“What’s she doing with it?”
“Meeting someone who seems a bit too smooth for my tastes. They’re getting in a car and taking off.” Flynn waved down a taxi and slipped in the back, directing the driver to give pursuit. “There’s something about this that really feels wrong to me, Libby. Tell Leo I’m going to keep reporting in.”
“Benjamin,” Libby said, giving him pause. He could sense her unease and knew the reasons why. They’d spent a night of passion together not long ago, part of her scheme to make a reluctant Leonid admit his feelings for her. It had been a mistake but one that Benjamin would have made again and again if he’d had the opportunity. “Be careful.”
Benjamin Flynn turned off the headshot, visions of Libby dancing through his mind’s eye.
CHAPTER VI
Tracking the Madness
Max stood in the center of the Peregrine’s Nest, his laboratory hidden beneath his plantation estate. He had his eyes fixed on a large map of the United States, looking for any kind of pattern in the Cabal’s activities. Not far away, Leonid sipped a cup of coffee and did the same.
“You mentioned that the zombies have a tendency to attack families…?” Max asked.
“There have a number of attacks that fit that profile, yes. Not so much an assault on all the individual members but the zombies are frequently seen near the homes of couples with children.”
“But never any assaults on the children themselves?”
“No,” Leonid said. “Do you think that’s significant?”
Max shrugged. “I’m not sure.” He turned away from the map, rubbing his temples in exasperation. “I’d rather not go to Whisper for help… maybe my own powers can make some sense out of all this.”
“If it causes you pain,” Leonid began but he was cut off by a dismissive wave of Max’s hand.
“I’ve suffered through worse and so have you,” Max said, moving to sit in a wooden chair that rested between an armory of weapons. “Would you lock the door, please?”
Leonid crossed the room and made certain that the entrance to the Nest was secure. When he turned back to his friend, Max was already in a trance, his head tilted back so far that his scalp brushed the wall behind him. Beneath his lids, Max’s eyes flicked rapidly back and forth.
In the darkness of his mind, Max sent out a series of mental pulses, trying to illuminate what lay beyond the normal range of human vision.
At first there was nothing, but gradually Max began to see things slithering at the edge of his consciousness. Moans of the dead reached his ears, hungry and full of evil lust. He’d encountered zombies often enough to recognize the awful need that drove them… a desire that would never be completely satisfied. The dead hungered for the living, hoping it would satisfy the void that existed where their souls should be.
Suddenly Max was standing in the center of a large room, upon whose floor a pentagram had been drawn in human blood. An altar lay in the middle of the pentagram, a screaming form tied to its surface. Max realized with a shudder that it was Kenneth, starving for the taste of human blood, protesting the harsh bonds holding him in place. A man in silver clothing stood over him, a curved blade held in one hand. The undead shambled about in the shadows, where Max also recognized two of the living: the necromancer named Keane was holding the crying form of Gloria, who begged for mercy in the name of Kenneth.
Max was a helpless viewer to what came next, unable to touch these ghostly visions of the future. The silver-garbed man with the oddly distorted facial features—was he wearing a mask of some kind?—raised the knife he held and plunged it deep into the heart of the half-dead infant. Kenneth’s wail was cut off by a series of painful coughs and his blood jetted into the air. When it did, Keane began chanting, loud and eager.
A glowing doorway began to open in the room, forming out of ethereal energy. Max could feel something awful on the other side… something whose hunger dwarfed that of the zombies.
It was pure death.
Max opened his eyes and sat up, startling Leonid with the suddenness of the movement. He was drenched in sweat, his heart pounding in his chest.
Leonid knelt beside him, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Max? Are you all right?”
Max swallowed twice before speaking. “Kenneth. They want Kenneth.”
A pounding at the door to the Peregrine’s Nest prevented Leonid from inquiring further. He left Max to recover and opened the door, seeing a distraught Evelyn on the other side. “What’s wrong?”
Evelyn pushed past him, still wearing her robe and pajamas. “Max!” she exclaimed, not even noticing her husband’s disheveled appearance. “She’s taken him. She’s taken him and Flynn thinks they’re both in danger!”
Max stood up, trying to find his equilibrium again. “Slow down, Evelyn. You’re not making sense.”
“Gloria… she took him. Kenneth. Flynn followed her and said he’d met up with someone who seemed a bit too smooth for his tastes. That sounds like the man you fought in England. Keane?”
Max cursed under his breath, realizing that his vision was soon to come to pass. He strained his memory, trying to find something in his vision that might give him a clue as to where they might have taken Kenneth. And then he saw it, something so small that he had almost missed it. Through one of the shaded windows, he’d caught a glimpse of a marquee from across the street. The Douglass Theatre, it had read… and Max knew where that was.
Throughout the 1920s, the Theatre had been the premier movie house for blacks in Macon, Georgia. Even now it was still home to many musical and theatrical performances.
“Max?” Evelyn prompted. “Are you listening to me?”
Max looked around until he spotted his mask. He walked over and held it in his hands. “I’ll get him back, Evelyn. The world depends on it.”
Evelyn looked confused. “The world…?”
Max glanced towards Leonid, who was looking stern. “Hell on Earth, Leo. That’s what the Cabal wants. Hell on Earth.”
CHAPTER VII
The Oblivion Gates
Christmas Eve and Gloria was spending it in the arms of a man she barely knew.
They’d arrived in Macon just over an hour ago and she’d reluctantly allowed a friend of Keane’s to take the baby off to sleep until sundown. She’d hated to do it, being naturally protective of the child but the promise of desire in Keane’s eyes had overcome her suspicions.
He’d led her to his private room, which was sparsely furnished. All her questions as to the nature of this place and the odd men who shared it with him were quietly brushed aside.
It had been her first time with a man and as she lay on her back now, covered in sweat, she wasn’t sure what to make of the experience. He’d been so gentle at first, caressing her and whispering sweet nothings into her ear. But once he’d had her stripped, he’d changed somehow, becoming much more dominating. He’d taken her roughly and she was certain that she was bruised in her nethers, for they ached fiercely.
Keane was sitting up in bed, wearing only a white shirt and tie. He’d never bothered to completely undress. He lit a cigarette and blew out smoke, looking at her with amusement. “Liked that, did you?”
Gloria’s cheeks burned with shame and she pulled the covers of his bed up to hide her nakedness. “Don’t look at me like that. Please.”
“I’ll look at you any damn way I like,” Keane snapped. “The Baroness said you had your uses but I doubt she ever got to see your true talents like I did. Or did she?”
Gloria’s eyes widened at his hurtful implication and she immediately responded by shouting “I loved the Baroness! She was like a mother to me!”
“She didn’t share the same feelings for you, believe me. She planned to kill you as soon as that baby was old enough to fend for itself. She even said she’d let you be Kenneth’s first kill!”
“You’re lying,” she whispered, her eyes beginning to fill with tears. What had happened to the man who’d seemed so nice to her?
Keane took another drag on his cigarette before stamping it out on the nightstand. He rolled over on top of her, pinning her arms in place. “It’s the truth, you little bitch.”
Gloria struggled but to no avail. Her screams went ignored by the rest of the Inner Circle.
* * *
Dr. Zero stared at the motionless form of the vampire infant. Since it was daylight, the child gave every impression that it was dead. But once the sun dropped from the sky and the world became one of night, he would stir and grow hungry once more.
A zombie moved slowly around the room, ignoring both infant and Zero. It was kept from its murderous hunger through a complex series of spells, binding it to Zero’s will. It would feed only when he gave the order to do so, thus allowing him to keep his undead army at close quarters.
Zero looked at the zombie and sighed. All his life he’d been obsessed with the mysteries of life and death. Fear of what lay beyond the grave had driven him to seek mastery over death and that pursuit had eventually given him dominion over the zombies. But they were imperfect at best. The zombies were ultimately more dead than alive, being nothing more than reanimated corpses with the most basic of desires.
But this infant…! It was both alive and dead, in seemingly equal amounts. If Zero could use this child to open the Oblivion Gates, the creatures from beyond would view him as a savior and would no doubt help him in replicating whatever spell had transformed this baby into a member of the undead.
Zero still remembered when he’d discovered the existence of the Gates, each detail of that day burned into his memory forevermore.
He’d traveled through the Far East for several months, digging through every opium den and Tong stronghold he could fine, seeking a man called the Revenant. It was said that he’d crossed over to the land of the dead and fought his way free once more. He’d done this through something called an Oblivion Gate, a barrier that kept the hungry undead from flooding into our world.
Zero had found him in a dirty hotel room in Bangkok, stoned out of his mind, with two half-dead prostitutes lying in the corners, ignoring their own filth. Revenant was painfully thin and wore only a thin garment that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in months, if ever.
Zero had stood over him for several moments before speaking. He was disappointed by what he saw and wasn’t certain he should proceed. But he wanted to know what the man had seen… he wanted to
understand
.
He’d nudged Revenant with the toe of his boots. “Wake up,” he said in broken Chinese.
Revenant opened one eye and peered up at him, opening his mouth in a toothless leer. “You are the American. The one who courts death.”
Zero had blinked in surprise, not only at the fact that Revenant knew him but that he spoke perfect English. Returning to his native language, Zero had asked “How do you know me?”
“The Shambling Ones told me you would come. They said you would be the one to open the gates completely and let them return.”
“But… you opened the gate. Didn’t you?”
“I stumbled through.” Revenant sat up and Zero noticed flies buzzing bout the other man’s face. He smelled like rotting flesh. “But you… you will fling the door open wide. Only one man a century has the ability to do that. But you cannot do it without the half-dead child.” And then he recited the prophecy that Zero had come to know by heart:
“And it is said that in the days of fire and strife, the child of life and death shall utter his first cries. His arrival shall signal that the time is right for the gates of oblivion to be flung open and the spirits of the dead to claim what is rightfully theirs. The Shambling Ones shall feed and mankind shall crumble to their knees, begging for salvation.”
Zero had stared at him in shock, not knowing what to make of these words. While he’d struggled to find his voice, Revenant had reached under a pillow and extracted a small bundle. He unwrapped it carefully, revealing two things: more drugs and a dirty knife.
“The Gates,” Revenant continued, helping himself to another hit in between words, “are ancient things, erected to keep the Shambling Ones at bay. They are older than humanity and have always coveted our world. The Gods decided that the realms of the living and the dead should no longer mix and so the Shambling Ones were pushed aside and locked in a realm with no living flesh upon which to feed.”
“Feed…? So they’re zombies of some kind?” Zero had managed to ask.
“The things created by man are but the least of what the Shambling Ones can be. They
think
. They are
clever
. And they want our world. Open the gates and they will return, mixing the worlds of life and death forevermore. They promise you great rewards.”
“They let you go, didn’t they? So you could tell me this?”
Revenant laughed merrily then and Zero wondered if all that he was saying was the product of madness. Or was there truth behind those glazed eyes? “I will do more than tell you. I will show you. They say you cannot be the one who will free them until you understand the notion of pain as beauty.”
“I… what are you talking about?”
Revenant had plucked up the knife and thrown himself upon Zero before the other man had even realized he was in danger.
What came next was not only painful but enlightening. For in that terrible moment when he was scarred forever, Zero saw the Shambling Ones, lurking at the edge of his vision, just beyond the normal range of human sight. They were horrible and awe-inspiring all at once, reinforcing something that had always known: if that was death, he wanted no part of it. He had to avoid it. And if avoiding it meant sacrificing the rest of humanity to the Shambling Ones, it was a price worth paying.
* * *
Keane approached Zero cautiously, noting that his master was lost in thought. It would be so easy to strike him down and lay claim to the leadership of the Cabal… but what if there were things Zero had not shared with him? What if he knew of a way to control the Shambling Ones that Keane would not?
Zero turned then, making such thoughts moot for the moment. “You stink of sex,” the Cabal’s leader said disdainfully. “Did you know that some call orgasms the little death?”
“So I’ve heard. It’s almost nightfall. When do we begin?”