Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (6 page)

A little upset at the rudeness of our greeting, I toss the hundred and seven pound duffle bag into the cab as I yell “catch,” then hop onto the hood.  I twist my torso back to face Sabetha and offer her a hand, palm up.  She takes it and steps with perfect grace from the speeding train onto the hood, never swaying or fighting to find her balance.  We drift back from the train until it disappears and the truck slows to a stop.  The scout who picked us up gets out and we jump down with him onto the mud covered ground.  My poor
Phobes
.

The truck departs down another track into an access tunnel, leaving us alone with the scout who stands nearby.  A new flare illuminates his torso, casting green shadows over his face and allowing me a chance to sense things around us.  He waves an arm for us to follow and we duck into a different side tunnel.  I can feel the moisture and dankness of this newly carved burrow.  

Our guide comes to a grate at the end of the passage and taps on it a few times with the flare.  A rusty bolt is slid to the side and the mesh gate swings open with a creek, allowing us entry.  We come out into a dimly lit cavern and with the flare’s help I can make out the other end.  Three gazers stand before us.  Two are in a hybrid middle form which is only achievable by those who embrace their inner beast.  These kinds of gazers make both the best and worst warriors as they don’t have to wait for the right phase of the moon to gain a physical edge, but by the same token, forever lose whatever discretion they may have possessed in the first place.  Instead of Jekyll and Hyde syndrome they tend to just be Hyde.  These two are different however.  They’re not the drooling, lumbering beasts with wolf heads on a human body, dragging their knuckles like you see in lone pups. 

That’s because these are some of Lezar’s warriors and that makes them cunning predators even with their yellow eyes, protruding fangs, deformed noses, and abundance of body hair.  The third among the sentries displays none of these features.  He is human looking, though still an imposing mass, and I immediately recognize him as Bullworth.

“They’re here to see Lezar,” our guide informs the sentries before handing one the flare.

“Not near your bite-phase, or are you just slacking off?” I say to Bullworth.  He quickly chuckles, keeping the others in the room from pulling my legs off. 
It’s a grave insult none the less.  The bite-phase is the phase of the moon when the gazer was bitten, and for whatever reason, that is the time when forever hence he or she can turn into a
millitus
, the last thing in Gothica you want to tussle with.  It’s a sensitive subject for them and the only way I could have been more offensive was if I phrased it as a menstrual-cycle metaphor.  Bullworth extends his big brown hand and I take it firmly, perhaps especially firmly.  I’ll be sure to behave from here on out.

“How are you, Delano?”

“Worried enough that should my luck not change, I may be hiring your services from Lezar again.”  Bullworth, like Sabetha, is noteworthy for walking the tight-rope between what he would be and what everything else in the world would have him be.  His life is a struggle, and he is unique in that he is a stronger creature for it.  Among Lezar’s court, Bullworth is a legend for his warrior prowess combined with his tranquility and even temper. 

“I’m sorry to hear the bad news” he says, mostly to Sabetha.

“We’ll get by,” She replies.

“After tonight,” I say, “rumors will do as they do, but let’s just say we had an intruder and we’re trying to find out who sent him.”

“Best of luck to you,” Bullworth says in his deep voice and nods us on down the next tunnel.  I wait till we are out of sight to start dabbing at the dirt stains on my pants with a handkerchief wet with saliva.

We come out into a sixty-three foot high cavern filled with eighteen tin-sheet huts, forty-three garbage bag brimming shopping carts, and nine barrel fires.  Towards the center of the village, an overturned subway car, rusting and hollow, glows with candle light from within.  Children playing inside, dance with their giant shadows. 

Over to the right, two hundred feet away, is a long dirt slope leading up to the roof of the cave.  At the summit are three makeshift doorways each six feet squared.  They’re made of plywood and framing lumber with door hinges and simple latches, like hands on a clock, that keep them closed.  They’re built into the ceiling itself which is the bottom of an abandoned building above.  It was slated to be over eight stories based on the materials and foundation but it looks like the construction crew only ever made it to the third floor.  Through those three doors is a labyrinth of tunnels that lead through the rubble of the abandoned building’s basements and into the outside world.  It’s a perfectly camouflaged front door and easily defendable. 

Another one of Lezar’s warriors, also in hybrid form, sits on a metal beam sticking out of the long dirt slope leading to the three doorways.  Only one of his arms is bestial and clawed, the other comparatively meek and devoid of hair.  In the smaller one he holds an M1 carbine rifle.  He sniffs at us to let us know he’s watching, then continues to survey the cavern from his vantage point.  

There’s not much to see.  Haggard people scurry about, hunched over and eyeing everything distrustfully.  The whole scene is eerily apocalyptic despite the world of consumerism and excess just a half mile away on the surface.  Suffering is everywhere and soon I feel guilty for trying to keep my designer pants clean when these pathetic darkened, humans raised by wolves, are scrounging for food.  But like the topside world does, I just tell myself they are here because of their own decisions and choices and that if they wanted to get out, there are opportunities for the determined.  I tell myself that because I know the truth about these ilk and gazers.  I know about the havoc their wolf-sides wreak on their human-sides, about the beast they know is nearing but cannot stop themselves from becoming.  I know about the poverty they were born into and the hopelessness that traps them here.

Continuing on, we come upon a group dropping pinches of fluorescent blue dust into their eyes.  It’s an acidic drug known as flush or blush that leaves burn marks on the user’s cheeks and causes blindness.  But like all drugs, legal or illegal, it makes the world go away for a while.  Sabetha, the scout and I cross through the rest of the subterranean shanty town and go through a set of double iron doors, built into the cave wall.  On the other side is Lezar’s chamber.  

L
ezar is an old gazer.  He is smart enough to know he’s smarter than his peers, but not smart enough to realize how small that disparity is or how much smarter people like me are.  He holds a gathering of local wolves in his hall and controls the most organized network of shape-shifters in Central Gothica.  To make himself seem more important to outsiders he tries to connect his lineage to Maynard Creek, the gazer who ended the blood wars.  If for no other reason, Lezar respects me because I knew Maynard, and I know that the connection is fabricated.  He’s nevertheless made a significant impact in uniting the local packs and I respect him for that alone even if he doesn’t himself.

The sad part is what other groups, like chyldrin think of this accomplishment, and in truth, the meager ties that hold the court together do speak to the impoverishment and disarray of the gazer community.

Other well-off gazers reside in or near Lezar’s court, the hall we have just entered, and if you want to get something out of Lezar you have to play along with his courtly charade.  He thinks of himself as a prince, wearing a faded brown robe and crown of scrap metal.  His throne is made of garbage and knickknacks and he sits there proudly.  By his side stand two guards and an advisor, and around the rest of the hall are representatives from various gazer dens.

“Delano,” he says cheerily as I enter his hall.  “Sabetha,” he says with slightly less enthusiasm.  “My good friends. What do you think, eh?” he motions behind me with a long arm.  “I just had it finished Thursday.”

I turn around and look up at the archway over his door.  Carved into the stone with halfway decent workmanship is the phrase: the poor man is not he who has little, but he who desires more.  I read it aloud.

“Excellent.  Excellent,” he says enthusiastically.  “Now tell me, what brings you to my court?”

“An incident of sorts.”

He flashes me a deadly sharp canine smile from his weathered features and beckons me to continue.  Sabetha stands statuesquely beside me with her head bowed slightly and strands of auburn hair falling over her eyes.  She’s behaving, for which I am grateful.  Her
kind is not welcome here.  I step forward and look around the court with my jaw set so that my teeth grind against each other.  “Our home was attacked.”

“A violation of sanctuary?”  Lezar leans forward intently.  Such violations are only taboo among the darkened elites.  We have something to lose and so we want the laws to mean something, but they don’t.  He relaxes and sits back.  “Surely not some of mine?”

“No, no,” I answer quickly, “the infiltrator was alone.  But perhaps you may have seen this fellow.”

“Do tell,” Lezar prompts.  I forgot how much he enjoys the whole
messenger in the court
thing.

“It was a man-like creature that wore the faces of the ilk as its skin.”  I look around the room. Gazers in all forms and sizes eye me skeptically.  To them I’m an enigmatic messenger from a distant world they don’t understand and some avoid my eyes.  “I doubt it could be anything other than the work of a surgenitor.  I’d even say it looked like old Fabriano’s handiwork, if you and I both didn’t know for damn sure he was dead,” I say, playing on his nostalgia from the last time he left his court to join a fight.  “Regardless, it was strong enough to gain entry.”

“Can’t say I’ve seen anything like that.  Not since you and I felled that wretched blight.”

His advisor suddenly speaks.  “Did you slay it?” the voice is human but the speaker is a millitus, a fully transformed werewolf.  I instantly recognize the unique ability of the crafter Alistair – Lezar’s Merlin they would each have people believe – and shift my gaze to him as he comes to heel next to Lezar.  Despite having a wolf’s body on hind legs, he is surprisingly scrawny, perhaps only the size of a large dog, even as a millitus.  Lengths of faded purple and gold drapery are slung about his furry form, and are surprisingly well fitted.   

“It was dead by the end,” I reply.

“And you suspect it was sent by another?” Alistair continues.

“Not just sent, but retrieved… by the craft.  After leaving his body for only an instant, the invader, and all of his insides, which were efficiently decorating the walls of three rooms, vanished.  Nothing else but the craft would have allowed him to leave so completely and so quickly.”

Lezar slowly looks up at Alcibiades who looks back.  Not that I expected otherwise, but their heartbeats stay regular.   They aren’t hiding anything on the subject, and I can see on their faces that they aren’t holding back anything in their immediate thoughts, either.  One of my many abilities as an observer of existences is to be able to read people and interpret the words their bodies create.  I once did a thirty year study on body language that pioneered it as a science within the Hyperion.  Lezar is looking to Alcibiades due to the wolf’s ability and knowledge with the craft, and for no other reason.

“As you said, Captain,” Alcibiades says, addressing me but still looking at Lezar, “Fabriano is dead.  You will have to look beyond our tunnels.”

I’m getting impatient and want to leave to follow other leads.  Playing to Lezar’s courtly mannerisms I say, “This night is too old for me to spend any more of it in your honorable presence; our task beckons us.  I have no more words for you, save these.  The hunt is on for those responsible.”

Lezar smiles. “I shall spread the word.”

†
Sabeth
a
†

D
elano and I ease into the leather seats as Rolla comes to life with a purr.  The streets looks like rows of movie sets, each meant to fit within the width of a lens, fake and cardboard at any other angle. That’s central for you. 

“Where to next
my liege
?” I tease Delano.

His
eyes look blankly ahead, resting.  He’s brooding, lost in terrible memories, or self-pity.  Usually both.

I try to snap him out of it. 
“What about Carlos?”

Victory.  He
sits forward and looks right at me.  “What about him?”

I’m already driving there and he knows it by mid-question.  He
sits back and looks out the window as I drive casually through the streets.   

“Tell me a story,” I say to him and he begins to narrate what he can see and I cannot.

“Eleven people nearby are in low-love, the kind you get from proximity and shared experiences.  The twelfth is in love, but not with her spouse.  Two are having sex with no love involved at all.  One woman is making spaghetti even though its midnight and her children are asleep.  She must have just gotten home.  Her nametag says retail; her feet say a lifetime of it.  Her hands say arthritis, and her blood pressure says, she’s trying damnit.  She’s trying.”

“Okay.  Now one with dragons and a princes…”

I trail off as I catch sight of something on the side of the road.  My body stiffens and I feel the ache of too little blood nagging at me like a ghostly whisper. 
Later Betha.