The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (12 page)

“Trip?” Cawood took a long sip of her drink,
turning her back to the bar so she could see both men. “Where are
you going?”

“Ah fuck,” Raul said, his eyes wide and
pupils dilated. “Trains already left baby.”

“Hey sister.” Dave grabbed Cawood’s free
hand. “What’s your name?”

“Call me Karrie.” Cawood smelled his cologne
as she shouted her name.

“Here’s your ticket. Karrie.” He placed a
small colored capsule in her hand.

Cawood looked at it, then up into Dave’s dark
eyes. “What is it?”

“Fucking Salvation Baby.” He laughed showing
all of his teeth.

“Salvation.” She held the capsule up in the
weird light. “I need Salvation!” Cawood tipped her head back and
dropped the capsule in. It tasted like nothing, but she washed it
down with a splash of her drink. She looked at her companions. They
slapped each other’s palms laughing. “Salvation!” Cawood felt
Raul’s hand slide over her hips and pause over her tailbone.

“You’re fucking beautiful, Karrie,” he said,
his breath garlicky with chemical traces.

“You’re not!” She laughed, and then kissed
him wetly.

Raul looked up at Dave and the pair shared a
secret smile. Cawood watched the writhing bodies on the dance floor
as she waited for the drug to kick in.

16 – The Hit

Balg’s key opened the apartment door without
a sound. Felon moved in quickly, quietly locked the door behind
him. He hurried cautiously through the living room. It was late
20th Century female. The walls were pink, the carpets red.
Victorian era remake chairs and chesterfield gathered around a
maple wood coffee table on a dark Indian throw rug. Magazines
fanned out across the table’s shiny surface. Plaque-mounted prints
hung on the walls. Felon hated it at first glance.
Fucking
women
.

His eyes scanned for and found the fire
escape’s black iron silhouette at the end of a hallway that brought
him to the bedroom and bath. A feathered spirit catcher hung in the
window that opened onto it. To his left, he passed a small
kitchenette with tiny breakfast nook, stove and fridge. The
apartment was small, well maintained, and intended for a single
occupant.

He opened the bedroom door on silent hinges.
The bed had a floral-patterned comforter in place and a pair of
pillows in lace-trimmed covers. He closed the door behind him.
Balg’s envelope had contained a photo of the woman: a redhead,
five-foot-six, athletic build and chestnut eyes. The photo had been
snapped as she climbed from a car, unaware. Chrissy Morgan had a
candid carnal look that vaguely stirred something in Felon. The
combination of apparent youthful innocence and sexuality started to
explain the Demon’s interest in her. The bio completed it.

Age: 27 (Pre-Change), Occupation: Secretary
for City Phone Company. She worked from 8:30 to 4:30. Arrived home
after a workout at Silver’s Gym at approximately 7:45 p.m. if she
didn’t eat out with friends, 9:30 if she did. The file said she was
meeting someone from work at the gym at seven-thirty. She’d be home
after that.

Morgan was a member of the New Life Group—an
organization that sprang up fifty years after the Change promoting
a New Life in a New Age through temperance, nutrition and exercise.
Its founders believed the regimen encouraged the growth of latent
powers in the mind. Felon thought it was a waste of discipline.
Chrissy went to bed early and got up early. She was Demon bait.

The assassin glanced at his watch: nine
o’clock. It was early, but success depended on the element of
surprise. He looked around the bedroom and walked to the closet.
Folding lattice doors: perfect. Felon could set up his hunter’s
blind behind them. He stretched, took a deep breath to relax his
body before entering, and then pulled the closet doors shut after
him. He settled himself cross-legged behind perfumed dresses and
suits. He pulled his gun from its holster, checked the silencer and
laid it in his lap. He waited.

The Incubus would be dangerous. The assassin
had long ago learned to shape innate fears into reflexive
defenses—so much so that he had almost lost the ability to flinch
or be surprised. And his life, his individuality became irrelevant
when he started killing. The storm of concentrated fury protected
him like razor wire.

Felon heard the door click. A muffled voice
followed, a woman’s humming a formless tune. There were thumps and
bangs of a briefcase dropping and shoes being kicked off. Then he
heard the quiet rustling of a nylon rain jacket falling to the
floor or over a chair. Felon lost sound of her, until he heard
clicking, a beep, and then garbled monotones as she listened to her
phone messages. He’d seen the ancient reel-to-reel by the door. A
long beep, and more clicks. There followed a rushing of water and
more humming. Then the bedroom door opened. A dim light flicked on.
Felon’s hand reflexively tightened its grip on the gun. He watched
her through the slats, moving rapidly toward the closet. She flung
the doors wide.

The assassin was hidden behind the long
dresses and coats. His pulse raced when he smelled her perfume, and
the breeze from her movements touched the hair on the back of his
hands. She was dressed in a pair of tight black leggings and tunic.
He couldn’t see her face, but he had glimpsed it as she approached
the closet. It was Morgan.

With quick motions her tunic was a tangle on
the carpet and her tights were down and off. Felon’s position
allowed a detailed view of her taut buttocks as she walked away;
but he blinked his eyes mechanically, the thought of killing more
important than arousal. She slipped into her bathrobe and left the
bedroom. Faintly, he could smell the woman’s scent rising from the
tangle of clothes on the floor an arm’s reach from him. He raked
the gun across his ribs to keep his focus.

When the Incubus was engaged, Felon would
stand and fire. He had four clips in his coat pockets, two in easy
reach thrust through his belt. Felon’s heartbeat surged at the
thought of the kill. Stahn might have any number of tricks up his
sleeves, but a low-level Demon like an Incubus was unlikely to
waste energy transubstantiating a weapon from the Infernal places.
Balg said it took too much power.

Felon looked up as the woman re-entered the
room in her bathrobe. She hooked it on the back of the bedroom door
and strode naked to her bed, lit the lamp beside it before
returning to the entrance and turning off the overhead light. When
she walked into the bathroom, Felon studied the kill zone. The
Demon would appear somewhere near the bed. That was the only
certainty. The assassin’s blind had a clear line of sight. He would
wait for Stahn to begin his work.

Morgan returned wiping her lips with a
towel.

“I’ve got to sleep tonight,” she muttered,
dropping onto the bed while lifting an electric alarm clock to set
it. Distantly, Felon smelled peppermint. The woman chuckled, threw
back the covers and climbed under them. Her pale hand reached out,
and clicked off the lamp. Darkness settled. Out in the living room
a light had been left on causing a rectangular slash of dim yellow
to cut a section from her bedroom carpet.

Felon focused on his gun. He felt its weight,
its shape. He studied the dimpled surface of its grip. The assassin
located each of its clips with his mind, weighed them, measured
them, imagined the precise hand actions required to eject and load.
He imagined these mechanical actions until the gun oil was strong
in his nostrils. Minutes passed uncounted.

Felon was brought from his meditative state
by a gasp—slight, instantaneous—the sudden intake of air a person
makes touching a toe to cold water. He opened his eyes. The bed
covers, top sheet and all, had floated up toward the ceiling.
Chrissy Morgan’s well-exercised body lay asleep, naked and exposed.
She reacted to the chill by turning on her side and drawing both
knees to her chest. Worried little sounds came from her.

The covers were suspended in the air as if
invisible wires held all four corners. They hovered a second before
spinning away to land in a heap by the door. Felon heard snuffling,
lapping noises now, wet and bestial. But in the half-light from the
doorway, he could not see any physical reason for it.

Stahn was still intangible, but he was
beginning his work. Morgan’s legs suddenly flexed outward as though
stretching, and then faintly, Felon saw the outline of a hand like
it was drawn in chalk on an invisible screen. A large human-like
hand slid out of the darkness, and then another. Both were sketched
at first, but grew in detail. Each hand grabbed an ankle, and
pulled the legs apart. The darkness between her thighs was thrust
upward as her hips turned.

Felon quietly got to his knees.

Morgan moaned as the snuffling and lapping
noises continued, and now the vague shape of a massive man was
appearing on the bed. He was bent over between her outstretched
legs. The sleeping woman moaned and her breath drew in more
sharply. She twisted her hips against the shadow head that grew
steadily more visible. Felon could make out a small pair of curved
horns atop the large naked skull. But he could not distinguish a
silhouette or profile. Its face was obscured pressing against the
sleeping woman’s groin. As Morgan made small laughing noises, she
began to buck her hips more powerfully against the Incubi’s slowly
resolving face. With each counter thrust, the guttural sounds she
made increased—spasmodic gulps of air exploded—and the Demon took
shape.

It was more than eight feet in height, and
powerfully muscled. The Demon’s dark flesh was like carved granite.
The muscles flexed impossibly—black blood churned through distended
veins. The Incubus slipped one large hand under the woman’s
buttocks and easily lifted her lower trunk and hips upward toward
his foot long tongue. Morgan moaned with pleasure as the Incubus
lavished her with monstrous kisses, his tongue flicking, darting in
and out, his yellow fangs nibbling.

Felon lifted his gun as the creature lowered
the woman on the bed. Stahn straightened now, arching his powerful
back. The Demon’s penis stretched over the woman. It was two feet
in length and looked as thick as Felon’s arm. Stahn gathered
Morgan’s ankles with one clawed hand and pushed them back to her
ears. He grinned, muttered “ficus” to himself, and then looming
over her exposed genitalia he thrust. The woman screamed.

Felon stepped out of the closet, gun level
with his eyes. The Incubus swung its head as he fired. The hiss of
the silencer drew Morgan from her trance. She screamed again.
Impaled, she was dragged over the mattress as the Demon turned.
Felon moved slowly toward Stahn, looking at nothing but his head.
He fired into the skull, again and again, while his free hand
positioned the next clip. Stahn’s head flexed and changed with the
first few bullets as he attempted to disappear, but too late, for
the impact of the bullets pulled him back into physical form. Each
strike punched more solidity into his dissolving head. Roaring the
Demon was drawn back to the physical world.

Felon had the other clip poised beneath his
gun, now ready: discharge clip, reload. Fire! The automatic thumped
with each shot. The Demon howled, then shrieked as one of its horns
shattered. The bullets fully reversed the earlier process and began
to chew a great hole of ragged nothingness in its face. “NO!” it
roared—the mirrors in the apartment burst into fragments. Felon
slammed in the next clip, opened up

“NO!” The top of Stahn’s head exploded in a
great eruption of black and gray. Hot red streaks flew from the
gaping skull and steamed smokily on the dresser and wall. The
Demon’s body could no longer resist the impact of the bullets, and
was flung to the floor on the far side of the bed. The assassin
leapt after it firing.

He shifted his aim onto its muscular chest
until a ragged fist-sized hole was punched. Discharge clip, reload.
Fire. Stahn stopped moving. Felon continued to fire. Discharge
clip, reload. He stopped; then grimaced. The gun steamed in his
hand. Morgan was out of her mind, screaming—her white thighs
streaked with Demon blood. She threw herself on the floor and
crawled into the closet sobbing. Then Stahn’s body began to smoke.
Wisps of silky white thread like solid steam curled upwards. His
head was missing from the top lip up—a wide pool of blood filled
the crater in its chest. The rising mist was sour.

Felon turned away.

“Assassin...” The voice was deep and
terrible; the words wet with blood. “Assassin...”

Felon froze, gritted his teeth, and turned.
He swung his gun, stepped near. Miraculously, even as its body was
dissolving, the mouth moved. Jawbones slid beneath torn flesh. “I
see you,” the corpse moaned. Felon looked at its mangled head. The
eyes went in the first volley.

Felon checked his peripheral vision, caught
on the dresser: a white orb. The eye trailed its long gray optic
nerve through a pile of gore. The slit pupil dilated. Felon raised
his gun and fired. The eye burst into a glob of moisture that
painted the wall behind it. The Demon’s body moaned a final time,
limbs flailing weakly as it turned to smoke.

Felon wanted to kill the woman in the closet
but Balg wanted her alive. He walked out of the bedroom
scowling.

17 – Bedtime Story

“What do you think happened to my mother?”
Dawn asked from the darkness where she laid on her little mattress
by the cubbyhole. Mr. Jay was over at their small table. He used a
wooden packing crate as a chair. After returning to their hideout,
they had eaten dinner and shared a little chat about the day. Mr.
Jay did not tell her anything about what happened at Carmen’s
apartment except to say she had pictures of cats. Dawn didn’t think
that was any biggy. Since the animals went crazy after the Change,
pet lovers had to make do with pictures and stuffed animals.