Run the Day (4 page)

The Sleeper Awakens.

- Hack

Well that was properly ominous.

Last I knew Hack had been roaming the West Coast, doing who knows what. And I'm not much of a fan of anything that brings doom. Hack wasn't the kind of guy to bullshit or embellish, which made the bit about the whole world a touch unsettling. And what the hell was the Sleeper?

More and more I was beginning to regret even getting out of bed today, but Devlin and his sweet, sweet money had been too damn tempting. Things were starting to pile on thick, and I still had no idea where to even begin. I needed to find out what I could about the Libro, but if Hack was really in danger I owed it to him to meet up, if only for old time's sake. It was still early; I had lots of daylight left, which was a concept that would take some getting used to.

I shut down the computer, snagged my bag, and stomped my way downstairs, meandered through the halls and made my way back to the kitchen where I'd left Swift. Strangely, he was standing much the way I'd left him. As if he hadn't moved the entire time.

"What the hell are you doing?"

A shiver ran through his body and he slowly turned to face me, like he was coming out of a trance. He shook his head, reached up and took off his glasses. He rubbed at his eyes with the heel of a hand, and I gawked. White, they were solid white. Swift caught me looking and replaced his glasses, frowning.

"Just thinking. You look less terrible."

"Right, okay. Thanks. What in the hell is up with your eyes?" I stepped closer and asked.

Swift stood up straighter and folded his arms across his chest, which made me notice how much larger and imposing he was. He frowned down at me, letting his sunglasses slip down his nose some to expose a glimpse of his eyes, which were now a perfectly normal shade of hazel.

"What are you talking about?" Swift asked.

What the hell? More hidden depths to the enigma that was Swift, I'd get to the bottom of it, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

"We have to go; I need you to take me to the Bastille." I said.

"Why do you need to go to a club at not even nine in the morning?"

"Something about the end of the world, I'll fill you in on the way." I said and walked out of the kitchen.

I was still stiff and sore as we made our way out, but I was mostly functional. We stepped outside and I slipped into my coat, the morning still hanging on to the autumn chill.

After we'd gotten into Swift's car and were heading down the road back to town, I told Swift about Hack's letter. He listened without saying a word, eyes straight ahead the whole time.

"And what exactly is Grannok's Cell?" Swift asked when I was done.

"Abel Grannok was a farmer around a hundred years ago. He also happened to be a mage of some talent, and a psychopath," I said. Swift perked up at that, but kept his eyes on the road, so I continued, "He had been communing with some of the uglier denizens of the Other Side for a while, and working on ways to bring one over and devour its essence. He thought he could achieve apotheosis, godhood, by consuming one of the elder powers. My great-grandfather Henry, along with Hack, went after him when people around town started to go missing.

They found him at his farm in the middle of opening a portal to one of the more hideous parts of the Other Side, surrounded by the ritually slaughtered remains of some twenty victims. The entity was already making its way through when Henry and Hack disrupted the ritual, closing the portal and binding Grannok, but the reflux of energies fried Grannok's mind and left him a gibbering idiot. Back then, the Bastille was an actual prison. Bastille's French for prison, see? Hanford's classy. Also explains all the brick and iron architecture. Anyways. They locked Grannok away in one of the cells, but one night an angry mob of townsfolk broke in. They believed Grannok had been possessed by the Devil, and went in loaded down with pitchforks, torches, and the like. They were furious about all the victims.

So, right there in the cell, they strung Grannok up and hung him, beat him, then lit him on fire. There wasn't a damn thing he could do about it, the man's mind was gone, but the people didn't care. They just wanted justice, some kind of closure. I can't really blame them. But, long story short, the reason it's called Grannok's Cell, is because his ghost still supposedly haunts it."

I took in a deep gulp of air after I finished rattling off the story. Grannok's Cell under the Bastille also happened to be where Hack used to take me to practice some of the more dangerous aspects of being a mage, once upon a time. Evocation, lethal forces, stuff like that. He used to say it was shielded from outside influences, or something. It was probably why he wanted to meet there.

"Well? Does Grannok still haunt the Bastille?" Swift asked, turning the car onto one of the streets that led downtown.

The Bastille was located in the civic square, by the old courthouse and an ice cream parlor. There was an antique carousel ringed with fantastical creatures nearby, and right across the street was an old abandoned theater. The library was spitting distance away, too. Most of the buildings in the downtown area were around a hundred years old, or older, and they had a lot of stories to tell.

"Not entirely sure. I've never seen Grannok, but the building practically hums with activity from the Other Side." I said as we pulled into the parking lot beside the Bastille.

In this part of town were a lot of old growth trees, towering things, and they kept the red brick building in almost perpetual shade. Though the place had gone through numerous renovations and owners, the Bastille still looked like a prison. There were towers at each corner, and the iron bars on all the windows. These days the place saw business as Hanford's trendiest nightclub.

I snagged my bag and Swift and I got out of the car. We walked around the building to the front, passing by a cluster of city landscapers maintaining the grounds around the square. By the grand stone water fountain not far away a pack of old men sat at a picnic table, drinking from bottles in brown bags and playing checkers.

It was all stupendously normal.

To the casual observer, life as usual, another quiet day. We walked up the steps of the Bastille and approached two massive oaken doors studded with iron rivets, and I glanced up at the unlit neon sign proclaiming the building's newest name.

"Nightside? Serious?" I pounded on the door with a balled fist.

"I think they're closed, Thomas." Swift said from behind me.

"There's always someone here, even if there's not."

Swift was about to say something but I held up a hand for silence, just as one of the heavy doors swung open of its own accord. Inside everything was dark except where slashes of light cut through the iron bars on the windows, and revealed the main floor of the club. A great empty space, apparently a dance floor, it had an area with high-top tables and a bar off to one side, and a large stage on the other. In the back, by the restrooms, was an unmarked door tucked into the corner.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Swift asked as we walked inside.

"It means what it means," I said over my shoulder and began making my way across the room to the back.

We had made it about half way across when the front door shut itself with a thud that echoed through the room. I cringed a little, and looked back to see Swift standing at the ready, hands raised up and curled into tight fists.

"Calm down, the caretaker knows me. We're probably safer in here than we are outside." I told Swift and continued walking.

"That's comforting. Who's the caretaker?" Swift asked.

"What," I said and approached the unmarked door and clasped the handle. It opened up to a short dark hallway and I flipped the light switches on the nearby wall.

"Who's the caretaker?" Swift asked again.

"I heard you the first time. What is the caretaker, not who. What," I said and passed by the first two doors in the hallway when the overhead lights came on. At the back were two flights of stairs opposing each other, one leading up and the other leading down. I, of course, took the one leading down.

"Why is it every time I work with you, I get recurring migraines?" Swift asked as we descended the stairs.

"Because your puny mind can't handle all of the awesome," I said. I kept my hand on the wall as we went down, "It's just the nature of the beast."

The humming in the back of my skull that had started when we walked into the Bastille got a little more insistent when we got to the bottom of the steps. I spotted the dangling cord to the lights and pulled it, illuminating what looked alarmingly like a prison cellblock, because that's exactly what it used to be, row after row of cramped cells and sturdy black iron bars. They were all being used as wine cellars and storage now, crammed with racks of bottles and boxes.

"I can still kick your ass," Swift said and stepped off the stairs and into the cellblock, "So which one's Grannok's?"

"But you never would, would you? You're my very own guardian angel," I said and pointed down at the end of the row, where the lights didn't quite reach gave way to shadows.

I took a breath, switching between spectrums, and the room changed.

I could see luminous white vapor rising out of the cells and coalescing into the spectral shapes of men and women. Hazy individuals, they floated listlessly around. Not even proper ghosts, they were harmless, and they dispersed when I walked through them. It tingled when I did, and I caught hints of memories that weren't mine. I saw someone crying in a courtroom, a bright afternoon in spring on horseback, the blank look on my wife's face as I held her underwater.

I shook off the thoughts, and pressed on. When we got close to the last cell I noticed something seeping across the floor, red and slick.

Blood. A lot of blood.

Things aren't supposed to bleed that much. I rushed over to the cell door and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what waited inside.

"God damn it."

I'd found Hack.

He lay curled up on the floor of the cell, trying to hold his insides from spilling out of the great gash that split his belly open. He looked terrible, and much smaller than I remembered. The Hack I knew was a giant, he vibrated with power, the poor creature before me was a shriveled up husk of a man. From the countless wrinkles to the patches of liver spots and ropey veins standing up beneath tissue-paper skin, he looked ancient.

"We were too late." I knelt beside the broken man, lifting a hand to wipe away the blood that stained his face and matted down his beard, when his hand shot up and wrapped around my wrist like a vice, grinding bones together. I gasped and heard Swift cry out behind me. Hack yanked me down and pressed his face up against mine, his eyes wide open and bloodshot, pupils swallowing up all the color, and his voice wheezed out in a dry rattle.

"Not too late."

Chapter Four

"He's alive?" Swift exclaimed.

I was about to answer when Hack went limp, releasing his grip on my wrist and falling slack in my arms. His breath came in slow, shallow rasps and his skin was sickly pale. I looked down at the gaping wound in his abdomen where he still had one arm clutching at his own intestines, and that's when I noticed the wound itself. With my vision shifted I could see the edges of the wound flickering and moving, sparkling faintly with curious energies, so I leaned in for a closer look. The flesh was growing back, slowly but surely, trying to pull itself together. It was like watching a fractal in slow motion, expanding, replicating. I hadn't even noticed when the blood stopped flowing.

"Yeah, barely though, but he's fighting. We have to get him out of here; whatever attacked him might still be hanging around," I said and pulled my jacket off, maneuvering Hack's limp body enough to get it wrapped around his midsection in a half-assed bandage, "Give me a hand, he's heavier than he looks."