by Rob Cornell
The motion swung Tony free of her horn, though he left the knife in her side. He slapped onto the concrete floor and the back of his head hit with a wet crunch. His eyes rolled back and he went instantly still.
Elka shuffled backward, her hooves clocking on the concrete. The sound echoed against the metal walls which amplified it. Her pain matched the echoing beat, a pulse and a pulse and a pulse through her flank. Blood soaked through her hair down to her skin with sticky wetness.
If she shifted, she wasn’t sure where the knife would end up in her changed anatomy. It might fall free, pushed out by her morphing form. Or it might end up pierced through her throat. If it fell out, she could heal—though it would take time and hurt like hell.
If it stayed in her and cut a vital part, death would take her in seconds.
And if she stayed shifted, she wouldn’t be able to remove the knife herself. Plus, it would leave her exposed to Earl and whatever he had planned for her. She would have to make every effort to get to him before he got to her and, in the meantime, hope she didn’t bleed to death in the process.
Chapter Forty-Five
WHILE TIME HAD LOST ITS meaning in the dark behind her blindfold, Jessie guessed an hour went by since the old guy—who still hadn’t introduced himself formally—dropped the Gabriel bomb on her. And since then, he hadn’t said a word.
She could hear him though, shuffling around her, movements sounding busy and purposeful. His breathing remained relaxed and steady, unlike her previous roommate. He even whistled softly from time to time, usually old TV theme songs that Jessie only knew because of her interest in film history. Sanford and Son was one of them, which Jessie found sickly ironic coming from such a bigot.
At one point, he assaulted her with a wet cloth, scrubbing at her face without any regard for the pain from her broken nose. She cried out. Tears bled into the fabric of her blindfold. She thrashed against her bindings and tried to kick him in the nuts.
He dodged her blind attacks and went on wiping away like a mother wipes the nose of a squirming toddler.
Air suddenly popped in through her swollen nostrils.
The first thing she smelled was incense. The air was thick with its smoke. It tickled the back of her throat and made her cough. That only made the pain from her forced face wash throb all the more.
But it also clued her in to what was happening.
The old guy had set up a ritual of some kind. She had no doubt it had something to do with Gabriel. And if she dared guess, she would say he probably meant to drop Gabriel’s soul back into her body.
But we destroyed the artifact. Obliterated his soul.
Or had they simply destroyed what kept his soul on the mortal plane?
She realized she hadn’t thought much further beyond blowing up the artifact, assuming that getting rid of it meant getting rid of him. But it made sense. You could destroy a thing.
But how could you destroy a soul?
Her damp face turned frigid in the smoky air. It didn’t take long for the rest of her body to quiver with chills. With fear.
Damn if she would show that fear to her kidnapper, though.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” she asked with all the mirth she could muster.
The old man chuckled. She really, really hated that chuckle.
“’Course I do. He made sure I had everything I need. That man left a lot of good shit behind.”
She turned her face in the direction of his voice. “I’m not talking about the ritual.”
“You worried about me, sweetheart? Think I can’t handle a dead man’s spirit trapped in a little girl?”
“You can’t.”
The pat to her cheek startled her since she didn’t see it coming. More creaky chuckles. He was about to earn himself the nickname Mr. Chuckles. Or maybe Chucky, after the possessed doll from the series of so not scary movies.
“Don’t fret about me. Right now, I’m the closest thing Mr. Dolan has to a best friend. Ain’t nobody else can bring him back except me.”
“Key words there are right and now. You think once he’s here, he’ll make you his second in command? Gabriel Dolan doesn’t have any seconds.”
“I guess you’d know,” he said.
It might have been wishful thinking, but Jessie thought she heard a thread of worry in those words.
“’Course me and him have had some right nice chats for a while now. Not counting the last one.”
Jessie swallowed. With her nose clear, she could taste the mix of snot and blood draining down from her sinuses. Her stomach lurched.
He’d communicated with Gabriel? Several times?
“How is that possible?”
She didn’t realize she’d asked the question aloud until the old guy (a.k.a. Chucky) answered.
“He’s got a lot more influence here from the Inbetween than you’d reckon. In fact, I’d like to think that little gun jam of yours was his doing. No way to know for sure. But I’m gonna ask him when he gets here.”
“You really don’t have a clue, do you? He isn’t your fucking buddy. He’s a madman. A powerful one, at that.” Especially if he really could reach out from what the old guy had called the Inbetween.
A somewhat comforting thought—he was in for a big disappointment if he thought Jessie had any of the power he’d been used to in her.
Pessimistic counter to that thought—it sounded like he could bring plenty of power all his own.
She heard Chucky move away. Then she heard a slosh, like water in a bucket. Then a splash, as if Chucky had dumped the water onto the floor. Then another slosh. Another splash. Then a third slosh and splash.
Eventually Jessie felt moisture roll around her feet and begin to absorb through her canvas shoes. She jerked her feet up and the puckering sound the liquid made suggested it was thicker than water.
Well, duh. What ritual was complete without a blood sacrifice?
Jessie clenched her teeth while she shook her feet and only managed to spatter cold blood onto one forearm.
Even through the strong incense, the room began to smell like a butchery.
Jessie wished Chucky had left her nose clogged.
“That the blood of the woman you captured along with me?”
“No,” he said flatly. “She’ll bleed plenty when this is all done.”
The guttural tone of his voice made Jessie feel more sorry for the woman’s fate than her own. Whatever role she had in all of this, Chucky had dark plans for her.
“Yeah, one woman’s blood isn’t evil enough for you, is it?” She said evil Boris Karloff style. “This probably comes from a bunch of little infants straight out of their cribs.”
“I’d never hurt no babies,” he shouted, followed by a series of calming breaths. “And I ain’t evil.”
“Of course not.”
“Shut up. This is the way it’s got to be. Dolan’s the only one can bring on the Dawn. I don’t have to like him. I just need him. The whole world needs him.”
Since her start as the Return, Jessie had heard more and more about the “Dawn.” Just a fancy term mojo fanatics used to refer to exposing the supernatural world to the public at large. For some reason these people thought that was a good idea. Who knew why.
But now she had a chance to ask.
“Why?”
“Why what?” he said, the sound of his voice directed away from her.
“Why bring about the Dawn? Why the hell would you want to freak out the whole world at once?”
Jessie felt the following stillness like a pressure against her ears. She wished like hell she could see what was going on around her. For several long seconds, it felt as though the old guy had abandoned her.
His voice creaked when he finally answered. “My family’s suffered because of folks’ ignorance. They were treated like they weren’t even human. All because they had the touch.”
She could hear the pain in his words. Whatever had happened to his family—and she could imagine
a few things—it had damaged him. Jessie knew all about how the secret world could screw up your life.
But taking it out on the whole world wasn’t what you’d call a healthy way to deal.
She could feel sorry for the part of him that was hurt. Nevertheless, it didn’t excuse his actions.
“So scaring every mortal on the planet, that’s your revenge?”
Something metallic crashed and tumbled. One of the buckets, from the sound.
“It ain’t about revenge. It’s about making sure it don’t happen to no one else.”
He sounded sincere enough. Too bad he hadn’t applied a little rational thought to his plan.
“You really think you’ll save people by doing this? Chaos will break out. Panic. Everyone will think their neighbor is a supernatural monster or black witch. Innocent people will die. A lot of them.”
“Revolution ain’t an easy thing. But it’s this or it’s never.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Shut up.” Another bucket clattered across the floor. “Just shut up.”
Nope. She wasn’t done yet. “How do you think Gabriel’s going to bring on the Dawn? Snap his fingers? Do a little dance? His brother and him tried for years to do it and it never happened. What do you think has changed?”
“Now that’s a right stupid question,” he said, and damn if he didn’t chuckle under his breath. “What’s changed? Why, he has you, the almighty Chosen One. And according to him, that’s plenty.”
Chapter Forty-Six
THE ROOMS. ALL THOSE ROOMS with the big glass windows, looking into each.
Elka couldn’t get them out of her mind. The things inside…
Things left behind.
Most of them were long dead.
Imps, starved and left to rot in the corners of one room, like greasy black scraps of leather. What looked like a white-furred sasquatch curled up on the floor, head tucked under its arms, clots of filth in its coat.
Other things still showed pathetic quivers of life—if life was even something you could call it. A room with a trio of vampires, skin shriveled down to their bones, lips permanently peeled back from their fangs; they would twitch, and when Elka passed, their eyes rolled in their emaciated skulls, following her, holding a thirst for blood a dozen years old.
Or the golem, standing in the center of his room, stone body crumbling and stiff, its blank, slate eyes frozen in a sad and distant gaze.
An abandoned zoo of the supernatural.
It had turned Elka’s stomach as she made her way down the empty hallway, her hoofbeats echoing in both directions.
Now, clear of that place, she found herself wandering through the maze of tunnels, unsure how to make her way back to those parts she was familiar with. That assumed that part of the underground complex was where Earl was. She didn’t know where he could be in this place. And with all the floors made of hard tile, she couldn’t walk softly enough to keep her steps quiet.
He would hear her coming.
Maybe it was best to leave. Though getting out the way she had come in through the trapdoor in the shop would prove a serious challenge in her natural form.
There had to be another entrance. She doubted Earl and Tony had pulled her unconscious body down the shaft.
Then there was the matter of the girl. Murderer of her family. Earl’s ambush on the street hadn’t been just for her. He had to have the girl somewhere down here as well. Unless she got away.
No. She was here. During her stare down with Earl, she could sense he had everything he wanted, and that his vengeance with her was not far on the horizon.
Which meant she couldn’t leave. Not after all she’d been through. Her likelihood of survival out there was as bleak as it was in here. A unicorn with a dagger in her side, roaming out in the open among mortals?
She would eventually come upon a hunter.
Then she would become yet another of the fallen.
In here, in this fluorescent glazed network of sterile tunnels, she could play out her last act as the hunter instead of the hunted. Like the Minotaur in his maze, she would stalk Earl and the bitch until she had killed them both or died in the effort.
She stopped at an intersection, each direction looking identical. She chuffed in frustration. She bent her head and gouged a line in the floor with her horn, marking the tunnel she was coming out of. It would keep her from going in circles.
Then she arbitrarily took the turn on the right, trotted a dozen yards or so, and abruptly came to a halt.
The smell.
Faint, but distinct.
What a fool she’d been. She’d spent so much time in human form, she had forgotten the advantages of her real form. Her heightened senses.
She inhaled deeply through her nose, drawing as much of the distant smell as she could.
Incense.
Her ears flicked. She closed her eyes and focused on any kind of sound outside her own breathing and heartbeat.
A voice.
Two voices.
A woman and a man.
She couldn’t make out any words, but she recognized the pitch and cadence of the man’s voice.
Earl.
Was the woman her family’s killer?
Elka felt certain it was.
She had them both, together. And if she could just manage to creep carefully enough toward them, maybe she could surprise them. Earl wouldn’t be listening for her, after all. He thought she was safely locked up and guarded by Tony.
Thank the Great Beyond. The day has finally come.
Time to make her father proud.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“CAN’T YOU TAKE THIS damn blindfold off? You know, so I can see my wicked captor face-to-face?”
The stink of blood had done battle with the incense and won. Between that smell and the cold air, Jessie wouldn’t have been surprised if he did take off her blindfold she’d find herself in a meat locker.
Chucky did his chuckle, though it didn’t sound half as sincere anymore. Maybe Chucky was getting sick of his own old-timey ticks. More than likely, it was Jessie getting under his skin that annoyed him.
She refused to let him do his ritual in peace.
“You know you want to look into my eyes before you feed me to that sick fuck.”
He didn’t bite. Not even another Shut up. He had obviously learned Jessie didn’t know how to shut up.
Instead, he started making a series of beeps in varying tones. Like he was dialing a phone.
Silence followed.
Jessie strained to hear more, thought she heard the ringing on the other end of the call.
After a dozen rings, Earl cut the sound with a final beep.
“Your date not picking up the phone?” Jessie asked. “Did you get stood up?”
Chucky grunted. “No, no. I was hoping for no an answer. Means that dumb shit Negro did exactly what I expected him to.”
“For a couple of rebels for the Dawn, you guys sure don’t seem to like each other much.”
“Aw, I don’t need to like him. Just need him to do as he’s told.”
“Sounds like you don’t know how to make friends.”
She heard the wet slap of footsteps through the blood approach her. Then her head jerked back. The knot in her blindfold loosened and the blindfold itself dropped down around her neck like a dog collar.
Barely any light filled the room she sat at the center of. The only illumination came from about fifty candles gathered in a ring around her and propped around and on a…
Jesus Christ.
No mistaking it as anything but an altar. One made entirely of bones and skulls, including a leering skull at the altar’s pinnacle.
“Those are my friends,” Chucky said through a craggy sigh. “My brothers.”
Jessie turned to look at Chucky standing beside her. The wavering candlelight drew shadows in his lined face and made his eyes look as sunken as the skulls he stared at on the altar against the far wall
. The light also revealed glistening tears.
He turned his gaze down to the pool of blood that formed a perfect circle around Jessie. A round section of floor sat deeper than the rest, creating a shallow pool to hold the blood.
Chucky nodded toward the floor. “And that there is the blood of my best friend.”
Jessie’s gut twisted. The air tasted to bitter to breathe. “You really are a monster. How could you do that to your friends?”
He snapped his gaze to her. The sheen of tears on his eyes brightened as they bugged out. “They sacrificed themselves to make this happen. They were willing to do whatever it took to bring on the Dawn. They are heroes.”
Jessie sneered. This man had no idea what a hero was. Her dad had been a hero. Wertz had been a hero. Marty. Her mother. Hell, she’d even give Kress the title on an honorary basis. The fact that this piece of shit compared a bunch of whack-job fanatics to these true heroes made her sick.
“If they’re all heroes, what does that make you? What have you sacrificed for your stupid cause, besides everyone else’s life?”
He raised a hand to backhand her, but froze. He curled his raised hand into a fist and let it float down to his side. His eye-bugged stare held on her for a few seconds, then he turned his back on her and carefully walked out of the blood pool.
A ratty towel lay flat at the pool’s edge, and Chucky wiped his feet on it as if it were a doormat. Once he had sopped up most the blood from his soles, he moved to a wooden crate placed on end to make a small pedestal. Jessie could see the phone on there, what looked like a hacksaw, and the thing that Chucky picked up from it. Something slick and slightly translucent that shone a purplish green in the candlelight.
It sort of looked like a perch, but without fins or a tail, and a mouth that flared out like a small bullhorn.
Didn’t take much of a leap to realize its relationship to its much larger cousin.
Chucky held it up, a closed-mouth grin on his face. He looked like an actor in a commercial advertising a tube of toothpaste or a new brand of cleaner.
“Ain’t it amazing what’s out there? Vampires. Werewolves. Unicorns. And strange artifacts from a million different planes of existence.”
