by Tim Waggoner
Contents
Cover
Also Available from Titan Books
Title Page
Copyright
Historian’s Note
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
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First edition: July 2016
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HISTORIAN’S NOTE
This novel takes place during season ten, between
“Hibbing 911” and “The Things We Left Behind.”
ONE
Beads of sweat dotted Renee Mendez’s forehead as she worked. She’d been holding the brush for so long—several hours at least—that the muscles in her right hand burned like fire. Her back and shoulders ached, as did her feet, and her stomach gurgled painfully. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate. This morning? Yesterday? She wasn’t even sure what day it was.
She stood in front of a canvas on a wooden easel, to her right a small bench upon which rested a collection of brushes and tubes of paint. She used a piece of old plywood as a makeshift palette, and it was covered with small globs of paint squeezed from the tubes and mixed as needed. Her studio, such as it was, occupied a corner of her parents’ garage. Her father had cleared the space for her when she started taking art classes at Eldridge Community College after graduating from high school. It was cramped—if she backed up too far while she was working, she’d bump into her mom’s car. If she stepped too far to the right, her elbow would hit the garage wall, too far to the left, and her foot would touch a leaf blower propped against the wall. But she appreciated her parents allowing her to work here. It saved her from having to drive to the college and use one of the equally cramped studio spaces reserved for students. Here, she could work whenever she wanted, day or night, and she could do so without distractions. Both of her parents were good about leaving her alone when she was painting. They might occasionally sneak a peek over her shoulder if they were in the garage, but they never tried to engage her in conversation, never asked her what she was working on or how it was going. She deeply appreciated that.
Her mother worried about her sometimes, though, especially lately. Are you getting enough sleep? You look so tired, and you barely touched your dinner. Renee was nineteen, and while her mother’s concern irritated her—she wasn’t a child anymore—she also knew it meant she cared. And on some level she knew her mother’s worries weren’t without justification. Renee had loved art since she was old enough to hold a crayon, and she’d rather draw or paint than do anything else. But the last several days she’d been especially prolific, completing one painting after another in a white-hot frenzy of inspiration. She’d never experienced anything like this before. It was like she was caught up in a tidal wave of artistic energy, unable to do anything but hold on tight and let it carry her wherever it would. The experience was equal parts amazing and frightening, but she couldn’t stop if she wanted to. She had to keep painting.
She wore her long black hair tied back in a ponytail to keep it from brushing against the canvas, and she had on an old T-shirt and ratty jeans, both of which were covered with paint splotches. She positioned her face close to the canvas as she worked, not because she had poor eyesight but so she could better focus on the small details. She was almost finished with this painting, and it was now just a matter of adding a few final touches. Normally, she liked to draw and paint images based on real life—flowers, birds, trees, people… But lately her mind had been filled with fantastic characters: men and women with strange, unearthly appearances and abilities, like creatures out of fantasy novels or comic books. This current painting was of a cruel-faced woman whose waist-length hair, flawless skin, and sleeveless floor-length gown all appeared to be made of the same silvery metal. An oversized metallic gauntlet covered her right hand, the fingers tapering to sharp claw-like points. There was something missing, though, and Renee couldn’t put her finger on what it was. But then it came to her. She dabbed her brush in white, then blue, and with a couple of quick strokes the woman’s eyes now appeared to be crackling with electric energy. Perfect.
She lowered her brush and stepped back to admire her work. But as she did so, the colors that comprised the silver woman began to fade, and within seconds she was gone, the canvas blank once again.
This should have struck Renee as strange, but it didn’t. After all, the same thing had happened to the last dozen or so paintings she’d produced. Why should this one be any different? She sighed, selected an image at random from the dozens swirling in her mind—a man wearing a white lab coat and holding a strange object: a golden rod with snakes intertwined around it—and lifted her brush.
“In the end there shall be One,” she murmured, and began a new painting.
* * *
“I can’t believe this.”
Geoffrey Ramsey walked along the sidewalk of downtown Corinth, Illinois, his friend Jimmy Reid at his side. Well, maybe friend was too strong a word. Temporary compa
nion was closer to the truth. Geoffrey had been homeless for almost three years now, and he found it easier not to get too close to anyone. You had to look out for Number One on the streets, even if those streets were located in a small Midwestern town instead of some big city. In a lot of ways, being homeless in a small town was worse, Geoffrey thought. At least in a city there would be more places to hole up for the night where the cops would leave you alone, and more places where you could find an odd job or two to score some cash to buy food. Not in Corinth, though. He and Jimmy had been going from business to business all morning, and so far they hadn’t found a single bit of work. No trash to take out, no floors to sweep, no heavy boxes to carry… Usually they could find something. But not today.
“It’s just the way it goes sometimes,” Jimmy said.
Jimmy always had a good attitude, regardless of the situation. It was a quality that irritated Geoffrey to no end.
“Yeah? Well if it keeps on going like this, you and I will go to sleep with empty bellies tonight.”
Jimmy shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Geoffrey sighed. “True enough.”
The two men continued walking, and Geoffrey tried to think of other places they could look for work. It was the second week of December, and there were several inches of snow on the ground. Despite this, the sun was warm, the sky cloudless, and the air still. But Geoffrey knew the weather would be taking a turn for the worse soon. He wore a thin brown jacket over a flannel shirt and two T-shirts. It was all about layers when you were homeless. This jacket wouldn’t see him though another Illinois winter, though, but right now it was the heaviest coat he had. His sneakers were shot, too. He could feel cool air filtering through the numerous holes, and when it rained it didn’t matter how many pairs of socks he wore, his feet got soaked.
The state of Jimmy’s wardrobe wasn’t much better. His blue windbreaker was even thinner than Geoffrey’s jacket, his jeans had holes in both knees, and his old, broken-down work boots had been repaired with duct tape so many times that almost none of the original material remained. Both of them were going to need to get hold of better clothes, and soon. But that was a worry which could be postponed a little while yet. The first thing they needed to do was eat.
Clothing aside, the two men were a study in contrasts. Geoffrey was black, Jimmy was white. Geoffrey was a stocky man of medium height, Jimmy was thin and six-and-a-half feet tall. Geoffrey was in his fifties and had a beard that held more salt than pepper, while Jimmy was in his thirties, with a thin patchy beard and shoulder-length blond hair. And of course, Geoffrey tended to look at the negative side of things while Jimmy preferred to focus on the positive. And right now, Geoffrey was definitely in a negative frame of mind.
Downtown Corinth was a collection of two- and three-story buildings that had been erected in the forties and fifties, narrow structures of red brick and gray stone. Businesses came and went as the years passed, and right now the buildings housed coffee shops, restaurants, antique stores, secondhand clothing stores, funky art galleries, used bookstores, and the like. The old-fashioned architecture should’ve clashed with the bohemian vibe of the businesses, but somehow they complemented each other. The small business owners that struggled to make a living downtown were normally sympathetic to the town’s homeless population, but during the holiday season they became more focused on their own needs. Geoffrey couldn’t blame them. If they didn’t make good money this time of year, more than a few of them might end up having to close their doors for good. And the last thing customers wanted to see was two homeless guys hanging around, trying to pick up a couple bucks. Geoffrey had hoped they’d have a week or so before Jimmy and he became personae non gratae downtown, but from the response they’d gotten in their quest for work today—or rather lack thereof—it seemed the holiday season had already kicked into high gear in Corinth. He and Jimmy probably wouldn’t be able to find odd jobs to do until after New Year’s.
Peace on Earth, goodwill to men, Geoffrey thought bitterly.
It wasn’t noon yet, but there was a steady stream of traffic, and most of the parking spaces in front of the businesses were taken. There weren’t many pedestrians, though. People in Corinth tended to drive straight to their destination, take care of whatever business they had there, and then leave. They didn’t window-shop much.
Geoffrey had worked as a machinist for twenty years before the factory laid off all its workers and closed down. He drew unemployment while he looked for work, but one night—after he and Ellen were coming back from a late movie—a drunk driver ran an intersection and hit the passenger side of the car head-on. Ellen was killed instantly. Geoffrey wasn’t so lucky. He sustained numerous injuries which required multiple surgeries. He had so many pins and rods in him that he’d set off an airport metal detector if he came within fifty feet of it. His medical insurance had lapsed when the factory closed, and he’d used what savings he had to pay for Ellen’s burial. He couldn’t pay his astronomical medical bills, and because of this he lost their house. He and Ellen had never married or had children, and what little family he had left lived in the Chicago area. So once his house was gone, instead of looking for a new place to live, he hit the streets and he’d been on them ever since.
“It’s kind of weird, huh?” Jimmy said.
The question pulled Geoffrey out of his glum thoughts and he turned to look at Jimmy.
“What?”
“The decorations.”
Geoffrey turned away from his friend and examined their surroundings. At first, he didn’t know what Jimmy was referring to. The downtown businesses always decorated for the holidays—normally well before Thanksgiving—and this season was no exception. Wreaths hung on doors; cardboard figures of snowmen, Santa, Jack Frost, and even a few dreidels hung in windows. But the longer Geoffrey looked, the more he understood what Jimmy was talking about. The usual holiday decorations were out in abundance, yes, but there were other decorations too, all of them strange and unfamiliar. A music store across the street called Tune Town had a black spiral pattern painted on the inside of its display window. A couple buildings down, a pawn shop called Cash Bonanza had a straw figure hanging on its front door. The figure was roughly human-shaped, but it had two heads and four arms. And on their side of the street, only a few doors down from where they stood, an antique store called Treasures and Trinkets had a small sign out front on the sidewalk, red letters painted on a wooden board. But instead of advertising the business, it read ALL HAIL ARACHNUS! complete with thin strands of webbing drawn between the letters.
Geoffrey frowned. “What the hell?”
“Pay no heed to the signs of false gods,” said a steely voice behind them.
Geoffrey and Jimmy spun around to see a woman standing on the sidewalk. Geoffrey hadn’t heard her approach, and his first thought was that she’d somehow appeared out of thin air. He knew it was a crazy idea, but he couldn’t shake it. The woman was silver from head to toe, both her skin and her gown, and Geoffrey wondered if she was some sort of street performer one of the businesses had hired to attract customers. But her skin didn’t look as if it were covered with makeup or body paint. Her hair resembled finely wrought strands of metal and her eyes shimmered with unearthly blue-white light. The fabric of her gown appeared to be made from some combination of metal and cloth. It hung on her stiffly when she remained still, as if it were some sort of armor, but when she moved, it shifted with her, suddenly soft and pliant. She wore a large metal glove over her right hand that stretched halfway up her forearm. No, not a glove, Geoffrey thought. There was a better word for it. A… gauntlet, yeah, that was it. The gauntlet was the same silvery color as the rest of her and so highly polished that it gleamed in the sunlight. The gauntlet’s fingers ended in wicked-looking claws, the sight of which made him shiver. He imagined those claws slicing into flesh, needle tips parting skin and muscle with the ease of a hot knife cutting through warm butter. The image nauseated him, but at the same time it gave him
a thrill to think of the damage the gauntlet could do.
What the hell’s wrong with me? he thought. He wasn’t a violent man, had never raised a hand against anyone in his life. But he couldn’t take his gaze from the gauntlet and its deadly fingers.
The woman’s height added to her otherworldly appearance. She stood over seven feet tall, taller than Jimmy by at least six inches, giving her a commanding presence. But beyond her size, she exuded an aura of strength, of power. It radiated from her in waves that Geoffrey could almost feel physically, and he thought he could hear a slight hum in the air, as if he were standing close to a powerful machine that had just been activated.
“I am Adamantine,” she said. Her voice was cold and unemotional, with a hollow, echoing quality that made the hair on the back of Geoffrey’s neck stand up. “I have Manifested.”
Geoffrey exchanged glances with Jimmy, but Jimmy only shrugged. Geoffrey faced Adamantine once more, but he didn’t look directly into her eyes. He couldn’t bring himself to gaze into the light that shone from them. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He swallowed once then tried again.
“We don’t understand,” he said. His voice was hushed, almost reverent, and he felt a near overwhelming urge to kneel before this strange woman. It took an effort of will, but he remained standing.
Adamantine ignored his comment. She took a moment to look around at her surroundings, and Geoffrey had the impression she was taking everything in, as if it was all new to her. Traffic continued at a steady pace, and while most drivers were too intent on where they were going to notice Adamantine, those who did see the tall silver woman gaped at her as they drove by.
“It’s a modest place,” she said at last. “But I suppose it will have to do.” She turned to look at Geoffrey and Jimmy once more, her silver lips stretching into a smile. “What are your names?”
Neither man answered at first, but then Jimmy told her his name, as did Geoffrey.
Adamantine inclined her head, as if giving them some sort of official acknowledgement.
