The Dark Communion (The Midnight Defenders) (31 page)

Then the scene changed, and she sat in a bus station, or maybe the lounge area of an airport, her park bench became a row of hard, plastic, armless chairs. Large picture windows stretched from floor to ceiling behind her, reflected the light of the room she inhabited.

“Anna,” I breathed.

At my side, Adam spoke with Brom’s voice, “Your daughter is not here.”

“No,” I said simply. From the moment I saw her, I understood. I knew the truth, but didn’t want to voice it. Anna was dead. She’d been dead a long, fucking time. I was a fool to expect anything else, yet what Adam told me was true, nonetheless. She was here, right before my eyes. In a way I never knew could be possible.

Brom moved behind me, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Your daughter awaits judgment,” he said without malice or remorse. “And I will reunite you with her.”

I didn’t fight. I didn’t move. I knew exactly what he intended. I’d breached the sanctity of his isolation, come backstage uninvited, and ruined the illusion he’d created. I found the man behind the curtain.

But none of that mattered. I had my daughter back, and while Brom sought to destroy me, he’d given me the greatest gift I could’ve asked for.

The pain numbed me. And although I didn’t feel anything, I knew a smile had spread across my face. Had I felt, I would’ve almost pitied Brom and certainly felt such intense joy at the sight of Anna my heart would’ve collapsed.

“The show must go on,” Adam said, almost eagerly, and Brom’s hand began to tighten.

A low growl behind me. Then a brown blur, and the hand slowly, uncertainly, began to let go. Brom took a step away, and the growling grew steadily louder until it purred like an outboard boat engine.

My consciousness drifted from me. My eyes never left the pool, never left my little girl, yet I could see the room from some high place. Below me, the candlelight flickered beside the sheer curtains, and shadows danced against the wall.

Brom grappled with one of the Ridgebacks, the one with the black face mask and nose. His coat was torn away, and his limbs flailed wildly. His skin was sunken and sallow, as if someone had removed all of the organs and stretched bread dough over his skeleton, let it sag under its own weight. The way he wrestled the dog, they might have been fighting over a steak.

Taboo’s head writhed and shook, snapped his canines down on Brom’s fingers, and wriggled free of the Bogey’s grip, backed up to the makeup table and barked furiously, his head close to the ground, his eyes narrowed and fierce.

Three gunshots echoed in the small room. Brom took them all in the back and shoulders and staggered forward, then spun with malice.

Ape stepped from the darkened doorway, one of Finnegan’s Colts smoking in his outstretched hand, a look of pain and agony in his hardened eyes. The violet light of his cane sword glowed like a star in his other hand, and Brom’s attention shifted nervously to the blade.

“I have a score to settle with you,” Ape said, teeth gritted and bared.

He squeezed off two more rounds before Brom charged. Ape brought his sword up and swung, missed the Bogey completely. The top hat fell in two equal pieces to the ground. Brom’s fists hit Ape’s gut, threw the sword arm away to the side and backhanded Ape.

Ape rebounded quickly. With a snarl, the amaranthine blade arced upward, but Brom caught Ape’s forearm in his skeletal grip. For a moment, the violet light touched Brom’s neck, and the pale skin sizzled and smoked. He didn’t cry out, simply bowed his head and twisted his wrist, flicked the sword away and snapped Ape’s wrist with a loud pop.

When Brom let go, Ape staggered to the side, fell against the wardrobe and onto the chair that stood next to it. Candles toppled on their sides, maybe a dozen all together, and hot wax pooled and dripped as the flames bent skyward from the wicks and caught the diaphanous fabric that wallpapered the room.

Taboo leapt at Brom, knocked him flat against the wall. I heard a loud, dull sound and pieces of asphalt flaked from the brick. Brom screamed and threw the dog backward, but it rebounded instantly and sunk its teeth into Brom’s calf, clamped down firmly and shook his head as if in seizure.

I don’t know what happened next. I felt my body again, felt my pain, and saw the peaceful form of Anna in the still water before me. My left glove hung from my teeth and my naked hand hovered a hair’s breadth from the water’s surface and for a moment I thought I could touch her. I was aware of the scorching heat in the room, the way the hung fabric caught as if soaked in turpentine. I knew the room was on fire, and yet it didn’t seem to matter.

It’d been more than twenty years since I’d seen my daughter, and suddenly, she was before me. Nothing else mattered. I couldn’t bear the thought of being without her again, not even to save my own life. Yes, as I watched her still form, I realized that this was Brom’s lair. That as long as Brom was there, something would exist to separate me once more from my child.

What I did next, I didn’t do for myself. I did it for Anna.

I pushed the pain from my mind, pulled strength from outside of myself, and even though I couldn’t feel my leg, even though my side was aflame with heat and agony, even though my arm was mostly useless and throbbed dully, I managed to pull myself to my feet, fueled, I guess, by nothing more than my own stupidity and stubbornness.

Adam lay unconscious beside the pool, both of his arms out before him clumsily. Another discarded shell.

I turned to the fire, to the Bogey, the dog, my friend, and squared my shoulders at Brom who turned toward me as I stood. He tilted his head to me in challenge, tragedy on his face.

I threw myself forward.

He was so gaunt and thin I could’ve taken his spinal cord in my hand through his mid section and lifted him like some plastic Halloween lawn display, but he held his arms out at me, caught me as I fell upon him, one hand going for my throat, the other finding the open wound in my side.

Fingers in my gut, electric pain shot through me. I reeled back, trembled with the intensity. I couldn’t focus on any, one thing, but knew it was me or him. All I could think of was my daughter. All I could think of…

My Anna.

My fingers found Brom’s mask, and as my ungloved hand caught the porcelain face of Tragedy, my senses prickled and tensed and the pain was numbed as the vision began to play.

It wasn’t one vision but a series of quickly-flashing images, hundreds of them, like a slide show in fast forward.

I saw Brom’s cloaked form crawl through the basement of the theater, saw him stalk the shadowy corridors after hours. The make-up table, the wardrobe, the costume trunk, the masks, the fabrics had all been spirited away from the theater.

Several images showed Brom in front of his mirror, removing one mask for another, changing faces, his form masked in shadows.

Brom stared in to Anna’s pool, the waters dark and murky.

Brom came up through the sewer drainage pipes of Arthur’s retirement home, found Ape’s uncle, the flair of Solomon’s ring.

Adam’s school, the playground, a view from the other side of the fence. Brom stood on the outside, looked in, hidden in the shade of tall trees. He watched three older boys toss Adam Gables around, taunt and spit on him. One of the boys raked his nails across Adam’s face, left him in the dust, and they wandered off amidst their own laughter as Adam cried.

A bathroom with two children. One was Adam Gables, the other must have been Clint Johnson. The reflected image of Arthur Towers in the bathroom mirror raised his taloned hand and struck once, twice, three times. Clint Johnson screamed in agony and pain, fell onto the floor and the man called Dewey slashed and tore and carved, all the while Adam screamed, “No, Dewey, stop it. Don’t hurt him.” And Clint Johnson was a loose pile of raw, exposed tissue, thick red fluid, and hanging, limp tatters of skin and hair.

Another flash revealed Adam and Brom standing together in the make-up mirror. Brom wore the tragedy mask and stooped low, his head visible just over Adam’s shoulder, and both stared forward as the Bogey handed Adam the comedy mask. The boy lifted it to his face and cocked his head to the side.

The Wright house, Brom on the patio in the rain. Then he shimmied up the drain pipe to sit outside the boy’s window.

Then darkness. I understood that the mask was propped against the mirror, and from what I could see, only two candles burned in the room, distantly, beyond the hanging fabric and visible only through the sheer scarves. A loud crash sounded from somewhere beyond. A thin, gaunt and bony hand shot out from between sheets of fabric, made an opening in the curtain and Brom’s dark head slithered out of the gloom, backlit by the candles.

After that, a series of images I didn’t understand:

Brom, naked and huddled in a sewer pipe, cold light filtering in from a grate overhead, water cascading around him in a weak, but steady, waterfall of sorts. The mask held limply in one hand, head buried against his shivering chest.

Brom, mask-less, face hidden from view, shattered a full-length, standing mirror with the base of an antique lamp.

Brom sulked away in the shadows from the brightly-lit, nocturnal chorus of the Siren Song.

Brom, alone.

And I understood:

The way he stalked back-alleys in search of those he could control, the way his ring would flare and spark as he took possession.

The way he stalked his victims, hand-picking the children he later consumed, fed on their emotions. He chose kids who didn’t have a lot of friends, that were isolated, easier to manipulate. He’d seen something special in Adam.

But most of all, what I understood about Brom was not the things he had done or the places he had gone, but I understood who he was. How weak he was.

His collection of old husks – his mutilated legions of the Dark Communion – weren’t discarded, but stored as if in a closet.

Through the power of Solomon’s Ring, he wore people like suits.

As I came out of the flash, mask in-hand, Brom pulled away.

His hands up before him, face turned to the side. He cowered in the corner, exposed, his thick strands of hair shading his bowed head like a veil.

“You’re pathetic,” I spat. “You’re not a fucking god.”

I threw the theater mask against the wall, shattered it like fine china.

He startled at the crash, then screamed and threw himself against me, threw me. I caught myself before I fell in to the flames of the hung tapestries.

Brom moved to the makeup table, grabbed the first mask he could find, the porcelain clown, and lifted it to his face.

He turned back to me, but as he spun, Ape roused himself from his chair and struck him in the face, shattered the clown façade.

As the pieces of the mask fell away, Brom caught one of the shards, his head bowed low, and raised it to Ape, stabbed him in the shoulder once, twice.

I tackled him.

Ape fell back against the wall, and Brom and I collided into the make-up table, shattering the other masks, snapping the table legs, knocking the mirror loose where it clattered to the floor and cracked.

The Bogey managed to plant his feet against my chest, kicked me off. As soon as I was clear, Ape leapt on him, hit him several times in the face.

Ape got to his feet and lifted Brom by the neck, squeezed, a look of rage on his face.

Brom struck him in the chest, and Ape’s hold faltered. Brom was on his feet again, hit Ape once more. He grabbed a table leg from the floor and beat Ape with it like a club, watched him fall and continued to swing furiously after he was down.

I grabbed the blazing curtains behind Brom and wrapped them around his neck. The flames sizzled against his hair, and he struck me, threw me back. He tore the sash from the ceiling and let it hang around him like a scarf of flames, the light billows of smoke thinly veiling his face.

He studied Ape for a moment, and when he saw no movement, turned to me.

A blur of brown fur struck Brom, drove him back into the shadows and toppled him onto the floor.

Taboo growled, his head and body shaking violently as he straddled the Bogey. The flaming cloth shook to ashes with the bared fury of his canines.

I moved to Ape, but he didn’t seem to be awake, and then something caught my eye: a purple glow.

Just behind the Ridgeback sat Grace, and in front of the gun lay Ape’s sword. I crossed to them and holstered the gun. Then I retrieved the blade. Moved to Brom, eyes narrowing.

“Taboo,” I thundered. “Heel.”

The dog whimpered once, quietly, and backed away, growling as he did, his eyes never leaving Brom.

I don’t know what I’d intended, but as the blade raised to strike, I saw his finger, the glint of the firelight on the white-gold band, as his hands shielded his face from me and cowered under the violet light that caused his skin to bubble and burn at the touch.

Fury flowed through me. “Fuck you, Brom,” I spat.

I swung, heard the gory crack of bone and the wet tear of tissue as his hand fell away and clattered to the floor at his feet. I tossed the blade against the stone floor. The metal rattled against the brick underfoot, and I reached down, took the severed hand in my fingers. I pocketed Solomon’s Ring and tossed the hand.

As I looked down at him, he continued to hide his face. I shook my head and cackled. “You’re pathetic,” I said. “Still trying to hide, even after I see you. Not the show that you put on, not the glam or the fucking fashion. I know what you are, you fucking coward.”

I knelt over him and pulled a large piece of mirror from the broken frame that lay on the ground. I held it up before him and said, “You don’t want anyone to see who you are. You’re afraid of yourself.” And as I spoke, his body went rigid, tense, and something curious happened. His hands lowered from his face, and for a split-second, he saw his own reflection.

I saw what he fought so desperately to hide.

Brom had only one eye, one black eyebrow, and that one amber eye glistened with pain and fury and shame, blinked rapidly at the image in the mirror. The rest of his face was sunken with deep reddish-brown marks, three of them side-by-side, like claw marks, that stretched from the hair line in front of his right ear to the flapping shreds of torn flesh that dangled where his jaw should have been. There was no hollow eye cavity. There were no nostrils, no mouth, and no structure or molding to his face of any kind below his left eye, as though whatever had done that to him had melted the skin over any openings.