The Light is the Darkness (16 page)

“Jeez, sis. What’s a guy to do then?”

“Get on your horse and ride into the sunset. Avoid that fight in the desert. The forces of evil ‘TM’ will be watching. Go underground. Cash in whatever you’ve got squirreled away and retire. Live like a king on that island. Forget me. Forget Ezzy. Forget us all. This is an elevator ride to hell, bro.”

“I love you.” He didn’t know what else to say.

There was a long pause before she said, “One more thing. The house is dangerous. Don’t go there.”

“A trap?”

“Yeah. Dark side of the moon. Lose the girls. Do that soon.”

“What girls?”

“Don’t be an asshole, Connie. Someone sent two of them, didn’t they? The brides of Dracula you fucked tonight? In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve attracted groupies like flies lately. Not to burst your bubble, but you ain’t that cute. One of your enemies has thrown these devil bitches at you for months. They ain’t what they seem. They’re decoys sent to spy on you, drain you, weaken you for the kill. You’re getting to be a beast, so Drake or Kosokian sicced twins on your sorry carcass. Don’t even dream you can handle that kind of action if it gets rough. Another thing. My amigo Lorca is probably lurking nearby. You see that motherfucker, start shooting, no questions asked. Meanwhile, scram.”

“I’ll try,” Conrad said. “Sorry you and the boyfriend had a falling out.”

“Remember, time is a ring. Don’t go near the house. But, if you do, watch your ass.” She hung up.

“Who was that, baby?” the blonde said, nails digging into his arm. Her eyes were large in the dimness. She nuzzled his shoulder and fastened her lips to his flesh.

“Yeah, who was that,” the brunette said. She’d swiftly raised her head in the manner of a predator. Her eyes were also very large. She dipped her chin and licked his nipple.

“An old flame,” Conrad said. “Go to sleep, girls.” He concentrated, visualized waves of lethargy radiating from his core. The women yawned, relaxed, and soon were snoring. He watched the light from the streetlamp thicken to red, and after a while, he extricated himself and dressed and left the women muttering and snarling in their sleep.

III

The two-lane highway wound through forested mountains. As the sun rose, he turned onto an unmarked dirt lane and eased along the overgrown track for nearly a mile before entering a field. The Navarro family home lay near the center of the clearing, rebuilt shortly after the tragic fire during Conrad’s teenage years—a two story wooden structure with a peaked slate roof, walls painted in shades of green and brown. The government had picked up the tab, sent in an army of contractors and laborers, and the whole building was restored in weeks like the phoenix from its own ashes. Conrad had watched this miracle of industry and finally grasped that his father was involved in some heavy duty shit for the powers that be to take such an interest in his welfare. Imogene rolled her eyes at this epiphany. She’d said,
Late to the party as usual, you big, dumb bastard
, and smiled sweetly and punched him in the arm.

He parked near the front porch. He fastened a cestus with two inch spikes to his left hand and forearm, strapped knives to his belt and ankle. The yard was overrun with weeds and grass. Moss clumped on the roof, vines dripped from the eaves. He smoked a cigarette and watched the golden light spear through the surrounding trees and ripple across the grassy field. By contrast, the dark windows of the house were cavities, pits.

The spare key was hidden in a coffee can covered in leaves at the end of the porch. He unlocked the front door and stepped into the foyer and smelled its closeness, the rich, mildewed damp that pervaded such long-neglected habitations. Lamps glowed in alcoves here and there, but the house was otherwise steeped in dusty gloom. Conrad bowed, inhaled, and concentrated. As if his consciousness dilated and partially detached from his body to float along the hallways of the building, he gradually became aware of every bolted door and sealed nook, every minute vibration of scuttling termites and flaking plaster. Mice foraged in the cellar, the hundred-fold cabinets and closets. Spiders hung like opals in their webs. Mold bloomed on the sills. But this was the sum of organic life present. None of the Honorable Opposition lay in wait for him. He was utterly alone.

Conrad had left home for good on his eighteenth birthday when he walked down the drive to catch the bus for the airport and his decade-long sojourn in Crete. Glancing at the austere furnishings reminded him that they’d lost the last of their familial history on the day he’d fought Dad and the house burned. The paintings and knick-knacks, the photo albums, Mom’s library…all reduced to ash and scattered across the field and among the fir trees. This place was a rotting shell. He knew instantly that Imogene had never come back either; the only familiar human scent belonged to Dad and that too was stale as the collecting dust.

The cellar door and surrounding surfaces were forged of steel beneath the walnut paneling. The lock was secured by an electronic keypad. Dad hadn’t shared the combination and it was doubtful with his eidetic memory that he’d bothered to write it anywhere. Conrad briefly pondered smashing the door with a sledgehammer from the garage, or trudging out to a mining supply company for dynamite. Both options were problematic for a variety of reasons owing primarily to laziness and his abiding disquiet about staying too long in the house. Without focusing, he typed a random sequence of numbers and the door slid open. The numbers were simply
there
and he had understood without conscious thought that they would be. Cool air rushed forth. He flipped a wall switch and a series of naked bulbs caged in iron lattice illuminated intervals of the stairwell that curved downward into gloom.

Dad’s experiments were congealed in beakers and tubes and Petri plates. In his day, he’d spent as much time crouched watching ants moil in the dirt as he did peering into a microscope or at a computer monitor. There were as many tracts and tomes of philosophy and folklore upon his library shelves as treatises of medicine and chemistry. The elder Navarro had believed, as did the ancient philosophers of the Far East, that the cosmos ultimately revealed itself as a repeating pattern, an infinitely replicated superstructure contained and embodied in a galaxy, down to a drop of blood.

Poking through the maze of rusty, dusty equipment, overseen by murky photographs of Tesla and Einstein, Conrad missed the crazy, ruthless old drunk. Unfortunately, this abandoned lab was no Fortress of Solitude and Dad hadn’t been any kind of Jor-El. There wouldn’t be a journal or a stash of secret recordings to lay his innermost thoughts bare, to offer a pearl of wisdom or an oblique symbol of rapprochement. There was only dust and rust and bad memories.

The center of the laboratory was empty space amid four support beams. The rest of the room was cluttered. This inefficiency was inexplicable. He studied the concrete, its patina of water stains, its chips, cracks, and concentric grooves that funneled into a shallow basin. He ran his fingers over each support beam, searching for the hidden switch, the concealed button, his inquiry guided by intuition and cynicism. The inward face of each beam bore an inscription that together formed a quartet of glyphs obscured by a thin coat of plaster. The beams were of basalt. Dad had had them trucked in special. Conrad didn’t recall any carvings, but obviously Dad got funky after the kids left the nest. The stains on the floor weren’t from water, either. Too dark, too ominous. He hung his head. “Oh, Pop. What have you done?”

Spilled a few drops of claret to propitiate the black gods, what else?
the ghost of Imogene whispered.
There’s a vicious dagger stashed in a drawer somewhere. Look at those Tesla coils, those tuning forks. He was trying to open a door in space and time with vibration and sympathetic magic. Whatever came through would be famished, natch…

So Dad really had been a magician, a sorcerer, corrupted by his association with Kosokian and Drake and the Great Dark they represented. Imogene was right about everything.
He sent me and Genie away. Maybe he possessed a shred of decency. Maybe he wasn’t all bad.
He wanted to believe that, but he also recalled Uncle K’s oblique comments regarding Dad using Genie as a weapon and holding his remaining son in reserve. That didn’t strike Conrad as particularly wholesome.
No, my preservation is just another kink in a plot only Machiavelli could truly appreciate.

“Ah, we meet again.” Dr. Raul Lorca detached from the inky backdrop and stood directly beneath one of the lamps so his emaciated figure was striped in shadow. He wore a handsome suit and his hair was dark and soft upon his collar. Conrad estimated Lorca to be of early middle age, despite his sallow flesh, its tightness across his jaw and cheeks. Elegant and a refined in a vaguely aristocratic fashion, it wasn’t difficult to see why cynical Imogene might’ve been smitten. She’d always fallen for the worldly types; at least for a ride or two. Lorca glanced at the posts and said, “My, my. A summoning circle. Dr. Navarro was conjuring demons with the blood of babes, eh? Quaint.”

“Hi, Raul. Last time we talked you were fucking my sister. I got a feeling I liked you better then.”

“You’re too jealous of Imogene to truly like any man. On the subject of procreation: I to understand you were a test tube baby.”

“Somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning,” Conrad said. He slid a foot to his right, putting a table of beakers between himself and Lorca. “I was carried to term by Mom. That makes me a real boy, huh?”

“Who donated the material?”

“Kinda personal.”

Lorca smiled apologetically. “I confess, the questions are rhetorical. Imogene told me everything, although I don’t think she knows the half of it. Your father combined his material with that of at least two distinct species. Early Homo sapiens, possibly Cro-Magnon, and something much older, a DNA strand only a select few have encountered. A missing link, unless I miss my guess. The fascinating question would be, where did he acquire these cells. As that psychopath Kosokian is your patron, your father was also nurtured by a powerful man. Granted, they became enemies once your father ultimately grasped the enormity of the being he’d allied himself, its arch plan to enslave the planet. Meanwhile, Dr. Drake procured the cells because he had a tremendous interest in witnessing the birth of a superman, knowing full well you’d become his servant one day. Unlike mere mortals such as Imogene and myself, you were unique
prior
to Blooming. The serum simply sped the process along. Now…”

“I’m not a flower.”

“Yes, you are. A poisonous night-blooming flower. How else could I have winded your scent and flown here to greet you? You snatched every clue I laid down for you, my brutish sleuth. You would Bloom or die. Simple.”

“Did Drake send you to fetch me?” Conrad said.

“Heavens, no. He’d either make me a thrall or devour my essential salts if I were foolish enough to come near him. Your sister wished to kill him, foolish girl, while I simply desired the secret to immortality. I’m my own man with my own designs and I’ve hunted you for many moons, as the indigenous types say. It was very difficult to bide my time, to wait for you to fruit.” Lorca tilted his head and smiled shrewdly. “I wonder—what on Earth did you give Souza in exchange for your shot? Imogene and I bartered a veritable pound of flesh to receive ours. The Brazilian is wholly Drake’s creature. More than human, as it were. Drake inducted him to the immortality club ages ago, made him a chief servant. As I said: I shudder to speculate what Souza extracted from you in return for his precious elixir. Come, won’t you level with an old family friend?”

“You didn’t like Dad.”

“Lucky guess.”

“Nah. I see those rows of genteel shark teeth and think, this guy is a predator. He only opens his mouth for one reason.”

Lorca clapped in merriment. He shook his finger at Conrad with mock rue. “I confess. I hated him. Dr. Navarro killed me when my name was Enrique Valdez. He
thought
he killed me, I should say. I was revived and given a new identity, a new face. Those bastards at the CIA actually slotted me right back into your father’s department. This was about five years after I recovered from surgery and learned to walk and talk again, learned to answer to Raul instead of Enrique. The cretin never caught on. Every day I thought of murdering him, oh yes. I longed to repay him for ruining my face. He’d burned it with acid. Such exquisite agony. The plastic surgeons did a credible job, but it always felt like a mask. Nearly drove me insane.

“Although, I’ve since reverted to my former countenance, if not my birth name. This is how I would’ve appeared if that lumbering ox hadn’t mutilated me. To Bloom is to gain ever increasing control over one’s molecular structure, one’s electromagnetic field, to reshape one’s form to fit one’s needs. It feels good to be myself again, if only superficially. It feels good to be immortal.”

“Shit, Genie was on the money about Dad murdering some poor schmuck, huh? So, you’re the poor schmuck. That’s an interesting tale. By the way, I’d rather you didn’t call my dad a cretin. Speak no ill of the dead and whatnot.” Conrad rolled his neck and shoulders, willed his muscles to loosen. He tried sending a cone of sleep at the older man, but the cloud dissipated and he couldn’t seem to concentrate on generating another. He said, “How come my dad tried to kill you anyway?”