Dark Heart (8 page)

“Please!” He wanted to push her away, but in his weakened condition, his movements were a mockery, less forceful than the flailing of an infant.

“Rest, my lord, please.” She began to weep openly. Justinian could feel her tears trail across his fevered flesh.

It hurt him to see her pain, but there was one last boon he would ask of her before he sent her away. He wished to see for himself what the cursed hand of fate had wrought upon his flesh.

“A mirror, Gwendolyne. Bring me a mirror!”

“No, my lord, I beg you. Rest.”

“The mirror!” he commanded.

Gwendolyne pulled a silver hand mirror from the chest at the end of the bed.

“It is here, my lord.”

“Hold it up where I can see it.”

“My lord, it will only pain you to see what you’ve—”

“By God, woman! Do it!”

She held it up to his face. The mirror wavered with the trembling of her hands and her silent sobs.

His reflection was distorted by the motion and his own dementia, but what he saw was plain enough.

It was the monster he’d become.

The vision at last ran its course as he looked in the mirror upon himself as he was today.

Blood in his long black hair, on his chest, and on his hands. Iridescent scales clinging to the ichor that coated his body. A needle full of a moment’s forgetfulness hanging limply from his arm below the rubber tourniquet.

Finally freed from the past’s lethal grasp, Justinian reached over and pushed the plunger. Heroin rushed into his veins and the castle around him melted away. The pain melted away. And with it, the vision of Gwendolyne…

Heroin was a recent addition to Justin’s life, and not one he was proud of. Justin had known several Elder disciples of the Dragon over the centuries. For reasons he never understood, they did not suffer from the ghosts that plagued him. They carried out their missions for the master, many of them as bloody as his own, and never gave them a second’s thought. Apparently the ghostly gallery that haunted him was unique among the disciples. The other Elders could not know the desire that burned within him to flee from those pale images.

In the beginning, he had turned to alcohol, but it wasn’t strong enough. He metabolized the slow poison so fast that even in a swaying stupor, the ghosts could still follow him. He couldn’t drink enough to banish them by passing out. And in some ways, his ordeal became worse during his drunken frenzies. He lost what little conscious control he had on what he saw, and all of his practiced mental defenses against the pain.

Still searching for surcease, he started dabbling in opium in the fashionably unfashionable salons of Paris just before the French Revolution. Like alcohol, the opium did not send the ghosts away completely, but rather softened his emotional response to them. The pain was still there, but it somehow didn’t seem to matter as much.

Then Justin tried heroin. He’d been in San Francisco in the late 1960s, in the Haight-Ashbury. It was a time and place unique in his long experience. He soaked up the gentle atmosphere of the flower children, and along the way tried a few of the drugs from the pharmacopoeia the kids were experimenting with. Most had little or no effect on him; they were metabolized by his immortal body long before they affected his mind. Two of the drugs he tried were different. The first, LSD, was a mistake of epic proportions, one that cost several people their lives. But heroin, though a filthy habit, saved him from his personal demons, if only for a little while. The drug sang to him and the ghosts could not follow.

And the terrors and addictions that were the drug’s deadly downside didn’t affect him. His immortality and healing powers kept him safe. Even as he watched the children who’d introduced him to heroin’s joys waste away and die before they reached adulthood, destroyed by the drug’s embrace, he realized he’d found at last the release he was looking for.

Most men only had eighty years on this earth before they departed for whatever paradise they believed awaited them in the afterlife. He had been doing hard, brutal work for the Dragon—for all of humankind—for nearly seven hundred years, with no end in sight. Justin tried to believe he deserved his chosen form of oblivion. He knew better, of course, but there were days when his self-loathing was outweighed by his need for release.

He didn’t know how long he floated in heroin’s liquid arms before something brought his senses back. At first, he wasn’t quite sure what awakened him. Usually, while he was in a heroin haze, the roof could fall in upon him and he would barely notice it. But then, sometimes, a breath of air touched his skin and he would come back to full consciousness. As he did now.

The ornate mirror on the dais shimmered, as if the glass was dissolving. At first, he thought it was a fantasy induced by the drug. He forced his eyes to focus on the mirror. The glass shimmered again.

No. This was real. Someone was coming through.

When his master used the mirror, there were no preliminary signs, nothing to indicate that his presence was near. One moment, he was not there, and the next moment, he was the whole world. Though after all his years as the Dragon’s servant, Justin was still unsure of what the Dragon looked like. He saw him only as the Dragon wanted to be seen. Sometimes the Dragon was smoldering eyes in the darkness. Sometimes he was a voice speaking from Justin’s own reflection in the mirror. Once he’d even been a blonde beauty decked out in shimmering samite, complete with wings and a harp.

None of the disciples could control the mirror as the Dragon did. They could use the mirror, of course, at the Dragon’s request—sometimes they used it, too, without the master’s direct consent but never without his knowledge.

Again the mirror shimmered, and again. Justin watched with detached interest. He knew he should either stand to greet whoever was coming through or throw a black cloth over the glass to indicate that he did not wish to be disturbed. At the moment, all he wanted to do was to remain still, let time flow past him, enjoy the lingering afterglow of the drug. And so instead of doing what he knew he should do, he merely watched.

The shimmering intensified, then the surface rippled as though someone was skipping stones across it, as if the mirror was now a vertical plane of water. Features formed just on the other side of the mirror’s surface, those of a dark-skinned man, his jet black hair cropped close to his head. Deep-set black eyes gleamed on either side of an eagle’s beak of a nose. He had a face resembling that of a bird of prey. He seemed to stare at Justin from the moment he appeared in that shimmering other world.

The man wore a gray wool three-piece business suit and a hand-sewn silk shirt, both fresh from Saville Row, masterpieces of British single-needle tailoring. They fit him perfectly, like a second skin. The clothes were a disguise, giving the man the appearance of a top-flight corporate raider, a very successful businessman, a modern robber-baron at the peak of his form. But Justin could smell the dung heap behind the surface polish. The man concealed beneath the natty wool was an Arabian street thief from the fifteenth century. And all the suits in the world would never change it.

The mirror embraced the man as he stepped through its gleaming surface like a knife cutting through quicksilver. He looked about the room, his long, bony nose wrinkling in disgust.

“It smells like a charnel house in here,” he said. He spoke with a perfect American accent, colored with shades of an Oklahoman’s drawl.

“Does it remind you of the prison cells of your youth, Kalzar?” Justin asked. He straightened up in the chair. He tried to force his thoughts into order.
Steady and calm, keep it steady and calm,
he told himself. He cursed the remains of the narcotic in his veins, slowing his thought processes, making his reactions sluggish and fuzzy.

“Ah,” Kalzar replied, “now that you mention it, it does have the stink of fear.”

Kalzar stepped down from the dais, away from the mirror he’d just traveled through. He frowned as he stepped over the skins and fluids from Justin’s recent transformation. Once on the carpet, he paused to wipe his shoes.

“You really should show more care, Justin. Doesn’t this shock the cleaning lady? Cause her to ask embarrassing questions? Or do you simply murder them and then hire new ones?”

“That would be more your style,” Justin said, still trying to see clearly through his heroin haze—and failing miserably. He sat back in his chair, waiting to see what Kalzar was up to, looking for a hint of the devious plan or uncontrollable urge to gloat that had led Kalzar here.

“There are too many people in the world, Justin. You wouldn’t know that because you’ve spent your entire life in Europe and America. The East is different. If you’d spent time where I come from, you’d realize that the majority of people on this planet should be squashed like roaches.”

“That doesn’t sound like one of the five pillars of Islam. The Prophet would be disappointed in you.”

“He’s not my prophet anymore. I know who my god is. I know in whose
jihad
I fight.”

Kalzar’s vulture-like gaze flicked about the room, lingering on nothing except the drawings and the drug paraphernalia. He snorted.

“The weakness that surrounds you…” Kalzar said, venom dripping from each word, “after all of those years I put into you, after teaching you everything I know, this is where you end up.” Kalzar waved a hand at the pictures on the wall, then gestured at the heroin vial, syringe, and rubber strip scattered on the small table by Justin’s chair. “I suppose your raw talent must be quite impressive for the Dragon to turn a blind eye to all of these weaknesses. Once I thought you showed promise, but you’re no disciple. As you are now, Omar could best you.”

“Omar is a worm,” Justin said, annoyed to hear a slight slur to his words; he resolved to keep his mouth shut until he was sure he could control his voice.

Kalzar’s gaze flashed to Justin. All the old hatred, centuries in the making, was there. None of it had been mellowed by the decades they had been kept apart by the Dragon. Then he smiled suddenly, though the smile looked like a snarl.

Crocodiles look like that before they sink their teeth in,
Justin thought.

“Remember how we used to fight together, Justin? Side by side, I mean, in the early days, before you took from me what was rightfully mine?”

The acid he’s putting in those words must burn his lips,
Justin thought, but said nothing.

“We would run down those pathetic druids in the forests of Scotland, back when Scotland still had forests fit to run in. You and I, we grinned at our own reflections on the swords of the Knights Templar before we slaughtered them like lambs. Together, we could have led a successful charge on all the armies of the world and won. And now look at you. See what you’ve become. I taught you everything, and look at how you waste it.”

Justin levered himself to his feet, met his old enemy’s gaze, saw the hate in Kalzar’s face. Justin’s jaw tightened but he forced himself to speak. This time, his voice came out low and deadly.

“Your arrogance stifles your tiny brain,” Justin said. “Your memories are a delusion. We never fought side by side, Kalzar. I followed behind you to clean up the messes you made. To bury the whores you lost control with. To squelch the rumors you started with your endless bragging to the wrong ears. I did not steal your favor with the Dragon, Kalzar. The Dragon sent me to cover your tracks. I’m surprised the Dragon hasn’t sent me to kill you. Perhaps our master is more forgiving than he seems. At least, so far he is…” Justin let out a disgusted breath. “Yes, you taught me, Kalzar. Everything you know. I could never have compiled a finer manual on what not to do as a disciple!”

For a moment, Justin thought Kalzar would attack him. Kalzar’s smile disappeared. The Arab’s thin lips formed a straight, rigid line. Veins throbbed at his temples and against his white silk collar. His face was flushed, his eyes narrow. Justin waited, ready.

Kalzar mastered himself. His left eyelid twitched, and then he smiled again. “And you are such a fine disciple that the master has banished you from your homeland. Perhaps you are not so secure in the Dragon’s favor as you think.”

“Perhaps,” Justin said. “Or perhaps you don’t know the workings of the Dragon’s mind. My stay here is for a reason, one which will become clear to me over time. Just as we could be ordered to kill a man today for what he will do in ten years, the Dragon’s decision to keep me here is most likely to hold me ready for some coming task. I follow his orders. I have the intelligence and subtlety to understand what is at stake. That’s the difference between you and me, Kalzar. You are the Dragon’s bludgeon and I am his scalpel. That’s the way it has always been.” Justin walked forward, nearly nose to nose with Kalzar. “No matter how well you dress yourself, no matter how many accents you affect, you will always be a mere butcher. Not just because you’re an idiot, but because you enjoy the slaughter, not the grand purpose behind it. You are a wretch, a festering sore on the face of the earth. I tolerate your continued existence because the Dragon can use you.”

Kalzar narrowed his eyes. He was so angry he could barely speak. “You prancing peacock.” Kalzar’s voice was low but deadly, echoing throughout the room like a gypsy’s curse. “You dance on thin ice, Justin. And one day you will fall through. It’s only a matter of time.” Justin could practically feel the heat of Kalzar’s fury seeping through the fine wool of his impeccable suit. “And on that day,” Kalzar spat, “I will be waiting to swallow you. Then I will tear
your
flesh!”

But the game grew old. Justin finally asked the question he should have asked the moment Kalzar stepped through the mirror. “What do you want here, Kalzar?”

No reply. The urge to fight was strong within both of them, and could explode into violence any second. Each lusted to shed the other’s blood, to pour it out until the floor was lost beneath the crimson tide, until the
enemy
was too weak to stand, too weak to run, too weak to live. One day, each of them knew, the Dragon’s edict forbidding them to fight wouldn’t be enough to keep them apart. And each knew that day was getting closer, that the Dragon’s long-standing edict wouldn’t hold for much longer.
And,
Justin thought,
that brought up a very interesting point.
“The master ordered us to remain separated. How do you come here?”