The Adventures of Gravedigger, Volume 2

by Barry Reese

  Flush with excitement for the first time in ages, Mortimer sat down on his bed and grinned.

  “Mayor Quinn,” he whispered. “I could get used to the sound of that.”

  PANDORA PULLED ON the form-fitting garment, admiring the fabric and the way it allowed for complete ease of movement. It had been Locke’s idea to counter Gravedigger by outfitting herself in something similar. Thus, after arriving in Sovereign via train, which had proven slightly easier to manage than her planned route of flying, Pandora had broken into a Halloween costume shop. She had found a black bodysuit with a red panel that ran all the way down the center, giving her an almost mirrored appearance to how Gravedigger dressed. She was unable to find a full facemask but she had found a domino-style version that she had put into place with spirit gum.

  With her sword around her waist, she really did look like some bizarre variation of her enemy. It seemed right somehow.

  “How do you feel?” Locke asked, the phantom voice sounding so loud in Pandora’s head that it was like having someone shout in her ear.

  “Can’t you tell?”

  “Not really. I can’t feel anything. I can see out of your eyes but that’s all. I think I’ll go crazy if I stay like this for much longer. I need physical sensation: human contact, food, smells, something!”

  Pandora reached up and tied back her hair, leaving it in a ponytail. “You’ll be fine. It’s amazing how much the human spirit can endure.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “No. I speak from experience. What do you think it was like for me in that Silver Skull? I was dimly aware of the world around me but I was even worse off because I couldn’t see. I was locked away from everything for so very long with nothing but my memory and my guilt to keep me company.”

  “I’m sorry,” Locke said and Pandora sensed that she meant it. They were united by the similarity of their experiences. After a slight pause, Locke asked, “Do you think there’s any chance that you would give me back my body at some point? Or at least let me take control? Just for a little while?”

  Pandora’s response was quite calm and very cold. “No.”

  “But why not?” Locke, in contrast, sounded strained and desperate. “I’m helping you! I told you how to use my information to buy a train ticket! I helped you find this outfit…”

  “I’m grateful. But this is my body now and you have to accept that. Embrace your new role and I will try to accommodate you as much as possible but I can’t risk you doing something stupid while in possession of our form. I have a mission.”

  “You’re insane,” Locke hissed. “You can’t destroy Sin! It’s in every man, woman and child! There’s no such thing as real innocence.”

  “I don’t blame you for thinking that. You were born and raised in a world tainted by the demons I unleashed. It wasn’t always so. Before I gave in to curiosity, the men and women of earth were better. They were not always without fault but when they made a mistake, it was out of ignorance or poor judgment. Now… now the demons take root in your souls and twist your view of everything to their whims. It is because of them and, ultimately, me that you seek to drown your fears and sorrows through power over others or through the consumption of physical goods.”

  “You’re going to get us both killed.”

  Pandora smiled ruefully. “Sometimes I think oblivion would be a blessing. There were times over the centuries when I contemplated suicide but in the end, I wanted redemption. I wanted to strike down all the evil in the world and then stand for judgment.”

  “That’s how Hiroshi described The Gravedigger,” Locke pointed out. “She’s been given a certain timeframe in which to fight evil. If she fails, she’s punished by being sent to Hell or something.”

  “And if she succeeds?”

  “Then she’s freed and her soul is redeemed.”

  “Then I envy her.” Pandora placed a hand atop her sword. “And just this once, I’ll let jealousy have free reign over me. Because I need to hate her so that I might find the strength to kill her.”

  Chapter XII: The End of Everything

  It was late in the evening when Charity gathered the entire team in the study. She and Mitchell had pulled all the furniture back, leaving the center carpet free. Using salt, they had drawn a pentagram, along with several protective wards.

  “Are we doing a séance?” Cedric asked. Clad in a suit and tie, he looked almost out of place at the mystic ritual. Li, in her Oriental dress, seemed exotic enough to fit in. Mitchell and Mortimer both radiated enough familiarity with the occult that it didn’t matter how they looked: they were obviously at home with the ritual.

  Charity, with her mask and hood pulled back, approached the center of the pentagram with spell book in hand. She stood over two weapons that lay on the floor; a short sword with many nicks in the blade and a small knife, both of which looked quite old. “Not quite, Cedric. I’m going to perform a small ritual that should allow us to figure out where Pandora is hiding.”

  “Are you going to get a vision or something?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  Cedric glanced over at Li and whispered, “Seems like the kind of thing I’d want to know before I started spouting magic-speak.”

  Li looked like a little girl on Christmas morning. “Oh, hush.” To Charity, she asked, “Do you think a demon will appear? Maybe you’ll have to bargain with it before it will help you!”

  Not wanting to disappoint her friend, Charity responded, “I think there’s a very good chance. In fact, all of our souls could be in peril.”

  Li crinkled her nose with delight. “Oh, goodie!”

  “Let’s have silence, please.” Mitchell dimmed all the lights, leaving only a single flickering candle to illuminate the room. “Charity, please put your mask on.”

  “Why?”

  “Just in case you do end up summoning a demon. It’s my experience that they’re sometimes a cowardly lot.”

  “You think I’ll spook one of them if I wear my mask?”

  “Couldn’t hurt, luv. You scare the hell out of me with it on.”

  Cedric nodded. “Me, too.”

  With a crooked smile, Charity pulled the mask on and then yanked her hood into place. In the dim light, it seemed like her eyes glowed from beneath the covering.

  Everyone stood stock-still as Charity opened the spell book and began reciting the required words. Her voice was strong and sure, with enough challenge in it that the walls themselves seemed to shift and move in response. “Dwellers of the dark places, lurking just out of sight and mind, I call upon you! I seek the owner of these items, which were of great importance to them. Please come before me and help me find their location! In return, I promise you the freedom to leave. You shall not be bound to this place or to this person.”

  The candle suddenly went out as a tremendous wind swept across the room. Li gasped loudly and took hold of Cedrick’s hand, squeezing it so tightly that he thought his fingers might crack.

  And then a light returned, though it did not emanate from the candle. A figure stood before Gravedigger, within the confines of the pentagram. It was a nude male figure surrounded by tiny yellow and red flames that danced along its skin. Atop its bald head were two massive curved horns and every time it opened its mouth, tiny bursts of smoke accompanied each syllable. “I stand before you, beauteous one. Your beseeching has touched my heart and I am willing to help you.”

  “By what name may I call you?”

  “I am Druaga. I know you by your title, which is enough for now. You are Gravedigger.”

  Unable to hide her surprise, Charity asked, “You know about Gravediggers?”

  “You are agents of The Voice. All the denizens of the dark places know of your ilk. Many of them have been vanquished by members of your order.” Druaga laughed and the sound was like rumbling thunder. “There are many of my brothers who would like to feast upon your entrails.”

  “But not you?”

  “Nay, I have no quarrel w
ith you or yours.”

  “I guess I was lucky you heard my call then,” she replied with some doubt in her voice.

  “Indeed! Now, how may I help you? You say you seek the owner of these weapons?”

  “Yes.”

  Druaga knelt down and ran the flame-covered tips of his fingers over the weapons. “A powerful woman held these and killed many. She is partially obscured now, though, as if her body has changed.”

  “She’s occupying another person’s form.”

  “Ah. A common enough practice.” Druaga paused and then looked up at Gravedigger. “I have located her. Do you wish me to give you the images that I have seen?”

  “Yes.”

  Druaga stood up straight and reached out with a single finger. He placed it between Charity’s eyes and she stiffened, expecting it to burn. In truth, it felt warm but nothing more.

  Images seemed to ooze from his fingertip, seeping into her mind’s eye. She was surprised to see that she recognized Pandora’s location: 1931 Gibson Avenue, the same house where Josef Goldstein had set down roots in Sovereign. It was there that Charity’s life had ended, leading to her eventual resurrection. The property had been bequeathed to Charity and Mitchell following Josef’s death but it had stood empty since the group had moved their operations to Hendry Hall.

  There she stood, however, in the very room where Charity had died: Pandora. She wore a strange set of clothes that seemed to be a perverse twist on Gravedigger’s own and though the vision was completely silent, Charity somehow got the impression that Pandora was engaged in some sort of conversation, but with whom?

  Other things flitted by at the edge of her awareness, sights and sounds that could only have come from the deepest pits of Hell. Charity heard the screams of the damned and she knew that there was a chance that she could be among them if she failed in her role as The Voice’s champion.

  The contact was severed as Druaga pulled back. Charity suddenly felt a void inside of her and she realized that while she’d been looking into Druaga’s mind, he had been looking into hers.

  “You are such a sweet thing,” he said, his voice so low that it almost sounded like a purring in her ears. “We relish the suffering of those like you most of all. The truly damned relish their sins but you… you’re so wounded by all of your failures. You strike against your own soul and do more damage than a demon like me could ever manage.”

  Charity looked down at the book and said, “Begone, back to the foul regions that you call home. Our business is done and your soul is cast back down to the shadows. Never darken my home again and I swear to leave you be.”

  Druaga laughed as he began to fade away. “That may prove to be a hard promise to keep, my Gravedigger….”

  The candle suddenly flared to life once more just as the demon vanished completely.

  Mitchell was at his lover’s side within seconds. “What the hell did he mean by that?”

  “I wasn’t sure anyone else heard it,” Charity responded, setting the book down on the floor.

  “I couldn’t make out most of what he was saying but I heard that last bit. You shouldn’t have let the bugger touch you.”

  “I think you’re right. He was in my mind. I have no idea what he saw or what damage he might do with it. Maybe he’s just a voyeur.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Me, too.” Addressing everyone in the room, she said, “I saw where she is. I want everyone dressed and ready for action in no more than ten minutes. Li and Cedric, you’re on car duty again. If she tries to escape on foot, you’ll do everything you can to keep track of her. Mortimer and Mitchell, you’ll both be on the ground. If you can engage her and bring her down, do it. Neither of you takes any action unless you see her get away from me. Understand?”

  Mortimer nodded but asked, “So where is she?”

  Charity wasn’t looking at Mitchell but she sensed his surprise at what she said. Gibson Avenue hadn’t been his home for very long but it had been where both his friend and his current lover had died. “She’s at 1931 Gibson. She’s in our old house.”

  “WHY ARE WE still here?” Locke asked.

  “I told you why. This is where Tamaki said she lived in the months before Josef Goldstein died.”

  “How did he know so much about Gravedigger anyway?”

  “His research into Pandora led him to other stories about immortal warriors. He found Gravedigger particularly interesting since there were reports of someone by that name operating here in the city. He put his considerable resources to finding out about her.” Pandora frowned. “Why do you ask these things? You’ve been inside my head the entire time.”

  “It took me some time to get my bearings. Having somebody take over your body can give a person a real shock, you know?”

  Pandora recognized the sarcastic tone but ignored it. She had come here because she wanted to get a feel for her opponent. Despite the fact that virtually everything from Charity’s time here had been removed, Pandora felt the trip had proven worthwhile. She could envision the woman walking these halls and sitting in these rooms. She had located a bedroom that had to have been hers.

  All of those things lacked obvious application when it came to combat but Pandora felt that a deeper understanding of an opponent was never a bad thing.

  “Hello, Pandora.”

  Placing her hand upon the hilt of her sword, Pandora slowly turned to the doorway. Gravedigger was standing there, blade held down at her side. “How did you find me?” was what Pandora asked, though her real concern was “How did you get inside the house without me noticing?”

  “I asked a demon.”

  “Somehow that seems appropriate. You’re consumed with Sin.”

  “Pot meet kettle.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  Locke replied inside Pandora’s head, just as Gravedigger did the same aloud. “It means that you don’t have any room to talk. You’re the same way.”

  Pandora drew her weapon. “I voluntarily accepted the demons into my soul to hold back their full power from the rest of the world. I was willing to become their prison so that people like you might be saved. But not only do you actively seek to interfere with that, now you choose to mock me?”

  “I’m just trying to point out the truth.” Gravedigger had still not raised her sword. “You made a mistake. Maybe it was a terrible one but that’s all it was. You’ve done your best to atone for it but you can never undo the past. All you can do is move forward and try to do the best you can. For all the centuries you’ve spent on this, on trying to put the devil back into the box, you’ve missed out so much. You could have told the world so many facts about its own past. You could have become an inspiration to so many people.”

  “An inspiration? I’m a villain!”

  “You refused to quit. You never gave up. You’re a strong, proud woman. That sounds pretty damned inspirational to me.”

  “You don’t understand,” Pandora said with bitterness. “Every time I see someone commit a horrible misdeed, every time a husband beats his wife, every time a war breaks out over some stupid disagreement about a border… All of those things can be laid at my feet.”

  “A demon told me not more than half an hour ago that his kind relish my sort of suffering more than any other – because the truly damned don’t care about their sins but that people like us punish ourselves over and over again, because of our guilt. Sounded to me like something that could be applied to you, too. The fact that you’re so tormented tells me that you’re a good person and it tells me that nobody is ripping you to shreds over this but you.”

  “Someone needs to,” Pandora said. “I deserve this.”

  “I really don’t want to fight you,” Gravedigger replied. “I think we could do a lot of good together. We have so much in common. Please let me help you.”

  “You serve The Voice. It directed you to kill evil people, didn’t it? Isn’t that how you’re supposed to remove your own sin? Don’t you wonder how those things
can go together? How do you become a better person by becoming a killer?”

  “Some people deserve to die. They’re a threat to everyone around them.”

  “Then you should kill me, too.” Pandora dropped into a battle stance. “Because I’m the biggest threat there is. I’ll destroy the world if that’s what it takes to undo my crime.”

  “That wouldn’t undo anything. It would just compound your mistake.”

  Pandora charged, swinging her blade with terrible ferocity. Gravedigger blocked the attack with a fluid motion and then began the combat in earnest by delivering a solid kick to Pandora’s stomach. The blow knocked the other woman back but did little to really slow her. She was chopping at Gravedigger again within seconds, though once again all of her movements were parried with consummate skill.

  “I’ve beaten you before. Why are you trying this again?”

  “Because there’s no alternative. You stand in my way. That means I have to deal with you. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.” Pandora punctuated her words by swinging for Gravedigger’s head. It was only the hero’s lightning-fast reflexes that saved her life. The blade sliced through part of her hood, sending the fabric flying.

  “I know you’ve beaten many fighters before but that was in your own body, wasn’t it? This one hasn’t got the same speed or strength that you’re used to.” Gravedigger slid to the side and raised her mini-crossbow. It fired with a quick flick of her wrist and the next bolt slid down into place.

  Pandora twisted to avoid it but once again she was undone by the limitations of her form. The bolt struck her in the side of her neck, leaving a deep furrow as it passed on and hit the wall behind her.

  Roaring with pain, Pandora struck back with increased ferocity. She used all of her knowledge of swordplay to drive Gravedigger back and finally one of her strokes slipped through the younger woman’s defenses. Pandora’s sword slipped between two of Gravedigger’s ribs and then retreated, leaving a gash that quickly began to flow with crimson.