by Ryan Talbot
“Thorne!” The Toymaker shrieked. “It was him!”
“What was he before you got your fucking hands on him?”
“You don’t know?” His eyebrows lifted. “You really don’t know?”
“Tell me!” I roared.
Darkness flooded the dying dream, and the Toymaker raced for the failing portal. I grabbed his greasy hair and yanked him back.
“Tell me!”
“Iblis!” He slapped at me, kicking and biting at my hand. “The Whisperer!”
I let him go, he pinwheeled his arms as his balance failed and tumbled into the portal a second before it collapsed.
“Kill him,” Satan’s command echoed in the darkness. “Find the Whisperer in the Dark and end him.”
36
I opened my eyes. A foot. My vision slowly focused on the slender white foot that hovered in front of my face.
“You bastard!” The heel crushed my nose and nearly knocked me cold.
“Ow!” I rolled onto my back, my hands clasped protectively over my face. “What the fuck, Rachel?”
“You son of a bitch!” She raised her foot again.
“Stop!” I threw my forearm up to block her foot from swinging down on me again. “Hang the fuck on!”
“You lying bastard!” Her foot came down again.
I caught her ankle and rolled to the side, pinning it as I dragged myself up her body, straddling her lap. I leaned forward until she had no choice but to look at me.
“Let’s get something straight,” I said quietly. “I never lied to you. Those kids were dead before we went back. Those kids were dead the moment you left. They’ve been dead for years. And if you kick me again, call me a liar, or so much as glare at me, I’ll rip your fucking spleen out.”
“I tried,” she whispered. “I tried so hard.”
“Rachel,” I said quietly. “You know I can’t stand you, right?”
“Yes,” the fire came back into her eyes.
“You know that the sight of you makes me violently ill?”
“Yes,” she glared at me.
“Then believe me when I say this,” I held her eyes. “You did everything a sane, rational person would, or could do.”
“It wasn’t enough,” her face fell, and her eyes welled up with heavy tears.
“That’s the motherfucker of regret,” I said. “You can never suffer enough to make it go away.”
“I thought,” she sobbed and trailed off.
“It was a nightmare,” I crawled off of her and sat beside her. Exhaustion wasn’t the word for it. Poisoning, beating, and finally, getting axe kicked in the face. It’d been a hell of a day. “Nightmares give you just enough hope to hang yourself with.”
She wiped her eyes and stared at me.
“Get it?” I asked dazedly. The exhaustion was getting to me. “Hope, to hang yourself with? You know, rope?”
She grabbed the bridge of my nose, yanked down, and then shoved it up to the left. My eyes watered and my vision pinholed. I leaned over, trying not to vomit. Lesson learned, never let your enemy set a broken nose.
“Ow,” I dry heaved. “Not cool.”
“There are some lines you shouldn’t cross.” She flicked the blood off of her hand.
“Fair enough,” I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling of shipping container, swallowing a mouthful of blood. “Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Why Rachel?”
“Why what?” She asked.
“Why do you call yourself Rachel? Your name is Leah, isn’t it?”
“My sister’s name was Rachel.”
“You were twins, weren’t you?” I thought of the poor girl chained to the center of the heptagram.
“How’d you know?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Why did you start using the name?”
“Leah Anne died,” she said quietly. “And she needed to stay that way.”
“That makes sense,” I said, my mind drifting to Iblis. “If you wanted to hide from the world, give up your name.”
“Yeah,” she nodded.
“Except YHWH would see straight through that,” I sat up. “And know you for the lying bastard that you are.”
“What?” She whipped her head around to look at me. “What did you call me?”
“No!” I waved down her anger. “I was thinking of someone else!”
“Who?” She asked, her tone doubtful.
“Iblis,” I replied. “The Harbinger of Days.”
“Thorne is Iblis?” She asked, connecting Thorne’s title with Iblis’s name.
I nodded.
“The blindness of the Almighty,” she quoted Thorne’s taunt from earlier.
“I don’t think he was blind though,” I said.
“No?”
“I think he didn’t care,” I coughed. “I think he knew the whole time. Satan did, I think YHWH must have too.”
“You think they let this happen?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I don’t think either of them took it seriously, they were too focused on each other. It’s always the War.”
“Someone has to stop the Devil,” she snapped.
“Really?” I cocked my head to the side. “Really, Rachel? You don’t fucking say.”
“Facts are facts,” she grumbled.
“What do you know about Iblis?” I asked.
“He was a Djinn,” she said. “Created after the Angels, but before Man. And when the Almighty told him to bow before Adam, he refused. So God cast him down.”
“Right,” I nodded. “But what about after that?”
“He went to Hell.” She shrugged. “End of story.”
“Except it’s not,” I disagreed.
“What happened then?”
“Oh, you know,” Thorne’s silky voice came from the far side of the container. “There were words, people had hurt feelings. All in all, it was a bad fit.”
“You motherfucker!” I launched myself off of the floor, my Mark swinging at his face.
“Temper,” he smirked. “Temper.”
My fist ripped through him, leaving only smoke in its wake. Now, I was angry, but not enough to smash someone to a cloud of vapor.
“As you can see, Mr. Beckett,” he smiled. “I am not actually here.”
“Thanks,” I snapped. “Dick.”
“I felt compelled to let you know, in the interest of fairness,” he bowed his head graciously. “That I’ve taken the precaution of burying this container fifty feet below ground.”
I stopped breathing. It was instinct, someone tells you that air is limited, what else do you do? I looked at Rachel and frowned. She was human. Full, unadulterated human. She wouldn’t survive.
“And to be fair,” he smiled again. “I did wait for you to mention my name, but if you’d been ever so slightly smarter,” he held his forefinger and thumb a hair’s breadth apart. “You’d have had hours more of breathable air.”
“You motherfucker,” I swore. “You twisted fuck.”
“Words, Mr. Beckett,” he said with an effeminate wave of his hand. “Nothing more than wasted oxygen. Suffer well.” With a flash of brimstone, he disappeared.
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” I punched the side of the container, and true to his word, it rang solid.
Rachel’s face was white and sweat beaded on her brow.
“Relax,” I said, concernedly. “We’ll find a way out.”
“There’s no time,” she said. “The air’s getting thin.”
“That’s your imagination,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s all in your head.”
“The air tasted stale when I woke up,” she disagreed. “There isn’t much time.”
I began to pace. “There’s always a way.”
Rachel began to pray. I resisted the urge to punch her in the face and focused on the problem instead. We needed out of the container, but they’d buried us in the quarry.
“Why do this?” Rachel aske
d. “It makes no sense. Why bother to capture us, torture us,” she waved her hands in frustration. “Just to kill us?”
“Why doesn’t matter,” I ran my hands over my face. “It’s a distraction.”
“From what?”
“Freedom,” I stopped and stared at Rachel, a grin spread across my face.
“What?” She asked, concernedly.
“I can get out,” I said with a laugh. “I know how to get out.”
“How?”
I kicked her in the face.
37
A chuckle sounded from the darkness behind me, followed by the clacking of her many legs on the metal floor.
“Bravo, Liar,” she said. “You are beginning to understand.”
“Thanks,” I knelt beside Rachel’s unconscious form. “Somehow, I doubt she’ll applaud.”
“Does it matter?” She laughed. “You will survive, perhaps carrying her memory will be enough to allay your pangs of conscience.”
“She was always honest,” I said. “She’s never…” I shrugged it off.
“It was only a matter of time,” she said. “Until you were forced to kill her anyway. It is the nature of enmity to end in blood.”
“How do you know she wouldn’t kill me first?” I pushed Rachel’s hair away from her forehead.
“What’s one more death to one such as you, Liar?”
“Pain,” I said. “Resurrection hurts like hell.”
“Run away,” she said. “Do not return.”
“What no request for freedom?” I asked. “You don’t want me to come back to rescue you?”
“Pragmatism, Liar,” she laughed. “Is the greatest flaw from which I suffer. Do you think me foolish enough to expect you to return?”
“Fair enough,” I agreed.
“I am more than capable of freeing myself now,” she said. “Time is all I require.”
“Good luck, then.” I nodded at her. “Kill as many as you can.”
“You as well,” she faded into the shadows.
Alone again with Rachel, I ran my hand over her manacles until I found the inevitable rough, sharp edge those damn things always seem to develop. I yanked my wrist over it, tearing a small fissure in the sensitive skin. Blood beaded almost instantly. I drew a sigil on her forehead and spoke a Word of correspondence. I felt my sorcery pulse outward. Any Aetheric in the vicinity would know I was no longer warded. I grinned again. I imagined some poor schmuck on the surface digging furiously as Thorne screamed at him. I hoped they’d buried us deep. The dark fled as my Sight once again lit up with the hundreds of tenuous threads binding me to the others. I felt a sudden sharp pain in my heart as all but one of them winked out, leaving only the thread leading to Rachel’s heart. Part of me wanted to believe that distance had severed the connection; I knew better. Thorne, Iblis, had killed them, not personally, mind you. His word had been enough. All the more reason to end him. I tugged on the thread and once more, I felt my consciousness fall away.
The dark gave way to pain as I awoke. Rachel kicked me in the face and I immediately threw up my hands to cover my already broken nose.
“Why?” She screamed. “Why are you torturing me like this?”
“Bitch, you’re the one kicking me,” I screamed back, my voice muffled by my hands and steady streaming blood from my nose.
“Why did you bring me back here?” She kicked me in the balls. “You bastard!”
I coughed and gagged as the blood from my nose poured down my throat. Rolling onto my knees, I struggled my way to my feet. “I’m trying to save your worthless fucking life!”
“By driving me insane?” She tore at her hair and raked her nails down her face. “I can’t take this!”
“Then fucking pray!” I spat blood on the floor. “You people seem to think that makes everything better.”
Rachel’s mouth opened, then closed. She looked at me strangely, then mutely closed her eyes as she crossed herself. I clenched my fist as I forced my mouth shut. I hadn’t been serious; I’d just wanted her to calm the hell down. All the same, my suggestion seemed to work. I was simultaneously disgusted and intrigued. Had someone made a similar suggestion to me at a time like this, I promise you I'd have kneecapped them.
After the better part of a minute, Rachel opened her eyes. We still stood in the ruins of the orphanage, or whatever the hell it was. Silence still reigned and nothing lived. I stopped finding that disconcerting a long time ago, since I tend to have this effect on places I visit. I met Rachel’s eye.
“You ready?” I asked.
“For what?”
“To get out of here,” I replied. “And get back at Thorne.”
“Jason,” she said patiently. “This is a nightmare. We can’t get out this way.”
“You can’t,” I grinned. “Alone. But I know a way out.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she shook her head. “I’m asleep. How can you move me within my mind and have that affect me in the waking world?”
“Have a little faith,” I smirked. “A magician doesn’t reveal his secrets.”
“I have no faith in the Devil,” she frowned.
“Then have faith that your god put you here with me for a reason.”
“The Almighty lights my path.” She nodded. “And he is with me always.”
“I’m gonna let that one go,” I said, remembering her at the hands of her tormentors.
“You said you could get us out of here?” She snapped.
I motioned for her to follow me, and led the way back to the ritual room.
38
The room was covered in blood, and the corpses of the girls lay scattered like chess pieces from an overturned board. None of that mattered to me, I was after the heptagram, and the portal in the center of it. That doorway led through three realms, which made it unstable as hell. I had to be sure at least two of the links were solid. I had a solid link to reality, I just needed to lock the other realms to that link and we’d be in business.
“This is your way home?” She asked, incredulous.
“Yes,” I nodded. My Sight confirmed that the links were functional. “And the good news is that it’s working.”
“So,” she asked trepidatiously. “I just step into the center and it zaps me to the earth?”
“No,” I shook my head. “If you step in there, you’ll get all turned inside out like Anastasia.”
“How?”
“You’ll be traveling through yourself, and that just can’t work.” I shrugged. “I can get through, then pull you through once I’m there.”
“How can I trust you?” She stepped away from me. “You’re a liar. You’re my enemy.”
“I haven’t killed you so far,” I said.
“Not for lack of trying,” she shook out her hands.
“Rachel,” I massaged my temples. “If you invited me over for tea, I’d probably feel the way you do right now. I don’t trust you. I don’t like you. Everything you stand for sickens me, but I need you safe. If you die, the War starts again. If I come back without you, no one will ever believe that I was blameless in any of this. If you die only one half of the truth survives, the half no one will believe.”
“It’s not like anyone on your side would believe me either,” she said quietly. “Your lot blamed me for everything after Magda was murdered.”
“Thorne played us all,” I said. “And he’s still got Corrigan Alefarn.”
“The Witch from Central Park?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I don’t know where Thorne’s got him, but I’m freaking out here, and I need to get him back.”
“You’re asking a lot of me, Beckett.”
“I’m asking you to have faith,” I said. “Not in me, but in your god. Trust that the path was put before you for a reason.”
“Go,” she pointed at the portal. “Before I change my mind.”
I stepped into the portal. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Reality flirted with Heaven and Perdition as
I was ripped across the surface of the world, and through the edges of the three realms. Dream. Heaven. Perdition. Each of them distinct, and yet so similar. The Gatekeepers of Heaven, the Seraphim, flew out in force, their golden armor glinting with the light from their flaming eyes. Blond hair as bright as the sun flowed out from under helmets of hammered gold. And bronze-skinned hands gripped spears of polished alabaster and adamant. I grinned and flashed my Mark, as I faded through the outer edges of their realm. Perdition’s twilight surrounded me as I slipped through the border between Satan’s realm and the edge of the dream. Satan’s sapphire eyes tracked my path from the top of the Tower of Grief. He nodded in recognition of my passing, and I felt my soul grow inexplicably heavy. As if the gaze of the Traitor at the Gate weighed my failures, my insecurities, my self. Just as quickly as I entered his realm, so too was I cast out. The maddening scorpion itch covered me again, and I was thrown onto the dark, dirty floor of the orphanage. I coughed as the decades of dust exploded off of the floor and into my lungs. I deposited a second helping of blood and bile on the floor and for the first time in my life I was thankful for Veilshock. That initial outpouring of disgusting vomit was the link that I used to bring myself home.
I took a second to collect myself, then stumbled over to Rachel’s, the real Rachel’s, corpse. I didn’t need my Sight to lock on to the correspondence between the body and her sister. I ran my finger over the heel of my shoe, wiping Rachel’s blood onto my skin. This is the distinction between a sorcerer and one of the myriad fools that command the power of their master’s Words.
What I was about to do could only be done by someone with the strength to draw upon the most minor of coincidental connections between people, and channel the power of the elements along those flimsy links. Awash in my own sense of superiority, I spoke a Word of conflagration and sent it along the tangent that bound Rachel and I together. I didn’t need to see, the fireball would devour whatever oxygen remained while filling the container with flames hot enough to buckle the steel of its structure, bringing tons of earth down on her. With my Word, at my command, Rachel died.
