Darkness of the Soul (43 page)

“Maybe
you
should give up. I mean, you did hear what’s supposed to happen when the shit goes down, right?” He laughed and then moved again.
Two
can
play
this
game.
He slid up against the central bar and ducked under a shelf full of bottles, and then popped up for a second, grinning. “You know, the whole apocalypse gig. I don’t think it really suits you.” He ducked again, barely avoiding a rain of splintered glass as several reports went off; apparently, she’d decided the old-fashioned way was good enough and was spraying the bar with bullets.

“You wouldn’t understand. Too thickheaded.” There was a note of anger in her voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and Parker wondered what Karim or the Beast had promised her.
Such
a
little
thing,
really,
to
give
up
the
trust
of
your
friends
and
co-workers
in
favor
of
promises
made
by
a
psychopath.

“What, did he tell you you’d be a queen or something? Rule the world? Sorry, sister. Don’t cut it. Or maybe he just drank your Christmas punch and didn’t puke.” A neon display featuring the Little Mermaid—promoting the new Disney-themed penny slots—went out just above his head. The lights were left hanging from the central fixture and filling the air with mosquito buzzing as the neon fought valiantly to keep functioning.

“Shut the fuck up, Parker! I’m warning you!” Her voice sounded as though it was edging dangerously close to the realm of panic. Parker felt sure if he pushed her much further she’d just explode.
Of
course,
he thought with a hint of a smile,
you
can
juggle
nitroglycerine
and
it’d
blow,
too.
You’d
just
be
lucky
to
still
have
a
hand
when
it
was
done.
This time, she opted for the gun again; either she was carrying more than one or she hadn’t been empty in the first place. He was sure if she had tried to reload it, he’d have heard it, even if she was packing speed loaders. The shot didn’t even come close. It zinged off the metal base of one of the chairs deeper on the casino floor. Then something in that direction exploded, and he guessed she’d added whatever gun was in her head to the one in her hand for that one.

Hell,
maybe
she’ll
run
out
of
ammo.
You
can
hope,
anyway.
He supposed he could, but he was also a firm believer in that old saying about those God helps. He decided he didn’t want to sit around and wait for her to get tired, and she didn’t look like she was going to quit anytime soon.

He stood up, grinning, and reached into the recesses of his mind. He was digging for the power that he felt buried back in there. He didn’t think he could use it with the finesse that Damien probably had, or even what Taeda was showcasing—assuming it came from the same place, anyway—but he didn’t think he’d have to. People might think that using an anvil to crush something when a hammer would do wasn’t exactly the best way to go about things, but Parker had always believed you used the tools you had at hand.

He could feel static in the air, charging around him like he had just turned on an ionizer or something, and felt that new awareness within reaching out and taking hold of all of it; he harnessed it, grabbing with meaty mental hands that would never be able to pluck just what he needed but would serve for now regardless. He started toward the last place he’d heard her voice.

Taeda bounced up, her head appearing briefly over the top of one of the tables set along the west wall. Her mouth dropped open, and for a moment, she had a look of almost complete surprise on her face, which faded quickly into a sly grin that said she obviously had the upper hand. Parker could feel some of her thoughts coming off of her—more empathic resonance than real telepathy—and could tell she thought she had him dead to rights.

You
just
keep
thinking
that,
honey.
We’ll
see
who
goes
home
in
a
box.
He didn’t stop moving. He picked up his pace a little, even as she raised her hand and her face twisted into a grimace of concentration and pain. The charge in the air felt stronger all of a sudden, and some of what Parker was trying to pull from it started to flow the opposite direction. He could see a small ball of black light gathering in her palm and knew that was going to have his name on it if this didn’t work.

“I told you to quit, Parker. Now you’re going to be retired. Forcibly.”

“Fuck you.”

She shook her head once and threw the bolt of whatever-it-was at him; it moved fast, faster than he might have been able to track before, though not quite as quick as a bullet. The new senses he’d gained gave him enough of a reaction time to see it, and he drove his own fists forward, propelling his body directly into the path of the thing.

He felt all the air go out of his lungs and heard an unimportant popping noise followed by the sensation of something warm and wet trickling down his cheeks and neck, soaking into his collar. He released his grip on the energy he’d pulled and threw it with his mind as hard as he could, bearing down and producing a flare of agony in his forehead. He swore he had just ruptured his brain, but the rest of it happened too fast for him to worry about it.

Taeda’s bolt struck him just as he let go of his own. The two forces slammed into one another, combined, and then burst, sending shockwaves both real and psychic through the room. The force of it sent Parker flying backward. He landed on the bar and skidded along on his back, tumbling in a crumpled heap at the far edge. Every piece of electronic equipment near the blast—and a good lot of them elsewhere on the floor—popped and shattered, sending glass and electric guts spewing in a wild rain. A moment after that, the remaining lights flickered and died, leaving them in the dark.

Taeda saw what was going to happen a moment before it did and tried to dive out of the way; whatever Parker had done had overpowered the energy she had been able to muster and was still streaking toward her. She didn’t move nearly as quickly as she thought she had, and the swirling globe of raw psychic energy struck her in the chest even as she tried to throw herself clear. Her eyes went completely blank in an instant; in two, her body was on fire. In a third, the globe exploded, spraying the wall with a gory splash.

Parker felt her die. Apparently, his new gifts didn’t come with an on/off switch.
Either
that,
or
she
sent
it
to
you.
Wanted
to
make
sure
you
knew
how
it
felt.
She didn’t scream, and Parker counted that as a plus, though he realized he wasn’t able to hear much of anything anyway. Something was fucked up with his ears. Even his own ragged breathing sounded far away and hollow, like a recording made somewhere in the dim days of the first phonographs.

He lifted a hand to the side of his head and dabbed at the wetness there. When he pulled it away, he saw that his fingers were slick with blood. Whatever had just happened, it looked to him like it had probably blown his eardrums out, at the very least. The headache that was simmering up to a nice boil inside his skull probably wasn’t helping matters any either.

No
time
to
worry
about
that
kind
of
bullshit
right
now,
bucky.
Business
to
be
done,
and
it
looks
like
you’re
the
fucking
cavalry.
True enough, but it didn’t mean that he had to like it. “This was supposed to be Mikey’s job, goddamnit.”

He heard the voice inside, but it wasn’t his own, just the friendly neighborhood higher power, invading his brain. He supposed the average person could get used to damn near anything if given time enough to do it but doubted that contact this intimate would fall under the heading of “damn near anything.” He was willing to lay money on the line that this was one of the few universal exceptions.

Enough
dallying,
Vincent.
Upstairs.
You
know
the
way.
He realized he did. Whether it was a gift from whatever, cop instinct, or some deeper empathy with the others didn’t really matter. He knew where to go.

Without offering further argument, he wound his way through the darkened rows of machines and bar stools, heading toward the registration desk and the elevators beyond.

Chapter
39
 

9:30 am, December 25, 1996

Silence ruled in the sunny kitchen of the Drakanis home for a long while. Gina appeared to be completely oblivious to the situation unfolding between her son and her husband. She continued to set plates out and prepare breakfast as though nothing odd was happening. Drakanis was almost ready to believe that he was just having some kind of episode, that all of it was in his head and some mental censor had just turned down the volume as a prelude to blacking out the screen and informing him that the remainder of the film had been edited for content. That kept not happening though, and the longer he looked into his son’s face, the easier it became to realize that it wasn’t going to.

Joey didn’t appear to be in the mood to drop hints or break the tension; he just continued to focus his gray eyes on his father—and Drakanis realized a terrible thing: that he could no longer recall with certainty what color his own son’s eyes had been, though warning bells were sounding inside. He was almost certain that whatever color they had been, gray had not been anywhere close. Drakanis was unsure if he actually wanted Joey—or whatever impersonator was claiming to be Joey—to speak or if he preferred the silence.

At almost the exact instant that he decided sound was preferable to silence, the boy-thing spoke again, the voice still the clotted and hissing syllables of the Beast instead of the high, sweet sound of a child.

“Your friends made their choices. Brought the wrong sorts of presents. But you still have time to choose correctly. Whether I make it to my next birthday or not depends entirely on what you choose to do now, Michael.”

Gina had finished filling the plates with bacon and the bowls with cereal and had settled into her own chair. She opened the newspaper and began to read. Apparently, this discussion was just between the men of the house. Involuntarily, Drakanis’s eyes were pulled to the date and headline of the newspaper. He could see the date clearly enough, and seeing that much made his stomach knot in fear and worry and sweat break out on his brow. “December 25, 1996,” the date read. The headlines were harder to read, since they seemed to be saying more than one thing; even the big, half-page front photo seemed blurry and indistinct, shifting from one picture to another and back again.

From what he could tell between the flux of the ink pattern, one headline had something to do with a Christmas caroling session that was going to collect donations for AIDS research; the other screamed in neon letters that a double murder had been committed in the neighborhoods off of Robb Drive, his neighborhood. The picture that seemed to go with that headline was also much more recognizable; it was of his own house.

“The past and the future are mutable, Michael. Provided you have the will to change either. But you must choose. You cannot simply sit in the middle and wait for life to happen to you instead of taking command of it.”

Drakanis couldn’t speak at first; what the thing was offering him—and he was sure that this was indeed the Beast, the creature that dwelled within the painting and that Woods believed he was supposed to destroy—seemed impossible, but in the last few weeks, he had come to accept nearly anything as being
possible
; whether it would actually happen was a different question entirely.

Once he had finally managed to unglue his tongue from behind his lips, Drakanis turned his attention back to the boy that wasn’t really a boy. He tried to speak forcefully, but all that would exit his throat and pass his lips was an awed whisper. “You can give them back?”

The thing that was pretending to be Joey laughed, and Gina—assuming it was her in some shape or form—snorted from behind her paper. Drakanis wasn’t sure what they thought was funny about the question and was about to protest, but Joey interrupted him before he had even managed to think it, let alone speak.

“Those Karesh has taken may be replaced, just as he may be. The one you call Damien speaks only lies of me, for he knows me under only adversarial circumstances. Karesh—the one you call Karim—believes me something else and appeases his own hungers while claiming them to be mine. I have a purpose, one granted me long ago, but cannot serve it as I am. Unlike what you may believe, my mission is one of mercy.”