DarkWalker (13 page)

“A bar,” Jack said.

“They’re all closed by now.” Lisa glanced at her wrist, but there was no watch. “Closing’s at two.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “The man I’m looking for won’t necessarily be inside. Just attached.”

“This helps, how?” Nick asked.

Jack hesitated before answering. “I’m not sure it will.”

2.

Briefly, Jack Harlow thought they’d reach the bar
unaccosted
.
Lake
behind them, buildings more crowded as they approached the heart of downtown, eyes in windows instead of trees.

They’d passed a series of one-way streets. Rounding a corner onto
Orange
, they were within sight of the bar.

It was too late in the morning, too long after closing, for the psychic to sit outside. Only the breeze occupied the empty street—and a layer of darkness. Inappropriate, even to Jack’s eyes, too deep and too rich. He detected an aroma of jasmine, vanilla, cinnamon—then decay. Unmistakable, overpowering, and awful. Rot like cabbage unattended, dead rats, congealed blood.

Nick halted. Sniffed. “Vampire,” he said.

“No,” Jack said.

“Death,” Nick said, drawing his gun. “The whole city reeks of it.”

Lisa coughed and backed against the glass wall of a shoe store. “You live with this all the time?”

Jack scanned the windows across the street, above a restaurant. Under its awning, in the shadows of its doorway, stood a figure in the shadows, a man in a black suit. Big shiny coin in his left hand. Chocolate skin.

Nick saw him, too, aimed, and waited.

Bearded, with long black hair and colorless eyes, shrouded in murk, the man flipped the coin once, smiled broadly, and stepped out from under the awning.

Three lanes of tar separated them. No cars. No people. Just two broken white lines.

“
Vaudoux
,” Jack realized.

“Indeed,” said the man.

“What?” Nick whispered.

“Like a witch doctor,” Jack said. “A sorcerer.
From
Haiti
.”

“Well, not quite,” the man said, pocketing the coin.
“
Santo Domingo
, actually.”
His accent was thick, almost French,
almost
Spanish, with a touch of British. He was old.
Well-traveled.
“Please, put down your weapon.”

Nick tightened his finger on the trigger. Just a touch. Not enough to be seen across the street. He did not lower his aim. “You smell like a vampire.”

“Actually, I don’t,” the man said. “Incense, maybe. Jasmine. Spices. But I do detect what you smell, my friend.”

“Friend?” Lisa asked.

“Please, the weapon,” the
vaudoux
said.

“You would usually ignore me,” Jack said, taking one step into the street. “Go about your business.”

The
vaudoux
nodded.

“But not tonight?”

“Not tonight,” he said. “Apparently, no.”

“Why not?”

“Your glow.”

“What?”

“Your aura, you might say,” the
vaudoux
said. “It screams to be noticed. Seen. Touched. Ripped.”

“I don’t want that,” Jack said.

“I can’t help you. But I had to see for myself, of course.”

“Why can’t you help?” Jack asked. “If there are rules to all this, haven’t they changed?”

“Rules,” the
vaudoux
said, shaking his head, “never change, and have no place between us. I cannot help because . . .” He shrugged. “Because I cannot. There is no spell to remove your aura, it’s what you are, who you are. It demands to be seen. Warps the dark around you.” He tossed the coin—though he’d never pulled it back from his pocket—across the street. Jack caught it with one hand. “I was already close,” he said. “But there are others, not so near, who will come. Others, not so strong as I, who will be unable to resist your magnetism.”

“Is that a threat?” Nick asked.

“Warning,” the
vaudoux
said. “I do not make threats.”

Jack examined the coin. It was silver, solid, unadorned on either side.

“Magic,” the
vaudoux
said, “comes in many forms. Shapes, sizes, are unimportant, Mr. Jack.” He laughed, a quick, hearty
Caribbean
laugh, as smoke swirled around his feet and snaked up his body. Over knees, hips, around the back, across his face until only white teeth and eyes were visible. His laugh echoed even as the smoke dispersed. The
vaudoux
was gone.

“Witchdoctor?”
Lisa asked.

“You’ve seen him before?” Nick asked.

“Him, no,” Jack said.

But Jack Harlow had glimpsed a
vaudoux
once before, briefly, in
Miami
—South Beach, actually—standing on a balcony of one of the art deco houses. He held a fresh human skull in one hand and sprinkled powders over it. He chanted so quietly, the skull could not have heard.

The weather had darkened—even nights could get darker.

A woman on the beach, not two hundred yards away, beautiful, black as shadows, braided hair to her waist. Possibly a model, once, no longer alive, not completely, but enthralled. When the
vaudoux
completed his spell, the woman—almost a zombie—stopped in mid step. She almost fell. She turned to look at her master. No smile, no nod, no other acknowledgement at all.

She crossed the street, passed one café, and went straight to a man calling customers into a restaurant. “Lovely lady like you,” he said with a thick island accent, “ought not be wasted on a fine young night like this.”

“Ought not,” she said, and then kissed him. A long, lingering kiss, hot, wet, the kind a man would kill for—or die for.

She walked away as his mouth foamed, eyes bulged, and sweat ran from every pore in his body. He swung his head. Lips curled back, drying, flaking. Spots mottled his skin. The people near him scattered, like they might catch the plague.

He stumbled to one leg. Agony etched his face. Smoke streamed from his eyes like tears. Finally, he saw the
vaudoux
on the rooftop. He opened and closed his mouth, trying to speak as his teeth fell out. He doubled over, clutching his stomach, and fell face down to the sidewalk.

The
vaudoux
lowered the skull and stood perfectly still. The victim sizzled, smoked, burned, melted. His skin ran like water. Eventually, he was just a stain on the street; not even a tooth remained by which to identify him.

No one else had seen the woman—or the
vaudoux
. No one, that is, but Jack Harlow.

3.

“His stink’s still here,” Nick said, not resting the gun. Probably thought the
vaudoux
had turned himself invisible. Wasn’t the case, not this time. The smell came from somewhere else. Something else.

Jack glanced at Lisa. She tried to smile back at him. To reassure—herself, more than him. To say,
I’m not letting any of this get to me, I’m still sane, I’m still rational, I can accept these things and change with these things
. Jack smiled back, took her hand and squeezed it. “We’re not alone,” he said.

Stupid thing to say. They hadn’t been. Since leaving the apartment, all manner of creatures had been focused on them. Every corner was dangerous. The children of the night were many. They were everywhere.

Further up the road, beyond the ghost’s club, a pair of men stood at a corner. Thin and wiry. One wore glasses. The other held back a beast on a leash. Six legs, the head of a lizard and the body of a—was it a beetle? Maybe a scarab? Snake-like tail. Salivating, straining at the leash that bit into its neck. Didn’t seem to bother its keeper any.

“Stories,” Lisa reminded him.

“Right.” Jack turned his attention to the blackened windows less than a hundred yards down the road.

Something dropped from the sky.

It swooped at Jack. Hands black as coal, claws, flowing robes, no visible face under its hood. Its cloak was like smoke, folding into itself, drifting, shifting in the breeze. It screeched, turned, and swooped again. The high pitch shattered the shoe store’s window. Lisa fell backwards. Nick readjusted his stance, fired three shots into the wraith without effect.

It hovered over the ground, directly in front of Jack. The robes swarmed behind it.

Jack stepped back, stumbling, held by the wraith’s gaze. Its eyes—there were no irises, no pupils, no whites, no sockets for them—its eyes reflected Jack. In the reflection, he screamed, pounded his fists in the air, banged on an invisible box like a mime in excruciating pain and fear.

Jack stared. He barely felt his feet leave the ground. Barely heard more gunshots and Lisa calling his name. Her hand swiped his leg as she tried to grab him.

He stared at himself, reflected, distorted, agonized.

“Do not be afraid,” a cold, whispery voice said. Slick, slithering, nasty, the voice left his ears unclean. It pierced Jack’s head, smashed his sinuses, rooted into his eyes, dug into his chest. Jack’s reflection screamed and screamed soundlessly.

“I will ease your pain,” the wraith said. Ice. Oil. Sticky and disgusting. Like acid, it seeped into Jack’s skin, under his muscles, into pinholes in his bones.

Jack’s reflection cried, tears racing down his cheek, the whites of his eyes burning red. Blood dripped from his nose and sprayed from his shrieking mouth.

“Do something!” Lisa screamed, touching his leg again. Just his leg, but he felt her desperation.
Not about to lose him, not here, not now, not to this thing
.

Jack closed his eyes. Stop looking, stop feeling, stop listening to the thing.

“I can end your suffering,” it said.

He reached toward those eyes with both hands. Grabbed them—nothing to grab but smoke and dust and air—crushed them in his grip.

The wraith screeched. The two lurched sideways, striking the brick wall hard enough to shake Jack’s bones.

Opening his eyes again, Jack saw the wraith’s skeletal face, the holes where eyes might have been (his own hands there, squeezing), missing teeth in its grin: a smoky, insubstantial skull, there and not. No reflection in its eyes.

To be certain, Jack shut his again and then yanked backwards.

With a screech, the wraith released him.

They might have been hundreds of feet into the sky, over buildings or trees or roads. Jack had no way of knowing, and no chance to brace himself for impact. He bounced on the sidewalk.

“Jack!” Lisa called, immediately kneeling at his side, hand around the back of his neck, lifting his head. Three more gunshots.

With one final screech, the wraith was gone.

Jack struggled for breath—the fall had knocked it out of him. The first inhalation hurt, but the next came more easily. He looked up at Lisa, smiled, touched her cheek. Concentrated on breathing before saying anything.

“It’s gone,” Nick said. “I don’t think I hurt it.”

No, he hadn’t. Wraiths were insubstantial. Like a ghost gone wrong. Empathic, apparently; Jack hadn’t known that. He didn’t know a lot of things. He’d watched, listened, recorded, but never investigated.

“You’re okay,” Lisa said. “You’re okay, there’s no blood, you’ll be fine. Right? You’ll be alright?”

Jack nodded once. “I will.”

“What was it?” Nick asked. “Smelled like a vampire.”

“No,” Jack said. “It smelled like death.”

4.

Jack needed another moment. The fall hadn’t hurt him, but the wraith had frightened him. There’d been a moment when he expected to die. The shadow hadn’t frightened him that way; it hadn’t shown him anything. He’d felt the pain of his reflection, burning and boring through him. Had that been a future the wraith offered?
I will ease your pain. I will end your suffering
.

No, he wouldn’t think it. Wouldn’t dwell on it. The wraith had not been offering to
save
him from that future.

Jack closed his eyes. Inhaled deep. Exhaled slowly. Controlled.

The dark lied. The creatures of the night were liars, thieves, murderers. The wraith had not meant to save him. He’d seen wraiths in action before. Invariably, their victims were skinned, flayed, left as bloodied skeletons broken in a hundred places or more. Wraiths came from the depths of despair. And it was true, their victims felt no more pain—not after the wraith left them. But the agony, even in reflection, had been horrible, as much as he could withstand. Over the course of what, a minute? Two? A wraith could spend hours burning to its victim’s core.

Jack had avoided that fate, but what waited?

1.

Lisa Sparrow did not cry
. No need for it. A woman in an old horror movie might break down in tears every time the handsome hero disappeared for a moment, lost in folds of darkness as the embodiment of death loomed closer. She might scream, get hysterical, flee, suddenly speak in tongues or reveal herself to be the daughter of Satan. A thousand other things. Lisa did none of them.