Darkness of the Soul (34 page)

“Yeah, and got your girlfriend killed in the process.”

The look that crossed Damien’s face at that made Drakanis instantly sorry he’d said it; the younger man looked like he’d been slapped across the face. In a way, Drakanis supposed he had. He supposed if positions had been reversed, Parker might have felt a certain species of savage glee, but Drakanis only felt hollow.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He reached out to touch Woods on the shoulder, but Damien was shaking his head and pulling away. The vibe Drakanis was getting from him felt like one part anger and one part grief, though who it was pointed at was up for grabs. Woods sniffed and scrubbed his nose against the sleeve of his uniform coat. Looking at Woods dressed in those clothes—not quite cop clothes but almost—triggered some spark of memory in the back of his mind. The spark became a flare a moment later, and his brows arched.

“All right, different subject. I heard something earlier about being a pretend cop. What the hell did you mean by that?
Was
it you that said it? Memory’s hazy, but I know somebody said something, and nobody caught it, then.”

Woods smirked, the left corner of his mouth arching enough to give him a grin like the Joker; his teeth gleamed. The flicker of the remaining fluorescents shone in his eyes, making it hard to read his expression, even as he took another step backward and spread his arms, gesturing around him.

“Look at this place, Drak. Think about how many of them I might have. How many bolt-holes. I’m not going to make you count, because you couldn’t find ’em all. I’ve got ten, just here in Reno. Add in the rest of the West Coast, that climbs up to almost a hundred. And not a one of them can be pointed back at me.”

The grin was changing now, coming down, and Drakanis was reminded of one of those paintings, the one they liked to use in the commercials,
The
Scream
or
The
Cry
or whatever the hell it was. Woods didn’t seem to notice. He just continued on, the volume of his voice rising, the grief in it overtaking the anger. “I’ve had twenty jobs since the night Sheila died, and none of those people knew me or remembered me. I was just a ghost in the halls, collecting a paycheck while I did my real work.

“I’ve slept with thirty women since that night, and only one of them knows I exist at the moment, and even she wouldn’t if things hadn’t gone to hell in a handbasket in the last couple of weeks. And you know why?” He shoved his face inches away from Drakanis’s own, and Drakanis could see the tears gleaming in them, could feel the sorrow pouring off of him. He shook his head, keeping his eyes focused on Woods.

“Of course you don’t. Because nobody does. But that’s the price. I didn’t tell you the rest of it, and I lied about the end of what I
did
tell you. Sheila wasn’t dead when I got there. She was possessed, oh fuck was she, but she wasn’t dead when I got home. I had to do it.”

He whirled, turning to face the wall and slamming his fists into one of the filing cabinets. Drakanis heard a crack that was as much in his mind as in his ears and saw the glimmer of blood between the knuckles on Woods’ hands when they cracked, but Woods didn’t seem to care. He just did it again, driving six-inch deep divots into the metal and producing a hollow bonging.

“I had to kill her, and then I get told I’m special. Here’s your fucking reward for killing your whole fucking life. Oh, guess what, as a reward, nobody will remember you. Oh, and even better, hardly anyone will pay attention to you at all.”

The tone Woods had, the facial expressions, even the sniveling, all of them had the quality of a child about ready to go into a full-scale tantrum. Drakanis had no urge to witness that, especially not with time on the clock ticking merrily away. He knew as well as Woods did—perhaps even better—that time was very short these days, and they had better things to be occupied with. He stepped toward Woods, who didn’t appear to notice. His eyes were fixated on something that only he could see. Drakanis raised his hand and brought it hard across the young man’s face. The sound was like a gunshot, rebounding off the sterile concrete walls.

Woods’ gaze slowly focused on Drakanis’s face as his hand came up to rub at the sore spot. “You hit me.”

“Yep. And I’ll do it again if you don’t get your ass in line. You lost your girl, you lost your life. I’m fucking sorry, okay? But there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do about it. You’re not the only one who’s been hurt by this shit or had everything pulled out from under you like some magician’s trick tablecloth. Quit bitching and tell me what it is I need to do, so we can at least try to keep it from happening to anybody else.”

Woods’ face pulled in on itself, becoming ratlike and cunning. In the split second that his expression lasted, Drakanis saw a tangible urge to murder him reflected in those eyes. He didn’t step back or look away, however. Too much was riding on it for him to turn this into pussyfooting around the school bully. Woods apparently came to the same conclusion. His features smoothed out, the curled lip returned to its proper place, and the fire and hate in his eyes dimmed. Drakanis didn’t believe it was all gone—his newfound sixth sense was telling him there was still a good deal of irritation against him simmering somewhere inside of Damien, but it had retreated enough that they could get on with what they were doing, at least.

“All right. Now. Before you got off subject, you were saying you don’t know what you’re training me for. You’re just teaching me to feel it, to put it on a leash so it doesn’t hurt anybody. Am I right so far?”

Woods nodded, his eyes flickering warily over the hard lines of Drakanis’s face. Wherever Woods’ eyes went, Drakanis felt a tingle, like the man was tickling him with a feather, poking at him and waiting for a response; he imagined that the sensation was Woods trying to get a fix on his mental temperature but wasn’t sure and didn’t want to press the point right then. Instead, he continued, “Okay. And then you’re telling me that when it comes to crunch time, I’m just going to somehow know—pull it from the air or something—what it is that I have to do. Is this also correct?”

Woods nodded again, this time without the probing. Drakanis thought he’d seen what he wanted to see in there—though Damien could have told him otherwise; trying to read Drakanis was like trying to read blue ink on black paper in the dark. You might be able to see a word or two, but most of it was guesswork and imagination. He was content to let it drop.

“Fine. Now, I’ve got a question or two further. What happens if I
don’t
know what to do? If whatever universal power you claim guides moments like that doesn’t show up and tell me what to do? What then? Because it really doesn’t strike me as one of those situations where you say, ‘Oopsies,’ and it all gets better. Feels more like this is one of those situations where you’ve got one shot, and if that doesn’t work, you pull the dirt over your head and wait to die.”

Woods didn’t answer him for a moment; he just stared him in the eyes. He sighed. “That’s more or less right on the money, man,” he said. “There isn’t really a whole lot you can do if the spirit doesn’t move you.”

He could tell from the way that Drakanis didn’t flinch or react to what he’d said that he had already gotten that far in his thinking. Apparently, he was just asking for confirmation, rather than outright curiosity.

Shit,
if
he’s
got
that
far
in
his
thinking,
it
doesn’t
matter.
He’s
still
here,
so
he
isn’t
going
to
quit.
Only
real
question
here
is
if
he
intends
to
feed
me
to
the
beast
before
he
tries
anything
on
it.

The laughter was so loud, so sudden, that it left Woods with a rare look of complete puzzlement on his face. Drakanis looked like he’d found the elusive punch line to a joke he’d been hearing for years and had just now gotten it; he was in a full-on, thigh-slapping, eye-watering fit of borderline hysteria.

He came down slowly, the laughs falling into snickers and then to chuckles and then into nothing but the occasional hiccup. When he was done, he forced himself to put on a straight face—though his lips were still twitching, trying to go back to where they wanted to be—and shook his head. “I don’t see what giving you over to it would do, really. Except maybe give it such a case of indigestion that it’d forget all about killing the rest of us.”

Damien paled and shook his head rapidly. “You shouldn’t be able to do that. Not that fast, not like that.”

Drakanis appeared genuinely surprised by the statement. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be learning? Or am I moving too fast for you?” There was a touch of taunting in his voice, good-natured ribbing, but it only served to drive Damien further into apparent panic.

“You’re jumping right into my head without even trying; yeah, I’d call that pretty fast.” He shook his head and backed away a bit further, stopping only when his back was against the wall. He was trying to guard his thoughts, especially those relating to what had happened since his awakening. Whatever passed for mental shielding was apparently also in the parcel of missing tricks that was getting larger by the minute though. As soon as he thought about trying to block it, Drakanis’s expression changed, and Damien winced.
Shit,
he
caught
that
one.

Drakanis nodded, dragged an old office chair from the jumble in the corner, and sat in it backward, hanging his arms over the back brace. “Well, that puts things in a different light, don’t it?” He sighed, dangled his head over, and stared at the floor. “Fuck.”

Woods smirked and shrugged. “So now you know. Most of the juice is gone. So what you’ve got is all we’ve got. Tough shit, innit?” Drakanis answered him with a nod but otherwise stayed quiet.

Silence reigned between the two for some time; each was thinking his own thoughts—and neither intruded on the other’s while they mulled the situation over. Drakanis spoke first, lifting his head and scrubbing at his face first, trying to wake himself up.

“Right. So we’ve got, what, little more than forty-eight hours before zero?” He stopped to check his watch, confirming that and finding his count high. He assumed he must have dozed off for a time, since it claimed the time was already 3:00
am
. December 23. “Correction. Forty-five.” He let his arm dangle, wincing at the pins and needles that assaulted it, yet again confirming that he’d been napping.

Woods was even more obvious about it than Drakanis. When he heard voices, he jerked awake, thrashing wildly at thin air. Then he focused blearily on Drakanis, squinting and licking his lips to try to break the seal of dried spit that had coated them. “Hunh? Wha?”

“Mornin’, sunshine. Clock is still ticking.”

Woods made a visible effort to banish whatever dream he’d been having. From the haggard look on his face and the pulse of his thoughts, Drakanis judged it had been a bad one. He couldn’t see what it had been about—though he was sure if he wanted to dig he could find out—and for that he was glad. For someone to have seen some of the shit Damien supposedly had, a dream that made him look like death warmed over and sent all his thoughts into a scurrying panic must have been pretty out there. Drakanis could feel the force of the younger man collecting and found himself wondering—not for the first time—how this kid could take so many tragedies and keep going, wearing that smirk most of the time. Sure, he’d cried a little last night, but he was holding up pretty goddamn well. Drakanis didn’t think he could do half as well if it came to it, but he supposed he was going to find out in short order.

“Right.” Woods’ statement was mostly lost in a jaw-cracking yawn that turned “right” into “roiiiiiiight,” but the sense of it was still there.

“So now what?”

Woods’ yawn ended in a chuckle, as he shook his head. “Man, I don’t know. There isn’t anything else to teach you except to have you keep blowing shit up, and I think you got tired of that game a while back.”

Drakanis shrugged. “Seems too easy. Maybe the other side of the coin?”

Woods looked troubled at the suggestion, the way someone might look troubled if you asked them if you could break into their house, rifle through their underwear drawers, and spread the contents all over the community for everybody to see. Drakanis guessed the look was somewhat warranted; given the crap Damien seemed to be carrying around in his head, it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t want anyone digging in it. Drakanis raised a hand for peace and then shook his head.

“I don’t mean digging in your brain, Damien. I can think of a few other uses for it.”

Woods’ brows arched, and for a moment, he looked a lot like a very young and very tired Spock. His voice sounded a lot like that too, all business and devoid of emotional resonance. “Share.”

“We know where Karim or Amal or whatever he calls himself was last, right?”

“Uh-huh…” the way Woods dragged out the last syllable conveyed doubtfulness. It reminded Drakanis of the tone one took with the retarded or the mentally ill, the one people used when they were just humoring someone to see where they were going.

“Everything leaves a residue. I’ve known that for years. Tapping that little bit of it, like you said. Maybe, since the rest of it’s waking up, I can tap a lot more than that. Find whatever trail he left. I don’t figure he’s going to stand on a rooftop and advertise the end of the world for us, after all.”

Woods studied him, unsure if the older man was serious about it or not. He could tell Drakanis had some inkling of what was going on, but still the man appeared determined to follow this through. It wasn’t bothering him in the least; he was just going to keep plodding along, trying to do what he considered his job until he did it or died trying, perhaps both at the same time.