by LW Herndon
“This is how I need your help, Jez. I need to know this isn’t for nothing.”
Her lips pinched together in annoyance, but she nodded once.
“Promise you won’t come back here,” I added.
She raised her chin to retaliate, but I watched it click in her brain as she determined I wasn’t going to back down. “Fine. I promise,” she snapped. “What if something happens to you?”
I was halfway out of the car and turned around to open my palm, our connection forever inscribed in my hand. “You’ll know.”
***
I jogged off into the alley up ahead, hoping to cut off several blocks. It took me five minutes, but I reached the end of the few streets, turned the corner, and could feel the thrum of malevolence in an Indian drumbeat that stirred my blood.
I could feel evil too. It resonated around me, pressed close in a cold, damp fog that left a slick, oily taste in my mouth and a raw, burnt stink in my nose and throat. I’d picked up a sorcerer’s trail several blocks back in the car, interlaced with the sweet spice and chocolate of Aisha and the dank sweat of fear.
My talent picked up the scent and vibration, but both ratcheted higher from an overlay of cold, malicious intent to harm. The sick side dish of pleasure I sensed in the pure evil made me run faster.
Demons and other fantastical beings are associated in literature with pure evil, but from my experience, humans top them both. Pleasure differentiated whether need or desire drove an act of violence. With free will, the ultimate malice was to choose to derive pleasure from evil. A human trait, in my book.
The three-story brick building in front of me was an old theater that had seen better days and spanned the full length of a city block. No other inhabitants were within clear view.
The property across from the theater offered a long string of one-story white cement and tin-roofed buildings, rows of storage units surrounded by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. No threat of exposure from neighbors on that front. To the left and right, empty lots of brush and asphalt provided a channel between more abandoned buildings. Two small warehouses and a ratty textile building, abandoned and in various stages of disuse, filled in what I could see of the surroundings.
Newer, mismatched bricks covered the two large sets of the theater’s front doors, and boards blocked the concession window. The makeshift alterations hid none of the original structure. Two floors of blacked-out windows rose above the remains of the marquee. The sheen of the last few rays of the sun reflected oddly against the glass. Judging by the angle of reflection, I had roughly ten minutes until sundown.
I walked around the outside of the building, found no entrance, and came full circle with the front of the theater.
Somehow the sorcerers’ guards and extras were able to get inside. Aisha and Marco were inside as well; I could smell them. I didn’t have time to find the hidden entrance, and I didn’t have time to find the nearest fault line to maneuver into the theater from below ground. Though Shalim’s attack would come from that entry.
I jogged back to the rear of building and looked for another option.
Across the alley was a trash Dumpster for the building. That would work.
I looked around, but the streets were empty, quiet, and dead. I wedged behind the Dumpster and, with no small effort, leaned my shoulder into the baked metal and pushed. I get that Dumpsters are heavy, and while this one had wheels, the twenty-by-seven cubic yards of metal, half-filled with crap, wasn’t cooperative at first. Once I got a good foothold, it creaked and moved.
I suspected my new sigil kicked in some extra strength, since the effort got easier. No pain or tenderness nagged from my skin or muscles either. The noise, on the other hand, grated across the alleyway and ripped through the silence with a mechanical screech.
I pushed faster. The noise was unavoidable, but I didn’t need to drag it out.
There were only two windows on the backside of the building, neither close enough for me to get in, but one was close enough to the fire escape, which started about ten to twelve feet above the alleyway.
After scrambling to the top of the Dumpster, I grabbed the bottom rung of the fire escape. The slide bar that should have extended to the alley was missing. I worked my way up the ladder, angled my head away from the window, and used my shoe to smash the glass. A few more careful kicks evened out the jagged edges. Definitely not a quiet entry.
The room inside was small. Racks of steel shelving lined two of the walls—probably a storage location for the projection equipment and supplies. I crossed to the door and gripped the knob—not a budge. Everything nailed shut, tight, and secure.
I released a string of foul words that seemed appropriate for the situation and looked for a way to force open the door. The shelving to my left was built into the wall and vacant except for layers of dust and several tin boxes. The shelving on the other side was freestanding, probably set up later, and rickety, unevenly placed against the wall. I moved the shelves, expecting to have to construct a battering ram. Instead, I found the final wall housed a sliding door, sealed with an unusual dead bolt.
Finally, a break. The dead bolt mechanism locked from the other side, but at least my access held a key lock.
Two well-aimed whacks from the leg of the steel shelving and the key-lock mechanism snapped off. With several pokes of my knife, I hooked the exposed tumblers, twisted the dead bolt free of the doorjamb, and pushed my way into the projection room. Across the room, the projection hole looked down into the multilevel seating of the theater for a good view of who and what I was dealing with. At least it would if the window hadn’t been boarded shut from the other side, leaving only narrow cracks.
Sucking back the frustration clawing at me, I moved to the room’s second door and paused to take stock. I had no time to deal with emotions, but the wave of anger surged through me, and I counted. Fifty. Forty-nine. Forty-eight. I made it to thirty-seven before I stopped the launch of my unpredictable new talents.
I was so close to the collection of sorcerers that the vibration I’d felt earlier from them now amplified my own feelings back to me. Control. I needed control. Slow and steady, I regulated my breath. Emotions finally tamped down, my control and focus settled into place.
On the floors below were an undetermined number of Consortium members to deal with, two kids to extract, and a swirling miasma of demons ready to jump into the fray. Not to mention scouts, likely armed guards, and whatever new pets had been conjured. I didn’t have time to waste on mistakes.
I cracked open the door, checked for live bodies, and eased down the dark hallway to a stairway lit by flickers from two floors down. The basement level? Made sense. There hadn’t been casement windows to signal a basement, though the insulation on that level would restrict sound. It was an ideal place to keep captives without detection, with plenty of opportunity to do any number of bad things.
I pushed those thoughts away.
The stairwells were wide and winding, stripped of whatever carpet may have once made them grand and regal, and now just functional and creaky. Squeezing as close to the wall as possible, I reached the next level on what had been the concourse entry to the lobby. With a bricked front entry, the lighting in the lobby consisted of a bit of sun, escaping through the cracks in the boarded ticket-window.
The lobby was empty but activity echoed from within the theater. On the far side of the lobby, I could make out an adjoining stairway. I descended the stairs until I reached a metal fire door at the bottom.
I didn’t need a window to know the sun had faded and I was almost out of time. The minute I cracked the door, fluorescent lighting flickered from the ceiling of the hall ahead and spilled out into the stairway. I entered, pulled the door closed behind me, and scanned both sides of the hall for a hint as to where the kids might be held. The overhead flickered off, but a series of ankle-level running lights cut through the inky blackness.
The clear scent of spice and ginger from the back of the door and the
wall beside me caught me off guard and froze my movement. With a turn, I leaned closer and inhaled. Aisha. Along the wall I could detect her again, not a faint smell but one that resonated from full contact. I raised two fingers to test a dark smudge a few steps ahead. Blood coated my fingers, still wet and correlating with Aisha’s scent.
I had promised her I could find her, that I could track her by smell. She had not only listened but remembered. Given the position of her marks, she’d gone out of her way to leave me a trail. An action her captors had retaliated to with violence. I gritted my teeth, wiped her blood between my fingers, and assessed the doors lining one side of the hallway. She damn well better be alive, or I would test the full limits of my newfound anger and power.
The other side of the hallway was open but blocked by piled crates, huge dollies, pillars, and statues fanning out from a platform and crane several yards in. Small emergency lights dotted here and there like frozen fireflies. I quickly calculated my vulnerability to attack.
I could see how this place would appeal to Perry’s overrun sense of drama and self-importance.
Evidently, the theater had originally been a playhouse, with a basement for storage and stage access from below, before its migration to reel and film. There was no clear view up to the stage area, and what I could see amounted to years of stage supplies, which had been discarded somewhere beneath the theater’s seating area.
I kept to the wall with the doors and opened the first to find the electric closet for the building. Compact and efficient, the patch panels and wiring weren’t what I’d expected from a circa 1950s abandoned building. Slim steel panels and racks housed network cables and stacks of routers with active flickering tiny green lights. The building had undergone some major renovations, with someone tapped into the Internet in a big way. Not just a stopping point for Perry and his friends. Perhaps a major Consortium meeting spot?
I closed that door and headed to the next. The knob held firm, locked without a key entry on my side. Hearing muffled sounds, I moved behind a stack of crates just as the door swung open.
From a crack between the crates, I watched two people exit the room, both illuminated beneath the reactivated bright ceiling lights. The satisfied look on Bart’s face disturbed me, but the cold, malicious smile on the face of Marco as he turned to leave with him made me taste bile.
Bart turned back to a third man. “When the others arrive, I’ll signal for you to bring her to the hoist and secure her.”
The third man, an armed guard in black slacks, a matching shirt, and combat boots, nodded, his rifle casually fisted in his hand as if he didn’t expect trouble.
I took a slow, deep breath. This had narrowed my goals: one kid to extract, one nest of sorcerers to exterminate, and one clan of demons to head off. Seeing Marco’s black eyes gifted me with a grim clarity of insight.
I’d been too late. The vessel had been filled. I didn’t need confirmation to know that Perry had achieved his objective. He’d successfully migrated from his dilapidated carcass into Marco’s body, anticipating a new burst of longevity and the added use of the boy’s powers.
Bart’s comment also confirmed this was about Shalim and his clan.
If I didn’t figure out a way around this quickly, the wrong team was going to win.
CHAPTER 20
For the successful approach of a clan en masse, the cover of dark is preferable. Night protects the younger members, and the addition of a waning moon ups the ante of demonic energy. Tonight was two days post the last full moon. Energy influences every organism. Mystical entities, like demons, draw power from the expansion as well as the void of energy—an anomaly.
A waning moon and collective energy are all good for demon convergence. Unfortunately, the same is also true for sorcerers.
On a good day, I could spar within my clan and keep from sustaining debilitating injuries. That’s pitting me against one, two, maybe three of my own. Not my taking on Shalim and however many dozens of warriors he’d dragged with him.
I had recovered from my injuries. I might even be new and improved, but from my standpoint, my skills and strengths were pretty much unknown and unreliable.
Unfortunately, if Bart and Marco were any indication, the sorcerers were in peak shape and the Consortium-hired guards provided muscle and firepower. Whatever issue had existed between Perry and the main commander seemed resolved or removed. And now in Marco’s body, Perry was going to be a problem with a fit body and a ramp-up of power.
Between the two groups, my odds and Aisha’s looked bad. Quite bad, like bad to the power of ten bad. Then again, I never have good odds.
I stepped out from behind the crates. The guard turned to me and raised his weapon in one hand. The Taser in his other hand concerned me more.
I swung at his face with an andiron I’d scrounged from the prop pile behind me. A grasp of his Taser hand pulled me close enough to make his rifle useless. We grappled for two seconds, his mouth fitted with a wide smile, convinced he was better armed and more capable.
Fortunately, I was more determined. The Taser twisted back into his stomach. I squeezed his hand to execute the charge until his shaking forced him to release his rifle. With a quick snap of my palm, I smashed his head back into the concrete foundation wall. After the audible pop of his head and the roll of his eyes northward, he dropped to the floor.
Kicking his legs aside, I picked up the weapons and opened the door. It took a second to acclimate to the dim interior, but I made out the outline of a lump at the base of the opposite wall. The lump whimpered and tried to move, but the rattle of chains signaled the situation.
“Aisha.” I knelt down next to her. She flinched when I pushed the hair out of her face. In the light from the hall, I could see her bloodshot eyes, pupils large and unfocused. Streaked with dirt and tear tracks, her face sported a dark discoloration on one cheek with a swollen and split lip to match. I bit back my response, picked up one of her hands, and eyed the raw wounds around her wrists.
She squeezed her eyes tight and choked back a sob. Her arms pulled ineffectively at the shackles holding her, the chain strung from a sewage pipe along the wall.
“Marco,” she whispered.
“I saw him.” I touched her head softly and leaned closer to her ear. “I need to get you out of here.”
“I can’t leave him.”
“You don’t have a choice, Ish.” I spoke quietly to keep her calm. “I only have a few minutes to do this.”
“Not really.” The bulb above us flickered on with a bright white light that blinded me for a moment before my eyes refocused.
Cimejes, Shalim’s favorite strong-arm, knocked me out with a fist to my temple.
***
I came to hanging upside down in front of Shalim. His eyes full-flamed with fire reflected the bloodlust I could feel emanating in waves from the others behind me. I couldn’t move, but demons lined the walls. Their energy pulsated, and their images shimmered. I didn’t see Aisha.
I opened my mouth, and Cimejes’s fist slammed against my jaw. With a shake, I spat out blood and homed in on Shalim’s face. “You need to get out of here.”
“Son of man.” He didn’t mean that as a compliment. “Betrayal, like your namesake.”
The fist came again from the other side. I tried to blink back the pain. “Didn’t—” I paused to spit out more blood and heard a whimper from behind me. Fists held my ankles and more hands secured my arms, but they’d already tied my wrists behind my back. I couldn’t even twist around to see if she was okay.
Shalim crouched, his face close to mine. “I will flay her before your eyes, and then I will throw you back to the pit you crawled from.” I could feel the heat and pressure of his energy on my face, a blast from the furnace of a steam engine. “And I will dedicate all that is mine to ensure you never get free.” Shalim turned away.
Trust is a fragile commodity; once broken it’s incredibly hard to repair. My choices had pulverized Shalim’s trust. Even i
f I wasn’t responsible for this mess, I’d chosen to save the kids before I’d gone to Shalim with my findings on the Consortium. And though I may have prioritized my choices inappropriately in his estimation, it didn’t mean I wanted the clan to die. Even so, I wasn’t about to let Aisha die because of them. I needed him to listen to me. “You need to leave.”
Shalim turned back. His rage touched me from across the room. “You presume to tell me anything?”
I held on to my will even as he pressed to crush it from me. “Trying to warn you.”
Cimejes’s face came even with mine and he spat. The glob coated the blossoming pain in my jaw.
“We have all seen the product of your deceit.” The plumbing pipes on the wall started to jangle in concert with Shalim’s rage. “Did you not think we would see through your plan to use Brazko to bring us down? Your betrayal of Chaz, your destruction of Abraxas. They are all gone because of you. Your Consortium will be decimated.”
My Consortium. Gone? What? No.
***
“Well, all the little gremlins have come to roost. How convenient.” Bart’s voice dripped with sarcasm and joy, an unpleasant mixture. I couldn’t see him, but I could see Shalim’s face twist in rage. I also felt the pressure on my body change before Cimejes flung me at Bart. I still couldn’t move, but Shalim had sacrificed me as a distraction, a steak to an angry dog.
Bart didn’t want me and lunged aside.
I landed in the hallway, just outside the room, with a hard crack on the floor at his feet. He rolled me over with his foot. “Would appear you’ve worn out your welcome on all fronts.”
I blinked, finally able to get a quick glance around me.
The clan had shifted and released their corporeal forms as demons for a more convenient attack method of mist, but Shalim’s clan seemed confined to the space of the basement. Several large electrical sparks flashed in the air around the area for several seconds, and then the mist sank to floor level and hovered. Aisha lay in the midst of the haze, still shackled, her expression one of disorientation and fear. Bart gestured behind me to one of his plebes. “Take him with the girl and prepare them.”
