ASCENSION (5 page)

              Jake could feel the malice of the crowd now. The pent up anger and bitterness. They all wanted to see it, too. They wanted to see Jake's life end, right there on the barren barn floor. Their ill will awakened the monster inside Jake. He could not hold it back any longer. The torrent of venom broke the levy, and it coursed through his veins.

              With lightning speed, Jake caught a blow from Malic in his right hand and threw it aside. His eyes were glowing like hot coals. He felt the fire burning in his lungs. Malic's wild blow threw him off balance. He fired one more shot at Jake, but it was slow and sluggish, a result of fatigue.

              Jake ducked the strike and countered with one of his own. It was swift, precise. There was a dull crunch as Jake's fist connected with Malic's temple. The great titan toppled over as the blow echoed through the barn. He landed in a heap of straw with a thud. The crowd was deathly silent, all of them gawking at Jake, whose face was riddled with welts and bruises and looked like he had wandered into a hornet's nest.

              McClanahan rushed to Malic's side, slapping his face. “He's... out cold,” he said in disbelief.

              Jake did not wait for a second opinion. He walked out of the circle and began unwrapping his fists, trying to mask his disdain.

              “You did it, bouyo!” Shamus cried gleefully, coming out of a wall of bodies. “You just made me a week’s pay in a day! And it's still morning!” Shamus said with a laugh, patting him on the back.

              Jake shrugged. He felt numb. “What difference does it make? No matter how much I fight, there's always one more. Their bloodlust can't be sated.”

              Shamus nodded. “That's why this is such a good business!” he said with another laugh. “I say a celebration is in order. Free drinks for the whole lot of you scallywags! Whaddya say?” Shamus held up his winnings, and the crowd cheered.

              Jake couldn't take it anymore; these people disgusted him. It was becoming harder and harder to keep his inner beast at bay. Slowly but surely, he was losing his grip. Jake stepped out into the brisk snowbanks outside. The wind howled at his back as snowflakes pelted his bare skin, melting on his flesh. It was soothing. The cold helped abate the anger.

              Jake counted the money Shamus had given him. $500, a fraction of the whopping $10,000 he had just banked. Jake didn't care, though, so long as it was enough. He had had enough of Shamus, of this whole rotten country. Everyone in the states was so full of greed and hate. He couldn't take their black intentions any longer. They were wearing on his very soul.

              Jake had a plan, though. He was going to leave the country. He had wanted to for quite some time now, but it had been too risky. Ras' Guul had kept his promise. That they would always be hunting him. Over the years he’d had several close encounters with one of Ras' Guul's cult. The cult ran deep, and had infiltrated several government institutions all across the states. Not all of the members were monsters, either. Some were just worshipers, low-level humans hoping to rise through the ranks and make some powerful connections. The cult had a vast information network, and Jake's name was red flagged. So he could never use it. Not for anything important. He didn't even dare to get a bank account. On paper, it had to seem like he didn't exist at all. For a while, Jake had thought that this was his fate, that he would never be able to leave, but then he met a man who claimed he could get him across the border unseen, without going through customs. Once Jake made it into Canada, he could go to any country he wanted. All the man wanted in return was $300 cash.

              Jake checked the clock on his phone. It was time. He slipped on his shirt and overcoat, checking to see if anyone was watching. There wasn't a single soul. They were all still drinking and gambling. Even as Jake started up Shamus's rusty old pickup truck, he knew no one would be able to hear him. Then he slipped off into the night, bound for some diner in the city. That's where the man met his clients. He was Jake's last hope for freedom.

              “Hey, watch it!” Jake growled at some girl who bumped into him on his way into the diner. She had been in such a hurry she had practically run him over.

              “Sorry,” she said dismissively, and disappeared.

              Jake shook his head and sat down in the left hand corner, away from the windows, just like the man had asked.

              “Jake?” a voice hissed. It nearly made Jake jump out of his skin. The man who asked was sitting in the booth behind him.

              “Yeah nice t-”

              “Don't turn around!” the man hissed.

              “Oh, sorry,” Jake said.

              “Yeah, save it. Here's how it works, kid. You leave the envelope with the money under a cup of black coffee, and I leave you a napkin with an address scribbled on it. Understand?”

              “Well, that doesn't seem like a very good deal,” Jake mused aloud.

              “Nobody likes a wise guy, kid. I've got other offers, you know. My van's practically full as it is.”

              “Okay, okay!” Jake said. “Relax. I was just kidding. So, where exactly is the drop off point once we pass the border?”

              “Ever hear of a place called Toronto, kid?” Jake couldn't see the man, but he could hear the smile in his voice. “Hope you like the cold.”

Chapter 3

(Sophie)

              Sophie shivered as the arctic wind pierced her coat and slithered down her back. The land was blanketed in snow. Swirls of it were being kicked into the air by the wind, creating a frosty fog that nibbled at Sophie's nose, the only real skin left exposed by her massive parka.

              Sophie looked up. The snow-dusted tavern in front of her was called The Frozen Tusk. A strange name, but not an uncommon one for Canada. Sophie slipped inside, thankful for the warm air, even if it did carry the odor of scotch and cigars with it.

              Sophie let her hood down and grabbed a seat at the bar. The gruff bartender had salt and pepper stubble on his face. His eyes sagged and were bloodshot, weary, like an old dog. He watched Sophie warily. Somehow, she didn't think they got too many female customers here.

              “You need sumtin’?” the bartender asked. Sophie caught a glimpse of the calendar behind him. It was her birthday, she realized. A whole year had passed since she left the orphanage. She had spent all that time traveling from place to place, seeing the world. Just as she had always wanted. Living life one lottery ticket at a time. It was a hard life, harsh, and it was getting harder. The other day she had lost. She picked the wrong lottery ticket. Her visions were also getting fewer and farther between. They used to be so close to the surface, pulsating, yearning for freedom. Now it seemed as if scarcely any remained. As if it had withered and died inside of her.

              Night, however, was a different story. She kept having the same dream, a whispering window, warnings of darkness descending. Each time she would plead with herself not to go towards the window, not to get in reach of those flailing drapes. She would, though, every time, and every time, they would strangle her, and she would feel the pain of it. Sophie would be forced to watch, as if it were a world away. She hadn't had a good night’s sleep in days, and dreaded the darkness.

              “You hard on hearing? I said, do you need sumtin'?” the bartender growled.

              Sophie snapped out of her trance. “Just water, please,” she said, feigning a smile. The bartender grimaced but filled her glass. As she touched it, though, several visions bombarded her. The glass had changed over twenty hands in the past two days and had never once been cleaned. Then she got a vision of one man slobbering into it as he hunched over the bar in a drunken stupor. Sophie pushed it away, but her throat was so dry, and her lips so cracked. She pushed the vision out of her head and drank down the cool water greedily.

              “Where you coming from?” the bartender asked.

              Sophie finished the glass in one gulp, sighing in satisfaction. She shrugged. “All over.”

              The bartender took her glass and refilled it. “I hear that a lot around here. Do you have any idea where you are right now?”

              Sophie gave the bartender a curious look. “I'm at the Frozen Tush, a bar in Ontario,” she responded.

              The bartender cackled, revealing a row of broken and rotten teeth. “This taint just a bar, girlie.”

              “What do you mean?”

              The bartender nodded towards a room in the back. “Why don't you go find out yourself?”

              Sophie looked warily at the bartender, then back at the room, where uproars kept rising and falling like a tide.

              “I'd hurry.” the bartender said with a sly smirk. “You're about to miss the main event.”

              A cold fear sat in the pit of Sophie's stomach. There was something foreboding about that room. It held a certain energy. What she had come to know as a fate flux. A fate flux was a point of causality that was uncertain, a junction of two timelines, where they directly intersect. That was why Sophie's powers were so limited. There was no way of knowing what timeline she was witnessing, what fragment of the space-time continuum her vision brought her. So it was her certainty of the future that made it uncertain, even for her. Just by seeing the future she could be altering it, or causing it. The thought made her dizzy so often she quit considering it.

              The visions of him, though, had come so often, so intensely. She was certain this was the timeline her mystery man was in. She could feel the weight of the fates. The god of time was kick-starting something into motion, turning the cogs of bigger machinery. She had felt it for months now. Something massive was coming, slowly but surely, like a meteorite sailing towards Earth. But there was no way of knowing if it was good or bad. Sophie only was certain that things were soon to change, and drastically. At the epicenter of it all, there her mystery man was, holding together the strands of fate. They were pulling him in all directions.

              Then a thought struck Sophie. He was here at this very moment. She was sure of it now. Though, she had felt that feeling once before, in a diner in Michigan. She had been wrong then. Too many visions of him had obscured the timeline, making it harder to follow. The more she saw, the less she knew.

              Finally, Sophie let out a big sigh. There was only one way to truly know what awaited her.

              “Good luck,” the bartender said with a toothless grin.

              As Sophie passed the threshold, the air itself got heavier. With it came the stench of sweat, and something coppery, like blood. A smell that comes from too many bodies in too small of a room. There was shouting, too, from a cluster of men in the center of the room, chanting and yammering.

              Sophie stepped on top of a chair by the wall so she could see over the crowd. A burly, bearded man with a barrel chest and a beer belly was heaving, a trickle of blood running from his lip to his matted beard. A jolt of electricity ran through Sophie as she recognized the face. It was the murderer, the man who buries the stranger.

              Across from the bearded man, a younger one with dark hair and a square jaw was kneeling, his lean, muscular body coated in sweat, glistening under the flickering Kerosene lanterns. That's when Sophie realized what the crowd was chanting.

              “Kill! Kill! Kill!” the crowd roared as the bearded man approached, his eyes bulging and his fists curled.

              The younger man was still kneeling, clutching his ribs, which Sophie realized were black and blue. Panic fluttered in her gut. Then, unprovoked, the young man looked directly at her, his ice blue eyes freezing her solid. There was no mistaking those eyes. It was him, the man from her visions. All that searching had finally led her to him, and now he was going to die, right in front of her eyes. She was too late.

              The bearded man buried his boot in the boy's ribs. There was a sickening crunch, and Sophie's mystery man collapsed and the crowd roared. “Stop!” Sophie screamed, trying to push past the wall of shirtless men, the mountain of mass. “Stop!” she screamed again when she finally broke free from the crowd into the makeshift arena.

              “Get out of the way, girl,” the bearded man growled.

              Sophie felt the warmth of tears streaming down her cheeks. “No, you'll kill him.”

              “You too!” the man said, shoving Sophie aside with remarkable strength. Sophie crashed into the thrashing crowd, being swallowed up by the angry masses...

***

(Jake)

              Sweet surrender. It was so close now. The savage, cold, and cruel world was fading in front of him. The beast of a man over him was breathing heavily, hammering into the back of his head. Jake could hardly feel the blows anymore, only a narcotic warmth creeping from his stomach to his chest. There was no rage this time, no compulsion for retribution. The beast inside had abandoned him. It was finally over. Finally.

              Then he heard it, just as he was about to rest. It was crisp, so audible all the other noises were muted by it. It was a cry, a woman's cry. The sound carried a purity to it he had never felt before. It stirred something inside of him. The pinching pain of his cracked ribs ceased, and suddenly, he felt strong again, like hammered steel. Then, the sounds of the world came rushing back. The pain, though, the pain was gone. Jake opened his eyes, and jumped to his feet.

              “Stay down, boy,” the bearded man grumbled. “No shame in losing. I've given bigger men less of a beating and they didn't get to walk away from it either. Count your blessings.”