Shadow & Light

by Stephen Ayer

  Defiance rose in the drug dealer’s eyes and he stood up from his chair, veins bulging from his neck. “You think you got me played? What if I fucking kill myself?” He reached under a magazine on his desk and pulled out a gun. “Right now!?”

  Peter was unmoved. “Then you go to Hell and I still get what I want. Even at that caliber, there will be time before brain death. I’ll take what you know.” He bluffed. Demon names were knowledge linked to the soul, not the brain.

  Once the soul went, so too did the knowledge. But this one doesn’t know that.

  Or so he thought.

  Karim had brought the gun closer to his head, and on his hand a silver ring wrought with the details of a vaguely cephalopodic creature glowed with pale emerald light. He nodded his head as if the pistol had spoken to him. “Yes... yes I see...”

  Hanif fidgeted in his chair, slowly scooting to the exit while Peter exhaled loudly, his piercing eyes set on Karim’s watery gaze. A dealer who speaks to his gun. Excess does seem to magnify a man’s absurdities.

  Karim looked to Peter with renewed cunning in his eyes. “You lying fuck...” He pointed the gun at Peter. “You’re right. Deal’s over.”

  Peter tensed. “We never had one.” He swiped the old weapon out of Karim’s hand and bounded over the desk, sending folders and papers fluttering in the air while knocking over a dusty CRT monitor.

  His hands wrapped around the desperate man’s neck and he looked back to Hanif. “Hold the door. This won’t be long.”

  Hanif launched out of his chair and held the door back as Terry yelled and pounded against it. “Hurry!”

  Peter looked into Karim’s darting eyes, and saw nothing but fear. He laid a palm over his face. “Your soul is sodden with lies and deceit and guards its truths jealously. No more!” Golden heat radiated from his hand, streaking into Karim’s eyes and delivering an unearthly fire into his soul.

  Karim convulsed and gasped for breath as his chest burned with what felt like the most horrendous heart burn. It seeped into his ribs and coursed over his lungs. The righteous searing sent him screaming in pain.

  “Open the fucking door you fuck! Now!” shouted Terry from the other side, slamming the door so hard that Hanif felt himself budge off the frame before his blows. Shouts and noises filled the hallway. Others in the apartment were taking notice.

  “Give it up, Karim. She knows. We all know.” said a new voice from behind the door, resonant yet soulless. “And you know what they do with ‘assets’ like you... you tell him the name and death will be the least of your problems.”

  A habit of loose lips, eh Karim? Peter grimaced in pain as his holy touch delivered its own to Karim while bullets whizzed through the dust choked air. So the serpent deigns to eat its own tail. Give me the truth and I will give them the body. Only the most decorated of Earth bound angels were granted the ability to peer into a soul and seek out its lies, dreams, hopes and secrets. He had to root out the truth the old fashioned way.

  Pain.

  A compelling pain that was linked to the angel himself, a safeguard against excessive use and detachment from the price of punishment. From Karim’s groans of agony, to the near invisible sacred light underneath his hand, Peter was well-reminded of where his power derived.

  And then he felt it rumbling underneath the surface of Karim’s soul, like a great monolith rising out of the sands of deception. Truth. The demon’s name was his and he felt the pain lessen as Karim’s mind prepared to surrender what his soul already had.

  “Sartha-” he gurgled as his throat burst in a spray of viscera and blood. Peter felt stings race across the side of his ribs and turned back to see Hanif slump down the door, riddled with bullets and drenched in dark red.

  “No!” Peter saw the smoking holes in the door and threw Karim’s corpse over the table, using it as a bullet shield as a new barrage of rounds carved through the entry and frame itself. Fresh gouts of blood exploded from the drug dealer’s corpse as hot lead tore through flesh, bone and wood.

  Peter ducked down, guarding his face as wood splinters scored through his clothes and bit into his skin. Blowback of Karim’s still warm blood streamed down the angel’s neck and he warred with feelings of disgust and outrage that so impure a creature had left some measure of himself on him.

  He moved his hand to his ribs and sighed with relief that the initial violence only grazed him. The hail of gunfire continued, ripping the office into shreds. Papers flew up in great plumes and danced with feathers blown out of chairs in a chaotic waltz. The halogen lighting dimmed and flickered as chunks of debris collided against their fixtures.

  This was more than just ensuring Karim’s secret never left his lips. This is overkill. A cold chill ran up the angel’s spine as he realized the men and women in the apartment were far more than they seemed.

  He racked his brain, flashing back to how many he saw in the living room and kitchen. Eight? Nine? Who needs that many for one man?

  When the shooting stopped he took a deep breath and braced himself. He was an angel. But these were close quarters and well lit. Nowhere to hide. He reached underneath Karim’s ruined desk for the gun he had knocked away earlier. It was a long barreled revolver but the angel didn’t know the name for it.

  The last time he had spent extensive time in this realm mankind was still enamored with flintlocks. Still, he was relieved when it appeared the principles of firing remained largely the same. He tensed when a light fell through the weakened ceiling, hanging on by its chords and throwing bright illumination against the holed up walls.

  He heard hurried whisperings beyond the door, and through the bullet holes, witnessed little glimmers of unearthly light. Arcanists? From the witch herself perhaps? He looked down to Hanif’s blank stared corpse and whispered a short prayer for him under his breath. At least you can claim dignity in death, Son of Adam, he thought, thinking on the smoking red ruin of Karim’s body.

  Then a terrible force roared through the hallway, blowing the door off its hinges and ripping Hanif’s slumped form in half. His torso flew head first into the wall behind Peter while the heavy door barreled into Karim’s desk. More chunks of wood split apart while the door settled itself on what was left of Karim, further pinning him down.

  Peter took cover and fired into the smoke and dust filled hallway. His shots were mid-level, ever mindful to hit the broadest target. “Ah fuck!” one cried, followed by the sound of a loud fall. It sounded like Terry. Little pinpoints of light began to filter out of the thick, sooty fog. Some floated high, most were low, at waist level, glowing with various shades of red, bluish gray and even pale emerald.

  Peter gulped. As a destroyer of heathens, he knew well the tell-tale ghostly light of magic. And he knew for each glow, a staff or scepter. Not lowborns. Heathens from Calanar. “Looks like our lost birdy’s got a beak...” rasped a new voice, deep and guttural.

  Peter couldn’t focus on him or the strange luminescence at the end of their staffs. One little thing nagged in the back of his mind because it was right in front of him the whole time. Karim’s jerking, flailing hand.

  Dead men did not flail.

  It was the same hand that wore the strange silvered ring. And now it simmered and coruscated with that sickly bright sea color.

  “Make this easy and we won’t make you fly.” said a woman from the hallway. Peter turned to her voice and saw the smoke clear and darker shapes come into focus. He looked back to Karim’s hand and shuddered when he heard revolting gurgling sounds emanating from the wooden pile.

  The only way out was forward.

  He stood up and shook the dust off his jacket, staring at the looming figures in the hallway with defiance. “Face the light!” he bellowed. His skin and jacket flared, piercing the eyes of the cultists with pale golden effulgence. The effort winded him like a gut punch. Their cries and spasmodic misfires told him it was worth it.

  He leaped forward, his chest still burning, and fired at the closest figure.

  T
he man’s face was gaunt, his skin gray and strangled with blue veins. His black robes writhed to unseen currents, the ends coiling upon themselves as if the raiment was threaded with fog and shadow itself. Shock exploded in yellow-green eyes as Peter’s bullet made a bloody hollow of his withered chest.

  Peter stumbled, his eyes confronted by unrealities the mortal form is unfit to behold. The hall bent before him, twisting like a serpent’s gut, the shadows shining like light and the light pooling like shadows. The whole cadre of witches and warlocks regarded him hungrily, their faces bearing only passing resemblances to mankind; long and angular, lips as blue as death’s kiss, eyes that glittered like crystals or pools of color yet unfathomed.

  All raised their arms, and a wall of guns, wands and staffs greeted the angel. Lights heaved and throbbed in his vision, as if the illumination had a breath of its own. He saw the minute sparks of muzzle flashes, the bullets racing out behind, lead death borne out of sound and fire.

  His heart raced at the sight of the air rippling at the heads of staffs, the sear of countless summers drawn to the very tip. Hairs rose on his neck and goosebumps along his arms as the windows frosted while the ceiling perspired with drips of unnatural cold. His senses were both enchanted and revolted by the pale light that dripped from the ends of wands like melted will o’ the wisps, soft fires compounded of silver and jade, each reminding him of strange, manic dreams and beautiful dirges and alien horn calls that he could not entirely dismiss as fantasy, the sweet fruits of delusion.

  Peter found his breath again and his perception of reality snapped back with such speed as to drive a man insane – bursting out of the waters of nightmare – sound, smell and sight sharpened, no longer dulled by the dreamy and terrible.

  A dark spray erupted out of the warlock’s back and he fell to his knees, coughing for air. “Fuck you!” screamed Terry from the back, and the whole hallway exploded in violence once more. Peter ran to the bleeding warlock and threw him into a fellow witch. The man was caught in the cross fire, struck with bullets and taken by a blast of superheated air misfired by one his comrades.

  Both burst into flame.

  Opulent robes burned up like dried fig leaves and their hands became molten and skeletal as the arcane fire ate through them. Peter had narrowly avoided the spell, and noted the straight line of broken, steaming and melted tile floor below. He fired three more shots in the clustered group and then sighed when the pistol would only click.

  Empty.

  A deep roar echoed from Karim’s office and Peter leapt off from his feet, more motivated than ever. He hugged the wall when he saw another near invisible heat wave ripple down the center of the hallway, hurled into Karim’s office. More tiles cooked, bubbled and split as the spell landed, igniting the wood Karim was piled under. A scream of rage and pain sounded out in report.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the swirling dark shape of another warlock and turned to face the heretic. The warlock moved inhumanly fast. Peter saw his face emerge from the smoke.

  His face was white and powdered and blurred like a windy tempest. Smears of silvered dust twinkled around cloudy eyes, swirling and darkening with little points of witchlight. He had only the barest similarities to a human being, bearing the countenance of a changeling grown.

  The angel moved, but not fast enough for the warlock. The heathen carried a personalized submachine gun in one hand, its cylindrical clip decorated with swooping designs of screaming spirits. In his other hand he swung a gnarled and blackened wood staff, bringing it in a downward arc before Peter.

  The angel leapt just out of reach.

  A trail of blurred black unlight followed the tip of staff as it completed its crescent and the warlock opened his mouth as broad as a python to let loose a scream that sounded as primal as nature itself.

  The arcane blast knocked Peter through the wall into some part of the apartment he did not recognize. His body screamed with new pains. Vines of fluttered light danced along his chest while smoke rose off his skin. He had just enough presence of mind to roll out of the way when the warlock sprayed a wide arc of gunfire into the new opening.

  Their cold laughter aroused fear and rage both in the angel’s heart. No sooner had he dodged the barrage, he was forced to move again as he saw another section of untouched wall smoke, fizzle and drip scalding plaster to the floor. He launched himself forward into a pile of plastic wrapped narcotics, barely dodging the next section of exploding wall that smashed into where he had been sitting.

  He broke out in a sweat as the heat burned out a portion of the room’s ambient oxygen. Little embers waved from the edges of the blown out wall, while the main chunk itself was charred black and steaming. The room had one window. It was past the section of the room that was destroyed, giving his assailants a clear view should he make a pass.

  Where he was, was against a wall. Sealed drugs stacked half way up to the ceiling. He glowered at the brownish yellow material behind the plastic. If I burn... it won’t be in a daze. He made a run for it.

  He jumped from the packages and his shoes crunched on sharp, hot rubble. From the corner of his eye he detected the elf eyed warlock rush to him like a black shadow. He predicted where his hands would be and ducked his head just in time to hear the keening scream of ethereal claws pass over.

  Just as he made it to the window he scowled. It was a long drop onto the neighboring building below. He kicked open the window frame in time to the wall in front of him exploding in a shower of dust and plaster. Outlined and backlit by the inferno of his office, was Karim reborn.

  In the barest sense he was still Karim. Still the same height, still the same ring. Little patches of his original skin peeked out in between... flesh that the angel could not rightly identify. It looked like the hide of the animal yet reflected light as if it was hard polished stone. Great streams of black oozed down his rippling chest.

  Even the warlock behind Peter was forced to acknowledge the sheer wrongness of the beast. “It can’t be...” Both were transfixed by the deranged splendor of the thing that had overtaken Karim. The rivulets of sable did not reflect light like any earthly liquid, but rather absorbed it.

  Time stopped for Peter as his eyes became lost in the runnels of darkness. Within each amorphous drop he saw galaxies upon galaxies. Behemoth stars shined their pale light upon the far and forgotten parts of the universe. Starlight, as old as time itself and separated by unfathomable light years rained down upon tattered and desolate planets, roiling with beasts that eluded even the angel’s knowledge.

  Spindly legs supported rippling masses that should have crushed them in any natural environment. They heaved like lungs and were interconnected with other creatures. Whether they were many or one, Peter could not tell. Others rose as lords of the cosmos, sailing across the blackness of space upon gigantic wings of silvered astral ice. Their eyeless, cadaverous yet celestial forms drifted with pulsating, chaotic purpose and Peter was compelled to watch as their maws opened wide and never stopped, like an ever expanding black hole.

  Within each mouth was yet another doorway into another galaxy, glowing with the dim and distant lights of the infinite, and howling the sounds that accompanied the birth of the universe and its death. Time, ever the arbiter of history, had taken leave of itself, allowing all events that ever were and would be to occur at once.

  Peter witnessed interstellar wars between these vaporous, polypous and shadow haunted beasts all in the space of one moment. Luminous lances, as long as a light year and burning in shades of livid viridian, launched into ships as exotic and titanic as their architects. Eyes, vast eyes, burned like novas across the canvas of space.

  Undulations of stellar fire washed across entire worlds, dooming these spectral yet corporeal abominations into oblivions that were not entirely final. There was no malice or fury in these beings as they warred with each other. The closest approximation to a will he could come to was cold and alien.

  These were not the midnight machinatio
ns of a demon in its twilight hours, but the artifices of a being who waited with time as a predator to prey. There was no passion and there was no light. There were only thoughts and ideas that the angel could never hope to understand.

  And for once, he was glad of it. He turned away from the endless mirrors into caliginous horrors unlimited, and came back to his senses in the real world. The warlock did not.

  The master of eldritch arts stumbled forward to Karim, mumbling under his breath. “The masters... call... so colkragl...nelokh bethoth tolkropl’kyl!” Saliva foamed out of his mouth as he spoke faster and faster. Peter noticed his hands shake and clench, distorted with unnatural lights and shapes, spellcraft aborted before it began.

  The warlock tried to fight the inexorable pull of the foetid beast the drug dealer had become, yet could not marshal his will. Karim did not wait for him to do so. The possessed dealer took a step closer to the warlock and grabbed him by the throat. The warlock shook and jerked in his grip, screaming the strange alien tongue that had overtaken him, before three curved organic spikes punched through him in a shower of gore.

  The hooked protrusions seemed to have sprung from the lightless liquid on Karim’s chest and drew the warlock in as if he had been caught in a spider’s web. Peter watched with fascination and horror as dim, silver light shimmered down the warlock’s body, aging him rapidly with each passing moment.

  Soul reaping. Peter looked over his shoulder when he heard more crunching footsteps behind him. The other arcanists had stepped through the broken holes their comrade had created. “No!” one of them said upon seeing the warlock’s skewered form. Peter noticed they were torn between pursuing him or handling the seething monstrosity.

  He turned to the opened doors that led to the small balcony outside and spared one last look behind. He wished he hadn’t. The warlock’s spine broke with an audible snap and his decrepit body was pulled into the living, abyssal portal that was Karim. His body folded in half as bone and ligaments ripped through flesh and robes, compacting and threading itself bit by bit into the creature as if subject to a black hole.