DarkWalker (26 page)

Wind whistled through the shattered window. The fountain, in the middle of the lake, splashed loudly. Car sounds, an undercurrent of distant engines, seemed constant and unending. Sitting, eyes closed, all other senses shut off from the world, her hearing became excessively acute. She heard spiders crawling in the corners of her apartment. Tree limbs swaying in the wind. Lightning bolts, very distant now. Feet running, a baby crying upstairs, lovers across the hall. Oil sizzling on a frying pan in the next building, glasses clinking in the wine bar across the street. Hearts beating. A gunshot. Doorbell. A cacophony of music, though she heard each piece distinctly: a local band downtown, someone’s tinny radio on NPR, “White Wedding” being belted out at the arena. Talk show hosts, commercials. Blood pumping through arteries. Whispered promises and lies. Requests for money, cigarettes, beer, soda, magazines, lap dances, movie tickets, wallets, second chances, the mushroom cream sauce. Money, hits, blow jobs—she heard everything, except her own clothes tearing. That, she felt.

Slowly, Lisa opened her eyes. She saw no demon, no ghoul, no vampire or ghost. No Jack. Just a broken window, its glass everywhere. Clouds churned, ready to release another deluge. Lightning danced across the sky, so slowly Lisa was able to follow it from beginning to end.

She lowered her gaze. Her clothes were torn, her skin blistering and bulging.

“No,” she said, jumping to her feet.

The demon’s laughter echoed dimly in her mind.

“No,” she said again. The blush of her skin deepened, as she watched, toward the demon’s fiery red. “This isn’t what we said.”

Bones cracked and grew within her. Muscles ripped and thickened. Lisa dropped heavily to her knees. A piece of glass, hanging in the window, fell with the vibration.

She had an amendment for Jack’s file on demons:
they lied
.

“Yes,” the demon said, its voice issuing inside her head. “I knew you’d make an excellent vessel.”

Lisa shook her head (the demon’s head?) and tried to will her body back to its proper proportions. Chest muscles overlapped her breasts, consuming them. Her legs expanded with a jerk, knocking the coffee table askew. Eyes burned. Her mouth tasted hot and bitter. One at a time, her teeth popped, lengthening and sharpening, shredding the insides of her mouth.

A wave of agony washed over her spine. Lisa hung her head, gripped the floor with crimson fists as blood dribble from her mouth.

“You cannot have me,” Lisa said.

The demon merely laughed.

Hot needles pricked her brain. Her vertebrae reconfigured, protruding through the stretched flesh on her back.

“You cannot have me,” Lisa said again, and she raced toward the window.

The demon tried to stop her. One leg almost didn’t move, but she demanded it, forced it to push her forward. Her body tried to bend at the waist, but she held it straight. An erection burst forth between her legs, merely to distract her. Her whole body twisted, turning over, and she stumbled. She slammed the bottom of the window pane, cracking the wall, scattering more shards. She teetered on the edge, half in and half out.

The demon laughed.

Lisa rocked herself over the edge and out the window.

1.

When the darkness passed and
the mist was gone, the stranger—cane and all—was an ashen statue. Perfectly still. Some seven feet tall. Even the individual hairs of his beard had burnt. His mouth was partly opened, an incomplete O of surprise. He’d gotten himself, thanks to Jack’s last minute kick at the cane.

Slowly, Jack climbed to his feet. Ashes flaked off, drifting lazily, as if they had all the time in the world, never seeming to reach the street. The wind, which had died within the mist, returned to scatter the stranger without a sound.

Jack blinked—twice—and got into his car.

The Mustang roared to life. Headlights flooded the street. In the rearview mirror, Jack saw the ghoul.

2.

The fall to death, presumably, should have been when Lisa’s life flashed before her eyes. Past triumphs and failures, regretted choices, her parents, Liz, the office, her red bedroom, even Jack.

Instead, she saw a flash of the demon’s world: dirt and rock, molten metal and earth, souls crying as they twisted into unnatural shapes—from the demon’s point of view. He hadn’t lied about that, but he was as much prisoner as warden; he’d used Lisa to escape. His last outing, done incorrectly, had been but a moment; this would be forever.

As they died together, it was his life that flashed before her eyes. She didn’t understand the importance of any particular scene: a motherly figure bearing a swollen, charred breast; seas of fire; bridges made up of distorted souls that clawed his feet as he crossed it. A huge hole, a portal, and the winged
Kaz’azeal
racing skywards, shattering the unstable opening. Even his second lieutenant, a human-like figure, cringing in understanding of the depth of his failure.

Together, in the demon’s body (but Lisa’s flesh), they smashed the ground.

The apartment building rocked. Abnormal waves crashed through the lake. Concrete cracked beneath Lisa, but she did not die. Nor did the demon.

When she rose, she was physically the demon, no longer trapped in its own dimension, no longer restricted in its time on earth. And though Lisa’s thoughts still directed her actions (the demon’s actions), there were desires and thirsts she could not ignore.
Compulsions
.

Blood—not to drink, nor even to bathe, but flowing in her name (the demon’s name)—and flesh, flayed by her anxious fingers. Above all else, she was drawn west.

The demon laughed inside her head. “You feel it, do you not? The wrongness that must be righted? I can ease your pain. Your suffering. Move aside, give me control, and I shall do all the things I promised.”

“And more,” Lisa said.

“Much more,” the demon agreed. “We shall have a glorious reign!”

“No.”

“You must at least allow me to recapture
Kaz’azeal
, as we discussed,” the demon said. “Relent, temporarily, and I shall obey the letter of our agreement.”

“You’ve already gone beyond that,” Lisa said.

“Have I?”

“I was supposed to summon you,” Lisa said, “not
become
you.”

“Ah, but if you summoned me, your words would compel me,” the demon said, “I have no desire to be commanded like an animal.”

“Release me,” Lisa said.

“If you had offered another as receptacle,” the demon said, “I’m sure I could easily have taken the other host.”

“You never intended to take anyone else,” Lisa said.

The demon laughed. “True enough. But do you intend to stand idly by as
Kaz’azeal
spreads his red death? Can you not hear him now, flying overhead, circling, following the very same instinct that calls to us?”

Lisa tensed every muscle, as if that might force the demon loose. Tightened fists and legs, jaw, eyes.

“It’s a burning, inside, is it not?” the demon asked. “Let me quell it.”

Her eyes snapped open against her will. “You will give me free reign,” the demon said, “or I shall allow
Kaz’azeal
to spread his disease far and wide.”

“And what about your disease?” Lisa asked.

“I,” the demon said, “am beyond disease. I am a nightmare, given flesh. You invited me, willingly, into your body. Give me your mind.”

“No,” Lisa said.

She stepped away from the apartment building, beyond the cracked concrete, despite that she tried not to move. “Your will is slipping,” the demon said. “You require rest. Sleep. You needn’t be bound by those needs. You shall always exist within me.”

“This is
me
,” Lisa said. “My body. My soul.”

“Not anymore.”

Lisa lashed out blindly, an explosion of rage and fury. “Leave!”

The demon laughed. “It’s not that easy, dear lady. You are me. I am you. You can no more rid yourself of me than you could excise an unwanted limb.”

Another step.

“You cannot stop me,” the demon said.

Another.

3.

Five minutes on the highway, Jack saw nothing in the mirrors except other headlights. He had the speedometer at 80, and figured it was best to not go so fast he drew unwanted police attention. They often ignored him, but probably not tonight. He doubted a cop would be well enough armed to stop a ghoul.

Assuming he survived, Jack decided to change the way he recorded information. Learn more about these things.
I saw a ghost in the park today talking to a little girl. It was 60 degrees with a northwesterly wind, ten minute after 4 on a Friday
wouldn’t cut it anymore. It was that lack of relevant information that made this sudden turn of events so dangerous. He might easily have learned that a simple lock of golden hair would stop a ghoul. Okay, maybe
golden locks of hair
wouldn’t be enough, but the hunter had long ago learned the usefulness of silver against vampires, so maybe every creature, regardless of strength, had a potentially simple weakness.

He watched the road ahead of him carefully, half expecting something to suddenly be standing in his path. That was another reason not to go too fast; he had to be able to stop or turn if the need arose.

He checked either side of the car, too.

That was when he noticed the motorcycle. The rider turned to him and grinned. Waved. He was misty, luminescent, matching Jack’s speed exactly. The bones beneath his skin were visible, as were white veins.

Jack gripped the steering wheel with both hands. The rider slid closer. Reaching with an impossibly thin hand, the phantom knocked on Jack’s window.

Jack stepped on the gas.

The motorcycle matched him precisely.

Jack swerved to the right lane, away from the phantom rider. The bike mimicked the move, and the phantom knocked again. Harder. Mouthed something, but at 80 mph and with the windows shut, Jack heard nothing.

Jack passed a white van. It carried a metal sliding ladder on its roof, and had the name “Paint by Walter” scrawled in blue on its side. The phantom rider drove through the van, unaffected. As Jack passed the vehicle, only the phantom’s arm was visible, still knocking on his window. The van, meanwhile, swerved suddenly to the left, brakes screeching. The motorcycle burst forward, driving as if nothing had happened.

At the last minute, Jack veered onto an off ramp. He descended a small hill, racing toward a red light. No room to stop. He glanced in the rearview mirror; the phantom rider was right behind him.

Jack drove through the light. Horns blared. A car skidded to a stop. Jack turned sharply left, tires screaming and smoking. Too far, he drove headlong into oncoming traffic, under the overpass.

Fortunately, there were only two cars; they swerved in different directions, allowing Jack’s Mustang to pass between them.

Jack turned left again, this time with the light, and sped up the on ramp that would bring him back toward downtown Orlando, as intended.

The phantom rider was right behind him. As Jack merged into traffic (moving, in this direction, substantially less than 80 miles an hour), the phantom rider took the spot alongside his passenger door. He looked, grinned again, and then turned into Jack’s lane.

Jack braced for an impact that never happened. He saw the motorcycle, part of it, where it stuck through his seat and entered his dashboard. Wind still ruffled the rider’s pants and jacket. He winked, eyelid passing over both the eye and the empty socket of his skull. “Howdy!”

Jack shifted lanes, cutting someone off, sped up, switched lanes again. The phantom rider matched every maneuver, never straying from the center of Jack’s front seat. “Just wanted to know,” the rider said, “if we’re headed in the same direction!”

“Where’s that?” Jack asked.

“South,” the rider said, “on the highway to Hell.”

Jack shifted lanes again. The hour he’d given himself was almost over. And now, riding back in the direction he’d come, he expected to see the full breadth of his pursuit.

“I’m not,” he told the rider.

“Ah, but I think you are,” the phantom said. Then he veered left, crossing through a bus and the median, to return to the eastbound lanes.

Up ahead, there was a sudden flurry of brake lights. Jack turned hard to the right, to reach an exit ramp before it was too late; he didn’t want to stop, especially when he had a good idea of the cause—maybe the ghoul, maybe something else—but at least part of his plan had been successful.

As he turned, he checked his rear view mirror. There were shapes behind him, figures, some amorphous and indistinct. But after turning, shapes loomed ahead, too—on the sidewalks, in the windows, on rooftops and in the air.

And, as if fate itself had turned against Jack Harlow, this road was a series of short blocks separated by an endless supply of red lights.