Broken Contracts, page 25
The second brand made contact with a hiss, and Micah keened, high and desperate. His body arched, the audience laughing as they almost, but not quite, lost the struggle to hold him down.
“So you can remember,” Slate said, leaning in close, listening to Micah’s ragged panting. “Exactly where your freedom will get you.”
Micah didn’t respond, and Slate realized he was unconscious. The security team had given him a hell of a beating, and they’d probably need a medic to rouse him again. Slate almost called for one, then closed his jaw so fast he nearly bit his tongue.
No. No. This motherless bastard had spent the last year tearing Slate’s empire apart brick by brick, and if Slate couldn’t bring himself to kill him outright, he could at least let him die.
“Party’s over,” Slate announced. “Throw him in a cell. He can go another round if he wakes up.”
There were some halfhearted protestations from the gathered crowd, but Slate ignored it. They had their own slaves, or the creatures Coffey had stashed here—hell, they could take their boredom out on each other, for all he cared.
Two of the staff dragged Micah off toward the barracks, and Slate turned back toward the security team.
“Anything on him that could be tracked?”
Justin shook his head. “Even if there was, it wouldn’t work within the perimeter of the warding. This building’s a black box.” He gestured to the phone they’d taken off Micah. The battery had been removed, the phone itself snapped in half. It lay, screen cracked and dark, alongside the collection of items they’d found in the various pockets of Micah’s tactical jacket. Nothing looked particularly dangerous, though Slate was amused to see that his errant whore had apparently learned to pick locks.
Something blue caught his eye. “He had this?”
Justin shrugged helplessly. “In his pocket, yeah.”
Confused, Slate switched focus.
The world wasn’t that complicated, once you had a handle on it. Even the unsolvable mysteries weren’t that mysterious once you had the courage to pull back the curtain.
Slate sat on the floor in front of the gateway, leaning against the black stone frame, one leg hanging over the edge, into the abyss. The winds beyond ruffled his pant leg. Gazing out across the infinities, Slate saw answers and answers and answers, but never to the question he’d asked.
He’d made this, torn this hole in the universe, to solve the mystery of Micah’s missing connection. Something that could not be and yet was.
The answer wasn’t in there. It was here, in his hands, in the blue plastic cap of a milk bottle.
To anyone else, it would be an unsolvable mystery all on its own. Why would a man on a suicide mission bring a piece of cheap garbage? Why this piece of cheap garbage? But Slate knew, and only Slate could know.
He switched focus, a smile playing at his lips as the tendrils spread like calligraphy, into the portal and out of it. The whole story, playing out at last.
Slate had been wrong about Micah’s new owner. Wrong, and wrong, and wrong again.
Micah’s mysterious connection hadn’t been obscured, it had simply been incomplete, waiting for everything to fall into place. Waiting for Slate to pluck a piece of darkness into the world. It wasn’t Micah’s bottle cap at all. It belonged to the Gestalt, who had saved it for the nostalgia of its color. He’d given it to Micah this morning. A good luck charm. A joke between the two of them.
Slate could see it all as he turned the bottle cap over in his hands, the connection between Micah’s lovers forming a starburst all of its own. A connection strong enough to appear before they’d even met.
It had nothing to do with Slate after all. And it never had.
Sighing, Slate cast the cap into the darkness, watching it vanish from view. Micah’s new friends were nearby, waiting for the signal to make their next move. They were with the detective, that motherfucker that Slate should’ve had shot after the incident in Selina. Another mistake to add to the tally.
The cap reappeared, and Slate caught it easily, the cold stinging his fingers. He could see what had thrown it, as easily as if the creature still gripped it between its myriad talons.
The wind whispered to him, and Slate reached out, taking hold of a breeze. It flowed over his fingers like gossamer, showing him where it had come from and where it wanted to go.
Slate couldn’t see the future, but the writing on the wall wasn’t blurry. He didn’t have time for more testing. His cowardice was about to make the decision for him.
By morning, this place would be overrun with police, and Slate would lose his chance. The gateway would become police property, if the Gestalt didn’t manage to close it first. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. Something would need to be done about that.
The wind twisted between his fingers, and Slate’s fist tightened.
The power went out, and as the generator brought the red emergency lights to life, Slate closed his eyes and slipped into the darkness.
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Hazel Domain is a cryptid who escaped Ohio and can now be found roaming the woods of eastern Maine. Hazel spends their time fixing computers, fiddling with databases, making renaissance faire costumes and, when all alternatives have been exhausted, writing.
Hazel has five Nanowrimo certificates, a doctorate in parapsychology, and a cat.
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