The Spaces in Between (11 page)

Is this his apartment?
They must be waiting for someone really important, because this action of the Irishman seemed so amateur. He grabbed them as quickly and efficiently as possible, but had nothing to do with them until whoever shows up.
Who the hell would want us so badly?
The men in black suits were somehow related, but something in Warren’s gut told him that they weren’t in cahoots with the Irishman.

Could this have something to do with Cameron?
Warren immediately pushed that train of thought back down into the stem of his brain. They watched the door in silence to pass the time. They never once spoke, made eye contact, or tried their Frostys.

The monotony parted when they heard the door open in the next room.

“Have the case? Then right this way.”

The door opened and the man in white stood in the doorway with the Irishman. The man in white shielded his eyes with his forearm against the single halogen hanging from the ceiling.

“Now wait just a second.” The Irishman sidestepped into the man in white’s way. “You said that you’d cover my expenses. She’s an expense, but considering the price for him an extra fifty grand won’t mean much to you.” Janet gulped and bit her lip to hold back the tears. They were cattle to be bartered.

“I don’t want the woman,” the man in white said. “Just kill her.”

“That’d cost more than taking
him.
”

“I’m not taking the woman, and I’m not giving you a red cent extra.”

“Then we’ve got a major problem,” the Irishman towered over the man in white. “You’re not leaving here without taking both of them, and then we drop by the bank or wherever the hell you get this cash. There you give me the extra fifty grand for my trouble.”

A sixth sense flared in his mind, and the Irishman went for the revolver in his jacket pocket. The man in white did not so much as strike the Irishman as his arm seemed to extend into a whip that slashed the Irishman across the face. Blood and teeth splattered across the wall followed by the Irishman’s crumpled body. The man in white glided across the floor towards them.

Janet cried out and Warren’s mind went through every scenario with such speed he couldn’t see any of them. He skimmed his mind and in short they were fucked. The wires began to whisper, and Warren tried to ignore it. A screaming came from the light bulb.
Wait! He hates me! And if you just give me the word I’ll give him hell even if it kills me.

“O-okay.” Warren told the voice in his head. He would have felt far saner if he had kept his end of the conversation in there too. The light flared like a spotlight on the man in white. He hissed and swatted at the light. A cat chasing after a laser pointer. The light fixture was torn from the ceiling followed by a spray of sparks. Once his vision adjusted Warren leapt form his seat and rammed the man in white with his shoulder. He might have as well just run into a marble statue. The man in white didn’t give like a person, but remained stiff and rigid.

Warren cried out when he landed backwards unto his bound wrists. The man in white grinned like a snake and his fingers slithered around Janet’s neck. There was a snap followed by another. The man in white staggered backwards. Blood splattered against the wall and Janet. The Irishman stood up again and smoke billowed from his Smith and Wesson. His intentions were palpable and left a copper taste in Warren’s mouth. Warren could barely see him in the darkness – what little was left of his face to see.

His right eye had swollen shut and his nose was knocked completely askew. He spat something that sounded like a glob of jelly filled with marbles when it hit the ground. Then the Irishman began to breath, heavily, from his mouth. The man in white looked up and two bloodless holes went across his face. The man in white was healing right before their eyes and his bullet wounds were already perfect holes in his face. His right temple exploded after a flash of light and a bang.

The man in white was fazed, but still standing. The Irishman removed the hammer from his pants, swooped across the room, and planted the claws of the hammer into the base of the man in white’s brain. He went limp and slumped, but he was still held on the hammer.

“Healed around it then?” the Irishman said. Using the hammer as a handle Irishman dragged the man in white to the door. “Well our contract is void so I’ve got no beef with you guys unless you go to the police. Then we’ve got a huge problem. Mention this to anyone and I’ll kill the both of you. No force can stop me when I put my mind to something, y’see? Keys to the cuffs are on the dining room table. I guess this is one of his flats, but feel free to help yourselves to that suitcase. For your troubles…”

Warren and Janet were silent.

“I’m leaving. Don’t follow, and don’t try to leave until I’m gone. But don’t dally too long, because I’m sure someone called the cops. In a half hour or so they might actually come out here. It’ll look pretty incriminating. Even though the blood’s gone…” Warren’s eyes scanned the room. The Irishman was right it was like the man in white’s blood had already evaporated.

Warren turned around but the Irishman had already gone into the living room.

“You ever read Anne Rice?” the Irishman asked the limp man in white before stepping out of the apartment.

12

Zzzzrrtt! Zzzzrrrtt!

Warren woke up with a start and rolled over to pick up his phone that was vibrating on the nightstand beside him. It was Unknown.

“Hello.”

Heavy breathing.

“
I don’t want to be found anymore.
” Warren whispered to the phone. The call disconnected, and he returned the Motorola to the nightstand. But once again he couldn’t make himself fall asleep. He sure as hell wasn’t going to wake Janet up. They barely said anything to each other and after today he wouldn’t really blame her if she left.

He dragged himself over to the bathroom and washed his hands. The soap stung the wounds on his wrists from the handcuffs. He sat on the couch and picked up a Radisson notepad. It was unlikely that they would ever go back to their apartment or even stay in this den of monsters for too long. But would we be any safer anywhere else? Was the world a den of monsters?
No, but the Astral is.
This was the Dread Pirate Cameron’s voice.

Warren sighed and twirled a Radisson pen. It wobbled and went off course. He looked at the brand on his hand. He took in every detail of the sigil, and sure enough the mists of Fae filled their hotel room.

“So what does this all cost me?” Warren said. “Let’s go ahead and get this over with, but if you want to kill me please make it so she won’t find my body in the morning.”

“It might, but not anytime soon,” Teftin said. “I want you to write a story about what happened today.”

“What about the Irishman? What if he sees it?”

“Change all the names if you must except mine, but do you really think this would be up his literary alley?”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

13

Elsewhere the Dread Pirate Cameron finished his drink and slammed the glass on the table. Lam was gone for now. Lam was confused, because he had hurt it. Lam withdrew from the Physical, from Cameron, and those knowing him. Until it can heal, regroup, anyway.

His red left eye watched the thing scurrying in the darkness of the room. The dreadful thing he called to drive Lam away. A thing beyond the spheres that was not entirely under his control, but greater than the Old Ones. He was safe inside the double circle, but not because of its power, the Watcher did so out of respect for the covenant. It was a grudging respect at that. The ship was silent and completely dark. All walks of life subjugated themselves before the Watcher.

Cameron moved the eye patch from his right eye to his left eye. His green eye was not able to see the creature and for this he was thankful. He dragged the pot of soil from under the table. He gave the Watcher the license to depart and removed a short sword from the pot. The artificial lights overhead filled the room as he did this.

Cameron was drowsy as well as drunk on liquor and magic. He pulled an LCD sheet from his pants pocket and entered a phone number as it came to him. He paused and waited through the rings.

“Hello?” Warren Elliot answered on the other end of the line.

Now what? Do I say
Hey you probably don’t remember, but I accidentally caused you to lose the use of your left arm. Remember, when you were in space?
Finally the best course of action occurred to him. He mouthed the word sorry, but couldn’t bring himself to vocalize it. Soon he had drifted off to sleep.

“
I don’t want to be found anymore
,” Warren Elliot whispered and hung up.

“Done,” Cameron murmured in his sleep.

Intermission: Makoto Tsuen’s Homecoming

As his shuttle approached the Lemurian satellite monastery, a dull pain sank down from his heart and settled at the bottom of his limbs. They were now replaced with metal facsimiles (the Draco’s insurance policies were excellent), but Tsuen’s soul clung to the memory of flesh and blood limbs.

He listened for the click of the auto-landing switch. He had neither touch nor sight to confirm what his hand was doing. The shuttle rocked with a force that would cause any lesser man (Cameron) to lose their lunch as it broke atmosphere.

For all Tsuen could tell there could have been damage to the ship, but this one trip was all he needed. He banged around the one room of the shuttle until he stumbled out the open door. Exposure to an organic environment sparked his spiritual senses.

Where he was in total darkness before, he could see the light emitted by the faint auras of the plants. The grass under his feet tickled his aura. Tsuen sat in the lotus posture and with a deep breath stretched his aura across the globe. He took in the entire terrain of the small moon until he could see the flames of complex life forms.

He dashed in the direction of a nearby plateau. The red rock stretched higher than the clouds – a precaution to keep non-Lemurians out. Statues of the Lemurian masters were carved into the rock with heads made to look eroded flat. A thought flashed through Tsuen’s nervous system and flashed in his legs.

His mechanical legs pumped, and Tsuen easily cleared to the top of the first statue. His next takeoff cracked the head of the statue and he spiraled to the next. While hating the lack of tactile sensation, he did admire not having to channel
rhlung
or invoke the Lemurian deities to scale the mountain.

On the third leap his fingers raked over the handholds, but in a moment of doubt he wasn’t able to find them. Instead his titanium fingers and toes dug into the stone like it was merely soil. Tsuen had only traveled this path three times before.

The first when he was only a novice and with an escort. When a Lemurian turned fifty, iit was the time of their coming of age. They had reached sexual and physical maturity decades ago, but the Lemurians valued the maturity of the mind. The coming of age ceremony was ritual death called
Chud.

The novice would be declared dead and his meager material possessions were given to the next of kin. He would be taken from the monastery and stranded in the wilderness. In the wilderness the novice would fast only on what he could find and meditate until demons would come and drag him into Hell.

The vision in Hell is different from person to person, but ended the same. The Enlightened One would deliver them from hell, and whisper to them the secret to scaling the plateau. When the monk returns he is fully initiated into the order and given a new identity.

Performing the ritual of Chud took months, even years, of traveling to find the right place to meditate. The needs of the body often broke the fast and the ritual would have to be restarted. Tsuen only needed a week to return to the monastery. He traveled down the road the third time when he was exiled thirty years later.

Now on his fourth trip, Tsuen prayed. He called upon all the demons whose names he learned in Hell. He called upon the spirits of Death. He invoked the angry and violent deities of vengeance. A fire burned inside of Tsuen, and he scaled the red stone with preternatural speeds.

His metal arms and legs carried him tirelessly through the clouds and over the last of the statues. He was now close enough that he could sense the guards in the tower at the top. Tsuen crouched and summoned all his
rhlung
into his legs. The metal joints in his legs pistoned and shattered the head of the statue under his feet.

He propelled like a jet and broke the clouds high over the monastery. The guards jumped from their towers towards him, and demanded identification in the Lemurian tongue. Tsuen’s sword flashed from its scabbard. He fell to the ground in one piece and the guards in two.

The other guards sensed the disturbance and banged on the bells in their towers.
Rhlung
crackled and condensed in their hands. Tsuen brought his aura into himself and his presence drained away from him. The eyes and heightened senses of the guards could no longer perceive him.

Tsuen silently scaled one of the towers and snapped the necks of the guards inside. For a moment the other guards could feel his presence so Tsuen split himself and sent the doppelganger towards the next tower. He dimmed himself again and leapt towards the opposite tower.