Soul of Stone

by Leo Romero

  A growl behind me made me freeze.

  My blood ran cold, all kinds of terrifying thoughts wormed their way into my mind. I whirled on my heels to be faced with Alawan. He was opposite me, his cold and murderous gaze on me. I rolled my eyes down to the floor. The king of hearts lay there between us both.

  I licked my dry lips, my bladder feeling heavy. I didn’t want to make any fast moves but needed to get that card and send him back to the Void.

  He continued to glare at me. I gave him an uneasy grin. “There’s a good boy,” I said in barely a whisper. Any slight movement could trigger him. He pulled his lips back, exposing those gleaming teeth. A low growl rumbled in his throat.

  I gulped. I rolled my eyes back down on the card. It was tantalizingly close. I had no choice, I’d have to go for it and hope I got there before Alawan clipped my head off.

  His scorpion stinger swayed lazily on the air above him.

  I dived in for the card.

  The sudden movement triggered Alawan. He pounced. My heart skipped a beat. I got a close up view of lion fur, the stench of Alawan’s rotten breath in my nostrils. But my focus was on that card. I bent down, scooped it up, and rolled off to the side. Alawan’s mighty frame shot by. His paws crashed down on the floor where the card had been, his stinger stabbing the space just ahead of it.

  Fear electrified me. I jerked up to my elbows. Alawan was now next to me, facing forward. By the time he realized where I was and faced me, I was halfway through the binding spell. Alawan’s back legs flexed to propel him into another leap.

  I winced, expecting the worst.

  The door to the Void opened. His feet made it a foot off the ground before the vortex from the Void kicked in. The power was too much for him. He was sucked toward the opening, his front paws scratching on the air in desperation. He tried to claw himself back into our world, but the Void had him. He was pulled in, and the opening slammed shut, leaving me alone.

  I collapsed to the warehouse floor in relief. I rolled around, a frayed mess.

  “That was...interesting,” said Draxil.

  I’m glad it was for someone.

  “Who were they?”

  “Long story,” I said as I got gingerly back to my feet. I looked around. Smoldering remains of vamp, pieces of vamp, and puddles of blood met me. I collected my stuff and staggered out of the warehouse, bloody and battered. I was coughing uncontrollably, the cold night air hitting me like a wave, sobering me. A vast emptiness greeted me, a starry night above. Confusion befuddled my mind. I was in the middle of nowhere, not a thing in sight.

  A tinkle played out from my pocket. I gave my pants a dumb stare. With a trembling, blood-stained hand, I pulled out my phone. I flicked my sweaty hair out of my eyes and put the phone up to my ear. “Hello?” I answered in a hoarse voice.

  “Daddy!” she yelled.

  I winced. “Yeah, sweetie.”

  “Where are you?”

  I looked around in a daze. “I’ve no idea.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I don’t know where I am.” I spun in a circle. That damn warehouse faced me for a moment before a long stretch of nothingness.

  “Have you been drinking again?”

  “I wish.”

  “Why does everything have to be so weird with you?”

  “I often ask myself the same thing.” I stared at the blood and goo on my free hand. Ugh! I wiped it on my leg.

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Fighting a bunch of triad vampires who wanted to torture and kill me. How has your day been?”

  “Can you just come home please? I haven’t seen you in ages, and I’m worried about you.”

  My heart panged with regret. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I’ve been...to hell and back. I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

  “Be careful, Dad. You’re all I’ve got.”

  I frowned. “Sweetie? Is everything okay?”

  “No.”

  “Sweetie, what is it?”

  “It’s Chad.”

  My eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What about him?”

  “He...” She started crying. “He’s been...cheating on me. With Chloe.”

  “Who’s Chloe?”

  “Like my best friend.”

  Assholes! My mouth scrunched up in anger. I had a special shitball for Chad! Lucy carried on sobbing, and the sound sent my emotions colliding. I rubbed my head. It wasn’t exactly ideal timing for this. I tried my best to console her. “Listen, sweetie. You know, guys can be assholes.”

  “What about Chloe?”

  “Girls can be assholes too.”

  “Just come home, Dad. I need you.”

  I nodded. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. I promise.”

  “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you too, sweetie.” She hung up. I pulled the phone away from my ear and pocketed it. Damn Chad. Never did like that guy. Smiled too much. I’d get him. But first, I had to go and see Lucy. After that shit in Hell with my ‘mother’, there was no way I could leave my child alone in that kind of state. I wanted to be with her right then.

  I spun in a circle, wondering where the hell I was.

  The roar of an engine behind me made me whirl. Big headlights almost blinded me. I used my arm to protect my eyes while the unmarked van screeched to a halt next to me. The side door slid open. I caught a glimpse of a couple of guys wearing old man masks. One was staring into a device, the glow from its screen lighting up the mask. The other was pointing something at me. By the time danger registered in my mind, the prongs from the Taser hit me in the stomach. A juddering pain rocketed through my body, and my back stiffened. My teeth chattered as thousands of volts were pumped through me.

  After a few seconds of that excruciating mania, I passed out, and everything went black.

  Chapter 27

  “Floor sixty-two.”

  The friendly, robotic voice and the ping of the elevator stirred my senses. My eyes fluttered open, and I was staring at the elevator floor from somewhere high up. A forest of feet and legs dominated my vision. I lifted my pounding head, my eyes running up a pair of black pants, black jacket, white shirt, and black tie until I reached the plastic-doll-like face obscured by shades.

  Inside, I groaned. The Dark Suits. What did they want now?

  “Not these assholes again,” lamented Draxil. I wholeheartedly shared his sentiment. At least I was catching up on my sleep.

  I tried to move but was caught in someone’s grip. I soon realized I was being carried on the shoulder of a Dark Suit in a fireman’s lift. He must’ve realized I’d awoken from my slumber and tightened his hold on me.

  “Ugh! You guys,” I said. “Did you have to Taser me?” I didn’t get an answer.

  Instead, the elevator doors slid open, and we all filed out into the hallway, me still on the guy’s shoulder. As we marched down the hallway, I met the gaze of the guy walking behind me. He was as robotic as the rest of ’em. “Hey, you ever watched the football in nothing but your underwear? It’s liberating; you should try it.”

  He didn’t answer, his face remaining stony. Asshole.

  I was taken around the corner into a new corridor. “Now I know how it felt to be a cavewoman on her wedding night,” I said as I bounced up and down on the Dark Suit’s shoulder. The guy must’ve been as tough as my late aunt’s steak to carry me like that. We passed the obligatory names embossed on the doors, ‘Jones’, ‘Johnson’, ‘Jameson’, until we reached a familiar room. The door with ‘Smith’ embossed on it was held open for us. My Dark Suit chaperone entered and dumped my ass down on a chair waiting ahead of a desk. My butt hit the cushioned seat a little too hard, and I winced at the pain jolting up my spine.

  “Love you too,” I said to the goon’s back as he stomped away. He clomped back out into the corridor, and the door closed behind him, leaving me in the place where this sorry story started. Smith’s office.

  The low hum of office equipment took over the airwaves. I tur
ned around. Smith was sitting on the opposite side of the desk, just staring at me. For a brief moment, I got the illusion that he was a cardboard cutout.

  “Smith!” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “You know, I’ve seriously had it with you and your goons. What’s with the Taser treatment? The phone would’ve been a lot more painless.”

  “We weren’t sure if you would be hostile, Mr. Stone,” Smith said in a business-like tone. “So we took the necessary precautions.”

  I grumbled under my breath. “When have I ever been hostile with you?”

  “You haven’t. But things may well be different since we last met.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, a certain demon appears to have vanished, and his signal leads directly to you.”

  I frowned. “What are you getting at? How did you find me at that abandoned warehouse?”

  “I think I once mentioned to you that we implanted a tracking device on the Armor of Agony. Well that device was an advanced form of dermatological microchip that is indistinguishable from skin.”

  I kept my stare on him. Not only did I have no clue what he was on about, but it was clear he suspected Draxil was hiding inside me.

  Smith leaned forward. “I don’t know the ins and outs, but we find it particularly fascinating that a demon can enter a human body and the tracking device still operates. We were going to pick you up at the DIY store, but the vampires got there before us. We had the warehouse staked out—pun not intended—and were going to rescue you, but we decided to wait and see how you’d perform with your added extra strength and assess the outcome. We were most impressed.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve no clue what you’re blabbering on about. Now, I was actually on my way home to see my daughter, who is very worried about me and will most likely be going crazy by now. So if you please.” I got up to leave.

  “Where is Draxil, Mr. Stone?” Smith asked in a voice as emotionless as an alligator.

  I grinned. “How the hell would I know? You were the one who abandoned us on that rooftop to face the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Ring any bells?”

  “You cannot expect me to join battle against such a foe without sufficient arms, surely?”

  “Think I had sufficient arms to face immortals?”

  “No, but your friend must have something. That...intrigues us.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned. It was the perfect opportunity to fill in some blanks. “What happened? How did he get put back together again?”

  Smith adjusted in his seat. “He consumed Mr. Jackson.”

  “Shamone.”

  “Devouring Mr. Jackson somehow brought the demon back to life.”

  “I told you not to mess with that stuff, Smith. Resurrecting Draxil triggered the horsemen, and now they’re gonna destroy the world tomorrow, so good job on killing us all.”

  Smith recoiled ever so slightly. “Well, that doesn’t sound good, does it?”

  A laugh burst from my chest. Talk about an understatement. “No, Smith, it doesn’t sound good at all.”

  “So what are you going to do to reverse this proposed catastrophe?”

  “Well, while you’ve been sitting on your ass, I’ve been busy putting together Draxil’s team of fallen angels who can neuter the horsemen’s immortality. And then we’re gonna kill ’em! So if you’ll just allow me to leave.” I got up again.

  “Not so fast, Mr. Stone.”

  I groaned. “What, Smith?”

  “Draxil is our property, I’m afraid, and you’ll have to hand him over.”

  “Hand him over? It’s not like I’ve got him in my pocket.”

  “We know he’s possessing you, Mr. Stone. Please don’t play dumb.”

  “Don’t tell him anything!” Draxil hissed.

  I let out a chuckle. “That’s a little farfetched, isn’t it? A demon possessing an angel.”

  “Really? So tell me, if that isn’t the case, and Draxil is running loose, why are the horsemen not returning to fight him?”

  “Uh.” I went to speak, but nothing came out. The asshole had me there. “He’s hiding in another plane!” I blurted.

  “Where?”

  I flipped a hand on the air. “I don’t know. Hell or somewhere.”

  “I see.” Smith interlocked his fingers. “Mr. Stone. You have always been fair and helpful with our organization, and we have duly reciprocated.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What are you getting at, Smith?”

  He sighed. “We feel that maybe we should open ourselves to you more. Underline our special relationship. Someone very dear to us all wishes to speak with you.”

  “It’s not your mother, is it?”

  “Not quite.” He rose from his seat. “Please follow me.” He marched straight past me for the door in a drone-like fashion. I watched him go, confusion embedded in my face. What the hell was he on about? Who wanted to speak with me? Another weirdo in a dark suit called Johnson? What was the point?

  He went and held the door open. “If you please, Mr. Stone. We don’t have all night.”

  “Keep your eyes open, Stone!” said Draxil. I intended to.

  I straightened my jacket and headed for the door. Smith led me along the hallway, past the plastic plants in pots and the peculiar art on the wall depicting red rectangles, blue triangles, and yellow squares, while the CCTV cameras up in the corners watched us go by.

  We entered the elevator, where Smith pulled out a small key from his jacket pocket. He put it in a hole beneath the number pad and turned it, allowing him to pull a small panel away. Now more buttons were exposed on the panel, except with letters embossed upon them and not numbers. He pushed ‘G’, and the elevator doors closed.

  “Secret torture chambers, huh, Smith?” I asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Going down to Genesis,” the robotic voice told us.

  Genesis? What the hell’s all that about?

  The elevator got moving downward at a fair old pace. I almost fell back under the pressure. I grabbed hold of the railing and watched the panel above the doors with a beady eye. The numbers flashed downward through the fifties and forties and in no time, we were down to the teens. I expected the elevator to come to a halt at some point seeing as we were hurtling toward the ground floor, but instead, we reached it and continued down beyond it.

  Looked like we were going to the secret basement. I just prayed there were no bodies down there.

  The panel now displayed the letters that were on the secret buttons. ‘B’, ‘F’, ‘S’, ‘T’ until we finally got there. ‘G’.

  The elevator ground to a halt, and the shock sent me swaying again. I held onto the rail tight, managing to keep my balance.

  “Genesis,” the voice told us as the doors slid open.

  Curiosity burned inside me as the fluorescent lights from the outside chamber flooded the elevator. The aroma of bleach and disinfectant hit me, and images of surgery and experimentation flashed in my mind. I looked down and saw that I’d involuntarily taken hold of both Excalibur’s hilt and Bam Bam’s grip. My heart beat slow and hard, my throat dry. I didn’t like the surreal vibe I was getting. Made me twitchy.

  “Follow me, Mr. Stone,” Smith said in his perfunctory manner, which right then was creepazoid city.

  He stepped into the vast basement, and I followed like a drunk lapdog, my jaw inches from the floor. Pure weirdness surrounded me. I was in some kind of infirmary. White tiled walls, bleached clean. Incubators sat to the left and right of me, wires leading up to monitors displaying heart rates. Most of them were occupied with sleeping babies. My first thought was that these assholes were running some kind of babynapping ring, and a bolt of anger surged through me. A cyan glow shot out from under the cuff of my sleeve as the etchings flared. Violet mist burst from my palm, and my top lip curled up. I had Smith in my sights. And I had a special shitball for him.

  Just as the globule started to form in my palm, other Dark Suits appeared from nowhere, c
lipboards in hand. Except these ones were draped in white lab coats. They stopped by the incubators, studied the contents, and made notes.

  I threw my hand down by my side and watched them go about their business in bemusement.

  Smith noticed I had stopped following and spun to face me. “Follow me, Mr. Stone.”

  I gave the ones in the lab coats a final unsure stare and continued through the room toward the electronic doors at the end. They slid open, exposing what was like some kind of electronic beehive. Machinery buzzed and whirred, lights blinked. A giant machine stood in the center of the room, plastered with TV screens. Concertinaed piping sprouted from the machine like alien umbilical cords where they attached to square vats filled with a light-green, syrupy substance. Lying inside the substance looked to be embryos. Babies, just like the ones in the incubator, only they were partially completed, some missing an arm, or a leg, or even a head. More Dark Suit people in lab coats were busy studying, making notes, pushing buttons, tweaking dials. Making babies. I shook my head in disbelief.

  Smith stood to the side, arms behind his back as he peered over and down into one of the vats. He nodded in appreciation.

  “What the hell is all this?” I asked, my eyes rolling, revulsion suffusing me. It was a scene straight out of a dystopian sci-fi movie.

  Smith turned to face me. “This is the Genesis Hub, Mr. Stone. Where I was born. Where we were born.” He held his hands out to the sides, and like ants, the other Dark Suits congregated around him. In seconds, there must have been twenty of the bastards. Men and women, all with that same plastic look about them. That blank stare. More came through the sliding doors behind me, making me turn. They marched past me and joined the others, these ones wearing the obligatory dark suits.

  I stared at them all. “Born? What do you mean?”

  “I think maybe He can explain things better for you than I ever could,” Smith said.

  “He?” I echoed. “Who?” I don’t see anyone here apart from us.”

  Smith upturned his head toward the nearest screen mounted on the big machine in the center of the room. It flicked on, and the head and shoulders of an elderly guy with cropped white hair and trimmed gray beard came into view. He was wearing a black turtleneck and beige jacket. Sitting on his nose was a pair of uber-nerd glasses with lenses so thick they magnified his eyes to golf ball proportions.