Unfortunately, since he’d woken up with Sheila and during the brief time he’d been asleep he’d gotten a bit more guidance from whatever powers guided him from time to time, he didn’t have that option. Sheila, he knew from previous experience, wouldn’t be fooled by the pretense of his nonexistence, and failing to follow orders was a good way to get in deep shit very quick.
He wished the dreams had given him an easy way out of this one, one that didn’t practically scream at him that his time was up, to punch the clock and head on out, but they had made it very clear that he wasn’t going to be able to pass this job on to someone else. He knew who the killer was now, and it was his job to do something about it. Drakanis was going to get a note, but that was the extent of involving the police on this one.
What was bothering Damien wasn’t the high probability of his impending doom, nor was it really the identity of the killer. It was the nagging sense that he had missed something, something vital, that and the fact that he’d been so goddamn blind this whole time. He’d sat across from the bastard, having coffee and shooting the shit just like everyone else, and never known a goddamn thing. The idea that he’d been too busy jumping at shadows and waiting for orders to notice the root of the fucking problem sitting right in front of him did more than bother him; it depressed the shit out of him as well and made him wonder what other elementary truths he might have overlooked while he was contemplating his navel.
He walked past the front desk—thankfully, Sheila was on the crapper or something, so he didn’t have to deal with her, yet—and ignored the door to the bullpen, walking right on toward the maintenance closet. As he was walking, his mind was running ahead of him, casting nets to pick up that sense of miasma, that aura that the killer seemed to project when he wanted to stay hidden. He knew enough about what it came from to pinpoint the source now, if he could get a vibe on it.
He wasn’t getting anything from the closet itself, nothing fresh anyway—just a lingering mental reek—so he pushed the door open and headed in. He figured the killer would come back there eventually, and when he did, Damien intended to be ready for him.
When the broom handle came whistling down, trying to crack the side of his skull, Damien almost earned himself a Shot(s) Fired form, before reminding himself of where he was and lashing out with his mind; he managed not to scream as he turned toward the bludgeon. He shoved it back violently with the telekinetic power that was just one of his many gifts. Then he fell against the door, laughing at himself and trying to get his heart beating normally again.
In his mind, he’d imagined the killer standing there, smiling sweetly even as his eyes gleamed with violence and he brought the bludgeon down on the back of his neck. What had really happened was a great deal simpler; the broom had just been leaning against the door, and when he’d opened it and moved in, it had fallen toward him.
“You need to calm the hell down, my friend. Not to mention buy the department a new broom.”
Damien didn’t like the sound of his own voice; it was too shaky, too full of easy rationalization. Also, he wasn’t overly pleased with his own performance. Just a falling household item in a potential avalanche of a closet, and he lashed out with enough force to turn the damned thing into splinters. Not a good sign.
Still laughing and trying to catch his breath, Damien turned away from the closet, deciding that maybe the surprise tactic wasn’t the best idea. Wired like he was at the moment, he was liable to cause some major damage to whoever opened the door first, whether or not it was the one who was supposed to be getting the brunt of it. What faced him as he did so made him holler again and jerk backward, tumbling several of the cleaning agents and paper supplies from the shelves to bury him as he sputtered.
Karim, also known as Karesh, smiled innocently at him, the nimble fingers of his mind rifling through the Disciple’s brain and finding what he wanted. He nodded once and then spoke with a smile in his voice.
“Ah, Mr. Woods. I had so hoped to see you today.”
Damien lurched out of the pile of debris, dragging the unawareness that surrounded him and stretching it to cover the whole of the closet. He felt an uncomfortable tingling, and then it seemed as though the shroud he had drawn had been boosted. He realized Karesh had added his own strength to it, apparently not wanting to be interrupted any more than Damien did.
“So, you know. Excellent. I was beginning to think that I’d have to do something drastic to get your attention.”
Karesh didn’t appear to be disturbed in the slightest by the prospect of dealing with Woods here and now. He might have preferred to arrange an accident or to have the Disciple removed in some other fashion—declaration of insanity, perhaps. It might not have stuck, but it would have put him out of the way long enough for it not to matter.
Damien was nonplussed with the concept of direct action against Karesh, but at this point, he didn’t see any other options. Whatever would be would be, and he could only do his best to make sure that if he went down, Karesh came with him. He pulled what little of his energy he could afford, tapping into the reservoir that he had touched only once before, knowing he was going to need the kind of power that had bound Sheila; anything less wouldn’t even scratch the bastard.
If this doesn’t work, we’re all toast, his mind calmly commented, like an announcer at a golf game. Then, in a second tone, he answered himself, Doesn’t matter.
Karesh felt the surge of power, the disturbance in the threads of magic that held everything together and felt it coming. Incredibly, he was laughing, his black eyes alight with perverse glee. He smelled the energy crackling in the air and knew well what Woods was going to attempt, just as he knew it would fail. He saw no reason to stop the boy. He wasn’t going to hurt Karesh, after all, and he’d very likely just kill himself in the effort—perhaps not as immense a personal victory but quite amusing.
Woods was having no trouble reading the thoughts in Karesh’s head now. The Warden had apparently seen little need to hide the images in his head from his apparent victim any longer, and now Damien was being buried beneath a mental onslaught of atrocity. A single thought continued to pulse through Karesh’s mind, swimming through that flood like some vicious fish. He’s going to kill himself!
You just keep thinking that, asshole. Woods didn’t believe Karesh had full access to his mind—not right then anyway, not while he was busy trying to break him with images of pain and torture—and that was to the good. Best Karesh didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.
With a final thought of Fuck, I’m sorry, Sheila, Damien released the energy, but not in the way Karesh had expected him to. Karesh had expected a pyrotechnic display, some explosion that would destroy both of their bodies. Every sign he had gotten from the Disciple indicated that was exactly the idea.
What Damien did instead was allow that power to double back on itself into a mental feedback loop and then pictured it driving through the connection Karesh had forged, a mental tac nuke on course for whatever passed for the Warden’s slime pit of a mind.
You wanted in, asshole. Now you’ve got it. Damien threw open the doors of his own mind, giving Karesh full access to everything rattling around in there. Even as he felt thoughts and ideas begin to fade, shut down one by one as the magic shattered his brain, he saw Karesh’s eyes widen, felt the killer trying to pull back his mental probe, but it was too late.
He could hear Karesh screaming in his head—and maybe with his ears too, but he wasn’t sure about that—and as his vision centers shut down, he had the satisfaction of seeing the bastard’s eyes roll back in his head and him drop. Damien let go then and felt something inside break. He’d known this would probably be his last day, but he hated to be right about those kinds of things.
Damien fell, sprawling over Karesh’s body as the last of the magic left him. Then there was nothing, for either of them.
Chap
ter 17
The darkness swirled around him, penetrating every part of his being and filling him with renewed purpose and power.
How long he had been floating here, in this place that was not really a place at all, he did not know. He remembered nothing of what had come before, nothing save his service to some being—god or demon? He did not know; that dwelled in this place of shadow.
He felt that he had somehow failed that being, broken some important vow, and that this apparent rebirth—for in his failing, he was somehow sure he had been slain, though the face of his murderer yet eluded him—was meant to be as much of a punishment as it was a reward or a second chance.
His suspicions grew more deeply seated when the voice echoed out, seeming to come from all around him and within him, from his very blood, carried by the tangible darkness that carried him along even now.
“You are awake.” There was no compassion in the voice, and neither did it bear the simple statement of fact that it implied. It carried with it only a deep-seated feeling of disappointment and rage, one that harmonized with his own flesh, blood, and bone, bringing them to an almost unbearable agony. As he writhed in the weightless space, there came no further response for a long while. How long, he could not say, for as well as being apparently placeless, the darkness was also timeless.
After an eternity, the pain faded, and the voice came again.
“You will not fail again.”
He shook his head violently, trying to bring some sense of focus to his surroundings, trying to force remembrance of what had happened, how he had come to this state. Still, nothing came. There was just an empty space where memories should have been.
Hoping to evade further agonies, he tried to make his lips move, tried to force sound out of his throat and into the darkness around him. None came, but the other voice answered his attempts, now sounding slightly amused.
“How quickly you forget. Your voice shall do no good in this place; speak with your mind instead, worm.”
How? he thought, but then another blast of the pain ripped through his spine and drove him to screaming soundlessly in the void.
“You understand how.”
As the pain faded, he managed to form something resembling a coherent thought and tried to think of it as reaching the owner of the booming voice, the giver of pain and apparent teacher and mentor to this place. How have I failed?
He felt the darkness within and without, coiling as if to drive him into another spasm of torture, but then the sensation faded. The silence felt almost contemplative, as if whatever had spoken to him was trying to decide if there was incompetence or simple amnesia behind the question.
Then it felt as if all the darkness moved collectively, a sigh from deep within that racked the entire body of whatever sort of beast the darkness and the voice were. Sounding almost sorrowful—but like with all other emotions but indignant rage, it had the tinge of unreality to it—the darkness seemed to shake its head.
“You allowed yourself to die. You knew full well that such was not in the terms of our agreement; you are not to cease living until you have chosen a replacement. What is worse is the fashion in which you died; you thought yourself prepared for anything, capable of bringing down any foe who stood between you and glory. You allowed yourself to be surprised, to be bested by a mere child.”
I am sorry. I don’t remember . . . he began, but was cut off as the darkness’s voice bellowed at him. Had it been a man standing there, he believed he would have been covered with spit and rendered deaf; as it was, the sound assaulted his soul rather than his eardrums, and deafness was a mercy that would be denied him.
“I know you don’t remember!” There was a pause then and another of those heavy sighs, as if whatever it must speak next was difficult for the thing that lived in the dark to relay. “You may recover what was lost, given time. But for now, it matters not. Be thankful he gave his life to end yours; as you are now, you would not have been able to stand against him, and conflict would have been inevitable.”
Though he was still lacking any memory of what had happened, the tone in the voice—tinged with something that sounded a great deal like fear—seemed like a good enough reason to consider the death of this other as good fortune. Anything that could make something that lived in a darkness like this consider fear at all was likely something to be avoided by someone who was apparently mortal, as he was.
He considered asking any further questions with a great deal of trepidation, fearing another flare from the darkness, but it remained silent, and at last, he could do nothing but ask, unless he chose to go insane. One thing could be said for this place—the choices seemed simple enough.
Who was I?
The silence continued on, and for a moment, he considered—with equal parts dismay and relief—that whatever lived there had decided to leave him alone. He was not proven to be so lucky.
“No one of importance. A failure. A better question is perhaps ‘Who shall I be?’”
Finding a small measure of courage in the fact that he hadn’t been punished for asking, he pressed forward. Who shall I be, then?
“You shall be Lintar, favored son of the talu`shar. But you shall also be Karesh, to remember your failings in name if not in mind.”
The words echoed through the newly christened Lintar’s brain, dredging up fragments of a past that was no longer his: images of blood and pain and chants of power granted him by his master—the master of this void, he had no doubt—and turned upon those who would oppose him. Then the trickle of memory ceased, and he was left again without a past, but he had at least been granted a chance for the future.
I will not fail you again, Master. Bolstered by his naming and eager to return to the world of flesh painted so lightly on his nearly blank mind, he managed a smile, feeling the darkness within him boil once more. There was no pain in it now, however. Now it was ecstasy of the highest caliber. The darkness without seemed pleased.
“I know you won’t. Now finish the task you were granted.”
Karesh Lintar, formerly Karesh ibn Karesh, formerly Karim Alvat, opened his eyes.
Chapter 18
8:30 am, December 14, 1999
Parker and Drakanis were seated in the corner of the local Denny’s, ignored by the other patrons almost as much as they were ignored by their waitress. They had spent the past forty-five minutes eating with as much gusto as they could muster for the $1.99 breakfast special and downing cup after cup of the shit-tasting sludge the waitress claimed was supposed to be coffee. Several times, Parker had tried to get Drakanis to talk, but he just shook his head and continued eating.
Now, as their coffee cups were being refilled and the plates taken away, with cigarette lit and belt loosened, Drakanis cracked his neck and stared Parker in the eyes.
“You ready? I warn you, it isn’t good stuff. And might be more trips down Paranoia Lane.”
Parker barked laughter, dropping his cigarette into his crotch and nearly choking on his coffee. Once he had regained some sense of composure, he rolled his shoulders.
“Spill it. That particular street is rapidly becoming my home address.”
Drakanis studied his friend for a long moment, trying to decide how bad off Parker was. He didn’t look good, that was for sure, but given the morning—hell, the week—he’d had, Drakanis didn’t suppose he could really blame the man. He supposed if the early morning call from the killer hadn’t thrown Parker for a loop, nothing in the painting’s story would send him off the deep end just yet.
“All right. The basics—the facts, as anybody knows them—are simple enough. Some crazy Thug—like, from the cult of the death goddess, not some idiot with a teardrop tattoo on his eye—painted it, so far as anybody can guess, some time in the third century. He was real popular with his fellows apparently. Claimed to be the lover of Kali, binder and father of
a hundred thousand demons, and so on.”
“Charming gentleman, I’m sure,” Parker remarked with dry sarcasm.
“Right. Anyway. So he paints it, claims it was divine inspiration, that this thing was the way to whatever the hell they call Heaven over there. This goes over pretty good until they find out that he killed half his underlings and used their blood to paint the damned thing. So, of course, they take the nice logical action. They kill him and decide to torch the thing.”
Parker noticed that Drakanis was looking a little green around the gills as he got to this part. He stayed quiet, though. He just signaled for another cup of coffee and waited to hear it. Mikey would tell the tale in his own time and in his own way. No reason to rush him or shove him into the uncomfortable bits.
“If anything about it is true, they supposedly… well…” Drakanis paused, looking greener than ever, as if he was trying to decide if he was going to tell this part or not. Finally, he forced his gorge down and spat it out. “Cut him up. Severed spine; eyes, penis, ears removed.”
Parker nodded. “Sounds like what our boy has been up to. Any more fun little facts about it?”
Drakanis shook his head, snuffed the cigarette, and almost immediately lit another. He opened his mouth, about to say something, but the waitress decided right then would be an excellent time to nag them. Her eyes flickered fire as she asked them if there would be anything else, clearly trying to tell them that there had better not be. Parker earned himself a glare that would have killed small animals when he requested refills on the coffee and flapped her off before turning his expectant gaze back to his partner.
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