CHAPTER 68
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An excerpt from the diary of Damian Slayer
It got worse. The presence, the thing in my head, it just grew stronger. Or, at least, that's how I perceived it at the time. On reflection, it may have been correct to say that I just grew weaker. I had dealings with Metis, I had experience. She had been so much stronger than this one. This one chiseled away at my defenses over hours, maybe days, breaking me down until my whole existence was a blur of sweating exhaustion. Metis could just kick down the doors.
In the end, it didn't matter which way you went. If Metis wanted you then she got you, sure. But this one, he got you too, it just took longer. Maybe that was worse. I could feel him shuffling through the pages of my mind, my memory. He was looking for something that would help him find The Crucible. He wanted to know where it was.
As he poked and tortured and pawed his way through my mind, I tried to move that knowledge away from him. If not for Metis, what she’d done to me, then I would have been lost. But she had given me experience. Not just that, she had touched me, made me different.
He didn't find The Crucible in my brain as I lay writhing in my bed in the hostel. But he did find something. I felt the pressure come to an abrupt pause. I couldn't tell what he'd seen, what he'd found. The presence receded for a few seconds. Then it came back, stronger again than before. This time, it had a satisfied slyness about it as well. My ears filled with one word.
‘Penny…’
That was when I knew defeat was certain. Her face flashed before my eyes. I shut them tight, but there she was, projected on the insides of my eyelids. First, she was pretty and perfect, an angel's face surrounded by an aura of red hair. Then she was dead, bloodied and broken. Her face contorted in the agonies of that terrible thing that had happened to her at the end.
Another word, this time amused and questioning, ‘Prowler? ...ah, Perseus.’
It was going to be over very soon. I could feel it. The door wasn't wide open to him, but he had his foot in the way now and I wasn't going to be able to shut it again. Now he had Penny as a weapon to use against me. I knew the kind of delirium he could sink me into, I could predict what he'd be able to do with her. Knowing in advance wasn't going to be any kind of a defense, either.
I got out of the bed. That process alone was a kind of agony, an effort of sheer will. I brought myself to a sitting position and then stood up. I couldn’t find my balance and fell back to the bed.
‘Where are we going?’ The voice was curious, not really concerned.
I rocked myself back onto my feet and reached out to the wall to support myself. My clothes stuck to my body with the sweat. The room swam before my eyes.
I staggered across the small room to the door. I opened the door and leaned out into the hall. The air was cooler in the hall and it chilled my sweat covered skin. I rested a moment, hanging onto the door frame, halfway into the hall, halfway still in my personal little dungeon.
‘Are we going for a walk? Going to find Penny maybe?’
I gritted my teeth and said, aloud, ‘Not yet, you fuck. Not yet.’ But I knew that would come later. I’d known it the instant he’d said her name.
I stuck to the wall as I made my way down the hallway. My hands pressed flat against it as I moved. I needed that assistance, not just to stay upright, but to keep myself orientated. By the time I reached the stairs, I could hardly see. I nearly fell down them when my foot dipped to the first step.
‘You are a tough one. How is that so? There’s a flavor about your mind. Something familiar? Yes, like the smell of a fox. Something is clinging to your mind. What is it?’
My whole story could have ended on that journey down the stairs. The hostel was six or seven storeys tall and my room was on the second to highest floor. Every single step was a feat of concentration. Aiming my foot at each new step was a gamble. I could see how it could end, me lying at the bottom of the long staircase, my neck broken. It didn’t even seem like such a bad idea at the time.
He could see the danger as well. He didn't want that. So he eased off. He closed the door a little more, took a little bit of the pressure off my mind, and it got easier. I was still panting by the time I reached the bottom floor. Gulping for air, groaning through my teeth.
As soon as I got there, the pressure resumed. It was okay now, though, I was there. Before my vision began to cloud back up, I had also seen my goal. It was fixed to the wall, twenty paces down the hall.
‘It’s her. Isn’t it? My sister has touched your mind. That’s how you’re doing this?’
His sister? I tried to tuck this away in my mind, along with the name Perseus, hoping that if I did survive this, that these pieces of information would find a way to stick to my liquefying mind.
I think he became aware of my intentions then. He pressed harder. Every step I took, each of those twenty agonizing steps, felt like I was forcing my legs to move through sand. My muscles literally burned with the effort, my lower back ached from the jerking pressure I had to exert to keep moving.
Then I actually bumped into it. I was so lost, so blind, that if I hadn’t knocked my shoulder against it, then I would have kept on walking past it.
I held onto the wall mounted payphone and took a deep breath. I thought of Metis, of her irresistible power, of the touch she had left on my mind, and I pushed back. I pushed him out, pushed him away. I needed privacy and I hoped against all hope that I could be strong enough to afford it.
With a shaking hand, I drew coins from my pocket and waveringly inserted them into the slot. I dialed a number that I had committed to memory. I'm very good at that, remembering things, but it was an incredibly pleasant relief to find I could still find this number in my current state.
The male voice that answered said, ‘Cardinal Werner’s office.’
‘I need to... to talk to Werner.’ My voice was far away from me, and it was full of agony.
If the voice on the other end of the line was aware of the suffering that saturated my words, then it gave no indication. It did seem to be offended at my use of the cardinal's name and when it spoke it stressed the title, ‘Cardinal Werner is not available. May I ask what this is in relation to?’
I took a deep breath, then spoke quickly, angrily, ‘Jesus Fucking Christ, go get him. This is Damien Slayer, he'll know who that is. Get him quickly, for the love of God.'
The voice was silent. I could feel the hesitation on the line. Then I said weakly, sounding every bit as pleading and pathetic as I felt, ‘Please.’
‘Just a moment.’
I heard the rustle of cloth and the slight clunk as the receiver was placed on a desktop.
The presence pushed hard while I waited. With no distraction, it was harder to keep him out. He hammered on my mind, tried to smash his way in. He was growing angry and frustrated. I don't think he could have imagined that I could eject him from my mind at all, let alone for this long. I didn't have long left, though. I was draining away, fading.
There was suddenly a new voice in my ear. Faintly accented, composed, authoritative. Familiar, because I had spoken to him before.
‘Slayer?’
‘Werner, please… I need help. Something is after me, it’s almost got me. It’s trying to take over my mind.’
Werner paused. I knew why. He didn’t need time to process what I’d said, he only needed a moment to measure the leverage he had.
When he spoke again, he said, ‘What will you give us?’
‘Whatever you want, just please, please help me.’
‘We want all of it, Slayer. All of it.’
I didn’t know what I was even saying when I answered, ‘Yes, yes. Anything, everything. Please, Werner, I don’t have much time.’
‘I’m having to trust you with this. If you’re lying, if you renege…’
‘I won’t, godammit. I won’t, just please.’ The pressure was almost through, almost back inside my mind and I was practically sobbing into the phone. I wouldn’t last long once he got back inside, there wasn’t enough left in me to fight.
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‘If you cross me then that will be it for you.'
‘Okay, yes. Okay.’ Miserable, weak, my voice wasn’t even my own.
There was another pause. More measuring.
Then he said the only thing that could have given me any real hope. This had been a longshot, I wasn’t sure that even The Order had people who could really contend with whatever was after me. But he said the words, said the name. The name. The legend.
‘I can send someone. My readout here says you’re in Berlin. Father Stryker is nearby.’
Father Stryker. I wasn’t saved, everything was unlikely now. But Father Stryker was the best chance I could ever have hoped for.
CHAPTER 69
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‘That’s you?’ Ardia said.
Stryker nodded, solemnly. ‘No mistakin’ it. That’s me.’
Ardia raised an eyebrow and said, 'You're this little boy in a photograph from…' She inspected the back of the image and nodded, ‘From 1938?'
Stryker’s vibrant, young face broadened into a grin. The eyes that looked out of that face were old. He said, ‘I take care of myself.’
Homer said, ‘You’ve drunk a bottle of whiskey every day since we met you.’
Ardia shook her head, ‘No, that doesn’t matter. You could exist on a diet of nothing but yoga and good thoughts and not look like this… I mean you must be at least…’ She paused as she did a little bit of mental maths… ‘At least eighty years old.’
Stryker smiled again. He said, ‘I don’t see how that can be so amazing when we’re standing together. Three of us. You can bend steel with your hands. I’ve seen you move too. You’re even faster than me. And then there’s the big guy. You tell me what’s more amazing, that I’m eighty-something, and that’s my best estimate too, or that Homer exists.’
Ardia nodded slowly, then stepped back. ‘So you came from here? And my mother, too.'
Stryker was distant as he looked at the walls around them. He said, ‘Long as I’ve lived I’ve wanted to know what I was. Feels like we’re getting mighty close to finding out.’
‘And my mother?’
Stryker just shrugged, ‘I have no memory of being here. But then, I don’t remember anything before the age of maybe six or so.’
‘Nothing? You blocked it out?’
‘Well,’ Stryker said, smiling sheepishly. He leaned forward and parted his hair. Ardia peered at his scalp and could see crudely formed scars.
She said, ‘They operated on your brain.’
‘I dunno. All I know is it is funny, cause I ain’t never made a scar in my memory. Every mark on my body comes from my early childhood, from before my memories. Every wound I ever remembered has healed up completely.’
Ardia nodded, ‘Me too. This is strange. Too strange.’
Homer stood looking from one of them to the other, ‘None of this has anything to do with my father.’
Stryker spread his arms wide, ‘It's a big place, we got a lot more looking to do.'
They turned their attention to the part of the room where Ardia had found the photograph. There were more documents in more drawers. Most of them seemed to be records of deliveries that had come to and from the facility. And there was another photograph, of the same tortured little boy. In this photograph, the little boy was holding a card with German writing on it. It looked like the photograph taken when being booked at a police station, where the detainees hold a card with their name and date of birth for the camera. This card had more writing than that.
Stryker looked at the photograph and shook his head, wonderment consuming his expression. He said, ‘Well, don't that beat all. I'm Jewish.'
He stood there, contemplating this new revelation.
Then he said, as though he was putting a great puzzle together, ‘I never did like those Nazi bastards.'
‘Yes,' said Homer. ‘But my understanding is that even non-Jewish people don't remember the Nazis with fond memories.'
Stryker’s phone made a loud beeping noise. He rolled his eyes, ‘Goddamn, but you wouldn’t expect cell reception down here, now would ya?’
He looked at the screen for a few moments and his expression grew very serious. He said, ‘Shit.’
‘What is it?’ Ardia asked, still opening drawers.
‘We gotta go.’
‘Is someone coming?’ she swivelled her head towards him quickly, urgently.
‘Nope. It’s business. I sure hope nobody comes across that bust open entrance while we’re gone. I want a chance to come back here.’
CHAPTER 70
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An excerpt from the diary of Damien Slayer
The wind on the rooftop was strong enough to make my clothes whip against me. My skin felt icy as the air rushed over my sweat-soaked skin. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Not the struggle up the stairs with my muscles screaming at me and telling me they were dying. Not the bruised bones I had received while smashing down the locked door that lead to the rooftop. All that mattered was Penny.
It had her.
The creature was a real piece of science fiction. It wore no clothes. It wasn't human, it couldn't be. But it was clearly derived from humanity. It was long. Tall seemed like the wrong word, long seemed to work better. It was like a piece of human chewing gum that had been stretched out of shape. Its skin was green, reptilian green. Its face had more of that human-chewing-gum-stretched-out-of-shape look about it. It had a pointed look, as though a normal human face had been wrapped around a reptile's head.
Alongside it stood Penny. I remember at the time wondering why I had thought she was dead. Even knowing, deep down, that she was long dead, I couldn't seem to put that information together with what I saw. What he wanted me to see.
He spoke, but without moving his hideous lips. He spoke right into my ear from all the way across the rooftop.
‘Now you will tell me where The Crucible is. And my sister. We thought she was dead.’
‘I won’t,’ I said, wondering if he knew there was a pistol holstered under my coat.
‘Oh, yes you will. They all tell eventually. And, if you don’t, I’ll make her jump. You can see I have her enthralled to me.’
He was right. She just stood there, one short step from the edge of the building. Her eyes were vacant and staring. She'd jump if he said. If he even thought it, then she would go.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘you can’t. I’ve spent my whole life…’
‘Your whole life what?’
I wanted to say, hunting for her killer. What I said was, ‘Hunting for her.’
‘For her?’ A weird stretched smile grew on the things face. I couldn’t figure out what was funny, not then.
‘Tell me now. Or she jumps.’
‘I can’t.’
He jerked his head at her and she raised a foot and began to step backward.
‘Wait!’ I shouted, more forcefully than I thought I had force left for.
She stopped, just paused, standing on one foot, the other still stretched over the abyss behind her.
‘Get her to step forward. I’ll talk. Please.’
‘No. Talk now, then she comes back. I would talk fast. I’m not sure how long she can balance like that.’
So I told him. The words came out of my mouth in a blur, a buzz of words and information. I gave him a location for The Crucible. I gave him a location for Metis. Only, somehow, there was enough of me left to understand that she wasn't real. That part of me, which wasn't driving the car but was, at least, calling some of the directions out from the back seat, told him one lie. I gave him two locations, one of them was a lie.
That weird smile came again and he jerked his head. And, of course, she did the obvious thing. She stepped the rest of the way back and fell, like a lead weight, over the side and out of my sight.
Then I did the obvious thing. I sprinted across the roof, forgetting the gun, forgetting that I could easily just kill this monstrous thing, and I jumped too.
And after I jumped, I started to fall.
CHAPTER 71
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An excerpt from the diary of Damien Slayer
About two seconds. That's how long it takes to fall six storeys. Two seconds is not a lot of time to see the ground coming rushing up to meet you. It's not a lot of time to feel the wind rushing through your hair and in your ears. It's not an experience you can detail. It is just one big rolling blur of movement.
It is also not a lot of time for someone to intervene. Think about it. You spend just two bare seconds plummeting. At the halfway point you’re moving at 20 miles an hour. Just before you hit the dirt you’re going more than forty miles an hour. You are a moving target, in the air for what? Three heartbeats?
But he caught me. He, himself, was a moving target. He came leaping from the shadows, laterally, so he must have been pretty high up when he jumped. He caught me in arms so big that they felt like whole people themselves. His momentum pulled us across the space between the buildings where he landed, still holding me, onto a fire escape platform. All the things I’ve seen him do since then, and that one is still one of the most amazing.
At first, naturally, I didn't know who it was that had caught me. I didn't know him, I didn't know he existed. In the first instant, all I could process was that it was a big, ape-like creature, with arms that were too long and too strong. The shape was hulking and there was something about the skull, about the silhouette it made against the weary yellow backlighting of the city lights that reminded me of Prowler. In my partly exhausted state of complete mental exhaustion, all I could see was Prowler's dark form, looming over me.
So I did what I would always have done in that situation. I pulled down on him. Exhausted or not I was still fast with the gun. It was out of the holster and in my hand before he could stop me. God knows he's fast, faster than any normal human I've ever seen. But so am I, and he was not expecting it. Man, but this whole story could have come to a sorrowful end then. The gun snapped up, lined up on the center of his forehead.
But I didn’t pull the trigger. And when I didn’t, he didn’t try to take it from me. It was like he knew I wasn’t going to shoot.
Why didn't I? He didn't have the eyes. He didn't have those weird orange eyes. Even in the darkness, I could tell. Those orange eyes, they're like fucking grapefruit, gone off in the sun. No shadow was hiding those eyes this close.
He did seem to take a meaning from what I did, though. He seemed to be able to translate something about the way I had reacted. He had read more than fright or surprise in my action. He must have seen the recognition, and the decades of hatred, burned right there on my face like a signpost. And, he knew who I'd seen in him in that first moment. He said as much.
‘You know him?' That was all he said, but we both knew who he was talking about. His voice was scary in the darkness, even as I realized he was an ally. It was such an incredibly big voice.
I nodded slowly.
He was going to say more when he suddenly cocked his head towards the roof that I’d fallen from. I could hear it as well. There was a fight up there. And, with the big guy, if there’s a fight to be had, then that’s where he goes.
‘Stay here,’ he said, and he was gone. He had jumped up, several storeys in one leap. It wasn’t quite flying, but it sure looked like it.
I lay back on the cold, sharp metal grating that was the floor of the platform. I laid my head back on it. The metal grill pressed hard against the back of my skull. But I was spent, spent beyond all comparison. I sure as hell was staying here. I didn't need him to tell me twice.