Crossfades. Part 6

But that didn't matter now. Nothing did.

Chuck no longer had a job to go to. And Lydia was still out there.

Still suffering.

Alone.

He'd failed her. He'd bought into her captor's baiting when he should have been concentrating positive energies. When he should have been fighting back. Now she was at his mercy. And there he was, on his pillowtop mattress, watching occasional headlights splay through the venetian blinds as the clock ticked off another minute.

Admitting defeat, Chuck sighed and rolled out of bed. He'd picked up a cheap coffeepot and a can of Maxwell House on the drive home in the same way a reformed alcoholic might purchase a bottle of booze; now he shuffled into his kitchen, filled the basket with grounds that no longer smelled as rich as they once had, and lumbered into the living room as water gurgled through the machine.

He could still make out Mrs. McNeil's television through the walls and the laughter made him wince each time it rang out. Let them laugh. Let them all laugh at this joke of a man, at this pathetic loser whose ambitions were so much loftier than his abilities. They could chuckle and snort and guffaw. He deserved it. But, at the same time, it didn't necessarily mean that he had to listen to it. Why rub salt in a wound he knew perfectly well was there?

Slumping onto the sofa, he plucked the remote control from a coffee table littered with spiral-ring notebooks and turned on his own television. What he watched wasn't important. He just needed a distraction. Any distraction. Even the inane commercial with the talking baby currently playing was better than nothing.

The commercial ended and an anchorwoman who looked perkier and more put together than anyone at that hour had a right to be appeared on the screen. The station's logo hovered ghost-like above a scrolling news ticker and a square appeared over her left shoulder, framing a picture of an old man with watery blue eyes and a shock of white hair. Though it was a still photo, the man's expression seemed to radiate cruelty, gazing at viewers with callous disregard.

"Convicted serial killer Albert Lewis was put to death earlier today, bringing a close to his legacy of evil." The anchorwoman had a.s.sumed a serious tone, but her eyes twinkled, reflecting the studio's light. "Lewis, dubbed The Dark Butcher of Burberry Hollow, was responsible for the deaths of nearly seventy people, spanning a period of nearly three decades. Sentenced to death by electric chair, the killer remained unrepentant until the very end, his final moments echoing the frequent outbursts that characterized his trial."

The newscaster paused as courtroom footage filled the screen. Lewis hunched over the defendant's table, half standing as his hands made wild pa.s.ses through the air. A barrage of Sumerian curses spewed from his lips amid a spray of spittle and his eyes blazed as his lawyer tried to pull him back into his chair. The anchorwoman was providing a voiceover again, but Chuck no longer heard her words.

The moment Lewis began talking, he'd bolted upright, his body so stiff and rigid it seemed as though he'd been petrified. His mouth hung open and he clutched his own hair in one hand, frozen mid-pull.

That voice.

"One good eye, son..."

That's why he'd sounded familiar. That's why Chuck had trouble placing him. Like most people, he'd followed the trial, but he hadn't exactly hung upon every word.

Albert Lewis.

A chill raced along Chuck's spine and tears once again warmed his eyes. He didn't want to think of Lydia in the hands of such a monster. He tried to envision her smile and replayed the warmth and security of her hand in his as they fled through the darkness. But there were other flashes of imagery that burst into his imagination as well: extreme close-ups of her mouth, screaming in agony; darting, frightened eyes that s.h.i.+rked from the white-hot blade reflected in them; beads of blood against pale flesh.

He'd failed her.

"So what are you going to do about it, Chuck?" Oddly enough, his conscience sounded like Control. He knew it wasn't really her. It wasn't as if he were out in a Crossfade, after all. "You gonna sit around feeling sorry for yourself? Are you gonna mope and moan: poor me, poor, poor me...? Or are you gonna get off your a.s.s and find a way to help the woman you love?"

Chuck didn't balk at the idea. For he realized the truth as soon as it flitted through his mind. He did love her. More than he'd ever thought possible. It was like he'd lived his entire life with part of himself missing, and now that he'd actually found that piece, he wasn't about to let it slip through his grasp.

Chuck jumped to his feet as he flirted with an idea almost as crazy as Lewis himself. His nameless Sleeper, the banks of machinery and monitors, the halo...and, as much as he hated to admit it, even Control: All of it was unnecessary. Mystics and pagans had been embarking on The Walk long before the boys in the lab had invented colorful names for the process. Astral Projection. Dreamtime. Out-of-Body Experiences. It was something anyone could do with the right training. Training that he possessed.

s.n.a.t.c.hing a notebook from the coffee table, Chuck ran across the room, whooping and laughing so loudly that he'd probably receive a call from the landlord about noise complaints. But he didn't care. Hope gushed through his veins and excitement forced him to shout Yes! as if it were the only word in the English language. Approaching the kitchenette, his uneaten dinner crashed to the floor with a sweep of his arm.

Huddled over the table, Chuck scribbled the translocation equation at the top of a blank page, ripped another one from the back of the notebook, and jotted down all the variables from Nodens's instrumentation. He pored over them several times, positive he was forgetting something. But they were all there. Everything he needed to pinpoint the s.p.a.ce-time coordinates for Lewis's Cutscene was laid out in a crooked column of numbers; all he had to do was finally solve that d.a.m.n formula.

Forty-five minutes later, Chuck's hair was a disheveled mop from continuously running his fingers through it and his mouth was bitter from the dregs of lukewarm coffee. Crumpled b.a.l.l.s of paper bunched around his feet and his fingers ached from squeezing his pencil between them. His initial burst of enthusiasm had died out, leaving only stubborn determination to take its place. Starting a new page, he tried plugging the numerals into the equation again, forcing back the urge to snap the pencil in half from sheer frustration.

She's counting on me. I've got to do this.

Two hours pa.s.sed and the pencil's eraser had been worn to a nub. Every few minutes, Chuck pushed the chair away from the table, its legs grating against the tile, and paced around the kitchen, mumbling a string of numbers like a deranged mathematician. His mind would seize upon a possibility and he'd dart back to the table amid a flurry of scribbling, only to throw the notebook in disgust minutes later.

By the time sunrise illuminated the small window above his sink, cramps seized Chuck's hand with increasing regularity and he yawned between gulps of coffee, relying more on his scalding throat to jolt him awake than the caffeine. He'd sharpened the pencil so many times it was now nothing more than a stub, but the solution to the equation stayed maddeningly out of reach.

Rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, Chuck sighed and looked again at the jumbled numbers. Something wasn't balancing. But what? Forcing himself to slow down, he checked and double-checked the math. He knew he was close. Closer than he'd ever been before. So why couldn't he make it work?

Pausing to rub his eyes again, Chuck stopped short as a phrase popped into his mind: The log of a product is the sum of the logs of the factors.

For a moment, he could only blink. But then he cackled and clapped his hands as he rocked back so forcefully that the chair teetered on its rear legs. It seemed so simple now, so obvious. How had he never seen it before?

Within minutes, he had the correct solution to the equation. Which also meant he had a map that would lead him straight into Lydia's arms.

The only thing standing in his way was a s.a.d.i.s.tic killer who refused to die. But he'd deal with Albert Lewis. He'd make the b.a.s.t.a.r.d regret each and every tear that had ever fallen from Lydia's eyes and enjoy doing it.

It was time for that son of a b.i.t.c.h to pay.

It was time to go to war.

Chapter 10.

The Mercy Seat

Chuck strutted into Albert Lewis's stronghold with his silver cord gleaming behind him, his chin held high, and his chest puffed with bravado. He'd mastered the equation, had returned to the realm of the dead without the aid of the technological trappings even Level I Whisks relied upon, and walked into the place as if it were nothing more than a local pub. He knew that confidence bordering on arrogance would expose him to the denizens of this world, but he didn't care. In fact, that was precisely what he wanted.

"Lewis!" He swaggered like a returning champion, his challenge echoing through the corridors and halls. "Show yourself, old man! Come take my eye...if you can."

When he'd reentered the castle, Chuck had made his way to the tower he'd entered the first time he set foot in the castle. From there, he'd followed the sounds of suffering, ascending the stairs at a steady pace, and knocking torches from the wall as he pa.s.sed. He knew the flames could never burn through the cobbled floors, but these small acts of defiance bolstered an already inflated sense of invulnerability. He didn't fear the shadows or anything that lurked within them; his love for Lydia burned away any doubts he once may have harbored and would serve as his armaments in this land of evil.

As he pa.s.sed one of the turret's windows, lightning illuminated the sky, flas.h.i.+ng so rapidly that it almost seemed as if the world were attempting to warn its master of Chuck's return. The strobe-like effect spilled through the window and bathed the stone walls in flickering electric blue, momentarily making Chuck's stride look jerky and robotic.

As the lightning faded, he swiped another torch from its metal sconce and held it to a tapestry like the one in which Lydia had clothed herself. The dry-rotted material whooshed into a wall of flame as fire hungrily devoured the fabric. Black smoke roiled from the remains of the tapestry and Chuck tossed the torch over his shoulder as he called out again.

"Lewis!"

He half-expected Control to admonish him. But there were no recriminations, no memories conjured from childhood picnics or days at the park: He was utterly alone, a rogue Whisk with no backup or support.

"Come get me, you old f.u.c.k!"

The stairwell opened into a chamber that was as large as a football field. Moldy banners hung from the walls with woodcut-style scenes of the Inquisition fading into the moth-eaten fabric. Bound men and women roasted above open flames and a row of supplicants lined up for their chance to kneel as they kissed the a.s.s of Satan; racks, iron maidens, bodies curved around gigantic wheels while robed cardinals looked on: The chamber was a gallery dedicated to man's inhumanity and the torches lining the walls imbued the crude drawings with lives of their own, creating the illusion of movement in dancing patterns of light and shadow.

There were no windows in this room, nothing to convey that anything existed other than impenetrable stone and the cathedral-like ceiling. Every few yards a column descended from the gloom overhead, planting itself firmly into the floor. The size of elevator shafts, these columns lined either side of the chamber, and the cobbles became a network of paths leading to each one. Iron gratings covered the gaps between the paths and wisps of smoke curled above blackened metal, born of the fires raging miles below. In the physical realm this would not have been possible: The lower levels of the castle should have been directly above the room, not an abyss that sunk deep into the earth. But here anything was possible. All it took was Lewis's belief.

The columns, however, did not serve as mere supports for the roof: Shackled to each one was a soul who'd been lured into this false realm. Trapped by their own beliefs, Lewis's prisoners endured fantasies so depraved that their mortal bodies would have given out long ago. Here their suffering was eternal; for in the land of the dead, even death could not deliver them from their torment.

The sounds of agony were deafening, but Chuck tried his best to ignore them. This, however, proved to be difficult. The screams were so harsh and shrill that they seemed to vibrate his skull with resonance; peppered among them were gasps of pain, blubbering sobs mingled with animalistic howls, and from the far end of the room a man with a childlike voice repeatedly shrieked the word No.

Underscoring the tumult were clinks and clanks as tortured souls fought against their restraints. The chains struck the stone columns as manacles sc.r.a.ped away layers of skin, transforming wrists into bands of glistening red tissue and frayed strands of muscle. The captives hung close enough to the floor that those with the strength to do so stood on tiptoe, defying their trembling legs; others, too weakened to fight, dangled limply from their chains. With knees bent and heads bowed, they slumped forward, swinging in slow circles as they gasped for breath.

Walking the central path was like strolling through the Devil's personal museum. A stringy-haired woman drooped in one display and her torso had been sliced with surgical precision. Peeled open and pinned to her back, the slabs of parted flesh revealed organs that squished and pulsed every time she s.h.i.+fted positions. In another tableau, a rat perched upon the shoulder of a pasty, overweight man and cleaned droplets of blood from its whiskers with swipes of its paw before darting in for another bite. Sinking its teeth into the man's lips, it pulled gristle that stretched like a rubber band before snapping free with savage shakes of the rodent's head.

Each step revealed atrocities more horrifying than the last. Chuck looked away as roaches scurried beneath flaps of skin sliced into a tribal warrior. His eyes clouded with tears as he pa.s.sed a woman with an angelic face who was more skeleton than flesh, the sagging skin that remained held to her frame by hooks and twine so thin as to almost be transparent.

But still he persisted, checking each miserable soul and dreading that he would find Lydia hanging in this hall of abominations. Even if he didn't-even if she'd already managed to free herself and had left this place far behind-it had to end.

"Lewis!" Only echoes answered Chuck's repeated challenge, so he tried a different tact. "Lydia!"

Stealing a look at his silver cord, he knew he'd have to tread carefully. It was nothing more than a shadow, as thin and tenuous as a mortal's grasp on life. He tried summoning memories to strengthen it: the sour stench of a skunk and stinging, watery eyes; crickets and insects chirping as shafts of moonlight streamed through the canopy of leaves overhead...

It helped. But only a little. Chuck's subconscious did its best to imitate Control's cadence and inflection, but without the familiar rhythm of her voice he keenly felt the isolation. No one knew he was here. No one would call him back if things got too hairy. The words themselves, he realized, were not nearly enough; he needed Control's special gift, her ability to paint a vivid masterpiece with nothing more than timbre and a pause in just the right place. His own attempts were like a child's finger painting in comparison and his silver cord was still indistinct, portions of it flickering in and out of existence with each new swell of emotion.

From his right, a strained moan snaked through the other cries, nearly overpowered by their force. If he'd been just a few inches farther, he probably wouldn't have even heard it. The sound could have been a garbled vocalization of pain...or it could have been the word help, weakened by a throat that had screamed until its vocal cords were torn and b.l.o.o.d.y.

He ran to the column he thought the sound had originated from, all attempts at strengthening ties to the physical world cast aside and forgotten. As he neared the pillar, however, he slowed. Whoever was chained to this one was bound on the other side and currently hidden from view. Though no more groans reached his ears, Chuck heard the soft jingle of chains. A raspy wheeze greeted each new breath and a wet gurgle bid it farewell upon exhalation, the sound so wet and bubbly that it was hard to imagine the lungs were capable of filtering any oxygen through the mucus flooding them.

As much as he longed to be with Lydia again, part of Chuck didn't want to see who was chained to that column. He held his breath and tried to steel himself for what he might find as he rounded the corner.

The woman shackled to the pillar had been starved to the point that her stomach was a hollow cavity beneath ribs so clearly defined that it looked as though flesh and muscle had been shrink-wrapped over them. Her bowed head was obscured by a wild ma.s.s of tangles and knots, the hair streaked with gray and so oily that the torchlight reflected a yellow sheen. She'd been cut multiple times and scars existed side by side with open wounds, crosshatching her legs and torso to the point that little flesh remained intact.

Chuck's stomach tightened as his hand reached for the face hidden beneath all that hair. He didn't want this emaciated and battered woman to be Lydia, didn't want to have concrete proof of how horribly she'd suffered. He kept thinking that if only he'd been better at his job, he could have whisked her away from this place, could have helped guide her across The Divide, where she would've been welcomed into the peace, harmony, and beauty that she deserved.

"It might not be her." He told himself. "It could be anyone."

His hand cupped the woman's chin so delicately it seemed as though he were afraid she'd turn to dust with the slightest touch.

Please don't let it be her, please don't let it be...

His teeth ground against one another and the din of tormented spirits became nothing more than an indistinct lull.

A flex of the fingers was all it took for Chuck to tilt her head upward, her limp and gangly neck offering no resistance. Eyelids fluttered, struggling to open within the black and green bruises that had swollen them into narrow slits, and her cracked lips parted, emitting a hiss that may have been an attempted word.

Chuck pulled her to him, wrapped his arms around her frail frame, and shut his eyes, squeezing out a warm tear in the process. A void yawned within him, sucking down all the things that had made life worth living, and words burbled through a stream of snot and tears.

"Oh my G.o.d, Lydia...oh, my G.o.d. I'm so sorry. So very, very sorry. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to leave you. Not here. Not alone. I'm so, so sorry."

Lydia's flesh was ashen and cold, and Chuck pressed against her more tightly, hoping to infuse her with his own warmth. But he felt the chill as well. It p.r.i.c.kled the skin at the base of his spine, numbing vertebrae as the cold seeped into surrounding tissue; it burrowed deeply, sinking into his bowels and marrow, and his entire body s.h.i.+vered as he finally pulled away from her.

He had to find a way to free her, to release her, to carry her away to a place where nothing would ever hurt her again. His hands scrambled over the chains, searching for some sort of catch or release that would free Lydia's wrists from the manacles cutting into them. But there was no keyhole or hinge, not even a gap where one end of a cuff met the other. There were only unbroken bands of metal that almost appeared to have organically grown around her wrists, encircling them with no true beginning or end.

And still the cold spread, turning the emptiness he felt inside into a tundra where snow and sleet were whipped into a frenzy by howling arctic winds. His jaw clenched and anger crystallized his eyes, his wrath so intense that emotion seemed to beam out of them like icy rays of death.

Lewis would pay for what he'd done. The son of a b.i.t.c.h would beg and plead and curse the day he'd ever laid eyes upon this woman, screaming pet.i.tions to dark G.o.ds who'd turned their backs on him in his moment of greatest need.

Chuck's silver cord was entirely gone. He knew this without bothering to look. Its absence was felt as acutely as if one of his arms or legs had been hacked off.

There was no way home now. No way back to his body. He would float forever in The Divide, neither alive nor dead but stuck somewhere between. Even when his physical sh.e.l.l finally succ.u.mbed to starvation-even after it was no more than a decomposed mess soaking into his sofa-even then he wouldn't be able to cross into the place he'd helped so many others find. Without the connecting cord, soul and body were separate ent.i.ties and death meaningless.

But he was beyond caring.

The floor trembled beneath Chuck's feet and a sound like the marching of an invading army echoed through the chamber. Whirling around, his eyes scanned the darkness bordering the room and he sucked in air, ignoring the rank fetor seeping through the air as he envisioned energy flowing into his lungs, twin streams of light so white it was blinding. The light converged into a pulsating orb halfway between Chuck's chest and abdomen, growing more intense with each new breath.

From the shadows, a golden throne emerged. Formed of gilded skulls, femurs, and tibia, it sat upon a riser carried upon the backs of a writhing ma.s.s of people whose mottled skin was st.i.tched together with flaxen thread. A tangle of arms, legs, and torsos seemed to fuse into a single ent.i.ty, and they moved as an uncoordinated unit, some scrambling for purchase but slipping in puddles of blood, others supporting the weight with quivering arms but never collapsing. Crawling forward with bent backs and sc.r.a.ped knees, they carried the throne on an undulating wave of flesh, and their lamentations rang through the room, heralding the arrival of their foul king.

Seated upon his throne of inequity, Albert Lewis glowered at all he surveyed. The man's white hair was a tousled mop of tufts that framed a lean face that looked as if it had been carved from stone. With wrinkles chiseled into alabaster features, he pulled his lips into a thin, tight smile.

"The prodigal son returns." The voice boomed from the old man like thunder, and fresh gales of pain erupted from his victims as it reverberations quivered exposed nerve endings. "Kneel before my mercy seat, boy. Kneel and perhaps you will die easily."

Chuck remained silent. He focused on his hands and felt the pulsating ball of energy flow into his arms. The white light warmed and energized them, making the little hairs on Chuck's arms feel as though they were standing on end. At the same time, his torso tingled like a limb that had fallen asleep. Somehow, Albert Lewis looked smaller than he had just a few moments earlier, more like a retired pensioner who might feed pigeons in the park rather than the monster he truly was.

"Perhaps you'd like to play with my pet, then." If Lewis was aware of the power surging through Chuck, it was not betrayed by his jeering tone. "Maybe you'll remember her from the catacombs. I know she remembers you."

As if in response to a command, a thing only remotely human scuttled from the darkness. The foundation of Albert Lewis's living litter had their bodies st.i.tched together with coa.r.s.e fibers pulled so tightly that the skin puckered around each suture; while intolerably cruel and s.a.d.i.s.tic, it paled in comparison to what had been done to this creature.

The base of its collective body was formed from two burly men on their hands and knees, a.s.ses facing each other. Their b.u.t.tocks had been splayed extensively and then pressed together, conceivably bandaged, and allowed to heal into a single graft. Conjoined to them by the same technique was the body of a pet.i.te woman. Her legs were spread in a split that only could've been accomplished by wrenching joints from their sockets, and the scarring that melded her thighs and calves to the men's backs was a jagged pink seam. Severed at the wrists, her hands had been replaced with curved blades whose barbs gleamed in the torchlight, and her face was a contorted mask of insanity. Pulling her lips back into a snarl, the woman revealed a webwork of needles attached like steel braces to teeth browned and pitted by decay.

The thing clanged its blades together just before it sniffed the air.

"This is my domain!" Lewis slammed his fists on the throne's armrests as he lurched forward in his seat. "Do you think you can just waltz in here with your little bag of tricks and usurp my sovereignty?"

His creature scurried forward, surprisingly quick and spider-like. The woman's thin hair was plastered to her skull and her face burned hotly with the reek of an infection that made her veins darken like a network of roots lying just below her glistening, reddened cheeks. She hissed as her blades whooshed through the air, and Chuck stumbled backward, his mind and confidence balking at the sight of the abomination.

Albert Lewis's laughter echoed off the walls and ceiling, the reverberations growing in strength and volume as if his guffaws fed off one another. As it reached a crescendo, his prisoners' mouths opened in unison. Rather than releasing more screams and wails, however, they resounded with the deep baritone of their jailer's cruel laughter, each mouth robbed of its own voice and replaced with Lewis's.

The tingling in Chuck's hands subsided, and he continued backing away as Lewis's monster clattered forward. With his heart thudding distress signals, a cold sweat broke out on his brow, his previous bravado all but dissipated as he saw his own distorted, funhouse reflection in the creature's blades. There was no confidence in his gaze, no swagger in his step; in fact, he looked like a young boy, abandoned and cast aside in a world of nightmares.

He tried to narrow his focus, to envision the glow of healing light engulfing his hands like tongues of white flame. He thought he sensed a trickle still flowing down his arms, but it was hard to be certain. With the monster filling his entire field of vision, Chuck felt as though he existed somewhere outside his astral body, as if his soul had a soul that had leapt backward, cowering before the thing's approach.

This sense of detachment made it impossible to tell exactly how much energy still flowed through him. Was the pins-and-needles numbness in his extremities due to arcane forces gathering within? Or simply hyperventilation from gasps of putrid air?

The thing clanged its blades together again and the room spun in dizzying circles with Chuck at its center.

One unadulterated, well-placed blast of white light. That's all he was asking for.

Just one.

"Welcome," Lewis sneered, "to my reign."

And at that moment, his creature pounced.