Tales of the Unquiet Gods (13 page)

"No." Alongside his newfound sight, Vincent's anger roared hot and clean. "I don't trust you."

The beast-thing stopped in its tracks, and Vincent could now see the re-curved legs. It looked less and less human as Vincent beheld more. The clicking he'd heard came from ragged claws on the ends of its paw-like feet, each the size of a dinner plate. Noisome breath whistled through yellowed teeth in an oddly bent snout. Deep-sunk eyes glowed with malevolent cunning under heavy, downward-sloping brows.

Cunning, but not with any great intelligence.

"But," the monster's voice combined all the worst tonal qualities of a contra-bassoon, a camel's bray and a cement-mixer full of broken glass and tone-deaf opera singers. He could barely hear its imitation of Dr. Thomas. A long, prehensile tongue the color of bread mold slithered between the thing's taut lips as it spoke. "I will help you become what you were." Thick, black drool dripped from its open maw, giving its offer the lie.

Whatever had opened inside Vincent continued, and he saw the creature in front of him for what it was. Massive, and monstrous, a hideous combination of man and mangy, feral beast. Ashen skin covered in patches of greasy, black hair was flecked here and there with furious, red boils and sores that weeped an oily, green fluid. The creature was naked, except for tarnished metal rings around it's upper arms and legs. Limbs thick with muscle nevertheless twitched and shook with noticeable palsy. It was demonstrably male, but bore a jagged, shiny patch of scar tissue between its legs.

"Come, my young pupil, let me give you the benefit of my experience," competed with, "so hungry, feast on your ka, magos," in Vincent's highly trained ears. He heard two overlaid sets of words every time the abomination spoke. It was the aural equivalent of the time he'd take a knock to the head and had double vision. And was just as disorienting.

Vincent's arms tingled with a heat that had nothing to do with the strange, desert sun the beast-creature brought with it.He'd never felt so full of life. His heart pounded as his thoughts buzzed with the power, and he began to look for a way to bend it to his will.

Without a conscious thought, Vincent's hand rose up, bearing the odd book from the odder book store. The cream leather cover blazed with a network of glowing vine-like knots, weaving and interweaving across its entire surface. Beams of light actually shown out of the crack in the boxlike covering, and it snapped open in his hand. Pages ruffled and blurred as they turned themselves.

Vincent's eyes rolled back in his head as images that he'd swear he'd seen before poured into the front of his mind in an incandescent way even music theory never had. Formulae, diagrams, lines and line of writing in a language he'd never seen, yet understood anyway, all jumbled together in his head. For one brief, infinite moment, Vincent saw the way everything fit together, and in that instant, his eyes snapped open.

He glared at the once-god before him.

The emasculated beast-thing's draw gaped and it roared at him. Legs - even stripped of most of its power as it was - coiled under it's not-insubstantial bulk flexed, and it shot into the air. Arms and jaws gaped wide, and though Vincent knew it was barely a shade of its former glory, he knew the monster could still consume him.

Those hideous, glowing eyes blazed with sulfurous triumph and black abyss followed in their wake, when Vincent's entire body tensed and he screamed. The energy blazing in his chest complied with his desire in a way he knew he'd likely never manage again. But now was enough.

The flows of energy and matter he sensed rearranged themselves to Vincent's will, coiling around into a channel that linked him to the erstwhile Typhonian. With a thought, Vincent sent the blazing, pure green energy of life he'd borrowed from the cosmos roaring down that empty channel in the flows of reality.

For an endless, fiery instant, Vincent looked into the heart of a god, saw the fall of an empire and the dwindling of self that accompanied it, and knew something of what was happening and why he'd suffered the devouring consumption of something for which he'd worked so hard.

And then time caught, restarted, and the very energy he'd summoned shouldered him aside, taking something of him with it. The hounding, desperate monster shrieked, locked in a blaze of energy inimical to its dark and chaotic existence. And then it frayed at the edges and began to crumble.

Vincent tried to cry out in triumph, but choking, oppressive silence suddenly reigned over the narrow street. With shocking suddenness that stopped his heart, the lines that made up existence warped and bubbled. Purple-black tentacles burst into being, converging on the struggling, disintegrating beast-thing, gripping it with horrific intimacy. They pulled the straining form into somewhere else, leaving Vincent alone on the horribly empty sidewalk.

Vincent's breath exploded out of him, and he gasped fresh air, unaware he'd been holding his breath at all. He retched with reaction, and staggered backward to lean against the brick wall behind him. The whole episode had his thoughts screaming around in tiny circles inside his skull.

Vincent's knees buckled and he slid to the sidewalk, suddenly aware of his crushing exhaustion. He remembered the whole day with crystal clarity, barring the strange fog he'd enjoyed inside Mr. Judy's not-really-there-maybe shop. He just couldn't quite recall how he'd done what he'd done after that.

Lifting the book of magic to his lap felt like hefting a couple of hundred pounds of lead brick. His eyes fluttered he was so tired. And hungry. He wanted to devour a couple of pizzas. Maybe three or four. His stomach growled in agreement.

"Hey, kid, you okay?"

Vincent's head rolled around to see his questioner. A short man in wearing a windbreaker over jeans and an athletic mesh shirt looked down at him. Shaggy, brown hair and brown eyes looked out of a tan face. Vincent's pulse sped up as the man reached into a pocket, but he heaved a sigh of relief as the man pulled out his wallet. When Vincent saw the polished brass of the badge attached to the inside, he thought distantly that his relief might be a little premature.

"I'm Detective Timmons, NYPD," the cop said in his tenor voice. "For now, at least," he muttered in with a bitter half-smile. He shook his head, dismissing whatever dark thought twisted his features. "Anyway, are you Vincent Bahur? 'Cuz Dr. William Thomas has been looking for a student of his."

Vincent opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Fatigue crushed him where he sat, and ravenous hunger gnawed at his middle, but he tried again.

"Dr. Thomas is looking for me? I sent him a message."

Timmons looked down at him, one eyebrow raised.

"Kid, what Will said was you'd disappeared, and if I could put the word out, he'd appreciate it." The detective raised one hand in a placating gesture, using the other one to slip his wallet back into a pocket. "Now, I'm not calling you a liar, I'm just saying you might want to talk to the man face-to-face."

Vincent thought about what he'd seen, and the book still clutched in his hand, and how he'd treated his mother and his mentor.

"Yeah," he agreed. His stomach growled again. "I think I'd better. Can you give me a hand up, please? I think I need something to eat before I go home."

PART SIX

WITHIN RANGE

6

The kid - Vincent - waved as he walked up the steps to the first floor of the apartment building he and his mom lived it. Pat Timmons, sometime detective in the glorious NYPD waved back. As the kid disappeared into the building, Timmons' stomach turned over. The boy practically glowed with the power he'd drawn in. Spending time that close to him - and that book, whatever it was - felt like straddling a live power line.

No doubt Vincent thought Pat had just happened on him. Which was almost true. Dr William Thomas, the boy's violin tutor, had called him when he and Vincent's mother found the note he'd left in his room, and given him a likely starting place. Which had helped, but once he'd gotten within a quarter mile or so, he'd been drawn to the kid like a magnet. The magic juice - whatever it really was, he had no clue - running through Vincent thrummed in the air. Pat couldn't help but feel it.

He'd always had a good bit of a sense of the genuine weirdness of the world. His granddad on his mom's side claimed it came from the Irish background. When Grandpa Murray talked about the Sight, you heard the capital letter. When something strange happened, Pat was sure to be around. It wasn't that he caused things, but they sure seemed to happen around him.

Especially since-

He shuddered, his breath suddenly coming fast and harsh. He hated the memories, feared them like nothing else in his life, but he rode them. It was the only way he knew to get through it. He was the master of his own damn soul.

7

"Please! You have to help me! Those things got Carla! You gotta; you're a cop!"

Pat had just stepped out of Convenient Willard's, where'd he'd stopped for some bait. Willard's was a little nook a few blocks from Chelsea Park, where Pat liked to go fishing for striped bass.

Right near midnight was about the only time he had available with his shift schedule. Fortunately, that meant the park wasn't terribly crowded. When he caught a good one, he treated himself to a dinner at the brewing company near Pier 59. Which wouldn't happen tonight, it seemed.

Pat estimated the young man was near twenty, of Middle Eastern descent and wearing jeans and a NYU sweatshirt. In deference to the cool of the night, he had a brown scarf wrapped around his neck. And naked panic splashed all over his face, made stark by the glare of the neon.

"Whoa, slow down, my friend. Who are you, who's Carla, what things," Pat asked. Then his eyes narrowed and he continued, "and what makes you think I'm a cop?"

"Uh, uh," the kid stammered, black eyes wide and glazed. "I'm Aram Kazemi. Carla's my, my girlfriend, and, and. They were - I don't know what they were! But they just, just appeared. Outta nowhere! And grabbed Carla and ran off to this boat!" Sweat sheened his face, though that could easily be from a run if he'd really come from the waterfront. He didn't read as a druggie, though Pat supposed his clothes could be hiding any needle tracks.

"Which way should we be going, here?" When Aram waved toward the nearby charter boat marina, Pat started moving. "And about me being a cop?"

"I, I fish at the park sometimes, and I've seen you there. I asked some of the other guys, and they told me."

Pat nodded. That might be possible. Aside from training, and Krav Maga practice, Pat had just enough time to do one thing to relax, and fishing was it. He spent that time at Chelsea. Usually around now, but often in actual sunlight on his days off. Some of the regulars knew he was NYPD, but didn't bug him about it. It could come out in conversation, though.

"All right," Pat allowed, "what's this about things taking your girlfriend? What things?"

"They - oh, Jesus - they," the kid cut off. He stopped and bent over, planting his hands on his knees. His knuckles whitened as he gripped. "They looked like something out of a movie. Like, halfway between men and fish. And insects and lizards and God-knows-what! Covered in slime, with no noses, and black, staring eyes!"

With his description of the alleged kidnappers, Pat thought if the kid wasn't high on something, he'd do well in the theater department, assuming he actually was a student. Or writing some crazy sci-fi, if he wasn't.

"What were you two doing down at the waterfront this late at night?"

"I, uh," Aram flushed, "I'm a biology student-" answering that question "-and my term project involves tracking the striped bass population, and it lets me get some fishing time in, y'know?"

Pat did know, and said so, but that it still didn't explain what Aram and Carla were doing down at the docks near midnight. The restaurants were still open, but none of the marinas would be.

"Well, I spend a bunch of time down there, and I talk to the other guys who fish," Aram repeated. As the young man's terror ebbed, his flush deepened, "and, uh, a couple of them told me about this spot where you can, uh, not get disturbed. And, well, the acoustics keep people from hearing anything. And it's still kind of in public. The, uh, problem is you kind of have to sneak through part of the marina."

Pat's eyebrows shot up. Aram had the grace to look embarrassed.

"That's kind of trespassing, isn't it?" Pat made his voice coolly officious, though he genuinely didn't care one way or the other, so long as the kids didn't get caught or damage anything. Aram's words were as good as a confession, though, and Pat really didn't want to do the paperwork. Especially if this turned out to be some kind of student prank.

"Uhhh," Aram temporized.

"That's
if
the two of you had actually been in the marina after closing, right?" The trick was to stay cool and keep things hypothetical. If this
was
a kidnapping, though, everything would get very serious, very quickly.

"Uh, yeah." Aram blinked, dealing with the mental whiplash. He'd gotten his breathing under control, but his forehead still shone with sweat. "We, uh, we were
going
to, but we were still outside."