” Lisa asked.

  Nick glared at her. “The things I kill, honey, if given half a chance, would suck you dry in a way you might or might not enjoy and leave you for dead. But you wouldn’t be dead, not exactly. You’d wake with that same insatiable thirst. Predators. And we, we’re the prey. Kill or be killed.” He grinned. “I choose the first.”

  5.

  Jack Harlow hadn’t considered his computer an item of importance. But now that Nick had mentioned it, Jack realized his files carried data on more than two hundred species indigenous to the dark, including some of their weaknesses. He’d learned some of it from various websites that had proven useful. There were few of those. Now, however, was the perfect time to access one.

  “Internet?” he asked Lisa.

  She pointed. He unplugged her laptop, connected the line to his, and opened the web browser. Someday, he’d arrange for something more mobile.

  As the machine worked, he looked from Lisa to Nick, then back to Lisa. He could trust her with his life, he was sure of it; Nick, however, had made his intentions clear.

  “Some things work frequently,” Jack told Nick. “What kind of sword is that?”

  Nick withdrew the blade from a sheath hidden under his jacket. “Knife,” he said. “Silver blade. Marble handle.”

  “Silver?” Lisa asked.

  “Inherited,” Nick said.

  “Silver’s good,” Jack said. “Useful against most types of vampires, lycanthropes, other things. The zombie downstairs, any blade would’ve worked.” He glanced at the screen, called up the website. “It was beheading that mattered there.”

  “Nice to know,” Nick said. “Bullets are silver, too.”

  “Good.”

  “And I have more weapons in my truck,” Nick said.

  Jack clicked a few buttons, typed imp, and waited.

  No results. Nothing useful.

  “Damn,” Jack said. That had been his best source. He tried another site, then a third, finding only references to impatient, impotent, impartial, important, and impress. Jack shut down the computer. “This isn’t helping.”

  “What, then?” Nick asked.

  Jack thought a moment. Claire had entered his life just before all this started; what else had there been? Two nights ago was so far away. There was the bald stranger snorting the ash of his victim; the Asian vampire winking at him; and the ghost in the bar.

  “Stories,” Jack said. He closed the computer, looked at Lisa, and said, “I’ve got to go hear a story.”

  “I’m going with you,” Lisa said.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” he said.

  “No more so than sitting here,” Lisa said. “Anyway, you might need protection.”

  “I’ll handle that,” Nick said.

  Her eyes never left Jack. “From him,” she said.

  Jack sighed. “I don’t know what else might be out there.”

  “But you’ve led them here,” Lisa told him. “Pointed them straight to me. I’m not going to sit here and wait for them.”


  “I work alone,” Nick said.

  “You’re already not alone,” she said.

  “Stop,” Jack said.

  Everyone looked at him. He inhaled, long and deep, making them wait before turning to Nick. “Give her a knife,” Jack said. “And arm me, too, when we get a chance. It’s me they’re after, anyway.”

  After a long moment, Nick shrugged. He flipped the knife in his hand and, holding the blade, gave it to Lisa.

  “Good,” Jack said. “Hunter, how well can you see through the dark?”

  “I see fine,” Nick said, “but I can smell a vampire a block away.”

  6.

  Jack Harlow didn’t trust the hunter; but he could’ve killed Jack and taken the computer if he wanted it. Was that why the dark suddenly turned on him, because he’d seen too much? No, the imp. He didn’t know how, or why, and he didn’t know if it could be reversed, but learning about the imp was the only way Jack could help himself.

  Claire hadn’t been the only ghost to offer stories. Stories that’ll blow your mind.

  In the elevator, they were quiet and tense. Even here, indoors, the darkness had thickened. The bright lights of the downstairs lobby provided no solace; rather, the fluorescents accentuated their vulnerability.

  Jack’s eyes were excellent at night. He could look into shadows, and almost peer around corners. Very little could hide from him; they had never bothered trying before.

  Outside, the air had chilled—naturally, or mostly so. No phantoms met them. Nothing barred their path. They left the apartment, walked three abreast with Jack in the center. The street was quiet. Even the crickets had desisted. Clouds, gathering above, seemed iridescent, reflecting the lights of Orlando.

  From every shadow, behind every corner, eyes watched. There, a cat, that black cat he’d seen earlier. An owl perched atop a fencepost. Vagrants in the park, on the path surrounding the lake. They were creatures of the night, if not of the supernatural sort, and they, too, had an interest in what was happening.