Adversary - An OUTER HELLS Dark Urban Fantasy (The Tome of Testaments Book 1)

by Jeremiah Kleckner

  "We know exactly what we are doing."

  "I mean to yourself," Damon grumbled. A rage filled him. "I will rend you."

  "Yeh-Rholyu guides my actions," Kevin said.

  "Then I will crush his feeble skull in my hands."

  "You have twenty minutes," Kevin said. "One minute longer..."

  "Start the clock, Lieutenant. Watch it closely. You'll be dead in fifteen." Damon hung up the phone and slid back outside through the living room window.

  Chapter Seven

  Alvaro took one hand off the wheel and reached into his shirt. He grabbed his pendant and placed a thumb on the opal center. This was the seventh time he attuned to Randall's pendant tracking key and it gave him the same result each time. Randall hadn't moved.

  Three hours without contact was a bad sign, especially for assignments marked Track and Follow.

  He slammed a palm on the dashboard. He was minutes away now and perhaps hours too late.

  Randall had to have known to wait for a second man before starting the assignment, right? He had learned at least that much, hadn't he?

  After twenty minutes of looking for parking, Alvaro Ahmad gave up and pulled onto Court Street. He turned off his engine, pulled a hood up over his head, and eased out of his car.

  He tapped his pendant's opal twice for a location signal. The pulse of Randall's pendant answered up ahead--in the dumpster.

  Alvaro looked up and down the street and at each of the windows.

  There was a camera above a far window, the sole silent guardian of the street.

  Alvaro whispered into his pendant and waited for the events of the world to make the camera inoperable for him.

  Satisfied, he walked to the dumpster. He didn't give himself time to build concern or worry over what he was about to find. He just opened the damn thing.

  There was a thin layer of trash. Beneath that, Randall's torn and broken body lay twisted and cold.

  Alvaro breathed one hard sigh before checking his wounds. Claw marks across the chest and torso. Crushed bones in his hands. He turned the body over and found his Hklfeha dagger underneath him. Whoever did this had to have known not to rob the body after killing him. There weren't many who fit that description and even fewer who could cause this type of damage. If The Tome of Testaments was involved, then that left only one. Damon Nero.

  A ripple of excitement overtook Alvaro as the possibility of retaking the book became a greater and greater probability. If Damon Nero was here, then The Tome of Testaments couldn't be far at all. It could even be in this city, hidden away in one of its many corners.

  Alvaro stood over Randall for a moment longer out of respect. He raised Randall's Hklfeha dagger and drove the hilt of it down on the pendant around Randall's neck. The opal cracked and a dark mist rose out of its setting. It surrounded the dead Mithughee in thin wisps. Alvaro dropped the dagger in the dumpster and closed the lid as the cloud swallowed his former protégé. This life may be over for Randall, but he'll need his dagger in the next.

  Alvaro climbed back in his car and smiled. A small hope grew in him that Randall would be his mentor when it was his turn to pass through.

  A different hope grew. Damon Nero was close by and so was The Tome of Testaments. With the right support and a little luck, this thirteen-year case could be nearing its end.

  Alvaro Ahmad backed out of Court Street and drove off to find parking in Hoboken.

  Chapter Eight

  Everything that's anything knew the stone house on Palisade Avenue. It's the only three-hundred-year-old house in the Heights, a real point of interest in the area. Curious, considering that three hundred years wasn't that much time.

  Ancient cultures laugh at the people of this continent. Three hundred years ago, European castles and tombs were centuries-old relics. Asian and African temples were dust and ruin millennia before that. But Americans rarely let things grow old.

  Damon let himself think on this for a few seconds of blissful distraction while a more serious question burned in the back of his mind. Why was Yeh-Rholyu interfering? He had to have known who Damon was, even if the lieutenant said his name without knowing it.

  These thoughts puzzled Damon in the forty-five seconds he took to sprint the distance from Rebecca's building to the stone house.

  Once he was on the block, he slowed. Kevin and whoever else Yeh-Rholyu was working with were ready for him.

  Damon stood on the rooftop next to the house. What surprises did they have planned? The house was small, too small to hide enough troops to concern him. Maybe it was just Kevin and Yeh-Rholyu, or was that too easy? It had been too long since he felt a Near God's lifeblood on his talons.

  A faint buzz came from the phone in his pocket. Damon reached in and read the text.

  CHRIS: Update?

  Damon thought about ignoring it, but decided better. Chris would keep texting if he didn't get an answer. He tapped the screen.

  DAMON: Stone house on Palisade. Yeh-Rholyu. One hour.

  He then turned off his phone and slid it back into his pocket.

  The front door was most likely the least guarded, but it was the most public and Damon couldn't afford the attention of a shootout with a police lieutenant on a busy city street. Nor could he risk being seen kicking in the door of a point of interest.

  The window it was.

  He stepped off of the ledge and clung to the stone house beside the second-story window. He pulled the window open with two fingers, then crept into the house.

  Damon looked around the bedroom for any planned defenses and found none. No alarms. No cameras as far as he could tell. No weapons.

  There were several parts of the room that struck Damon as odd. The drawers in the dresser were ajar, the closet doors were half open, and the bed was unmade. Damon touched the still-warm pillow. Someone left in a hurry, probably the surrogate owners of the house, the people Yeh-Rholyu used to preserve it over the centuries.

  The bedroom door was open enough to see into the hallway. The other two doors on the second floor were shut and there was a light on at the top of the stairs.

  Damon quieted himself. He felt around for others with a sense that was more touch than sight or sound and found the pleasant tempo of a spiked heart rate. Although he couldn't pry into his host's thoughts, the lieutenant's flat pitch was unmistakable.

  The man was alone.

  Curiosity overtook Damon. Part of him wanted to drop down and sneak up behind his prey, but he decided to be more direct.

  When he reached the first floor, he saw a light on behind the stairs toward the back of the house. He stepped into the kitchen and found Kevin sitting at the table, staring at his phone. Cheap coffee filled the air and the lieutenant sipped his cup.

  "Am I interrupting?" Damon asked, watching the man's eyes.

  Kevin saw him and stiffened. His face drained of color. He lowered his cup and phone to the table. "I get so few moments to myself," he said. "But, no. You're right on time."

  Damon felt the joyful spike of fear that overtook the lieutenant ebb. The drop was slow, but definite, as though the anticipation of the moment concerned him more than the moment itself.

  Kevin checked his watch. "I'm still alive."

  "It's only been eight minutes since we talked," Damon said. "You've got time."

  Kevin smiled and sipped his coffee again.

  "Where is she?"

  "Just like that?" Kevin said, putting his cup down on the table. "No threats? No beatings? No torture?"

  "I always start light."

  "Very kind of you."

  "It's not kindness," Damon said. "It's expediency."

  "I get it," Kevin said. "We're all busy."

  "Your schedule is going to clear up."

  "So you do start with threats," Kevin said. He loosened his watch and put it on the table. "One thing fi
rst."

  Damon nodded.

  "Why her? What makes her so special?"

  "The usual," Damon smirked. "Born under the right stars. The perfect shade of eye color. The proper lineage. A pure heart. What does it matter to you?"

  Kevin shifted in his seat. "I just wanted to know what it was we were taking from you. I want to know what I'll be feeding to Yeh-Rholyu."

  Damon grabbed Kevin by his coat and lifted him from his chair. The man was far lighter than he expected and, even though Damon didn't lift him above the man's usual height, he carried most of the man's weight.

  It was then that Damon saw that Kevin had no legs. They had fallen from the lieutenant and were now on the floor. But instead of lying there, they shuffled out of their pant legs and grew legs of their own. Their hip joints became mouths full of teeth and each foot became a barb like that of a scorpion.

  One of these barbs struck Damon in the thigh.

  "What the hell?" Damon said, kicking at the leg that stung him.

  "Just a few more surprises for you," Kevin said. His hand, the one that attacked Rebecca earlier, crept down Damon's arm and bit him on the wrist.

  Damon dropped the man and, as the lieutenant's body hit the floor, his body split further. He became different things, almost unrecognizable as a head, two arms, and a torso. Each piece of Kevin, six in total now, scuttled about the house in all directions.

  The man's arm slithered underneath the table and behind the couch in the living room.

  Damon stormed out of the kitchen after it. As he reached the threshold into the living room one of Kevin's hands, covered in thick black fur, dropped off of the wall and scratched his face. It hissed, then disappeared under the stairs before Damon could catch it.

  The lieutenant's now thin and raspy voice filled the room. "Surprised?"

  "More than I should have been," Damon said, wiping the blood off of his face. "I'm more surprised that you can talk without lungs."

  "It isn't pleasant," Kevin rasped.

  "Well, get used to it, because I'm removing them tonight."

  Something low to the floor ran in front of the stairs and into the dining room. A chair slid and Damon followed the sound.

  He walked more cautiously into the room this time, expecting another attack. Instead, the thin voice met him. "It is taking you a lot longer to kill me than you said."

  "I'm not killing you yet," Damon whispered.

  A searing pain struck Damon's ankle. He kicked at it, but caught only a glimpse of an arm, or what was an arm, as it slithered under an end table.

  There was a laugh. "Not like that, you're not."

  "If I wanted it, you'd be dead already," Damon said. "I need you alive. Where is she?"

  Gentle tapping above Damon's head alerted him to the next attack. He dropped to a knee and looked up in time to see the scorpion-leg drop from the ceiling. Damon crashed to the floor. The spiny legs dug into his arms and torso, but that wasn't what concerned him. Damon watched the barb at the end of this malformed extremity.

  It struck and Damon jerked his head left in time to avoid the sting. The barb stuck in the wood. It jerked twice to free itself. Damon bit deep into what would under normal circumstances be the heel of Kevin's leg. A shriek came from the mouth of the thing. From a different location, the man also screamed.

  Damon squeezed the thing on him and felt a few bones crack. It went limp in his arms and Kevin screamed again.

  Damon pushed the broken ugliness off of him and stood upright. "Again, where is she?"

  There was no answer.

  "What?" Damon asked. "Nothing to say now?"

  He drew into himself and felt for a pulse in the house. An odd measure greeted him. The lieutenant's flat pitch and rapid beat came in a chorus, a horrible cacophony to match his many parts.

  Damon tried working the old-fashioned way.

  He pushed the couch over and a snake-arm jumped at his head. He snatched it out of the air and cracked the first long bone he felt.

  A scream came from the next room.

  He twisted it until the bone ripped through the skin.

  More screams followed from the same location.

  "I'm getting tired of asking."

  Damon walked past the couch and the front of the stairs into the dining room. There, under the table, several of the lieutenant's parts were in a heap.

  Damon dropped the arm and kicked it off to the side. He then threw two of the chairs out of the room and drove a fist into the center of the table. The wood splintered and broke clean down the middle. The two halves fell to their sides, creating a narrow opening in the center of the room.

  In clear view, Damon watched Kevin's head and torso reattach. The unbroken arm and leg did the same. With greater effort and pain, the crushed leg and arm crept their way over to the body.

  Damon knelt beside the broken man. "Now, one last time."

  The lieutenant laughed.

  Damon smiled. "You are sunnier than you showed in our first few conversations."

  "That's not it," Kevin said. He pointed with his good arm at the trail of blood.

  Damon looked at the floor. Someone else, someone mortal, would have seen the wavy lines and hard angles as the pained twisting streaks of broken limbs, but Damon noticed the pattern right away. It was a symbol. The mark of Yeh-Rholyu.

  Damon laughed. "If all it took to summon your tired old god was smearing your blood on the floor, I'd have gotten around to it sooner."

  Kevin laughed again, but this time it was weaker and sounded more satisfied than amused. The man's eyes became glassy and distant. In their reflection, Damon watched as a rolling cloud of black mist swallowed the street, the house, everything.

  The room became dark, but not in any natural way. The darkness ambushed him. It wrapped him up like a blanket, muffling all light and sound.

  Damon spoke into the darkness. His words come out as a stifled whisper. "This is how you hide in your final moments, Yeh-Rholyu?"

  He reached out with his senses. There was fear, which was good, but there was also an eagerness that filled the room, as potent as the darkness itself.

  "What are we so excited about?" Damon said into the black curtain around him. An answer came and, even though he hardly heard his own words, the voice was clear and loud.

  "You," the voice said. "I'm excited to have you."

  Something grabbed Damon around the neck and pulled him further into the void.

  Chapter Nine

  There were hands on him.

  Not hands.

  They grabbed him. Pulled him. Battered him. His wrist snapped.

  Damon clutched his arm as the bone mended.

  His sight returned to him, but not because the darkness receded. His eyes adjusted to it somehow, but with his sight came the immediate concern over where he was. All things were a deep shimmering gray, as though he were underwater at dusk. He looked to Kevin, but all he saw was the lieutenant's shadow.

  What is this place? Damon thought.

  A voice rose to meet him. "We are beneath the lie you know. A Near God realm, one of many."

  Damon followed the voice with his eyes. There, by the front door, stood a small man. He leaned on the banister of the staircase and held a handkerchief to his mouth. He coughed once into it, then looked up at Damon with baggy, red eyes.

  The small figure shifted his weight further onto the banister and cleared his throat. "You see parts of it when you change. Glimpses. Here, we are all, all of us, aware."

  Damon looked around him. "There's no one here but us."

  "Not now, there isn't," Yeh-Rholyu said. "Not while I hunt."

  "Hunt? You can barely stand."

  "Are the other Far Gods in better shape?" A smirk crawled across his gray face. "Ah, yes. Your girl is supposed to fix this for you." Yeh-Rholyu coughed a dry laugh. "
Odd how we are all dependent on the actions of lesser things."

  "Where is she? If you've hurt her..."

  "You'd do what? Slay me?" Yeh-Rholyu asked.

  "That's my line in the sand."

  The god's brow furrowed. "You're what?"

  "My line in the sand," Damon repeated. "If you cross a line in the sand, there is no going back. It's a common saying now."

  "I don't keep up," Yeh-Rholyu said. "Needless to say, yes, I have hurt her and I will continue hurting her as long as it amuses me." The God of the Near stood upright and stretched his arms, all of his arms. A sound like rubber on plastic crackled as Yeh-Rholyu showed his true self. His beige and slick body stood motionless as jointed chitinous limbs writhed like a dozen expectant fingers.

  Yeh-Rholyu raked one of his limbs across the floor in front of him, cutting a deep groove in the wood. "She is mine now."

  "Is that your line?" Damon asked.

  "I was hoping you would get my meaning," Yeh-Rholyu said. "We have no sand in the house."

  #

  "Are you sure that he said nothing else?" Gracie asked as she walked up to The Tome of Testaments. The book's pages ruffled as she opened it.

  Chris hung back and watched her work. "Just that it was Yeh-Rholyu and he's in the Heights. I've been trying him since, but he must have turned off his phone."

  "The book is showing me what it knows about Yeh-Rholyu now," Gracie said. She studied the words in silence until she let out a horrified gasp.

  "What is it?" Chris asked, rushing up behind her. "How do we stop Yeh-Rholyu?"

  "I can't, not anymore," she said. "And if you're reading over my shoulder, neither can you."

  Chris's eyes reached the bottom of the page. He shook his head and frowned. "Son of a bitch. Does Damon know?"

  "Maybe, but we were being attacked. He might not have read all the way through," Gracie said. "How did he sound on the phone?"

  "I told you it was a text, but it's Damon. He's going to kill him."