MudMan (The Golem Chronicles Book 1)

by James Hunter

  “I was young, then, and quite sloppy. The boy’s corpse was discovered by the authorities several weeks later, and because of my carelessness, his murder was rightly laid at my feet. In those days, despite the technological advances, they still executed murderers by hanging until dead. Can you believe that? The barbarity of it all?” He took a deep breath as though savoring the notion. “I should’ve been hanged more than four thousand years ago, but I was spared. In those days my people were at war with themselves, and the rebels were doing surprisingly well. Capturing new territories by the day and executing nobles by the score. Bloody times, dark times.

  “That is why they spared me, because they were losing their war. You see, my brother worked for Atlantis Correction Systems as the high-warden over Cain’s prison, and the authorities—the greatest of all black-hearted murderers—agreed to pardon me in exchange for using my family connections to gain an appointment in the temple. Even at seventeen I was an accomplished technomancer, so my government funded my research, hoping I could covertly find a way to control Cain and release him as a weapon against the upstarts. Lir, good brother that he was, was only too happy to offer me an appointment as an under-warden.

  “While working there, though, my eyes were opened. Cain connected with me, thought to thought, mind to mind. He spoke through the walls of his dimensional prison directly into my consciousness. I could hide my heart and intentions from Lir, but not from my master. Cain set me free. He understood my truth. He understood the joke of black and white, good and evil: there is neither, only power. And murder? Murder is the ultimate power. The power of God. It was a truth I always knew, but which he encouraged me to embrace. He took me under his wing as a disciple, taught me the ways of killing, genocide, dark alchemy. Taught me to embrace what I am instead of hiding from it.

  “I’ve tried to free my Master countless times since he first spoke to me. The first was when I murdered Lir. I harbored him no particular animosity, but neither did I harbor him any love. Love is one of those vulgar notions, like good or evil, which serves only to restrain. I smashed Lir’s head in, too, just like the neighbor boy, hoping to tear open the doors confining my Lord. Sadly, my attempts have never met with success—too many missing elements. I was almost successful with you, until that bothersome Jew, Yitzchak, interfered with my work, but this time will be different. No guesswork, now. I have everything I need, thanks, in large part, to you, Levi.”

  “I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish by telling me all this,” Levi said, “but it doesn’t change a thing. I’m gonna come for you, Hogg. And I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna do the whole world a favor and eradicate you like the cancerous tumor you are.”

  “That is precisely what I desire, golem. Do you think I told you this story in some misguided hope that you will show me mercy or pity? Hardly. I neither desire nor need your clemency. I told you this because I want you to know just how badly I deserve my death sentence. I want you to know the depth of my depravity and corruption because I know the secret truth that drives your every action, golem. You are a killer, no different than me. You may disguise your hunger, try to suppress it, try to cover it in a veneer of righteousness and rationalize it as justice or vengeance, but you are a murderer of the first order.

  “This little history lesson was meant only to stoke the fire of your hunger, thus ensuring your participation tonight. Make no mistake: you belong to me, you are my creation, and I intend to have you back in my possession, where you belong. Where you can become what you were always meant to be. It will simply make things easier in the long run if you deliver yourself to me. Now, as I said, I have work to do, but I expect to see you this evening. 1:21 AM pacific standard time or there won’t be anything left of the girl to save.”

  The phone clicked and fell silent. The Mudman balled his fist, crushing the phone as a snarl curled the edges of his lips, and the seal in his chest blazed to life.

  TWENTY-SIX:

  Judas

  Ryder came to. Groggy. Thoughts slugging through her aching head—a low throb beating out a melody behind her eye sockets, keeping pace with the pounding of her heart. Just another dream, she reassured herself as she strained against the leather straps digging into her wrists, neck, waist, and ankles, securing her to a very familiar stone table. Another flashback, she thought, desperate to fight off the claustrophobia constricting her lungs, making every breath a struggle.

  She was fine. Fine, dammit. This wasn’t real. Couldn’t be.

  It had to be a nightmare. Had to be.

  Her head hurt so bad, like someone had taken a tire iron to her temple, then shoved a bagful of discount cotton balls inside her skull. Must’ve fallen and hit her head. That might explain the pain, the visions. She couldn’t remember much. Still, the cogs inside her brain were slowly squeaking to life, clanking along as her mind worked like fingers pulling at a stubborn knot. She’d been kidnapped by the Kobock Nation—that’s what the blue-skinned freaks were called, right? Kobocks? Who’d told her that?

  Chuck?

  No, not Chuck.

  Levi. Right. Levi.

  She’d been drugged and kidnapped, then slashed right down the center and stitched back up. A hazy thought, along with a single word, floated up like an air bubble surfacing in a pond: her belly sliced open and a chubby grub, with a circular mouth and too many eyes, thrust into her guts. Homunculus. That thought she stomped down, crushing it like a bug underfoot, refusing to think about the wriggling she sensed inside her.

  Drugged, kidnapped, stitched back together. Check.

  Then Levi had come for her. That much, at least, she remembered clearly. He’d obliterated the freaks holding her captive, freed her, and dropped her off at a hospital in Colorado. Chuck came after that, then the Sprawl … Everything about the Sprawl, though, seemed like a disassembled jigsaw of blurry images. All of the memories bleeding at the edges, running together in an incomprehensible montage …

  An endless desert …

  Bat-eared wolves …

  Flower-faced plant monsters …

  Definitely a nightmare. She was asleep, dreaming about her time in the cave again. She’d hit her head and passed out, that was the only thing that made any sense.

  Why couldn’t she wake up?

  She forced her eyes open and stared up at the ceiling. Instead of rough, uneven stone, she saw steel rafters and harsh fluorescent lighting hanging from steel cables. That wasn’t right, not even close. Despite the leather cuff running over her throat, she could rotate her head, so she looked left with a muffled groan. The altar of the wyrm god—an image she was sick to death of seeing—was where it was supposed to be, but the bodies were gone. If this was the dream, there should’ve been a mound of corpses piled in front of the ruby-eyed altar.

  A mound of them, deformed and mutilated.

  Sally Jensen from Newark should be there somewhere, staring up at a craggy ceiling with vacant eyes while flamingo legs protruded from her belly. That was the center of the dream, the tent pole holding everything together. But Sally Jensen wasn’t there. None of them were. And the floor below the altar wasn’t the rough bedrock of some twisted subterranean cave, it was cold, clean gray concrete. The kind of floor you might see in a warehouse or industrial park.

  Wrong, wrong, wrong. All of it.

  She craned her head a little further and discovered a lone prisoner, badly beaten and chained to the wall not far from her. A lean man of maybe sixty, with dark skin and gray hair. She vaguely remembered his face, though she couldn’t say how or from where. He was alive, the rise and fall of his chest testified to the fact, but looked dead to the world. She continued her sweep of the room, this time turning her throbbing head to the right.

  She spotted the towering stone pillars with their greasy firelight, exactly where they should be, but the iron, dropdown gate wasn’t. The medieval-looking son of a bitch should’ve been standing guard at the end of those pillars. It was gone, replaced by the bay of a warehouse, cl
osed off by a roll-up loading door with a thick chain running across its front. A neon exit sign loitered above the door. That sure as hell didn’t fit. Then she caught sight of a row of test-tubes, computer banks, and machinery buzzing and blinking on the far side of the room, blocked off by a thick wall of Plexiglas.

  The fuck was this?

  Given, the details of her rescue were fuzzy at best—indistinct things like mirages on a hot day—but none of this jived with what she remembered.

  Seriously. What. The. Fuck?

  It was like someone had ripped the guts out of that Kobock temple and crudely mashed them into an empty storage room in some modern office park.

  Bile rose in her throat, burning at the back of her mouth, but she swallowed it back down. No way in hell was she gonna get stuck lying in her own puke for only God knew how long. After a moment the urge passed.

  The ring of footsteps on concrete drifted to Ryder’s ears. Once more she tried to sit up, straining against her bonds while she searched for the source of the steps. “Oh, Sally,” she heard a minute later. “You weren’t supposed to wake up, not until it was time for the ritual.”

  Ryder bucked, inching her head off the table. Slack-jawed confusion bloomed on her face as she watched her sister, Jamie, waltz in through a connecting doorway that looked like it led to an office.

  Jamie moved toward Ryder with the brisk, professional strut of a seasoned nurse caring for an ailing patient who’d pushed the call button. A trio of blue-skinned Kobos trailed after her like deformed shadows.

  Definitely a dream.

  Her sister looked the same as she always did: slim build, short brown hair, hard eyes, and a thin face with sharp, almost severe, features. Ryder knew if they were to stand next to one another, the family resemblance would be uncanny, save for the fact that Ryder looked a few years older, had pink hair, and had tats splattered all over her chest, arms, and legs. Had Ryder finished high school, gone on to college, and gotten a decent job instead of getting hooked on coke, that’s exactly what she would’ve looked like.

  Jamie wore blue scrubs—not uncommon, considering her occupation—but Ryder couldn’t square that image with the medieval temple or the blue-skinned monsters surrounding her. Stranger still, Jamie had weird shapes painted onto her skin and clothes: unearthly symbols that shimmered an iridescent blue-green in the flickering light.

  Ryder shook her head, waggling it from side to side as much as the neck restraint would allow, trying to dislodge the vision before her. No luck. Her sister remained. “Is this a dream?” she finally asked, the words slurred.

  Jamie paused at the question, as though weighing options in her mind. Eventually she sighed, shrugged, then crossed her arms. “I could lie to you, Sally. Maybe that would be for the best. But I already feel sick to death about all of this and I guess you probably deserve an explanation. None of this is a dream, though a part of me wishes it were—that I’d made different choices.” She paused, eyes unfocused and far away. “It’s too late for second-guessing. We’ve already come too far.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Jamie? What the fuck are you doing here? What the fuck did you do, you crazy bitch?”

  Jamie uncrossed her arms and planted hands on hips, a scowl of disapproval on her lips. “Please, Sally, there’s no need for that kind of language. We don’t have a lot of time left together, so I’d really like it if we could end things on a good note. I know you’re going to be mad, but I want to at least try and explain because I do love you. All of this”—she glanced around and shuddered—“is so that we can finally do what should’ve been done years ago. Years ago, Sally. I’ve found a way to get justice for us. For our family.

  “Even if the justice system says there’s not enough evidence, we both know who is responsible for taking everything from us. We both know Cesar Yraeta butchered Mom, Dad, and Jackson—you know most of all since you had to watch.”

  “How’d you know—”

  Jamie held up a hand. “You never told me, but you used to talk about it in your sleep. Cesar killed everything we ever loved and he got away with it because he owns cops, attorneys, judges, and politicians. He owns the system, top to bottom. I know because I’ve been trying for sixteen years to set things right. Sixteen years of pointless litigation and endless police reports, which always get lost. Sixteen years of closed doors and red tape. It can’t be done—he’s guilty and everyone knows it, but he’s also untouchable. The law might hold people like us accountable, but not people like him. He can do whatever he wants. Kill whoever he wants—and he’s killed a lot of people—and our legal system will always turn a blind eye.”

  “Holy shit, you’ve lost your fucking mind, Jamie. You’re crazy. A certifiable nut-job.”

  “No.” She shook her head, a sad smile tracing her lips. “I’m thinking more clearly than I have in a long time. I realized something a couple of years ago. If Yraeta is outside the law, then I needed to go outside the law, too. And these”—she glanced back over her shoulder at the Kobocks, blanching—“these things, as horrible as they may be, are going to help us get what we deserve. Yraeta might be untouchable through normal channels, and he might have an army at his disposal, but now I have an army. Let’s just see how that monster deals with an entire supernatural nation of monsters even more bloodthirsty than he is.”

  The sad smile became a feral grin that belonged on a wolf instead of a woman.

  “So you orchestrated this whole thing?” Ryder asked, suddenly numb on the inside.

  Jamie shook her head. “Of course not. You think these things would listen to me? I’m a nobody. We’ve always been nobodys, Sally, and we always will be. That’s why Yraeta got away with what he did. I’m disposable and so are you—that’s a reality I’ve come to terms with. But the man running this show, Sally? He’s not invisible. And he’s going to get us what we’re due, and that’s what matters. All that matters.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Ryder asked, incredulous. “Let me lay down some truth for you, little sister. The guy running this show is a whack job, and he’s twisted as a fucking pretzel. He’s going to unleash a murder demon, Jamie. Let me say that again: a murder demon. Why would you believe anything an evil jackass like that would say? He’s not exactly the pinnacle of honesty.”

  “Once I realized what I needed to do—that I needed to go outside the law—I fell into some bad circles,” Jamie said, glancing away, eyes unfocused. “Drug dealers, bikers, freelance mercenaries. Bad people. But none of them were bad enough to do what I wanted done. Eventually, though, I stumbled onto a rumor about a place where you could find anything. Get anything for the right price. The Hub. I followed those rumors for over a year, and I found a way in—there’s an entryway in New York that even people like us can use.

  “Once I made it to the other side, I started asking around, and it wasn’t but a couple of weeks before Hogg found me. Showed up right out of the blue with an offer in hand. This thing we’re going to release, this murder demon, once it’s free it’ll be unstoppable. Not even Yraeta will stand a chance—”

  “You must be high or stupid,” Ryder interrupted. “Seriously. You really think this fucking monster is gonna do your bitch work? You’re supposed to be the smart one, Jamie. How could you be such a moron?”

  Jamie nodded her head slowly. “I’ve … I’ve seen him.” She shuddered, then folded her arms across her chest and hugged herself. “Hogg showed me. I”—she paused and ran her hands over her biceps as though to eradicate some chill deep in her bones—“I talked with him, the murder demon. We made a deal. If I free him, he’ll avenge us. He swore it on his power, and I believe him.”

  Tears began to leak down Ryder’s face, running over her cheeks and staining the gray stone black. “But we’re family, Jamie. I know we’ve never seen eye to eye on a lot, but how could you do this to me?”

  “I’m not doing it to you, I’m doing it for you. You deserve justice, just as much as Mom or Dad or Jackson. None of us walked awa
y that day. That day broke you—it broke us both. The drugs and alcohol, the boys. It all started after that,” she said. “He broke us. You always tried to hide it, but I know how much you resent me. You resent me because of what you had to do, what you had to give up to protect me and cope with what you saw.

  “He spared your body, but he murdered your future, Sally. Mine, too. I’ve got a degree, a house, a good job. But I’ve never had a boyfriend. The thought of starting a family or bringing a child into a world like this, a world where criminal tyrants massacre families and walk away, is unthinkable. It makes me sick.” She balled her hand into a tight fist. “He killed everything that day. No survivors. And if we can pay the price so no other family has to live through that? It’ll be worth it.”

  Ryder didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything. She sobbed silently onto the stone. Jamie had always been a bitch, but she was still family. The only family Ryder had. The only real, lasting relationship she’d managed to keep ever.

  Jamie cleared her throat and backed up a step, running hands over her scrubs, smoothing away nonexistent wrinkles. “I’m sorry it had to be like this. But I promise, it’ll be over soon.” She turned to go, then faltered and glanced over one shoulder, refusing to meet Ryder’s eyes. “I’ll be back with the doctor in a bit,” she said. “Don’t struggle, that’ll only make things worse and nobody wants that—”

  Jamie fell silent as her cell phone buzzed, flickers of light showing through the thick fabric of her pocket. She pulled the phone out and glanced down at the caller ID; the color drained from her face, her complexion suddenly ghost white. And then she was gone, rushing back toward wherever she’d come from, phone held out as though it were a deadly rattler just waiting to bite.