DarkWalker

by John Urbancik

  The creature turned toward him. Mindlessly. He was a light that they followed like moths. Jia Li smashed two of their heads together. Shards of bone crumbled to the ground; their dead eyes remained firmly fixed on Jack until they were gone.

  Jia Li, however, did not seem to see the ghoul. Shrouded in a dark cloak, only its skull visible, it drifted along the field. It touched a dead man as it moved, pushing it aside; the corpse dried instantly, then split and fell apart when another creature bumped it.

  “Watch out!” Jack yelled.

  Too late. Jia Li turned to find herself directly in the ghoul’s path. It reached for her with a bony hand.

  Rather than flee, she kicked its skull. The bone cracked, but Jia Li fell back as if she’d just hit a brick wall. The ghoul passed over her, headed straight toward Jack.

  Nick had given him a gun as well as a knife. Jack pulled it out now, though he had no faith in it, and fired. Twice. Three times. At least one shot put a hole in the ghoul’s fractured skull, but it continued undeterred.

  Jack turned and ran. There was nothing else to do. How could he destroy a creature he couldn’t harm?

  He didn’t have time to reach the Mustang. The dark surrounded him. Penetrated him. He felt the icy touch of the ghoul coming closer as he fumbled through ankle-high mud. He glanced over his shoulder—a mistake. The ghoul swiped at his face. He ducked, slid, and fell.

  He turned over. The ghoul reached down and grasped his shoulder. Dryness spread and bore through his flesh to the bone. He tried to pull away, but could not. The skull showed no emotion. The moment, a fraction of a moment, ran as if in slow motion.

  He didn’t understand how it ended.

  The dryness hurt, but hadn’t gone any further than its initial touch. Then, without explanation, the ghoul pulled away. Smoke rose from the glowing sockets of its eyes and between its teeth. Flames danced on its robes. The fire burned bright and fast. The ghoul’s skull—nothing else—dropped to the ground.

  Nick stood behind it holding out a lighter.

  Jack stared at his weapon. “That?”

  “I want a flame thrower,” Nick said.

  “You went after it with that?”

  “It worked.”

  Jack climbed to his feet. “You’re crazy.”

  “Thanks,” Nick said. “Nothing’s paying any attention to me. They want you. I figured I could get close enough.” He flicked the lighter.

  “Where’s Lisa?”

  “Getting in the truck,” Nick said. “She knows where your imp is.”

  “How?” Jack asked.

  “Does that matter?” Nick asked. “It’s at her apartment. Hiding in the basement.”

  “Damn.” Jack paused. “How does she know?”

  Nick shrugged. “She seems sure.”

  Jack glanced at the truck. Lisa leaned against it, next to the passenger door, wrapped tightly in one of Nick’s jackets. She smiled weakly.

  “Drive,” Jack said. He still couldn’t reach his Mustang, so he followed Nick to the truck. Lisa climbed in, closing the door.

  Jack jumped into the pick-up’s bed. From there, he surveyed the field.

  The dead things had swarmed on Jia Li (or she had swarmed on them). Nick jumped in and started it immediately. Jack crouched. He fired one shot at an advancing wolf. When Nick pulled the truck into the road, the dark spectators parted to let him pass.

  Jack watched the field as they left. Jia Li could hold her own against whatever remained, but there was a definite shift of focus. Eyes, everywhere, turned away from the field. Things took to the air. Figures swirled.

  One creature loped after the truck. It was mostly shadow, indistinct, half unreal. Jack missed with his first shot; the second hit its back leg. It yelped, slid, and tumbled.

  It was getting up again when the truck turned onto another road.

  5.

  Beings and entities big, small, and enormous, drifted slowly away from the field. Some lingered. Some casually followed the truck. Winged things took to the air. Others simply vanished, with or without smoke. A few came together, spoke briefly and quietly, and decided to get a few beers.

  From the shadows, not unseen but basically ignored, another watcher watched. He stepped out of those shadows. He approached one who remained, a stranger, something he couldn’t quite place. It was ghastly, its shell-like armor rigid and stained, its teeth crooked and splintered. It leaned, but not heavily, on a mahogany cane, and somehow managed to exude a regal air, as though once upon a time this thing was a prince or a pharaoh. The watcher approached warily, but cockily. An idea had come to his head. A thought, possibly a belief, so he wanted to test a theory.

  “He’s stronger, now,” the watcher said, referring of course to Jack Harlow. The stranger with the staff regarded him in silence, but did not leave. “If he survives, he’s got something he didn’t have before.”

  The stranger leaned forward and breathed a single word. Infused with a question, with pure but weak curiosity, and with a touch of impatience. “Yes?” Deep, the voice nearly rumbled. Unearthly, it vibrated through the watcher’s bones. Proper like a British accent, but clipped as if Russian.

  A moment passed, the briefest of time spans, during which civilizations were birthed and devoured within the stranger’s gaze. The watcher steadied himself. He grinned. He knew what he was doing, or at least believed he knew. He said, “I deserve that strength.”

  The stranger narrowed its eyes, looked closely at the watcher, and finally nodded in approval.

  6.

  The drive back to the apartment was mercifully short, but it didn’t feel that way to Jack Harlow. Shadows slid beneath and through the clouds, across rooftops, and around corners. Others came to windows, eyes aflame, shrouded in dark. Indeed, whatever dark atmosphere had covered the field followed them now. People on the streets did look, but only briefly, puzzled, as if they only thought they saw something.

  He’d always felt comfortable in the dark. Safe. He’d grown to accept it. Now, there was Lisa, the possibility of real love, love that could overcome all obstacles. Tonight, however, the dark had turned against him. Certain aspects had stood aside, watching rather than actively participating, but Jack doubted their innocence.

  Jia Li hadn’t stayed out of it, but he didn’t need to see her again. She could return to her vampiric ways; either Jack would succeed, or he would die.

  Nick pulled up onto the sidewalk in front of the apartment building. People across the street, sitting outside at the wine bar, stared, maybe made comments, but didn’t really respond. They didn’t really see through the shifting dark.

  Lisa had no key, but Nick picked the lock faster than she could’ve opened it with a key.

  The steps to Lisa’s fifth floor apartment came only as low as ground level, but another staircase around the corner went down. It was a metal door, with a slim window along its side. Nick grabbed it and twisted. “Locked,” he said, but it didn’t stop them.

  Together, they descended the concrete steps to the basement.

  7.

  The basement was a single room under the entire building. Concrete floors and walls. Three windows on one wall, all near the ceiling. Free-standing shelves filled with gardening and janitorial equipment. Stacks of cardboard boxes. Huge bags of concrete mix. Scattered filing cabinets. Some desks. Furniture in piles. A few bare bulbs provided light in pools that broke the dark but failed to chase it away.

  A second set of concrete steps led to an outside entrance.

  Nick stopped at the bottom of the staircase, gun drawn. “I won’t let it out,” he whispered.

  Jack nodded, drawing his own gun. He felt comfortable with this hunter’s tool. Jack’s previous attempt to hunt hadn’t worked. He was free of that now.

  Though there were no other rooms, there were plenty of places to hide. No one had straightened out this storage area in some time.

  A rat sat atop one of the shelves, staring, twitching its nose.

  The imp had cl
imbed walls, too. It could cling to the ceiling. He looked up and around, walking slowly.

  It was in here, waiting, ready to spring. Jack never lowered his weapon, never faltered. He listened for the clicking of the imp’s claws on concrete. He checked behind a mattress propped against the wall. Under a table. The shelves of an old, shoddy bookshelf.

  A sound to his right, toward the basement’s center. Jack swung the gun. There was a dark spot where one of the lights had burned out or broken. One step closer, Jack narrowed his eyes. He saw well in the dark, well enough to see shapes and a few details. A lampshade on a table. An open magazine. A chair for someone to read or do crossword puzzles.

  A shadow shifted.

  Jack aimed. Almost fired. A snake slithered under the chair, deeper into the dark.

  The imp sprung from his left. Together, they crashed into a support beam. The gun slid away as they fell, imp on top. Tiny claws on four limbs (one rather limp, not fully re-attached). Teeth gnashed. It tore a deep rut down Jack’s chest.

  Jack kicked it off him and scrambled for the gun. By the time he reached it, the imp was gone.

  It couldn’t be far.

  A shape in the shadows. Jack fired. The bullet ripped through a pile of magazines.

  Jack stepped forward, saw the imp running toward the windows. He fired twice, missing both times. The imp ducked behind a couch standing on end. Jack fired into the couch. The imp screeched.

  Jack ran forward, pushing a coat rack out of his way, knocking over a pile of boxes. He came around one side of the couch, gun poised. The imp dropped on him from above.

  Jack fell forward, into the couch. It tilted, slamming the wall, and slid out. Jack flipped over the side of it. The imp landed next to him. It bled from a scratch in its side—the bullet had grazed him.

  Jack pointed and shot again. The imp was pure muscle, despite its small size, and fast. It jumped up, away from the bullet. Jack fired again, hitting the imp in midair. It flopped and landed with a loud slap. Jack put two bullets in its head.

  He stood a moment and waited.

  If anything changed, Jack didn’t feel it. He hadn’t felt the loss of his immunity, either. He toed the side of the imp; it didn’t respond.

  8.

  “It’s dead,” Jack said, approaching Nick and Lisa at the stairs.

  Lisa rushed forward, kissed him with quickly dying fervor and desperate urgency, then collapsed in his arms. Her jacket slipped open enough to show Jack the self-inflicted knife-wound in her chest. She said, “I waited.”

  Jack dropped to his knees, holding Lisa, rocking her in his arms. “You can’t die on me, you can’t,” he kept saying. “I love you. I can’t live without you. I want to show you things, give you things. I want to live for you. With you. C’mon, Lisa, don’t die on me. Don’t.” But she’d already been dead, since the field, since the demon had taken her; she’d held on only by force of will.

  Until that moment, he had never really known fear. When the were-bat attacked, when he woke in the vampire’s office, when creatures came at him from water and sky and earth, Jack had thought he was scared. He truly believed it. He’d trembled and sweat and tensed. But now, as Lisa slipped slowly away from him, his stomach wrenched and his chest tightened. No pain had ever been so piercing. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t see past Lisa’s eyes. They’d rolled back, never closing, and were just white now. Through the hole in her chest, he saw her heartbeat slowing, slowing, until it stopped.

  9.

  Nick helped Jack carry Lisa to her apartment. It was too late to take her to a hospital; the damage was too extensive, too thorough. The hole in her chest showed her ragged heart.

  Nick didn’t know what else to do. He opened Lisa’s door, helped lay her on the bed, and even put a hand on Jack’s shoulder as he cried. Nick felt tears welling up in his own eyes. He hadn’t shed any since Diane and didn’t want to now. He really didn’t want to.

  But he did.

  And then he left.

  10.

  Calmly as possible, Nick walked away from the elevator and out the front door. He heard sirens; he’d made himself conspicuous, and was armed if they caught him. He couldn’t afford to linger, but he wanted to. He wanted to go back upstairs and share Jack’s grief.

  But it wasn’t like him to express such feelings.

  Passing the outside doors, he caught the scent a moment too late: under vanilla and cinnamon, a hint of death. Vampire.

  He swung his arm, striking if it was close enough. She blocked it.

  Nick kicked, pulling a stake from his jacket, but Jia Li parried the kick as well and caught his arm before he could attack. “I’ve been training a lot longer than you,” she said.

  Nick glared. Anger built up inside. Rage. He wanted to tear her throat out, put a stake through her heart, cut off her head, and burn her corpse.

  “I thought I’d tell you,” she said, “it worked. The urge is gone. The pull. He’s no longer a magnet. Congratulations.”

  “I know,” Nick said.

  She smiled, sadly, and pushed Nick back. “You’re safe from me, hunter. Tonight, at least, let’s keep our truce.”

  Nick sighed, the anger spilling away. “Tonight,” he agreed.

  Nick looked up the side of the apartment building. Though he couldn’t see Lisa’s window, he knew she was on the fifth floor. He knew she was dying, or already dead. She might have made a good partner. Jack might become one, someday, but not tonight.

  He got into his truck and drove away. Slowly. Calmly. To all the world—at least, beyond that corner—he looked like no one special. Two police cars passed him.

  Nick drove toward I-4, but avoided the field.

  EPILOGUE

  1.

  Awareness came slowly. First, there were sounds: distant city noises, the fountain in the lake, a radio playing “Dancing With Myself.”

  Jack laid on the bed, staring at Lisa’s body, lost in thoughtlessness. Sunlight streamed in through the window. It was a perfect blue sky. Her body was cold. Stiff. The demonic blood insider her had done a horrible job, burning most of her insides and leaving little more than a shell.

  “Don’t cry,” she said.

  Jack rubbed his eyes. “Lisa?” He smiled, reached toward her. She held up her hand, but they couldn’t touch.

  “I’m gone,” she said.

  He clenched his eyes shut. Nodded. “You shouldn’t be.”

  “I am,” she said.

  His unsteady smile widened. “I’m a DarkWalker. We’ll still be together.”

  She shook her head; they both knew she’d never be able to leave the apartment. “I can’t stay,” she said. “I’m going away.”

  He opened his eyes. The whites were raw.

  “I’m going away,” she said again. “But I’ll always be with you. A little.”

  “I can’t . . .”

  “You can,” she said. “You don’t have to end like this. My time is over. This . . . this gift . . . Jack, I love you. I will always remember you, whatever happens next. And I will miss you.”

  “I can’t,” he said again, leaving it at that. He wiped moisture from his eyes.

  She touched his chest, the untended wound the imp had left. It was infected and needed medical attention. “I love you,” she said again, “and I want you to live. For both of us.”

  “I’ll stay,” Jack said. “We can talk about . . . about anything. We can stay together.”

  “Only a short while,” she said. “I’m . . . being pulled. I won’t be here for long.”

  “For as long as we have,” Jack said.

  They talked, then, about things they had loved in childhood, dreams and other silly things. They laughed. She convinced him to drink water, to eat, to wash himself. And slowly she faded. Within a day, she was gone.

  Jack Harlow lingered a long while before leaving.

  2.

  The ghost Lisa Sparrow watched from the bedroom where she’d died. She didn’t really know wha
t was going to happen to her next. She wasn’t going anywhere. Tricking Jack’s eyes had been easy. Her heart, however, crumbled to dust when he left. She cried real tears then, drops that left wet dots on the bed.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John Urbancik lived in Orlando, twice, and on Long Island, twice, as well as a few other places here and there. He started writing comic books at a young age, but those one-page scripts are mercifully lost to the ravages of time. He went to school, did a few jobs in a few places, met a few people, learned a few things. In his spare time, he plays with his Nikon. His business card says “Writer. Photographer. Adventurer. Man.” That sums up all the vital parts. You can find him at www.darkfluidity.com.

  ABOUT EVILEYE BOOKS

  Evileye Books publishes horror, dark fiction, crime, supernatural thrillers, and science fiction. For more information please visit our website, Evileyebooks.com.