Dark Duets Read online

  With a sense of wonder, Skari took the sack and pulled it open. An explosion of wondrous smells struck him in the face. His mouth watered. He was so hungry!

  He stuffed the burger into his mouth, fished around with his paws in the bottom of the bag to grab every small, withered french fry. “Thank you,” he said, his words muffled around the food. Tears stung his eyes.

  He remembered feasting with some of the other warriors, a delicious banquet thrown by the victorious lord after a particularly long and bloody battle. They had slain countless scaly demons that day, driven them back through the nightmare gate and barricaded it under a stone bridge. Skari remembered how much blood there was in the air on the battlefield, how the smoking black demon blood had a sour acid smell, unlike the vibrant freshness of the roasted boar in the lord’s fire pit, unseasoned meat shimmering with grease. He and his fellow foot soldiers had eaten the celebratory feast, drinking the lord’s best wine and his cheapest ale. It was all so delicious!

  That was before Skari had failed, before he had been cursed . . . before he’d been given this sacred duty.

  He finished the food now, licked his crusted lips, and straightened, searching for his scraps of pride and memory as desperately as he looked for more fries.

  “Is this your stuff?” Kenna was rummaging in his shopping cart, moving aside the piled possessions he had gathered over the years, decades . . . centuries.

  He sucked in his breath. He didn’t dare let her find his weapons, the spell-sealed dagger. “Get away from there!” The girl jerked back. “You shouldn’t be here. Go back to your mother, your family.” He raised himself up, and Kenna looked awed and terrified as Skari grew and swelled, an ominous lurching shape under the bridge. She backed away, stumbling in the weeds. Skari lowered his voice, speaking more to himself than to her. “You have a family. Don’t forget that.”

  She ran back to their forlorn station wagon, and he heard her crying, which made his heart heavy. Another stone of guilt, another failure, another thing to atone for. But Kenna had her brother, her mother . . . a mother who actually cared for her children.

  Skari’s mother hadn’t been like that. When he’d run away to fight in the demon wars, he’d been cocky, full of false bravado, sure that no nightmare monster breaking out of hell could be worse than the shrewish woman who had beaten him, starved him at home.

  He’d been so wrong about that.

  For a while, his comrades had become his family. The clerics had blessed them all, the noblemen had armed them, the wizards provided magical talismans with blades dipped in bloodsilver that could strike down demons.

  In the first two engagements, Skari had been out of the fray, far from where the monsters boiled out from beneath the bridge. Warlords and armed warriors had fought the slavering demons, while clerics and wizards struggled to seal and barricade the nightmare gate. Skari was terrified, but uninjured—and the war went on.

  In the third battle, though, when the fanged and clawed monsters turned, charging into the pathetic group of Skari and his friends, he watched his best comrade, Torin, die. Torin was a baker’s boy from the same village—they’d run off together—and Skari saw the demons tear him apart, twisting Torin’s arms and legs from his torso like the bones from a well-roasted quail carcass. Another demon had bitten off Hurn’s head. The long-haired tanner’s apprentice had feminine features and a cocky smile, and the fanged monster had opened its hinged jaws, engulfed the boy’s entire head, bit down, then spat it out amid a gout of foul breath. Hurn’s head had struck Skari right in the chest.

  He didn’t remember dropping his sword or running screaming past all the other soldiers. Many hundreds of human soldiers had died that day, but the demons were driven back at an incredible cost of brave blood. Skari, though, was captured by the lord’s men, found to be a coward, sentenced to be executed by a headsman’s ax. But he was given a choice—a choice that he hadn’t known was so terrible. The wizards offered him the opportunity to become the guardian of a sealed gate, to be made immortal, to stand watch in case the nightmare hordes ever tried to break free again.

  Babbling, Skari had agreed. He dropped to his knees weeping, begging them to make him a guardian. He had not known that choice would be worse than simply dying.

  Skari had lost his family, his friends, everyone and everything. He had been alone for centuries, moved from bridge to bridge when it was deemed necessary, when a new vulnerable spot appeared anywhere in the world.

  “Your job is to protect mankind,” the wizard had said.

  The lord who stood before him had a grim, heartless face. He had lost a hand in the last battle. He had seen Skari run in terror from the monsters, and Skari knew he had earned his isolated eternity. His crime was not so great that he deserved hell itself, but bad enough for him to be sentenced to this purgatory. His fate, his job, was to protect humans against evil . . . even though his close proximity to the nightmare gates had twisted him, too.

  He could never let the evil escape again. He couldn’t let it get to Johanna and her two children.

  He turned to the bridge wall behind him where he could sense the simmering gate. It had been quiet, silent, but he dare not let his guard down. Dare not leave . . . dare not have hope. He clenched his filthy, scabbed fist and hammered against the hard wall. “I hate you!” Nothing was worse than to be trapped alone where you didn’t want to be.

  While he kept the nightmare gate guarded, he thought of Kenna and Billy, homeless, penniless, cast out by a “mean man,” vulnerable to human predators and unkind fate. Even if the demon wars were over, the darkness of human society was heartless, too. At least the demons were obvious enemies, and they could be defeated.

  His thoughts kept going to the woman and her children. How could he defend against the troubles Johanna faced? The family was like the one he’d never had. Maybe that was another part of his punishment: to feel such helplessness after he’d begun to sense a connection. But what could he do?

  We just need a little to get by, step by step, Johanna had said. If we make it to Michigan, we can have a fresh start.

  As he thought of them, he sighed. They were the ones he fought for. But if he simply ignored their very real, though not supernatural, plight, he might as well let the evil behind the nightmare gate eat them. It would be like running away from the battlefield, a coward again.

  He went to his cart and dug through his cluttered possessions, the detritus and treasures piled and packed there . . . until he found the last few things he had from his original life in another time, another world: a thick gold medallion, one small ring, and a handful of silver coins, spoils from his first battlefields. The trinkets had amounted to a fortune even then, an even greater one today.

  For centuries, he’d kept them safe. Now, they would help a young mother and her children reach safety.

  It was full night, and the nightmare gate seemed strong, stable. He sensed no whispers of evil back there, only emptiness. But he did feel the pain and the need of Johanna and her children.

  Halfhearted rain began to fall as he trudged to the parking lot of the rest area. The station wagon was dark, closed up for the night as the family huddled there for shelter, safer and warmer than under a bridge. It was the only vehicle there. A single white mercury light shed a pool of illumination over the picnic tables. A metal sign peppered with divots from shotgun pellets said NO OVERNIGHT PARKING—STRICTLY ENFORCED. But no one had bothered to enforce it for days.

  Shambling forward, a looming shadow surrounded by deeper shadows, Skari approached the driver’s-side window and thumped on it. He heard a startled gasp from behind the glass, the children stirring. He saw the glint of the mother’s eyes; she was concerned, ready to fight. In the darkness, they would be able to discern his gargantuan size, but unable to see his ugly twisted features, his scabrous skin.

  He held up the pouch. “Didn’t mean to scare you, ma’am. I just thought this would help you get on your way.”

  Johanna rolled down
the window just enough for him to push the pouch through. She took it, and he turned, not wanting to speak with her, not waiting for her to see what he had given them.

  Skari ambled back into the night, hurrying before any demons could discover the unguarded nightmare gate, before he would have to endure the mother telling him thank you.

  NO MORE THAN an hour later, as he sat in the damp gloom of his lair, Johanna, Billy, and Kenna appeared under the bridge, walking closer. They weren’t afraid of him. The mother held the sack with the medallion, the ring, the old coins. “I can’t take this.”

  “Yes, you can. Those things do me no good, but for you they can make the difference. Buy yourself a new chance.” He tried to remember how to soften his words with humor. “It should keep you from having to eat the boy for at least a week.”

  She laughed, and her brow furrowed. “It’ll keep us from living under a bridge.” The boy and girl gathered closer, and they all looked at Skari. Johanna’s face was tight, and he saw tears in her eyes. “This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for us. Thank you.”

  The little girl burst forward, threw herself against him, and hugged him tight. “You’re not a monster.”

  Billy nodded and said strangely, “You’re saved. I’m glad we didn’t have to kill you.”

  No sooner had the boy spoken than pain shot into Skari’s body. He hissed as it burned through him, screaming through his muscle fibers. His skin began to boil and discolor. Underneath his layers of old, crusted clothing, his body twisted in a spasm. He bent over and threw himself against the bridge abutment, his mind ringing with terror.

  Were these people escaped demons? Had they come here to attack him? He staggered into his shopping cart, grabbed it. He had to get the bloodsilver dagger, defend himself, defend the world—but the cart crashed to one side.

  Unable to stand the pain, Skari doubled over, dropped to the muddy, garbage-strewn ground—

  And shrank. Confused, Skari looked at hands that were no longer gnarled ugly paws. They were hands again. Human hands. He flexed his arms, pushed himself to his feet.

  The mother and children stood before him, watching, but their eyes didn’t look evil. In fact, they seemed glad . . . relieved.

  “The demon wars were over long ago,” said Johanna. “The nightmare gates are permanently sealed, but after all this time, the guardians themselves have become dangerous.”

  Billy added, “Not only were you immortal, you became inhuman, too—so close to the darkness that it found a home in you.”

  “We’ve been sent to find the last few remaining trolls, to test them,” Kenna said in a voice that did not belong to a little girl. “To see if they need to be destroyed, or if they have remembered human decency and compassion. You, Skari, are one of the last. We were afraid for you.”

  Instead of the eyes of a little boy, Billy’s eyes were hard and ancient. “But you convinced even me.”

  “You are free now,” Johanna said. “The world is safe from demons . . . and it is safe from you.”

  Kenna grinned, and her eyes sparkled. “We release you from your post.”

  Welded

  Tom Piccirilli and T. M. Wright

  It’s a familiar story—

  Kid and girl fall in love. Homicidal maniac kidnaps and butchers girl over a three-day period in an isolated cabin on the beach. Kid is left for dead at the shore with a partially crushed skull. Parents fail to identify girl’s remains. Kid winds up with a couple of metal plates welded in his skull. Kid awakens from coma and has to learn to walk again, feed himself again, rediscover spatial geometry, et cetera. Kid is called down to the morgue. Kid identifies girl’s bits based on a shred of a rose tattoo on a scrap of her left buttock. The parents, of course, didn’t know. Seven months after her death girl is at last buried. Memorial service has five thousand mourners and is blitzed by the media. Helicopters, reporters crawl over kid. Kid spends twelve weeks under psychiatric care for consistent outbursts of rage and violence. He does harm to himself. He does harm to others. Shrinks claim explosions of frenzy and phantom auditory and visual phenomena are the result of lasting minor brain damage. He sees things and hears things. Cops cut him a break and don’t stuff him in prison for bar brawls, for beating up pushy journalists, for drunk and disorderly.

  Maniac racks up an additional nine kills before the feds shut him down. Maniac, like all the best murderers, terrorists, and assassins, has three names: Ricky Benjamin Price. Kid, like all the best heroes, has no name. Ricky likes writing letters. He writes his congressman, his president, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the ACLU, the pretty newscaster on Channel 4, the families of his victims, and he writes the kid. Nobody responds, except for the kid. Nobody visits, except for the kid.

  The kid’s there now, letting Ricky’s soft and seductive voice work its magic on his nerves. He sits on a chair outside the cell while Ricky lies on his bunk, his arm thrown over his face, motionless except for his lips. The voice is like cold cream on sunburn. You take your kindnesses where you can, and Ricky’s voice is just that, a kindness, a mercy. The shrinks, the cops, the protesters pro and con capital punishment screaming outside, they all grate and fray and scrape. The kid can’t stand their gruffness, their know-it-all attitudes, their noise, their touch. Everything they do or say drives him up a fucking wall. He hates everybody.

  The kid’s been visiting the prison for five years. Ricky’s been on death row nearly the whole time. His execution’s set for tomorrow at nine P.M. You’d think it would be midnight, but no. Nine P.M.—who knows the reasoning behind it. Ricky seems to be looking forward to his impending death. The kid isn’t so sure how he feels about it. The girl’s parents are out there right now, grouped up with the yahoos and rednecks drinking beer and promising to keep their lights off so there’s enough juice to fry Ricky good.

  Of course, Ricky’s getting the hot shot, and the kid’s got a front-row seat.

  Ricky wanted a firing squad. The kid thought that was still allowable in this state, but apparently not. They denied him. The kid knows what it’s like to go to sleep almost forever, lying there paralyzed, struggling for breath, while the waves roll over your knees and try to drag you under and away. They’ve got a lot in common now, him and the guy who almost killed him.

  Ricky whispers on. What he says doesn’t really matter. Most of it is a play-by-play rundown of exactly what he did, and when, and to whom, and how they tried to run, or scream, or fight back. The girl was brave and very strong. She didn’t go easy. Ricky points this out over and over. The girl scratched and bit and struggled. She did better than any of the others. The kid feels the same stirring of love and pride he’s felt for her for years.

  His skull aches and thrums and rattles full of locusts. He gets migraines that make the world tilt and send him into free fall. Ricky is used to the kid clenching his temples and crying out by now, and he calls for the bulls so somebody can drag the kid’s ass off to the infirmary. Aspirin are considered contraband but Ricky’s got a couple and offers them to the kid, who waves them off.

  The bulls come. The setup is sort of funny. You can’t mingle with the cons so the infirmary is kind of a secondary ward set off from the primary one, with a lot of reinforced glass between the two. But you’re right here, and the cons are right there. The kid’s vision is unfocused, he’s seeing two, three, four of everything, looking beyond dimensions into parallel universes, the edges red and black and throbbing. The prison docs are aware of his condition. They treat him as a psych patient. They juice him with powerful sedatives, the stuff they give to the psycho killers who stabbed their mothers ninety-five times.

  The cons stare at him through the glass. He stares back. He’s in here with a little boy who skinned his knee while visiting his father, who still has nine years to go on a fifteen-year stretch. The mother of the boy stares off into a dream, seeing herself in another life, another time, with fulfilled expectations, no guilt, no humiliation. The boy sniffles. The mother gnaws her lip. A
pregnant woman who started having false contractions is moaning in the corner. She’s rattling in Spanish about how she wants to get the hell out of here so her child isn’t born behind bars. The kid hopes they move her out soon too.

  The doc comes over and touches the kid’s head. His brain burns and sings. The metal feels white-hot. The doc pulls his fingers back quickly as the kid groans in agony. The doc hands him two horse pill pain meds and writes on a chart. The doc asks boring questions, not like Ricky. The doc asks about pain levels, about the consistency of stool, about sleeping habits, drug use, alcohol consumption, sexual function. The doc asks why the kid keeps coming back week after week. The doc asks about nightmares, about the violent outbursts, about anger management, psychosis.

  Ricky’s back on death row but his voice is still whispering under the kid’s welded metal plates. The voice is malleable, mellifluous, slick, oily, like aloe. The girl is screaming under there too but Ricky shushes her, calms her, quiets her, the way he did in real life, or thought he did, before she worked a screw free from her cot and stabbed him in the guts with it. Ricky nearly croaked from peritonitis. The girl wishes that he would have. The girl stares at the cons too.

  One Aryan with the face of Adolf covering his entire chest has got his tongue unfurled. He’s bandaged with three seeping shiv wounds. He makes kissy faces at the kid, he makes kissy faces at the pregnant woman, he makes kissy faces at the little boy, and the girl says, “Before you go, you ought to kill him.”

  Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s time for another brutal surge of rage. The kid isn’t afraid of his capacity for ferocity anymore. It feels good to cut loose. It feels righteous. And how are you going to get in trouble kicking the ass of a guy who has Hitler’s face on his chest? The only real problem is getting through the glass, getting to the other side of the glass.