Darkness of the Soul (35 page)

Finally, he nodded. “All right. We’ll check the morgue. I don’t think we’re going to find anything there, but we’ll check. Only one problem that I can see, how we going to get in?”

Drakanis smirked. “Just because you’re not really a cop doesn’t mean your badge won’t work. Your paperwork’s all in order. It’s just you that’s fake, right? So long as I have an escort from the RPD, they’ll let me in. No problem there at all.”

“Right, sure, okay. So off we go. Probably should wait till morning, though. I’m fucking beat, and you don’t look too good yourself.” Woods started moving toward the door, rummaging in his pocket for his keys.

“Where we going now, then?”

“To a place with a warm bed and some leftovers, hopefully.”

Drakanis nodded and followed him out. He clicked off the light switch out of habit even though most of the lights were blown anyway. As they headed down the walk and toward Woods’ car, he laid a hand on Damien’s shoulder and pulled him up short.

“We’re probably going to die on Christmas, aren’t we?”

Woods could no longer see a reason to lie to him. He didn’t even try, just sighed, shrugged, and answered, “Probably. But look on the bright side. We don’t have to worry about Y2K.”

Drakanis shook his head. He even managed to manufacture a small chuckle. “Fair enough. Let’s go.”

Chapter
31
 

6:00 am, December 23, 1999

The alleyways behind the county morgue were normally dank, dark, and empty. As the sun crawled out of its bed, two of those statements remained true. The light never quite penetrated the alley, leaving the close walls, the small piles of trash, and the outdated dumpster that had not been used in years and not been picked up by Waste Management in months shrouded in darkness. The rain and snow of previous weeks had left their mark as well, staining the brick and concrete, breeding fungus in the cracks and in places where the buildings joined.

Normally, the place would have been empty with the exception of the few rats that would investigate the trash piles, find nothing, and be on their way. Later in the day, a homeless or two might do much the same. But today, life—or a form of it—crowded the alley, creating an even greater stink than usual and driving the wet away with the heat of fever.

They had crowded in over the nighttime hours, piling into the available space, two and three deep in some places, hundreds of gleaming eyes aimed hungrily at the morgue. Though no two of them appeared the same, at the core, each was like the others and all felt the single thought buzzing in what remained of their brains.

They waited with a patience born of death, the slow certainty that their prey would come. They had been roused from their slumber and driven to reach this spot by the commanding voice of something beyond the borders of the known. The voice had given them their commands simply:
Go.
Watch.
Wait.
Kill.
They had come and now were watching and waiting. Soon, the time for killing would come, and they were more than satisfied to do it. No conscience troubled them; no reminder of mortality or the human condition could sway them.

Cars came and went, passing the morgue by with barely a glance: shoppers with their minds set on last-minute presents, spouses on their way to the airport to pick up or drop off loved ones, cops making their rounds. The sounds all reached the alley, but the things within it ignored them; their business was not with any of these people.

Distantly, they could hear the cries of those rallying around the police department. A trick of the wind—or perhaps the whim of their commander—allowed the sound to travel this far. If those currently so angered by the police’s supposed ineptitude were to see the gathered assembly there, they would perhaps not be so anxious to reclaim their loved ones, but the creatures in that alley did not—could not—appreciate the irony or laugh about it as they might have done, once upon a time.

The sound of a new car was heard. This time, it was pulling into the lot in front of the morgue; the throng shuddered and a moan emerged from them as one, carrying the stink of decomposition and marring the air around them. Still, they waited, even as the sound of car doors and the grumbling voices of officers pulled from sleep to watch a crime scene neither cared about reached them. The creatures did not relax, but neither did they strike. These were not the ones they were waiting for, but their coming meant the others would be along soon enough.

Time meant nothing to the things. It might have been an hour; it might have been three. They waited and were at last rewarded. The smell came to them first, the psychic scent of those they were to kill, coming nearer. To them, it smelled like fresh blood, electricity, and rain. They grew more anxious. Some moaned again; others gnashed their teeth. Those in back shifted to try to get closer to the front of the pack; all of them wanted the honor of dining first, of being the alpha, the first to sink their teeth into the warm flesh and taste the power within. They could not think, not in so many words, but the need was instinctive, an animal desire that had easily been twisted by their master.

Then they heard other voices and footsteps approaching the building.
Soon,
now,
the voice within them said, and all of them pressed against the walls of the alley, all of them facing the rear exit from the building. Some even smiled, though there was no joy in it, only the memories of emotions that were already fading to be replaced by the cold comfort of the void at the end of all things.

Soon, very soon, those they had come for would open that door. When it happened, the outcome was simple: a feeding frenzy.

The dead waited in the alley for the first drop of blood to hit the water.

Chapter
32
 

9:30 am, December 23, 1999

Woods slammed the door of the cruiser and bopped down the walkway toward the morgue with far too much spring in his step for Drakanis’s taste. Given the early hour and how late it had been when they finally crashed, to say nothing of the grim nature of their errand, he would have figured Woods would be morose and despondent. He supposed the banging and groaning that had been leaking underneath the bedroom door and into the living room where Drakanis had been trying to sleep might have had something to do with it.

Woods glanced over his shoulder as Drakanis pulled himself out of the car, the smirk on his face widening as he studied the drooping features and bags under his eyes. “You’re laggin’, Drak. Wake up, since you’re the one who wanted to be here.”

Drakanis gave him a half-lidded glare and shrugged. “Maybe I’m rethinking the idea. It’s too early, and it stinks.” Woods arched a brow, sensing something more behind the words, and found it odd that he didn’t sense Drakanis noticing it. As soon as he’d thought it though, Drakanis picked it up. “Yes. Something’s wrong here, and it’s not just what already happened.”

The two of them looked over the parking lot, each seeing it in their own way but neither able to identify what was causing the psychic stench and making the hair on the back of their necks stand on end. A pair of bored-looking uniforms was standing near the front door, watching them without much interest, and other than the brilliant yellow tape surrounding the lot, it looked as it should on any other day of the year. All in all, it was relatively normal for a murder scene, except for some unidentifiable something that was itching at both of their minds.

They turned to look at one another and then laughed as they shrugged in unison. “Just a case of the creeps, I guess,” Drakanis said. Woods wasn’t really buying it—he was feeling
something
anyway, and if he was feeling something, that meant it had to be pretty strong—but he nodded, if for no other reason than to calm them both down.

“Screw it. Let’s get to work,” he said and then started up the walk with Drakanis tailing a half step behind. He stopped at the tape and waved at the officers, who didn’t bother to leave their posts or check IDs but just waved him through. On a lot of days, Drakanis would have been irritated and Woods would have been amused by the less-than-perfect job performance going on here, but both of them were becoming known figures around the station.
Besides,
Damien thought,
it
isn’t
like
there’s
much
to
guard
anyway.

He lifted the tape up and waited for Drakanis to slip under it and then followed after him. The officers finally decided that at least some measure of professionalism should be displayed—especially given the near riot that was probably picking up again over at the office—and the younger of the two approached them, stifling a yawn against the back of her hand.

Woods knew the slender, rat-faced cop who was coming up to him—he made it his business to at least get names and faces from almost everyone he was around as soon as possible—but only in the vague, passing-in-the-hallways fashion. Officer Taeda was not known for either outstanding or horrid performance and preferred to be in her cruiser to sitting at the office, so the two of them had never had much occasion to associate. Taeda gave a brief glance at Woods’ badge before nodding.

“Woods. Here on one of Parker’s errands?” The voice matched the expression; still half asleep, Taeda was putting out plumes of fog that reeked of last night’s eggnog and schnapps with every word, slurring them ever so slightly.

At
least
someone
was
having
a
party
last
night.
Maybe
it’s
not
all
gone
to
hell
just
yet
after
all,
he thought as he manufactured a smile. “You could say that. Got dragged in against your will, Taeda, or just had an early morning pick-me-up?”

Taeda shrugged, gave Drakanis a once-over, and then waved them back to her partner and the entrance. She started back herself without waiting to see if they would follow or not. Her voice carried a bit of a barb in it, a warning maybe, as she spoke over her shoulder. “Little of both, Woods. Kept some in a thermos. I’m willing to share, if you feel like you need a dose of Christmas spirit.”

Drakanis laughed; he couldn’t help it really. The sound just escaped when he thought of the nearly rabid folks outside the police station, the deranged and possibly resurrected serial killer on the loose, and the world-destroying demon that was due to wake up any day now contrasted with one hungover officer offering them all a nip from her bottle. Given the sharp looks he got from Taeda and Woods and the way Taeda’s partner’s head turned in his direction, inclined slightly like he was looking at Drakanis over the rim of a pair of old man’s spectacles, he guessed they didn’t see the humor in it.

“Never mind. Just thinking how there are a lot of folks out there who could stand a little Christmas cheer. Make your jobs a hell of a lot easier, I imagine.”

Taeda’s partner raised a thermos in one gloved hand, as if toasting them. He was an older man with sloped shoulders, crooked legs, and a dignified frosting to his hair, who had been born Manfred Manderly but whom everyone just called Old Man.

“Ayuh, true, true. So pass ’er ’round, boys—and girl, don’t give me that look, Janice—and give a toast to the cap’n.”

Manderly’s Yankee accent—difficult at the best of times—was thickened by cold and the nips he had apparently been taking at Taeda’s thermos, making it nearly impossible for Drakanis to sort it out at first. When he saw Woods take the thermos and raise it, “To the captain, sure thing,” his brain translated it again and got most of the sense.

The thermos was passed around, first to Woods, then to Taeda, and then back to Manderly. Finally, it rested in Drakanis’s hands, and he raised it up.

“To the captain.” Only after he upended the thermos and had the liquid rushing into his mouth did he think that he should have been watching Damien’s face more closely when the younger man tasted it.

The flavor was something only Taeda—whose dead taste buds had been a topic of conversation even when he was still on the force—could enjoy; eggnog had never been intended to be mixed with butterscotch and sour apple schnapps. He nearly choked as his throat closed in complete revulsion at the idea of allowing the mix into his stomach. Over the rim of the thermos, he could see Taeda grinning, a wicked gleam shining in her brown eyes and telling him all he needed to know about whether that had been intentional or not.

He managed to force himself to swallow it, coughed into his hand, and fought the urge to sick it back up as he passed the thermos back to Taeda. “That’s an… interesting mix,” he croaked out, which prompted laughter from her and Old Man both.

“Ayuh, this is also true. But y’get used to it.” As if to prove the point, Manderly filched the thermos from Taeda’s hands with a surprisingly nimble gesture and took another mouthful, grinning from ear to ear the whole time.

Woods just shook his head and started to push between Taeda and Manderly. They rolled their eyes at each other and then at Woods, passing the thermos back once again. Then they stepped apart. “Michael Drakanis, come onnnnnn do
wwwwn
!” Taeda said, in her best Bob Barker voice—which wasn’t very good, to be honest, but she deserved points for trying, Drakanis supposed—before pushing at him to go on through. When he didn’t move at first, she arched one of her almost nonexistent brows and tried to hide the smirk he could see simmering underneath her apparently friendly smile.

“What’s the problem? Not here to see the big mess? Afraid the monsters are going to get you if you go in?” While her voice was trying to sound friendly, just a bit of a tease, Drakanis was catching a great deal of actual malice coming off of her, though he couldn’t feel any particular reason for it.

Woods had stopped just inside the door. He was glancing over his shoulder and looking at them all with concern, but Drakanis just shook his head and moved onward.