Rise Of The Soulless Read online

  “A world leader. She could corrupt anybody, she could mess with someone who holds real power. The president even.”

  “Exactly. Not just corruption with power or money as you humans seem so fond of, but with real evil. Who needs an army, when you have the leaders of the world in your hand?” the Librarian asked.

  “Jesus,” Christopher whispered.

  “You keep invoking that name. I am pretty sure he’s not going to jump in to help the Lord of Damnation.”

  “So, what do I do?” Christopher asked. He liked it better when it was just a monster he had to look out for, not a teenage girl on a power trip.

  “Seems pretty straightforward. Stick her with your sword,” said the Librarian.

  “It’s gonna be that easy huh?” asked Christopher. Of course, he already knew the answer.

  “It never is. She has her own power, the depths of which I don’t know. She will have defenses that are not just tied to soul manipulation.”

  “Not to mention the full force of this Alliance of dark souls behind her,” Christopher added.

  It was quiet for a moment, neither spoke. It seemed like the weight of the office pressed down on Christopher’s shoulders.

  “Were you going to visit the journal room, perhaps pick up a hunt?”

  “Fuck no. This is enough on my plate.”

  “Ah, training it is then?”

  Christopher let out a groan. But he knew it was the right thing to do; he needed all the help he could get. And training via the library had some cool advantages.

  “What will it be?” The Librarian asked. “I know this Mongol who could really help you get over your fear of pain…”

  “Get over my fear of pain? You’re a real salesman,” said Christopher. “Besides, I can still feel the bruises from last time. Got anything more mellow?”

  The Librarian seemed to think it over. “Come, follow me.”

  The Librarian glided back to the stacks with Christopher following close behind. They passed dusty volume after dusty volume and the occasional skull or other curiosity. Christopher had no idea how a skull, or really most of this other junk qualified as knowledge, but it must have been here for a reason.

  They stopped at a row of books covered in what looked like Chinese. Even as he watched, the characters changed to English. He could understand any spoken language, and apparently that applied to the written word as well. He could make out the words Kung Fu, Tai Chi, and other Chinese words written in English, but he didn’t recognize them.

  “This is the book of one of the greatest Kung Fu masters to have ever lived,” said the Librarian.

  “Kung Fu doesn’t sound mellow,” said Christopher.

  “You’re learning to fight, kind of hard to find ‘mellow.’ Besides, he also has experience with the softer styles like Tai Chi. After all the months of training, many hours per day training with a dozen of the best warriors, I think you can handle this. It will probably be a walk in the park compared to what you’ve been through.”

  “You’re right, just another day of training.”

  Christopher took the book and opened it. Then he was standing in an alley. He didn’t recognize it—he spent a lot of time stalking alleys in his new role as Hunter—and he didn’t think it was New York. Trash cans, overflowing, were propped up against one side next to a door that, based on the smell and noise, led to a Chinese restaurant.

  There were a few other non-descript doors, paint peeling, one with a broken lock. There was only one other door with a small light just above it. A faded sign above it said ‘gym.’

  While he could hear the people talking inside the restaurant and the occasional car passed the alley mouth, Christopher knew he wasn’t in the real world right now. This was just another pocket dimension where time did not pass for the Library or the real world. This was all just figments of some Kung Fu dude’s memories. Here he could spend as long as he wanted training with the greatest warriors the world had ever seen.

  There were times he had spent days in one of these dimensions, training as hard as he could, making himself better, learning how to wield the Weapon, how to fight the unknowable monsters that would populate his life.

  The teachers he found here were not ghosts. They were not souls of long dead masters, nor were they truly real, but they might as well be. These books he stepped into represented the collective thoughts, ideas, skills, and life experiences of real people, in this case, warriors. They created this sort of virtual reality he could experience and that his mind could understand and interact with.

  He could train with any fighter who had ever lived. It was an elegant solution for someone who had to learn to fight foes that would be different every time, with different weapons and skills. It was also hard as fuck. He was basically getting his ass kicked daily by a variety of people whose primary job was to perfect ass kicking.

  The light above the door and faded sign flickered. That must have been where he was supposed to go. A gym sounded like as good a place as any to prepare for getting his ass handed to him.

  The door opened easily under his hand into a large open space covered with the thinnest of mats. Martial art weapons hung from the walls. Nunchucks seemed to be the preferred weapon on display, many of them hung from hooks. The air smelled of stale sweat and maybe faintly of blood. It also smelled of wood—paneling covered the walls—and age.

  There was a man across the room from him, he faced away from Christopher. He was short, but obviously wiry. He was shirtless and his pants were loose in a traditional martial style uniform. His back was packed with small, but defined muscles. The man’s body fat percentage had to have been as close to zero as you can get. There was a tension in him even as he stood, like a tiger about to pounce.

  He knew who it was even before the man turned around to confirm it. Christopher’s mouth dropped open.

  “You’re Bruce Lee!” Christopher said. And all at once he knew this was not going to be the mellow session he had asked the Librarian for. “You’re Bruce Lee,” he said again, only this time it came out more like a moan.

  6

  Hamlin arrived at the scene of the first murder, at least the first one they had found. Without a cause of death or normal body deterioration, time of death estimates were not very precise.

  It was hot out, even at midnight in Concrete Plant Park. He was hoping it would be cooler here by the river, but he was out of luck. The patrolman who had drawn the short straw to guard the place was long gone. Not that he abandoned his post; Hamlin was sure he had been told to head home.

  There had been no obvious signs of foul play, just a girl dead and used up. Nobody cared. The assumption was that it she had died of natural causes, although exactly which natural causes were to be determined. Many on the force had concluded she was a runaway; the death was inevitable. A normal, rational cause would show up. It would be drugs or perhaps some sort of suicide. Either way, they only had so much time to dedicate to a case like this.

  It made Hamlin angry. Of course, he couldn’t go to the detective in charge of the case and explain to him why he knew this was no simple suicide or heart attack. He couldn’t go to his superiors and tell them that the monsters that go bump in the night and the boogie man were real. That would be just as crazy as letting them know he was buddies with the guy that ran around town—and now the world—wielding a flaming magic sword and killing those monsters.

  Despite the YouTube videos of the kid doing his thing, most people still chose to think it was an elaborate hoax. Although that disbelief was changing rapidly, the last thing Hamlin needed was to be playing Commissioner Gordon to Christopher’s Batman.

  Most of the police tape had been removed, but it had been a sloppy job. He could see strands of the tape still clinging to a tree. The evidence, what little there was, had been collected. The forensic team had done their usual thorough job and left. The girl was probably already forgotten.

  Hamlin wasn’t sure why he was here. It was unlikely he would f
ind something the forensic guys had missed. He just felt frustrated. Hamlin knew there was a supernatural element at play, that this wasn’t a simple cut and dry case. There was a bigger picture and he couldn’t tell anyone.

  Obviously, he could talk with the kid about all this, but even with him something was very different. Part of it might have been the realities of this new life forcing him to grow up quickly, becoming cynical, jaded. But there was something more wrong with the kid; he was changing, and not in a good way. Hamlin had no idea what to do about it.

  Perhaps if he did some poking around at the scene, with his insider knowledge of what might really be behind all this, he could find some clue overlooked by the forensic teams. But after twenty minutes of kicking around through grass and peering at every dirty cup and cigarette butt with his flashlight, he knew it was useless. The place had been searched thoroughly.

  He paused and leaned against a lamppost, thinking. Not for the first time tonight he wished he had a cigarette. That was the one bad habit he had been able to quit; all his others were going quite strong, thank you.

  The theory that these deaths were supernatural was just that, a theory. He needed some sort of evidence. He needed a lead and was coming up empty.

  Across a stretch of wild growing grass and a tall fence stood the abandoned shell of the old concrete plant that the park was named after. It was a dilapidated structure made of brick and wood but held together more by moss and dirt. Graffiti covered the walls. Despite the effort to rehabilitate the park, the artists managed to make it through the fence and paint those walls with tags and sometimes impressive murals.

  A movement in one of the upper windows caught his attention. For a moment a cigarette cherry flared up and cast a red glow on a dirty, bearded face. Then the man, realizing he had been seen, ducked away from the open window frame. The glass had been gone for many years.

  It had to have been some homeless man, a transient or drug user taking up residence in the abandoned structure. It happened all the time and in any other situation, Hamlin would have ignored it. This was New York, a huge city; cops didn’t waste effort on rousting the homeless from old buildings. But he wondered how long the guy had been there. Had he been here the night of the murder?

  Hamlin was walking down the path toward the building before he even finished the thought. There might be a witness. It didn’t take him long to find a way in. A portion of the chain-link was only laying against a fence pole. He tapped it with his foot and it moved easily from the pole. He grabbed the chain and pulled it back, revealing an entryway big enough for a person to fit through. He didn’t even have to crawl.

  In moments he was at the door to the building. There was a padlock on the rusted steel door, but after a short inspection, he saw that the bolts holding the latch had been sheared off. It only appeared locked.

  Hamlin wasn’t going to call for back up, but he wasn’t stupid either. Whoever was in this place had seen him. He drew his gun, then kicked the door open.

  It flew open with a rusty screech of protest and banged against the wall. A hinge cracked and the whole door sagged with a moan. It would never close again.

  The room beyond contained only the detritus of past visitors. Trash littered the floor: food containers, syringes, old newspapers, and some clothing items long since deteriorated and moldy. His flashlight traced the walls. There was more graffiti in here, but darker.

  The outside work was filled with colors and, while crude in some cases, seemed as though the artist was trying to improve his canvas. In here the graffiti was filled with dark colors: blacks, grays, and browns. It seemed the artist who had made it inside had a darker side. Suicide, weapons, human figures with x’s where their eyes should be—these were the images here. Sloppy, paint dripping images as though painted by someone not fully in control.

  Besides his flashlight, the only light coming in the room was from the row of small windows at the back. Most were coated over with mold and grime to the point of being almost opaque. Several were cracked or completely broken out. The broken ones let in light from the city outside, mostly from the few lamps that lined the walking path in the park. It was through these windows that he had seen the figure.

  But there was no one in the room now. Then he heard a something. A quick shambling sound, like someone shuffling through trash. Hamlin’s flashlight, playing over the wall at the back of the room, found a doorway and hall beyond. Somebody had used a black spray can to paint a monster’s head around the door, the doorway its mouth. It was the same dark-minded artist, and the eyes floating over the door looked almost real in their dark intensity and fury.

  There was another noise from beyond the monster’s mouth. This one like a short squeak and sputter; it reminded Hamlin of a kid playing hid and seek, trying to keep from laughing in a hiding spot as a friend searched nearby.

  “Is someone there? I’m a detective with the NYPD,” Hamlin said, voice raised. The acoustics in the room were odd. Dead sounding, like his words never reached the walls to bounce off. They were dull in his ears.

  There was no response. Whoever was hiding in there wasn’t coming out.

  “Look, I just want to talk. I’m not going to arrest you or anything. Come out, it’ll be a lot easier for both of us.”

  Still deadness, still no answer.

  Hamlin really didn’t want to go in there. He knew instinctively this wasn’t normal cop shit. He had been hanging with the kid long enough now to know when the tingle goes up his spine it’s Twilight Zone time. With a sigh of the inevitable, he entered the monster’s mouth.

  The room beyond was darker than the other. There were windows here, but none were broken, so any light that got through was filtered through the murky green of filth and mold. It might have been Hamlin’s imagination, but it seemed even his flashlight dimmed the moment he entered.

  Part of the roof had caved in, and wood and old roofing material littered the floor. But even that gaping three-foot hole in the ceiling didn’t let light into this dark place.

  His feet kicked empty spray cans piled on the floor. These walls were also covered with images, but where the other room seemed painted with spray cans like traditional graffiti, this one looked like he had run out of paint and had resorted to a sort of black paste, like charcoal mixed with water.

  The wall was even more elaborately drawn than the other room. Images of people bowing or lying on the ground at the feet of three figures. Large, all-black beings were drawn blurry as though even the artist couldn’t keep the shape of these things in his own head.

  Figures, not blurry, but sharp and focused, were scattered around them alternating between bowing and—not lying, but writhing—on the floor at their feet. The crude images almost seemed to move.

  This can’t be good, thought Hamlin. He heard a scraping sound and spun, aiming the flashlight at the opposite wall. There, crouched close to the floor was a person, a young man, younger even than Christopher. He wore jeans and a t-shirt with some sort of logo on the back, Hamlin didn’t recognize it, but his fashion logo body of knowledge consisted of the Nike swoosh.

  He had a cloth backpack at his feet, old spray paint cans sticking out. While the clothes looked new, they were covered in filth as though he had bought them a few days ago and then decided to live in a dumpster or sewer. The fingers of his right hand were black from the piece of charcoal he held. He was hunched over, drawing with the charcoal on the wall close to the floor. The baseball cap on his head tilted forward as though about to fall.

  The kid paused when the light hit him. He turned his face slightly and looked back at Hamlin. He smiled but tried to hold it in. A giggle bursting to get out. Laughter sputtered through his lips when he could hold it in no longer. He smiled wide with shiny white teeth. Hamlin could only see him in profile. The kid didn’t bother to turn around, he just looked at the detective with the one eye.

  “The little girl wants me to kill you,” the boy said and then laughed again. “She was pretty.”
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  “Why would she want that?” Hamlin asked. His gun angled slightly down—he wouldn’t shoot a defenseless kid—but ready to come up at the slightest threat. The last year had taught him things were not always what they seemed and this ‘kid’ could turn out to be a monster any second.

  “She doesn’t like you; the Hunter she said was a bad dude,” the boy said. He still hadn’t turned around, but drool had started to form on his lips, dripping on his pants.

  “But I’m not the Hunter, I’m a cop, a good guy,” Hamlin said. “Please don’t do anything stupid, this is good just talking. Did she do something to you?”

  The boy looked down as though a little uncertain. “She changed me, but now I see things, I understand things. Things she doesn’t even know. She was so pretty. So innocent.”

  “How did she change you?”

  “She, she, looked at me then I… twisted. She said to watch for the Hunter. And I did, but I am so hungry.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth drool followed. And a look of intense need washed over his face. The giggling smile was replaced by a toothy sneer. Hamlin was losing him.

  “What things did you see?”

  The kid glanced, still not moving from his crouched position, at the wall Hamlin had been studying a moment ago. The hand with the charcoal pointed.

  “They are coming. Nobody knows, not even the girl that twisted me. Not you. They are coming. I saw this while I waited.”

  “Who is coming?” Hamlin asked.

  The kid’s eye glazed over as though he was far away. “Who’s coming?” Hamlin asked again. A little louder than he should have, but he was afraid the kid wouldn’t remain lucid for long.

  “They are empty,” the kid said. “The Empty people. They are coming, three I think. And they are very, very angry.” The kid shuddered violently. “I don’t want to talk about them anymore.”