030
I can't stay
In this place
I can't stand
When the room turns round
On my fate
You give no guarantees
There's no promise
I can keep
- Love Spit Love, Am I Wrong
Gabe drained the last bit of coffee from his favorite mug, black and emblazoned with the X-Files logo. It was a Christmas present from one his best friends in the office, Jeanette was a petite brown-eyed, brown-haired Long Island native who worked in the forensics lab downstairs. It would be nice if she finds something on the clothing.
"Such as?"
"Didn't you ever watch Discovery channel?" Gabe absently wiped away a drop of coffee from his chin.
"That stuff is boring."
"Hmf," he picked up the file he had been studying earlier, "fibers, leaves, bugs, hell even pollen might be a clue. If there was a struggle there might be someone else's blood on the clothing, or bits of skin under the finger nails."
"Gross."
Gabe focused on the file again. Another body with wounds identical to the one recovered tonight. The coroner would venture no guesses as to how the mortal wound was inflicted, and there was no other useful forensic evidence recovered from the body.
"Great," he sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Well Miss Dark Forces, can you give me any leads?"
"I don't know, this is supposed to be your gig."
"Yeah," Gabe stood and paced the confines of the small office he shared with two other investigators. The building was empty at 3:30 in the morning. Before the incident with Abrams, he would sooner pull his own wisdom teeth than be up at this time of day. In the past weeks, many things about his life had changed. "Damn it! Why the hell couldn't I just come back to an ordinary case?"
"Maybe you should go home and get some sleep," Mary said. "You're not going to get anything done if you pass out."
Gabe grunted in response, but grabbed his coat and headed out the door.
****
The normal crowd in the Metro Deli and Café roared at the football game playing on the overhead TV. Normally, Asher would be watching intently. He avidly played in a fantasy football league at work and followed the stats religiously. Tonight however, he did not even know what teams were playing. It was 8:30 and he had already downed nine beers - or was it ten? He lost count a while ago. This place was his normal suppertime stop, but since Sarah's death it was Killian's and not a Reuben on the menu. In constant succession, the images of that night played in his mind. The beer blunted the edge, but did not erase his torment.
He tossed back the last of his beer. I'm not a freak. I'm normal. His voice floated in his head. What about the flames? He remembered the circle of space that opened around him in the flood of blue fire. Maybe if you had admitted what you are, you could have saved her.
"No!" Asher slammed the bottle down on the bar. It shattered in his hand.
"That's enough for you. Settle your tab and go home," rumbled a voice from behind the bar. The usual bartender was off tonight and the part-timer did not abide Asher's drunken antics even under the best of circumstances. The mountainous black man said nothing further as he handed Asher his card and bill.
Asher grumbled as he sloppily signed the sales slip. He clumsily replaced the card in his wallet. Yeah, go home... right. He staggered out of the bar and out of Union Station. Once on the street, he took a moment to steady himself and headed for the loop. He frequented several shadier dives that served stronger stuff than beer down towards the lake. He walked with head bowed, studying the concrete passing beneath him. The smell of fresh-turned earth registered for a moment before he hit an unyielding obstacle.
"I see you've started another evening." Poe stood squarely in his path. A gust of wind opened her battered leather coat.
Even through his self-involved haze he could not help but pause. She was clad in a dark red corset fastened with multiple buckles. The tail of her dragon tattoo was visible ending between her collarbones. A shiny leather skirt revealed far more leg than it covered. Her booted feet were planted firmly on the ground.
"Yeah, what's it to you?" Asher recovered his ire.
Poe sneered slightly as she spoke, "Aww, poor Asher, can't handle being a freak huh?"
He glared at her silently while he sidestepped. Poe blocked his way again, near the opening of a tiny alley between two skyscrapers.
"Going to spend another night drowning your tortured soul in booze?"
"Yeah, why not?"
"I'd let you drink yourself straight to hell, but the Sister is worried about you."
"Yeah well ain't that just sweet. I don't need a wet nurse."
"No, you need something entirely different." Poe caught Asher with a left hook that sent him skittering like a skipped stone down the alley.
Pretty little lights obscured his vision. They throbbed in synchrony with his jaw and the back of his head where it hit the pavement. When his vision cleared Poe was standing over him, silhouetted by the glare flowing in from the street.
"You're pathetic," Poe locked eyes with him. "The Sister says to come home."
Asher sat rubbing his head, watching Poe walk away from him to disappear in the mass coursing down the sidewalk.
****
Gabe yawned mightily. He had slept till noon, and spent the afternoon poring through old files, searching for any with a similar MO. Dinnertime had come and gone before he gave up on the police records and ventured to the Haven. He now wove his way between the tables and benches of the great hall. Here and there a few people sat, slowly eating plates of food. Gabe stopped for a moment. For the first time, he wondered where the homeless that he saw eating went at night.
"There are bunk rooms and baths on the floor below us for those with nowhere to go. This place is not 'haven' in name alone."
"Hmm," Gabe still marveled at this place. Demons and vampires aside, it was still extraordinary.
"Nice of you to bring Mary for a visit," Poe's voice made him jump.
"Ahg!"
"Hi Poe!"
"Lovely, now my evening is complete." Gabe sighed deeply and looked to the rafters high above.
"Too bad you had to come, too."
He gave Poe a faux smile, "just climb out of your coffin? I smell dirt again."
"It is patchouli oil, Gabriel Ansgar, extracted from a very useful plant with many interesting properties."
Gabe spun on his heel, expecting to see the Sister, but instead saw a tall woman with black hair neatly plaited and draped across her shoulder. She was at once familiar and strange. Her face resembled the Sister's but her complexion was darker, her expression more austere. She regarded Gabe through keen hazel eyes.
"Uh... hello?"
"Good Evening, Sister."
"Sister? Wait a minute..."
"You don't think too fast there, do you Sherlock?" Poe smiled pitilessly at Gabe's discomfiture.
"There are two Sisters, Gabe."
"Two?"
"Yes, there used to be three."
"Indeed Mary, and there may be again," this Sister grinned wryly at Gabe. "Many of the older residents here simply call me Traveler, as I do journey a great deal. If it helps avoid confusion, you may address me thusly."
"Uh, okay," Gabe tried to gather his wits about him. Once again this place threw him a curve ball that had flown straight through the strike zone. "I need to talk to the Sister."
****
Joshua came to a stop in front of four story brick building that sat a little apart from the other crowded structures. Chain link fence, rusted almost to the point of disintegration, surrounded a narrow strip of what would no doubt be weed-choked grounds in summer. Half of a brick-framed sign, faced the street, miraculously resisting gravity. '...High School,' the remaining piece read. What high school it had been was lost in the crumbled remains strewn on the ground. Joshua did not know, nor could care less, what the name had been.
A stooped figure, swathed in ragged clothes, moved into his vision with the jerky, blurred movement that still unnerved him. He did not like the ghouls, no matter how much Karin had to say about their usefulness. The ghoul scurried ahead of him, opening a rusted door that looked as if it would fall from its hinges at any moment. He entered a large hallway, the shattered remains of a glass-enclosed display case to his left, concrete wall to his right. Every square inch of the interior was covered with layers of graffiti. Candles floated down each side of the hall, shedding dim light. Joshua smiled when he remembered first arriving here with Karin, remembered the satisfaction felt in using his recently discovered powers to clear the bums from the structure. He had enjoyed his first taste of murder.
He continued on, past gaping doors blasted off their frames, lockers pulled from their anchors and lying helter-skelter along the walls. Every so often, he would catch a glimpse of the ghouls skulking in the darkness. He tried to ignore them completely. They were beneath him. Still, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end each time he noticed them. At the end of the hall, two sets of double doors opened into what was once a gymnasium, in the center of which a roaring fire blazed in a crude, circular stone hearth. No smoke obscured the flickering yellow-orange light that produced dancing shadows on the walls.
A small multitude of stone columns, each one taller than a man and made from rubble fused together by intense heat, surrounded the main fire. Smaller fires burned atop each of these columns, adding to the confusion of shadows. A tall, raven-haired woman looked up from a large tome when he entered. She favored him with a smile that held all the warmth of an arctic winter. He walked toward her, feeling neither unease nor the usual contempt in which he held most. She had shown him what he could do, what powers lay dormant within him. She was useful... and dangerous. He treated her with the same respect one gave fire.
"I walked by the place today."
"Did anyone notice you?"
"No," he grinned, "I was just one more pedestrian walking by."
"Good," she crossed her arms and regarded him for a moment before continuing. "So, you don't think you'll have any problems getting in?"
"Are you kidding?" He shook his head. "Those bleeding hearts would take in the devil himself if he looked hungry."
"Well that's quite convenient for us isn't it?"
© 2003, Austin Hale
