DeKoon’s men swooped in and plucked Conrad off the street as he limped out of a tavern in the industrial district a few minutes after last call. He saw them coming, decided that discretion was the valorous course, and went along for the ride in a big black limo.
DeKoon sat across the way, immaculate in his white suit and hat. A heavily painted girl in a see-through blouse cuddled him, her hand inside his jacket and circling. She wore peacock feathers in her tightly coiled dark hair and silver eye shadow. A man sat on either side of Conrad. They too wore nice suits and hats, black ones, and sunglasses. Another guy rode up front with the driver and at least two cars followed the limo.
“You appear remarkably improved since our last encounter,” DeKoon said. “Still, only three weeks until the ludus. Not long to prepare for what I assure you shall be a nightmare. The Greek is hell on wheels. And, of course, he’s bringing some associates and pets. A pity for you.”
“Three weeks is an eternity,” Conrad said.
“Yes. You’re a special case. I said the same to Uncle K many, many times. We’ve made a small fortune on people underestimating you. You have the most remarkable endurance and fortitude I’ve ever witnessed. The ghost of Rasputin inhabits your skin.”
“Rasputin had nothing on me. I am going to slaughter the Greek, and his pets, and his associates.”
“I almost believe you.”
Conrad closed his eyes and tilted his head back so the blood and mucus drained from his sinuses down the back of his throat. DeKoon was correct, though—he felt far better than he had any right to. He said, “Uncle didn’t have any heirs. He left you the empire?”
“Let us say I’m the executor. I represent the spirit of his interests. Your incessant meddling with the greater powers that be alarms me and conflicts with said interests. It has to stop.”
“Been talking with my spook buddies.”
“Those two are bad eggs, Conrad. You really should get shut of them. They can’t help you. They are doomed.”
“I suspect our arrangement has run its course,” Conrad said, remembering the sweetly evil voice of the woman, the cloying darkness. “Why the hell are we having this conversation? Unless you hadn’t noticed I’m pretty goddamned drunk. My face hurts. I could use some sleep.”
“Where is the woman you were with the other night?”
“Which one? Nah, I’m kidding, they’re all the same. They come and go.”
“My advice to you is to pursue asceticism and celibacy, at least until after your match. Strange women are no friends to a man such as yourself.”
“Thank you. I’ll shoot the next one who tries to hop into bed with me.”
DeKoon smiled coldly. “It’s like this. The Pageant is a lucrative hobby, a diversion. You are a tiny part of that diversion. I never shared Uncle K’s familial regard for you. The scrutiny from one such as Dr. Drake is so unwelcome, despite your entertainment value, I’m tempted to have you diced so fine you could be sprinkled over a goldfish bowl. End of problem.”
Without opening his eyes, Conrad estimated the angles of his shoulders and elbows relative the vital organs of the men who bracketed him. Both of them had their hands in their pockets, ready to draw pistols. He didn’t like their odds in the confines of the limo. “Then why don’t you?”
“Because I received a package this morning—an exquisite birch hamper of the sort used by the daimios of feudal Japan. The hamper contained several items, including a handwritten missive penned upon obscenely opulent vellum. The details are tedious. The gist was, you are not to be pureed or otherwise molested. The package was sent compliments of one R. Lorca; your sister’s lover. My nephew’s severed head nestled inside the box and the letter was inserted into his mouth. I am of the distinct impression the lad died quite painfully and in much terror. The threat to my remaining family seemed implicit.”
“Well,” Conrad said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks, old chap. As I said, Uncle K was very fond of you. He feared you would come to a bad end. Personally, I hope you do. The sooner the better.”
“Been one of those days,” Conrad said. “Nobody loves me anymore.” And he chuckled.
The limo slowed and stopped on the corner where they’d originally nabbed Conrad. “Your sister is dead,” DeKoon said. “We would know if she were among the living. This phantom that teases you with ciphers and notes and well-placed rumors isn’t her. You are in a web, Conrad. The spider is coming.”
Connie, come to the house. Hurry. The note appeared in an email from Imogene’s old account, but he knew in his bones it wasn’t her who pushed send. He didn’t care because the beckoning plea aligned with his mood of desperation and a conclusion he’d already reached. The only place left to go was the one place the poets said a man couldn’t: home.
Three days of steady driving got Conrad across the desert and the mountains and sent him along the shadowy Oregon coast and into Washington—it had been years. He looked over his shoulder the entire way, hypnotized by the chain of headlights in his rearview mirror, wondering how many of them belonged to Dr. Drake, the NSA, or whatever sinister forces were aligned against him.
He spent a night in Olympia at the Flintlock Hotel. He could’ve gone the extra couple of hours to his ultimate destination, the abandoned family home on the Peninsula, but despite his strength and experience with mayhem and death at the hands of brutes and the claws of beasts, he feared the dark. The darkness of the Olympics at night was particularly oppressive—the ape in him responded to it with bared teeth.
Courage bolstered with a half bottle of whiskey, he opened the package Singh had given him at their farewell rendezvous and viewed the disk on the room computer. There were hundreds of files containing government aerial and satellite surveillance photos, a few motion picture clips, mostly ancient, and primarily concerning remote military installations in regions such as Mongolia, the Amazon Basin, Siberia, and Afghanistan. He kept clicking, certain of where it would lead, certain of what was coming—this was similar to the material he’d retrieved from Imogene’s caches, except for a handful of files buried deep in an unmarked subfolder. These last, labeled CLOISTER c. 1982-83, were muted surveillance feeds of Dr. Drake’s Pyrenees sanctuary.
First, a steady stream of images from the main grounds, then disjointed pictures of the interior corridors, culminating in a two minute recording of events in a large hall. Dozens of children were seated upon the floor in small groups. A pair of braziers smoked and blazed upon a dais at the fore of the assembly. The overhead lights dimmed and then the hall was illuminated by the shifting flames. Two figures entered the room and ascended the dais. Their features were hidden by cowls. Perspective was unreliable, yet the figures appeared freakishly massive, slightly bowed so the crowns of their hoods didn’t scrape the ceiling. They lowered their hoods and Conrad recognized both faces, before the faces changed and became something other than human. The children panicked and tried to flee. Apparently the doors were locked, because none of them escaped the hideous fate that awaited.
Conrad watched the proceedings twice. He removed the disk and snapped it in half and sat for a time, thoughts null.
Olympia’s tree-shaded streets were almost empty at dusk. He bought a steak dinner at a restaurant down the street, then drank a couple of beers in the hotel lounge; nothing stronger because he’d decided to at least attempt a pretense of professionalism. The lounge was a cozy, mirrored enclosure, lightly populated as it was a weeknight, and mostly by tourists. A blonde and a brunette who could’ve been sororal twins perched on the leading edge of the bar where the light illuminated them to best advantage, reduced their surroundings to a background blur. The women wore vintage 1960s dresses and vintage 1960s eyeglasses, slippers and stockings. Probably Evergreen coeds. They sipped mixed drinks in tall glasses and watched him while pretending not to. He bought them another round and one thing led to another and he learned it wasn’t his animal magnetism alone that attracted them, but the fact they were hooking their way through college.
Later, the trio lay tangled on his bed. He sprawled naked on his back and listened to them breathe. Light from the street illuminated the sleeping women, their soft, white curves, his dark and brutish hands draped against that pallid flesh.
The phone rang as he’d known with an unerring instinct that it would. The line hissed. He felt the weight of a presence on the other end. He said, “Is it you?”
“Yes, it’s me,” she said into his ear.
“Are you alive?”
“Are you?”
He squeezed the sumptuous ass of the brunette. The woman groaned and tucked her forehead against his chest. “Yeah, looks like,” he said.
The voice on the phone said, “You met the Brazilian. You took a hit. Jesus! You’re shining like a klieg against the old psychic skyline.”
“I followed your instructions. Watched the films, memorized the triggers. Something’s happening. I’m not certain what.”
“Caterpillar to butterfly, baby.”
“Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?”
“Depends, Connie. The Brazilian’s serum is bad juju. All those Rorschach patterns and evil home videos are also bad, bad juju. Mind-fuckery of the highest order. Put ’em together and it’s a recipe for a mini singularity. You gotta be of a certain genetic predisposition to survive and thrive. Our family tree possesses the recessive genes that react and activate. When this shit you’ve done to yourself finally kicks in for reals, it’ll be the biggest motherfucking trip you ever been on. Those dress up battles of yours… No human will be able stand against you. No beast will lay a paw on you. We’re talking godhead in a needle, brother.”
“Well, sort of sounds all right, you put it like that,” Conrad said.
“Sure, except that your change is a beacon to much bigger fishes cruising the deeps. You know who wants to eat you. He will eat you. Just like he munched Ezzy. Just like he munched thousands of others. He’s been around since before the ice covered the Earth. Doing his wicked deeds, striving to get larger than large. He eats the strong to get even stronger, and to eradicate the competition. He has to, because as big and terrible as he’s become, there are worse. There are frightful things beneath the mountains, beneath the oceans, beneath your bed. Things even the devil himself fears.”
“Fuck Drake. You slipped him. He must have a blind spot.” When she didn’t answer, Conrad said, “Drake is a man. I know how to kill men.”
“His name ain’t Drake, and like I’ve been trying to tell you, he ain’t a man. You won’t be for long, either. Nobody who survives the serum stays human.”
“What about Dad?”
“He didn’t take it. You see, the alchemical formula comes from Drake and Souza, which is akin to Satan handing the Apple to Eve, or Prometheus teaching some Greek how to make fire. For them, the inkblot cards and the serum are trappings of science designed to enthrall and enslave modern minds. A charade of rationality. Drake could simply breathe on you and transform you at the cellular level. He could snatch your brain and show you some cosmic horror that would turn your soul black. The Drake Technique is a joke, the mechanical rabbit greyhounds chase. And when Dad glimpsed the true nature of Drake and Souza, when he realized he’d made a deal not with high priests of a demon cult, but the fucking demons themselves, he opted out. Hilariously enough, he sent you to train with Kosokian, never cottoning to the reality that Uncle K was another of the diabolical set.
“I’m sure Drake had a good laugh at Dad’s expense. He loves games. That’s why you’re still alive. Oh, and because he’s swollen to such gargantuan dimensions he doesn’t get around much. He’s got plenty of servitors…and if one of his agents drags you to the master’s lair, you’ll be sorry.”
“Kosokian is involved,” Conrad said. “He faked his death. He’s mutating.”
“Took you long enough to add two and two.”
“I caught on a while ago. Didn’t know what I’d caught on to, though.”
“Kosokian’s deathbed act is just a snake slithering out of its skin. Happens every few centuries after the first couple of cycles. Uncle K is a monster. Your patron has been on the scene for an eon or three. He’s mortal enemies with Drake, by the way.”
“There’s a video of him and Drake taking a walk on the wild side together. At the Cloister.” He swallowed bile at the memory of the images he’d witnessed. “Seemed like peas in a pod while munching on kiddies.”
“They’ve got rules of engagement. Fuckers plot to destroy each other, but still get together for tea and crumpets on occasion. Lonely being a god, you see. Whole world is against you. Nobody understands you except your nemeses. I figure there’s fifteen or twenty of these dark lords scattered around the world hatching their evil plans—three or four others are elsewhere in the solar system hiding in moon lairs. There’s a reason the Apollo program avoided the dark side of the moon, is all I can say. The really old ones like Kosokian and Drake hate each other like fire, but they don’t get it on directly too often. Nah, they fight proxy wars. How’s it feel to be a proxy?”
“I don’t get it. Kosokian is using me as a proxy? Kosokian’s lieutenant has been warning me off Drake.”
“DeKoon is a patsy. Renfield to Kosokian’s Count. Except, being a dupe, he doesn’t have a clue regarding the identity of his boss. Hapless bastard thinks he’s protecting Kosokian’s estate. Bet he thinks the master is really dead. Sad.”
“There’s more.”
“Yeah, there is. The real reason poor DeKoon doesn’t know shit, is Uncle K likes to play mind games. Drake, Kosokian, that ilk…they get a rush from sadism, inflicting terror, instilling confusion and dread. They don’t give a rat’s ass about hierarchal efficiency. Hell, half the reason these things even establish organizations is so they can torture and torment their minions. Their own personal larder. To eat, fuck, and cause suffering is their reason to exist. The simple pleasures.”
“Where are you?”
“Let’s just say this is a long distance call and leave it there.”
“I miss you.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s nice hearing your voice. But you gotta forget me.”
“Not a chance, sis.”
“This is goodbye. My situation is… Let’s say it’s not pleasant. Raul tried to kill me and he may as well have considering where I jumped to. When that knife went in I didn’t stop to ponder, I reacted, made a leap across time and space and like the ol’ bottle, went round and round and stopped here, in this place, and I’m stuck. One way trip, folding the fabric of the universe to beat a hasty retreat. See, going back in time is actually to travel forward, which is the way the river flows. There’s no swimming against the current. I don’t want you to get into a similar fix—and you will, you keep fucking around with the ineffable.”
“C’mon. You left the clues. You want to be found.”
“Gonna rescue me, Connie? You’re a sap. I love ya, man. Ain’t gonna happen, though. Frankly, I never thought you’d actually track me down. You’re a resourceful dude. You need to realize, I’m not the one who’s fed you the tidbits lately. I quit a while back, once I realized you couldn’t save me…what would happen if you did. Raul’s had you on a hook for a while now. You’re getting played, fool. My former fuck buddy has a bone to pick with our family. He’s on the hunt for you.”
“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.
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?”
“A long, complicated, and boring story. I stole a bit of research and funneled it to my government. Nothing to do with the Drake Technique, so-called. We were designing a bio-weapon based on small pox. He caught me red-handed. We struggled. I was no match for a giant like your father. Not in those days. How I would savor a chance to replay that scene today… Years passed. Here we stand. The father is dead, yet lives on through his son.”
“Imogene isn’t with you,” Conrad said to gauge his reaction. He slid another six inches toward the wall. “I take it Pop doesn’t live through her.”
“We’ve parted ways. A lovers’ quarrel, I’m afraid.”
“Let me guess. Since you didn’t join Drake or one of the other immortals I can only assume you intend to form your own powerbase. Man like you needs an army if he’s going to stick around. Sis wouldn’t have your superbaby, would she?”
“These dark lords are ruthless and cunning,” Lorca said. “The only way for lesser lights such as myself and your sister to survive their predation is to either hide or band together. She would not listen to reason.”
“She finally realized who you were, I bet.”
“Yes, all was revealed after we completed the cycle. She means me harm. She is an angry and vengeful woman. This animus must run in the family.”
“Where is the angry woman?”
“Far away, I dearly hope. Doubtless Drake has her in his clutches. She wouldn’t leave well enough alone. Forget her. I’m here for you, Conrad. You’ve accomplished much these past few weeks. Yet this a delicate juncture, despite any sensation of heightened prowess, you are exceedingly vulnerable. It wouldn’t do to have you wandering the countryside in your emergent state. Too dangerous.”
“I suppose you’re going to take me to the mountains, teach me the ways of the mystical arts.” Conrad gripped the edge of the table with his left hand.
Lorca drifted closer without moving his feet. He stood in silhouette and his form blurred and warped in the dimness, seemed to gather size and density—the impression of wings, an aura of a black halo. “Don’t you believe I want to help?”
“My old man did you wrong and died before you got to even the score. I also think you’ve done something to my sister. Not much chance of us being friends in either case.”
“Wrong,” Lorca said. His face had broadened, its bones thickened, the flesh gone waxen and hard. No longer quite human, but a creature feigning humanity. “You and I will be much more than friends.” Even as he spoke he accelerated toward Conrad, hands hooked into claws, lower body impossibly motionless. He’d gained nearly a foot in height. His mouth gaped black as an eel’s. He was the image of a diabolical being sprung from the page of some book of demonology.
Conrad flipped the table in the same instant Lorca moved, and Lorca batted it aside as if two hundred pounds of metal was actually a Styrofoam prop. Conrad dove and rolled and slung the throwing knife he kept in his jacket. Lorca flinched and the blade skipped off the bone just above his temple. A pearl of blood formed and Lorca kept coming. He grinned. His teeth were jagged and many.
“Is that why you hung around with Genie? Revenge?” Conrad bounced to his feet and managed to get another table between them. Lorca had eased back, coiled into himself for another strike, and was in no hurry. Obviously if the man couldn’t torment Dad, the only surviving male heir would have to do.
Lorca stopped. He pressed his thumb to the blood, studied it. “At first, yes. Once I realized what she’d stumbled onto, what your father and Drake had accomplished, I delayed my plans and assisted her in gathering the puzzle pieces. I grew quite fond of her, in fact. A shame. Although, it still amuses me that she didn’t catch on until the end. Like father, like daughter. She really had no idea who I am. Silly little girl playing with guns.”
While Lorca was talking, Conrad gathered his reserves and tried again—he visualized the man bursting into flames. It was a strange sensation, a psychic weight in the center of his brain, the mental analogue to pushing rope. Pins and needles stabbed the length of his spine and his vision blurred. He pushed harder.
“What are you doing, Conrad?” Lorca said. The wound in his head widened and blood poured in a rivulet, dripped steadily from his collar and splashed on the concrete floor. “You can’t win. This is a rigged game.”
“Genie seemed confident I could kill you.” Conrad had gone through the same fire as Imogene and Lorca. The man obviously possessed the ability to shift shape, to manipulate his mass and strength. Whatever he could do, Conrad could do, if only he knew the trick.
Lorca said, “Nonsense. Imogene is…it’s not possible that you’ve spoken with her.” The man leaped again mid-sentence. Conrad reversed tactics; he pulled the table toward himself and used it as a shield. Lorca raked it and steel shredded like tissue paper. Conrad plucked a ten inch sliver of shorn metal and stabbed Lorca’s neck, rammed it clean through the opposite side. As Lorca reeled, hand clapped to his leaking jugular, Conrad punched him in the ribs with the spiked cestus, then the kidney, driving into the blow with every ounce of force he possessed, which would’ve sufficed to shatter a cinderblock, to rip a hole through a wet sandbag, or rupture the internal organs of a normal man. Lorca uttered a gurgling cry, and back-handed Conrad across the cellar and into the wall. Conrad curled, knees to chin, the air slammed from his lungs. He wished he’d brought a gun, although that hadn’t helped Imogene, had it? His thoughts were unclear; the room dimmed to infrared.
The scientist grasped the steel sliver and pulled it from his neck. Blood spurted and foamed. His face and chest were thick with blood. He was unrecognizable. His right eye shimmered and glared from the gore; it burned like a coal. “Allow me to return this,” he said, and approached Conrad and caught his ankle and lifted him as a doctor hoists a newborn. Conrad scrabbled at the floor, trying to find purchase. He had a moment to consider whether anyone had ever gripped him with such animal strength, then the scientist stabbed him in the thigh with the shard and twisted.
Conrad didn’t scream, although he wished to. Imogene whispered, Jesus, bro. Didn’t you get your ass kicked the last time you came down here? He beheld her then: nude and lithe, pinioned near the apex of an obsidian pyramid that jutted from a mountain of skulls. Her arms were chained above her head and she shone brilliant as a diamond prism. Light beamed from her flesh—white, then red; a nova that wiped the image from his mind, but left an imprint on his retina.
He laughed.
Lorca dropped him in a heap and frowned. “What is amusing?”
“See, in a life or death struggle,” Conrad said, pausing to cough a bit of blood, “when your enemy starts laughing you don’t stop to ask why, you finish him before it’s too late. Too late, sucker.”
Lorca kicked Conrad in the ribs hard enough to make him writhe. The second kick was less forceful, and the third thudded from Conrad’s side without effect. Lorca stepped back quickly. Nubs of horns bulged from his skull and his breathing whistled and keened high upon the register.
Conrad had gone about this all wrong, projecting malice at an enemy who was prepared for such a gambit. Perhaps inward was the answer. He imagined himself whole and strong, imagined his flesh as iron, his muscles as cables, his heart a furnace. He imagined a keyhole opening. Streams of dark and light flooded into his mind like oil. He stood. Lorca swiped at his collar and Conrad slapped his hand away and grinned. His teeth felt large and sharp. His was the physical strength of a great ape. Three great apes. The joy of his rage was more powerful still.
“Damnation,” Lorca said. “You catch on fast —”
Conrad grabbed his throat and squeezed, felt the windpipe go, then the spine, and squeezed hard enough to snap a railroad spike, reduce a stone to gravel. With a renewed burst of vigor, Lorca jerked free and attempted to run. Conrad leaped and drove his knee into the small of the man’s back while yanking his chin up and to the rear until several large bones snapped. Lorca’s muscles convulsed. Then his tongue protruded and he was dead. To be safe, Conrad fetched an axe and chopped the corpse into several pieces. He loaded the remains into a barrel, doused them with kerosene and struck a match.
He rested on the front porch and watched the greasy smoke coil into the sky. His sense of triumph was tempered by the regret he hadn’t had the opportunity to torture Imogene’s whereabouts from Lorca. While he rested, the steel splinter spontaneously worked itself from his leg and clinked onto the ground where it smoldered and bubbled. A few minutes later the wound sealed itself to an angry red pucker surrounded by deep tissue bruises which rapidly faded.
There wasn’t even a scar.
Conrad stayed in Vegas for the week preceding his showdown with destiny. DeKoon reserved a penthouse suite in the glitziest casino, provided him with a limo, guards, call girls, and an unlimited tab at the front desk. Conrad banished the girls. The gorillas in the mirror shades kept a respectful distance. A fearful distance. He sat lotus before a wall of glass that overlooked the desert. He stared into the distance and, when night fell, into the blackness between stars. That week every sunset was red, every night moonless.
On Saturday night DeKoon collected him and whisked him off to witness the heavyweight mixed martial arts champion of the world defend his belt in the trademark steel cage. The champion went down in the fifth round and as the fighter’s head bounced on the canvas, a few drops of blood splattered the breast of DeKoon’s impeccable white suit. The brunette on his arm squealed and dabbed it, then licked her finger as she smiled coquettishly and crossed her long legs. Conrad glanced at the crowd packed around the harshly illuminated stage: a sea of shadows fractured by camera flashes, its denizens hunched forward like carrion birds.
“Two of the most famous warriors on the planet,” DeKoon said, hand on Conrad’s shoulder, “and you could tear them apart, rip the stuffing from them. Likely at the same time. Couldn’t you? I’d wager anyone in our top fifteen could take these guys. What a shame the luminaries of the Pageant must toil in obscurity.”
“The wheel goes round. I’m sure the taste for real blood will hit the mainstream again one fine day.”
DeKoon glanced at the crimson-lipped brunette. “I think you’re on to something, my friend.” He leaned over and kissed her, savagely, possessively, and she grasped his hair and pulled him in. A pair of beasts feeding upon one another.
Meanwhile, doctors rushed to tend the fallen champion. The stage burned beneath a column of white light while all else faded to black. Imogene appeared again as she had at their house. She floated atop the column of light near the vault of the roof. She loomed, naked and glistening with blood and sweat, larger, by far, than life. Her wings beat slowly and crackled with fire. Like the archangel Michael, she carried a sword and its blade dripped flames that scattered into sparks as they fell toward the unheeding throngs below. She blew him a kiss as her body brightened and flared and disintegrated into the darkness.
Almost over, Connie. The brunette kept sucking DeKoon’s face. She winked at Conrad. Her eye glowed with the reflection of the stage lights.
The cargo hold of the helicopter was windowless and lighted by a red bulb in a plastic case. Conrad sat alone in the cavernous hold and listened to the rotors churn. He had no idea what coordinates the pilot bore him toward, only that it would be a remote and deep desert location where death and glory awaited.
He slept and dreamed of being trapped inside a cave, of cowering in animal terror while beyond the mouth of the cave twilight cloaked a primordial landscape. A terrible presence impended upon his hiding place. This bestial presence hunched until its crown of antlers scraped rock, and it chuckled and growled and reached for him, clutched him and drew him into the light. His flesh was shredded, his bones cracked, his blood poured down a ravening maw.
He awakened as the helicopter landed.
Engineers and laborers had further excavated a massive crater near the foot of some low mountains, reinforced it with granite pillars and entrenched amphitheatre style bench seats, with all the grandeur and scope of an ancient pyramid construction site.
Cold dusk had settled over the land. Floodlights glared from a ring of conning towers. Film crews positioned themselves atop strategic roosts along the rim of the crater. Several hundred spectators had assembled between granite colonnades. The guests were garish as peacocks in their collective attire. Men with automatic rifles patrolled the perimeter.
Conrad wondered, as he often did in the moments before a ludus of this size and complexity, how many millions of dollars had gone into the preparations, the construction, the bribery of God only knew how many law enforcement agencies and military personnel to steer clear, to divert attention and provide cover. Who were these pampered and pompous spectators? Foreign royalty, Balkan financiers, sons and daughters of Hollywood, of Washington D.C., the bored and bloodthirsty scions of Western industry, and fake celebrities? Their identities were a mystery, for the organizers of the Pageant scrupulously enforced a policy of non contact between athletes and patrons, but the crowd’s desire was plain; that desire charged the air.
Adrenaline smoked in Conrad’s nostrils, his lungs. He’d stripped naked in the belly of the chopper and donned his harness of battle, the boots and plumed helm; armed himself with a brace of pila, the cestus, and a gladius meant for chopping men to small pieces. He needed little else.
Pageant attendants escorted him to a staging area where he was consulted by a tight-lipped surgeon and a team of assistants. Conrad was offered an impressive selection of pills and injections—drugs to pump him up and inure him to pain, or drugs to sand down the edge and keep him calm, depending upon his strategy for the battle. He declined and sent the medics packing. DeKoon waved from the curve of a pillar a few yards away along the crumbling lip of the crater, then leaned back into the shadows and Conrad was alone. He regarded the stars while announcements crackled over speakers, introducing the main event of the ludus in several languages.
A youth, dressed in a toga and wreathed in laurels, came to lead him down the many steps into the pit. The boy warned him to watch his step on the final landing and the sandy floor of the arena proper. There had been a number of earlier matches, including an extremely messy battle royale between two dozen convicts flown in from various international prisons. The custodial crew could only do their best.
Oiled posts were driven into the ground at irregular intervals, torches socketed into the crowns. The resultant light was smoky and dull and his shadow stretched long and grotesque across the sand. Horns winded, deep, primal tones that raised the hairs on his body and vibrated in the soles of his feet.
Silence fell as the horns died and the announcements ceased and the crowd held its breath in anticipation of carnage.
The Greek’s retainers awaited; elderly and vile twins, dressed in soiled loincloths. Conrad recognized them as Uncle Kosokian’s creepy servants from the estate. One beckoned and dragged his nails across a stone outcropping and struck sparks. Conrad followed them away from the expectant eyes of the crowd, its burgeoning murmurs of unease and discontent. The ancients led him into a cavern that reeked of spoiled blood and charred meat.
The Greek lolled upon a throne fashioned from a pile of animal hides and armor and the shattered bones of men. More torches hissed and sputtered from crevices in the walls. Smoke tinged the air red as the heart of a stoked furnace. “Good to see you,” Uncle Kosokian said. He had grown to the immense proportions of the giants from Conrad’s nightmares; easily the height of three men standing upon one another’s shoulders. He wore nothing except for a crown of obsidian spikes and a necklace of bloody skulls. Sweat poured from his cockles and dewlaps. He sucked marrow from a cracked femur and tossed it atop the growing pile. The ancients scuttled to positions at the base of the throne, where they hissed and made signs of obeisance to their master.
Conrad’s knees quaked. His gladius fell from his hand and clattered upon rock. He said, “My, what big teeth you have, Uncle.”
Uncle Kosokian’s chuckle reverberated ominously. “Like certain Caesars of yore, I can’t help but descend into the arena for the occasional bit of sport. I know, I know, it’s unfair, undignified and a trait often derided in the illustrious. Regardless, nostalgia is undimmed by enlightenment. As a mortal, I was quite expert in the dispatch of my fellow man. To be deprived of a direct hand in such gory spectacles is a high price for godliness.”
“What does this mean? Am I to be enslaved? Eaten?” Conrad could still hear the children at the monastery screaming, could see them scooped into the slavering maws of monsters. This guise of Uncle Kosokian, albeit distorted to mythical dimensions, was yet a humanoid mask of his true self. Its true self was likely more accurate. Uncle K was a man by the thinnest definition only.
“I lied about many things, Conrad. My fondness for you is nonetheless genuine. Tonight is a celebration. You stand at the threshold of transcendence. You are of the primal stock, my son. The missing link between man and animal, your cells scraped from the soft sponge at the bottom of a pond when all the Earth was muck and amoeba. You possess a purity that none alive can match—not me, nor Drake, nor your sweet, lost sister. In a few eons, when your strength has grown, you will rise to gobble up your enemies and take dominion of this ball of dirt.”
“And Imogene?”
“Stubborn, stubborn boy. Assuming by some miracle she wasn’t captured by Drake as a thrall, or murdered by that wretch, Lorca, then by all means, take her as your queen, your slave, your whatever. None of my concern.”
Conrad half-listened to Uncle Kosokian, mesmerized instead by a sudden transformation of the ancients from wizened men to a pair of the taut, voluptuous women he’d known in a dozen incarnations over the past months. Rhonda smiled with lascivious glee and Wanda tipped him a wink and thrust her hip at an exaggerated angle. Smoke shifted a veil across these apparitions and as it drifted, they were scabrous trolls once more, snickering at his expression of horror.
“My apologies,” Uncle Kosokian said. “Think of them as hobbles…impingements upon your running amok, drunk with power. Pleasure instead of imprisonment. My servitors meant you no harm. Quite the contrary—they disposed of those two baboons who’d been extorting you. Marsh and Singh were into wet work. Sooner or later one of them would’ve decided to cut your throat in case their superiors decided to investigate. I couldn’t permit such a fate to befall you.”
“No,” Conrad said, and a multitude resided in that utterance. He gritted his teeth and composed himself. “And here we are. The guests will be pissed when there’s no fight. We’ll be ruined.” He smiled bitterly at this last.
“The guests? Provender, my boy. Grist for the mill. In a moment I shall make a minor adjustment to you that you might transmogrify into an astonishing and horrific creature of legend and then we’ll shamble forth and devour them where they recline. Kicking and screaming.”
“That sounds absolutely delightful.” The voice was soft and urbane and Conrad recognized it as Dr. Drake’s. Eyes burned molten red in the darkest corner of the cave at the heart of a column of shifting darkness. The column gathered height and mass, billowing upward and outward with silent menace.
“Damn you Ambrose,” Uncle Kosokian said, lurching to his feet, which was a frightening sight. “This is my demesne. You are trespassing in violation of our covenant. Begone!”
Dr. Drake said, “I am aware of our arrangement, Cyrano. Alas, I am compelled by reasons of appetite and paranoia to abscond with the young man. Surely, in your wisdom, you knew I’d come for him tonight.”
“I rather hoped you’d show a bit of restraint. There will be repercussions. You’re ruining the lad’s debut.”
Dr. Drake emerged from his roiling cloud of blackness. He was as Conrad remembered: frail and bald with a hook nose, his lips perpetually curved in a sardonic smile. He dressed simply in a dark shirt and slacks. “Greetings, Conrad. It’s been positively ages. How’s your sister, eh? Hold tight and we’ll be off for a conversation of cabbages and kings, my little oyster.” To Uncle Kosokian he said, “Hand him over, Cyrano. All is not lost; you can still eat the folk awaiting their bread and circuses.”
“Get behind me, Satan.”
“We must destroy him. I’ve never witnessed such acceleration, such raw potentiality. Had I suspected… Let’s say I’d have taken measures. Call it a failed experiment, hubris. If we hesitate, he’ll become too strong. We must act.”
“But I am. The blood and bones of five hundred sheep will be his initiation unto godhead. The boy will make a fine ally to my cause against you, old one.”
“The servant will become the master,” Drake said.
“Admittedly I fear you in your full aspect,” Uncle Kosokian said. He cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders as a prizefighter preparing for the blows to come. “However, you’ve overreached by appearing within my sphere. I say again, begone!”
“Don’t be a fool. I am sufficiently manifested to annihilate you and take what I wish.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, it’ll be bloody.”
“Do you promise?”
Galvanized by a nod from Kosokian, the ancients shrilled in unison like angry vultures and hopped toward the doctor, claws extended. Drake caught each man by the neck, midair. He smashed their heads together in a shower of pulp and cast the limp bodies against the cavern wall with such force their limbs detached and flipped end over end into the gloom. He wagged his finger at Uncle Kosokian and clucked his tongue.
Conrad stared with newly sharpened senses at the doctor, a kind of X-ray vision that bored through Drake’s façade. Drake’s flesh and bones flickered and rippled and Conrad had the sense of enormous fingers inserted into a puppet. Whatever plucked the strings existed partially upon another plane and across an improbable gulf; an entity that radiated malignant hunger and rage of scarcely conceivable scale.
“Run, Conrad. And remember the little people on the day of your return.” Uncle Kosokian stooped and brought a fist the size of a wrecking ball down onto Drake’s head with the evident purpose of driving the doctor into the ground as a mallet pounding a stake. The blow glanced aside without effect. Drake laughed and a thundercloud coalesced and swiftly descended to coil around the antagonists. Strokes of blue and yellow lightning licked forth and scorched rock, blasted sections of the floor into gravel. All of the torches snuffed at once and the cavern was cast into darkness.
Conrad took the opportunity to flee, his flight guided by the intermittent flashes of lightning. The earth shook and groaned and cracks opened in the ground and raced along the walls and thick, choking dust billowed forth. The curses and cries of the combatants rose to a tumult and became the death cries of mighty beasts, the roaring of calving glaciers, of collapsing mountains. He caught his heel on a stone and pitched headlong into a chasm of hot, whistling wind and blackness edged in dull red fire—
—and found himself kneeling in the courtyard of his Vegas hotel. Only, not precisely his hotel and not the Vegas he knew, not by a long shot.
The building loomed dark and silent, a mausoleum beneath the glittering desert sky. The entire city lay motionless, silent and sepulchral. A breeze rustled a flag on a pole. The stars were not right. Brooding emptiness crushed down with the weight of the universe itself. Conrad’s face was wet and he realized he bled from his eyes and mouth and nose. His blood mixed with flakes of ash and rust, and it tasted of antiquity and ruin. The moon slowly pierced the horizon and hung there, the blazing ivory tooth of a cannibal god taking a bite of the world.
His enemies would follow once they finished squabbling. He had to keep running lest Drake find and kill him. The problem was, he doubted there was any place on the planet to hide. It’s a one-way trip, Imogene had said. Forward to the end, beyond the end to the beginning. There would be no return. Actually, there’d be a return, it would just require several hundred million years of evolution.
It all felt so malleable, the moon, the stars, the night itself. He covered his face and concentrated, and discovered that there was nothing a bit dramatic about folding space and time. He allowed his mind to fill with the blackness of the illimitable void that surrounds the specks of dust that comprise the cosmos, and from this heart of darkness he summoned an image of his sister, pure and crystalline. Her image persisted for a moment before it wavered and dispersed. His vision dilated and contracted simultaneously, impossibly. In Imogene’s stead, something awesome and terrible shuddered, a stirring from the cosmic depths. He glimpsed a reflection of his own form, grown monstrous, elongated, distorted, all encompassing. A mouth, his mouth, yawned like a thousand black holes, eating planets, constellations, light, its own tail.
Dread overwhelmed him as the earth gave way and he was suctioned into the cathode of the universe, reduced to his constituent particles and absorbed.
Conrad crawled from the soup and curled into a fetal position, gasping and wet with slime. He eventually opened his eyes to a lambent sun directly overhead. His unreasoning terror receded by degrees, although it lurked and his heart beat too fast. He lay supine on a mossy atoll surrounded by shallow, blood-warm seas. Steam drifted from the water. The sky was apple green.
“Behold the empire of trilobites,” Imogene said. She gleamed. “Hard to believe there’ll be little hominids skulking in yonder caves an eon or two down the road. Then flint and fire and dogs and rats. The adoption of gods and devils. Then, revenge, baby. Fiery, gory revenge. It’ll be great.”
“Something to look forward to,” Conrad said. He shivered violently, taken with a sudden chill. Contemplation of deep geological time wasn’t doing much to curb the fear in his heart, the wooziness of his brain. Nor did his sister’s dark smile lend him comfort. “I don’t know why I’m thinking of frying pans and fires…”
Imogene beamed her sinister smile as she reached up and casually grasped the sun and turned it counterclockwise as if unscrewing a light bulb.
A night without stars rolled over the world.
In the darkness, Imogene laid her cool hand upon his brow and her nails only dug in a little. She said, “Shall we begin?”