CHAPTER 25: REUNION

  CYPRUS ALLEY—NOVEMBER 19th, 1992 | LATE EVENING

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  Long days in the South End had more than prepared Cameron for nightcrawls like this.

  It helped that his stomach was full and he had a cup of coffee to go, though he wondered how well all that damn food would sit when he finally got to moving around again. A hamburger, a milkshake, and two cups of coffee before a fight was less than a calculated risk before an expected encounter—it was downright stupid.

  Cameron expected he had maybe thirty minutes to an hour before his poor meal choice caught up to him, and gave it twenty minutes for Leroy, whose stomach had been grumbling the entire time they’d been in Leroy’s black SUV.

  Leroy had switched between 99.3, the Rat and 107.1, the Smitten Mistress more than a handful of times. According to him, the Rat was playing too much back-to-back Black Sabbath, and the Smitten Mistress had been playing some new-wave stuff that pissed him off. They’d steadily worked their way along Cyprus Alley and committed no longer than thirty minutes to one storefront at a time, careful to position themselves outside of the stores that were open as opposed to those that weren’t.

  Up to that point, the only signs that were alight with neon were: JENSEN’S, a convenience store, THE LOOSE TOOTH, a dive bar, and, of course, RUBY’S LOUNGE, the brothel that started this whole thing. Cameron hadn’t seen anything meaningful out of any of those places, just the usual foot traffic he’d come to expect out of Cyprus Alley.

  “You see anything?” Cameron asked.

  “No, not yet,” Leroy answered.

  Nirvana’s ‘Lithium’ played through the car's loudspeakers, set to a low volume. Cameron was surprised that Leroy left it on, and even more surprised to find him tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

  “Anywhere else still open?” Cameron asked.

  “Only one spot I can think of. If they aren’t there, we’ll need to try again tomorrow,” Leroy said, shifting the car out of park and into drive.

  They veered off into an alleyway, and by some miracle, Leroy managed to maneuver the vehicle through a network of tight turns and backstreets that were adjacent to the main strip of Cyprus Alley. Dense fog hung low to the ground and the occasional dim window light illuminated the darkness where the neon and streetlamps failed to. Before long, Leroy parked the car along a wider alleyway, just close enough to the edge of the sidewalk so that they’d be able to view the street from the front windows of the car.

  He killed the headlights and turned the radio off, and nodded his head to a large vertical sign. The word NIGHTINGALE was framed by a collection of circular bulbs, and beneath it was a ticket booth.

  “A theater?” Cameron asked.

  “Foreign film theater. I’ve only been there once or twice. Mostly stupid French movies,” Leroy stated. “Hardly worth the money you pay for the tickets.”

  “So, a theater for people who think they have taste,” Cameron said.

  “Yup. That and—”

  Across the street, twin doors on either side of the Nightingale swung open.

  A group of panicked individuals readily flowed out from inside the theater and ran up and down the sidewalks, and several among them crossed into the street. One car crashed into another, and chaos ensued. Before the shouts of disagreement could begin, someone was thrown out through the ticket booth of the Nightingale, sent skidding across the asphalt with a groan that echoed through the street.

  “Let’s move,” Leroy said, opening the door.

  Cameron perked up. “What, now?”

  “Yes, now,” Leroy said, exiting the vehicle.

  This whole plan of Leroy’s was a Hail Mary at best. Sure, it sounded reasonable—good, even, given what they had to work with— but would it pan out? After the events at Spectre, Cameron had his doubts. Leroy was right; they’d only just gotten through the security, and even then, they were saved on Marcus’s orders. He wasn’t one for prayer. Any hope of being a praying man was lost to Cameron the day he was born as a South Ender and a hexling. At the moment, however, they could both use a miracle. Something simple. Something small. Something that might make a difference.

  Cameron shook his head at himself as he crossed into the street.

  No.

  People don’t hope for miracles. They trust in themselves, in their capacity to do better than whatever weaker version of themselves had caused failure in the first place. He steeled his nerves and reached for Leroy’s handgun, the Ruger P89, and held it with one hand.

  Leroy, who was only a few steps ahead of him, turned briefly. “Two hands. You can’t handle that kickback.”

  Cameron placed both hands onto the handle of the P89 and offered him no more than a snarky set of raised brows.

  Leroy crouched down next to the person who’d been thrown onto the street. Around them, the pedestrians and former movie-goers had all but cleared the area, leaving only the dense fog and the sound of multiple car alarms in their wake.

  Cameron kept the gun pointed forward towards the doors.

  Dim lights revealed their otherwise identical silhouettes.

  They were both the exact same height. One was a man, adorned in a red tank top with a star graphic at the center, with cargo pants, sneakers, and a chain for a belt. Beside him was a woman wearing a cropped white tank top with strange letters—пицца—that looked like they were drawn on with a sharpie, and a pair of track pants and running shoes.

  They were both pale, both with blonde hair, brown eyes, and sharp noses. Siblings. No, twins. Outside of their clothes, and the fact that the sister had much longer hair, they would’ve been indistinguishable from one another. Each of them had an arm covered in a brown-black crust, which spread up and along half of their bodies. Singular, stag-like horn jutted out from one of their ears.

  “Accursed, two of them, just like Mr. Huang said,” Cameron said aloud.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “He’s dead.” Leroy stood up from where he’d been squatting, shaking his head at the state of the body that had been thrown.

  “And that’s one less pair of eyes,” a voice said.

  A man emerged from between the twins, wearing a burgundy blazer and slacks, with a half-tucked black tee shirt that had a few holes on it. Shoulder-length black hair hung from his head. Two distinct streaks of graying hair could be seen above his ears, and his face was framed by five-o'clock-shadow. He must’ve been about Cameron’s height, with a bit more muscle to his frame.

  “Gideon Draves, I’m guessing,” Leroy said.

  “And you must be Leroy Waters.”

  A weight fell on Cameron.

  Invisible, distinct, undeniable.

  It was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before—like an unseen assertion, or a shout so loud it couldn’t be heard, only felt. And he wasn’t the only one. The two accursed were visibly shaken, and struggled to maintain their footing. Cameron leaned forward on a single leg, and lifted his head to see two rivaling displays of light. He white-knuckled his grip around the gun, gritting his teeth in focus so that it wouldn’t escape his grasp.

  From Leroy’s neck, a familiar dim blue light flowed outward from his demonic contractor’s mark.

  Opposite of him, a purple-black energy, murky, almost like oil, flowed out from a mark on Gideon’s neck.

  “He’s a—...” Cameron wheezed. “A contractor, Leroy?! Why didn’t you.. fucking tell me!”

  “Because he’s mine to deal with, not yours. You worry about the twins and whoever the hell that is,” Leroy said, nodding towards the doors to the Nightingale.

  It was the third member of Gideon's crew, who finally stepped into the light.

  Cameron’s eyes widened.

  He felt the pull of something deep, an unrivaled anger that quickly freed him from whatever aura of pressure had been imposed upon him by Leroy and Gideon’s standoff. His veins began to burn, illuminating in a scarlet that wanted to force its way out of him. He recognized that grizzled brown beard anywhere. That black leather jacket. The striped shirt he liked to wear underneath it. The symbols and arrays on Pauper. That assured, cheeky expression that always rested on his face—those hungry, ambitious, self-serving eyes.

  David St. James.

  A deep scarlet energy flowed out through Cameron’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, flowing over his skin like a wax, hardening into a white-ivory material. He dug his feet into the ground, and the asphalt caved in, scattering small bits of concrete outward.

  The two accursed readied themselves, and moved closer together, as if they were going to move into each other, and David stepped in front of them. “Take it easy, Katia, Boris. I’ll handle this.”

  Gideon glanced over his shoulder toward David. “A friend of yours, David?”

  “Sure, you could say that,” said David with a half-smile.

  Leroy twisted towards Cameron. “Kessler.”

  Rage swelled Cameron’s features, and when he looked at Leroy, it was the first time he saw Leroy surprised. There was a direness that plagued Cameron’s brows; sloped them down with a weight that thinned out his gaze into that of a hunter’s. Within the gray of his eyes was a triarchy of things that leaned on one another, building a frame of certainty so structurally sound that it could not be challenged. Focus. Commitment. Sheer will.

  “Kessler! Remember what we talked about!" Leroy shouted.

  All he could remember in that moment was the day he’d burned two names into his head. There was one name he couldn’t touch, one name he couldn’t kill. Not now, and not for a long time. But the other name only stood a dozen feet away from him, unprotected by the ring that bound Cameron to Leroy.

  He paused to look at Leroy’s gun, the P89, and threw it towards Leroy.

  Plan be damned.

  A bellow exited Cameron, layered and thunderous with a voice that wasn’t his.

  Within his cry of anger was a second tone that came from somewhere deeper; from the cauldron of that undeniable burning sensation that always resided in the pit of his stomach. For a moment, it felt alive—an entity within its own right, nestled in what remained of his soul. It called to him, and without words, Cameron answered the burning with intention.

  Concrete caved in beneath the force of his dash toward David, who raised Pauper with a defiant grin. The white-silver arrays and symbols were alight along his glove, and he shot a small, circular wave of concussive energy towards Cameron.

  It hit Cameron like a brick wall. But walls hadn’t stopped him before. And they wouldn’t today.

  Cameron planted his foot, one after the other, and crossed his forearms in front of his face. Another blast hit him. And another. And another. Each time, Cameron resisted, and put one foot forward after another, staining the asphalt with his bootprints.

  One final step.

  David prepared to launch another blast from his gloved hand, only for Cameron to grab him by the wrist. In a sudden jerk, he pulled David forward and into his opposite arm, smashing the side of David’s head with a fist covered in a glistening white-ivory. A crack sounded through the air upon impact.

  Glass shattered around David’s body as he hurled through the doors leading into the Nightingale.

  Katia and Boris stood dumbfounded, and before either of them could make a move, Cameron grabbed Katia by the horn protruding from her ear and twisted, throwing her across the street and into one of the abandoned cars.

  Boris let out a shout and punched Cameron in the chest. A whine escaped Boris, and he shook out his hand, where his mangled and bloody fingers failed to hurt him. He only hurt himself.

  With a sudden pull, Cameron grabbed Boris by the neck, lifted him by a single hand, and fell forward onto a single knee to slam him into the sidewalk. Blood spattered out from his mouth, and he gurgled, an unpleasant and bastardized mixture of pain and purpose plaguing his features.

  It happened quickly—all of it—and Leroy’s continued silence spoke volumes. Red pulsed within what used to be Cameron’s gray eyes, and scarlet veins were alight along the sides of his eyes, beating with a heartbeat of their own, feeding into the white-ivory along the sides of his face and jaw.

  Leroy opened and closed his mouth, as if to say one thing, only to say another with no words at all.

  He crouched to pick up his handgun, and tipped his hat to Cameron before the air around him thrashed and swirled into a localized cold front; fog was pulled in around him and expanded outward beneath his feet as a sudden surge of ice, encrusting the surrounding cars and working its way up the streetlamps.

  The only thing unaffected was Gideon Draves, who, at some point during Cameron’s brief encounter with Katia and Boris, had called upon a power of his own. A large necrotic hand, half shadow, half rotten flesh, loomed over him, protecting him from the expansion of ice. Two contractors in one place. Cameron had never seen anything like it before, and the sheer intensity of occult energies rebounding between the two of them still lingered in the air.

  David groaned inside the Nightingale, and Cameron’s head swiveled towards the theater.

  Glass shattered into smaller pieces as he worked his way inside, and saw David struggling to stand up, still processing the pain of getting launched onto the patterned carpets of the Nightingale’s inside lobby.

  “Cam,” David began, his voice slow, and plagued by a fractured jaw. “It’s been a bit.”

  Cameron stood over him, fists clenched. “Yeah. It has.”

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  GIDEON DRAVES

  DAVID ST. JAMES

  BORIS

  KATIA

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