Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (30 page)

†
Va
l
†

I
use bolt cutters to pop the lock on the chain-link fence, then prop up the chains after I pull through so it looks like it’s still locked from the street. Not much I can do about the tire tracks without risking Euthos seeing me disguising them from the road. I run back inside the lot to where the truck is parked and find the nearest storage unit big enough to fit it. Bingo. Bolt cutters. Back the truck inside, and think: good thinking on Delano’s part to have had the mechanics snip the wire that makes the thing beep when in reverse. At the payphone near the empty self-storage office, I dial Delano.

“It better be important –
Beep
.”

“Hey Del – it’s Val. Listen, that last meeting was a bust. The contract was killed by Euthos.” I stop and look around the vacant storage lot. “Delano…. Euthos is after me. I’ll try to get back to Central as soon as I can. Goodbye.”

I hang up the phone and walk back to the truck, my stomach twisted and shaky. Euthos won’t kill unless he has a contract. So unless he’s gotten over his code, someone wants me dead. No surprise there, it could be a lot of people. I close the door to the storage unit. If Euthos still remembers that little incident surrounding my darkening, he was probably only too happy to take the job.

Wait… Jones? No. No, that doesn’t make sense. Euthos would have to have been following me. Was there anyone in the crowd? …one of his handlers maybe?

Kill him!
Jones yelled
kill him!
at me. That isn’t enough for Euthos though, is it? Is he that desperate to kill me?

Suddenly I hear the sound of Euthos’ car. My blood goes cold. It sounds like a hornet right next to your ear, but it’s the engine to his ricer, a long way’s off. I hold my breath but it doesn’t do any good – he knows I’m here. Do I start the truck? I’ll have to drive through the door or open it, and either way it’s gonna be loud. I grab the AK and put it on my lap. The plan: take a deep breath. Crack both windows so you can cheat the AK out to shoot. Turn on the engine – don’t hold the key over too long – feel it with your
fingertips till you know the engine turned over then put it in gear. Hit the gas and blow through the door, then cut the wheel right. Go down the lane towards the gate but check right before you turn. Gun it left and make for the fence. Reassess. Execute.

As soon as I turn the engine over I hear the pop and whistle of a rocket propelled grenade. I think it’s over right now and here, but the plan is already goin’. I stomp on the gas and blow through the storage unit door in front of me. Suddenly the whole place rocks and is lit up by a fireball. It’s on the other side of the aisle of the storage lot – he must have hit the propane tank to scare me out of hiding. And damnit, he’ll have the satisfaction of thinking it worked. Damn it! At least I know he’s to the right, no need to check.

I straddle the center console with my left foot on the gas and stick the AK out the passenger side window, left hand steering the right hand firing. I cut left towards the fence shooting blindly but then see something out of the corner of my eye. He is on the left – not the right! Val, you idiot. I let the AK fall in the cab and get fully back into the driver’s seat. Euthos is standing behind the door to his jet-black street racer. He tosses a shoulder tube to the ground and goes back into his cabin for…
another one
?

I push the beast to its limits, but that isn’t very far. We’re a lumbering target that he pegs with a second RPG. It hits the back end somewhere and I spin around in a one-eighty, almost flipping. It must have hit above the wheel well. When I settle back down I’m facing him, though the truck seems stable enough that I assume I have three and a half tires left. I’m already in reverse and never lost momentum. For a split second I see a flame thrower with a backpack tank sitting in his passenger side seat. Then I cut the wheel and reverse J turn the fucking beast, heading for the freeway again.

It won’t take him long to catch me, I need a new plan. Yup, there he is, flying out of the gate and drifting into the left lane. I pull into the center but she’s not very responsive. Must be down to the run-flat base. On-ramp in three hundred yards. Gun it. Euthos’ hornet gets from the gate to up-my-ass in the time it takes me to get from the “turn here” sign to the ramp itself. You need a new plan. Somewhere through the blood pumping through my ears I hear a train. The plan: get to the train.

The freeway is empty so as Euthos makes a move and zooms up ahead of me just after I merge on, I cut the wheel all the way over, nearly flipping the bitch, and gun it for the median just behind the ramp entrance. He spins around after realizing his mistake but by then I’m already headed for the gap in the overpass at forty miles an hour. Just before the collision, I throw on my seat belt and put my hands in front of my head. I plow through the concrete barrier and topple down through the square hole between the two sides of the
highway. I hit my head but feel a great relief when I see that I am looking down into a splintered freight car and moving along the tracks perpendicular to the freeway.

†
Reverend Jone
s
†

“
I
t’s okay, Alana,” the mother screams.
A kindhearted woman gains respect
. “It’s okay.” She strokes her daughter’s hair, matting the blood into her scalp. “It’s okay.”

“What’s wrong with her?” the father asks me, worried about his unmoving daughter. What a silly man.

I lean down and get a hold of the girl who seems blind to the world, yet awake. She is a beautiful young thing under all that blood. I take a handkerchief and wipe across her neck looking for bite marks or scars. Next I lift up her hands and hold them delicately while scrutinizing her thin, little wrists. She’s wearing her pajamas: a pink, cottony tank top and matching sweat pants. They feel soft. I check her ankles pulling up her pants to the calf and noticing the softness of her flesh. Lastly, with a tightening in my belly as the authority reveals its power, I pull down at the waistband and check the inside of her thighs by the edges of her panties. Her parents say nothing but look on worriedly, the ignorant whelps. The girl remains limp till I am finished my inspection. I quickly call for a blanket and wrap it around her, giving time for my erection to subside.

“She’s not bitten, but she may have been brainwashed,” I announce.

“It’s okay.” The mother continues to blindly rub the demon blood into the girl’s face and hair and I watch her do this. I look at the blood on her hands like finger paint. “It’s okay.” She rocks herself and her daughter back and forth. Where would I be without the Lord? Lying in mothers arms, covered in blood.

“What do we do?” A neighbor asks me quietly.

“We have to retaliate,” I say. Why hasn’t that blasted Euthos killed Val? How can I be expected to save these people, Lord, with abominations sprouting up like a plague? “The infiltration has already begun.”

“What about Paul’s parents?” The demon-boys parent’s… yes.

“They may be brainwashed too…. or worse.” I pause. Far worse. “Contain them for now. Make sure they do not escape.”

The neighbor, a short middle aged man with obedient eyes named Henry, quickly makes his way down the stairs and through the gathering crowd. Neighbor Agnes, a wretchedly ugly and old woman, steps forward and asks for instructions from me, her leader. “Agnes,” I say unto her. “Get the other deacons together. We must plan against further invasions!”

She nods and goes down the crowded staircase. I despise her wrinkles. People have now filed into the house and are gathering in the streets all around like a storm of fury. I lean down and separate Alana from her mother. “Take her to my chapel,” I order, and several other neighbors take the girl away, despite the mother’s reluctance. Oh, a mother’s reluctance. Her husband quickly goes to her side and helps her to stand. “Submit to your husband, wife, as it is fitting to the Lord,” I quote, then, approach them cautiously. Several good neighbors move with me like angels at my sides. I take off my fedora and say to the parents: “I need to speak with you two… about your daughter.”

†
Delan
o
†

I
can’t help but strain to hear as much of the conflict as possible. I had come to a stop at a South Gothican corner just in time to see a group of people lynching a man. At the forefront of the vicious throng was his very son, fear, masked by rage, aflame on his countenance.

With the shouts and screams out of ear shot, I continue on to Captain Cassandra’s old house. Corbin and Roger should already be there. Cassandra lived over a liquor store near a commercial section of a South Gothican neighborhood. I park on the street and ignore the suspicious looks I get from some pub patrons nearby. As soon as I make my way up the stairs to Cassandra’s apartment, they head over to the limo and begin looking in the windows.

Corbin opens the door as I arrive at the top of the stairs and ushers me in with a hand on my back and suspicious look through the walls.

“You worried about the car?” he asks me as we walk past the kitchen and into the office. I shake my head no and then greet Roger with a hug. We’re all happy to see each other alive.

Roger is holding a particular file in his hands and many more are spread out over the desk. I can still feel the lingering presence of Cassandra as we move through her old space. Her smell… her breath is still warm in the room. I will miss her most of all.

“We got this from various cypera houses in the area, and attached them to Cassandra’s file,” Roger explains handing me a folder.

I flip it open and quickly skim through with a flicking index finger. I assimilate the thirty pages about a school rioting in about a minute and then look up at Corbin. “This candidate for a darkening… Is there more on him?”

He nods gravely and then hands me five more folders. A casual report on a murder in South Gothica, the killers name: Alexavier
Ganithala age fifteen, catalogued by the cypera Julia Magnusson. A prison riot and fire. Among several hundred who die or go missing? Alexavier Ganithala, catalogued by the secretary Gregor Milonowski from prison records. Pantheon Theatre rented out the Saturday before Tuesday’s Reckoning? One Dominique Tsuba.

“Who is this?” I ask.

Corbin hands me a high school year book open to a page. It’s a picture of the high school’s main stage ensemble. He points to a girl, then flips it to another page to show me her portrait.
Dominique Tsuba
. He flips back to the picture that shows her holding hands with a rather normal looking boy next to her. Corbin flips to another page that shows his portrait.
Alexavier Savage
.

“A name change…” I ponder. “After he escaped from prison.” I get dizzy in my seat. “He was at the theatre?”

“It’s not over,” Roger says. Corbin points me back to the next folder. A photo shop owned by Corey Caprelli explodes mysteriously, one of the employees there that night – Alex Savage. Cassandra picks up the kid on her radar and orders a report on him. None of this ever reached her.

“Recognize the date?” Corbin asks. The photo shop explodes the night before the Reckoning, two days after the kid was at Pantheon. The next day, shortly after the news of
the explosion in Neo Square, the school riots spilling out into surrounding neighborhoods. The name of the school. Solthweros High. Corbin slides the same yearbook over to me, showing the cover. In reflective silver lettering: Solthweros High.

Roger is looking at me with wide eyes awaiting my reaction.

“I sold that photo shop to Corey Caprelli,” I say, staring at the file. “I arranged for his take-over when I sent everyone the red scroll.”

“What?” Corbin stammers setting his hands down on Cassandra’s desk.

“What? What does that mean?” Roger asks.

“I have no idea,” I sigh.

“Did Corey have something to do with this?”

“Looks like we’ll never know.” I toss the file on the table and sit down in the desk-chair, my head in my hands.

Roger asks, “What about the prison or the pawn shop where the murder happened?”

“Or the school?” Corbin adds. “Did he have anything to do with those?”

“Corey? I don’t see why he would have,” I reply, at a total loss for answers.

“Well it’s not like this is a fucking coincidence,” Corbin spits.

“Where is he now?” I ask them.