The Gathering Dark (10 page)

This morning it was all business, and Kuromaku was bored.

The office of David Truchaud was situated in a spectacular location on one of the tiny streets that criss-crossed Montmartre, within sight of the white steeple of Sacré-Coeur that jutted like a beacon of faith from the top of that hill with all of Paris unfolding below it. Among the women’s boutiques and fine French and Italian restaurants, tucked into buildings that had seen the ghosts of centuries pass through their doors, there were some of the most respectable businesses in all of France. Truchaud’s office was entered by walking through a tall, Medieval doorway into a courtyard filled with colorful flowers in bloom. The silence in that courtyard was extraordinary. Several doors led off the courtyard, but Truchaud’s offices were accessible from the one farthest to the right, and up the stairs to the second floor.

The architecture was admirable but the décor was depressing as hell. Kuromaku had managed to gather quite a collection of antiquities over the years. He bought and sold them as a business and a pleasure and had amassed a significant fortune in doing so. But in rooms as staid as these—all dark wood and very little light—the paintings and antique furniture Truchaud had decorated his headquarters with solicited only gloom from those who came through the door. Kuromaku’s own estate in Bordeaux was sprawling and open, every room planned so that it was awash with light on days when the sky was graced with the sun.

It seemed to him a horrible shame that they could be so close to such tranquil beauty as was to be found upon Montmartre, and yet exist in such dreary surroundings.

And so he sat in an uncomfortable yet extremely valuable wooden chair in Truchaud’s office and did his level best not to fall asleep. The room was so dark and the voices of Truchaud and his attorney so monotone that it was quite a feat to keep his eyes from fluttering closed. As it was, he had lost the thread of the conversation and perked up only when Sophie spoke.

Now, for instance.

“Kuromaku,” she said, voice somewhat urgent.

He lifted his chin, hoping he appeared to have been deep in thought rather than excruciatingly bored. With the slender fingers of his right hand he reached out and adjusted the crease of his pants at the knee.

“Yes? I’m sorry, what was that?”

His attorney did not smile as many would have done. Kuromaku was Japanese, though he lived in France, and Truchaud was of a grimly serious breed of Parisian businessmen. The proceedings were to unfold with a sobriety and dignity that left no room for amusement at Kuromaku’s lack of attention. He knew he ought to be embarrassed, but could not find it in himself to worry overmuch about any unintended insult. He was bored, pure and simple. The rest, as his American friends would say, was all bullshit.

“I asked if you had any more questions before the deal is concluded,” Sophie explained.

Kuromaku let his gaze tick from her face to Truchaud’s ruddy features and wispy white hair, then to his young, bespectacled attorney. “None at all. I am very pleased that Monsieur Truchaud has agreed to sell his vineyards to me and I look forward to caring for them for quite some time.”

“I am confident you will be a splendid caretaker,” Truchaud replied, nodding his head politely toward Kuromaku. “I am pleased to have found a buyer for my Bordeaux property who actually lives in Bordeaux.”

There was an ironic undercurrent to these words that Kuromaku sensed immediately. The man genuinely had wanted to find a local owner for his winery, but was not entirely comfortable with the fact that though he had lived in Bordeaux for decades, Kuromaku was still—to Truchaud’s mind at least—a foreigner.

Kuromaku only nodded in return. “You are very gracious,” he told the white-haired man.

They had arrived at that moment when all of them realized the meeting was over and their business concluded. Kuromaku and Sophie rose and offered their gratitude to Truchaud and his attorney, then took their leave. There was something wistful in the old Frenchman’s eyes and Kuromaku wondered if he already regretted having sold the vineyards, or if he was simply sad no longer to have an excuse to visit Bordeaux.

But then they were walking down the stairs and out into the courtyard and the bright sunshine, and Monsieur Truchaud was forgotten. It was like that for Kuromaku, and always had been. Some people made an impression upon him so that he could never forget them, not in a thousand years. Others drifted across the path of his life like windblown autumn leaves.

Sophie, for instance. He had known the girl—now twenty-six, he believed—since her birth, and had always been fond of her. She had been a bright, happy child and seemed to be at least as competent an attorney as her father had been. Unlike others who crossed his path, Sophie had made an impression.

Now, as the two of them emerged from the courtyard into the narrow street that slashed across the steep hill leading to Sacré-Coeur, Sophie slipped her arm into his and smiled brightly.

“Congratulations, Kuromaku. I hope that you will let me visit the vineyards from time to time. The photographs are quite beautiful.”

He paused and turned to gaze quizzically at her, this sensual, lithe slip of a girl, with her golden blond hair and her eyes so bright and blue.
No
, he thought,
not a girl
. Sophie was a woman now. The understanding came as a revelation to him and he felt foolish because of it. How could he not have noticed this before? He had thought of her for too long as the little girl he had once taken on a boat ride along the Seine. And yet now there was a new spark in her voice, a flirtation that shocked him.

Yet as he looked at her, he realized that it also delighted him. When centuries passed one by the way decades did for others, it became impossible not to see that some mortal beings shone more brightly than others. Sophie had ever been one of those and he had always relished her company.

Now Kuromaku saw her with new eyes.

“I thank you for your help,” he said, nodding his head respectfully. “And of course I would welcome you as my guest anytime you desire to visit.”

Unlike the courtyard inside the building, the narrow street was mostly shadowed by the buildings on either side. Somehow even in those shadows her eyes sparkled more brightly.

“I’ll take you up on that soon,” she told him, reaching out a hand and placing it flat on his chest, at the place where his crimson tie disappeared inside the buttoned jacket of his suit.

“And I shall be most pleased when you do,” he replied. “For the moment, however, let me show my gratitude by taking you to lunch. There is a tiny restaurant atop the Montmartre where we can sit and watch the artists and the street performers.”

A moment of silence passed between them during which Sophie left her palm upon his chest and a curiosity crept into the smile she wore. It seemed to Kuromaku that she was examining him closely, wondering if her interest had been properly communicated, and then deciding that indeed it had.

“Lead the way,” she told him at length.

And so he did, slipping an arm through hers and escorting her with a formality that was somehow joyous along the narrow street to the nearest intersection, where they turned to climb up toward the peak of Montmartre. The street was so steep that there were stairs in the sidewalk. Vendors stood beside their carts and tried to sell T-shirts and souvenirs to spring tourists.

As they climbed closer to the top, Kuromaku could see not merely the main dome of the bone white structure of the Sacré-Coeur, but the two smaller domes on either side. Here there were a great many people on the street, mostly tourists by the look of them but also some locals. Brightly colored umbrellas jutted above stands that sold the works of the various artists who made their encampment here, but also crêpes and glaces and various other foods one might conceivably eat while strolling.

For all the horrors and advancements that the world had seen in the past decade, certain things were timeless. This was one of them.

As they walked, Sophie glanced happily up at Kuromaku from time to time. Something was being revealed between them here. He felt it just as well as she seemed to. It was not blossoming, precisely; rather it was more that it was an artifact they had unearthed and were carefully brushing away the soil to reveal.

The top of the hill, Montmartre itself, was lined with trees and splashed with warm sunshine. With the white geometry and exquisite architecture of Sacré-Coeur silhouetted against it, the sky was impossibly blue. The air seemed to shimmer with the tapestry of conversations in half a hundred languages. There was a magick to this place that Kuromaku relished. With Sophie at his side he navigated toward the restaurant, hoping it would still be there eleven years after he had last sat upon its patio and watched life upon Montmartre unfold.

“Perhaps,” he said without looking down at Sophie, “you will be able to steal a little time from your clients soon, even if only a weekend, and walk the vineyards with me. There is a kind of ancientness to them that you can taste in the grapes, in the wine. A sip of it, with your eyes closed, is almost enough to transport you back in time.”

Just as he had not looked at her, neither did Sophie glance up at him as she responded. Rather she let her gaze drift across the faces of those around her and the canvases of the painters at work on the street as she slipped her arm out of his and let her hand drop so that their fingers touched as they walked.

“I’d come as soon as you’ll have me,” she said, voice barely audible over the hum of the crowd. Her fingers now twined with his as they walked.

Kuromaku smiled.

The tranquility of Montmartre was shattered by the high-pitched, keening whine of a police siren. All at once people scattered, pulling small children by the hand and glancing anxiously over their shoulders as they moved aside to let the police car travel through the horribly clogged street. Yet somehow in the midst of that sea of flesh, an avenue opened for the police car with its flashing lights, as though Moses were behind the wheel.

Kuromaku held Sophie’s hand as they stood aside. As the police car passed, the human sea began to roll back in behind it, filling the gap. In that moment he gazed along the vehicle’s intended path and his fingers tightened involuntarily upon Sophie’s, hard enough so that she cried out, more in surprise than hurt.

Farther along, upon the very steps of the Sacré-Coeur, the crowd was still scattering and not because of the approaching police car or its siren. There in the brilliant sunshine of a perfect spring day, a hole had been rent in the fabric of the world and it gaped, shimmering like liquid silver where it hung in the air.

“My God, what is it?” Sophie whispered.

Kuromaku did not reply. He knew precisely what it was for he had seen its like several times before. And even as that thought entered his mind, something erupted from the vertical tear in the face of the world, a thing glistening greenish-black with eight or ten legs that clacked upon the cobblestones as it crossed dimensions, its long tail bobbing and darting about behind it. Its body was narrow and it had no discernible face, only a round circle of eyes that glowed a putrescent yellow. To the humans who shrieked in terror and began to flee, shoving one another, trampling the less fortunate beneath the heels of their fear, it might have appeared some hideous combination of spider and scorpion. But those were natural creatures, things of this world. It was not.

It was a demon.

Sophie screamed along with the others and she tried to tug Kuromaku away with her. There were words to her panic; frenzied questions and pleas for him to come on, to run with her. But Kuromaku was not listening. As he watched, the doors of the Sacré-Coeur opened and a middle-aged couple whose olive skin might have made them Italian or Greek poked their heads outside, obviously curious about the commotion.

The demon was upon them instantly. It scrambled up the steps of the cathedral and that scorpion tail whipped around and jabbed at the exotic features of the woman. Its sharp point punched through her head, obliterating it in an explosion of blood and brain and bone shards that splashed an obscene pattern against the whitewashed face of the Sacré-Coeur, the latest masterpiece painted at Montmartre. Her husband cried out in grief and horror and for a moment, just a moment, he stared at the headless corpse of his wife as it tumbled wetly down the steps. Then he realized his own peril and turned to flee.

Too late.

The demon slashed its tail in an arc that tore the man in two, his bisected remains falling not far from where his wife lay dead. The sky echoed back the screams of those who fled. Vendors’ carts were toppled, people stumbled over them, artists left their easels and works-in-progress to be crushed beneath the retreating wave.

The police car halted and the doors popped open. Two officers appeared with their guns drawn, faces pale with panic. Nothing they had been taught had prepared them for this—not that such abominations were unheard of in the world in these times, but such things happened in other cities, not here. Not in Paris.

“Kuromaku, please!” Sophie cried, pulling at his arm. “Run!”

He narrowed his dark eyes and turned to her. “Find cover. This will be over momentarily.”

“What?” She clutched his arm more tightly. “What are you talking about?”

Kuromaku smiled gently and reached down to remove her hand. The crowd was flowing around them still but thinning, and he walked her several steps toward the café that had been their original destination.

“Get inside. Wait. I’ll return.”

With that, he spun toward Sacré-Coeur once more, leaving Sophie behind as he began to run. Kuromaku weaved a serpentine path amid the stragglers the mass exodus had left behind. Dozens of people were on their knees or sprawled on the ground, injured, several possibly dead. But there would be time to help them later. For now he sprinted toward where the police car was parked. Behind the imagined safety of their opened doors, the officers shot at the arachnoid demon but the thing ignored them.

It was the cathedral that held its interest.