My Black Beast (5 page)

“
SHIT! Jesus!”

He yelped and bent over at the waist to steady
himself.

“
You… yeah. You are quiet. Why are
you in your cloak? Dinner’s… uh…”

She pointed at the door to the
apartment.

“
You want to go?”

She nodded, a serious expression on her
face.

“
Yeah, no. Totally. Let me get my
coat and pants.”

He went into the bedroom and quickly changed
into a pair of jeans and grabbed his coat. It wasn’t more than
thirty seconds, he figured, but when he came back into the living
room, the door to the apartment was open.

Lowell bolted into the hall, fearing the
worst, but found Marka surveying the doors of the hallway trying to
figure which would let her out. He calmed down when he saw her and
put his coat on. Marka looked at him and then went back to work on
the doors. Lowell took himself to the door she’d been looking for
and held it open.

“
This one.”

She walked through it ahead of him and they
went down the stairs. It was still early yet and as they descended
Lowell couldn’t help but worry that there would be someone in the
lobby. People tended to keep to themselves and a quick glance would
probably just show them a girl dressed eccentrically. He could pass
it off as a nerdy obsession of hers or something. She wasn’t likely
to say much to anyone.

The lobby was empty, like it always was, but
it didn’t do a whole lot to calm him down. He started going over a
made up narrative in his head. She’s a cousin. From the Midwest.
Out to visit somebody. Or something. Where in the Midwest?
Wisconsin? People were from Wisconsin. It’d be fine.

The glass door swung open to the street. The
Seattle clouds still hung around, keeping the world just that extra
bit darker. Marka turned to face the direction where Lowell had met
her the day before. He walked along beside her. There was a guy in
a hoodie moving along the far side of the street, nothing really
worth worrying over.

“
Are we going back to that
building?” He paused. “Is it safe? I mean, probably would have
heard about it if another one of those things showed up. I mean,
I’m trying to sort of pretend that this isn’t really happening, in
a way. Well, not you. You’re fine. But the monster and the
rubble.”

Without making a sound Marka sped up. Lowell
moved to keep pace with her and she took off, running what seemed
impossibly fast for a girl her size. It took him a second to
understand what was happening, but before she made the curb, he was
running as well. If things had looked suspicious before, this was
just… yeah… he might as well wear a sign that said “child abductor”
on it.

Marka made the corner well ahead of him and
bolted across the street. Lowell crossed behind her and tried his
best to keep up but a life of pizza and general sloth doesn’t end
up being the best thing for physical fitness. Still, he never would
have thought he couldn’t keep pace with a little girl. Here was the
truth though. She was leaving him behind almost entirely. He turned
to a dead sprint hoping to at least keep sight of her.

It was clear she was headed for the industrial
building where he’d found her. The only thing he could imagine was
that she was going underground. It didn’t make a lot of sense to
him, but nothing really did in the ridiculous course of the past
day or so. He looked down for a second to try to give himself a
head of extra speed but when his eyes came back up, she was gone.
He slowed up a bit and told himself he’d just have to head to the
industrial site. It was doubtful she’d get by the cops unnoticed,
but who knew. She put a brick through a slimy dinosaur, so maybe
she was some kind of magic.

The run to the small side-street he’d snuck
her away on the night before was maybe the most exhausting thing
Lowell had done in the past five years. He stood behind a brick
fence at the corner, wheezing like an asthmatic. The blue lights of
a police car popped in and out as they spun around, though there
was no obvious talking from around the corner. Makes sense they’d
be in their cars. He’d need to round the corner casually and just
see what the scene looked like. Drawing suspicion would end
somewhere way south of poorly.

With the most convinced innocent face he could
manage, Lowell rounded the corner. There was a cool breeze running
down the street and it sent an oddly cold chill running across his
previously hairy neck and chin. The feeling reminded him that he’d
shaved and suddenly he felt like the police would be able to smell
the guilt on him.

He’d made it twenty feet before he had the
confidence to look up and survey the area and when he did he
stopped dead. The police weren’t in their cars. No, they were very
much out of their cars. But they weren’t walking and talking and
doing cop stuff. They weren’t walking or talking at all. He could
see three of them laying on the ground in front of their cars, not
moving.

“
Ohhhhh shit. Okay. Okay. This… not
alright.”

He heard a metal clang from the alleyway and
the cops on the ground disappeared from his mind. The alley leading
to the clearing where Lowell had found Marka the night before was
empty and eerily quiet. Or maybe it was just normal quiet and
Lowell was convinced he was going to be murdered by a monster or by
a cop. The truth of it was less dramatic and when he came to the
edge of the small lot there was nothing to see.

The space around the collapsed wall had been
taped off and there was a small tent at the far side of the area,
though it was dark and didn’t seem to be in use by anyone. Another
sound pulled Lowell toward the collapsed wall and he saw a small
shadow move against the dark of the room.

“
Marka!”

He called out, but it was probably a stupid
move. The figure dropped down through something and Lowell rushed
over. What he found was a jagged hole coming up through the ground.
It was the size of the monster Marka had fought, or so he told
himself. There wasn’t a good deal of level headed thinking before
Lowell stepped out over the hole, but when he began to fall the
thoughts all came rushing in.

Before they had time to coalesce in his brain,
his feet turned first wet, then cold, then impacted on something
hard and slick. He managed to bend into what he now recognized by
smell as sewage. It was either that or a distinctly sewage like
substance. There was splashing in the distance ahead of him and he
pushed the concern out of his mind as best he could.

The sludge was watery but came to his mid-calf
and gave considerable resistance in the shrinking sewage tunnel. He
could stand well enough just under the building but he was crouched
now and the air was thicker and it was all he could do not to
vomit.

“
Marka! … Marka! It’s Lowell! Come
back!”

He couldn’t see anything ahead of him, the dim
light having long since left him behind. He patted the pockets of
his jacket, nothing. The phone he was looking for was broken
anyway, so he wasn’t going to have any light. A flash of the
dinosaur thing ran through his mind and he decided the lack of
light was probably fine.

He took a few more steps, he hadn’t heard any
splashing in who knows how long. Another section of pipe came,
smaller than the last one he’d passed. He’d need to crawl into it.
Lowell frowned in the pitch black. He wouldn’t find her. He felt
himself lurch to the side and his stomach turned, the full force of
the stench plunging into his lungs. He vomited, a choking, painful
heave in the dark. He sucked in air and wretched again. He fell to
his knees, the sewage at his thighs. He was going to die in a
fucking sewer. God, his mom was going to be pissed. Probably. He
choked out a laugh.

A purple light bloomed at the edge of his
vision and there was a tug at his jacket. Lowell wrenched his head,
but in the direction he’d come. She was there, Marka. He reached
out for her and felt a wind push the foul air away. The fresh air
ran into him and filled his lungs. He smiled as his vision blurred
and dimmed. He could almost touch her.

Chapter 5

Lowell’s mind swam back from
the black
nothing of being knocked out by poo gas. He realized he wasn’t dead
before he opened his eyes or heard anything. A brief second after
he realized he wasn’t dead, the sound of lightly burbling water was
around him and he opened his eyes. Above him was a rounded roof of
pale rock. He was in a cave of some sort.

He moved to sit and looked around the cave.
Sitting in front of him, staring intently, was Marka. He coughed a
small laugh.

“
Morning.”

Rubbing his head, he looked toward the
burbling sound. It was a small stream of perfectly clear water. He
pulled himself over to it lazily and scooped a bit up with his
hands.

“
Is this safe?”

He held the water aloft and turned toward
Marka. That was when he saw it. The stream and the recent return to
consciousness had distracted him to the point that, somehow, he’d
managed to miss the thirty foot tall, pure white door that stood at
the far end of the cave. It was made of an entirely different sort
of rock as the surrounding cave structure, marble maybe.

Lowell’s eyes widened and he looked from the
door to Marka.

“
What is that? Why is there a
door?” He looked back at the door. “Fuck sake, it’s
massive.”

Marka stood quietly and looked at the
door.

“
Home.”

She said the words without looking at Lowell.
He pulled himself to his feet and stood doubled over for a moment,
steadying himself.

“
Home?” He scanned the door again.
“Wonderful.”

He walked closer to the door ahead of Marka
and looked at it a bit closer. The door was done in an intricate
style with carved pillars reaching up in staggered levels toward
the top. The entire surface was carved with designs that were
similar to the tattoos that covered Marka’s body. They spiraled
toward the middle of the door where four cloaked statues stood
facing outward, each at a corner of a diamond alcove with a hollow
latticework ball of onyx in its middle. Staring at the door, Lowell
realized that he could see because it was emitting a blue-white
light that filled the cave around them.

Marka stepped in front of him and the cave
dimmed. The door’s light shifted a deeper blue and then toward
purple. It was a light Lowell was growing familiar with. The cave
dimmed and the glow intensified. Marka’s leg glowed intensely and
she winced against the strain. The door began to slide open away
from them, trailing in deep grooves. The opening was unearthly
smooth and silent aside from a humming that came from above. Lowell
looked up and saw the black sphere glint dully in the dim purple
light. The humming came from the ball as it spun in the
air.

He was transfixed by the ball. The purple
energy in the grooves of the door seemed to flow toward it and dive
in at different angles. Inside the ball it fell to the middle and
disappeared into a dead black hole that looked like it had ripped
open the world.

Finally, it fell into place at the far end of
its arc and Marka turned to Lowell. He came to her side and stood
next to her.

“
Lowell…” She paused, looking for
the word. “Go?” She pointed beyond the door.

He smiled. “Yeah, I go. You saved me, I’ve got
to make sure you get home safe.”

She nodded and started through the door.
Lowell followed closely and when they had passed over the arc of
the door it pulled itself shut in a rush. Lowell watched it slide
soundlessly past and then looked out ahead of him.

It was beyond comprehension. There was an
entire city and more. To his left, where there should have been a
limestone wall was a sprawling farmland that seemed to curl up onto
the rounded rock of the walls what seemed like at least a mile
away. To the right stood what he’d have sworn was an old European
city, full of ornate buildings. At the center of the odd city there
was a spire that shot up sharply along one side and stood
triumphant and beautiful above everything that sat below. He
couldn’t quite tell what it was made of, but it was a spiral of
white around black stone. Maybe the same materials as the
door?

Marka tugged at his jacket, pulling him back
from the trance the spire had put him in. It didn’t seem as though
it should be able to stand. The girl started down a smooth cobbled
path that lead out from the doorway. It was his first step onto the
path that made him realize the entire expanse of the city was lit.
He looked up, there was nothing. Rock along the walls fading into
blackness as they climbed away from the ground. It must have been
more than a few hundred feet. The spire stood that tall at least
and was nowhere near anything that could be recognized as a
ceiling.

The blackness above meant there was no
lighting up there either. The world was being lit from ground
level. He looked down at the path as he paced along behind Marka.
He blinked at the stones, swearing there were tiny strands of light
rushing over and between them, but he couldn’t ever seem to focus
on any of them.

Ahead, he heard a slight shuffling sound.
Marka had increased her pace and was walking with purpose. The road
forked not too far away, one path leading straight and the other
heading down into a series of shoddier looking homes that was maybe
a few hundred yards to their right.