The Theocracy - The Blackened Cross - 17. Chapter 17

Pale moonlight cast pools of silver on the Wishwood ruins, giving everything a ghostly cast. During the day there had been humans everywhere, scuttling around like rats in search for scraps, but now that darkness had fallen no one was around. The silence reminded Bazzelthorpe of those long, endless days when Gael and he had snuck around the streets of Inferno (not unlike rats), afraid to draw the attention of something that wanted to eat them or torture and maim them in a terrible way. He tried not to think about those times, but memories had a way of sneaking up on him.

He looked over at Vanus, hoping the death magician would take the lead.

Vanus looked out through the windshield, his skin pale and chalky and smoothe. Bazzelthorpe’s skin tingled with the memory of his touch, cool and soft as silk, so unlike his own skin which was hard and unyielding and ugly, hardened by time and scars. The longer Bazzelthorpe watched him the more guilty he felt. He kept thinking about what he’d seen when he looked through the camera - he had seen something. Why he couldn’t tell Vanus what it was he could not say; every time he tried his tongue became stuck, gluing itself to the roof of his mouth.

“Are you afraid?” Bazzelthorpe asked.

“Yes.” The death magician smiled; it relieved the Astorathian to see there was some humor in it. “Can’t you tell by the sound of my heart?”

“My own heart is going too fast right now to hear much of anything. I’m afraid too.”

This won him a laugh.

“A big, strong warrior type like you. I doubt it.” Another smile, another joke, another attempt to hide his vulnerability. The more he was around him the more Bazzelthorpe was learning to pick up on Van’s quirks.

“Even warriors get afraid. They just don’t admit to it.”

The humor faded from Van’s face, his eyes darkening. His eyes remained on the corpse of the building lying in wait for them. “I’ve been afraid almost every day of my life; now that I think about it there probably hasn’t been a moment where I haven’t been afraid. You get used to it. It becomes a way of life. Listen, I don’t know what we’re going to find in there. I have an idea…It could be ghosts, revenants, or it could be something else. We won’t know what we’re dealing with until we take a look. Should anything happen to me, should we get separated, don’t be a hero. You get back to headquarters and you tell the captain.”

Bazzelthorpe felt his heart speed up. Vanus was back to looking at the Wishwood ruins with an intent expression on his face. Bazzelthorpe had seen that expression before…mostly on the faces of other Astorathians, but on humans as well. It was a universal look that transcended species and dimensions. It was the look of someone who didn’t have anything to lose. Seeing it on Van’s face made him feel strangely uneasy. “If anything happens to me you do the same.”

The death magician nodded. “You have a deal.”

At the trunk of the SUV they began to prepare for their expedition into the Wishwood ruins. Vanus slid his arms through the straps of his staff while Bazzelthorpe loaded shells into his shotgun. He wasn’t taking any chances; he would both have the camera and the shotgun with him. He tucked the weapons inside his jacket. His curiosity got the best of him. “How do you cleanse a place of spirits?”

Vanus closed the trunk with a resounding thud that sounded deafening in the silence. “Do you remember how I said when a person dies, especially if that death is violent, if there are powerful emotions involved, it thins the boundary between our world and the Void?”

Bazzelthorpe nodded.

“We have to find the spot where that boundary is thinnest: the source of where the activity is coming from. And then I have to close it.”

“How do you close it?”

Vanus smiled wickedly. “Wait and find out for yourself.”

They picked their way carefully through the debris; for someone so short Vanus moved gracefully, taking the lead, climbing gracefully over large chunks of plywood. Bazzelthorpe found himself looking up at the hollowed windows that watched them with great interest. He couldn’t shake the sense they were being watched even though he couldn’t see anyone. That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there, he reminded himself. He resisted the urge to raise the camera Vanus had given him and peer through the viewfinder.

The double doors leading into the building sat warped in their frame. Jagged-edged shards of glass gleamed in the moonlight like teeth. Bazzelthorpe felt the air pop when Vanus drew his mana around himself in a veil of shimmering gray light. His eyes glowed, the same color as the moonlight reflected in the sky. He looked over his shoulder at the Astorathian. He didn’t say anything but the determined set of his mouth was translation enough: Are you ready?

Bazzelthorpe nodded: I’m ready. He got the camera ready.

They entered the lobby. The bubble around Vanus cast puddles of light on the floor, what remained of the walls, and in the ceiling. Holes had been burned into the ceiling above their head. Wires and bits of plaster or drywall dropped down towards the floor like the guts of a great beast. Vanus stopped at a desk with a bank of cracked security monitors. With a dazed look on his face, he reached towards the desk to place his hand on it. Before he realized he’d meant to do it, Bazzelthorpe’s hand snapped out, fingers wrapping around the delicate bone hard enough to make the death magician wince. When his flesh made contact with Van’s mana, his skin prickled, but there was no pain.

Van tried to tug his hand free to no avail. “What are you doing? I’m trying to get an idea where we should go. Let go of me!”

The Astorathian released him, cheeks burning. “What if you have another seizure like you did in the morgue?”

“Then I have another seizure,” Vanus said impatiently. “Listen, if you don’t want to do this, I get it. You can wait in the car. But this is what I do. It’s not just my job, it’s my life. It always has been.”

“I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”

The moment his hand touched the soot-covered top of the desk, the death magician became still. His eyes stared ahead of him at something Bazzelthorpe could not see. His face bunched up in an expression of sorrow. Around them a chorus of whispers sounded from the shadows - the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the entire building seemed to be speaking - swirling around them like a cloud of gnats. The camera began to vibrate so suddenly in Bazzelthorpe’s hands that he almost dropped it. Motes of dust fell from the ceiling. The air was electric with a growing tension. The Astorathian knew that if he looked through the camera’s viewfinder he would see things that were both terrible and beautiful.

“Oh yes,” Vanus sobbed beside him. He was stooped over now, hand still on the desk, eyes still glowing. Tears tracked down his cheeks like liquid crystal. “I can feel them. I can feel them all…They’re trapped in an endless loop of agony and fear…”

Bazzelthorpe raised the camera to his eye. He wished he hadn’t. The dead poured from the hole in the ceiling and cracks in the wall. Long limbs scuttled over one another, legs over arms, arms over legs, mouths opening in screams of rage and pain and despair, leaving tendrils of smoke behind them. The Astorathian did the only thing he could think of to do and mashed the button of the camera down. The camera shuddered in his hand. A white flash lit the nearest revenant. The creature wailed before breaking apart into a cloud of smoke.

“So that’s what it does,” the Astorathian muttered under his breath.

Another flash from the camera; another spirit twisted and writhed as if in great agony before disintegrating. There were too many of them to fight on his own. He threw a glance over his shoulder. The death magician had not moved from his position in front of the desk; in fact he didn’t seem to be aware of what was happening around them at all. You picked the perfect time to fall asleep on me, Bazzelthorpe thought. Whatever the plan was, whatever they’d agreed on, it wasn’t going to happen.

“Sorry,” he panted. “I’m not dying over here today.” He snapped the camera a third time, then lifted Vanus in the air and tossed him over his shoulder. It was like carrying air.

Of course they couldn’t just leave. The dead…or was it undead?...wouldn’t let them. They blocked the way, coming at them in a wave of half a dozen. The revenants circled them like a hungry pack of hungry wolves. Bazzelthorpe turned this way and that in a desperate search for an opening. There was none. Vanus hung limply from his shoulder, muttering sleepily under his breath, his staff still strapped to his shoulder.

The Astorathian saw no other choice but to take their chances. He broke into a run. Not for the doors leading out of the building because that way was blocked, but towards an open doorway because that was the way not blocked off. The pack of undead followed; they shouted in rage, their individual voices mingling together as a singular voice.

Bazzelthorpe thundered up a short flight of steps. He felt the floor sag beneath his feet. He didn’t know where he was going, if there was safety anywhere to be had. For all he knew they were already dead. He turned through another door and slammed it shut. He laid Vanus gently on the floor before pressing his ear to the door to listen. He could still hear the revenants scuttling about like insects, but the sounds were distant as if they had moved on. He breathed a sigh of relief.

“Kaufman,” he said breathlessly. “I don’t know where you are, or what’s going on inside your head but I need you to get up.”

Vanus opened his eyes. He had a sleepy look on his face. “There’s so much pain here, so much grief…and anger. They’re all screaming in my head…It’s so loud. I almost saw him. I almost saw the killer. For a moment I was there. When he did it. But then I woke up. I need to go back under.”

Bazzelthorpe shook his head. “Now is not the time.”

Vanus grunted. He sat up, leaning against the door for support. He glared at his partner. “Now is the only time.” With effort he rose to his feet, staff in hand. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small knife. Bazzelthorpe watched him press the blade to the palm of his hand.

“What are you doing?” the Astorathian demanded. He resisted the urge to snatch the weapon from Van’s hand.

The death magician scowled. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m buying us some time.”

“You’re insane,” Bazzelthorpe muttered.

Vanus answered this with a smile. “And everyone says I don’t know how to have a good time. Not how you expected your Friday evening to go, was it?” He winced slightly when the knife cut deep enough to break the skin. Blood seeped from the wound. He staggered to his feet with great effort before running his cut palm along the length of the door where he left a smear of dark red. He raised his staff, pressed the tip to the door. Gray light filtered through the cracks of the door. “That should do it for now,” he said.

He turned. He did not look good: there were dark circles under his eyes. Blood trickled from his nose.

Bazzelthorpe resisted the urge to reach out and touch him. “You’re bleeding.”

Vanus wiped at his face with the sleeve of his coat. “That tends to happen when I use up a lot of myself. It’ll get worse. Don’t worry, though, I can handle it.”

The Astorathian blinked in surprise. “You sound awfully confident.”

The death magician shrugged. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve been in worse situations than this.” He stretched back out on the floor. “I’m going back under. I was right here before the fire started. I saw the killer, Bazzelthorpe…Not his face, but…” He grinned with something that might have been excitement.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Not really. Just hang tight until I wake up. It’s not like you can do much of anything else at this point. You could try getting a hold of the captain, but I doubt our cell phones are going to work at this point.” With that Vanus stretched out on the floor like a man tanning himself at the beach. He closed his eyes and then became very, very still.

Bazzelthorpe waited for him to wake up.