Zero Sum: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 3)

by James Osiris Baldwin

  He paused for a moment, a pillar of black linen, and then gestured with his hands. “The Vigiles-Deutsche Orden brought back a relic of the War of Heaven.”

  “Which is?”

  “You first. I know that AEROMOR is the main base of operations for the Russian Mafiya, but when my scout broke into the venue to look around, he found precious little of interest.”

  “Because their information is digitized and stored downstairs in an archive of floppy disks,” I said. “They keep them in a safe near the interrogation rooms. Glory really needs to learn how to use a computer.”

  “I see.” The Deacon digested that for a moment. “The relic is a Spur. It is a tiny fragment of the Spear used to pierce the Heavens in the first great battle between God and the Leviathan: a large, black stone, blacker than space. Coagulated evil. Anti-magic, anti-life, anti-itself.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. “I’ve seen it. The Vigiles have something like that in their headquarters.”

  “Really?” There was genuine shock in the Deacon’s voice. “And you were not driven insane?”

  “They use it to suppress magic. It didn’t really seem like… anything, really.” Now that I thought about it, the stone plinth had almost pushed away attention. “They put it up in their building, built a little rock garden around it.”

  “If it fit inside of a building, then it is only a chip from the totality of the Spur.” The Deacon descended the two steps leading down from the old pulpit, and to my surprise, he sat down on the ground. "Do you remember what I said to you on that night? The last night we fought?"

  The night when you shot me and turned John Spotted Elk into a giant cockroach? "Most of it."

  "I told you that I thought it was a shame that you would reject what the Father has to offer men like you," he said. "The power to rid the world of the unnatural and perverse; an understanding of the mechanics of fate and time. I was honestly feeling maudlin that night. You might not believe me, but the whole business with the children made me sick. I complained, but was overruled: my superiors tolerated it because they thought they needed Sergei. Now, we have the gift of hindsight.”

  How noble. I fixed my game face and squatted down where I stood, hands linked between my knees. "I’m more surprised that a man like you would tolerate superiors.”

  “I am in all ways a servant to powers I do not understand, Alexi. Pride goeth before the fall, and Father help any man who thinks himself equal to the power of Deity,” The Deacon replied. "Those children were supposed to be taken for a higher purpose, to be trained into warriors. After the extent of the abuse came to light, Sergei Yaroschenko is now... out of favor. We were not involved in the pornography—that was entirely Sergei’s business. So, tell me: how was he conducting this trade under the nose of the Vigiles Magicarum?"

  Interesting, but at least half a lie. “They were paying him to do it.”

  “I had wondered. No… I had known, but it is always good to have more evidence. Do you have evidence?”

  “MinTex,” I said. “A shell company owned by a shell company owned by the Future of America. A PAC.”

  “A Traditionalist Catholic PAC affiliated with a certain up-and-coming Presidential candidate,” the Deacon said. “How… elaborate.”

  “Made more so by the route of sale,” I replied. “And their headquarters is—was—a safehouse used by the Vigiles. It got trashed the night the bugs fell.”

  “The Philimites. Interesting. Were you involved?”

  I shrugged. “Expect to see my face on the news tomorrow morning. If I’m not in the top ten most wanted right now, I’ll be shocked.”

  “It seems to be your destiny.” The Deacon lay a hand on the ground. “You escaped me twice. You are the first to have ever done so.”

  “Am I supposed to be flattered?”

  “I mean more that… that you survived was an extraordinary twist of fate. I didn't see it coming, and that means someone must have had a hand in your survival. Reweaving the strands of fate is... a very rare power. And it gives me hope."

  "Hope doesn't really seem like something in the repertoire of a priest in a cult of the NO-thing."

  "It is... " he looked up, and made a thin sound of exasperation. "More complicated than that. Tell me... can you imagine an enormous machine made from dead planets and people, fueled on the pain and suffering of billions of creatures within its walls? An engine that is fed on the blood of pure creatures, innocent creatures, who are tortured into insanity and then thrown onto gears that crush them for their decaying Phi? A great machine with a singular purpose: to carry and breed an army that will in their turn consume more worlds, capture more life, as it drills its way into untouched, unsullied parts of reality."

  I felt Kutkha flinch, and then my gut chilled with a nasty, wrenching sensation. Dread… like a long-forgotten memory.

  "Every night before I mastered my abilities, I dreamed some part of the end of the world. The visions varied according to threads of probability, but in every single dream, every single night for most of my life, these dreams ended in a vision of the Engine." The Deacon’s shoulders hunched sharply. "Up until I found my... patron… I would only see parts of this machine. I was a ghost watching men being bred by giant insects, or women turned into chambers made of rotten flesh, forced to gestate monsters that ate them alive as they were born. It was all in glimpses. Disconnected nightmares of something so massive that the mind’s eye could not behold it in its entirety. Then I met the person who brought this all together for me. They confirmed that the Engine is a very real thing, and that people who revel in pure nihilism and who believe they alone are chosen are calling the Engine to Earth. If an Engine passes through our world, all of us—all of us – will be combined into it. Me, you, everyone. Evil and good, child and elder. There is no mercy, no reward. Nothing."

  I could hear the emotion in his voice now. He sounded... upset. Frightened.

  "I won't escape this fate. Neither will you. Nothing can. And the, the things that come out of it…" The Deacon turned his face. If he had features, he'd have been frowning. "Only recently have I understood what’s coming, and understood the extremes to which we must go to repel it from our world. You may have noticed, Alexi, that Life cannot stand before the Void. The Void, by its nature, is a mouth which devours living things. Glorious heroism has a place in fantasy, but in reality, the brighter something shines, the purer and more innocent it is, the more vulnerable it is to its antithesis."

  A strange alien memory of the White Land writhing under an insectoid horde flashed through my mind, and I shuddered.

  "Now, perhaps, you understand why we would take the young shapeshifters and magi. To harden them, to train them. We need an army to mount a defense, and the sacrifice required is great… but only the Morphorde can destroy the Morphorde, a force proportionate to the arrival of the Engine.”

  “Except that I literally busted you performing an actual HuMan sacrifice to the NO with an actual person,” I said. I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice.

  “Angkor is not a person by any measurable means, but I’m not pretending you didn’t witness what you saw. Evil men love a cult, Alexi, and cultishness inspires loyalty. Everything you saw in Red Hook was nothing more than showmanship. We have to gather resources through all channels."

  "You wanted to make DOGs out of those kids." My lip curled, but he sounded utterly sincere. “You were turning them and those men into fucked up monsters.”

  "They were already monsters. Rapists, thugs, murderers, racketeers. I would rather that we had our DOGs on leashes, don’t you?”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “And Mason? What did he do?”

  “He raped a communist girl in Vietnam and gutted her with a bayonet while he was high on heroin. He never told Jennifer Tran, and never would have."

  “What? And he told you?”

  “He couldn’t help it. We locked eyes, and I saw his timeline laid bare.”

  "And Angkor? What did he d
o?"

  The Deacon’s silhouette shifted, mantling in a way that reminded me very strongly of an irritated crow.

  “It is an agent for an organization bent on summoning the Engine to destroy us all,” he replied, voice tense with anger. “That... thing is a pathological liar, a spy, a saboteur. Even its physical body is a lie, a mockery of all that God wrought from Eden. As far as I know, ‘Angkor’ was sent here as an agent by the international elements of our shadow government, and his mission intersects with the Engine in a profound way.”

  My knowledge on that matter was definitely not something I was willing to give up, seeing as he was still holding onto his trump card: the MahTree. I couldn’t bring myself to be angry at Angkor anymore, no matter how disingenuous he was. Suspicious, annoyed, but not angry. Not after Lee and Kristen.

  “Angkor and the Deutsche Orden-Vigiles coalition are all tied up together, though I don’t know the details. You freed him before I could purge his influence from our timeline, and sure enough, the signs have started. Let me guess: he attempted to become close to you, didn’t he? Friends? More than friends?”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I replied.

  "You would be wrong, because a creature like Angkor doesn't have friends: it has tools, which it skillfully manipulates to achieve its ends. And I wonder where you fit into its strategy.”

  That concerned me more than I was willing to show or admit. "Was that all this was about? You wanted me to know about this Engine, slander Angkor, then make excuses for yourself and your activities? If so, we're done."

  "I told you I contacted you to make an offer, actually, which I predict you will reject. Also, a warning – which you may or may not.”

  "Which is?"

  “The Vigiles Magicarum do not answer to the FBI,” he said. “Not at the upper levels. They answer to the CIA and the military, and all three organizations are infested by the Teutonic Knights.”

  “The Deutsche Orden,” I said.

  “Yes. These Crusaders are much older than this country. They are theocratic Illuminati with very definite plans for America and the world, and your shapeshifting biker gang has come to their attention in a negative way. You should prepare accordingly.”

  “Too little, too late,” I said. “They’re already onto them.”

  “Then you should prepare to mourn.” The Deacon inclined his head, gesturing with his hands. “The Vigiles do not bother imprisoning shapeshifters. They force them to shift into their animal soul-forms, then render them down into their basic Phi and use them to create homunculi and other weapons.”

  My skin rippled with goosebumps that had nothing to do with the cold. Not that the Deacon was one to talk: I remembered all too well what he’d done to Mason. “I’d figured that out myself, but like you said, better to have evidence.”

  “The Wise are not any more fortunate. I have reason to believe they mutilate us.” The Deacon huffed a testy little sigh, an odd sound from someone dressed like the boogeyman. “That is the default course of events. Unless a dramatic decision is made, I foresee you ending up in that men’s mage prison the Government operates, and that is where my ability to see the future ends. There is something wrong about that place, Alexi. The arrival of the Engine is tied to that prison as much as it is tied to Angkor’s presence on this world, but I don’t know why.”

  “So what’s the offer?” I knew he had to be lying, but was listening attentively now.

  “A double hit in exchange for a great deal of money and a boon.” The Deacon motioned with an elegant hand. “Whatever the Deutsche Orden is doing must be stopped for this world to survive... and that is where my hope comes in. I want you to find and kill the lynchpin, a man named Charles Bishop. He is the director of the Paranormal Special Activities Division.”

  “The CIA. You’re joking.” I arched an eyebrow.

  “He spends a great deal of time in Seattle. My offer includes sending you to the West Coast with protection and weapons. Excellent protection. Glory is fully capable of enabling the assassination of a senior Intelligence official.”

  “Then send him in, if he’s so good.” I sniffed.

  “Glory is exceptional in every way, but he is inhibited from striking directly at Bishop because of his nature,” the Deacon said. “But when it comes to support, espionage, and protection, he is absolutely the best I could offer. After the events of the last few months, he has every reason to want to protect you, both for personal reasons and for reasons of duty."

  “I noticed. He was filling his pants out like he meant it, so if you're trying to sell me on this, you're failing miserably."

  "By putting my best man at your disposal? Well, that isn’t intended to be your incentive. Your reward is a separate matter," The Deacon crossed his ankles and leaned back. "I doubt money over a certain quantity is of much interest to you, and so I have a singular offer. I am willing to grant you an act of magic at great expense to myself: The chance to go back in time and undo—or do—a regret. Loss, humiliation, a bad mistake, an error of judgment… anything that could have been avoided with hindsight.”

  I was glad I was sitting down. A swooping feeling of vertigo passed through me like a current. The feeling of if only.

  He pressed on. “I believe we all have things we wish we could change, and within limits, you can. It has to be something within the last year or so, and it will be difficult and potentially dangerous... but to avoid the arrival of Hell on Earth, I will make the sacrifice and sign a contract in blood, if required."

  A tremor ran through my jaw. “And who’s the second mark?”

  “Angkor. Every single precognitive vision I have had features him prominently. He must be removed from this timeline.”

  Of course. I clambered up to my feet, lips pressed together in a tight line. The Deacon also stood, and his robes fell around him in a way that resembled skin more than cloth. “Alexi, I beg you to think about this carefully. Now that Odaeyang is gone and the Spur discovered, the final events leading to the summoning of the Engine have begun. We have less than twenty-three hours to decide. Any time after that, and it will be too late to swing fate. The Spur fragment is already attracting calamity to this city.”

  “I make my own fate.” I jerked my head up in acknowledgment. “We’re done here.”

  “If you won’t kill the abomination, then at least consider Bishop,” he said. “It won’t earn you my magic, but we will pay for him. Handsomely.”

  If nothing else, that part of the deal was worth thinking about – assuming that the rest of what I’d just been told wasn’t complete and total bullshit. “I’ll think about it. And if I need to contact you?”

  “You will always know where to go at the right time.” And with that, The Deacon turned away and strode into the nearest cluster of shadows. I felt a ripple of energy, unpleasantly cold, and then he was gone.

  Chapter 30

  The fragments of information I’d picked up over the last three days—GOD, had it only been three days? —flitted around one another as I mechanically searched the dark streets for a good mark. It was already time to change cars. I used to think it odd that the ex-cons in the Organizatsiya boosted cars so easily and so frequently, but now that I knew the law was searching for me, I was starting to understand why they did it.

  I ended up jacking a couple of sets of license plates from abandoned, non-functioning cars, and took a plain Volvo station wagon parked outside a run-down warehouse in Hunt’s Point, something old enough to not be missed and with enough room to lie down in the back. With tools, I could move my gear, swap the plates, and boost the car without an alarm within ten minutes, skills honed by over a decade of practice. I could have started the engine with magic, but high-speed hotwiring was a skill worth keeping sharp.

  Dissociated and thirsty, I drove a loop and checked back, searching for tails. None—yet. I relaxed fractionally, enough to start trying to put everything I knew together. The numbers written on my arm felt like an afte
rthought compared to everything else, the reality of what I—we—were facing. Kristen Cross, Lee Harrison, her father, the Shard of Eden—Kristen had mentioned that, too—this MahTree. Bishop, Odaeyang, The Deacon, Soldier, Sergei, Harrison, the Nightbrothers... and Angkor. They were all connected somehow, but the links just wouldn’t fall into place. There was too much fuzz, too many missing pieces. Some of them were in Talya’s hands, some of them in Otto Roth’s, and the rest was all on Angkor, wherever and whoever he really was.

  If I triangulated what I knew, then Angkor was working for a third party—ANSWER—in opposition to the Vigiles and the TVS, who were busy pulling at each other’s collars as they fought over the Shard, the MahTree Lee described, and probably this Spur, as well. I could assume Angkor had killed Harrison’s father as a last-ditch attempt to find her.

  I was willing to bet real money that the bikers who’d taken Lee in were on the Vigiles’ payroll. Bikers stomped people for looking at them funny, but they didn’t hand people over to the police. My leap of faith was that the Nightbrothers had done it, but there were a lot of bikers in New York, and there was even more police corruption.

  We needed the information on that hard drive Zane and I had pulled out of the funeral home. I needed to find Talya, and therein lay a problem. I didn’t know where Talya lived, her phone number, or her haunts besides the clubhouse. There was one roundabout way I could possibly communicate with her, but I couldn’t do anything about it until the morning.

  Stress beat on me in waves as I pulled into a patch of shadow by the side of the road and cut the engine. It was time to make the final switch, exchanging the plates of the stolen car for the ones from the abandoned car and taking the fresh set for my own ride, completing the shell game and ensuring my anonymity.

  A shell game. As I worked, that phrase repeated itself over and over in my head. For a time, I paid the echolalia no mind, screwing the new plates on as quickly as I could comfortably work and fighting not to freeze at every little sound. After a while though, I began to think. Shell games. That’s what this is, isn’t it? There’s a prize under one cup that’s being shuffled around and around the empty cups on the table. But who’s the one hiding their hand?