Darkness of the Soul

by Kaine Andrews

  What the hell happened? It felt like even thinking hurt. As she coughed, she felt blood run out of the corner of her mouth, dribbling onto the floor. Manderly’s attention was apparently focused on whatever was on the other side of the door, and he ignored her.

  He’s not paying any attention to you, she thought, as she dropped her eyes down to his belt, noticing that he was wearing his service revolver. The holster strap was undone, like he had been getting ready to use it, but both of his hands were on the door, pressing against it. She tried to take stock of her own condition, to determine if the ribs would stop her if she made a grab for it. She figured that it would hurt, probably a hell of a lot, but at least trying seemed to make a hell of a lot more sense than just lying there and waiting for whatever was going to happen to her.

  You can handle it. Get the gun, shove it up against the back of his head. It won’t matter by that point. Just get moving. Good advice, but she had always found it most difficult to find the best advice, even when it came from her own mind. Still, this was looking more and more like a life-or-death situation and even if it wasn’t that bad, part of her wanted to kick his ass just because of the bullshit explanations he had given her.

  Dragging herself up proved harder than she would have thought, as daggers sunk into her lungs. She fought with the urge to cough, keeping an eye on Manderly’s back. She could see part of his face from the new angle and could tell his eyes were closed. Whatever he was hearing on the other side of that door must have been pretty deeply interesting to keep him occupied like that. She took as deep a breath as her ribs would allow and shot her hand out, still murmuring prayers in her head.

  Manderly reacted almost immediately, his hand flying out and trying to intercept hers, but his distraction caused him a moment of delay, and Sheila had already gotten the gun out of the holster. They fought over it briefly, Manderly pulling away from the door and trying to get a better grip on her arm instead of the gun. She could see his intent glimmering in his rheumy eyes; she could tell that if he got a decent grip on her hand or her elbow, he’d break it without a moment of hesitation. Thinking about that—and how badly it had hurt when she’d fallen out of a tree at the age of five and how useless her arm had been back then—helped her find a last surge of strength. She yanked back from him, tripped over the edge of the tub, and fell in, but she kept her grip on the gun. She steadied it with her other hand and aimed it square at his chest. She had never done particularly well on the firing range, but she thought she could handle hitting him at this distance.

  Manderly halted, put his hands up, and grinned down at her. “Oh, would you be so quick to shoot an old man?”

  Sheila was fighting waves of darkness that wanted to overtake her; pain radiated out from her rib cage and tried to drown her in the depths of healing rest. She doubted that if she gave in to the desire for sleep that she’d ever wake up again and was clinging with grim determination to everything she could. Her vision was starting to become spotty, leaving Manderly floating in a black tunnel where only his face and the sights of the gun were visible. She tightened her grip on the pistol. She stared up at him, her finger putting a slight amount of pull on the trigger. “You’re goddamn right I would. Now open the door.”

  Manderly smiled at her, the smile of a favorite grandfather welcoming a child during the holidays. When he spoke, his voice was low and soft, hypnotic in quality. “I don’t think you want that, Sheila. Things out there are even worse. Now lay down the gun.”

  Sheila felt a tremble in her biceps working its way down to her hands, and her arms started to lower themselves. It took all her will and the forced remembrance that this man had basically been intending to hold her captive to force the others to come back up. The only change in the old man’s expression was a widening of his smile. She felt something in the back of her mind, almost like someone was tickling her neck with a feather, but on the inside, and her arms trembled again.

  “You’re strong, girl. I’ll give you that. But I’ll win in the end. So put it down before I have to put any more force on you. It will hurt if I do, and you know it.”

  She had no idea how he was doing it—some perversion of what Damien did, maybe?—but she didn’t doubt that it was his gaze or words that were causing her arms to shake and her grip to weaken. This time, they went down almost all the way, but he still didn’t move. Sheila was sure that if he said one more word, it wasn’t going to matter a whole lot what she did, and then he’d be on her.

  Trying to find a way to regain focus on her thoughts and situation, Sheila did the only thing she could think of: she stuck her tongue out between her teeth and bit down as hard as she could. She heard the click as her teeth met, and the liquid plop as the tip of her tongue was severed and flopped to the floor. It lay there in an insignificant splat of her blood, looking like a comma someone had been meaning to drop into a sentence and then abandoned, but she didn’t look for long.

  The sudden pain tore through her mouth and shattered the hold Manderly had gained on her. As soon as she felt the weight in her arms lift, she brought his gun back up and pulled the trigger. The sound was nearly deafening in the close confines of the bathroom—and who knew who might have heard it outside, if that other gunshot had come from out there—and when Manderly began screaming, the hoarse, shrill cries of an old man lacking his meds, she found herself wishing that she had skipped nearly and gone straight for full-on silence.

  She brought her eyes up as Manderly thudded back against the door, both of his hands going to his kneecap and clamping down, trying to stem the spurts of blood that were erupting from the shattered remains of his leg. Sheila thought it might have looked comical, were it not for the circumstances, to see him hopping backward like he was. With the wound looking like it did, she didn’t think anyone would be laughing about it, especially not Manderly himself.

  I must have hit an artery . . . God, look at all the blood. For a moment, the pain in her side and in her mouth was forgotten as she tried to avoid the urge to vomit. Manderly was bleeding like a stuck pig and screaming at the top of his lungs. The worst of it wasn’t really the blood or the screams though. To her, it was the thought that she had done that. When she had joined the force, she had acknowledged that someday she might have to shoot someone, but only as an intellectual concept, not as a concrete reality that would one day have to be faced. Now that the inevitable had actually happened, she wasn’t sure if she could process that and still stay who she had been. Then again, a lot had happened in the last few weeks that had served to change her, not the least of which was finding out that the rules she had lived her life by—and assumed that everyone else did, as well—were about as solid as Jell-O.

  Hey, after all that, being able to deal with shooting one old man who wanted to play kidnapper is nothing, right?

  Still staring in horror at what she’d done, Brokov didn’t immediately notice the crackling in the air, the feeling of tension gathering around the old man even as his screams began to fade away. Her jaw dropped open as she realized that the blood was stopping and the raw edges of the wound were beginning to pull together. The old man grinned at her, baring his bloodied teeth like a predatory cat.

  “You’re a fighter, too. That’s good, I wager. You’ll need a temper like that. Now quit gaping and let an old man die in peace. It may not be bleeding, but you’ve killed me just the same.”

  Sheila tried to process what she was seeing, but it didn’t want to work out right in her head. She could look at the floor and see the signs of what she’d done to him—far too much blood, even if she had nicked an artery or something—but the physical marks on the man himself were so faded as to be almost nonexistent. Then there was the matter of what he was saying; he had made her shoot him, and now he wanted her to just leave?

  What the hell is going on here?

  Further chances at thinking it through were cut off when Manderly’s sweat-
streaked face suddenly jerked to the doorway again, as an old and dusty chuckle slipped from his lips. “Doesn’t matter, now. It’s time.”

  How she could hear it with her ears still ringing from the gunshot and Manderly’s screaming, Sheila didn’t know, but somehow, the sound of the door to the room—that was what she guessed it was anyway—swinging open and then crashing into either a wall or the floor was perfectly audible. There was a beat of silence in which neither of them breathed, but they both recognized Parker’s voice coming through the wall.

  “Hi, Mikey. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  Chapter 43

  12:15 pm, December 24, 1999

  Parker stood outside the door to hotel room 828 of the Silverado, apprehension, sorrow, and guilt twisting through his guts. He had shrugged off his lucky vest—he didn’t think he’d have need of it, not in there—along with his holster. He’d emptied out his pockets, leaving the detritus of his pack-rat lifestyle scattered in the hallway in front of the room where Damien had died.

  He no longer knew why he was doing any of the things he did. Things had changed so much over the course of the last few days that trying to apply any kind of rational thought to the process was nearly impossible. He only knew that the way he was doing this was the right way, the way it had to be done.

  The only things he had carried with him were his Glock, which he had emptied of all but one round—it was all he was going to need, if he did it right, and even full, the Glock wouldn’t have helped if things went sour—and a strange-looking tube of paper in his off hand.

  He wondered for a moment if Drakanis was standing on the other side of the door, seeing the red worm-shaped things crawling all over the building and leaving little trails of hate behind them, waiting for Parker to open the door and bring in the thing he wanted. He decided the answer was probably yes.

  “Fuck it. Let’s do this.”

  Parker didn’t bother with standard etiquette or politeness; he just lifted one heavy boot and pistoned it out with all of his force and weight behind it. The door had been built to withstand such onslaughts, of course, but Parker had been expecting that. The first kick only bowed it in the middle and rattled the frame. A second hit caused cracks to form, spider-webbing out from the area near the handle and producing a creaking noise that would have worried anyone on the other side of that door, if the person were the worrying type. Parker somehow thought Drakanis was beyond that now.

  A third kick sent the door flying off of its hinges and bent it nearly in half. Plaster dust and a few stray bolts pattered to the floor, leaving Parker with an unobstructed view of the room.

  The living room looked almost identical to the one in the other suite—same pink-yellow walls, shitty carpet, and everything else. The corpse on the floor with the missing face was new, though Parker had pretty much expected to see that. Drakanis stood in the middle of the room, watching him, an expression on his face that it took Parker a moment to process, simply because he didn’t think he’d ever seen it on Mikey before: contempt.

  Neither of them spoke at first, each studying the other and thinking his own thoughts.

  Guess he didn’t die after all. No surprise there. Why make it easy? Drakanis thought, almost immediately followed by an alien voice in his head.

  I suppose you’ll have to rectify that then, now won’t you?

  Christ, Mikey. You bought it, didn’t you? Parker lowered his gun, letting it fall to the floor. He had seen that Drakanis’s pistol was sitting there next to Karesh’s body and had decided he wasn’t going to need it after all.

  He sighed, shaking his head, and then slowly brought his eyes up to look Drakanis in the face. “Hi, Mikey. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  Drakanis only shrugged and then nodded. Parker could feel the emotions coming off of his one-time friend, the conflict and the sense of two beliefs trying to figure out which one was real, the possibility of violence, the chance for redemption. He wished he could give Michael what he knew as easily as Woods had passed it on, but he didn’t think that was possible. Even if it was, he thought—judging by the look in Drakanis’s eyes—that it wouldn’t change a damn thing. Drakanis had made his choice and was damned for it. Karesh’s corpse sitting at their feet pretty much proved that.

  Neither of them paid attention to the small squeak of the bathroom door nudging open or the whoosh of air as someone stepped through the swinging door from the bedroom area. They both knew who had come out—the air had changed, and the feeling of another person in the room was easy to pluck out and identify—but neither cared. It had reached the point at which they were the only ones who mattered. Let the circus gather around and the pope issue decrees from the floor if they wanted; it wasn’t going to change this.

  “It lies, Mikey. You know that. It played us all.”

  Drakanis shook his head, extending one hand.

  “Give it to me, Parker. Everything will be okay if you do. Everything will be better.” His voice sounded lost, devoid of any confidence or humanity, the mewling tone Parker had always imagined that Frankenstein’s monster had used when he begged his creator to make him a bride.

  Sheila looked between the two of them, not understanding, not knowing who was on the right side. Parker looked disheveled and potentially violent—and she guessed that the tube he was carrying was probably the reason for all of this—while Drakanis simply looked tired to her. She pressed herself up against the wall, trying to avoid notice from either of them—though she was fairly sure that they were both too focused on each other to pay attention to her—and waited for one of them to make a move. She still had Manderly’s gun, and while she didn’t want to have to use it again, she would if she had to.

  Parker took a step closer, raising his hands up over his head. “Mikey, come on. You know what it is, and you know it’s always been both. You have to be able to feel that. Christ, I do, and I’m nothing but a peon. You’re going to throw away everything for this? Are you really?”

  Drakanis’s eyes narrowed, and again, Parker got a new emotion from Michael: hate. “Shut up, Vince. You don’t understand. Give it to me.” He took another step toward Parker, and Parker could feel the energy gathering around his former friend and partner. Going to have to do something, and quick. He’s not going to listen.

  Parker did the only thing he knew how to do. He dug in and flung all the static in the air he could grab toward Drakanis. Michael fell back, a look of shock crossing his face.

  “Quit it, Mi—”

  Parker got that far before everything went to hell. The stabbing pain in his right hand came a moment before the sound of the shot penetrated his deafness. It felt like it was on fire, and the tips of his middle and ring fingers were screaming in unison. The rolled up canvas slipped from his suddenly reduced grip, a smoking hole in the center of the roll as it fell to the floor, bounced, and unrolled.

  Sheila stood behind Drakanis, now holding a smoking gun and standing in the shooter’s stance they taught every new cadet. Parker felt like all of his senses had been sharpened—especially whichever one governed the feeling of pain—and he could see the tears streaking down the sides of her face.

  Son of a bitch, he thought. There goes the ball game.

  A tremor ripped through the building, and all three of them found their eyes drawn to the scrap of canvas. It was perfectly black; any trace of the colors or the images that had been on it previously were gone. Three matching holes spaced through the canvas were eating away at the material, expanding toward each other. They could hear thunder in the distance, a storm getting ready to build up. From the distance and the volume, it sounded like when it got there, it was going to be one bitch of a flood coming with it.

  Parker and Drakanis saw energy gathering at the points where the bullet had pierced the canvas. Parker’s blood sizzled at the edges of the holes before being consumed by the power coming out of the paint
ing.

  “It’s opening!” Drakanis’s voice conveyed only a single emotion, the simple joy of a child at Christmas, finally witnessing some long-awaited event.

  Parker reached out with his mind, grabbed at the holes in the canvas, using the power he had been given to yank it back from the floor while trying to keep the holes from expanding. The lights in the room flickered and went out; they came back a moment later but significantly dimmed and looking as though they would go out—and stay out—again at any moment.

  “Move, Sheila!” he shouted, even as he grabbed for his gun, and then he was seeing stars as his head was punted back and slammed against the wall when Drakanis reared back and kicked him.

  Fuck. He’s the one who should have been playing football, his mind puked up. Can’t let go of it. Even if he lays hands on it, can’t let go. He could feel some inner part of himself, some spark that made him what he was, being spun out and pulled into the gaps. The strain of trying to keep them from growing was eating away at his life, his soul.

  Drakanis snatched the talu`shar from Parker’s weakened mental grip and then kicked the gun away from the other man’s reach while Parker tried to get up, wavering. Drakanis was unconcerned about his one-time friend’s health. He had the talu`shar and would keep it.

  Sheila watched the tables turn, unable to react at first. The flickering lights and the feeling of gloom that was spreading rapidly through the room weren’t making it any easier to deal with. When she saw Drakanis punt Parker’s head into the wall and witnessed the look of savage glee on his face when he did it, she tried to take a shot at him—You’re doing great, go a whole six years without shooting anyone, then you try for three in a day. No wonder you quit going to church, she heard her mother say in her head. She heard only an empty click.