Premonitions

by Jamie Schultz

  It seemed not. Nothing stirred in the flat, hot air.

  He wiped his hand on his pants and walked to the front door.

  * * *

  The halls were empty, to judge by Anna’s expression, but as far as Karyn could tell, there was a party on this floor. The lights were simultaneously on and off, bright and dark, and the corridors were choked with traffic. Men and women in suits raced down the halls, shuffling papers, muttering to themselves, shouting at each other, talking excitedly, or simply walking straight ahead at a rapid clip, as though they were late for an important meeting. She startled as a naked man and a woman with her skirt missing fell out of a side office, laughing.

  “Are you OK?” Genevieve asked.

  “Fuck you.” Nothing was OK. She couldn’t tell if what she was seeing was tomorrow or the day after or yesterday, or twenty-six possible Thursdays rolling around together in the Great Thursday Orgy, or all of them jammed together at once.

  “Sorry.”

  Karyn glanced back. Half of Genevieve’s face was gone, a ruin of blood and bone. Gunshot, probably. How am I supposed to stop this? We’re walking right into it. In her mind, she saw Tommy on the ground, clutching his stomach and screaming, his eyes rolled up to look accusingly at her. It was a lie—his eyes had been gone, hadn’t they?—but it felt like the truth.

  Keep walking. Keep walking.

  Anna stopped at the next intersection and peeked around the corner. Satisfied, she turned and waved at the others to follow. The hall ended after a few dozen steps. There was a door in the wall on the left and another on the right, but the space ahead was blank. It should have been the outer wall of the building—almost.

  Anna motioned for Genevieve to do her thing. Then she looked to Karyn.

  The cul-de-sac was light and dark, and people went in and out of the office doors on either side, but Karyn saw nothing else. She shrugged.

  Anna nodded, then went back to the mouth of the hall, gun at the ready, while Genevieve got to work. Karyn turned slow circles and tried to watch everywhere, awaiting the inevitable. Maybe it would reveal itself in time—it always has, she reminded herself without much effect.

  Genevieve’s flashlight burned white-hot in the darkness, then vanished the next moment as the whole hall lit up. In the stretched oval of the light, weird characters took shape under Genevieve’s marker. Tomorrow somebody would get a hell of a surprise when they came in to find the place vandalized, Karyn thought, but tomorrow was the least of anybody’s concerns.

  Genevieve will be dead by tomorrow, and, if this keeps up, I won’t be sane. And Anna? What about Anna?

  Karyn looked down the hall to where Anna leaned against the wall, listening. What about Anna? She was whole, for now, without a single bullet hole or bloody wound. Maybe she’d make it, then. And if Sobell was a man of his word—and survived—they’d be a million dollars richer. They’d get the nice apartment Anna wanted, and there’d be money for blind, if Karyn could convince Adelaide to keep providing it. It could all go back to normal.

  Minus Tommy.

  Yeah. Minus Tommy. And Anna would be a wreck. Between Tommy and Genevieve, Anna would probably never forgive her. As if I’ll forgive myself.

  “Holy shit,” Genevieve said. “I don’t believe that worked.”

  The wall had gone transparent, becoming a shimmering sheet of thinnest gauze, and Karyn could see plumbing and electrical conduits in the empty space behind it.

  “Is that for real?” she asked.

  “I sure hope so. Anna, come on!”

  Anna came over. She reached a tentative hand forward into the wall, then through it. “Whoa. Feels like . . . nothing.” She leaned her head in and shone her flashlight up the shaft.

  “Ladder’s on the right,” she said. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  Not a trace of blood in the front lobby, nor the scent of gunpowder, and Sobell’s hopes found that, yes, there was yet another subbasement to which they could further descend. His shoes clicked loudly on the marble floor, and the sound echoed back to him off the towering slab before him. There had been no battle here, no winnowing of the enemy. The Brotherhood had surely arrived already, so the absence of any signs of violence could only mean they had been welcomed.

  One lone guard stood at the front desk. The man wrinkled his brow in confusion as Sobell approached.

  “Sir—I—you . . .” He trailed off and pressed one hand to his temple. Then he caught sight of St. George’s sword and the blood that covered Sobell’s hand and dripped from the broken blade. He went for his sidearm, fumbled it, and, by the time he’d rescued it from a fall to the floor, Sobell was on him. A moment later, his head tumbled from his shoulders. The gun fell from his lifeless hand, and his body collapsed to the floor a fraction of a second later.

  “Tragic waste,” Sobell muttered. He walked around the counter and back toward the elevators. He wondered if he was being observed. The main camera screens were out here behind the desk, but there was another set upstairs, just in case. Whether anyone was monitoring them now was unknowable. It probably didn’t matter. The party was upstairs, and surprise would get him only so far with so many arrayed against him. In the end, he would have to trust in his magic, his wits, the spell woven around him, and the rusted-out relic in his right hand.

  And, hopefully, that pack of thieves I hired for this job. The thought should have given him pause, but he grinned as he pushed the button to summon the elevator. He wouldn’t trade his life now for the days of scrabbling in Belfast or San Francisco, but the old life had had a certain feral charm in its more desperate moments, and this certainly matched those days for desperation. He wondered whether he was really a gutter rat by nature and inclination.

  “Perish the thought,” he said.

  The elevator doors opened, and he smiled at himself in the mirror as he stepped inside. A preternatural awareness lifted his senses, propelled him to a nearly transcendent state of consciousness. He was aware of the smooth cloth of his shirt settled on his shoulders, of the rough grip of the broken sword, of the dull curtain behind which he’d swept the screaming pain in his forehead, and a thousand other details. In a moment, the elevator would open, and he would go to war for what was his.

  His smile widened. He shifted the sword to his left hand and straightened his tie with his right, smearing more blood on his shirt.

  The elevator slowed, then stopped. Sobell stepped to one side as the doors opened—no sense in getting shot right off, after all. But nobody made a sound, and the elevator lobby was empty. He stepped out onto the highest floor the elevator went to, the level just below his office. The city twinkled through the windows, the view interrupted only a few times by the columns holding up the rest of the building.

  He walked across the checkered floor to the spiral staircase. No sound drifted down to him from above, but then he hadn’t expected any. The office above had been soundproofed to his rather demanding specifications, and even if an orgy of unprecedented dimensions and enthusiasm were taking place up there, he doubted he’d hear anything.

  He readied a spell, speaking the incantation under his breath and then holding it in his mind, one word away from discharge. The noise of chittering, hungry mouths echoed in his ears and then fell silent, to be replaced by the sound of his panicked heart. But he was still here. Not this time, then.

  He ascended.

  He came up the stairs into the antechamber to his office. It, too, was empty of people, and the engraved black slabs seemed to tower ominously over him in a way they never had before. One more door. One more door, and he would be face-to-face with the miserable prick who’d taken his office—usurped his very throne, as it were. There were no signs of fighting anywhere, suggesting that Gresser had simply allowed the Brotherhood to come up, perhaps counting on the power of the jawbone to keep them from killing him and taking it.

&
nbsp; Sobell pulled a pair of cheap convenience-store earplugs from his pocket, stuffed them into his ears. If it was good enough for Ulysses . . .

  He opened the door.

  Inside, nearly filling his office, dozens of men and women prostrated themselves before a figure that stood in front of his desk. His first impression of the figure was confused, jumbled, but then his mind arranged it into something, and his gorge rose.

  Oh, Joseph. What have you done?

  * * *

  Anna went first up the ladder, followed by Karyn, then Genevieve. The shaft was narrow, not much wider than Karyn’s shoulders, and she marveled that Sobell should have built himself such a tiny escape hatch. He wasn’t a large man, it was true, but this must have been uncomfortable for him, if he’d ever had to use it.

  It was five floors up, and by the time they reached the top, Karyn’s arms ached, her heart pounded, and her nerves were worn raw. Confined space or no, if she fell, she’d end up broken at the bottom of a forty-foot shaft—most likely with Genevieve crushed beneath her. At least there were no visions here. Nobody ever came to this place, a fact for which she could barely express the depth of her gratitude. It was hard on the body, but at least one part of her mind got a break.

  Anna reached the top and stepped to the left of the ladder onto a narrow ledge that surrounded the shaft. Sweat dripped from her face. But she looks OK, Karyn thought. She’s OK. Anna extended a hand and helped Karyn off the ladder. A moment later, Genevieve followed, limping more now on her injured ankle. In the wobbling light of Anna’s flashlight, her face was still a bloody mess. Karyn looked away.

  Anna held the flashlight while Genevieve checked another in Sobell’s series of diagrams. A few more quiet words, a few lines on the sheetrock, and the wall faded to transparency. Beyond, Karyn saw a room full of softly lit alcoves, each of which contained an old, battered piece of junk. At the far end of the room, yellow light outlined a door.

  Genevieve stepped through the wall. Anna and Karyn followed her.

  * * *

  The awful apparition before Sobell swung two heads in his direction when he spoke. The first was Joe Gresser’s, and it barely twitched. Gresser was a wasted ruin of the man he had been. He still had the big, broad-shouldered frame, but the flesh had melted away, leaving him no more substantial than a coat rack, and his back hunched over like that of a man who had seen a hundred years come and go.

  If Sobell had wondered where Gresser had wasted away to, he had to look no farther than the creature growing from his body. It was nearly skeletal, wrapped in a sticky, clinging skin of bilious yellow. One bony arm wrapped around Gresser’s shoulder and torso, and the other caressed the big man’s face, leaving slimy trails of mucus. A fat, grotesque umbilicus came from under Gresser’s shirt and entered its side, looking like nothing so much as a loop of pale white intestine. The creature’s head was nearly that of a human skull papered over with wet skin, the jaw somewhat more protuberant, the eyes slitted and baleful.

  It pointed at Sobell. Gresser did the same, puppetlike.

  “Kill him,” Gresser said, and the creature’s mouth moved with his.

  OK, ladies. Don’t let me down here.

  Sobell spoke the last word of his spell, and the room exploded. A blazing white light detonated before him and a thunderclap ripped the air, sounding like the Devil himself had drop-kicked the earth. A dozen or more people dropped to the ground, screaming and clutching their ears or eyes, and even Sobell staggered for a moment, shocked by the force.

  He moved a moment before those farthest from the epicenter recovered their wits.

  It wasn’t fast enough, he saw, as the bodies closed in around him.

  * * *

  Brilliant light suddenly outlined the door, accompanied by screams, and Karyn jumped. Anna dashed forward. She pushed the door open ever so slightly and held her eye to the crack. Karyn heard her gasp from across the room.

  Before Karyn and Genevieve could reach her, Anna pulled her gun and kicked the door open.

  Karyn nearly gagged. The thing before them wrapped around Greaser like a gruesome living backpack, its flesh stretched tightly over spindly bones. What the hell is that? she had time to wonder, and then Anna was firing.

  Four loud, sharp bangs, and the bullets tore through the creature’s back, passing into the body of the man it hung from. An unearthly scream came from Gresser’s throat, and both figures fell back into the desk.

  Anna stood, shocked and staring. Karyn saw a handful of armed Brotherhood standing against the wall to Anna’s right, no less shocked. Opposite them, at the other side of the office, a man with a spotty beard and angular features clutched Adelaide by the elbow.

  “The bone! The fucking jawbone, you twit!” Sobell shouted from across the room, where he was being mobbed by angry cult members and security personnel. Part of an arm went flying.

  “Anna!” Karyn shouted, and she pointed. The bony horror that had ridden Greaser pulled itself off the dying man with a horrid ripping sound and turned to face Anna.

  It sprang at her before she could bring her gun up, jaws snapping at her face. She staggered backward and fell as it barreled into her.

  A high-pitched, frantic scream sounded over the shouts—Sobell, barely recognizable: “KILL IT!” His arm swung free for a moment, and something—black, maybe a foot long—spun out from the crowd, arcing through the air.

  “ANNA!” Genevieve screamed.

  The scene doubled itself, and for once, Karyn saw future and present spread before her in a crystal clear tableau. Nobody else dies on my watch, she saw with wonder and terror.

  The spinning thing cut through the air, tumbled end over end, and effortlessly sliced off a corner of Sobell’s hard wooden desk before hitting the ground.

  Anna screamed as the bony monstrosity clawed at her. It was making an awful wheezing, chittering sound now, and its jaw clacked and spittle flew.

  Genevieve moved. Karyn saw it before it happened, saw the whole sorry mess play out in slow motion. Genevieve would rush forward for the sword fragment, or whatever it was, and then it would happen. The blast would tear through her head, shower the room with blood and brains, and leave Genevieve a corpse before she hit the ground.

  And then, when the dust settled, it would be back to normal. Minus Tommy, of course. Just the two of them, plus Nail. Back to Anna looking out for her all the time, with the extra added bonus of Anna’s grief and her own culpability in two deaths she could have stopped.

  Or . . . the alternative. The horrible, unthinkable alternative.

  It was so easy. Karyn took one step forward, right into what would become Genevieve’s path, and twisted her body. Genevieve arrived a fraction of a second later, bounced off her, and went skidding to the side. Karyn fell forward. To her right, one of the Brotherhood—a confused, scared kid, probably no more than twenty—brought up his shotgun.

  The gun didn’t seem loud when it went off, not among all the chaos. Karyn felt a slight tug at her hip. She spun, falling to the floor with a thud.

  On the other side of the room, Adelaide reeled back against the wall as shotgun shot sprayed her rib cage and shoulder. When she met Karyn’s eyes, the look on her face wasn’t pain. It was rage, pure hate—and shock. She, too, had seen the possible futures unfolding, and she had moved just a moment too late, perhaps lost in the myriad possibilities, perhaps never believing Karyn would really make that choice.

  She wasn’t going to die, Karyn didn’t think, but even so, that was it. No more blind. Not from Adelaide. Maybe not ever.

  Genevieve leapt over Karyn and scooped up the broken sword. There was a moment when she froze, terror on her face as she looked across the room at something Karyn couldn’t see. Then she made a noise of horrified disgust and spun away. She crossed the room, stumbling a bit over her twisted ankle, and brought the weapon down on the monster’s s
kull. Karyn saw the sword pass neatly through the creature’s head, through cranium, spine, and jaw, and leave it cloven in two pieces.

  The noise in the room abated, or maybe it just seemed far away. Karyn was having a great deal of difficulty breathing, and distantly she felt that that ought to be cause for panic. But there wasn’t any pain. Anna was crawling out from under the dead pile of bones, screaming as tears poured from her eyes.

  “It’s OK,” Karyn said, or tried to. No sound seemed to come out, but that didn’t matter. She smiled. “I’m OK.”

  Everything was OK.

  She closed her eyes.

  * * *

  The room was bedlam, insanity far beyond what it had been just moments before. To Anna’s eyes, everything got weirdly calm for one second after Genevieve destroyed the bone—everyone paused, it seemed. Then shrieks and wails erupted from the Brotherhood, and a wall of bodies surged toward the desk, toward Genevieve, Anna, and Karyn.

  “Fucking kill them!” Sobell shouted.

  Kill them? They were outnumbered twenty to one! Then the dazed bruisers on Sobell’s security staff recovered their wits, and the mass of people exploded with violence in all directions, and Anna understood whom Sobell had been yelling at. Security attacked the Brotherhood with fists, batons, and guns, and the room erupted into a cataclysmic brawl.

  Anna jumped up from the floor, heaving the bony horror aside just as two of the Brotherhood vaulted the desk. She shot them both without a trace of hesitation and was running to Karyn’s side before they even hit the ground. Genevieve backed up to meet her there, holding the weird metal fragment up as though she could ward off evil with it.

  “Is she OK?” Anna asked, still not taking her eyes from the violence unfolding in front of her. Sobell had somehow managed to surround himself with a handful of his security people, who were backing him into a corner as they held off half a dozen enraged Brotherhood members. One went down with a knife in his ear, hands still clutching at the cultist in front of him. “Is she all right?”