Dark Game (Merikh Book 1)

by C L Walker

  “Go find out.”

  -- I'm on it. --

  I turned to a drainpipe running up the outside of the building and started to climb.

  Chapter 4

  The pipe running up the side of the building was rusty and in need of replacement, but it held. I pulled myself onto the roof and looked around for an entrance.

  I crouched and made for a hole, the site of an old skylight that had long since fallen to the distillery floor below. Peering over the edge I could make out a beam three meters below.

  I swung my legs over and paused when the roof let out a loud creek. A few seconds without someone yelling within and I was ready to go. I looked over the edge at my landing spot hidden in the murky interior, and slipped over.

  I landed silently, dislodging some of the crud that had built up over the decades. It fell lazily through the air and disappeared from sight.

  The gathering was happening in the center of the large space, between two huge metal vats. Cops on one side and Trevor and his men on the other. There was a crate between them with the pink backpack placed on it.

  I made my way along the beam, quickly and quietly. I wasn't worried about the dust I dislodged, both because there was nothing I could do about it and because I hoped they'd assume it was a bird rather than an assassin spying on them from above. I transferred from the beam I was on to another that ran at ninety degrees, taking me close enough to the men that I could make out what they were saying.

  “You're failing the county, sheriff,” Trevor was saying. The sheriff scowled in response. “I'm offering you assistance.”

  “Why, Foster? Why are you so concerned with Midway all of a sudden?” Sheriff Beaks was middle-aged and it showed. He looked tired, as though the world was bearing down on him and he was barely keeping it all together.

  “Why wouldn't I care? How can you ask me something like that?” He looked at his men as though unable to comprehend the question. “The people of this town are scared and looking for help. It's our role in the community to provide that help.”

  The youngest deputy spoke up. “What we're asking is how does this line your pockets?”

  “Matt,” the sheriff said, holding his hand up to quiet the man down. He never took his eyes off Trevor. “You've got a reputation, and we're a little surprised, is all.”

  “You wound me,” Trevor said theatrically. “But let's say I'm as bad as you seem to think. Let's say all I'm interested in is myself, for the sake of argument. Well, then helping Midway is in my best interests. We're approaching a point where there will be open violence in the streets, neighbor against neighbor. Midway and Littleton will be at each other's throats and that's just bad for business.”

  Sheriff Beaks sighed, clearly not buying it. “What are you offering?”

  Trevor grinned and grabbed the backpack, fussing with the buckle as he tried to work out how to open it. He gave up after a few seconds and tore it open, betraying the strength I’d felt the night before. He reached in and took out a small plastic water bottle filled with thick amber liquid, holding it up for the cops to see.

  “And that is?” Sheriff Beaks said.

  “Ambrosia, Sheriff. And the solution to your problem, should things get out of hand.”

  “I don't get it.” The sheriff kept his hands crossed in front of him, leaving Trevor holding the offered bottle in the air between them. “I expected funding or…I don't know. Something useful.”

  “Your man knows what this is,” Trevor said, holding the bottle out to one of the other deputies. I didn't know the man's name but I recognized the expression on his face. It was the same as that of any addict seeing the substance they desperately craved.

  The sheriff saw the expression too and wasn't pleased. “So, Bill, what is it?”

  “It's like…drinking it makes you strong. Stronger than you've ever been. No pain, no distractions, just focus and power.” Bill was almost as old as the sheriff, with a bushy, drooping moustache and a lined face, but at the sight of the ambrosia he was reborn. A child on Christmas morning.

  “So it's a drug,” the sheriff said, scowling at Trevor. “It's PCP in a bottle.”

  “It's how your men keep getting taken out, Sheriff. Whoever the bad guys are, they're using this against you. I'm only trying to help even things up before someone dies.”

  “How do you know that?” the young cop, Matt, asked.

  “I assume, deputy,” Trevor said, not bothering to look at the younger man. “This is turning the tide in the cities and it looks like it's turning the tide here now, as well.”

  “But how do you know that?” Matt wasn't letting it go. “This is news to me. Anyone else know what he's talking about?” He looked around at his fellow cops. Nobody responded. I’d been living in a big city for months and I’d never heard of it, either, and I didn’t exactly hang around with the highest class of people.

  Now Trevor deigned to look at him. “There are a great many things I know about the world that you don't, deputy.”

  Matt came back quick. “Like the best drugs for criminals?”

  “Enough,” Sheriff Beaks said, blocking whatever Trevor had been about to say. “I'm not interested in your drugs.”

  “Think about it, Carl,” Bill said, grabbing his boss's arm. “It's not illegal. And we're getting creamed.”

  “Listen to your man, Sheriff.” Trevor put the bottle down on the crate and removed the backpack. He handed it to one of his men and stepped back. “I can get you this in bulk. You give one to each man before they go out on a call, especially one of the recent calls, and you'll have this thing licked in no time.”

  The sheriff remained silent, thinking it through. I hadn't paid much attention to the local crime statistics when we were preparing for the job, but I knew from speaking to people at the bank that things weren't going well. Break-ins and muggings, once thought the reserve of the cities, were on the rise. Police on highway patrol had been beaten badly on routine traffic stops, one of them landing in a coma. Looking for someone to blame, people had turned to a community of squatters nearby that called themselves Littleton. It was a modest town of hippies and wanderers but it had become the focal point of Midway’s fears.

  “If I consider this,” Sheriff Beak said carefully, “how do I know you won't bring it up when elections come around?”

  “If I think it's a bad thing then it's a bad thing for both of us. I don't, though. I think this is the sane answer to an insane situation. Think of it in the same way you'd think of body armor, or new weapons.”

  “I want to see it in action first.”

  “You can't be serious,” Matt said, stepping in front of the sheriff. “We can't accept anything from him.”

  “I think the decision has been made, son,” Trevor said, a smile spreading across his face.

  “We've got open files on him, sir. Bribery and corruption, not to mention the Smith girl.”

  “Enough,” Beaks said. Deputy Matt held his tongue, but barely. “My mind is made up. Bill, show me what this can do.”

  The older deputy stepped forward, visibly restraining himself from leaping on the bottle. He picked it up and took off the cap as though handling a baby before lifting it to his lips and letting the ambrosia ooze from the bottle.

  About halfway through, he stopped and carefully replaced the cap, then put it back down. He turned to the sheriff with his eyes only half open, as though drunk.

  “The first time I tasted this was last year. Some guy at my kid's birthday party handed me something he called a dram. It was just a small test tube-looking thing with about a mouthful in it. Looked like pus in a tube, but it tasted like something out of a dream.”

  “How long is this going to take?” Beaks asked Trevor. “Looks like Bill just got stoned, which is counterproductive at best.”

  “Deputy Bill,” Trevor said. He waited for the deputy to turn and face him, then pointed at the crate with the half empty bottle on it. “Show us what you've got.”

  Bill's
voice was still dreamy and faraway, but he put his hand flat on the crate. “That was a great night. Me and the missus had the best sex of our marriage. Darn near broke the bed.”

  “That's enough,” Beaks said, reaching out to grab hold of Bill's arm as the deputy pressed down on the crate.

  The crate was old but looked sturdy, a wooden box with metal reinforcing that would probably have remained intact for another hundred years before rust and rot finally collapsed it. Bill's hand pressed down and did the job with ease, bending the metal and splintering the wood until he broke through the lid. With his hand stuck in the crate he turned to the sheriff. “I cut myself.”

  “Shit, Bill, are you alright?” Beaks hurried to his deputy and tried to hold his hand still. Blood poured from a gash along his forearm where the metal had torn through his skin and into the flesh below.

  “Better than ever.” Bill put his other hand on the box and tore his arm free. He looked at the damage the same way he'd eyed the ambrosia bottle, like a thing of beauty. For a moment I thought he might lick the bloody wound.

  Instead he aimed an easy kick at the crate and sent it flying past one of Trevor's men and into the shadows of the distillery. He held his arm out to the sheriff, grinning as something changed inside. It was like he'd been reanimated, recharged, and made young again. There was a light in his eyes that was disconcerting to see, even from my vantage point.

  The wound was healing already, like sped up footage from a school biology class. First the blood stopped flowing and hardened across the cut, then skin began to knit together, slow at first before speeding up and leaving him without a mark.

  Bill turned to Trevor, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Thank you, sir. I never thought I'd feel it again.”

  “You're very welcome, son,” Trevor said, despite being half the deputy’s age. He held the backpack out, offering it to the sheriff. “Do you want it now? Do you think it'll help?”

  The sheriff had taken it all in and somehow managed to remain unimpressed. “How long does the effect last?”

  “Long enough,” Trevor said, the first genuine annoyance appearing in his voice. “You get one of the calls where your boys are having trouble and you give them this and send them out. By the time it wears off everything will be alright. Guaranteed.”

  The sheriff accepted the bag and gestured for his men to leave, leading the way without any further deliberation. Deputy Matt resisted longer than the other two, but even he eventually relented. He scowled at Trevor before turning to follow his boss.

  “Deputy,” Trevor said, his voice echoing around the distillery. “I had nothing to do with the Smith girl going missing, but we all knew it was going to happen at some point, didn't we?”

  “Watch yourself,” he replied, pausing with his back to Trevor.

  “That girl never met a dick she didn't like. It was only a matter of time before someone cut her up and fed her to the wolves.”

  Matt spun around, his hands balled into fists. “What did you say?”

  “I said she deserved what probably happened to her, that's all. The way she dressed. The people she hung out with.”

  Matt stepped forward and threw a punch at Trevor's smug face, but his target simply snatched his hand out of the air and held it in place. “That was stupid,” Trevor said as he squeezed. Even from high up in the rafters I heard the bones break before the deputy cried out.

  The sheriff ran back inside and glared at Trevor, who released the deputy and allowed him to fall to the ground, cradling his broken hand.

  “He attacked me, Sheriff. I was defending myself.”

  “He said he killed her,” Matt said through the pain. “He said she deserved it.”

  “We're leaving now,” Trevor said. He started for the exit without waiting for permission. “Keep an eye on this one, Sheriff. He's got a screw loose.”

  Trevor and his men left and I heard the car pull away before the sheriff was able to get Matt back on his feet. They stumbled from the building and their cars rushed away a moment later, no doubt heading for the hospital near Littleton.

  I waited another five minutes before working out how I was getting down, eying the water bottle and the remaining ambrosia, lying on the floor, forgotten.

  Chapter 5

  They were handing out magic in a bottle, and I wanted to check it out while I had the chance. It would be good to know what I was facing if I went against Trevor's goons, and it wouldn't hurt if I could salvage a little for myself.

  I ran along the beam and silently transitioned to another, working my way through the darkness and heading for an office suspended above the floor. It had probably been a manager's office back in the day, but was now a rusted, roofless box jutting from the outer wall. I leapt the final few feet and landed on the remains of the corner of the room, then dropped to the floor. No furniture remained after all these years, and I ran for the door and the stairs leading to the distillery floor.

  The building creaked around me like a haunted house as I slipped into the murk and made for the fallen water bottle. Bird droppings and long dead rodents littered the floor, and the air was filled with the smell of age: rust and dust and barely perceptible rot.

  The bottle had rolled against one of the large metal tanks. I grabbed it and lifted it into a shaft of light coming from a break in the roof.

  Bill had been right. It did look like pus in a bottle, oozing yellow and thick as I twisted it in the light. The thought of swallowing it was less than appetizing, but the visual of the deputy's wound healing overrode any disgust. If I could have some of this on me at all times I’d feel better about going up against a magical threat.

  The sound of footsteps near the entrance had me ducking into the shadows of the tank. I put the bottle in my pocket and retreated further, heading for the stairs and up to the manager's office again.

  “Where are you, little rat?” It was Deputy Bill's voice echoing from the walls as he strode back onto the floor. “I saw you up there, watching us. I saw you listening in on something that had nothing to do with you.”

  I reached the steps and moved silently up them, watching the area the voice was coming from. Bill was hidden behind the tank the bottle had been resting against, meaning we were invisible to each other for now. I made it to the top and into the manager's office before there was any chance of detection.

  “I can hear you, scurrying around. Ambrosia doesn't just make you stronger; it makes you better in every way. I can smell the stink on your breath, rodent.”

  I climbed to the top of the office wall and moved to where it intersected with the outer wall of the distillery. The gray bricks were broken and cracked, providing easy handholds for an expert climber. But ascending meant potentially being visible, and though I was good, I wasn't faster than a bullet. He could knock me off the wall without even thinking about it.

  I decided to risk it. Bill was walking around to the stairs, following me slowly. Soon he'd have me cornered and climbing the wall would be the only alternative to facing down a drawn gun.

  “Come on, little rat,' Bill called as he started to run. His feet pounded on the stairs and shook the suspended office as he hauled his bulk along faster than should be possible for a man of his size. “You can't run and you can't hide.”

  I was six feet up the wall and almost to one of the cross beams. If I could reach it I’d be able to get out, or at least get a little distance and make the shot harder for the cop. I dug my foot into a larger gap in the brickwork and leapt for the beam.

  “Gotcha,' Bill said as I grabbed hold of the beam and began pulling myself up. I could feel the bullet that was bound to be coming for me. If the deputy could run as quick as he had, he could draw even faster, and he didn't sound like he was planning on arresting me.

  I made it to the top of the beam and was just rising into a crouch when Bill tackled me, smashing me off the beam and into empty space.

  I went calm and the world slowed down, even as I spun in a short arc heading for th
e ground.

  Bill had jumped from the office floor, rising ten feet into the air to slam into me on the beam. This was information, but not immediately helpful.

  Bill hadn't fired at me, nor even pulled his gun, meaning there was nothing official about his actions. Information again, but it would have to wait until I survived the fall to be put to use.

  Bill was a big man, despite his acrobatics, with lots of cushioning. This was information I could use, assuming the deputy wasn't thinking as fast as he was moving.

  I leaned into the deputy's grapple, swinging around our shared center of gravity as we fell to the floor. There was little time for the maneuver but the price of failure was death or paralysis. Desperation fueled my strength and the deputy did nothing to fight me. I gripped the man tight as the final part of the revolution completed a moment before we hit the ground.

  Even with the deputy beneath me to take the sting out of the fall, my wind was knocked out of me. I rolled, dazed, off the larger man and lay on my back, trying to breath as the building spun around me.

  Bill's form rested in my peripheral vision. In the calm of the moment I noticed something I’d missed earlier; the deputy was glowing a subtle yellow. It was the same sort of spectral light I saw when magic was in use, and I filed it away to think about later. If it were a way of identifying others using the ambrosia, it would come in handy.

  My ability to breathe returned in a ragged gasp and a coughing fit, my chest muscles screaming with indignant pain at the return to life. I put my hand over my mouth, worried I’d see blood when I checked. I didn't, meaning at worst I’d broken a rib or two, but nothing had been punctured. Probably.

  Bill was breathing too, though his was shallow and even. Somewhere deep in his chest came the sound of bones healing.

  The ambrosia. I finally remembered the bottle in my pocket. I scrambled to check on it and laughed when I found it only slightly crumpled. The thick liquid remained within.

  If I were going to face Bill I’d need all the help I could get. I unscrewed the cap and tossed it back, letting it pour slowly into my mouth.