Hang Wire (29 page)

Joel took the coin from his pocket and squeezed it in the middle of his fist. The cold hurt, like a knife plunged through his palm. Joel concentrated, focused on the screaming in his head.

Joel opened his eyes and looked to his left. There, in the darkness of the park, where the rides were black shapes jagged against the moonlit sky. Where there was no one, not anymore. Where, farther down the street, by a side entrance, sat two police cars, their lights off.

There was fear and there was death, and near too. In the dark fairground, something terrible.

The next piece.

“We need to see if we can get any of this stuff shifted tomorrow, after maybe taking down the – hey, excuse me!”

Joel walked past the cop, ignoring him, heading toward the body on the grass. The cop flipped his notebook shut and pulled the flashlight out from under his arm.

“Hey!”

Joel looked down at the body. It was a girl, face down, in a long dress. The grass was gray in the night, covered by irregular patches of something dark, nearly black. Joel smiled as he adjusted his footing. Blood, and lots of it.

“That’s enough, buddy!”

Joel glanced up. One of the cops pulled his gun and walked toward him, his colleague quickly pocketing the notebook and reaching for his own weapon. Joel raised his hands and turned around on the spot, face to face with the gun. The other cop hesitated; the first seemed to sense this and called to him over his shoulder.

“Get on the radio, get Mackenzie over here, pronto.” He turned to Joel. “On the ground, pal. Now!”

Joel glanced at the ground, and back at the cop.

“Well, friend, there’s a lot of blood on this here grass. I’m sure you don’t want me disturbing the scene of a crime, now do you?”

The cop did nothing for a couple of seconds. Then he gestured with his gun. Joel smiled and crabbed sideways until he felt the grass underfoot was dry.

The other cop turned on his heel.

The pearl-handled gun was in Joel’s hand in the blink of an eye. Even as the first cop gasped in surprise and raised his own weapon up, Joel brought the base of his revolver’s grip down on the man’s face. There was a crack and cop’s nose sank into his face, blood erupting in a thick spurt. The cop dropped his weapon but his cry was choked off as Joel’s free hand found the man’s throat. Joel pushed down; the cop didn’t resist and hit the ground on his knees. Joel raised his gun hand up again and hit the cop on the crown of his head just once. The cop gurgled as Joel released him, then fell sideways onto the grass.

The cop with the notebook was a rookie, had to be. He turned back around in time to see his colleague topple to the ground, but then stood for a second, frozen, his eyes wide. Then he drew breath to shout and finally pulled his own gun from its holster.

Too late. Joel was faster, his speed preternatural,
assisted.
He grabbed the rookie’s wrist and yanked upwards, breaking bone and causing the gun to fall from his grip. Holding the pearl-handled revolver in his other hand, he sideswiped the rookie’s jaw. There was a crunch, like someone biting into a crisp apple, and something liquid and black in the low light flew from the cop’s mouth. The rookie staggered, his head bowed. Joel took the invitation and cracked his skull as he had done with the first cop. The rookie sighed and fell to the ground, face-first.

Joel stepped over to the first cop’s body, feeling the power swell around him as the two lives drained away in the blacked-out night. The first cop gurgled and one leg twitched; Joel fell onto his back on one knee, reached down, and twisted the man’s head. Another crack, and the gurgling stopped.

Joel had dispatched the police as quietly as he could, but people would be coming soon. Joel glanced over and up; there were still people on the Ferris wheel, high up in the air with a view over Coney Island. If anyone had been looking in his direction, they would have seen the flashlight and dark shapes moving, surely.

No matter. He’d find the piece, collect it and go, off to follow the light to the next part, then the next, then the next.

Joel moved over to the rookie and took the flashlight from his cooling hand. He turned it on the body of the girl, murdered in the dark night of July 13
th
, 1977.

No, not murdered, at least not by human hand. The death was unnatural in more ways than one. This was why Joel had been brought here, he could feel it.

Holstering the pearl-handled revolver, Joel took the coin from his pocket, his fingers afire. He rolled it into his palm and squeezed and held his hand out as he slowly walked in a circle.

The girl’s body – and now the bodies of the two cops – was lying in a clearing near the north side of the amusement park, an area behind a series of dark fairground attractions. A water dunk, the back of two closed-up concession stands, and…

Joel walked around the front of the structure, into the park proper.

It was a shooting range. Ornate and colorful, a huge construction of wood and metal enameled in bright and elaborate drawings of stars and a great comet arching over the whole of the front. On each side, carved out of wood, stood a pair of life-sized soldiers in red coats, tall hats, each holding a rifle and bayonet. There were more at the back of the range, framing the empty target area where paper boards would spring up for the players to try to hit with their own toy rifles.

The coin pulled, pulled, pulled. Joel raised the flashlight at each solider, standing boldly to attention, rifle shouldered, shiny bayonet pointed to the starless sky.

The bayonet of the solider nearest did not shine. It was dark, and when Joel shone the flashlight on it, it didn’t shine but glistened.

Blood.

Joel shone the light over the soldier’s face, chest. The carved figure was covered in it. In the flashlight’s beam the soldier’s red cheeks glowed and it grinned with a mouth of straight white teeth. The thing was immobile, interlocked wooden segments assembled into the form of a giant toy soldier.

Immobile, but not lifeless.

Joel flicked the light off, counted two, and turned it on again.

The soldier’s carved wooden features were twisted now in anger, the mouth snarling, the cheeks still glowing red but the heavy black eyebrows dipped into a V over the eyes. Eyes now fixed firmly on Joel.

“I follow the light, and the light it shines for thee,” said Joel, pocketing the flashlight and getting to work.

— XXXIII —

There was something wrong with Tangun.

Kanaloa, god of death and of life, floated high about Chinatown, surveying the city below, Tangun hovering beside him. Bob had bent the light around them, so if anyone looked up they’d see nothing at all, least of all a man with long blond hair wearing only a pair of jeans and a man clad in antique Korean royal armor. Bob had to be careful. They could defy gravity, and Bob could play with photons so they wouldn’t be seen. But any more, and who knew what might happen. Bob supposed, if he thought about it, that he could turn the gravity off over the entire city, or separate San Francisco into its constituent elements. That would stop the killer and the power that drove him. Stop the thing beneath. And so the city would be destroyed and everyone in it would die in the process. But was that a bad thing, really?

What was worse? That the city was destroyed as the thing below awoke? Or that the entire world be ruled over by Kanaloa, the devil-god? Power. Power was dangerous.

Bob closed his eyes and shivered, and jolted like he’d come out of a deep sleep. There was a soft, metallic moan from beside him. That’s when he noticed the problem.

He turned to look at his warrior friend, but Tangun was no longer beside him. Instead, he had floated downward to land with a thud on the roof of the warehouse.

“Kanaloa…” His voice was quiet, merely an echo of the defiant roar that usually sounded from the golden mask.

Tangun fell onto his knees, the scalloped helmet dipped toward the ground as Bob landed beside him.

“Tangun?”

Tangun pressed his hands into the roof, like he was trying to keep himself from falling over completely.

Bob took a step closer. “What’s wrong?”

Tangun straightened up, and looked at Bob. Bob recoiled. He couldn’t stop himself. He took one involuntary step backward, too quickly, and his heel twisted under him. He fell heavily onto his backside.

Tangun’s golden mask was a frozen visage of despair and pain. The expression was horrific, the face of the devil from Korean mythology. Blood ran in two thick courses from the eye holes, streaking the gold with bright red.

Bob watched, fascinated, as the blood trickled to the bottom edge of the mask, collecting on the lip before dripping in heavy splotches onto the roof.

Bob stood, and stepped up to his fellow god. He peered closely at the mask, through the gaps at the face of Benny underneath. Benny’s face was clean and there was no blood, but her eyes were glassy and she didn’t blink.

“Tangun?” Bob reached out to touch the mask, the blood dripping from it, but drew his hand back.

Tangun sat back on his haunches. “The line is broken,” he said, gasping. “The line is broken. My time on the Earth draws to a close.”

Bob dropped down so he was at the same level as Tangun. His eyes searched the mask. “I don’t understand.”

“The Golden Child. The host,” said Tangun. “She passed from this realm. Without the Golden Child I am but a memory doomed to fade from this world.”

“Hold on,” said Bob. Tangun tipped forward and Bob grabbed his shoulders, steadying him. The armor was ice cold. “Benny died but I brought her back.” He peered closer at the mask, through the slots. Benny’s glassy eyes stared back. “She’s in there, inside the armor.”

Tangun shook his head. “Benny lives again, but her death and return has broken the line. Without the Golden Child, I soon will leave and return to the Heavenly Ones. My grip on the world becomes ever more delicate.”

Bob shook his head. “I need you here, Tangun. How long can you hold on?”

“I know not,” said the warrior king. “The longer I cling to the life of the Golden Child, so her time, too, becomes short.”

Bob rubbed his chin. “So if you stay, Benny dies. Doesn’t matter. I can bring her back again.”

Tangun laughed weakly, his wide, ornate helmet wobbling, but the mask was still frozen in the expression of pain and terror.

“Even you know the price of that.”

“I… I can control it.”

“Ha!” Tangun lifted his head, and this time the mask’s expression had softened, the mouth almost forming a smile. “You are a poor liar, my friend. But it is for the Golden Child that I worry. Your power corrodes her soul, Kanaloa. You dare to bestow the gift of life upon her again, so she will fade more and more to the shadow realm.”

Bob sighed. Tangun was right. Human souls were thin, fragile things. Repeated death and resurrection would cause irreparable damage to Benny.

“Well. Shit,” said Bob. He stood up. He wasn’t sure he could do it alone. He needed Tangun to take Nezha’s power back to the Heavenly Ones. It had to be him, thought Bob. He wasn’t sure he would be able to resist taking the power for himself, given the chance.

The whole city was in danger. And how much farther would it spread? First San Francisco, and then California, and then the western United States before the monster underground crawled east, rolling over the land, shaking it to pieces as it did, growing stronger as it expanded. If they didn’t stop it here, now, then maybe they never would, gods or not. Especially not with this other entity involved, the Cold Dark. It had power. A
lot
of power.

Bob watched as Tangun wobbled and crashed onto the warehouse roof on his back. Bob reached down, and Tangun took his arm. The warrior’s armor was as cold as the abyssal depths of the ocean as his power, tethered to the Earth via his host, Benny, drained away, back to the home of the gods.

Bob pulled Tangun back to his knees. Through the mask, Bob saw Benny’s eyes were still glazed, the lids now half closed. Tangun’s metallic groan sounded again.

“I can help,” said Bob. Tangun shook his head slowly.

“You cannot, friend.”

“I
can
,” said Bob. “I can hold onto Benny’s soul. Keep it where it should be–”

“You cannot–”

“–and that should give you some extra time. I can keep Benny on this side of the shadows. It won’t be like before, but it might be enough to hold your line together for long enough.”

“Bob,” said Tangun – said
Benny
, her voice a hollow whisper. “Dude, you can’t do that. You don’t have enough power anymore.”

Bob felt fear rise in him, and something else too. Excitement.

Tangun slumped forward. Blood poured from the mask and splattered on the warehouse roof, splashing Bob’s feet. Time was running out. And Bob wasn’t sure he could face the fight alone.

He had to do it, just the once. Just enough.

“My name isn’t Bob,” he said. “My name is Kanaloa, and I am a god.”

He closed his eyes, and he remembered.

Kanaloa. God of the ocean, god of life. God of death. Millennia ago his people had worshipped him, praised him for the bountiful seas. He kept them fed, he kept them safe, as god of the seas.

And as god of death, he took them away, sometimes before they were ready, with cruelty and pleasure, feeding on their pain as their life energies left their physical bodies. Kanaloa, a god to be thanked and worshipped. A god to be feared and appeased.

On the warehouse roof, Bob flinched, his eyes still closed. He didn’t want to do this. He was afraid what Kanaloa would do, drunk on power, a whole world as his plaything.

But he had to trust himself. He had learned a lot. Had he learned enough?

Death and life are intertwined, the two sides of the same coin, one unable to exist without the other. Like Benny and Tangun. Like, perhaps, Kanaloa and Bob.