Darkness of the Soul (47 page)

Drakanis’s eyes narrowed, and again, Parker got a new emotion from Michael: hate. “Shut up, Vince. You don’t understand. Give it to me.” He took another step toward Parker, and Parker could feel the energy gathering around his former friend and partner.
Going
to
have
to
do
something,
and
quick.
He’s
not
going
to
listen.

Parker did the only thing he knew how to do. He dug in and flung all the static in the air he could grab toward Drakanis. Michael fell back, a look of shock crossing his face.

“Quit it, Mi—”

Parker got that far before everything went to hell. The stabbing pain in his right hand came a moment before the sound of the shot penetrated his deafness. It felt like it was on fire, and the tips of his middle and ring fingers were screaming in unison. The rolled up canvas slipped from his suddenly reduced grip, a smoking hole in the center of the roll as it fell to the floor, bounced, and unrolled.

Sheila stood behind Drakanis, now holding a smoking gun and standing in the shooter’s stance they taught every new cadet. Parker felt like all of his senses had been sharpened—especially whichever one governed the feeling of pain—and he could see the tears streaking down the sides of her face.

Son
of
a
bitch,
he thought.
There
goes
the
ball
game.

A tremor ripped through the building, and all three of them found their eyes drawn to the scrap of canvas. It was perfectly black; any trace of the colors or the images that had been on it previously were gone. Three matching holes spaced through the canvas were eating away at the material, expanding toward each other. They could hear thunder in the distance, a storm getting ready to build up. From the distance and the volume, it sounded like when it got there, it was going to be one bitch of a flood coming with it.

Parker and Drakanis saw energy gathering at the points where the bullet had pierced the canvas. Parker’s blood sizzled at the edges of the holes before being consumed by the power coming out of the painting.

“It’s opening!” Drakanis’s voice conveyed only a single emotion, the simple joy of a child at Christmas, finally witnessing some long-awaited event.

Parker reached out with his mind, grabbed at the holes in the canvas, using the power he had been given to yank it back from the floor while trying to keep the holes from expanding. The lights in the room flickered and went out; they came back a moment later but significantly dimmed and looking as though they would go out—and stay out—again at any moment.

“Move, Sheila!” he shouted, even as he grabbed for his gun, and then he was seeing stars as his head was punted back and slammed against the wall when Drakanis reared back and kicked him.

Fuck.
He’s
the
one
who
should
have
been
playing
football,
his mind puked up.
Can’t
let
go
of
it.
Even
if
he
lays
hands
on
it,
can’t
let
go.
He could feel some inner part of himself, some spark that made him what he was, being spun out and pulled into the gaps. The strain of trying to keep them from growing was eating away at his life, his soul.

Drakanis snatched the
talu`shar
from Parker’s weakened mental grip and then kicked the gun away from the other man’s reach while Parker tried to get up, wavering. Drakanis was unconcerned about his one-time friend’s health. He had the
talu`shar
and would keep it.

Sheila watched the tables turn, unable to react at first. The flickering lights and the feeling of gloom that was spreading rapidly through the room weren’t making it any easier to deal with. When she saw Drakanis punt Parker’s head into the wall and witnessed the look of savage glee on his face when he did it, she tried to take a shot at him—
You’re
doing
great,
go
a
whole
six
years
without
shooting
anyone,
then
you
try
for
three
in
a
day.
No
wonder
you
quit
going
to
church,
she heard her mother say in her head. She heard only an empty click.

Manderly’s corpse-whisper voice beside her startled her; she didn’t know how he’d gotten behind her without any of them noticing. He laid a hand on her shoulder, shook his head, and let the wisps of his hair tickle her cheek.

“Let it be, girl. It’s done and between them now. We’re just bystanders. Besides, the gun’s empty.” He thought for a moment that it was too bad he hadn’t bothered to reload it—part of him thought it might actually have been better if Drakanis
was
killed right there—but he knew well the price for wishes, and the simple fact that he hadn’t made the thought pointless anyway.

Parker was bull-rushing Drakanis, who appeared too wrapped up in staring at the steadily widening gaps in the canvas to notice. His head struck Drakanis square in the stomach, the weight of him carrying both men past Sheila and Manderly and tearing down the swinging door between the two main rooms before Drakanis seemed to flicker for a second, remaining standing near the doorway while Parker plowed into the bedroom wall.

Sheila noticed that the light in the other room was wrong, and glancing up to the windows, she saw why. Whatever sunlight and snow-gleam had been remaining this morning was now gone totally, eclipsed by darkness and thunderheads forming around the hotel.

Parker rebounded from the wall; black spots exploded across his vision after a momentary white burst. He was sure he’d just given himself a concussion, but that wasn’t going to matter a whole lot in the next few minutes if he didn’t figure something out, and fast.

Drakanis bent calmly, shining a brief smile in Sheila and Manderly’s direction, and then picked up the
talu`shar
once more, running his fingers over it the way a man might stroke his wife’s breast or thigh in the middle of the night.

“Open says-me,” he said, the old childhood joke bringing a slightly more human smile to his lips. Obeying his command, the gaps widened further still, and the darkness outside deepened, punctuating his command with a fresh tremor and ripple of thunder.

Parker pulled himself up slowly and swayed on his feet as fresh blood ran from his ears and his nose, dripping on the floor and adding to the crazy patterns that seemed even now to be moving. Whatever was going on with the painting seemed to be going on in a different way in the room itself and the world outside the window, but he couldn’t let himself think about that too much; even contemplating it made his brain hurt. He staggered two steps toward the door.

“Hey, Mikey!” He could feel whatever Michael was doing tearing at his own spirit as he tried to keep the gaps as tight as he could. This had to be finished one way or another, and soon, or it wasn’t going to matter. Drakanis was just too strong, and he was fresh.

Drakanis turned on his one-time friend, smiling. “You’re starting to get on my nerves, Vince. Maybe the new you will be a little less annoying.” Parker had a moment to wonder what Drakanis was talking about, the answer shimmering just inches from conscious recognition, and then his feet left the ground and he was flying.

Sheila screamed as she saw Parker go flying and crash through one of the windows in an explosion of glass, blood, and flesh. Drakanis favored her with an icy glare that immediately silenced her. She felt movement at her side and glanced that way, seeing Manderly sliding down the wall with one hand clasped to his chest.

“Fuck,” he whispered. Then his eyes closed. Sheila’s own went wide as she turned her gaze back to the window and saw what she would have thought impossible.

The curtains flapped around him, the freezing cold pouring into the room and turning it into a sub-Arctic zone, but Parker didn’t let it bother him. His body was screaming in pain, every part of him aching as blood ran out of him in rivers. His back was a shredded mess, the leftovers after some chef got overzealous with a cheese grater, and his hands were scarred and broken, his left middle finger severed totally, the right missing two fingertips, and the palms of his hands speared on shards of glass that clung stubbornly to the window frame. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold on, but for now, he was still clinging to the window, trying to pull himself back in.

Drakanis started toward the window, holding the
talu`shar
in front of him in both hands, in the manner the old explorers might have once held their treasure maps. His face was plastered with that same happy smile, as he looked down at Parker dangling out the window, blood trickling down to the street below to mingle with the first drops of rain that were beginning to fall. There was no compassion left in him, nothing left of the man he had been, just whatever obsession the Beast had planted in him, whatever promised lie he had obtained.

“I wish you’d have the sense to die, Vince. It would make this easier.”

“I never take the easy route, Mikey. You know that. Too bad you did. Sold out.”

Parker managed to lever an elbow into the window, impaling it on a particularly nasty spear of glass that went all the way through and out the other side, running red with his blood. Drakanis made no move to stop him but didn’t seem particularly impressed.

“I did what I had to do. You can’t understand that.” His lips quivered slightly, and his gaze grew softer. It took a moment for Parker to realize Drakanis was crying. “They didn’t deserve what happened, but I can change it.”

Parker saw how it would have to be then. He just had to hope that Drakanis was too fried and focused on what he was thinking of to foil it. He knew what Drakanis had asked for and how to jab the button. He didn’t want to do it, especially because of the outcome that would result, but he thought he was done having choices in the matter.

Kill
the
world,
or
kill
your
friend.
Not
really
a
choice
at
all,
is
it?
He felt another part of himself slip away, burned to keep the
talu`shar
from opening, and knew it wasn’t a choice. He was damned anyway.

“Then let me help. I loved Gina and Joe as much as you did, you know that. I give. Let me help.” He tore one hand from the glass, putting it back into the room and turning his pleading eyes up to Drakanis. “Let me help.”

Drakanis appeared thoughtful for a moment, and Parker felt himself slipping. No matter what the movies said, trying to cling to a windowsill after you’d just been used as a bludgeon wasn’t at all easy, and when you were trying to do it at the same time you were feeding bits of your soul to a demon-infested painting and considering killing your best friend, it was damn near impossible. At last, Drakanis’s face cleared, and he smiled again.

“All right, Parker. Help me.” He reached out and grasped Parker’s hand. His face turned to shock and fury, and he tried to dig his feet in and stop it from happening, but it was too late. The second Parker had hold of Drakanis’s hand, he braced himself against the wall with his legs and yanked.

Drakanis couldn’t hope to match Parker’s strength, and the dual advantages of weight and gravity were also on Parker’s side. He didn’t have time to shift himself or pull himself away and went sailing out the window almost as easily as a child might have. He lost his grip on the
talu`shar
, staring down after it as it drifted toward the ground. He screamed out Gina’s name, his voice a note of pure agony.

Parker slammed his eyes shut.

I’m
sorry,
man.
So
fucking
sorry.
Then he let go, shoving his hand back up into the window and trying to drag himself back in, shouting for Sheila to help him, goddamnit! He slid backward, digging new agony into his pierced arms and hands, and felt a weight on him. Parker glanced down to see Drakanis, his face empty except for the hatred of the
talu`shar
, dangling from his boot and trying to claw his way back up.

Drakanis was shrieking in a language that Parker didn’t understand, but the tone of voice and the feel of the words coming from the man made it clear enough that they were curses. He sank his fingers into Parker’s calf and dragged himself up another six inches, still shrieking.

Parker didn’t think Drakanis’s hands were exactly hands anymore; the brief look he’d gotten when Drakanis had shifted his grip made them look scaled and deformed somehow, and the pain in Parker’s calf felt like the time he had been bitten by his neighbor’s dog. He ground his teeth, biting back a scream, and yelled for Sheila again, trying to plant his free foot against the building and use it for leverage.

Sheila had watched Drakanis go out the window, her eyes still wide with shock and her mouth permanently fixed in an “O” of surprise. When Parker screamed for her the first time, she hadn’t been able to move. Terror had rooted her to the spot like superglue. When he called again, she managed to break the paralysis and run to the window. She tried to get a grip on his flailing hands and brace herself against the wall. She nearly lost her grip when she made the mistake of looking out the window.