A Mystery of Light

by Brian Fuller

  “Remember, gentlemen,” Crane said. “The goal is Dread destruction. There is no capture and interrogate on this op. You see a Dread, you burn him. Got it? No exceptions.”

  Crane’s gaze seemed to linger on Helo for longer than anyone else while the rest of the team uttered a hearty “Yes, sir.”

  Sparks patted Helo on the back, his gray eyes alight with a kind of malice. “No exceptions, Helo.”

  Twenty minutes later, he and Sparks turned out of the alley in the Ford Escape, loaded with BBGs and BBSGs, Stingers, and bricks of C4. Getting pulled over by the cops was not an option, so Helo kept the speed modest and toed the line at the stop signs. The plan was to park in the back of the building so the vehicle wouldn’t be spotted from the street.

  Sparks had a hungry look in his eye, but his posture was relaxed, like he was on the way to a rivalry game he knew his team would win. It didn’t seem like confidence or like he was cocky. He clearly enjoyed this stuff in a professional, barely-staying-inside-the-lines sort of way.

  They turned into the parking lot, and Helo killed the headlights. The theater appeared all the more dead and foreboding in the dark, the early blush of oncoming dawn silhouetting it against the horizon. The rotting structure seemed to stare down at them, a tomb extending an invitation for a couple of fools to enter.

  Helo could feel it now. The vague sensation he’d felt from across the street had matured into a full-fledged unease up close. The greasy torching effect of a Sheid was somewhere nearby.

  “You feel it?” Sparks said, eyes tight.

  “Yep. Call it in.”

  “Looks like this trip will get hot after all,” Sparks said. “Crane, this is Sparks. There’s a Sheid in there for sure. No visual. Just the taint. We’ll be in there in two minutes. Bring the sanctified weapons, kids. I’ve got a sanctified knife and His Holiness, the Helo.”

  Helo parked the car on the sidewalk at the rear of the theater, backing up into a weedy bed right next to the theater’s exterior wall. After killing the engine, he grabbed his gear and got out. The roof was a good thirty feet up. This was going to take some Virtus.

  Sparks waved, flared his Strength, and bounded into the air, clearing the roof. Helo joined him a moment later, coming down on the roof with an audible crack. One of several exhaust vents still spun with a rusty squeak. Thirty feet away, a chained maintenance door waited.

  “Approaching entry point,” Sparks said quietly into his comms unit as they approached the door, weapons up. The feel of the Sheid was weaker up here, back to the barely perceptible sensation he’d experienced during the stakeout.

  Sparks pulled the rusty chain apart with his hands and turned the reluctant knob. “This door’s going to whine like Faramir.” And then he pushed. Helo had to catch it before it fell in, its rusted hinges giving out completely and noisily. He leaned it against the wall on the inside.

  “So much for stealth,” Sparks said with a grin.

  They risked a quick burst of illumination from gun-mounted tactical lights, finding nothing but an empty stairwell leading down into darkness. Sparks led the way, taking the steps slowly, feeling for each one. The air was dead and cool but somehow still stifling—the breath of a crypt just opened, a quiet reserved for churches at midnight.

  The steps ended at a landing with a metal door that had a rectangular cut-out window. Sparks peered through it.

  “Nothing,” he said. “This one’s going to scream too,” he said as he depressed the lever on the handle and pulled it open. And scream it did.

  BBSG first, Helo snapped through the door and found himself face-to-face with a Dread who had his back pinned against the wall. He was about to blast him but held up. Something wasn’t right. Sparks came out directly after and froze, too.

  The Dread, who had tats crawling up his neck, was dressed in dark slacks, a white shirt, and a red vest with the Red Angel Theater logo embroidered on it. His mouth was turned up in a customer-service smile, but his blank eyes took in nothing. Dust had settled on his shoulders.

  “The hell?” Sparks said, waving his hand in front of the Dread’s eyes.

  “Enjoy the show,” the Dread said, eyes unfocused, voice animated but devoid of warmth. “Concessions are in the lobby. No food or drink in the theater, please.”

  Not wanting to raise an alarm with gunfire, Helo angel-fired his chest, the uniform collapsing onto a pile of dirt.

  “I really want that Bestowal,” Sparks said. “It’s wasted on you. Control, one Dread down. No others in sight. We’re on the second-floor balcony.”

  The balcony stretched away to their right, a wide-open space with dusty, broken tables and furniture. To their left yawned the opening of a wide stairwell leading downward.

  Sparks took point, risking the tactical light to guide them down curved, red-carpeted stairs trimmed out with gold on the sides and edges of each step. Sparks held up his hand and then signaled for Helo to take a look. Helo craned his neck around and flicked on his light, finding a wide lobby with a ticket counter and concessions area, each occupied by two Dreads standing in the same dull stupor as the one they’d encountered by the upstairs door.

  “Four reds,” Sparks reported to control.

  “Say the word and we’ll breach the front door,” Crane said.

  Helo shook his head, and Sparks nodded in agreement.

  “Hold on that,” Sparks said. “This smells wrong. You’ve got to see this. Activating camera.”

  Sparks activated his chest-mounted camera, and together they took the rest of the stairs into the lobby. Already Helo could sense the Sheid’s taint crawling up his back, distant yet present. They stepped over the stanchion rope leading up to the mahogany ticket counter. Two uniformed Dreads—these with bowties—had all the marks of ex-gangbangers. Helo kept his weapon on the two Dreads standing dumbly at concessions. Sparks approached the counter but then lowered his gun.

  “This is mental,” he said, waving his hand in front of the Dreads’ eyes as he had with the one upstairs. “Makes no sense.”

  “Avadan doesn’t,” Helo said. “I’ve seen Dreads controlled before, but not like this.”

  “Welcome to the Red Angel Theater,” one of the Dreads intoned. “The cost for this evening’s show is twenty dollars per person.”

  “Helo,” Sparks said. “I think I forgot my wallet. Can you get this one and I’ll pay you back?”

  Helo crisped the Dread’s heart with Angel Fire. His companion at the counter didn’t even blink, even with Sparks’s light in his face.

  The Dread extended his hand robotically toward the back. “The theater entrance is to your left and right. Enjoy the show.”

  Helo turned him to dust with another blast.

  Comms crackled. “Smells like a trap,” Crane said. “Your call, Sparks.”

  “We’ll keep poking around,” Sparks said. “So far it’s been too easy. Helo, why don’t you go order some popcorn while I have a look at that door behind the counter?”

  Helo nodded and jumped the stanchion rope, striding across the dusty carpet toward the remaining two Dreads. The dark concession stand had been stripped of all equipment, the Dreads’ red halos shining through the empty glass where rows of candy had once been displayed. These Dreads wore the same outfits as the others but without the bowties. Helo’s flesh crawled. This was weird, even by Avadan standards.

  “Concessions may not be taken into the theater,” the female Dread said. “You may eat on the balcony just up those stairs. What can I get for you today?”

  Helo dropped them both with quick blasts of Angel Fire. Sparks met him a few seconds later. “Just a dead security room back there. How ’bout we go see what’s showing in there?”

  “Yeah, but not through the audience doors,” Helo said, shining his light around the lobby. “There’s an employee entrance by the door. It’s got to go backstage.”

  “Oddly sensible for you,” Sparks said. “You know Shujaa’s going to be furious if he doesn’t get to drive a car thro
ugh the doors.”

  “Let’s go,” Helo said.

  Sparks took point, and Helo followed him to the heavy wooden door with a sign that read “Red Angel Personnel Only.” The door was locked, but with a quick burst of Strength and a yank, it busted open, the clank of the breaking lock echoing throughout the place. If anyone was on watch at all, they had to know they’d been infiltrated. A hallway with offices stretched ahead and then turned right.

  One by one they cleared the rooms, nothing but empty spaces with telephone wires and the occasional filing cabinet nobody had removed when the place had shut down. It was odd to think Ramis had been in this building at some point, coming to awaken Allison June Parker to become the Ash Angel Cassandra. This place had probably been one of Avadan’s lairs for years.

  They turned right, and after a few feet found a door labeled “Actors Only.” The Sheid’s taint grew stronger the deeper they went into the theater. The quality was different than the wind-and-weather-slinging Sheid they’d faced at Deep 7. This wasn’t the Sheid everyone was starting to call Whirlwind.

  “Can you feel it?” Sparks said.

  “Haven’t stopped feeling it,” Helo said.

  Sparks raised his eyebrows. “I lost it on the roof. One of those Angel Born things?”

  “Probably,” Helo said. “We find the Sheid, we call in the cavalry.”

  “Roger that,” Sparks said. He yanked on the door, and it opened obligingly but with the same whining protest as the rest of the doors in the place. Dressing room doors, some open, some closed, lined the left wall, empty racks and mannequins lying haphazardly around the room.

  Someone was humming inside one of the dressing rooms. Sparks walked over, gun up, and pushed the door open. Helo came up behind. It was a female Dread, sitting in the darkness in front of a mirror with smashed-out light bulbs. Her dress was Egyptian, like Cleopatra’s. She absently hummed a song Helo didn’t recognize. She seemed as insensate as the rest of the Dreads.

  For a horrifying moment, Helo thought it was Aclima. But it wasn’t. She had dark hair but was short and skinny.

  Sparks looked at him. “Burn her before you fall in love with her.”

  Helo raised a hand, but Crane came over comms. “Hallow her and interrogate. Finish her when you’re done.”

  “Copy that,” Sparks said, eyes narrow, like he didn’t see the sense in it. “Helo, you Hallow. I’ll do the talking.”

  Divine light spilled onto the floor, surrounding the Dread woman. She blinked and stood with a jerk, spinning, eyes wide.

  “Careful there,” Sparks said.

  “What . . . what do you want?” she said, seeming lost. Then she looked at her costume.

  Sparks pushed her back to the wall, the barrel of his shotgun to her chest. “What in the bloody hell is going on in this place?”

  “One of Avadan’s lairs,” she said. “He parks Dreads here until he needs them. And there’s a prison here. If you take me out of here, I’ll show you where it is.”

  “Finish her and move on,” Crane said over comms.

  “Wait!” she said, hands up. “There’s a trapdoor on the stage. There are . . . guards. I can help you get past them!”

  “Sorry,” Helo said. He extinguished the hallow, and her face went slack. Then he shot Angel Fire through her heart, her costume falling to the ground.

  “Time to enter stage right,” Sparks said, striding eagerly through the room. The Sheid’s taint strengthened, and Sparks shouldered his gun and pulled a sanctified bowie knife from the sheath at his belt.

  “Go time, Helo,” he said. “You want to invite the rest of the boys in, or you think we can handle it?”

  If Aclima was here, Helo did not want more Ash Angels crawling all over the place. “We got this.”

  Chapter 11

  The Show

  Another slack-eyed Dread stood near the stage, headset on, a clipboard in his hand. A single red light shone down on center stage, and Helo wondered where its power came from.

  “Break a leg,” the Dread said blankly as they approached.

  Sparks pointed at him, and Helo fried his heart, the clipboard clattering noisily to the ground.

  “Take a peek around and see what kind of audience we got,” Sparks said, motioning Helo forward.

  It was odd for Sparks to give up the initiative, though it made sense. As a Blank, Helo was less noticeable to Dreads. And at some point a Dread would actually defend himself rather than just sit there and get massacred.

  Helo crept up to the side of the dusty, dark curtains and angled his head so he could see into the auditorium. Dreads, probably fifty of them, sat clumped together in the first few center rows, all unmoving, eyes fixed on the empty stage. The Sheid’s taint was even stronger here. It was somewhere beneath them.

  Helo backed away and relayed the information to Sparks. “We can’t leave them at our backs,” Helo said. “If Avadan figures out we’re here, all these guys will come at us. I say we find the trapdoor, then bring the rest of the team in quietly behind them.”

  Sparks considered it. “I’d like to put some C4 in their laps.”

  Crane came in over comms. “Helo, how many of those can you Angel Fire?”

  “Not sure,” he said. “It’d probably drain me to do it.”

  “Get started,” he said. “Fifty Dreads down is a major win. Sparks, you hunt for the trapdoor. Go now. It’s about fifteen minutes till dawn. I’m moving the other teams near the building. As quiet as you can, gentlemen. If that Sheid figures out you’re around . . .”

  “Roger that,” Sparks said, then turned to Helo. “C4 would have been more fun.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Sparks led the way out, and as soon as they stepped onto the creaky, uneven stage, every Dread stood up and applauded like they were A-list celebrities. They snapped their guns at them, but the Dreads just kept doing it, the red light of the stage seeming to deepen their auras.

  “So much for quiet,” Helo muttered.

  “Why won’t they stop?” Sparks said.

  Helo’s face pinched. This was madness. “What would an actor do?”

  Sparks kept his gun up. “I don’t know? Wave? Bow?”

  They tried it, and sure enough, the lot sat back down, hands on the armrests, and stared blankly at the stage again.

  Helo jogged to the edge of the stage and jumped off while Sparks examined the stage floor. Dust danced in the red light. The tight grouping of the Dreads would make frying them easy. He strolled down the row, Angel Firing the Dreads, leaving dirt and clothes on every seat. Each seat bottom snapped back up as the weight changed, excepting a few broken ones.

  After sixteen burned Dreads, the Sheid’s presence grew stronger.

  “Sparks!”

  “I know!” he said. “I think I found the trapdoor. Let me see if I can open the bloody thing.”

  “Call it in,” Helo said. “It’s going to get hot in here.”

  Helo fried a few more, keeping one eye over his shoulder. The Sheid’s taint kept growing beyond what most Shedim radiated. They were in trouble. While this wasn’t Whirlwind, it was definitely one of Avadan’s category-five Shedim.

  He burned numbers twenty-four and twenty-five and checked on Sparks. Sparks was fighting the taint, his face a scowl of concentration as he wedged the bowie knife into a crack in the stage.

  “Strength stomp it!” Helo yelled over his shoulder. The time for quiet was over. He picked up the pace, the Virtus draining from him with every blast. “Crane, get people in here.”

  “Two minutes.”

  “Really?”

  Wham! Sparks slammed his boot down, and a crack tore through the air, followed by a crumbling sound.

  “Got it!” Sparks yelled.

  The ground heaved. Helo flailed, but standing wasn’t an option. Ceiling tiles rained down around him, slamming onto the stage, dust filtering through the beam of his tactical light. The trembling stopped.

  “Helo!” Sparks yelled. Helo scrambled
onto the stage, finding Sparks peering down the hole, face pinched. “It’s down there.”

  A black, molten tentacle whipped out of the hole, and Sparks threw himself backward onto his butt to avoid having his head melted off. The ground shook again, and Helo fell to his knees. More ceiling tiles slammed down. A rack of stage lights banged onto the fragile wood, the echo booming through the theater.

  Gasps and expressions of surprise erupted behind him.

  “They’re awake!” Helo said.

  Then the Sheid burst from the hole, sailing into the air, both its arms tentacles of smoky hellfire. Fittingly, it was morphed as William Shakespeare. Sheid ahead, Dreads behind. They were going to get massacred.

  “Into the hole!” Helo yelled.

  The Sheid landed heavily on the stage between the hole and Helo, the floor cracking. The Sheid’s desecration field blasted out from underneath it, its tentacles whipping at them. Sparks Strength jumped one tentacle. Helo Hallowed the ground and ducked as the other tentacle whooshed overhead. The Sheid Strength jumped away, high and to Helo’s left, just before the hallow overtook it. Dreads were piling out of their seats and clambering up onto the stage, torching blasts flaring around him, some of them powerful.

  Sparks, wobbling like a drunk, jumped straight down into the hole, and Helo made for it with everything he was worth. But when the Sheid landed back behind the Dreads in the seats, the whole building shook again, and Helo buckled to the ground, then slid and tumbled headfirst into the open trapdoor.

  The fall wasn’t far. He slammed on top of Sparks, the glow of the sanctified knife just a few feet away. Helo rolled off and hauled him up to find him dazed, eyes darting around. The torching Dreads had gotten to him. Helo had to give him credit. He was fighting it, but there was no time! Dread feet pounded on the floor above him. In moments they would flood down like a pack of fast zombies and tear them apart. Helo flashed his tactical light around. A low hallway stretched stage left and right, but another trapdoor hung open five feet away. The Sheid had to have come from there.

  A Dread jumped down the hole, and Helo blasted its head off with his shotgun. He had to preserve his Virtus.