The Gathering Dark

by Christopher Golden

  Yet as he looked at her, he realized that it also delighted him. When centuries passed one by the way decades did for others, it became impossible not to see that some mortal beings shone more brightly than others. Sophie had ever been one of those and he had always relished her company.

  Now Kuromaku saw her with new eyes.

  “I thank you for your help,” he said, nodding his head respectfully. “And of course I would welcome you as my guest anytime you desire to visit.”

  Unlike the courtyard inside the building, the narrow street was mostly shadowed by the buildings on either side. Somehow even in those shadows her eyes sparkled more brightly.

  “I’ll take you up on that soon,” she told him, reaching out a hand and placing it flat on his chest, at the place where his crimson tie disappeared inside the buttoned jacket of his suit.

  “And I shall be most pleased when you do,” he replied. “For the moment, however, let me show my gratitude by taking you to lunch. There is a tiny restaurant atop the Montmartre where we can sit and watch the artists and the street performers.”

  A moment of silence passed between them during which Sophie left her palm upon his chest and a curiosity crept into the smile she wore. It seemed to Kuromaku that she was examining him closely, wondering if her interest had been properly communicated, and then deciding that indeed it had.

  “Lead the way,” she told him at length.

  And so he did, slipping an arm through hers and escorting her with a formality that was somehow joyous along the narrow street to the nearest intersection, where they turned to climb up toward the peak of Montmartre. The street was so steep that there were stairs in the sidewalk. Vendors stood beside their carts and tried to sell T-shirts and souvenirs to spring tourists.

  As they climbed closer to the top, Kuromaku could see not merely the main dome of the bone white structure of the Sacré-Coeur, but the two smaller domes on either side. Here there were a great many people on the street, mostly tourists by the look of them but also some locals. Brightly colored umbrellas jutted above stands that sold the works of the various artists who made their encampment here, but also crêpes and glaces and various other foods one might conceivably eat while strolling.

  For all the horrors and advancements that the world had seen in the past decade, certain things were timeless. This was one of them.

  As they walked, Sophie glanced happily up at Kuromaku from time to time. Something was being revealed between them here. He felt it just as well as she seemed to. It was not blossoming, precisely; rather it was more that it was an artifact they had unearthed and were carefully brushing away the soil to reveal.

  The top of the hill, Montmartre itself, was lined with trees and splashed with warm sunshine. With the white geometry and exquisite architecture of Sacré-Coeur silhouetted against it, the sky was impossibly blue. The air seemed to shimmer with the tapestry of conversations in half a hundred languages. There was a magick to this place that Kuromaku relished. With Sophie at his side he navigated toward the restaurant, hoping it would still be there eleven years after he had last sat upon its patio and watched life upon Montmartre unfold.

  “Perhaps,” he said without looking down at Sophie, “you will be able to steal a little time from your clients soon, even if only a weekend, and walk the vineyards with me. There is a kind of ancientness to them that you can taste in the grapes, in the wine. A sip of it, with your eyes closed, is almost enough to transport you back in time.”

  Just as he had not looked at her, neither did Sophie glance up at him as she responded. Rather she let her gaze drift across the faces of those around her and the canvases of the painters at work on the street as she slipped her arm out of his and let her hand drop so that their fingers touched as they walked.

  “I’d come as soon as you’ll have me,” she said, voice barely audible over the hum of the crowd. Her fingers now twined with his as they walked.

  Kuromaku smiled.

  The tranquility of Montmartre was shattered by the high-pitched, keening whine of a police siren. All at once people scattered, pulling small children by the hand and glancing anxiously over their shoulders as they moved aside to let the police car travel through the horribly clogged street. Yet somehow in the midst of that sea of flesh, an avenue opened for the police car with its flashing lights, as though Moses were behind the wheel.

  Kuromaku held Sophie’s hand as they stood aside. As the police car passed, the human sea began to roll back in behind it, filling the gap. In that moment he gazed along the vehicle’s intended path and his fingers tightened involuntarily upon Sophie’s, hard enough so that she cried out, more in surprise than hurt.

  Farther along, upon the very steps of the Sacré-Coeur, the crowd was still scattering and not because of the approaching police car or its siren. There in the brilliant sunshine of a perfect spring day, a hole had been rent in the fabric of the world and it gaped, shimmering like liquid silver where it hung in the air.

  “My God, what is it?” Sophie whispered.

  Kuromaku did not reply. He knew precisely what it was for he had seen its like several times before. And even as that thought entered his mind, something erupted from the vertical tear in the face of the world, a thing glistening greenish-black with eight or ten legs that clacked upon the cobblestones as it crossed dimensions, its long tail bobbing and darting about behind it. Its body was narrow and it had no discernible face, only a round circle of eyes that glowed a putrescent yellow. To the humans who shrieked in terror and began to flee, shoving one another, trampling the less fortunate beneath the heels of their fear, it might have appeared some hideous combination of spider and scorpion. But those were natural creatures, things of this world. It was not.

  It was a demon.

  Sophie screamed along with the others and she tried to tug Kuromaku away with her. There were words to her panic; frenzied questions and pleas for him to come on, to run with her. But Kuromaku was not listening. As he watched, the doors of the Sacré-Coeur opened and a middle-aged couple whose olive skin might have made them Italian or Greek poked their heads outside, obviously curious about the commotion.

  The demon was upon them instantly. It scrambled up the steps of the cathedral and that scorpion tail whipped around and jabbed at the exotic features of the woman. Its sharp point punched through her head, obliterating it in an explosion of blood and brain and bone shards that splashed an obscene pattern against the whitewashed face of the Sacré-Coeur, the latest masterpiece painted at Montmartre. Her husband cried out in grief and horror and for a moment, just a moment, he stared at the headless corpse of his wife as it tumbled wetly down the steps. Then he realized his own peril and turned to flee.

  Too late.

  The demon slashed its tail in an arc that tore the man in two, his bisected remains falling not far from where his wife lay dead. The sky echoed back the screams of those who fled. Vendors’ carts were toppled, people stumbled over them, artists left their easels and works-in-progress to be crushed beneath the retreating wave.

  The police car halted and the doors popped open. Two officers appeared with their guns drawn, faces pale with panic. Nothing they had been taught had prepared them for this—not that such abominations were unheard of in the world in these times, but such things happened in other cities, not here. Not in Paris.

  “Kuromaku, please!” Sophie cried, pulling at his arm. “Run!”

  He narrowed his dark eyes and turned to her. “Find cover. This will be over momentarily.”

  “What?” She clutched his arm more tightly. “What are you talking about?”

  Kuromaku smiled gently and reached down to remove her hand. The crowd was flowing around them still but thinning, and he walked her several steps toward the café that had been their original destination.

  “Get inside. Wait. I’ll return.”

  With that, he spun toward Sacré-Coeur once more, leaving Sophie behind as he began to run. Kuromaku weaved a serpentine path amid the stragglers the m
ass exodus had left behind. Dozens of people were on their knees or sprawled on the ground, injured, several possibly dead. But there would be time to help them later. For now he sprinted toward where the police car was parked. Behind the imagined safety of their opened doors, the officers shot at the arachnoid demon but the thing ignored them.

  It was the cathedral that held its interest.

  The demon scrabbled up the steps on its spider legs and froze before the doors of the Sacré-Coeur, scorpion tail poised above it. An ear-piercing chittering noise began to rise from the monstrosity, as though it were screaming at whatever lay within the cathedral. Its tail twitched, daggerlike tip drawing back, and then it stung forward at the open doorway.

  As though the air above the threshold of Sacré-Coeur were solid concrete, the demon’s stinging tail sent up orange sparks of eldritch energy and the beast staggered backward two steps. It shrieked even more loudly and then began to attack with such fury and speed that its tail was blurred as it sparked again and again off whatever power impeded the demon’s access to the cathedral. It raged and screamed and tried to push itself bodily through the door but it could not enter.

  Sacré-Coeur was holy ground. The demon was filth and would not be allowed to enter. But soon it would turn its rage to the surrounding area and then more people would die.

  Kuromaku ran at the police car, pausing when he was only a few feet behind the officer who had been driving. He and his partner were shouting to one another wide-eyed with fear. In the distance more sirens could be heard but there was no time to wait. If an army of Paris police arrived on the scene, there was simply a greater chance of more carnage, not to mention the probability that stray bullets would kill those cowering in terror within the cathedral.

  “Stop!” Kuromaku shouted to the officers in French.

  They spun, weapons aimed now at him rather than the demon. But only for a moment. They saw this Japanese man in a business suit and dismissed him as a threat.

  “You must get back, sir,” the older of the officers instructed him, barely restraining his panic. “Find somewhere to—”

  Kuromaku reached down to his side, slipped his hand into nothing, and withdrew as if from nowhere a katana, the long curved sword he had carried into hundreds of battles since that day in 1194 when it had been presented to him by his master, the shogun Yoritomo. The katana shimmered into existence now as though he had crafted it from the air itself. He knew well that was how it would seem to those terrified onlookers who now watched the horror unfold from the safety of some shelter or other.

  Kuromaku leaped onto the hood of the police car, drawing the attention of the police officers. He smiled at them each in turn as they stared up at him in astonishment and saw the sword held lightly in his right hand.

  “Gentlemen, I hope you will do me the favor of not shooting me, either accidentally or otherwise,” Kuromaku said.

  Then he jumped down to the cobblestones and raced across the space that separated him from the demon. It continued its attack, thrusting its deadly tail again and again at the cathedral as though by sheer evil intent it might tear a hole in the fabric of the wards that protected the place. Its chittering wail had grown even louder and higher pitched and Kuromaku wondered for a moment if the demon was smarter than it seemed, if indeed that scream was not its voice but some effort to find a frequency that might destroy the barrier that kept it from ravaging that holy place.

  The katana felt warm in his hand as though the metal were alive. His legs pumped and he sprinted toward the demon from behind. It had barely noticed the bullets that had torn into its flesh, had punctured at least two of its eyes, viscous yellow pus now seeping from those wounds. All of its malign attention was focused on the cathedral.

  But now, abruptly, it stiffened and fell silent for an instant before whipping around to face him.

  “Damn,” Kuromaku whispered.

  The police and their guns presented no danger to the thing, but it had sensed him coming. It could feel what he was, or perhaps merely what he meant to do. Somewhere nearby the sirens of approaching police cars grew louder and there were screams from hidden onlookers, and yet there was a kind of desolation to the Montmartre now, as though some hideous apocalypse had already occurred. The place had become a battlefield.

  Kuromaku felt right at home.

  A war cry tore from his throat as he raised the katana with both hands and leaped into the air, legs tucked beneath him. The demon’s stinger tail flashed in the sunlight as it punched toward him, too fast. Kuromaku brought his blade down and it clanged as the metal scraped along the demon’s tail. He had parried it, but nothing more.

  Now he landed on the ground in a crouch, only feet in front of the monster. Close enough to smell the putrid stench emanating from its punctured eyes and to see the intelligence and bilious hatred in those that remained. Its pincerlike maw opened and clacked shut several times as though it were yearning to tear into him, perhaps to consume him. If he tried to retreat, it would impale him with that tail.

  Kuromaku rolled forward and rose again in a single smooth motion that ended with the katana whickering around in a sidelong arc that severed the demon’s foremost pair of legs. Black, fetid ichor spilled from its wounds and it rocked backward to compensate for the loss of those appendages. He snapped into a combat stance with the sword above his head, pointed directly at the demon’s face, then thrust it forward, plunging it into another of the thing’s glowing yellow eyes.

  He had seen it all in his mind—he would bury the katana in one of the demon’s eyes and the beast would rear back. Kuromaku would ride it forward and then cut, slicing the blade across and down, blinding the demon completely.

  But the demon did not rear back. When his blade entered its eye, the abomination pushed forward, pincer-mouth snapping loudly as it tried to reach him. The katana sank too deep into its mass, and when he tried to tug it out or cut a wider wound, the blade grated against bone. The demon drew back, scorpion tail suspended just above it.

  The sword was trapped. Kuromaku struggled to free it even as he glanced up and saw the gleaming black dagger of its tail descending. In an eyeblink it would split his chest, shattering bone and tearing flesh.

  Kuromaku evaporated. His body, clothing, even his sword turning to mist. The demon’s tail cracked cobblestones and it shrieked in fury at his disappearance. But Kuromaku had not disappeared. As nothing more than mist and awareness he slipped along the ground beneath the demon. Its tail was dangerous, but that was not its most vulnerable point.

  Underneath that horror his body took form again, molecules reknitting themselves into flesh in an instant, and he lay upon the rough cobblestone in a pool of foul gore from its severed legs. Before the demon was even aware of his presence, Kuromaku thrust the katana up into its soft underbelly and sliced the blade through thick muscle, cutting a wound three feet long. A shower of stinking viscera rained down upon him, soaking through his clothes and drenching his hair. He could even taste it on his lips, and though Kuromaku relished the flavor of blood and the feel of it in his mouth, running down his throat, this was different. This was not human, but demon blood, dripping from its entrails, and it was all he could do not to vomit.

  As the demon collapsed upon him, Kuromaku became mist once more and his essence slipped from beneath the grotesque cadaver even as it twitched several times where it now lay upon the cobblestones. Then, at last, it was still. As mist he drifted for several seconds back across Montmartre, sunlight glinting upon the moisture in the small cloud he had become. The mist began to spin, whipping up small bits of litter and grains of sand, a dust devil that abruptly took on human form once more. His suit was clean as if newly pressed and his katana had disappeared back into the nowhere void from which he had drawn it. This was not precisely magick unless it could be said to be some form of molecular sorcery, but he knew onlookers would view it as such.

  Kuromaku stood in the midst of Montmartre surrounded by overturned chairs and carts and sha
ttered easels. Several of those wounded or killed in the exodus still lay where they had fallen but he did not need to go to them. Police and medical emergency personnel were even now rushing to their aid. The two officers whom he had urged to stay back stood and stared at him only a dozen feet away but they did not approach. He had likely saved their lives but their terror was plain in the dull gleam of their eyes.

  On the patio of the café where he had hoped to share a pleasant celebratory lunch with his attorney, he saw Sophie standing beside a table with her hand upon it as though she might at any moment topple over. Her mouth was agape and there was a sadness in her eyes. No fear, though, and he was relieved to see that.

  Kuromaku ran his hands across his lapels to smooth them and tugged at his jacket to make certain it sat right on his shoulders. Then he strode over to her. Sophie watched him come with almost no expression at all. Her face seemed absolutely still now, right up until the moment he stood in front of her and reached out to touch her shoulder.

  She flinched.

  Pained, Kuromaku glanced away from her. “I see. Perhaps lunch must wait until another day.”

  “No, I . . . that was incredible,” Sophie said, voice almost hoarse.

  Kuromaku met her gaze once more, saw her searching his own eyes for answers, for explanations.

  “You’re one of them,” she said.

  He frowned. “You must have known, Sophie. I have been a client of your father’s since before you were born. Have I aged even a day in that time?”

  A girlish smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “I know. I mean . . . I suppose I knew. But you always seemed so civilized. Sophisticated.”

  From within the café several waiters and waitresses now emerged along with some of their patrons, all of whom crossed the patio tentatively to gaze over at the stinking mass of quickly rotting demon flesh that lay in front of the doors of Sacré-Coeur. Some of them gave Kuromaku a wide berth but others barely noticed him; apparently they had not been looking out at the conflict as it had occurred. Probably hiding under a table, he would have wagered.