DarkWalker

by John Urbancik

  The streets were mostly empty of pedestrians; people driving by seemed too busy keeping on the road to worry about two strangers wandering their neighborhood.

  They had circled through the dilapidated residential area and eventually headed south, back toward downtown.

  Every time she thought of Jack, Lisa felt a stab of rejuvenation, as if simply invoking his name made up for the lack of sleep, hours of walking, and the pitiless rain.

  Lightning crashed all around them.

  Their pattern had taken them west first, then north, where they crisscrossed every road and alleyway. Residents stared, but from windows and doorways. The rain washed away whatever blood and gunk they hadn’t rinsed off in the gas station. Finally, they found themselves on the road on which they’d started, perhaps two miles north.

  “They could be in another state by now,” Lisa said.

  “Could be,” Nick said, “but vampires are usually territorial. A few square miles, at the most.”

  She easily imagined walking in the rain with Jack, alongside Lake Eola, hands joined, breeze at their backs. The fountain glowed and a sliver of moon shone down on them. But as she focused on this image, the scene shifted; the water reddened, thickened. The sky became rock, and then the ground, and walls formed behind her.

  Jagged lightning broke through the unreal image, becoming part of it. The demon laughed, nothing more, and souls in agony cried and screamed and clawed at each other.

  Then the vampire swooped down, snatching Jack again, yanking his hand from Lisa’s and leaping into the lake that had become molten rock. The vampire bounced from one head to another, carrying Jack casually under one arm. The souls she trod over reached for her, but always too late. The demon stopped laughing. But the vampire, and Jack, weren’t really there; only Lisa was, and the demon, and its horde . . .

  Lisa still felt the heat when she dragged herself free, back to the street and rain. Asphalt, concrete, glass, steel, trees, clouds . . . none of these things existed in the demon’s mirage.

  Nick stared at her.

  “I keep slipping,” she said.

  He squeezed her hand. “We’ll find him.”

  Yeah, she wanted to say, but then what? Every time she slipped, it became more real, more solid. The heat increased, and she almost felt the demon’s breath.

  They’d begun another sweep of another street.

  Nick said, “We’re doing this wrong.”

  4.

  Jack Harlow drifted in and out of dreams. Jia Li seemed to leave him alone, though he twice woke to stabs of pain—once in his neck, once his wrist. He didn’t know what was real, what was imagined, what was forced upon him.

  Jia Li often perched on the desk. Sometimes she seemed to watch him, tilting her head to one side or narrowing her eyes. Other times, she faced away from him. She wasn’t always there. When Jack wanted water, the cup was always full and sometimes cool.

  Once, he saw something else—perhaps a phantom—also staring at him. Jia Li either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  Noise from the next room woke him once; the crashing continued until a final bang shook the wall. Dust fell from the ceiling tiles. A dull thud followed, and then silence—except for the storm.

  Sometimes, Jack thought he was in the grip of night. Lightning flashed like strobes, heightening the contrast of the shadows. He saw everything as if he watched a low quality black and white video on a cheap television. Nothing was clear—except Jia Li; when she was there; he saw her perfectly.

  Finally, he woke. For real.

  Jia Li, on the desk, smiled. “Feeling any stronger?” she asked.

  “No,” Jack lied.

  Her grin faltered. “This storm blurs the line between day and night. Won’t be long before the sun doesn’t matter.”

  “Is that why we’re still here?” Jack asked.

  “We’re here,” Jia Li said, “because this is my nest. My aerie, you might say. I can see miles in every direction. There is no place safer.”

  “But I’m still going to die,” Jack said.

  Jia Li shrugged. “Life is one long death. From the moment you are born.”

  “Even for you?” Jack asked.

  She smiled.

  “Tell me something,” Jack said.

  She leaned close, licking her top lip, and whispered. “Anything.”

  “What happened?”

  “To you?”

  “What changed?”

  “Honestly,” Jia Li said, “and I have no desire to be anything but honest, I neither know nor care what happened. When I saw you the other night, so confident and quiet, with those wonderful chocolate eyes drinking me and drowning me, I knew you were off-limits. When I touched you, barely a brush, I felt it on a cellular level. Physically, I responded. It was dangerous, more contact might have killed me, but the pleasure was worth it. We were like magnets, repelling each other, but I wanted more. I don’t know how else to describe it. You had an electricity.”

  “No longer?” Jack asked.

  “Oh, it’s there.” Jia Li placed her palm on his cheek. “An undercurrent, stronger and more vibrant than before. Do you not feel it, through my hand?”

  Jack nodded. He did feel it, something akin to static electricity.

  She climbed down from the desk, straddled him—legs on either side of the chair—and settled into his lap. “It’s why I find you so irresistible.”

  “I was untouchable,” Jack said.

  She kissed him, and again, light pecks on the sides of his mouth. “Was, yes. Past tense.”

  “But you say it’s still there,” Jack said.

  “Oh, yes.” Jia Li’s eyes riveted his gaze, paralyzing him. “But it flows . . . differently.” She kissed him, lingering. “Makes you very, very touchable. And your lips, so kissable, and your throat . . .” She yanked Jack’s head back by his hair, exposing his neck, pushing the chair back as she did so. “I have never tasted a man so luscious.” She made a soft, slow trail of kisses up his throat. He heard his heartbeat, or hers. No teeth—just lips and tongue, and every subtle curve of her body melted into him.

  He couldn’t resist. Didn’t want to. She overwhelmed every sense. He surrendered, lifting his arms to her hips. One hand slipped around to the small of her back, the other slid down her thigh. Taut but soft. Solid but yielding. He felt the muscles under her skin.

  Internally, Jack struggled not to lose himself. He was not supposed to be a vampire’s plaything. He’d found true love, something more powerful than he understood. Nothing Jia Li did could cast Lisa Sparrow from his mind, not completely. But when the vampire came close, his mind scrambled. Thoughts failed to connect. Memories scattered.

  She reached between them and undid his jeans, her voice breathy and quiet now. “I can barely remember the last time I had a man like this.” She unbuttoned enough to release him.

  For a moment, Jack felt absurdly exposed. A twinge of fear, rational and very real, opened his eyes. This wasn’t something he wanted to do, but he absolutely had no will to resist.

  Jia Li drew breath through clenched teeth as she slid down onto him—unhurried—gently—what fear? They sighed in unison. Up and down, she slid, very slowly, savoring every sensation, luxuriating in it, as if time had stopped, the world had ended, and the universe had been reduced to two inextricable bodies.

  Other than the occasional moan, they made love silently in the erratic light of exploding thunderbolts.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  1.

  Following the wind was easy—relatively—compared to systematically eliminating every street, road, lane, and alley. The storm made that impossible; they may have passed within ten yards of a beasts’ den and not known it. However, the storm helped direct them.

  Once he started, Nick Hunter knew he was right. The wind, like every other creature of the night, was drawn to the watcher. If he’d just relaxed and let instinct take over, Nick might have been pulled by the same force.

  Lisa hurried to keep u
p. “What happened?” she asked, glancing down each street they passed.

  “The wind,” Nick said. “It led me to Jack once.” He didn’t know how to explain it; there had been other signs, last night, and looking around now revealed nothing to justify his sudden certainty: no rats in the gutters, no roaches or flies, not a single errant zombie to be seen. No demons, batboys, or vampires.

  Huddled against the door of a former shoe store (sign still etched on the window, chain links covering the glass, but absolutely nothing visible inside except few empty shelves), a bum clung to his brown-bagged bottle. Wine, whiskey, whatever. He sipped absently, his vacant eyes more or less watching the sky—not just any section of sky, but the very direction Nick was headed. Was that confirmation?

  “Don’t,” the bum said.

  Nick stopped and looked again. The bum was a bundle of rags, layers of variegated colors, all worn to dull gray and brown and black. Fingerless gloves. A disintegrating wool cap. He’d managed to stand, leaving the bottle tucked in the corner of the tiny alcove. He steadied himself with the door and stumbled into the rain pointing a thick, dirty finger at Nick and Lisa. “Don’t,” he said again.

  “Don’t what?” Lisa asked.

  The bum shook his head. “It’s all over,” he said, his voice rough but sad. “All of it, over, done. I’ll miss it.”

  “Miss what?”

  The bum squinted at her and scratched the side of his scraggly beard. “All of it.”

  Nick grabbed Lisa by the arm. “Let’s go.”

  They got one step before the bum raised his voice. “Hear me! Heed me! I am no mere conjurer of words, no fool who has drunk himself into oblivion! I have seen things that would make grown men weep in fear.”

  “Another watcher?” Lisa whispered.

  Nick shook his head. “Doubtful.”

  “I was a lieutenant,” the bum said, his volume back to normal. “I led the army over the hill. I took his head myself.”

  Nick hesitated.

  “It’s still dark,” the bum said, “night or no, and we shall not be put down again!” He rushed forward, arms outstretched.

  Nick deflected the attack, letting the bum fall forward—almost into the street. The bum spun, drool hanging from his oversized mouth, sharp teeth suddenly visible, and also the gaps where they had rotted away. The whites of his eyes were yellow, huge now, intent on Nick. He attacked again.

  Nick caught the bum’s arm between his fists (one at the wrist, one at the elbow). It cracked—loudly. The bum screamed, enraged; his broken arm fell limp, but he lunged again.

  This time, the bum feigned his attack; Nick blocked air, and the bum struck his chest. Brown and cracked fingernails extended, like claws. Nick fell back, knocking Lisa aside.

  “I was the second lieutenant,” the bum said, lowering his head, “and I will miss all of it.”

  Then he burned.

  It wasn’t like lighting a vampire, when the fire flashed and was out as quickly as it began. Flames rose from the bum’s arms, his legs, his gaping mouth. His eyes blazed. The woolen hat flaked away as his head became a ball of flame. He stumbled to one knee, laughing, and turned his head toward Lisa. “I will miss you most of all.”

  Then he fell—and continued to burn.

  2.

  Lisa’s visions had been neither memories nor imagined extensions; every time she saw the demon’s realm, the lava rivers and the tortured souls, she re-entered, if only in her mind.

  She’d taken an extra moment to watch the vagrant fall because he wasn’t typical: not a man, like other streetwalkers, but not a demon. A hybrid. A failure. He’d been cast from his home; Lisa saw echoes of the demon’s realm in his eyes. Lisa feared for her life now. After saving Jack, they had to find a way to save her.

  The demon glared at her through the hybrid’s eyes. This, at least, wasn’t current, just a remnant of memory, the last he’d seen before being abandoned on earth. The demon had armies behind him. Legions. He’d probably exiled this lieutenant so long ago, he’d forgotten.

  Lisa didn’t know any of this; it was assumption and conjecture, an educated guess. Her crash course in the ways of darkness neared an end; she couldn’t guess the final outcome. The demon had been intent on Jack, but what if its target had changed? Whatever it expected from the watcher, it now sought from an unwilling and under-prepared Lisa Sparrow.

  After the first step away from the hybrid, she was jogging. Two, three yards, she broke into a run. How far? How fast?

  She looked back as she ran. Nick tried to catch up to her, but he didn’t run like she did—every day, morning and night, three or five miles, sometimes ten. She’d even run a marathon once, just to say she’d done it.

  Thick smoke rose from the lieutenant, within which a rift opened. The small crack closed when the fire abruptly went out—but not before something slipped through, something no bigger than a man, winged, dark, camouflaged by the smoke and a sudden conflagration of lightning. A dozen, two dozen bolts fractured the sky over the hybrid’s body.

  Lisa tripped. She hit the sidewalk hard.

  She waited for Nick to catch up. She saw no point in running; where could they hide? Something had come through from the demon’s realm, a soldier or scout, or something instructed to use Lisa to force open another, more stable, portal.

  3.

  Nick helped Lisa back to her feet. The fire had died, but the smoldering corpse still emitted plumes of smoke. Lisa’s eyes, however, focused not on the burnt thing on the sidewalk, but above it. High above it.

  Nick saw nothing, even when lightning momentarily lit the entirety of his field of vision: the side of the building, the doorway, the windows, the body, even texture in the smoke. It looked like an alien landscape, cloud-like mounds of ever-changing black, as if the air itself had been charred.

  “Come on,” Nick said, trying to push Lisa further away.

  “Yeah,” she said, no longer running. “Let’s go.”

  Then she flickered—like a red spotlight suddenly passed over her, glimmering from one side of her body to the other before it disappeared.

  Nick stopped and blinked.

  Lisa turned. “What?”

  “You . . .” Nick hesitated. “Did you just see it again? The demon, I mean?”

  Lisa closed her eyes. Otherwise, she didn’t move. The scarlet glimmer crossed her again. Twinkled. It corresponded with a blaze of lightning, a crack of thunder, and the unearthly cry of an airborne beast.

  Nick looked. He thought immediately of the batboy, but this was entirely different. That earlier creature had shifted from one form to the other—large bat and small man—like a werewolf with control. This thing, however, had dark green skin, scales perhaps, talons and wide wings. Visible for only a moment, it slid above the clouds.

  “The first lieutenant,” Lisa said. “A scout.” Lisa shuddered. The whites in her eyes shifted to crimson, then black. She doubled over, retching, grasping Nick’s arm.

  “We’ve got to get you some help.”

  “There is no help,” Lisa said. The scarlet gleam came again, passing through Nick’s arm down to his fingers and up to his shoulder before spreading through his entire body. He felt it, a tingle, over as quickly as it had begun. But in that moment, he finally saw what she saw.

  A world of rock. Stone. Stalactites and stalagmites like teeth. A molten river. Two beasts, yoked like oxen, dragging a cart—not animals, but men and women conjoined and twisted, heads where feet should be and behind the neck and along the side—bodies melted haphazardly together. In the cart, thin and pale people, featureless faces, mouthless but screaming, reached through the slats of the prison wagon like slaves.

  The expanse stretched infinitely, despite the cavernous walls. Hundreds of variations. Thousands. Many lined up like soldiers. Winged beasts flew overhead. Smaller things clung to every available surface, hiding behind each other, fighting for deeper, safer refuges; and smaller things, not unlike spiders, crawled over them.

  A
t the center of it all: the demon. The same red behemoth that had been on the street, but bigger, broader. Laughing as it came closer, its every step rocking the ground. Creatures scurried in all directions and cowered.

  Lisa still clutched Nick’s arm.

  “You,” the demon said, its heavily browed eyes meeting Nick’s gaze. “You, I do not want.” The demon shoved the air, creating a wind that struck Nick full in the chest and knocked him backwards—out of Lisa’s grip.

  Then he was back on the street. Alone.

  4.

  Which left Lisa alone in a place she didn’t want to be. One moment, she’d held onto Nick for support as a wave of nausea wracked her body, dropping to the pit of her stomach like a sledgehammer. The world flickered, as if the film of her life had jumped off the spool.

  Then they were here, solidly, no longer just an image in her mind. She looked up at Nick, then at the approaching demon—and then Nick was gone, leaving her alone with the demon. And the millions of smaller things scattered around them. Unlike Lisa, everything else fled. But strength oozed from her legs, as if her feet melted into the ground.

  Flames erupted from the nearby magma river as something dove into it.

  With Nick gone, the demon turned to Lisa. “You, however,” he said, stopping directly in front of her, no longer laughing. She heard the silence now; even the scurrying quieted, as if everything feared attracting the demon’s attention.

  They had no need for worry; all its attention fell on Lisa Sparrow alone.

  “Me?” she asked, trying not to betray her horror. Courage was not the lack of fear, but the ability to face it. Presently, she stood before the unearthly embodiment of terror. Jack’s computer, still in her hands, was not much of a weapon.

  The demon looked down at her; he stood nearly twice her height. “We have to talk.”

  5.

  “No,” Nick said.

  He spoke to no one. Smoke coiled into the sky, like a snake escaping the self-immolated corpse. A series of thunderbolts rumbled, near and far, creating a single, undulating sound. The wind grew in ferocity. Rain intensified. Police stood in semi-circles around the burnt bum.