Out of the Black (21 page)

There are three groups of four each moving in from different directions. No flesh puppets yet, but they'd be coming soon. Shells tear into the roof from above, but they never make it through the cloth on the inside of the car. They ricochet away from Ivo's hastily constructed Shield. There is a larger, two-part impact on the roof as two assailants drop from the bridge above. The fabric of the Shield sizzles and parts as a Forged blade slices through the roof. Ivo quickly compensates and redirects the Shield's power flow before the Cast can unravel.

That's not powder, Ivo realizes as the deep red aerosol begins to settle wetly on his face and clothes. Don't think, don't think. Act. It's not too late. He's used the Loom to mend many serious injuries in the past, and his heart is singing with a desperate love. The Loom's power seems to swell and crystallize around him- clearer, more pure in response to the purity of his need to help his wounded son.

The roof explodes away from the car under currents of power welling through Ivo's darkening mind. Though the blade-wielders are quick enough to leap out of the way, Ivo holds them in place until the roof of the car reaches the bottom of the bridge. They join with the bottom of the bridge above him in a continuum of fusing blood, bone and metal. There is a low groan from the superstructure. Dust falls from the length of the bridge.

The disturbance in the currents of the Underworld gives Ivo enough warning to divert the onslaught of the first Savant. Ivo recognizes her weave-work. Her craft is the sloppy work they teach in Asado. Her Casts are as elegant and subtle as a stone axe.

Before he can counterattack, he has to dra the machine pistol a few degrees to the right. The man holding the weapon, if you can call him that, stands perhaps three meters away. His twisted face seems to be made of black, oily leather. Black, oily leather now shifting from fierce to frightened, touching surprise lightly on the journey. He perhaps senses what's next.

Ivo pushes outward and down, grinding, grating the low-order demon across the pavement. Before the end of the first meter, he's leaving a dark wet mark. At about meter five the scream terminates, the chipped bones stop at ten meters.

The Savant's next assault is already in progress. Time compresses, the speed of the Loom begins to depart as she attempts to force Ivo back into the Overworld. Ivo bores into her Cast and travels back toward her, hidden in the outward flow of her power. He arrives at her interface to the Loom. Unnoticed, he inserts a graft of his own weaving into the template she is activating.

With an interrupted scream, she explodes outward, splattering the creatures around her. Startled by the unexpected shower, they scatter. An instant later, they scatter again, bisected by lines of force wielded by their intended target.

Strengthening the weave of Vision, he pushes his perception outward, looking for what he knows must come. There! At the edges of his Vision, the disturbances in the flow of the Underworld's power indicate about fifteen of the puppets converging on him. He can't see them because of the interference they cause, but he knows what he would see all too well. Fifteen this time. Their master is getting stronger.

The shells tear into the concrete wall behind him, his blood seems to rush inward, collecting in his abdomen. When he looks down, he sees the hole. Shock has been all used up, so all Ivo is left with is a hole in the stomach. No emotional implications, no feelings of fear, outrage, or violated frustration. Hope keeps him moving. It's not too late.

The shooter ends in a pile at the base of the wall on the other side of the underpass, a spent dot under the red dripping exclamation point of his demise.

The blood stops flowing onto Ivo's shirt. No time to fix the damage, but maybe a little direct pressure will buy him enough time to get Roy out of here before...

No.

His eyes move to the front seat; the dam bursts- no father should outlive his son.

There amid the blood and shattered bone lie the remains of his bright boy's stolen potential.

His hand still grips the twisted steering wheel now embedded in the safety glass of the windshield. He must have ripped it off in a spasm as he died; his strength, speed, lightning mind, sense of humor, hellish persistence- all useless now.

Ivo slips back into the Overworld, lost in a tornado of what might be grief or guilt. Blood again flows from the ragged hole in his gut. He doesn't care. He is thinking of the small hand on his face as he worked the light into Roy's mind so long ago, the trusting smile that is no longer attached to that hand.

He doesn't have the few minutes it would take for him to care about the world again. He has the heart to fight for family, for survival, but not revenge. Before he can again care about the black wave that he knows is washing over the world- long before he reacquires the desire to fight, or even survive, the army of the Outsider is upon him.

***

Dek is downtown at Ivo's lab when Roy's side of the conversation ends in gunfire and the clock starts. Five seconds to broaden the communication link, and access Roy's tablet. Two more seconds to use its GPS client to determine Roy's location.

Dek doesn't stop to call Issak, who has stepped out of the room for a few moments. He doesn't stop to get a car, doesn't think to button up his shirt or grab his coat. He hops off the examination table, grabs his sword and goes straight out the seventh floor window. He lands in a shower of broken glass on the elevated train track that straddles the street below. Fifteen seconds.

He drops to the ground and sprints from street to street, sometimes from car to car, leaving a wake of agitated late night partygoers, irate cabbies, and damaged property. At five minutes and about eight kilometers, the sword comes out, it's ringing lost in the rush of the air he speeds through. Despair fills his eyes long before he arrives at the bridge, long before his tears are proved necessary.

Like always, he feels the Savant's work before he sees him. His heart fills with hope as he approaches the destruction. Of course they survived.

No. Not Ivo. He sees the Savant near the bridge, perhaps one third of the way into a cleanup operation. Though he's still two hundred meters out, Dek can tell by the stiffening of her stance that she has sensed his approach. There is work to be done, so his despair moves into the shadows as his work smile comes out to play.

He feels the Savant's Cast. It seems to coalesce around him, swooping in to inflict whatever havoc she's cooked up. His sword flashes through two arcs too quickly for even the Savant to see. The Cast explodes into background energy as Dek explodes through its remnants and into sword range. He needs answers, but he knows what's happened here on a visceral level. It is still efficiency that drives his movements, but it is rage that burns through him, threatening to leave him ashes. The Savant falls quickly and in several places; seconds later, the three grunts guarding the Savant share her fate.

Then, for a moment he is absolutely still, not breathing except to sample the air. He listens to the thousand small sounds of the night. He had felt this Savant like the tingle-chill of static electricity, but now he feels nothing and he knows. He knows now he is alone in every sense of the word.

Ivo's car is stopped against the wall beneath a highway. Its roof is missing, it is surrounded by destruction like only Savants can cause. Ivo lived through the initial assault. Perhaps they got away. But Dek
knows
. He doesn't know how or why... maybe the world just seems smaller now.

He scans the area, but sees no movement. He moves toward the car.

Dek creeps forward, needing but not wanting to see. As he nears the car, Roy's shoulder appears first. Even the irrational hope fades. Nothing comes to replace it- not grief, not rage... only emptiness.

"Like tears in rain." He hears himself say, placing his hand on his brother's. The hand is still knotted around the steering wheel. Dek slides his hand back along his brother's arm, coming to rest on his elbow, squeezing gently. He tries to say something, maybe 'goodbye', but only the first half of a whimper escapes his lips.

Emotion is still inaccessible for him, but a scream is tearing through his mind, so loud he can't hear it. Deaf, dumb, and feeling nothing, he moves to the back seat. He can't accept what he findt D. He stumbles around the car to the passenger side, feeling weak, dreaming. In his deafened mind, there is only the hollow sound of despair- wind through an empty mountain, reverberant with feeling.

Into his numbness, a single, small sound intrudes- the rush of the air around a falling object directly above him. In his grief, he waits perhaps fifteen milliseconds longer than he would normally, but he's got plenty of time.

Without looking up, his sword clashes three times with the blade of the man dropping from the bridge above. From the speed, accuracy, and the way the attacking blade was redirected multiple times during each strike, Dek knows he faces another Torpedo.

Behind him, the Torpedo lands lightly and attacks five more times. Dek parries based only on the sound of the blade and the feel of it through his own blade when they meet. The still unseen torpedo takes a few steps back, and shouts "You killed my master!" with great passion and clear frustration.

Dek waits a few more seconds, still staring into the back seat of Ivo's car, but no further attacks come. "Master eh?" Dek says finally, still not looking up. "What are you, a dog?"

With a fierce shout, the unseen torpedo attacks again and again, quicker than any human could have seen, but Dek parries every blow, though this time he had to turn half away from the car to do it.

When the attack, and the frustrated screaming after it stops, Dek again speaks slowly. "So, I killed your master, did I?" He finally releases his last look at Ivo, turning his head slowly to face his assailant, pausing briefly to assess him. To Dek, he looks like a B-movie martial artist- stylish, baggy clothes, hard face, trendily cut blonde hair that was highlighted at some upscale salon. His flashily-crafted sword is actually glowing with a cold blue fire... amateur. "Is that supposed to make us even?"

The Torpedo shifts his stance slightly, adjusts the position of his blade to look more aggressive, but he says nothing.

"Except it doesn't." Dek says, fury clipping the words. His face ticks and his body shakes with the inner pressure, but the only overt show Dek allows is the wicked smile crossing his face, "Sure, I killed your master, but you killed my Father- and there isn't enough blood in the world for a down payment on that."

Dek's sword rises between them, his intentions clear in his hard stare. "Well, you take what you can get, I guess."

The Torpedo understands at last what he should have been expecting since his ill-conceived attack began. He takes another step back, but it isn't far enough, not by an interstellar distance. Dek's blade tears through him four times before he pauses to destroy the Torpedo's blade with a massive blow. The sword Issak made for him so long ago cuts straight and true, severing the other man's blade at the base. Dek flicks his wrist and the backstroke removes the other man's head.

Not enough blood in the universe, Dek's hot, shivering mind compresses around the thought. His scream tears out into the night, again and again, until he has no more breath and is again empty. He stumbles backward until he is stopped by the overpass wall. He leans against it, then slides down until he is sitting with the wall at his back. His sword lies impotent on the ground at his side. He feels nothing; time passes. The world around him begins to flicker.

Strobes of blue and red shift the shadows on the ground around him. He has no idea how long he has been sittingthe police are here.

***

The confused child sits, suspended upside down, still strapped into his seat. His head hurts, but not as much as his broken leg. What did he do wrong? His eyes sting with sticky unfamiliar tears. The inside of the destroyed minivan is tinged red and blurry. His thick glasses are gone and his face is wet.

Below him, he sees one bent crutch lying on the roof. The roof is bent worse than the crutch. His parents are sleeping in the front, but though he screams, they don't wake. He hopes they aren't angry with him.

Clouds of dust and smoke blow through the air; wind makes a hollow monster sound as it blows through one broken window and out the other.

He doesn't have any more air for screaming, so he hangs alone in the dust with the wind monster all around him, gasping and fading.

What did he do wrong?

At times like these, Issak Kaspari liked to picture himself as a mad scientist, surrounded by a
rcane machinery. He wished he could put the final twiddle on knobs, make sure that electricity arced appropriately between scenic anode and mysterious cathode- perhaps throw a large rusty switch or two.

It had always bothered him that from the outside it looked like he was having a particularly boring yoga session. Inside though, between his ears, or down in the Underworld, his current weave shimmered on the Loom, putting even the most impressive Frankenstein soundstage to shame.

Here, in the deepest subbasement of his New York estate, the earth helped channel the energies he accumulated. The earth's darkness surrounded the firestorm of his work. If this worked, this would be a quantum leap for his craft. If it worked, he would be able to see the very fabric of the Loom, the fabric of all creation.

Boring yoga indeed.

He rechecked his rechecks, retuned his retuning.

***

Anne sat in the nurses' lounge under the watchful gaze of two uniformed officers and the accusing stare of her destroyed locker. The officers had asked Anne every question in the book twice, but no one had told her what she was supposed to
do
now.

She was afraid. More than fear though, she felt completely uncertain. No one had yet acted like they were going to imminently arrest her, so what? You just killed-
very
killed- someone, and then what? You go home? You go to prison? They give you a medal and an honorary police doughnut? You go to witness protection? If anyone knew, they weren't telling her.