by E. E. Knight
The port official walked them down a long, narrow wooden dock extending into the lake, held up by thick wooden pilings. The warped wood creaked under their feet.
Ahead they could see a long, low shape. The aged speed-boat gleamed in the distant reflected light of Chicago. Valentine prayed that they would still get away with no one questioning a Reaper’s orders.
The reaper.
The real Reaper was somewhere close.
Valentine tried to hurry the other three along by trotting out ahead toward the boat, his hackles rising like a wary dog’s. Rho seemed to blur, but his Reaper aspect re-formed.
They’ve found me. They are homing. I give off life sign like a firework, Valentine the Younger, the Lifeweaver thought to him.
“The Reaper grew closer. Valentine knew it was just behind them now.
The port official scuttled up the gangway. He began speaking to a pair of figures on board. Valentine pressed the pistol into Molly’s hand. “Keep this in your coat pocket,” he whispered. “Don’t let them take you alive.”
The Reaper approached. Its cold shadow was at the jetty, moving down the boards.
Valentine drew his parang, turned, and went to meet it.
When Valentine was fourteen, he had read Livy. Tonight his was the role of Horatius at the Sublician Bridge. What had seemed heroic now felt suicidal, with two meters of genetically engineered death moving toward him at cheetah speed.
At first he was afraid that the Reaper, coming out of the dark like a bounding tiger, would simply leap over him to tear and toss his charges lifeless into the lake. But Valentine stood, legs planted with the balanced blade of the parang resting in his hand against the back of his thigh.
The Reaper stopped.
It regarded him, drawn skull-face expressionless and yellow eyes sunken in bony sockets.
Ahh, thefoodling stands, curious after the long chase, it is your nature to run, human, it breathed, did you think you could steal and escape with our bauble? You would not get out of sight of this pier. It crouched, froglike.
Valentine tried to keep the fear out of his voice even if he couldn’t banish its shadow from his mind. His bowels suddenly seemed made of water, and his tongue was thick and dry.
“Your time is up,” Valentine said, speaking quietly to keep his voice from cracking. “In a few seconds, your Master is going to have one less drone.”
Go, Rho. Take Molly and haul out of here , he mentally implored.
The Reaper did not laugh, did not smile. It pulled back its lips to reveal obsidian pointed teeth.
Oh, no, foodling. It is high night, and your world is mine, soon you will be as cold and empty as the moon, your woman, too. All you have done is spit into a hurricane.
Behind him Valentine heard the motorboat sputter into life. The thing looked for a moment at the vessel, ahh, a boat, i thought so. Your luck has run out. It reached into its robes and pulled out a short, thick gun. Valentine took a step back in confusion; he had never heard of a Reaper using a gun, but it fired into the air, in the direction of the speedboat. A parachute flare opened, bathing the pier in red light.
“Do you know me, creature?” Valentine asked.
I know your kind, boy. Weak and easily emptied, I feast on your fathers at will, as i shall consume you, the Reaper hissed, rising and opening its arms for the deadly embrace.
Valentine brought his blade up. “Not my father. My name is David Valentine. Son of Lee Valentine. Have you met my kind, creature?”
The thing’s face lost animation. Perhaps the Kurian Lord at the other end knew dismay.
Valentine attacked. He lunged, hitting it with a backhand swipe that narrowly missed its neck. His blade struck the skull, cutting and glancing off its face with a resounding thwack.
It lashed out with a foot, almost caving in Valentine’s chest. He fell backwards onto the dock, gasping for air, his parang teetering at the edge of the wooden jetty.
With a soft plop it dropped into Lake Michigan.
And David Valentine knew he would die. The vampire-avatar advanced four steps, then bent to take him up in its long arms. But Valentine would meet it on his feet. He rolled away in a blur and got up with the balance of a judo champion recovering from a throw. Exhilarated, he felt a rush of power, a presence that lifted the fear away.
With him stood a phalanx of spirits who had also faced the Kurians. His father and mother, holding hands. Steve Oran and Gilman DelVecchio formed an unflinching wall to his right and left, and behind him Gabriella Cho went on tiptoe to reach his ear.
Go on, Davy. He’s not as tough as he seems, she seemed to whisper in his mind.
A terrible strength filled Valentine as the rush infused his belly with fire. The thing paused to wipe sticky black blood from its eye, and Valentine was upon it. The force of his leap knocked it over. Valentine clawed at its back, pinning an arm that tried to tear him off. He wrapped his arms around it. The Reaper flopped and rolled like a netted fish.
It rose, bearing Valentine like a backpack. It began to totter down toward the boat, which seemed to Valentine bathed in a red mist. It tried to shrug him off, but Valentine’s arms had turned to steel cables.
Molly Carlson stepped out of the darkness, sighting down the pistol’s barrel with tear-streaked eyes. The Reaper moved toward her, no longer struggling with Valentine but reaching for the woman. Valentine shifted his grip and tore open the Reaper’s robes at its chest, baring the rippled surface of its rib cage.
“Shoot! Molly, shoot!” he yelled.
She fired, putting bullet after bullet into the vampire’s chest. Valentine felt the impact against his own body as the heavy slugs tore into the Reaper’s flesh. Black blood fountained out of its mouth.
He slid off the thing’s back to avoid the bullets, falling to the ground. It turned its armored back to Molly and staggered toward Valentine, leaning over him as if it sought to at last crush and smother him under the fall of its body. Its deadly jaws opened wide, revealing the pointed tongue behind its fangs.
Valentine brought his knees to his chest and grabbed at the Reaper’s sleeves. He brought the creature’s weight to the soles of his feet, using its momentum against it. Now almost standing on his head, Valentine kicked out with both legs.
The hissing nightmare flew, thrown upside down into Lake.“ Michigan, arms clawing at empty air. It splashed into the water.
Valentine rolled onto his stomach, looking at the circle of waves emerging from where the robe-weighted Reaper sank from sight. Turbulence broke the water; perhaps the thing was still struggling as it descended into final darkness…
Now it was Molly’s turn to help him up. The pair returned to the motorboat, where the fake Reaper still glowered at the two-man crew.
“What the hell was that back there? Who called the Snappers to the pier, of all places? They’ll kill us all!” the port officer yelled as they climbed on board.
Nothing for you to know about, if you wish to see the dawn, Rho said in imitation of a Reaper’s breathy hiss, return to your duties, and let us catch the whitecloud.
The port officer ran.
Molly sat next to Valentine, leaning against his shoulder. He watched the two men nervously casting off the boat under Rho’s glowing eyes. Just in case, he reloaded the gun. While moving out of the slip, the boat hit something and rocked to a halt.
“What the—?” the man at the wheel said.
The engine sputtered and died.
“You have more guns?” Valentine asked. They ignored the question and stood looking out at the water around them in confusion, He fired a bullet into the windscreen. It spider-webbed, and the men turned to him.
“Get your damn guns!”
The pilot grabbed a shotgun, and the other followed his example and took a revolver from the map case. The boat rocked, and Valentine lurched toward the side. Molly threw herself down, pulling him into the bottom of the boat. Rho clutched at the throttle levers.
Humanlike hands and a dripping
face appeared over the side. The Reaper. Valentine fired the pistol and missed, but the face disappeared nevertheless.
“Grenades on this boat?”
“We have a few,” he said. He reached into a locker.
“Drop them over the side.”
“Can’t we get away?” Molly asked.
“The propeller’s wedged,” the pilot shouted.
“Here!” the man at the locker said, finding a canvas bag with soup-can-style grenades.
Valentine handed his gun to Molly and grabbed a sharpened boathook. He listened and tried to guess where the Reaper would appear next while the mate yanked the pin of a grenade and turned to throw it overboard.
An arm lashed up out of the water, catching the man in the temple. The unpinned grenade fell into the bottom of the boat, bounced and rolled toward Valentine.
Molly scrambled for it on her hands and knees. She scooped it with a shoveling motion, as if it were a hot rock. The grenade spun into the water. It exploded, sending a column of water into the air.
The Reaper climbed onto the front of the boat. It had shed its robes and boots. Bullet wounds showed as black patches on its chest like three extra nipples.
“What the hell?” shouted the man at the controls.
Valentine raised the boathook and leaped onto the bow of the speedboat, but the Reaper knocked him aside. It went straight for Rho, jumping into the back of the boat. The Reaper struck the Lifeweaver with a raking blow across his chest.
Rho’s masquerade blurred for a moment as he fell, giving Valentine a glimpse of an amorphous blue-green shape. Molly reached for Valentine’s gun.
His vision blurred from pain, the Wolf grasped the boathook in both hands. He moved toward the Reaper as it bent to take up the Lifeweaver, a hungry light shining in its eyes.
Now, I take —
Valentine buried the curved prong into the thing’s back. It reared up, and reached for the boathook in its back by using its elbow joints in the opposite direction from how they worked on a human being.
Shoot him, stupid foodling, the Reaper hissed at the pilot, pulling at the hook.
“Don’t,” Molly shrieked. She pointed the Colt at the pilot.
The Reaper lunged at Valentine. The blow sent him flying. He landed on the prow of the boat. Something hard poked him in the back: he had fetched up against the anchor.
The thing launched itself in the air, landing astride him. It bent, yellow eyes blazing.
Blue-white light flashed, and a shotgun blast tore through the side of the Reaper’s face. Skin and stringy black hair exploded in shreds from the skull. A second shot caught it in the back, toppling it over Valentine and into the water.
“Always wanted a crack at one of those sumbitches,” the pilot said, breaking open the shotgun to reload it.
Valentine could only lie and watch as a pair of ghostly white hands gripped the tube-steel of the low front rail of the boat.
“No, goddammit,” Valentine said. “You’re through.” He put the pain away and unclasped the anchor, making sure the line was not attached.
Mechanically, the Reaper pulled itself onto the boat. Its face had lost all animation, its limbs moving in uncoordinated jerks.
Valentine lifted the Danforth anchor by the shank, and turned it so the twin flukes pointed down. He brought it down on the Reaper’s spine, burying the steel into its torso. Still holding on to the anchor, the Wolf strained every muscle and picked up the Reaper. He heaved and threw the weighted abomination into Lake Michigan.
Beyond the splash, he saw gray humps in the water moving toward the boat.
“Shit, the Snappers are coming,” the pilot said.
Rho rose to his feet, the Reaper disguise gone. His human form looked like a wind-bent old tree, white hair streaming in the lake breeze. A misty patch at his chest throbbed with a faint blue light.
“I’m so tired,” he said. “But perhaps I can help.”
The Lifeweaver closed his eyes and gripped the boat. It began to move.
The boat picked up speed. Valentine saw more humps closing in from the sides. But they avoided the boat, gathering around the turbulence where the Reaper had disappeared in its final plunge.
“I’ve got the other grenade,” the pilot said.
“We won’t need it,” Molly said, looking out over the stern. “Whatever they are, I hope they have strong stomachs.”
Once clear of the harbor, Valentine and the pilot went over the side and unwound the Reaper’s robe from the propeller.
“You two just helped three terrorists escape Chicago,” Valentine told the Quisling as Molly helped them back into the boat. His friend was still unconscious, under a blanket in the forward cabin. “You can come with us and be set down somewhere, or join the fleet if they’ll have you. It’s the least I owe you for your help. That is if you don’t want to paddle back and have a talk with the Reapers.”
“I think we’d better come with you, sir. The name’s J. P., by the way. My mate’s name is Cal Swanson.”
“Thought you might, J. P.”
With the powerful motor again in action, they spotted the two-masted ship’s lights before dawn. The speedboat tied up against the whitecloud in an easy swell. The sailors, a mixed group of ten men, women, and children, came on deck to look at the visitors.
Rho stood still as a carving for a moment, looking at the new faces, then sank to his knees.
Valentine rushed to his side. He turned the Lifeweaver’s face to him, but Rho did not react.
“I’m exhausted, Valentine the Younger. You are among your kind now?”
“Close enough,” Valentine said. “We’re safe, if that’s what you mean.”
The masklike expression did not change. Valentine looked into eyes filled with thousands of years of memories. “I will go in peace, then.” Something that might have been a smile appeared on his lips. “I escaped them after all.”
“Maybe you just need rest and food, sir. I’ll help you up.”
The Lifeweaver’s mind touched his.
Too tired to talk. You’ve helped me more than you know. They would have dined long on me, but now i’ll fly away free in death. Bring me to the cabin, the others should not…
“Molly, you and J. P. clear out the cabin, would you?” Valentine said.
He picked up the featherweight Lifeweaver. The former Quisling dragged his comrade Cal out into the night air.
“Help us, please,” Molly implored to the faces above. Two sailors from the whitecloud swung down.
Valentine took Rho into the dim compartment. A pair of tiny bunks angled together into the sharp prow of the vessel. He laid the Lifeweaver down.
Thank you, Lee… David. You have a strong aura. It might be best if… the others didn’t see me, after.. . The mind’s touch faltered.
“It’s not over, sir. Just rest.”
It… Rho began, but never finished. He flickered one final time, before shifting back to his natural form. The thing he knew as Rho collapsed into a rubbery mass the size of a teenage boy. Rho sagged—there was no skeleton to support his body—into something that looked like a blue octopus with a bit of bat in the evolutionary tree. Leathery fins ran the sides of his tentacles, the longer limbs at the back of his body joined by the veiny membranes almost to the sucker-tipped ends like a ribbed cape, the shorter ones at the front unattached and with smaller, more delicate suckers. His aqua-colored skin, more blue around cephalopod skull, changed to sea-foam green along his limbs, with a latticework of delicate black lines covering the skin that he found eerily beautiful, though if they were decorative or functional Valentine could not say. Spicules and flaps formed a band under the brain-in-a-bag of its head, but whether they were noses, ears, breathing tubes, or even sexual organs was anyone’s guess. The bulging eyes, lids opening wider and wider as it relaxed into death, drew Valentine’s gaze back every time he looked elsewhere. They were like yellowish crystal balls flecked with red, with a black band running across the middle.
/> God, it was ugly for an angel. Or a devil, for that matter.
Valentine hugged the moist, limp form to himself. He owed his and Molly’s life to the dead Life weaver. When the warmth had left the body, he covered it with a blanket.
He should stuff Rho’s body in a bucket or a big jug, preserve it with alcohol, and get it back to the Miskatonic. The researchers there might be able to find a weakness, some flaw that would allow them to kill the Kurians without blasting into their lairs and blowing them to bits. Duty, and loyalty to his species, demanded it.
He exited the cabin and went to the engine.
“Take any gear and fixtures you want out of her,” he said to the crewmen of the whitecloud. “But don’t go in the cabin.”
He found a hose and siphoned some gasoline up into a water bottle. He took the fuel down into the forward compartment and splashed it on the carpet and wood paneling. He repeated the process until the gas was gone and the speedboat reeked of fumes. He followed his shipmates into the sailing vessel as the sailors pulled the powerful outboard up out of its mount with a block and tackle.
Valentine reached into his pockets and found one more tin of matches. He struck them all at once, and tossed the flaming handful into the cabin. Flames raced through the boat, and the whitecloud sailors cast it off.
He watched and waited until the lake consumed the flaming wreck. The smoke dissipated into the fresh breeze.
Sailors are used to the unexpected. A woman with a long, thin-boned face introduced herself as Collier, the captain of the whitecloud, and offered them blankets and hot coffee.
She invited them below to the cramped galley. Valentine showed the captain his card, the chit given him by Captain Doss of the white lightning. She agreed to take them north, where they could transfer to another ship, which could take them anywhere in the Great Lakes they wished to go. “I’d do it anyway, even without Dossie’s card. Something tells me you went through a lot to get here.”
He, Molly, and J. P. discussed their options on the coming voyage. They decided to winter in the familiar (at least to Valentine) reaches of the Boundary Waters. He would see Father Max again. Only when spring came would he have to make new decisions.
