The Light is the Darkness (17 page)

“A long, complicated, and boring story. I stole a bit of research and funneled it to my government. Nothing to do with the Drake Technique, so-called. We were designing a bio-weapon based on small pox. He caught me red-handed. We struggled. I was no match for a giant like your father. Not in those days. How I would savor a chance to replay that scene today… Years passed. Here we stand. The father is dead, yet lives on through his son.”

“Imogene isn’t with you,” Conrad said to gauge his reaction. He slid another six inches toward the wall. “I take it Pop doesn’t live through her.”

“We’ve parted ways. A lovers’ quarrel, I’m afraid.”

“Let me guess. Since you didn’t join Drake or one of the other immortals I can only assume you intend to form your own powerbase. Man like you needs an army if he’s going to stick around. Sis wouldn’t have your superbaby, would she?”

“These dark lords are ruthless and cunning,” Lorca said. “The only way for lesser lights such as myself and your sister to survive their predation is to either hide or band together. She would not listen to reason.”

“She finally realized who you were, I bet.”

“Yes, all was revealed after we completed the cycle. She means me harm. She is an angry and vengeful woman. This animus must run in the family.”

“Where is the angry woman?”

“Far away, I dearly hope. Doubtless Drake has her in his clutches. She wouldn’t leave well enough alone. Forget her. I’m here for you, Conrad. You’ve accomplished much these past few weeks. Yet this a delicate juncture, despite any sensation of heightened prowess, you are exceedingly vulnerable. It wouldn’t do to have you wandering the countryside in your emergent state. Too dangerous.”

“I suppose you’re going to take me to the mountains, teach me the ways of the mystical arts.” Conrad gripped the edge of the table with his left hand.

Lorca drifted closer without moving his feet. He stood in silhouette and his form blurred and warped in the dimness, seemed to gather size and density—the impression of wings, an aura of a black halo. “Don’t you believe I want to help?”

“My old man did you wrong and died before you got to even the score. I also think you’ve done something to my sister. Not much chance of us being friends in either case.”

“Wrong,” Lorca said. His face had broadened, its bones thickened, the flesh gone waxen and hard. No longer quite human, but a creature feigning humanity. “You and I will be much more than friends.” Even as he spoke he accelerated toward Conrad, hands hooked into claws, lower body impossibly motionless. He’d gained nearly a foot in height. His mouth gaped black as an eel’s. He was the image of a diabolical being sprung from the page of some book of demonology.

Conrad flipped the table in the same instant Lorca moved, and Lorca batted it aside as if two hundred pounds of metal was actually a Styrofoam prop. Conrad dove and rolled and slung the throwing knife he kept in his jacket. Lorca flinched and the blade skipped off the bone just above his temple. A pearl of blood formed and Lorca kept coming. He grinned. His teeth were jagged and many.

“Is that why you hung around with Genie? Revenge?” Conrad bounced to his feet and managed to get another table between them. Lorca had eased back, coiled into himself for another strike, and was in no hurry. Obviously if the man couldn’t torment Dad, the only surviving male heir would have to do.

Lorca stopped. He pressed his thumb to the blood, studied it. “At first, yes. Once I realized what she’d stumbled onto, what your father and Drake had accomplished, I delayed my plans and assisted her in gathering the puzzle pieces. I grew quite fond of her, in fact. A shame. Although, it still amuses me that she didn’t catch on until the end. Like father, like daughter. She really had no idea who I am. Silly little girl playing with guns.”

While Lorca was talking, Conrad gathered his reserves and tried again—he visualized the man bursting into flames. It was a strange sensation, a psychic weight in the center of his brain, the mental analogue to pushing rope. Pins and needles stabbed the length of his spine and his vision blurred. He pushed harder.

“What are you doing, Conrad?” Lorca said. The wound in his head widened and blood poured in a rivulet, dripped steadily from his collar and splashed on the concrete floor. “You can’t win. This is a rigged game.”

“Genie seemed confident I could kill you.” Conrad had gone through the same fire as Imogene and Lorca. The man obviously possessed the ability to shift shape, to manipulate his mass and strength. Whatever he could do, Conrad could do, if only he knew the trick.

Lorca said, “Nonsense. Imogene is…it’s not possible that you’ve spoken with her.” The man leaped again mid-sentence. Conrad reversed tactics; he pulled the table toward himself and used it as a shield. Lorca raked it and steel shredded like tissue paper. Conrad plucked a ten inch sliver of shorn metal and stabbed Lorca’s neck, rammed it clean through the opposite side. As Lorca reeled, hand clapped to his leaking jugular, Conrad punched him in the ribs with the spiked cestus, then the kidney, driving into the blow with every ounce of force he possessed, which would’ve sufficed to shatter a cinderblock, to rip a hole through a wet sandbag, or rupture the internal organs of a normal man. Lorca uttered a gurgling cry, and back-handed Conrad across the cellar and into the wall. Conrad curled, knees to chin, the air slammed from his lungs. He wished he’d brought a gun, although that hadn’t helped Imogene, had it? His thoughts were unclear; the room dimmed to infrared.

The scientist grasped the steel sliver and pulled it from his neck. Blood spurted and foamed. His face and chest were thick with blood. He was unrecognizable. His right eye shimmered and glared from the gore; it burned like a coal. “Allow me to return this,” he said, and approached Conrad and caught his ankle and lifted him as a doctor hoists a newborn. Conrad scrabbled at the floor, trying to find purchase. He had a moment to consider whether anyone had ever gripped him with such animal strength, then the scientist stabbed him in the thigh with the shard and twisted.

Conrad didn’t scream, although he wished to. Imogene whispered,
Jesus, bro. Didn’t you get your ass kicked the last time you came down here?
He beheld her then: nude and lithe, pinioned near the apex of an obsidian pyramid that jutted from a mountain of skulls. Her arms were chained above her head and she shone brilliant as a diamond prism. Light beamed from her flesh—white, then red; a nova that wiped the image from his mind, but left an imprint on his retina.

He laughed.

Lorca dropped him in a heap and frowned. “What is amusing?”

“See, in a life or death struggle,” Conrad said, pausing to cough a bit of blood, “when your enemy starts laughing you don’t stop to ask why, you finish him before it’s too late. Too late, sucker.”

Lorca kicked Conrad in the ribs hard enough to make him writhe. The second kick was less forceful, and the third thudded from Conrad’s side without effect. Lorca stepped back quickly. Nubs of horns bulged from his skull and his breathing whistled and keened high upon the register.

Conrad had gone about this all wrong, projecting malice at an enemy who was prepared for such a gambit. Perhaps inward was the answer. He imagined himself whole and strong, imagined his flesh as iron, his muscles as cables, his heart a furnace. He imagined a keyhole opening. Streams of dark and light flooded into his mind like oil. He stood. Lorca swiped at his collar and Conrad slapped his hand away and grinned. His teeth felt large and sharp. His was the physical strength of a great ape. Three great apes. The joy of his rage was more powerful still.

“Damnation,” Lorca said. “You catch on fast —”

Conrad grabbed his throat and squeezed, felt the windpipe go, then the spine, and squeezed hard enough to snap a railroad spike, reduce a stone to gravel. With a renewed burst of vigor, Lorca jerked free and attempted to run. Conrad leaped and drove his knee into the small of the man’s back while yanking his chin up and to the rear until several large bones snapped. Lorca’s muscles convulsed. Then his tongue protruded and he was dead. To be safe, Conrad fetched an axe and chopped the corpse into several pieces. He loaded the remains into a barrel, doused them with kerosene and struck a match.

He rested on the front porch and watched the greasy smoke coil into the sky. His sense of triumph was tempered by the regret he hadn’t had the opportunity to torture Imogene’s whereabouts from Lorca. While he rested, the steel splinter spontaneously worked itself from his leg and clinked onto the ground where it smoldered and bubbled. A few minutes later the wound sealed itself to an angry red pucker surrounded by deep tissue bruises which rapidly faded.

There wasn’t even a scar.

IV

Conrad stayed in Vegas for the week preceding his showdown with destiny. DeKoon reserved a penthouse suite in the glitziest casino, provided him with a limo, guards, call girls, and an unlimited tab at the front desk. Conrad banished the girls. The gorillas in the mirror shades kept a respectful distance. A fearful distance. He sat lotus before a wall of glass that overlooked the desert. He stared into the distance and, when night fell, into the blackness between stars. That week every sunset was red, every night moonless.

On Saturday night DeKoon collected him and whisked him off to witness the heavyweight mixed martial arts champion of the world defend his belt in the trademark steel cage. The champion went down in the fifth round and as the fighter’s head bounced on the canvas, a few drops of blood splattered the breast of DeKoon’s impeccable white suit. The brunette on his arm squealed and dabbed it, then licked her finger as she smiled coquettishly and crossed her long legs. Conrad glanced at the crowd packed around the harshly illuminated stage: a sea of shadows fractured by camera flashes, its denizens hunched forward like carrion birds.

“Two of the most famous warriors on the planet,” DeKoon said, hand on Conrad’s shoulder, “and you could tear them apart, rip the stuffing from them. Likely at the same time. Couldn’t you? I’d wager anyone in our top fifteen could take these guys. What a shame the luminaries of the Pageant must toil in obscurity.”

“The wheel goes round. I’m sure the taste for real blood will hit the mainstream again one fine day.”

DeKoon glanced at the crimson-lipped brunette. “I think you’re on to something, my friend.” He leaned over and kissed her, savagely, possessively, and she grasped his hair and pulled him in. A pair of beasts feeding upon one another.

Meanwhile, doctors rushed to tend the fallen champion. The stage burned beneath a column of white light while all else faded to black. Imogene appeared again as she had at their house. She floated atop the column of light near the vault of the roof. She loomed, naked and glistening with blood and sweat, larger, by far, than life. Her wings beat slowly and crackled with fire. Like the archangel Michael, she carried a sword and its blade dripped flames that scattered into sparks as they fell toward the unheeding throngs below. She blew him a kiss as her body brightened and flared and disintegrated into the darkness.

Almost over, Connie
. The brunette kept sucking DeKoon’s face. She winked at Conrad. Her eye glowed with the reflection of the stage lights.

V

The cargo hold of the helicopter was windowless and lighted by a red bulb in a plastic case. Conrad sat alone in the cavernous hold and listened to the rotors churn. He had no idea what coordinates the pilot bore him toward, only that it would be a remote and deep desert location where death and glory awaited.

He slept and dreamed of being trapped inside a cave, of cowering in animal terror while beyond the mouth of the cave twilight cloaked a primordial landscape. A terrible presence impended upon his hiding place. This bestial presence hunched until its crown of antlers scraped rock, and it chuckled and growled and reached for him, clutched him and drew him into the light. His flesh was shredded, his bones cracked, his blood poured down a ravening maw.

He awakened as the helicopter landed.

Engineers and laborers had further excavated a massive crater near the foot of some low mountains, reinforced it with granite pillars and entrenched amphitheatre style bench seats, with all the grandeur and scope of an ancient pyramid construction site.

Cold dusk had settled over the land. Floodlights glared from a ring of conning towers. Film crews positioned themselves atop strategic roosts along the rim of the crater. Several hundred spectators had assembled between granite colonnades. The guests were garish as peacocks in their collective attire. Men with automatic rifles patrolled the perimeter.

Conrad wondered, as he often did in the moments before a ludus of this size and complexity, how many millions of dollars had gone into the preparations, the construction, the bribery of God only knew how many law enforcement agencies and military personnel to steer clear, to divert attention and provide cover. Who were these pampered and pompous spectators? Foreign royalty, Balkan financiers, sons and daughters of Hollywood, of Washington D.C., the bored and bloodthirsty scions of Western industry, and fake celebrities? Their identities were a mystery, for the organizers of the Pageant scrupulously enforced a policy of non contact between athletes and patrons, but the crowd’s desire was plain; that desire charged the air.

Adrenaline smoked in Conrad’s nostrils, his lungs. He’d stripped naked in the belly of the chopper and donned his harness of battle, the boots and plumed helm; armed himself with a brace of pila, the cestus, and a gladius meant for chopping men to small pieces. He needed little else.