by Rhys Ford
Mal hit one of the parking garage’s cement columns, slamming hard into its solid mass. The world tilted sideways, and a shower of fine grit covered him as he slid down onto the garage floor, ending up facedown in a puddle of oil-slicked water. His lungs ached to recover his wind, desperate to get rid of the pressed-in feeling in his chest. Coughing, he tried to shake off the ringing in his ears, a high-pitched whining that seemed to fade in and out with each breath he took.
Swearing, Ari feinted to the right when the wraith surged forward. With a snap of its jaw, the creature’s teeth nearly snagged War’s arm. The wraith caught the back of Ari’s hand, blood flying in spiraled curls from the cuts. Ari winced and shifted, trying to keep one eye on the creature and another to check on Mal.
“You okay, Pest?” He stabbed at the creature when it lunged, slicing into its cheek. An unearthly howl ripped from the creature’s throat, the cold metal burning light down into its face.
Gasping still, Mal choked on his breath, lungs filling with paint flakes and head pounding from striking the column. Clearing his throat, he struggled to stand, hands shaking as he pushed off the floor. Nodding, Mal spat the blood from his mouth, slightly amazed that he retained consciousness.
The rippling pain far surpassed anything Death gave him during his rare sparring bouts.
Incredible aches formed under his throbbing flesh. The others always warned him to be careful. Being immortal didn’t mean they didn’t feel every bruise and shattered bone until it healed. Mal now understood what Min meant when she said sometimes it would be better if they died just long enough for their bodies to heal.
Cramped with the agony of his twisted body, sharp breaks in his bones knitting under torn skin, Mal wanted to pass out rather than suffer through the prolonged torture of healing, something not open to him at the moment. Ari would never let him live down passing out during a fight. Mal shook off the pinpricks of dizziness, hoping he wouldn’t throw up if he stood.
“I’m fine. I think I broke a few things, though.” Another cough produced a splatter of red-and-white foam, and his vision swam, refocusing on the small cracks on the garage floor. His hands ached from holding up his weight, and the shadows around him pulsed, pulling away from the Horsemen. “What the hell is going on? And what the hell is that? Is that a wraith?”
“Yeah, let’s talk about that a bit later. I’m kind of busy right now, kid.” Ari struck, feeling for the creature’s reach. It dodged to one side, keeping its head low, tilting sideways to avoid the knife. Watching its reactions carefully, Ari moved in again, slicing upward and meeting empty air.
Bouncing away, the wraith moved in, trying to strike under the man’s arm with its gnashing teeth.
Twisting, he drove his dagger down at the wraith’s skull, finding a sweet spot between the creature’s pupil-devoid eyes. The blade sank down a few inches, stopping short with a shuddering clang when it hit the creature’s frontal bone. Its crimson eyes flared with pain when the steel bit down into the darkness of its ether-formed skeletal frame.
Reeling, it struggled to get away from War, claws hitting out in an attempt to injure him. The knife wound gushed, shadowy skin split apart, seeping a viscous oily liquid. Its vision blinded from the ichor pouring from its wound, the wraith thrashed wildly, talons scraping deep into the Vanquish’s front quarter panel. Scorched paint, hot from the creature’s hands, smoked and peeled off the metal below, the panel neatly folding back from the wraith’s talons.
“Shit. Not the car. Come on, not the car,” he pleaded. Rage took over when the wraith continued to drive its claws into the fender. Ari stepped in tight against the creature, plunging the dagger into its neck. He drove the blade upward past the swooping curve of its skull, hoping to find a soft spot to reach its miniscule brain. “Fuck, he’s going to kill me.”
Long strings of pitch mucus spooled out from the cuts, the dagger’s runnel filling and emptying with each thrust. The splashing liquid burned, bubbling Ari’s skin where it struck his flesh. Shaking off the sting of the creature’s poisonous blood, Ari straddled its body, waiting for its final throes.
Keening, the creature gripped at the smoke-stained car, digging enormous grooves into the metal. It reached for Ari, eyes dulling as its essence leaked out onto the garage floor. Sticking its bony elbows outward, it dimpled the car door as it rose to its feet. Panting, straining to maintain its form, it lurched, its body jerking forward before toppling, a stretch of shadow slowly turning stagnant. The creature’s remains oozed outward, leeched dry and flat.
Standing over the thinning puddle, Ari nudged at the length of shadow with his boot tip.
Encountering nothing more dangerous than the cast-off shape of Death’s damaged car, Ari let out a hiss of hot relief. He flicked the dagger with a quick twist of his wrist, then placed the clean blade back into its sheath.
He spent a moment staring intently at the ruined Aston Martin, wishing he could kick at something, preferably the black nothingness at his feet. Resigned to the damage, he headed back over to Mal.
Mal staggered to his feet, head reeling from the attack. His temple throbbed, and his left leg threatened to give out under him when he put his weight on it. Wincing, Mal touched his forehead, feeling a stickiness under his questing fingers. Drawing his hand down, he stared in amazement at the blood filling his palm.
“I’m bleeding.” Mal held his hand up for Ari to see.
“Yeah, I can see that. Won’t be the last time either.” Ari held up his own hands for Mal to see the healing blisters. “Suck it up, pussy.”
Gripping Mal’s face, he checked the younger immortal’s eyes, peering into the other man’s pupils.
Satisfied the boy retained most of his senses, Ari suddenly released him and walked toward Death’s ruined car. The shattered bits of cement column crunched beneath Ari’s boots as he circled around the crumpled Vanquish.
“Do you see what that thing did to this car?” Running his hands through his hair, Ari gripped the back of his skull, knitting his fingers together in frustration, and moaned low in his throat. “Death’s going to be pissed.”
“He can’t blame you for this.” Mal limped over.
Tugging at his jeans, he studied the holes made by the creature’s talons. “This wasn’t your fault. He won’t blame you.”
“That’s what you think.” War snorted derisively. “He still hasn’t forgiven me for shooting his horse with a crossbow once.”
Swallowing around the lump forming on his tongue where he bit into it, Mal gaped. “You shot his horse?”
“Killed it. An accident, but try telling him that, though.” War dismissed the incident with a casual wave of his hand. “Trust me, he’s hard to piss off, but once you get him there, he takes forever to forgive. Especially if you kill his horse. I don’t even want to think about how pissed off he’s going to be about a car. He loves this car. The horse was going to die anyway. I mean, it was a horse. But a car, that should last longer.”
“Don’t you think he’d be more concerned about a wraith openly attacking us in the garage?” Another mouthful of spit hit the ground, less speckled with blood than the last. Mal filled his tortured lungs with air, trying to catch his breath. “Do you think that was the wraith from upstairs? Should we go tell him?”
“No. Hell no.” Ari turned, his face in profile. “We’re both fine, and I really don’t want to go upstairs to talk to him about his car. We can tell him about this later. We’ll play up the saving you part. He likes you. It might make a difference.”
Nodding carefully, Mal opened the passenger side door, taking a moment to catch his breath. Easing into the Mustang, he felt his body’s tightness release against the cradle of the seat. Leaning his head back did wonders for the ache in his skull. Sighing with a quiet relief, Mal dared a glance at Ari.
“You think the thinning of the Veil’s got something to do with that wraith being so aggressive?”
“I’m guessing yes.” Face set into a grim mask, Ari starte
d the powerful engine, feeling it throb through the steering wheel. “Wraiths don’t attack immortals, certainly not Horsemen. That thing was huge, bigger than the one upstairs was. Must have just smelled the human on us and figured we were prey. I’m hoping there aren’t more like that out there.”
“We’re not that human.”
“Human enough. Human enough for it to want to eat us.” Ari eased out of the garage, keyed up and watching each length of shadow clustered into distant corners. “Let’s see what we can find and come back to Death with some answers. Maybe he’ll forgive us about the car.”
KISMET WOKE up to pain. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been a familiar pain. His body was craving to be drugged. It wouldn’t leave him alone until he took care of its mewling demands.
Countless invisible spiders crept under his skin, torturous pinpricks digging into his nerves and muscles. His bones felt too tight, cramped up against one another. The dryness in his mouth stank of vomit and the sour taste of cheap vodka. He turned his head, his cheek hitting the hardness of the motel room’s matted carpet, a pool of rank wet stretching from under his shoulder blades to the small of his back. It hurt too much to roll over, head pounding from the alcohol he had poured into his stomach the night before. Kismet blinked the grit out of his eyes and tried to sit up.
His belly rebelled, and his world tilted on a crazy axis, the mold-stained paneling on the walls swimming around him. From the smell of things, he had only emptied his stomach on the floor, although, if he didn’t hurry, he knew his piss would soon mingle with the carpet’s more disgusting fluids.
“I’ve got to stop waking up like this,” Kismet muttered. His face felt bruised, runs of cobalt puffing beneath his eyes. Rubbing his hands over his temples, his fingers shook as the need kicked into his body, leeching his veins dry of every ounce of blood. Each of his twenty-something-odd years was rubbed into his skin, lines Kismet knew would disappear once he’d eaten and gotten some water into him. The bathroom’s stained white tiles shifted, and dark splotches appeared in the mottled shower door. Kismet looked away, refusing to be captured by the moving images.
The shower door rattled, a skeletal hand reaching around to let out the specter of a pale-skinned woman who passed through the tub’s molded plastic side. He’d seen her before, heard her stumble around in the bathroom as she prepared to walk through the outside door, heading to someplace she never would reach.
The ghost in his room reminded him of Lucy. Stick thin with flat, drooping breasts bleached gray in death, dusky pink nipples plucked hard from a perpetual chill. A large swath of scars marbled her belly and thighs, twisting her skin as she stepped out of the tub and reached for a towel no longer hanging off the bathroom bar, torn from one of its fastenings and dangling down toward the cracked linoleum floor. Broken trails of blue ink, dotted and run together, covered the inside of one of her wrists, a name of someone she once loved and possibly left behind. A patch of hair grew sparsely over her mons, touched with the sparks of gray she washed out of her hair with cheap dye, the straggling mop an intense, solid honey blonde with an inch of peppered black growth hugging her scalp.
She turned, her face caved in on one side, and smiled toothlessly at Kismet, fingers trailing down his naked back until the cold of her touch chilled his spine. Shuddering, he pulled away and swallowed the bile rising in his throat, unable to wrench his eyes from the dangling thread of gore suspending her right eye down over her cheek. He knew without looking that her tongue moved through the gash along her jaw, an entire chunk of her face flapping when she walked. Rotted, her teeth were punctuated with large gaps, gums swollen and purple from infection. He’d seen it all before, and Kismet was growing very tired of her walking through his room.
“Go away.” The cold passed over him again and crossed into the main room, where she would disappear within moments of her feet touching the soiled carpet. “You’re like every thing in every place that I’ve lived in. You’re not real.”
Panting, he pressed his face against his hands, letting the roiling screams in his throat lurch out in quiet sobs. The ache in his belly grew, and his arms throbbed where the nearly healed punctures wept with water, veins tapped dry until they collapsed under the sucking plunge of repeated needles. Kismet knew he’d have to get cleaned up and go looking for something to ease the dragon chewing away bits of him.
“I just need to see what Nick gave me,” Kismet mumbled. “That’ll take care of it.”
He forced himself into the recently vacated tub, then let the lukewarm water from the room’s complaining pipes wash over him, scrubbing at his disheveled mane of hair until his scalp tingled. The toothbrush he left in a plastic basket scoured away the fur on his teeth. He’d long since given up looking into mirrors for any length of time. Too many melted faces pressed up against the glass to look back, sometimes reaching through to grab at his face and screech their pain into his mind.
The few clean clothes he had left meant an impending trip to the Laundromat. The shower rod usually held up under the weight of a few jeans and socks. Drying cost too much money, and the woman who manned the coin machine had an eagle eye out for people who snuck their clothes into unattended dryers. He found a rumpled pair of pants under a stiff blanket, then pulled them up over his slender hips, buttoning them closed as he rummaged for a shirt.
“Andreas!” Pounding rattled the thinly constructed door of the room, threatening to shatter the frame and its pot-iron metal lock. “Open the fuck up.”
Kismet debated leaving the door closed and staying silent until the man gave up, but he didn’t have time to wait Carl out. A large pug-nosed man quickly stepped onto the threshold, arms bared and belly peeking out from under the hem of a too tight bowling shirt with its sleeves ripped free from the seams.
“You got some money for me?”
Kismet tallied up what he’d made in his head and winced at the idea of handing over some of it to the motel manager. He’d parceled out a hundred into an envelope. A quick search on the dresser came up with the monies, still tucked safely into the blue-hatched envelope.
Cracking the flap open, Carl counted out the variety of bills, calculating how much the young man still owed. “You got a couple of weeks with this, but you’ll have to come up with the rest of it by next week or you’re out. Understand?”
“Yeah, I know.” Full lip jutted out, Kismet leaned on the frame, refusing to let Carl intimidate him.
The man often pushed his way into the room, going through Kismet’s things while he was gone. Long used to the intrusions, Kismet no longer left anything of value out, squirreling away everything he owned into a footlocker with a thick padlock. “You need anything else?”
“You kill yourself with that shit you do, and I’m just tossing your stuff out and letting the fucking homeless pick through it like they do everything else.” Carl poked at Kismet’s chest. “Do me a favor and die someplace else.”
“Go to hell,” Kismet muttered at the closed door, shutting Carl out of view. His clenched fist followed his angry words, slamming into the wall. A deep breath rattled Kismet’s lungs, stretching them out with the room’s curdled air. The carpet’s weave still bore the woman’s footprints, wet splotches tracking through the room until they reached the edge of the bed. Struggling to get his wallet into the pocket of his denim jacket, Kismet stared down at the moist prints until they blurred.
“Kizzie, are you going to leave me here?” Chase grabbed at his shirt, the boy’s hand passing through the fabric. The young man burned where his brother touched him, his back itching from the ghostly presence. Kismet reached for the spot, rubbing at the crawling sensation.
Chase’s body was nearly firm, fleshed out and solid. Kismet could almost imagine his brother sitting there, not a day over five. The hardest thing to see was the innocence on his round face, wide eyes with long lashes, frozen in a time when life was a happy romp through empty motel rooms and sleeping under the stars in a park was an adventure. A blin
k of Kismet’s eyes sent Chase off, and his ghost became a cloud of smoke wafted away from the wind coming through the cracked window.
Kismet stared up at the ceiling, counting slowly to regain his composure. His brother never aged, never fought with him or stole food from his plate. That sibling was long gone, and all that was left was a construct of the insanity that plagued their mother.
The itch in his arms nicked his attention, and Kismet fought not to rub at his tortured skin. He moved to close the curtain and spotted a police cruiser slowly working its way through the parking lot.
His face was known to the local cops, a throwaway child of a drug-using whore. Kismet didn’t want company, and definitely not uniformed company. He’d been told more than once that he would end up like his mother, dying from too much liquid poison and disease in her veins while her body stiffened and crackled to a dry rot under San Diego’s intense summer heat. The system picked him up and chewed on his ass for a while, spitting him out unceremoniously when he turned seventeen. He’d been one of thousands of faceless kids serving a sentence for a parent’s neglect. Kismet figured he survived the experience. He knew there were others who weren’t as lucky.
His mangled brain often reminded him he could have done without the ghosts his mother left behind.
They were everywhere, some of them with faces, just floating ovals with wide mouths and sharpened eyes. Others had full bodies, slithering around him in an attempt to pull Kismet with them as they walked in circles around the small tight spaces their memories lived in. More were just shapes moving in the corner of his vision, tidal pools of slippery forms that grew claws and teeth to score furrows on his vulnerable flesh. As a child, he bore more than one set of raking scratches on his face or arms from the nightmares that crawled into bed with him.
“Shit. Take your time, Kiz,” Kismet scolded himself, teeth chattering under the pressure of his body’s need. “Got to make this last.”
