CHAPTER 70: CUT THE ROPE | THE RAID—XII

  SPECTRE—NOVEMBER 26th, 1992 | MORNING

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  Leroy trained Old Man Winter on Gideon.

  Marcus’s phantasm was flickering. Pink fractals gushed out from the illusionary anaconda that kept him firmly fixed to the ground. Marcus stood to the side of Leroy, hands neatly placed into his designer slacks. Gideon writhed on the floor, but had just enough strength to lift his head. The ironsights of Leroy’s gun pointed directly into the cross branded into Gideon’s forehead.

  Sweat beaded along Leroy’s brow.

  “Gideon first, Leroy,” Marcus insisted. “And then I’ll tell you what I know.”

  It would have been so easy. It should have been so easy. After all this time, he finally had a lead—the trouble was that it was a lead due to come out of Marcus Velvet’s mouth. Days. Months. Years. No headway, no progress, only disappointment and dead ends. Leroy didn’t ever get close to a name, and revenge was further still. If there was even an iota hidden in the sweet nothings that Marcus promised him, it was worth Gideon’s head.

  But as his finger hovered over the trigger, his memory took him back to the day that he’d met him. To the day that he decided to spare him—to the mutual understanding they had, and to the lesson they’d imparted onto Cameron.

  Want to, need to, have to. All three or none. And as Gideon looked up at him, his dark eyes didn’t plead. They didn’t beg. They didn’t whine. They accepted that this was one of those moments: that all three boxes had been checked, and that if this was his moment, he’d accepted it.

  Marcus kept his cool, for the moment, but this was it—the moment Leroy had been looking for the whole time. A crack in his composure; an admission of weakness. Leverage, by way of patience. Marcus’s mesmerism couldn’t kill them, and if he’d had a weapon on him, he would’ve already done it.

  A wry smile stretched across Leroy’s face.

  Marcus took note. “Something funny?”

  “Yeah,” Leroy said. “Something is.”

  With a sudden snap, he pistol whipped Marcus. He only half expected it to work. The flickering of his phantasm and the subtle urgency of his voice gave enough for Leroy to work with—his power wasn’t limitless, and there was a threshold would be reaching soon if he hadn’t already.

  Marcus hit the floor with a thump. Blood trailed out from his nose like evidence of his waning power. Gone were the precious moments he had where he could maintain his psionic influence and retain his phantasms. Now, it was one or the other.

  “You dipshit,” Marcus said, spitting out a glob of blood. “I’m the only one who's got your fucking lead!”

  “And I cut the rope,” Leroy said. “Noose around my neck wasn’t as tight as you thought it was.”

  Marcus’s eyes widened. He attempted to stand, but Leroy closed the distance quickly. He grabbed Marcus’s face with his entire hand and slammed the back of his head into the floor. Marcus cried out in pain, his sunglasses shattering on his face. Stray glass jutted along his sharp cheekbones.

  “Almost had me there, you know,” Leroy said. Marcus’s voice was muffled beneath Leroy’s hand, still clutching onto his face. “Riled me up. I’ll give you that.”

  Leroy smashed his head into the ground ahead.

  “Sore subject, you know—that whole business with Melinda. Still stings, even now,” Leroy admitted.

  Marcus tried to lurch forward. Leroy pushed his face back down into the ground. He removed his hand, readied a fist, and punched him square in the nose. It broke instantly. Blood poured down along his features, staining Marcus’s expertly trimmed mustache and goatee in a velvet deeper than the button up he wore on his chest.

  “Almost did it, too. Your little favor. Hell, a few years ago? I would’ve,” Leroy said.

  Marcus groaned, and once more tried to lean up.

  Leroy backhanded him. One of Marcus’s teeth flew out of his mouth.

  “But I’m trying to be more deliberate in my decisions, and I’ve got a little angel on my shoulder, somewhere out in that club of yours, probably beaten halfway to death. Don’t know how, don’t know why, but for some reason, when I think about what I’ve told him, you know, the advice I give him that he doesn’t ask for,” Leroy continued, “I feel more inclined to follow my own words. Take my own lessons. Learn from them.”

  Marcus whimpered.

  “Want to, need to, have to,” Leroy said. “Had a whole socratic seminar with your boy Gideon over there. And in spite of everything you’ve told me, yeah, every little fucking way you’ve tried to get under my skin, I’ve decided it’s not all three. It’s none.”

  Leroy grabbed Marcus by the neck and pulled him up.

  “It’s none, Marcus, and I can still get everything I want out of you. You, asshole, are going to tell me everything I want to hear, and I’ll tell you why.”

  With Leroy’s free hand, he pointed towards Gideon. The phantasm still held, but only just barely, and with each passing moment, more and more movement was restored to Gideon. He was writhing less and less, gasping less and less.

  “It’s me, and you, and him. When your fucking parlor trick is over, Marcus, the only thing that is there to stop him from ripping you into a thousand tiny pieces is me. You got that?”

  Fear widened Marcus’s eyes.

  Leroy shook him by the throat, only to soften his grip. “Say it.”

  “I-I got it, yeah, I got it man,” Marcus said.

  Leroy backhanded him again. Another tooth flew out, and Marcus whined.

  “C-Conclave! The Conclave! They’re called the Conclave, man, shit!” Marcus exclaimed.

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  Leroy held the back of his hand out.

  “Wait, wait! Hell, that’s all I know! That’s it!”

  Leroy furrowed his brows. He picked Marcus up by his hair and dragged him closer to Gideon. Marcus kicked his feet out and reached up to grab Leroy in a futile effort to stop him, only for Leroy to drop him directly in front of Gideon. The phantasm was on its final legs, flickering in and out of reality.

  Leroy held his face closer to Gideon’s, and forced him to look into Gideon’s eyes: two completely black orbs surrounded by a mask made of small, abyssal fingers that twitched out and reached towards Marcus’s face. One of them nearly touched his broken nose.

  “They hunt witches! They… they, they, they hunt witches and they harvest their fucking souls! It’s.. it’s a goddamn cabal, alright!? Powerful people in powerful places that want more, and more, and more! Not to be fucked with, not now, not ever! Shit’s not even a name that’s supposed to be said out loud!” Marcus yelled. “That’s it! That’s all I know! Everything!”

  Leroy released Marcus.

  The anaconda phantasm shattered, and Gideon, still prone, gasped as if he’d been breathless for the past several minutes; reaching towards his own neck as if it had been compressed by the vice grip of something impossibly strong. He inhaled, exhaled, and inhaled again.

  Leroy stepped back, and allowed for Gideon the space he was owed.

  Abject fear trailed out from Marcus, so tangible and so readily observed that it well surpassed any psionic manipulation or phantasm that he could think to create. Gideon stood up, slowly, only to crouch back down in front of Marcus, head titled, a sour expression plastered along his features.

  The walls were all shadows, and all hands. A menagerie of darkness and abyssal digits that had not for a single moment faltered even amidst Gideon’s restriction. Fingers curled and twisted with long and hungry nails, each of which loomed and waited and lingered like they each had a mind of their own—all passive observers like an audience composed of a thousand limbs.

  Gideon raised one hand over the other, as if he were clapping along a complete horizontal line.

  From the ceiling and with stupendous speed, an abyssal hand was born which clamped down onto Marcus. And as above, so too was below—clamping the mesmer between demonic palms that flattened him like an insect. Blood and viscera and tattered clothes churned out from between the gargantuan clasped hands, like pus oozing from a body sized cyst.

  It was so instant that Marcus was hardly permitted a dying breath, or even a wail, a wince, or a tremble. When the hands faded into shadows and wisps that was left was a paste; and the only thing present in that pile of congealed blood was Marcus’s golden chains.

  Leroy paced behind Gideon and picked his checkered flat cap off the ground. He dusted it off and secured it back over his wild and wiry graying head of hair.

  Yaerzul’s brand ignited in a dim blue. The words that reached Leroy didn’t hurt him this time.

  Tresthomm will soon collect.

  He’d said it before, the moment Leroy and Gideon had entered Marcus’s office. Leroy couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, his foreboding omens were worth listening too; though this would be the first time Yaerzul's cold voice had whispered anything close to a prophetic truth.

  “Won’t be long now,” Gideon said, standing up.

  The demonic brand on his neck swelled with power. Shadows leaked from it without ceasing, trailing from his body as a color darker than black.

  Leroy glanced over his shoulder at Gideon. “Heard through the grapevine that you’ve got a visitor coming soon. You ready?”

  “Leroy,” Gideon said, his tone low, decisive, and weighty.

  “Gideon,” Leroy retorted.

  “What I said early, in the VIP Lounge. I was wrong,” Gideon said. “About you.”

  Leroy paced over to his side. “Half-wrong, Gideon. What was it that you said? I screw people over, use them? Can’t see how the dominos fall?”

  “Something to that effect, yeah,” Gideon said with a nod. “But you didn’t do that. Not with me. Not today.”

  Leroy extended a hand. He looked at his bruised knuckles, and the remnant dredges of Marcus Velvet’s blood that stained his skin a deep red. “Doesn’t mean I won’t do that to someone tomorrow. Or the day after that. Thing is, Gideon, I kept you alive to use you for this. Dominos fell in my favor, and we ended up being two sides of the same coin. Could’ve gone the other way. Could’ve ended differently.”

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “But I got what I wanted in the end.”

  Leroy glanced towards the pile. “Yeah. You did.”

  “So,” Gideon said, extending a hand. “Thanks.”

  Leroy took it. “Yeah.”

  “You know what comes next?” Gideon asked, bringing that same hand to his neck. His demonic brand pulsed in a purple energy.

  “Tresthomm will collect,” Leroy said.

  “Yeah,” Gideon said quietly. “That’s about what I expected.”

  “I’ll see you there one day, Gideon,” Leroy said. “But I’ve got some things I need to handle first.”

  Gideon smiled.

  Leroy made his way towards the door leading into the VIP Lounge. He lingered his hand on the knob. A pulse of power and dread hit his back like a localized maelstrom, bearing all of the intensity—the dread, the disaster, the dauntingness—but carrying none of the force that might otherwise topple Leroy over. He glanced over his shoulder.

  A creature as tall as the room itself loomed behind Gideon. It squatted down behind his silhouette, its knees enclosing either side of him. One of its hands touched the inside ceiling. The other grabbed Gideon. Its skin was a deep ebonblack, and every part of its otherwise humanoid body was a finger; each interlinked and locked to create the impression of a vague humanoid silhouette. It had no eyes, only bandages and chains covering its face, and a slacked jaw for a mouth with a familiar abyssal hand for a tongue.

  Leroy tipped his hat to Gideon.

  Gideon nodded.

  The demon’s hand that had been clasped around Gideon twitched. Its index finger curled along the nape of Gideon’s neck and lightly tapped the glowing purple sigil.

  Gideon’s eyes rolled back behind his head. There was no scream. No cry. No pain. Just an outline of energy—blue and white and pure—which exited every pour of Gideon’s body, only to be inhaled by the demon who cradled him. His body hit the floor with a thud.

  Behind the demon, reality itself shattered and cracked.

  A fissure leaking a deep red showed Leroy only a slither of a glimpse of what awaited him. His eyes widened and settled. Fear settled into a quiet complacency. Whispers leaked out from the fault lines as brackish flames, each snapping and crackling with the despondent screams of eternal torture; suffering so raw it sounded the opposite of transcendent.

  Absent a tether, Tresthomm tore the fault line open and stepped into it with a belly made full by the soul of Gideon Draves.

  The fissure and fault lines snapped shut.

  Leroy’s head ached. Yaerzul’s cold voice returned, and it was far from a whisper. He winced and his grip around the door knob tightened.

  And now you know what awaits you. But you, Leroy, have always known this. It need not be said. This was always our arrangement. Our pact. These years you have put to waste were not wasted by any fault of your own. It was never a matter of inefficiency. Never a question of skill, or drive, or capability.

  Leroy held his head and grit his teeth.

  It was a matter of fear. Of anticipation. This is your greatest cowardice; years upon years of hesitation that dampened the love you believed yourself once capable of. A love you once thought fit to sell your soul to honor. But you have honored nothing but your basest of instincts to run from the danger that took from you what you cared about the most.

  His knuckles whitened on the door knob.

  “Didn’t have a name before. Now I do,” Leroy said. “Now I know what to run towards.”

  Leroy opened the door and closed it behind him.

  LEROY WATERS

  GIDEON DRAVES

  MARCUS VELVET

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