CHAPTER 66: UNCROWNED KING | THE RAID—VIII

  SPECTRE—NOVEMBER 26th, 1992 | MORNING

  ?

  Gideon’s abyssal hand had unfurled around them the moment they emerged from the shadows.

  It crawled just behind them, walking along on all five of its ebonblack digits, foggish shadows leaking from beneath its heavy fingertips. It attempted to pull itself inside the VIP Lounge, but proved to be too large to enter, much to Leroy’s dismay. Everything looked about the same since last he was there with Cameron, only, Marcus had been swift in repairing the prior damage.

  Only a few weeks prior, the place had been turned into an impromptu skirmish den. By some miracle, the shattered glass of massive windows overlooking the dance floor had been replaced, alongside the tacky carpeting and each and every bar stool and decoration that had been lost.

  Aria Remeau’s misfired thaumaturgic blast had destroyed half of the damn lounge, ripping up and burning away all of the svelte seating arrangements. Cameron had crushed Hughes into the bar on the far side of the lounge and nearly killed him. Leroy had been skewered like a kebab by Rachel Chen, and only just barely managed to defeat her by some foul and uncanny combination of the stilted fluids of his waterskins, his own blood, and liquor from broken bottles.

  Leroy was still sour about that whole thing, and could think of any number of reasons why shit had hit the fan the way it did that day. Babysitting Cameron? Check. Limited access to water? Check.

  At the moment, however, he had no such worries. Gideon’s presence was something to behold. Leroy glanced at the purple mark on his neck, his demonic brand. It leaked with power made manifest; and if Gideon’s demon was anything like Yaerzul, Leroy imagined he was hearing more than a mouthful.

  “Hell,” Gideon cursed, noting the abyssal hand stuck in the doorframe.

  “Figure that out,” Leroy demanded. “Cruci-whatever. Not much good to me without that hand of yours.”

  Gideon narrowed his eyes. “This, us? Enemy of my enemy sort of thing. But don’t get it twisted. You fucked me, Leroy.”

  “Well, Gideon, I don’t swing that way, but with enough money I might just—”

  Gideon clenched a hand around Leroy’s wrist.

  “And Marcus, he fucked us both, Leroy. But, see, regardless of the fucking that was done, you wanted me here for a reason. You can’t handle this,” Gideon said, eyeing him up and down. “I can.”

  Gideon wasn’t wrong, but Leroy wasn’t keen on admitting that. Even with three waterskins stocked under his jacket, he felt ill-prepared, and Old Man Winter wouldn’t be usable for some time. His skin, his bones, his muscles—all of it ached and itched. The bags of Leroy’s eyes were so dark he looked like he’d contracted some sort of damn disease, and the effects of Janice’s Vigor potion made his heart skip a beat every other second.

  “And that’s why you’re here, Gideon,” Leroy said plainly. “Yeah, look. I fucked you. You’ve got a brand on your face, and you’re a tool for the Vatican. Sucks. But you’re alive, no?”

  Gideon opened his mouth. Leroy snatched his arm away, and with a sudden step, pressed a firm finger against his sternum, ruffling the fabric of his brown and white jumpsuit.

  “You’re alive because of me. And you’re getting a shot at fulfilling the damn contract you sold your soul for, yeah? I won’t be the one to pull the trigger," Leroy said. "This is you, Gideon, all you, and if you want to be pissed, angry, and all bent out of shape, you be my guest. But don’t stand here and threaten me under your tongue. If you’re going to threaten me, then goddamn threaten me instead of tiptoeing around what you mean.”

  Behind them, Gideon’s abyssal hand warbled and contorted. Sickening crunches echoed out from each knot and section of every one of its fingers. It broke its own bones and flayed its own skin to step in through that narrow doorway, sprawling itself on the ground as it entered the VIP Lounge.

  The lack of light in the room meant Gideon’s conjured companion had no shortage of shadows. Only the subtle hue of neon from around the bar was present, in addition to a few embedded wall lights that added the perfect level of ambience to the emptied VIP Lounge.

  Gideon lowered himself to the ground and plunged a single finger into Leroy's front-facing shadow.

  Behind him, the entire hand sank down, only to re-emerge as a single finger that picked Leroy up by his collar and pinned him to the ceiling with a sudden thrash. Leroy’s eyes rolled back behind his head. Blood sputtered out from between his lips and stained his blonde-white beard. Whatever wind was in his lungs was forced out, and he gasped.

  “If I wanted to kill you, Leroy, I would’ve done it already,” Gideon said. “Fact is, I’m out of that stinking cell the Vatican has me holed up in, and I’ve got my shot at Marcus’s head no thanks to you. So, yeah. You're right.”

  The stygian finger pressed against Leroy receded into the shadow it was born from. Leroy fell flat onto his back with a humiliating groan, and Gideon squatted over him, his hands interlocked, his brown eyes boring down into Leroy with all of the silent ferocity of a hyena that refused to act on its better known instincts.

  “But my point still stands. You fuck people, Leroy Waters,” Gideon said. “That’s what you do. Screw them over and use them to your end, and you can’t see how the dominos fall later down the line. This isn’t me threatening you. This is me telling you that the way you go about things, the way you fucking treat people, it’ll bite you in the ass. Over, and over, and over again.”

  Leroy pushed himself up off the groan with a small lurch, groaning. He tipped his checkered flat cap. “Yeah. Now, you.. hnng.. done, Gideon, or do you got more lecture you wanna’ spew before we get this done and over with?”

  Gideon stood up and made towards the door to Marcus’s office. “Stay out of my way, Leroy. Not going to have you slowing me down or screwing up my one shot at this.”

  Leroy followed after him. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  ?

  The doors swung open.

  At the far end of the office, which took up all that remained of the third floor, Marcus Velvet sat behind his large and looming modernist desk. All that stood between Leroy, Gideon and Marcus was three dozen feet of sleek black flooring, walls covered in velvet wallpapers, and tertiary fixtures—velvet couches, velvet rugs, and velvet wine in a velvet glass that Marcus took a sip from with all of the assuredness of a snake comfortable in its patch of grass.

  The lightly coppered skin of his face stretched into a closed lip smile framed by a well groomed goatee. His dreadlocks tussled along his neck as he shifted forward, and the scattered reflections of his gold necklaces gleamed in Leroy’s direction as he tapped his fingers along his desk.

  Rectangle framed sunglasses hid a pair of eyes that seemed far too excited and far too unbothered by his uninvited guests.

  “Paint me surprised! Gideon!” Marcus said, his smile widening. “Been a while now, hasn’t it?”

  Gideon’s silence spoke volumes, and the energies collected around him even more so. Black and miasmic shadows leaked out from Gideon’s so readily that it appeared as if a second mass was emerging from him; swirling around the length of his silhouette and oscillating with all of the uncertainty of chaos made manifest. Abyssal fingers jutted out from the umbral tenors that flowed around him, mismatched, oddly shaped, and untamed.

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  Tresthomm will soon collect.

  Whispers like cold snaps forced their way into Leroy’s mind. Yaerzul’s voice was less sure of itself, plagued by hints of fear. If Leroy himself wasn’t overcome by the lingering and dreadful aura that radiated outward from Gideon, he might bring himself to smile at Yaerzul’s trepidation.

  If Marcus himself was uneasy, he sure as hell hid it well.

  “Not a bad play, Leroy,” Marcus said, nodding. “Bringing Gideon here, I mean. Not a bad play at all. And, you know, my lack of oversight, and I dare say it—my trust—in letting you handle him was, perhaps, misguided. Lesson learned!”

  Gideon took a step forward. Leroy held onto his arm. Gideon slowly turned to face him, his dark brown eyes consumed by a filter of pure black. Small fingers had crawled out from under and above his eyes, their nails stabbing into the skin of his face, granting him an uncanny and grotesque domino mask.

  Leroy let go immediately, and turned towards Marcus. “At the moment, it’s me standing between you and the death you deserve, Marcus. So I’m going to say my piece.”

  “Are you, now?” Marcus inquired.

  “Yeah,” Leroy stated. “And my piece is this: you’re fucked.”

  “Maybe,” Marcus said bashfully. “But that Clayton Trench fellow, huh? Quite the specimen.”

  “Your security is gone,” Leroy continued. He shuffled his hands into the pockets of his brown leather jacket, and watched as Gideon slowly approached Marcus. “Most of them are sprawled out on the floor somewhere, gutted. Whatever arrangement you had with Bluestein Philterworks is dead in the water. Dresker failed. Emilio, or whatever he is now, is going to lose, and Maude Dupre is gone with the goddamn wind. You’re out of pieces. Gone and taken your knight, your bishop, your rook, your whatever-the-fuck. And as of today, Marcus, I’m done doing you any more fucking favors.”

  Marcus set his jaw.

  Shadows in the corners of the room fluttered and gave way to the noise of crunching and the clamor of unholy emergence. Abyssal hands with full-sized fingers and full-sized palms turned into a new set of living wallpapers, all at the behest of Gideon. Every shadow and every shred of darkness had turned into a living appendage that answered only to him.

  “Ah-huh, well said,” Marcus admitted. “Though, a simple 'checkmate' might’ve served you better, my friend, if you were going to go through all that effort with the metaphor.”

  Yaerzul’s discomfort grew with each passing second, and while he lacked his cold whispers, Leroy’s hand was forced to his head as a resistant cold demanded that he either act upon this threat, put himself in front of it, or remove himself from it entirely.

  Leroy clenched his teeth. Yaerzul was afraid, and Marcus was far from that. He was perfectly, dreadfully calm, even as the prospect of an all-but certain death presented itself to him. In the face of death, Marcus didn’t plead for mercy. He smiled.

  “Got nothing to be smiling about, Marcus,” Leroy said. He tipped his hat in Gideon's direction.

  Gideon didn’t wait for an answer. He raised his two hands forward and clapped them together. From each side of the wall, abyssal fingers jutted out like spears. They tore through Marcus in an instant, poking holes into his body. Viscera poured outward like a geyser. Blood erupted along his desk, his chair, and stained anything next to him a bright sanguine.

  Just like that, it was over.

  Or so Leroy thought.

  He’d never seen a demonic contract fulfilled, but he imagined that there would be some kind of reaction. Some occult stamp of completion by way of Gideon’s soul being torn straight out of him by the demon who was owed it. But the shadows of the room still crawled with hands and fingers, and when Gideon glanced over his shoulder to face Leroy, his small fingers that framed his pure black eyes in a domino mask of digits remained.

  Leroy squinted at the corpse of Marcus Velvet.

  And he saw it shatter. Fractals of pink energy exploded outward from it like a phantasm of glass. The blood and the entrails and the gut-retching display of violence—the evidence of his very end—erupted in shards carrying the same fuschian hue.

  Only one couch in the room remained undisturbed by Gideon’s rows of abyssal fingers. A shimmer of ghostly pink illuminated Marcus in a seated position, his glass of wine still in hand. He swirled it and took a sip.

  If Gideon was Leroy’s trump card, Marcus’s years upon years worth of concealing the fact that he was a mesmer was a better one.

  Dispatching a member of the Cruciform Division was Leroy's. Marcus Velvet’s arcanic aptitude wasn't a trump card, it was an ace hidden up a sleeve Leroy had never noticed. Gideon’s mouth dropped open, his lips curled and furrowed along wrinkles and creases born of confusion, anger, and surprise—not even Marcus’s former errand boy, liaison, and right-hand man was privy to this. And if he wasn’t, nobody was.

  Cyprus Alley didn’t belong to Marcus solely on his dealings in the information industry. More potent than any amount of blackmail or owed favors was his potential to express a discordant ownership over people’s minds if he so desired, to an extent of which Leroy couldn’t recognize or comprehend. Mesmers were rare. Rarer than rare, they were the equivalent of a goddamn endangered species of arcanist, and it was just Leroy’s luck that Marcus happened to be one of them.

  “Fuck,” Leroy muttered.

  “Oh, that? No, no, no, no no,” Marcus said, taking a gulp from his wine, and tossing the glass against the floor. “No. That’s not why I’m smiling. See, independent of my oh-so-great secret, gentlemen, is the good old fashioned elbow grease of preparation and the time tested labor of uncovering other secrets, of course, not belonging to me.”

  Gideon reached out from afar, using a singular hand to mimic a crushing motion.

  From the shadows of the ceiling, a massive abyssal hand crashed down into where Marcus was seated. Between the splinters of the couch and its sundered fabric was a mosaic of blushing color; the shard-like dredges of a shattered phantasm.

  Marcus stepped out from behind Leroy, tapping his shoulder with all the casualness and effortlessness of a good friend, and paced around with his hands in the front pockets of his khaki slacks. His snakeskin boots clanked against the ground.

  “See, you know and I know, Leroy, that Hughes, God rest his soul, was a pick. You know basketball, yes? A pick. Either way you answered, I’d respond in full—”

  Gideon bellowed out in anger. His voice wasn’t his. It carried the inflection of something hellish and otherworldly. He clapped his hands together. From the corners of the room, writhing fingers pierced through Marcus once more; his form shattered into fragments of ethereal pink, and he emerged in front of Gideon, one hand removed from his pockets.

  Marcus snapped his fingers. “Gideon! Please! I’m speaking, and you’re being quite rude.”

  Fractals rushed into the air above Gideon like rose petals. From the fractals, a phantasm was born: an anaconda. It dropped down around Gideon and wrapped itself around his body and coiled. Leroy’s scowl deepened. He knew it wasn’t real. Even Gideon knew it wasn’t. But it didn’t matter. A mesmer phantasm didn’t need to be real for the body and the mind to think it was.

  Gideon thought he was suffocating by way of the anaconda’s tightly coiled grip. He fell to his knees as the semi-translucent pink serpent hugged his frame and gasped for air as if he hadn’t had any breath to begin with.

  “... as I was saying. Leroy, your gusto and your dick swinging will only get you so far. I’d hope at the very least, this is the lesson learned today. Among other things, of course, which I’m sure you can conclude for yourself,” Marcus said. “In short: you are fucked. Not me.”

  Leroy reached into his brown leather jacket, quickly withdrawing a waterskin. One of three.

  Marcus didn’t even dignify him with a glance, and kept his gaze fixed forward and down, towards the suffocating Gideon. “And, frankly, Leroy, at this point, your whole tirade is one hell of a sunk cost fallacy.”

  Leroy glared at him. “What?”

  “Well, your friends will be dead, even if you kill me,” Marcus said plainly.

  Leroy’s silence persisted.

  “The artificer? The alchemist? Esme and… Janice? Yes, those are the ones, Esme and Janice,” Marcus stated, his voice brimming with a nonchalant assurance.

  Gideon continued to wheeze. His face wasn’t blue, and he wasn’t actually suffocating, and therein lied the source of his torment itself. As long as the phantasm continued to convince him of such, he’d be trapped in a state of breathlessness with all of the illusionary pain that came with it.

  “How?” Leroy said, grip tightening around his waterskin. “How did you—”

  “Well, suppose I told you. Ask yourself, then, Leroy, what difference it would make,” Marcus said, finally turning around to face him. “You can’t, after all, be in two places at once. And fortunately for me, I don’t need to be.”

  LEROY WATERS

  GIDEON DRAVES

  MARCUS VELVET

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