The Gathering Dark (11 page)

The demon scrabbled up the steps on its spider legs and froze before the doors of the Sacré-Coeur, scorpion tail poised above it. An ear-piercing chittering noise began to rise from the monstrosity, as though it were screaming at whatever lay within the cathedral. Its tail twitched, daggerlike tip drawing back, and then it stung forward at the open doorway.

As though the air above the threshold of Sacré-Coeur were solid concrete, the demon’s stinging tail sent up orange sparks of eldritch energy and the beast staggered backward two steps. It shrieked even more loudly and then began to attack with such fury and speed that its tail was blurred as it sparked again and again off whatever power impeded the demon’s access to the cathedral. It raged and screamed and tried to push itself bodily through the door but it could not enter.

Sacré-Coeur was holy ground. The demon was filth and would not be allowed to enter. But soon it would turn its rage to the surrounding area and then more people would die.

Kuromaku ran at the police car, pausing when he was only a few feet behind the officer who had been driving. He and his partner were shouting to one another wide-eyed with fear. In the distance more sirens could be heard but there was no time to wait. If an army of Paris police arrived on the scene, there was simply a greater chance of more carnage, not to mention the probability that stray bullets would kill those cowering in terror within the cathedral.

“Stop!” Kuromaku shouted to the officers in French.

They spun, weapons aimed now at him rather than the demon. But only for a moment. They saw this Japanese man in a business suit and dismissed him as a threat.

“You must get back, sir,” the older of the officers instructed him, barely restraining his panic. “Find somewhere to—”

Kuromaku reached down to his side, slipped his hand into
nothing
, and withdrew as if from nowhere a
katana
, the long curved sword he had carried into hundreds of battles since that day in 1194 when it had been presented to him by his master, the shogun Yoritomo. The katana shimmered into existence now as though he had crafted it from the air itself. He knew well that was how it would seem to those terrified onlookers who now watched the horror unfold from the safety of some shelter or other.

Kuromaku leaped onto the hood of the police car, drawing the attention of the police officers. He smiled at them each in turn as they stared up at him in astonishment and saw the sword held lightly in his right hand.

“Gentlemen, I hope you will do me the favor of not shooting me, either accidentally or otherwise,” Kuromaku said.

Then he jumped down to the cobblestones and raced across the space that separated him from the demon. It continued its attack, thrusting its deadly tail again and again at the cathedral as though by sheer evil intent it might tear a hole in the fabric of the wards that protected the place. Its chittering wail had grown even louder and higher pitched and Kuromaku wondered for a moment if the demon was smarter than it seemed, if indeed that scream was not its voice but some effort to find a frequency that might destroy the barrier that kept it from ravaging that holy place.

The katana felt warm in his hand as though the metal were alive. His legs pumped and he sprinted toward the demon from behind. It had barely noticed the bullets that had torn into its flesh, had punctured at least two of its eyes, viscous yellow pus now seeping from those wounds. All of its malign attention was focused on the cathedral.

But now, abruptly, it stiffened and fell silent for an instant before whipping around to face him.

“Damn,” Kuromaku whispered.

The police and their guns presented no danger to the thing, but it had sensed him coming. It could feel what he was, or perhaps merely what he meant to do. Somewhere nearby the sirens of approaching police cars grew louder and there were screams from hidden onlookers, and yet there was a kind of desolation to the Montmartre now, as though some hideous apocalypse had already occurred. The place had become a battlefield.

Kuromaku felt right at home.

A war cry tore from his throat as he raised the katana with both hands and leaped into the air, legs tucked beneath him. The demon’s stinger tail flashed in the sunlight as it punched toward him, too fast. Kuromaku brought his blade down and it clanged as the metal scraped along the demon’s tail. He had parried it, but nothing more.

Now he landed on the ground in a crouch, only feet in front of the monster. Close enough to smell the putrid stench emanating from its punctured eyes and to see the intelligence and bilious hatred in those that remained. Its pincerlike maw opened and clacked shut several times as though it were yearning to tear into him, perhaps to consume him. If he tried to retreat, it would impale him with that tail.

Kuromaku rolled forward and rose again in a single smooth motion that ended with the katana whickering around in a sidelong arc that severed the demon’s foremost pair of legs. Black, fetid ichor spilled from its wounds and it rocked backward to compensate for the loss of those appendages. He snapped into a combat stance with the sword above his head, pointed directly at the demon’s face, then thrust it forward, plunging it into another of the thing’s glowing yellow eyes.

He had seen it all in his mind—he would bury the katana in one of the demon’s eyes and the beast would rear back. Kuromaku would ride it forward and then cut, slicing the blade across and down, blinding the demon completely.

But the demon did not rear back. When his blade entered its eye, the abomination pushed forward, pincer-mouth snapping loudly as it tried to reach him. The katana sank too deep into its mass, and when he tried to tug it out or cut a wider wound, the blade grated against bone. The demon drew back, scorpion tail suspended just above it.

The sword was trapped. Kuromaku struggled to free it even as he glanced up and saw the gleaming black dagger of its tail descending. In an eyeblink it would split his chest, shattering bone and tearing flesh.

Kuromaku evaporated. His body, clothing, even his sword turning to mist. The demon’s tail cracked cobblestones and it shrieked in fury at his disappearance. But Kuromaku had not disappeared. As nothing more than mist and awareness he slipped along the ground beneath the demon. Its tail was dangerous, but that was not its most vulnerable point.

Underneath that horror his body took form again, molecules reknitting themselves into flesh in an instant, and he lay upon the rough cobblestone in a pool of foul gore from its severed legs. Before the demon was even aware of his presence, Kuromaku thrust the katana up into its soft underbelly and sliced the blade through thick muscle, cutting a wound three feet long. A shower of stinking viscera rained down upon him, soaking through his clothes and drenching his hair. He could even taste it on his lips, and though Kuromaku relished the flavor of blood and the feel of it in his mouth, running down his throat, this was different. This was not human, but demon blood, dripping from its entrails, and it was all he could do not to vomit.

As the demon collapsed upon him, Kuromaku became mist once more and his essence slipped from beneath the grotesque cadaver even as it twitched several times where it now lay upon the cobblestones. Then, at last, it was still. As mist he drifted for several seconds back across Montmartre, sunlight glinting upon the moisture in the small cloud he had become. The mist began to spin, whipping up small bits of litter and grains of sand, a dust devil that abruptly took on human form once more. His suit was clean as if newly pressed and his katana had disappeared back into the nowhere void from which he had drawn it. This was not precisely magick unless it could be said to be some form of molecular sorcery, but he knew onlookers would view it as such.

Kuromaku stood in the midst of Montmartre surrounded by overturned chairs and carts and shattered easels. Several of those wounded or killed in the exodus still lay where they had fallen but he did not need to go to them. Police and medical emergency personnel were even now rushing to their aid. The two officers whom he had urged to stay back stood and stared at him only a dozen feet away but they did not approach. He had likely saved their lives but their terror was plain in the dull gleam of their eyes.

On the patio of the café where he had hoped to share a pleasant celebratory lunch with his attorney, he saw Sophie standing beside a table with her hand upon it as though she might at any moment topple over. Her mouth was agape and there was a sadness in her eyes. No fear, though, and he was relieved to see that.

Kuromaku ran his hands across his lapels to smooth them and tugged at his jacket to make certain it sat right on his shoulders. Then he strode over to her. Sophie watched him come with almost no expression at all. Her face seemed absolutely still now, right up until the moment he stood in front of her and reached out to touch her shoulder.

She flinched.

Pained, Kuromaku glanced away from her. “I see. Perhaps lunch must wait until another day.”

“No, I . . . that was incredible,” Sophie said, voice almost hoarse.

Kuromaku met her gaze once more, saw her searching his own eyes for answers, for explanations.

“You’re one of them,” she said.

He frowned. “You must have known, Sophie. I have been a client of your father’s since before you were born. Have I aged even a day in that time?”

A girlish smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “I know. I mean . . . I suppose I knew. But you always seemed so civilized. Sophisticated.”

From within the café several waiters and waitresses now emerged along with some of their patrons, all of whom crossed the patio tentatively to gaze over at the stinking mass of quickly rotting demon flesh that lay in front of the doors of Sacré-Coeur. Some of them gave Kuromaku a wide berth but others barely noticed him; apparently they had not been looking out at the conflict as it had occurred. Probably hiding under a table, he would have wagered.

“I did, eh?” he asked gravely. “And what do I seem now?”

Sophie licked her lips anxiously and glanced around at the growing number of people who had joined them on the patio. When she spoke again, she stepped nearer to him and her voice dropped.

“You’re a vampire,” she said, as if the word were foreign to her lips. And perhaps it was.

“Such a broad and vulgar term,” Kuromaku told her. “I’m no more a vampire than you are a chimpanzee. They still hide in the shadows and tombs, fancying themselves creatures of darkness right out of Stoker’s fevered imagination. I’m a businessman. Once upon a time, I was a warrior. Nothing more.”

Those last two words rang hollow, even to Kuromaku himself, but Sophie did not challenge his assertion. For a long moment she only stared at him, shifting nervously from foot to foot. The media coverage of the Venice Jihad and subsequent melees had revealed to the world the existence of vampires and demons, and the difference between traditional vampires and beings like Kuromaku himself, who had once called themselves shadows. Books had been written, films made, thousands of hours of news coverage devoted to the revelation that the supernatural was fact rather than fiction, that evil existed. While the Roman Church crumbled for its part in the Venice debacle, faith in general thrived around the world.

For if demons existed, why not something else? Why not divinity?

Kuromaku smiled as he thought of it, glanced back across the Montmartre at the dead demon, this revolting, savage, filthy beast whose very existence proved to millions the existence of God. To millions of others, however, it would be perceived as just another hoax. No matter how much video was shot of it, no matter how many images ended up on the Net, there would be those who refused to acknowledge its existence for the very same reason; because if this thing was real, chances were there were more benevolent powers in the universe as well, and that just fucked up their worldview completely.

“If that smile is meant to be comforting—” Sophie began.

He raised an eyebrow and his grin widened. “It wasn’t. I’m sorry. And there’s nothing amusing about what just happened here. I was just thinking that no matter how many times the darkness bleeds over into the light, some people refuse to believe there’s anything to be afraid of.”

Sophie’s bright blue eyes were no longer sparkling. She glanced past him at the blood and brain that was painted in a fanned arc across the front wall of Sacré-Coeur and she shuddered.

“But there is.”

Kuromaku placed a hand gently on her shoulder. Startled, she let out a tiny gasp and looked up at him. He nodded, kneading her shoulder just a bit.

“Yes. There is,” he said. “But not everything in the shadows is something you need to fear.”

For a long moment she stared at him. Then, at last, she gave an uncertain nod. Sophie licked her lips to moisten them, her body shuddering as her breathing quickened, and she stepped closer and laid her head upon his chest.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He frowned. “For what?”

“For being a light in the darkness.”

Sophie withdrew from him and glanced around. Kuromaku followed her gaze and suddenly he saw their surroundings with clarity for the first time. The hundreds of spectators, the dead and the wounded, the blood-splashed cathedral, the remains of the demon, the police and EMTs. He had seen all of it before but this was the first time he had truly taken in the entire scene.

All of Montmartre was silent save for the barked orders of the police and the low whispers that rippled through the crowd. Some of them were staring at the blood or the demon but the majority of the crowd was focused instead upon Kuromaku himself. Several official-looking police officers were muttering among themselves, casting furtive glances in his direction as though they were preparing to question him. This was bothersome only in that he knew there was nothing he could tell them that they did not already know.

“It’s going to take me a while to . . . figure out what to make of all this,” Sophie said. “But to begin with, do you mind if we go somewhere else for lunch?”

Kuromaku smiled. “By all means.”