Fifteen
5 April, 2000, 60 miles West of Chamdo, Tibet
She stood near the center of the circular stone room. The single lamp burned with a tall orange flame over the clay pot of ancient water. She looked down at her toes. She wiggled them and gave a small grin.
Logan took a deep breath. This was not going to be pretty. The Key, he had come to learn, like any symbiotic, non-corporeal entity, fit into a certain niche in its host. It couldn’t fit into just anyone. There had to be a vacancy, so to speak. Normally, when released from its watery prison, the entity would wander formlessly until it found a suitable space in a suitable host. This was the very purpose of the girl who now stood near the clay vessel, wiggling her toes with a grin. But there were two niches in this particular room; two new vessels that the Key might find.
Logan let out his deep breath and drew the small knife from its scabbard. In this, most unusual of circumstances, a conduit was required, to see that the Key found its way to a specific host. Logan looked down at the blade. It was not ceremonial. It was a knife borrowed from the hunting kit of one of the visiting priests. There was nothing ceremonial about this bloodletting. A single drop might coax the Key from its millennium of slumber, but no less than a full cup would draw it into its new resting place.
Logan looked to the girl before him. He wished, for all the reasons that were swimming around in his mind, that it could be his skin that the blade parted. That he could become the host. For a brief instant he considered it. With mastery– no, he chided himself, mastery would take years. The monks would realize and remove it before then. Only with their consent could he use what they guarded. What he now prepared to smuggle on their behalf.
Without allowing himself the luxury of a second thought, Logan closed the distance between himself and his creation, seizing her arm and holding it over the pot. She gave him a perplexed look, one which quickly turned to shock as he drew the knife blade across her wrist in one hard, swift movement. She opened her mouth in pain but no sound came out. The only sound was the tiny drip, drip, drip as her blood began to stain the shadowed water red.
Logan looked upon her in pure envy.
12 August, 1989, New York City
His chest ached. He hadn’t cried this much in a full year. His life had now completed its run of self destruction: Niki was dead. He had managed to pull her off the subway and get her to an ambulance, but of course, not in time. He recalled the impassive voice of the doctor who had met her in the hospital. D.O.A. he had said, never lifting his eyes from his clipboard, dead on arrival.
The next few days had been a blur. There was nothing left. Nothing for him, nothing for anyone else. The world was thin, now, without her. Without them. The weight of the death of his entire world had hit him, that very same day. He ended up staying in the hospital, pumped full of relaxants and antidepressants. But soon he was no longer their problem any more. He was his own problem. There was nothing left.
So he had come to this small creek in Central Park, the only place in New York city where he could cry alone. He sat by the edge of the small pond and pretended to watch the ducks, but in reality, his eyes were shut tighter than even the sun could penetrate.
Then the demon had come again. Logan never forgot how completely arrogant the thing had been. Jet black leathery skin with a leather trench coat sweeping along behind him, two long horns jutting up behind him, and he walked as if he had lived in this city for ten years, as if no one would notice him in the bright August sunshine.
With his eyes now wide, Logan Kilpatrick watched as the demon sat beside him on the bench. For long moments, the two simply sat there, the most unusual pair ever seen in the Park; the demon in his long black coat, the man in his brown blazer, both of them examining the other with curiosity and not a trace of fear.
Logan’s first instinct had been to kill this strange creature. He had seen nothing like it, and couldn’t immediately name it, but it was a demon, and that was usually enough. But today was not an ordinary day. Today, this demon was the closest thing Logan had to a friend. Today, this demon was Logan’s best friend and complete nuclear family all rolled into one. The man committed every detail of his friend to memory; his breathing, his smell, his notable horns, everything. After a moment of staring at each other for a moment, they simultaneously turned away, looking now to the duck pond and the ducks which paddled around it. It was the most bizarrely comforting moment of his life.
And then it ended. With a sudden wave of sickness, Logan realized something. There was no sudden indication; the demon gave nothing away, but somehow, the only logical reason for this demon to come to this park and sit beside this man was clear. This was the Werlech demon.
Logan turned back, twisting his body rapidly to gain force for his blow. His hand found the creature’s throat, but did little damage as the thing now turned to him, its face hiding any trace of emotion. It was the least human thing Logan had ever tried to kill.
The demon’s hand soon found the human’s chest, its long fingers spreading over the man’s rapidly pounding heart. It opened its mouth and took in a deep breath, its face near to Logan’s own.
That was how it was done. It is impossible to describe to someone who has not experienced it what it feels like to lose one’s soul. It has no comparison. Only a gaping emptiness now remained inside Logan as he fell from the park bench to the grass beneath; an emptiness that was never meant to be. The whole structure of his self was beginning to crumble, as if this thing which had been inhaled by the demon had been the corner stone of his entire being. The pen on the page of his existence was rapidly unwriting his story, taking away his destiny and leaving only a blank page. He was now a specter. No prophecy would include him, no good or evil would come of his hands.
He gasped for breath on the soft grass as the demon stood and moved away. Logan’s eyes were wide and he feared he would hyperventilate if he could not calm himself. The terrible feeling, however, would not go away.
The sun peeked through the tree branches, winking and flashing across his face as the suffocating went on, amid the distant sounds of ducks and squirrels and summer leaves. He had thought there had been nothing left to lose. His thoughts abandoned him now.
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