City of Shadows Page 8

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. I waited for Pearson to hang up the last of his vestments and sit.

  “Here’s the best question to ask: who benefits? From any of this? What about the Fowlers? Was there any insurance on the Stone? They’re creepy enough.”

  Pearson shook his head. ”Not that I know of. Why would they steal their own stone? Why not just take it?”

  “Good point. And besides, they’re atheists. They wouldn't believe in the legend of the rock. Can the Soul Stone be sold? What’s it worth? What can anyone get out of an item that’s so blatant and visible that it has to be broken up?”

  “And it can’t even be broken up.”

  I blinked. “Repeat that.”

  Pearson shrugged. “It can’t be broken up. They tried back at the museum so they could date it. Didn’t work.” He leaned back in the chair and tilted it back a little bit. “As to the worth? Well, if we go by the legend of the stone, it could be damn near anything.”

  I frowned. “Tell me the whole thing.”

  Pearson took a breath and thought it over. “Keep in mind, much of what we know comes from the notes found in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. He had taken it from Gamal Nasser of Egypt. Don’t even ask what the deal was, there were no notes about it. But Nasser wanted it far away from him. As I mentioned before, the legend that came with the Soul Stone is that it was handed to the first dynasty Pharaoh by Anubis himself.”

  It took me a quick moment to remember Anubis as the Egyptian god of the dead. “I don’t think I’d want to keep that gift if I could avoid it.”

  Pearson shrugged. “Anubis was considered relatively benevolent as far as gods go. First, he was the protector of graves and lord of the underworld, and when Osiris replaced him, Anubis became the embalmer, or guide for souls to the afterlife. He also had some authority over divination. So that itself wasn’t a warning sign. According to the Iraqis, the Soul Stone absorbs the misery and suffering of a city, and when it is fully charged, it becomes a weapon.”

  I blinked. It wasn’t the most outrageous story I’d heard, but it ranked up there. I had little problem with the idea of demons—that idea was eternal. I had no problem with someone exchanging his soul for power—again, that was a tale as old as fairy stories. But an evil rock?

  But then again, as Pearson told me when this all began, the Soul Stone had been in a torture chamber in one of Saddam’s palaces. “Considering where you found it, you figure that Saddam believed this crap?”

  “I’d lay money on it.”

  I tried to dredge up what little I could remember about the former dictator of Iraq. “But wasn’t Saddam crazy?”

  Pearson arched a brow. “Excuse me, weren’t you the one being attacked by shadows? Why not believe this?”

  I laughed. “True enough.” I shook my head, thinking this over. I had gone from demonic people to demonic artifacts. “Why does my life seem to just get stranger? And this insanity started when a demonic serial killer came for my family.” I readjusted in my seat, straightening up. “Anyway, evil rock. Fine. But if they couldn’t cut the stone at the museum, how did they put stone flakes in their weapons? Or the skin?”

  “And the stone couldn’t be cut or chipped in the legends. If the Soul Stone is truly everything they say it is, it makes no sense.”

  Pearson frowned. I frowned.

  Then I shrugged. “If it’s everything they say it is, then the only thing that could damage the stone would be the stone itself, right?”

  Pearson paused, blinked, cocked his head, and said, “Maybe. May … be. Which means that they didn’t cut pieces off of it, but they willed them off. Sheer force of will, directing the stone to take off pieces of itself.”

  I was about to compliment Pearson on the idea when there came a faint booming sound.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Boom boom boom.

  And it repeated.

  I looked at Pearson. “Are you expecting anyone?”

  Pearson shook his head. “Not now. I locked up behind us since we’d be out of here in a few minutes, and everyone else is out.”

  I shrugged. “Should we go out the side?”

  We went out the back of the church and circled around the buildings in the front. He came out on the street and walked along the curb. Coming at the plaza from the back, we found a sight that I wish I could have said surprised me. A crowd of forty angry people.

  Pearson was even more cynical. “Oh look. A crowd of angry Muslims. I wonder if they’ve come to file a complaint about a Hagar the Horrible comic strip.”

  I looked at him and smiled. He said, “What?”

  “No. It’s just that you reminded me of my partner there for a moment.”

  Pearson shrugged and looked back to the mob banging on the door of the Cathedral. There were several Molotov cocktails. They threw rocks at the front door. The next step would be the windows.

  Pearson stepped forward. In a loud, booming voice that hinted at time in the military, barked, “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  The mob turned towards us. The front ranks came up from the doors to approach us.

  The bottom fell out of my stomach. In the front ranks were people I knew. One was from The Museum, whose fingers I had broken. One had a face scarred with acid, from the Cathedral attack of yesterday morning.

  And behind them? Swordsman, Hand Gun, and several of the riflemen from yesterday afternoon, after the visit to the mosque in Whitechapel.

  Better and better. I don’t even need to guess what they’re here for.

  Acid Face pointed at me. “That’s him! Get him!”

  One of the men with him raised his hands. Lightning crackled between his fingers. Then he hurled it at us.

  11

  Last Man Standing

  I shoved Pearson to one side as I dove forward, rolling under the lightning bolt. If this guy was like Laser Eyes from yesterday, then it would work best to get closer to him, not farther away. If I could engage him close to the crowd, he couldn’t use his powers without hurting one of the friends who came with him.

  I came out of the roll, bounding to my feet…

  Unfortunately, I kept going up. It wasn’t levitation this time, but a gust of wind that blew me off the ground. I slapped the ground and rolled backwards, over my shoulder and back on my feet.

  Unfortunately, that meant that the crowd saw it and closed. And one flank swarmed over Father Pearson first.

  My adrenaline kicked in, and I darted for Pearson.

  A man stopped in front of me, swinging a knife. The crowd kept a wide berth of the knife, lest they get cut with it. I backpedaled, letting the swipe go past my face. On the backhand, I shot into it, meeting his arm with the backs of my forearms. I twisted my hands around and hooked down with my fingers, grabbing the wrist and forearm of the knife wielder. Without any fanfare, I slammed the man’s own knife, still held in his grip, right into his throat.

  I wrapped my right hand around the hand holding the knife, yanked on the fist, without even leaving my fingerprints on it. I then jammed it into his own stomach. I twisted him around and shoved him at some of his own friends.

  I went for Pearson.

  Pearson, meanwhile, had been jumped on by a man wielding rebar. Pearson wheeled back, out of the way of the swing, and pressed in before the attacker’s arm could come back around. He checked the offending arm with his left and drove an elbow into his attacker’s throat. Pearson grabbed the rebar out of his attacker’s hand and backhanded it into the face of the next attacker in line. He swung around with a strike to the first attacker’s face, dropping both of them. The next piece of rebar came in an overhead swing. With a two-handed grip, Pearson blocked with his rebar and stomped on the man’s knee, dislocating it. The man crumpled.

  Pearson saw me coming and tossed me the second piece of rebar. I leaped to grab it.

  A gust of wind sent the rebar in one direction, and me in another. I didn’t see where the rebar ended up, but I landed on
the curb, and rolled into the street, in front of an oncoming bus.

  I scrambled to the sidewalk. A bus nearly clipped me. I made it to my feet.

  Right in front of me were two men, only six feet in front of me. One was the lightning thrower. The other was the man I had stabbed with his own knife. Everyone else gave them room to work – no one wanted to get hit by a stray bolt of lightning.

  I only just noticed the faint glint of black obsidian embedded in both of their foreheads.

  The man with lightning fingers said, “I am Bariq.”

  The man who should be dead waved. “Shifa.”

  Bariq grinned. “Die.”

  I ducked down and drove forward, underneath the lightning again. I slammed my shoulder into Bariq’s right shin while cupping my hands behind his ankle. This forced him backwards, and I bowled him over. I stayed on my feet, with my hold still on his leg. I twisted him over and forced him on his face to keep from being struck with lightning. I straightened and back-fisted Shifa in the side of the neck. He went down, but it wouldn’t keep him down forever.

  I stomped on Bariq’s kidney since I didn’t want him popping up after me again any time soon.

  Pearson ran up to me, grabbed my arm, and yanked me along after him, running down the street. The wind picked up. I had a sudden bad feeling about all of the strange wind patterns. I looked up.

  There he was, a chubby Arab with an outlandish head covering that looked more like a Sikh Turban than anything else, with a long gray beard that came down to the belt covering his large gut. And he was walking on air. I could see the faint outline of a tornado underneath him.

  Great. I’m fighting Jihadi X-Men. I’ve already met Storm and Wolverine. I guess I killed Cyclops yesterday.

  It was even worse when the clouds gathered, turning a murky morning pitch black.

  As we ran, a young couple with begging signs looked around them in confusion as everyone started clearing the streets.

  I grabbed the arm of one. Pearson grabbed the other. We pulled them along with us as we headed for the train station. We charged down the stairs, the mob hot on our heels. But since we didn’t have to fight the wind in the train station, we moved faster. Once we were certain that our homeless friends knew to break off down another hallway, we moved even faster. We sprinted onto the train just before the doors closed.

  There was a crash into the doors behind us. I turned.

  It was Swordsman.

  I smiled and gave him a little finger wave as the train started up and pulled away from the station.

  Pearson looked at me and said, “Well! That was exciting! Wasn’t it?”

  I looked at him, smirked, and said, “It’s good to see that someone still has the get up and go that started the Empire.”

  Pearson shrugged. “The get up and go all got up and went to the Catholic church. Trust me on that. I was part of the move.”

  Then Shifa crashed through the train window before the train moved into the first hallway. He crashed to the floor. The other passengers gasped and screamed as they backed away. He rose and turned on Pearson and me. His face was smashed up and covered in cuts.

  And we could visibly see the gashes sealing up and the bones in his face resetting. He grinned.

  Before he was done healing, I crashed into him, smashing him up against the wall of the train. I head-butted him, grabbed him by the lapels, then hauled him up and around as I threw him back out of the window. I wasn’t worried about killing him. Shifa had decided that the best way to use his piece of the Soul Stone was to cause continuous, endless healing. Obviously, he had seen at least one X-Men movie with Hugh Jackman.

  “So there,” I spat in his direction. I looked back into the train. The other passengers were looking at me like I had grown horns. I jerked my thumb out to the broken window and said, simply, “No ticket.”

  Yes, I had wanted to use that line since I saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Especially since “crusader” was probably the next line on my CV.

  Everyone went back to ignoring me.

  There was just enough room on the train for Pearson and me to have a relatively sequestered conversation. It helped that when I sat down, everyone around us cleared out.

  Instead of just running from one enemy to the other, we needed to know where the heck we were going. Not to mention that we hadn’t even finished our last conversation.

  “So, now what would be the next step?” I asked Pearson. “They have the Soul Stone. Fine. Assuming that it works as a WMD, what’s the next step? What would you need to set it off?

  Pearson smiled gently at me. We had already discussed the answer earlier. “Aside from will?”

  I shook my head. He misunderstood me. “Too vague. That’s the trigger. They’d need at least a test run before they could decide that it would work on cue …” I stopped, thinking back to the crime scene. “Oh, wait, that supposed artillery damage at the museum. There were no fragments, just explosions, and melted asphalt. They can at least control the main stone, not just pieces.”

  Pearson raised a finger. “Yes, but wait a moment. The stone is supposed to wreck cities. The increase in violence has probably been a part of a plan to charge the stone further.” He shrugged. “If you knew the stone thrived on misery and suffering, and you wanted it for nefarious purposes, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to rev up the suffering of the average populace?”

  I frowned. He had a point. “What now? Back to the Imam? See if Kozbar will cooperate with us?”

  Pearson shrugged. “That’s not a terrible idea. But we’re already on the train to the Museum. Let’s go through, see if we can get any more background on the Soul Stone. I think even a rumor would be helpful by now.”

  I nodded slowly. I didn’t want to tell him that even I didn’t think that going back to Whitechapel was a good idea. Mainly because I had the feeling that we’d get murdered if we went back there. No, not necessarily by whoever masterminded the theft of the Soul Stone. There could be some locals who already had our photograph and simply wanted to string us up because we offended them by asking some questions. Hell, just because Kozbar didn’t flash our pictures around during his press conference with the mayor didn’t mean that he didn’t put out a Be On the Look Out photo for both of us.

  Unfortunately, that meant that we were in trouble. Whoever was behind this wanted us dead. They also could turn foot soldiers into super villains.

  Assuming that wasn’t Kozbar, that meant we had a second force of the local Muslim population unhappy with us… if Kozbar was part of the main problem, then that meant he could create supervillains out of anyone in his congregation that he felt he could trust to kill two meddlers who threatened “the community (IE: Kozbar).” On that sliding scale, Kozbar could conceivably recruit parishioners who weren’t even involved with the Soul Stone plot.

  The police weren’t on our side. Which, given the relative lack of rights in the United Kingdom (Right to Free Speech? Right to Bear Arms? What are those?) meant that Aaron Shaw of the Met could decide that we were a threat to public order and disappear us until after the city burns.

  Worst of all were the shadows. The shadows that held me down while Swordsman tried to bisect me. The shadows that gathered in my hotel room to haunt me. The shadows of London were growing stronger, and I wondered how long it would take for them to get the timing right—trip me at the right moment, slow down a punch at the right time, shove me in front of traffic when it really mattered.

  Shadows, cops, the population of Whitechapel, all piled on top of what we were trying to track down. This shouldn’t completely and totally suck. I …

  I stopped thinking for a moment. The wind continued to blow in from the tunnel outside the train. The tunnel was dark and unlit…

  Most of all, it was filled with shadows. Aw nuts.

  “Pearson,” I said softly. “I think we should get off at the next stop.”

  The darkness moved. The edges of the hole in the window faded, swallowed b
y the shadows. It bubbled and burbled, spilling over the edges, leaking into the train. The lights began to flicker.

  Meaning the shadows were eating the illumination from the ceiling lights in the train.

  Pearson looked at me, looked at the darkness outside, and patted me on the arm. “Wait here.”

  Pearson stood, pulling out a breviary. He stepped over to the shattered window and opened the book. He started to read aloud from his book of daily prayers.

  The shadow’s progress halted. It leaked down but stopped at only an inch away from the hole. More tried to flood in, looking like a giant bubble in an oil slick. But it fought against … something. Pearson? Either way, it fell back, into the outer darkness.

  Pearson stood, reading his breviary until the train pulled into the terminal. The main lights at the underground stop dispelled the darkness.

  The doors opened. I grabbed Pearson and pulled him out of there and straight for the stairs. As soon as I stepped out to street level, the wind nearly knocked me sideways. After the shadows below, I had looked forward to a bright sunny day at noon. Instead, the sky was black. The clouds were so thick in the sky, they had completely and totally blotted out the sun and any ambient light. The heavy wind kept every flag flying straight. The temperature had dropped from “warm spring in Queens” to “winter” in the course of a train ride.

  I pulled Pearson into the door frame of a building. “Tell me this is normal for London this time of year,” I bellowed over the wind.

  “Sorry!” he yelled back. “Can’t.”

  The flags drooped a little, and we stepped out. The wind had died down enough for us to get moving. Though I was worried about where it would take us next. We had left a weather manipulator back at the Cathedral. Was this him and his power building up over the city? Were there several of them manipulating the weather? Or was it the Soul Stone? Had the rock fully charged, and this was the prelude to turning London into a crater?