by DC Malone
“That’s not bad,” Carter said. “I can catch a few shows. Probably nap a little in the midday.”
“Absolutely. And if you have time, maybe you can help me out with something while I’m gone.”
“Sure, anything.”
“I have this set of antique hacksaws and bolt cutters. You think you could polish them for me? I keep them under the futon, right next to the keys for your cuffs and a map to the location of your ex-wife and her new boyfriend.”
Carter sighed and turned back toward the bathroom. “Alright, alright. You don’t have to be mean about it.”
“And you might as well clean your gun and my lockpick tools while you’re at it.”
I smiled as the bathroom door smacked shut against the chains a little harder than usual. Perhaps Carter’s supernatural patience wasn’t so supernatural after all.
I was still smiling when Hiram’s knock sounded at my door. I turned around and yanked it open, suddenly hopeful that Hiram might have brought along a bag of doughnuts or even some bagels. It didn’t seem particularly likely, though. The guy was rail thin, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing him actually eat anything. I’d suspected for some time he might be one of those guys who saved up all of their calories for one big feast at the end of the day. It would explain his grumpiness throughout the day—he was probably just needing a sugar fix.
“It’s about time—” The door swung open to someone who decidedly was not Hiram. The person who greeted me was far younger, far shorter, and sported a perky smile, the likes of which, I imagined, had never graced Hiram’s lips in his entire life.
“Meredith, I hope this is a good time. I brought coffee.” Gwen thrust a paper cup in my direction, but I was too busy glancing over my shoulder at the cracked bathroom door to take it. The silvery chain that snaked through the gap was grating and popping against the wood with Carter’s movements on the other side.
“I was hoping we could continue getting to know one another.” She pressed the coffee to me until I finally took it from her. “What do you say? I’ve learned a few things that might interest you, too. So, it won’t be such a one-way convo this time.”
What do I say? How about leave now before I pour this scalding coffee over your infuriatingly cheerful little head?
Instead, I stared at her wordlessly for about five seconds, took a step back, and slammed the door in her face.
Early-morning thinking was not my strong suit.
“Meredith?” Gwen’s words were muffled through the door, but no less cheery.
“Just a sec. I’m, uh, not decent.”
“But I just saw you.”
“No, you didn’t. Give me a sec.” I might not have been fast on my feet, but I could flat out deny and lie until the cows came home. If Punky Brewster out there decided to call me on it, what did I care? I’d just feign ignorance until she went on to something else.
I ran over to the cracked bathroom door. “Carter,” I hissed, “I’m going to leave you for a few minutes.”
“Oh?” His voice had that faux mild tone again.
“Yeah, but don’t get excited. I’m just going downstairs for something, so don’t get any grand notions of escape. If you do, I’ll know. And I will hurt you.”
“Meredith, you don’t have—”
“I will hurt you, Carter. And I don’t mean while your mind is all hopped up on demon juice and you can’t feel it. I’ll wait until you’re back to normal and kick you in the nards or something.”
“Uh, okay…”
“Just be good!”
I ran back over to my front door, pulled it open, and shoved my way rudely past Gwen before she had a chance to look inside. I knew she was reporting back about me to the Congregation, and I certainly didn’t want even a whiff of has captive police detective in her bathroom to make it into that report.
Gwen gave me a questioning smile as I joined her in the outside hallway.
“Sorry, I don’t let anyone see me before I get a chance to put my face on.” I tugged her away from the door and locked it behind us.
“Oh.” I could feel her eyes crawling across my face. “You look lovely. I can’t even tell you’re wearing makeup. Very natural.”
Yeah, well, that’s sort of the look you get when you’re not actually wearing any makeup. But I nodded my head emphatically and guided her toward the stairs.
“I thought maybe we could get something for lunch at Sason’s downstairs while we discuss, uh, whatever you’re here to discuss.” I trudged down the creaky stairs, half pulling Gwen along behind me. The walls were paper thin in this place, and I didn’t want to give her the chance to question any loud thumps from my apartment. Or the sounds of dragging chains, for that matter.
“But it’s barely after eight,” Gwen said as we cleared the steps.
“Yeah, I know. Lunch for breakfast. Surely, you’ve heard of that. It’s the craze right now. And these guys are making this weird fusion curry thing that’s spicy enough to light you up just from the smell alone. It’ll put some hair on your chest.”
“Oh, okay.” Gwen’s words were low and tentative. “But I really don’t want a hairy chest.”
“Great,” I said, pulling her from the stairs and into the restaurant proper, then pointing out a table in the corner. “You have a seat and I’ll get us set for food.”
“Are they even serving, Meredith? Doesn’t look like they’re even open.”
“Of course, they are. Probably. Doesn’t matter. I live here. They’ll get us something either way.”
I turned and stomped away, leaving Gwen to meander through the haphazard array of tables that still had their respective chairs hanging from the tops.
“Well, I think I handled that pretty well,” I muttered to myself as I headed toward the counter. Okay, so it probably could have been done a little more smoothly, but at least she didn’t have a clue about Carter. And that was a win in my book.
Now, I just had to get rid of her as quickly as possible. I didn’t think there was any real possibility of Carter escaping, not with me just one floor below. The sturdiest thing he had at his disposal was a television remote control, and I didn’t think that was going to quite do the trick with his heavy chains.
Still, I didn’t want to add any complications to the situation, and I didn’t have any desire to have a prolonged conversation with Little Miss Muffet anyway.
“No food, Bale.” The words came like popgun blasts from a young man with dark features who was standing behind the counter, just outside of the kitchen doors. He had dark, slightly curly hair that was pulled back in a makeshift bun at the back of his head. He was probably in his early twenties, and I figured him for one of Azhar’s many nephews.
“No food yet. You shouldn’t even be down here.”
“Come on,” I said, drumming my hands on the counter. “You’ve got to have something back there. My friend is in from out of town, and I’ve been building up this place to her for a week. Are you really going to drag down Sason’s great reputation like that?”
The young man’s frown deepened. “Not such a great reputation. Besides nothing is prepared yet. We’re still getting the rice ready. You want that? Plain rice?”
“Excellent,” I said. “See, that wasn’t so hard. Bring us two bowls of that with the hottest sauce you have.” With breakfast-lunch settled, I spun back toward Gwen and headed back over.
“You’ll get it from the counter when it’s ready,” the nephew said to my back before I’d managed to get out of earshot.
I gave him an amiable wave of acknowledgment. It wasn’t my fault that the wave may have been easily confused with a rude gesture.
Chapter 19
“Everything okay?” Gwen asked as I took my chair off the table and sat down opposite her.
“Oh, yeah, that guy’s an old friend. We were just having some fun.” I noticed myself drumming my hands again nervously and forced myself to stop. “So, what was it you wanted to talk about? And I’m not sure if
I mentioned before, but I don’t have a lot of time.”
“I figured as much,” Gwen replied in a neutral tone. “You always seem to be rushing off to something. I suppose it’s good to stay busy like that. Keeps a person out of trouble.”
There was something in her tone this time that I didn’t particularly like, something knowing. Like she had something over me and wanted me to know.
“What is it?” All of my forced joviality fell away at once.
“What is—” Gwen started.
“Don’t. I don’t need another game to deal with. Trust me, I feel like I’m juggling about a dozen things already. If you’ve got something to say that you think I’m not going to like, or that you think the Congregation isn’t going to like, just spit it out.”
Gwen nodded. Without the perpetual, and borderline psychotic, smile, she looked quite a bit older than I had previously thought.
“I’ve gone over that memory of yours at length.”
“Uh-huh. The one you saw when you lied about being able to see inside my head?”
“Yeah, that one.” If she felt guilty about her deceit, she hid it very well. “And I think I understand a little more about what we witnessed—what that entity was that you saw in the darkness.”
It was the darkness. The thought took hold, and something tickled at the back of my mind, but I pushed it away. “What was it?”
“They were called all sorts of things—Dark Ones, Dark Gods, Elders. Vampires called them—”
“Eldritch-touched,” I muttered.
“Yes, or Eldritch Gods.” Gwen studied me for a moment, her smooth brow furrowing ever so slightly. “To be honest, I thought they were vampire bogey stories, but it turns out they were quite real. It just isn’t something the Congregation has had to deal with, well, ever. That was a matter for the truly ancient factions that came long before the Congregation was around.”
“Deal with? Why were they a matter to deal with?”
“They weren’t just called gods by the primitive humans that worshiped them so long ago; they thought of themselves that way, too. Apparently—and this was all information I dug up from our archive, which predates anything the Norms have as a matter of historical record—those creatures were the ruling class of Earth before the light of civilization had come to mankind. They thought of themselves as the first inhabitants of the world, and everything else was basically trespassing, only allowed to stick around by their good graces.”
“They created the first vampires,” I said. I wasn’t exactly sure why I was volunteering information. Maybe Gwen just had that effect on people.
“I can’t confirm that. But the two species were mentioned together frequently in the old texts. They seemed to be allied in some way.”
Vampires were their servants. To Gwen, I said, “what happened to them? The Old Ones?”
Gwen smiled, but it wasn’t her usual bubbly one. “That wasn’t one of the names I used for them.”
I shrugged, not taking the bait.
“A war was fought,” Gwen said. “Isn’t that always the case? A massive force made up of the early Gifted, defector vampires, and even hordes of disenfranchised Norms rose up to oppose them. Tens of thousands strong. They staked everything to throw off the shackles of their supposed masters.”
“And they defeated the army of the Old Ones?” I asked. My heart had started pounding like I was taking part in that ancient war, but I couldn’t have said exactly why.
“Army?” Gwen shook her head. “There were only six. Six of the Dark Ones to rule over the entire world.”
“But they all died?” I heard the fellow from behind the counter call out to me, but I ignored him. The pretense of getting a quick bite no longer seemed important.
“No, none of them did, in fact. According to the record I found, the Dark Ones sent a single member of their collective to face that upstart army of men and Gifted and vampires. Just one was all they bothered. But it was enough. More than enough. The greatest force the world of that time could muster was utterly devastated by that creature—tens of thousands reduced to almost nothing at all, just the few who had sense enough to run away.”
Gwen cleared her throat. “There was one firsthand account from a surviving vampire, scrawled down centuries after the fact. And I quote: It was truly like our kind had raised our fists toward the black sky and demanded our own demise. For what is a God’s purpose if not to judge and smite His subjects? And smote He did. I saw a thousand men take more than one step as flayed corpses, their minds too slow to understand they were already dead.”
“God.”
“Indeed.”
“If they weren’t defeated, what happened?” I asked. “Clearly, they’re not still roving around and wreaking havoc in the present day. Pretty sure someone would notice that.”
“Maybe someone would,” Gwen answered. “Maybe they wouldn’t. These were supremely powerful creatures. I suppose they could do pretty much as they pleased. But to your point, no one knows what happened—at least, not that it’s recorded anywhere. The Dark Ones simply vanished one day. Maybe they found a place they liked better.”
“Like another planet?” I laughed at the mental picture of those god-like beings trekking about across the stars. The thought became rapidly less amusing as I considered the implications of beings able to do something like that on a whim.
“Another planet. Another realm. Surely, you must understand that there are other planes of existence than the one we now occupy. Truthfully, though, we simply do not know what happened to them. To beings like that, a half dozen millennia might not be much more than a blip on the radar—just an afternoon’s nap before they rise back up and continue on with what they were doing.”
“Okay, this history lesson has been really interesting and all, but where do I factor into all of this?” I knew what I had seen in that memory Gwen had helped me unlock, and I knew that Gwen knew the contents of that memory at least as well as I did—probably better. But I still didn’t know what she thought this all might mean for the Congregation. The events we were discussing happened thousands of years before I was around, so at the very worst, what I had seen in my memory was an echo of something that happened to somebody else. It could have been a glimpse into the life of one of my ancient ancestors or something, but it certainly wasn’t a memory of something I had witnessed firsthand. Last I checked, I wasn’t a few thousand years old.
“That’s just the thing,” Gwen said, like it was precisely what we’d been discussing the entire time. “If that creature—that darkness—in your memory was one of the Dark Ones, you certainly seemed to have more than a passing familiarity with it. It had called to you, by name, and you had recognized it. From everything I read about them, those creatures had servants of the human variety, but there didn’t seem to be much of a relationship beyond that.”
“That wasn’t me in the memory,” I said. “It wasn’t my memory.”
“Trust me, I’ve considered it from that angle as well. It makes the most sense. It certainly seemed like you from the inside, but that would be the case, wouldn’t it? Even if it were somebody else’s memory, viewing it from that perspective would make it seem like it had been yours.”
“Exactly.” I thrummed my hands against the table again, starting to regret not grabbing that rice when it was offered. “So, there’s no call for this doom and gloom act you’ve got going. That wasn’t me, and I don’t have a connection with those God things.”
“Well, that’s where we start to differ in opinion,” Gwen said. “You obviously have some connection to them, hence the memory. The extent of that connection is the unknown factor here, Meredith. And it’s precisely that uncertainty that creates the danger.”
“Danger? I’ve never been a danger to anyone.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true, and there had been a few on the wrong side of things that might have taken exception to that particular fib. But the sentiment stood. I definitely wasn’t a threat to the Congregation.
“See, though? How can we be sure of that?” Gwen tucked a strand of perfectly straight hair back behind one ear. “You didn’t even know that you had the memory inside of you, isn’t that right?”
“Sure…”
“So, what else don’t you know about yourself, Meredith? What if you’re a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off? How would you even know?”
“But based on what? Just that memory? It barely—”
“But it’s not just that memory, and you know that as well as I do. Gladys. And what happened with that other vampire and the things they were creating.”
“Sure, I stopped them, but I had help from Luka and—”
“That’s the story that’s been fed to the Congregation. Don’t forget, I can see inside people’s heads. When the matter is this serious, sometimes it calls for crossing a few lines that I normally wouldn’t.”
I jerked back from the table like she’d punched me. This whole time she’d been reading me like a book!?
“Don’t get carried away,” Gwen said evenly. “To really get anything, I still need physical contact. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t made an excuse to brush up close to some of those friends of yours.”
My heart was still pounding, and I was starting to reconsider that whole not being a danger to anyone concept, but I settled back into my chair to hear her out.
“Your friends, especially Luka, are covering for you, aren’t they? What happened with Gladys and those things she created, that wasn’t within the capabilities of your everyday Necro. What you did was beyond the abilities of anyone I know.”
“She was trying to create a new world order,” I said. “I saved—”
“I’m not saying you did the wrong thing. Quite the contrary, I think we all owe you a debt of gratitude for what you did.”
“Then I don’t see the problem.”
“Well, the problem is pretty clear, if you ask me. What are you, and what happens if the Congregation is on the wrong side of what you believe to be right next time?”
