“Oh, my God…” Tina prayed as she never had in her life, trying to push herself back through the seat again. “Why me? What do you want?”
“Your pretty little head on a plate,” the man replied. “I want to finish the job my mentor was too squeamish to take care of. Kalzar wants you dead. That’s good enough for me.”
“Please, somebody help me!” Tina screamed, even though she knew it was useless. After all the screaming she’d done on this night, surely help would have arrived if it was within earshot.
The man’s smile faded. “No use screaming,” he said. “It just makes me angrier. I will kill you regardless, but there are many ways to die. If you don’t play nice, I’ll make sure your death is long and painful.” He reached for her. Before he could touch her, a sound from outside the car caught his attention—the sound of footsteps on the pavement.
“Mr. Omar.” This voice was controlled, and held the smallest trace of a foreign accent, but Asian rather than middle-eastern. The man with the hunter’s eyes pulled himself out of the car so fast he almost bashed his head against the roof. Tina looked out past him and saw a teenaged kid standing calmly about ten feet from the car. There was nothing remarkable about him. He was just a kid, just like the kids she saw at school every day.
But by this time, Tina was convinced that nothing would save her, that this boy was just another in the endless stream of men come to destroy her on this night. She studied him—if he could keep the man he called Omar occupied for long enough, she could sneak out the door. There was enough wild country in the park that she would have a real chance to escape.
But from the looks of this confrontation, it would be over too quickly to allow her to fade into the distance. Omar was a perfect physical specimen: large, strong, fit, ruthless. The boy was small, lightly built, and—to all appearances—completely outmatched.
“How do you know my name?” Omar asked him.
“You’re famous,” the Asian kid said. His tone was scathing. “Didn’t you know? There are posters of you all over the city with your face on them and Killer written underneath. Your advertisements. Haven’t you seen them?”
As the boy drew closer, Tina realized that he wasn’t as calm as he seemed. He was shaking. His hands twitched a bit as though he wanted to clench them into fists, but he kept them open and loose.
“You’re a hero, huh?” Omar growled. “You like the girl, do you? Seems like everyone wants this girl. Well, if you want her so much, you can join her!” Omar lunged at the Asian kid, clawing for his throat.
What Tina saw next astounded her. Omar moved so fast she thought the kid would be on the ground before she could blink.
But the boy moved faster. Omar’s hand whistled by the kid’s head in a blur. She saw nothing but the wind left by its passing, ruffling the boy’s hair. The kid spun away from the blow in a perfect circle, using the momentum of his motion to power a blow to Omar’s neck as he stumbled, thrown off balance when his target failed to take the hit. Tina could hear the muted smack of flesh against flesh, the brittle crack of breaking bone. With a grunt, Omar crumpled to the pavement like a marionette with its strings suddenly cut.
Silence fell upon the night. The kid stood over the motionless Omar, clearly waiting for something. Then she heard the threats.
“I’m gonna kill you! I’m gonna fuckin’ rip out your throat!” The downed man growled and cursed, tried to look up at the kid, but was clearly unable to use his arms or legs.
“Perhaps,” the kid said. “Maybe one day soon. But not right this minute.”
Tina had clambered over to the open door during the fight, hoping to escape. But it was over so quickly she never even had a chance to leave the car.
The Asian kid turned to her and held out a hand. The look of rage he’d given Omar softened to compassion as he met her terrified gaze.
“Please, allow me.” He held his hand out to her. She hesitated a moment, then took it. “You must hurry,” he said. His voice was as calm as if he were helping her out of the car to attend an opera.
“Y-you broke his neck,” she said, looking down at the growling, cursing Omar.
The kid nodded. “Yes. But it will not last. Even as we speak, he is healing. We have only minutes, perhaps only seconds. Please, hurry.”
Tina didn’t need any prompting. She stepped out of the car and around the fallen Omar.
A small smile crossed the kid’s face as he looked over her shoulder.
“What is it?” Tina turned to see what he was looking at. She could see a faint glow of red and blue flickering above the treetops.
“Police,” he said. “Someone must’ve heard the noise.” The kid looked down at Omar, whose fingers were beginning to move. Omar looked up at them with such venom that Tina took a step back.
“You’re both going to scream until your throats explode when I kill you!” Omar promised. He clawed at the ground, obviously trying to get up, but failing.
“Quickly,” the Asian kid said. “Walk toward the street. The police will see you sooner there.” He began leading her through the deserted park, across the playground, and up the hill toward the well-lighted roadway. She leaned on him heavily as she stumbled along in the dark, wincing as her bare skin was scratched by bushes and undergrowth. Thank God, Zack had left her shoes on.
“How much further?” she asked.
“Not much, and I think Mr. Omar will not readily follow you under the circumstances.”
Tina noticed that she was hanging onto this boy like he was her last hope of heaven, and she tried to loosen her grip a little. Her hands wouldn’t unclench. He looked down at her and smiled as if he understood everything she felt.
“Thank you,” Tina said, and the tears burst from her eyes in a flood. She staggered. He held her up and she leaned against him as they made their way toward the sidewalk. Before they stepped out of the park and onto the sidewalk, she tugged the front of Zack’s letter jacket together. It and her shoes were her only attire. She could hear the sirens now. They were drawing closer.
“Have courage, Tina. Your trials are not over yet,” the boy said. They stopped by the edge of a building under a bright light. “Stay here. You will be safe here until the police arrive. Tell them everything you have seen tonight.”
“W-what about you? Aren’t you staying?”
He shook his head. “My place here would be difficult to explain, and I can serve you better from a distance.” He let go of her and backed into the shadows even as the police cars rounded the corner, lights flashing.
“What about Omar?” Tina asked, frantic. She didn’t want him to leave.
“He will not risk the possibility of being captured by the authorities. He is powerful, but he is not a Wyrm. He has almost assuredly recovered by now, so he will not stay, nor will he try to get at you again tonight. Stay within the light, Tina. Go to the police when they come. I will be near.”
With that, the Asian kid disappeared into the night.
Tina turned and ran to the police car as it pulled up to the curb beside her.
nine
Usually, the lights of the city made Justin feel at ease. The manic buzz of the electric arc lamps and the harsh definition of light and shadow in their unearthly glow were fitting companions to the low buzz and dark shadows that Justin always felt in his own mind. And in some rarely acknowledged corner of his thoughts, he felt they offered him hope. For while he could rarely escape that unintelligible static in the background of his own head, he could always fly above the lights, invisible and silent. When he did so, it made him feel better.
But tonight he was too disturbed for the usual soothing effects of night flight to kick in. That intrusive hum in the back of his mind was louder than usual, almost blaring. It harried him, tore at him until he wanted to scratch bloody gashes into his body. If he thought he had a chance to get rid of it, he’d give into the urge, tear his own skin until it was gone. But he knew it was hopeless. That buzz had been a part of him since the day h
e’d become what he now was, and it would continue to haunt him as long as he breathed. He flapped his powerful wings and let the wind take him, flying as swiftly as he could away from Tina, away from her now-dead ravager.
His acute night vision picked out the tiny sparkle of his skylight, far below. With a vicious twist, he tucked his wings closer to his body and dived steeply toward it. His muscles sang to him as he moved through the sky. As he neared the roof, rocketing through the sky like a comet, falling ever faster, he suddenly spread his wings to their fullest extent to slow his descent.
He felt his tendons creak and his blood rush through his veins. It took his mind off what he had just witnessed, what he had just done, and he reveled in the moment, at last forgetting himself in the joy of flight. The top of the building sped toward him and he felt an almost uncontrollable need to smash into it, to send cinder blocks and blood flying as he landed. He craved violence. Let the building attempt to stop me, he thought. Let it try!
It was a danger he faced every time he entered the Wyrm state. His anger was always pushing against his control, always threatening to turn him into some mindless, destructive beast. To control this violent form, his mind had to be focused on an even greater anger, an even more pressing purpose.
Again he spread his wings, unfurling them to their fullest extent to cup the heavy, wet air. Muscles burned along his back as the thin, leathery flaps strained with the demands he made of them. He slowed, then touched down lightly by the skylight.
His anger still pulled at him. Rip the skylight off now, it said, and dive through and smash into the floor.
Justin’s feet scraped the roof. Tarred gravel crunched under his talons, the power pulling at him. Finally he could resist no longer. With a growl he lashed out.
The low brick wall that separated his building from the next blew apart at the blow. Bricks and clay-red dust flew onto the roof, landing with a clatter, until finally even the smallest fragments skittered to a stop.
Why had he killed the boy? The child had battered Tina, but he was young. He could have been saved. He could have learned. If Justin had just let him live, let him go, the boy would never have done anything like that again. Justin had seen that truth in the boy’s eyes before he killed him. So what had possessed him? A bloody murderer, that’s what he had become. The Dragon had not ordered Zack’s death. The decision to kill had been Justin’s alone.
Justin’s dragonling body—like most of the gifts of the Dragon—did not respond well to thoughts of altruism. Just violence. That’s all it understood. Justin knew that, and yet he’d gone to the car when he smelled the blood, almost certain of what he’d find, had used the shadows to hide himself, had come down on Zack like the hand of judgment for his sins.
And he had murdered the boy. He could have saved Tina without killing, without revealing himself. But he’d chosen the other path. The blood-soaked path. And he hated himself for it.
He growled into the night and ripped another chunk out of the knee-high wall.
You are a fool, Justin, he told himself.
He paced across the roof, trying to master the dragon form that wanted to slay, to rend, to destroy. His Wyrm self called to him to fly into the air, find another victim, or maybe many victims, and rip them to shreds.
He had played a deadly game and Zack had paid the price. His original intent had not been to kill the boy. It had been to insure Tina’s safety.
And why did you think that was all that you’d get? Everything you touch runs with blood. Justin cursed himself. His howl of despair shattered the night.
He should have known he might lose control. He should have taken that into consideration, but he had failed to, and now he had alienated Tina forever.
What kind of protector are you? You should know by now. You cannot protect anything you love. You are no shield. You are only useful as a weapon, as a poisoned dagger that destroys whatever it touches. He dropped his head into his clawed hands. Justin had not been in charge of his body at all, despite his good intentions. It was as though his Wyrm state was nothing but an automaton assigned to slay. Once his anger sparked the machine’s engine, there was no stopping it.
Justin roared into the night again and slapped his claws into the sides of his face. His talons bit into his scaled flesh and he ripped downward, tearing his cheeks.
Fiery pain ran through him. His muscles flexed in response. When his vision cleared, he realized he had leapt high into the air, and now was falling. The building was coming at him sideways. He hit the roof with a crash. Tar and gravel flew and one of his wings snapped. He roared again with pain as he slid across the gravel, crumpling a satellite dish as he rolled.
Tina had recoiled from him, had screamed at him to go away, had fainted before his eyes in stark terror.
Now all the good he might have done by saving her was erased. She was more afraid of him than she’d been of the boy he’d killed.
Slowly, Justin stood up.
His breathing calmed. His wing popped, shifted. The wet sound of cartilage rubbing against bone ground through his body. Slowly, ever so slowly, the wing rose behind his left shoulder and reformed to its natural shape. No wound ever lasted, whether Justin was in dragon or human form. He healed so quickly that the process was visible to the naked eye. It was part of the master’s blessing. Part of the blessing of this cursed, vengeful gift of eternal life. He never had a lasting scrape or a scab. No virus could ever gain a foothold in his body. Bacteria in his blood stream died long before they could multiply. Even his veins were free of the heroin tracks that marked the arms of normal junkies.
Justin walked over to the combination latch and opened it. He dropped through the open skylight and into his apartment.
He let the pain soak through him during the entire process of sloughing off his unnatural skin. He deserved it. Every moment of pain, every instant of agony. It should have been him back in the park lying there with a hole in his chest, not Zack.
When the transformation was complete, Justin staggered down from the dais, wet and numb. He tossed the skin into his new fireplace—much safer than a Dumpster, why hadn’t he thought of it before?—and watched it burn. Then he showered and dressed.
Finally he slumped into his chair and pulled out his heroin and the tools he needed to use the drug. He’d had the fleeting thought that perhaps tonight, his good deed, the pain he’d rescued Tina from, would enable him to forgo his need to blank his mind, but even his good deeds turned rotten on him. He’d never forget the look on Tina’s face just before she fainted. He’d seen the monster he was, reflected hideously in her eyes.
The preparation for the injection passed like a blur before him, and he let himself come to full attention only when he plunged the burning liquid into his arm. For a brief moment he enjoyed the rush of the drug as it raced through his veins—but his immortal body began to neutralize the drug’s poisons almost before he could enjoy the glow, and then he slipped into the lassitude of the aftermath. His eyelids fell to half-mast and he sank deeply into the chair, hoping for the blank slate of sleep.
Send me no memories, he thought. Please, no ghosts…
The lights of his apartment were a pleasantly dim glow, and he closed his eyes.
No memories, leave me to sleep…
Justinian?
No…
Justinian?
I said no—
—Dreams, my lord…my dreams. They do visit me so strangely. They taunt me. In them I run, as I cannot now. My lord? Beloved Justin…do not leave me. Where are you?
Would the past never let him be? He cried out against it, but it was pointless. Now he sank fully into the vision, so clear in his memory that he might as well have been there, in the castle. He was curled in a corner of his bed in a cold stone room, cursing the servants who had left them, who had run in fear from the plague. Justin had refused to urinate in his own bed, and yet there was no one to bring him a chamber pot. He’d crawled through his room, defying pain and delirium and
the easy path of succumbing to the illness. He’d finally found several of the glazed pots in a corner, empty and neglected. He’d dragged them back to his bed and mostly stayed there since then, unwilling to move a step further unless he had to.
The mongrel of a priest had declared Justin’s castle off-limits, in the hands of the devil. Justin was not inclined to dispute the priest’s contention. While he’d been delirious with fever, his children had died. His wife had struggled to nurse them all, had fallen further and further into despair and despond as they each passed, unshrived and abandoned by God’s representative here on earth, to their maker.
And now only he and Gwendolyne lived inside these walls, and Justin knew that they would not do so for long. Though the plague’s progress within Justin had at last slackened, it had finally taken Gwendolyne into its awful grasp. Fair Gwendolyne, his beloved wife, now rotted under the same hand that had so nearly destroyed Justinian and had laid waste to everything he loved. When she died, Justinian planned to take his own life if the plague did not take him, too.
The terrible force of disease worked upon Gwendolyne with a speed unlike anything he’d ever seen before, consuming her with an unearthly vengeance. He’d had two days from the onset of his first symptoms until he’d reached the point where his legs buckled when he walked upon them; where the pain was a constant, maddening thing; where boils had throbbed and pulsed under skin; where the fever took his senses from him and gave him visions and delusions of madness instead. And he’d lived through it. The worst of his fever had finally broken, leaving him weakened, ravaged by the illness, barely able to move, but no longer delusional.
It seemed to Justinian that when the children died, Gwendolyne had given up hope. After she’d buried the last of them, she had succumbed herself. In the space of hours, Justinian had seen Gwendolyne’s illness surpass his. Her slender throat was marred by a grotesque swollen knot under her chin, and she whimpered from the pain constantly, even in her sleep. When she was able to speak coherently, she whispered to him of her fevered visions, as she did now.
Dark Heart Page 12
