by Erik Lynd
He moaned. Then he tried to move. Broken bones protested, battered flesh, heavy like lead, pulled him down. But he managed to roll to his knees just in time for Apophis to appear at his side, dual blades raised.
“This is the right position for you. Do you finally understand?” Apophis said.
Somehow, miraculously, Christopher had held on to the Weapon as he fell. It had transformed back to a pocket knife—its usual disguise—during the fall, maybe to increase its chances to stay in his hand.
He would only have one chance, but he only needed to hook Apophis’ soul, it didn’t have to be a solid strike. Just a nick would suck his soul away, damn him back to Hell.
Ignoring the pain in his body, Christopher whipped the pocket knife around. It changed in mid-cut into the longsword he needed, energy running along its blade, hungry for violence.
Apophis jumped back. But not far enough. The tip of the Weapon sunk into his stomach. It sliced cleanly, nothing fatal, but deep enough. The tip of the blade cut in and out quickly. And pulled away…nothing.
Christopher stared at the Weapon in shock. It should have wrenched the soul from Apophis’ body. But there was nothing.
Nothing but the ache of longing coming from the Weapon. Horror filled him as realization began to dawn: the Weapon’s lack of soul lust. The way he had thought there was something off about these brothers. The lack of any sort of soul smell.
The brothers had no souls. He had not seen it, he had been distracted by the police. Or he had just missed it because he was an idiot. How could he use the Weapon against enemies with no souls? Enemies that don’t seem to be injured by normal weapons either.
Or apparently didn’t even have blood.
Black sand spilled from Apophis’ wound, forming a black pool of grit on the ground. So, it wasn’t just sand. It was mixed with some sort of liquid to form an oily sludge. As Christopher watched, the thick flow stopped and the skin beneath Apophis’ shirt rippled and shifted as the wound closed. The sludge on the ground moved and pulsed, then like a fast-moving slug it crawled up Apophis’ leg and disappeared under his clothes.
A fist, wrapped around a pommel, slammed into Christopher’s face and his head snapped back. Then it was all darkness.
12
Regular murder investigations were hard enough, let alone when they involved a soul-shaping teenage girl with raging hormones and daddy issues—assuming the Golyat guy is a father figure to her.
Hamlin was at the precinct, staring at the evidence wall. He had been the one to create it, pasting up pictures, maps, and the few scraps of evidence that they had from each scene of the mysterious deaths. No one else was as interested. Sure, cause of death was unknown, but otherwise, they were either at-risk youth, bound for trouble anyway; or elderly, tragic, but with no family they took a lower rung on the priority ladder.
Not that the NYPD wasn’t interested in general, it’s just that when Hamlin took the case under his wing, nobody was angry about his butting in. In fact, they seemed almost relieved to be rid of it. Nobody liked the weird cases. They always started off interesting, but in the end, it was something simple—the butler did it kind of thing. And by now most of the guys at the precinct knew Hamlin’s reputation, Mr. X Files they sometimes called him. Yeah, working with the kid had really helped him get ahead in his career.
“Give Hamlin the case, he likes that creepy shit.”
“She says it wasn’t her. She says the demons made her do it. Hey Hamlin, seems right up your alley…”
“Hey Hamlin, why don’t you get your psychic pal to see if he can’t pick up some vibes…”
So now here he was alone at night trying to solve a case nobody else wanted. And just because he knew who was behind the murders, all he really had was a first name. They needed the why, the how. The purpose was most important. What was she up to? Was it just some sort of practice?
He had looked for a Golyat of course, but other than a reference to an old Jewish name, nothing. Golyat was a supervillain name, and Hamlin needed his secret identity.
Supervillain? Great now he was doing it.
He shook his head and rubbed his face to refocus. He looked at the board, trying to get into the head of a teenage girl. Why had he never had kids? It might have made this easier.
Whatever this girl had become she was a kid of sorts, maybe a little Children of the Corn style, but a kid and inexperienced with hiding a crime. Despite her power, she would be sloppy, she would make rookie mistakes.
This Golyat might not be so amateur; given his dark soul status, Hamlin would guess that he was smart and might be guiding the girl. Still, sloppiness was a place to start.
He started with the location the bodies had been found. He briefly visited one other site earlier during daytime—he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice—and had stayed near the scene, not straying to nearby buildings or secluded alleys.
He reviewed the photos of the crime scene. It was the same, no sign of struggle, the body had been found neatly lying on the ground, the way a body would if it had been deliberately laid there. Not splayed like the victim was running or trying to fight off an attacker.
The victims had not been killed at that location. They had been dropped there afterwards.
Great, so where was the murder location?
His cell phone rang. He looked down at the name displayed on the screen and quickly answered.
“Juan, what do you have for me?”
“Nice to hear from you too. No detective, I don’t mind being trapped in this concrete bunker doing your job for you. How’s your day going?”
Jesus. Hamlin hated kids who had ‘problems with authority’ and now he had to deal with two of them.
“My day would be going great if I knew where these murders occurred. Please tell me you have something.” Hamlin said.
“Well, I did find something interesting.”
After a suitable pause Hamlin said, “You gonna tell me or are you waiting for me to go there and demonstrate my version of police brutality?”
“I just saw you. You’re in no condition to beat an egg, let alone a young man in the prime of his life.”
“Okay, I’m on my way.”
Hamlin was about to end the call and head to the lair when Juan seemed to realize Hamlin was serious.
“Hold up five-oh, I’ll give you the intel. The girl was a runaway; she matches the description of a runaway from Ohio. I can send you the info, not sure it if will help though. The old man though, he fits the description of a geezer that disappeared from a death home in the city.”
“You mean a retirement home, right?” asked Hamlin.
“Nah, those state-run facilities are nothing but death homes. Clearinghouse for the weak and those that they think are not worthy.”
Well I guess you can take the boy out of the conspiracy but not the conspiracy out of the boy, thought Hamlin. Out loud he said, “Can you send me—”
“Done. Already texted it to you.”
Hamlin heard a beep on his phone and grunted. “What about the other body?”
“That one was tricky. No idea who he was. Best guess you guys had was that he was in his early twenties. So, I did some thinking.”
“Did you hurt something?”
Juan said something in Spanish that Hamlin didn’t understand but could guess it wasn’t flattering. “So, I did some thinking,” Juan repeated louder. “And I looked at recent missing person reports in the city, and low and behold a young man was reported missing earlier today by his mother.”
“Wait a minute. How did you get accesses to our missing persons system?”
“I used your password. Got right in. On a side note, you really shouldn’t keep it on your phone, especially since it is your name plus 1234. How the hell you gonna forget that?”
Hamlin put his head in his hand. For a moment he considered that while the kid was right about his body being pretty messed up, he did carry a gun.
“Okay you stole my pass
word, we can discuss that later. But why didn’t I find that? I checked the database just today.”
“Well it wasn’t really a report; it was only partially filled out, not submitted. I don’t think the cops take it seriously when a mom reports her adult son missing. Especially with no evidence of foul play. Man, you guys really are lazy. Also, do you guys really say, ‘no evidence of foul play’, or is that just the movies and reporters?”
Hamlin toyed with the idea of getting a silencer out of the evidence locker.
“Sent you the dude’s info also.”
Hamlin’s phone pinged again with a text. Was it just him or did the ping sound smug?
“Thanks Juan, I’ll take a look at it…”
“Oh, I ain’t done,” Juan interrupted. “What, you think that’s all I was able to do? The guy that almost took over a city with his keyboard? The guy that can get into any computer system on the planet?”
“The guy who almost destroyed Mexico City?” Hamlin regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. But he bit his tongue at apologizing, he needed the kid to get to the point.
There was a long silence on the phone.
“Look Juan,” Hamlin started.
“No man. You’re right, I’ll move on, for all my pride I got lots to atone for. So I got to thinking the missing person report doesn’t really help, but since I had a name I was able to find some photos on the web. Then I sort of did a reverse image lookup.”
“Ah yes, of course,” Hamlin said. He had no idea what Juan was talking about.
Juan sighed. “I used the picture to search for any other images, facial recognition stuff, see what else was out there.”
Hamlin was impressed. “You can do that with the internet?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t search the internet. I searched the NYPD video archive of all the body cameras, dash cams, and city security video cameras.”
“What?” Hamlin stood up. “How the hell did you get access to all that? Oh yeah, my fucking password.”
“Ha, no. Even you don’t have that kind of clearance. I hacked in. Though your password did help, so don’t feel left out. Anyway, using some of my homegrown tools and the mega super shit we have here I found him on some footage from a traffic cam outside a club.”
“Holy shit. It was that easy?”
“Fuck no, I just make it look easy. There’s probably two other guys in the world that could do it that fast. Some respect, detective.”
“Okay, okay, yeah cool. Can you send me the—”
His cell went ping.
“You got the video. You’ll want to watch it. Better than Game of Thrones.”
Hamlin thanked him and hung up. Then he watched the video. It was better quality than some; he could make out faces, not just black and white blurs they usually post on TV and then ask viewers to call in any tips for a reward. Those Crime Stoppers videos looked like anybody, and they got thousands of phone calls, almost all bullshit. This was a new cam much clearer.
It was outside a nightclub. Hamlin didn’t recognize it, but then again, he wasn’t really the club kid he used to be. There was a line, so it was popular. The date of the video was last Saturday night; that’s about right for just before he was murdered. He looked at the cross street printed across the bottom of the video and wrote it down so he could pin the location later.
A man stumbled from the doorway. Hamlin quickly compared it to the photo Juan had sent him. It was the same guy. He looked right at the security camera and the traffic cam caught his other side. The video switched back and forth between the two cameras. Juan had done some editing to give him the best view. Hamlin had to hand it to him, the kid was good.
The man from the photo was looking at something on his phone. Suddenly the video paused and a large arrow with text popped up
HI HAMLIN, HE IS USING UBER TO HAVE A CAR PICK HIM UP. UBER IS A NEW CAB TYPE SERVICE. A CAR IS LIKE A HORSELESS CARRIAGE.
Fucking Juan. The video resumed again and the man stood, unsteady; he had apparently been drinking. A large black SUV, maybe an Escalade or Chevy Tahoe, pulled up to the curb and the man walked over and leaned against the door. The camera changed to the traffic cam to give him a top-down view. From the angle Hamlin couldn’t see in the car, but he could see the young man. Unfortunately, none of the angles gave him a clear view of the license plate. After a quick conversation, he got into the back seat.
The video paused again and an arrow with more text appeared. The arrow pointed to the back door the guy just climbed in.
WAIT FOR IT.
The video resumed. Suddenly the door opened and Hamlin saw an arm come out clawing at the roof as though trying to pull himself out of the car. The arm disappeared violently back inside and the door slammed shut. The car pulled away from the curb. Nobody on the sidewalk noticed, no one in line looked up from their phones.
The traffic cam did get a view of the back of the SUV, but the license plate was smeared with dirt. He might be able to get a letter or two but not much. Hamlin noted that the rest of the car had been recently washed.
WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED BUT KEEP WATCHING JUST FOR KICKS.
A few minutes later another car pulled up. The driver sat for a moment before getting out and standing on the sidewalk. Another arrow popped up and pointed at the man.
THE REAL UBER DRIVER, ASKING WHERE HIS DUDE AT? POOR UBER DRIVER. HAMLIN YOU MUST FIND JUSTICE FOR THE UBER DRIVER. HE LOST HIS FARE.
Then the screen changed to black and white before the final word appeared on the screen: “fin.”
He was really growing to hate Juan.
So, he had been taken from that club. Hamlin had no doubt in his mind that whoever was in that car was working for Golyat and Grace.
Hamlin put a pin in the wall where the retirement home was and then another where the other victim had been taken. When he stepped back and looked at it, a pattern started to emerge. A circle to be exact.
The disappearance and dump sites were clustered around in a very rough circle. Central Park, Upper East Side was at the center. It was a little bit of a jump—there was lots of real estate in the area surrounded by the pins—but Hamlin had a gut feeling it would be in the wealthiest area in town. This group, the Alliance, was very rich and very powerful. They wouldn’t slum it.
For a moment Hamlin thought it couldn’t be that easy. But if it was Grace they were dealing with and not Golyat, then amateur mistakes would be the rule rather than the exception. She may not realize she was putting a bullseye on their neighborhood. Either way, it was just one more lead to work with.
Of course, he still was a long way off. The Upper East Side had a population of three hundred thousand. Hamlin still had no idea where to start there. He needed to thin it out more.
Seconds later his phone was out and he was calling Juan again.
“Hello chief,” Juan answered.
“Could you do that reverse picture search thing again with the photo of the car and maybe a partial license plate? Specifically, images and videos taken in the Upper East Side.”
“You mean use your password to illegally hack into a law enforcement server and access some cases, court sealed files, and personal images and videos?”
“I hate you Juan,” Hamlin said with a groan.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Sure, I’ll do it. Good idea by the way. Although how did you narrow it down to the neighborhood?”
Hamlin briefly explained how he narrowed it down and how it was a little sloppy. Then Juan had a good point.
“Careful Hamlin. They could’ve made a mistake, but it could be a trap. You might not get out of this one,” said Juan.
“Yeah, the thought occurred to me. I’ll be alert this time. I’ve seen what Grace is capable of and I don’t want to make that mistake again. I’m gonna head over to that area and wait for any info you have. Just want to get a feel for the neighborhood, it’s not my usual beat.”
He ended the call, and thirty minutes later he was drinking a five dolla
r cup of joe in the lobby coffee shop of a building full of apartments that were worth more than his entire lifetime salary. On the plus side, the coffee was very good. And the smell, he loved the smell of coffee shops. As far as he was concerned coffee was the food of the gods, and he drank it like he was fucking Zeus.
The shop was full of pretty people wearing the latest fashions. Brand names, real jewelry, inane conversation. These people had cares that were nowhere near his, not including the bit about working with the right hand of Satan. He had nothing against the fashion chasers or the rich folk, it just wasn’t his scene. He was a fish out of water in his cheap suit that no matter how hard he tried seemed to be perpetually wrinkled.
It was a hot evening again, so he sipped on an iced coffee. He was nervous and the coffee wasn’t helping, but he wanted the caffeine. The aches and pains throughout his body reminded him of what could go wrong when he found himself closing in on Grace.
His phone beeped, indicating he had a text. He glanced at the screen and read the text from Juan.
Juan: Found it…
The next text was a picture of the car driving along the street. Several more images popped up capturing parts of the car as it passed various cameras. None were perfectly clear shots, but he could confirm it did look like the car that picked up the man.
Juan: Most occurrences of the car between 5th and Park Ave and e 73rd St and e 76th.
This image lookup was some next level NSA shit. Whatever tools Juan was using he had to convince the kid to let the NYPD use them. Of course, since Juan hated all forms of authority, especially police, that would be an uphill battle. And not one for today.
Hamlin responded.
Hamlin: Is there any way to look up owners of balls.
Juan: This sounds like a personal issue.
Hamlin: Fuck. Autocorrect. Buildings, not balls.
Juan: Yeah, I assumed. You text like my mom and as slow as my grandma. And she’s dead.
Fucking Juan. Hamlin admitted defeat and called him.
“I’m disappointed, I never took you for a quitter,” Juan said when he answered.
