#Michael Sharpe | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

spookyspaghettisundae · 1 year ago

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All Invited to the Black Wedding

A glass shard clinked, then another fell from the same shattered frame. Dust motes danced in the light pouring in through bullet holes in the walls.

Shadow came and went, a cloud of darkness hugging the walls and corners, and engulfing Agent Parker’s mind, only releasing it whenever her consciousness rose from the black bottom of the cosmos to the surface of the world.

Anima mundi. Here and there.

Alive and dying.

She was fading. Life fleeting.

Mikey, whispered the Shadow. It loomed in the dark of the room around them, and it thrummed like a pulse in the unseen to which her fading consciousness connected.

My MVP’s down for the count, so it’s up to you to pick up her torch.

Michael offered no response to the Whispers. With sweat beading on his forehead, he focused on the wound on her belly. Where her blood kept pumping out with each beat of her pulse.

The darkness swallowed her again for another blink of an eye. Her lids fluttered and only the white in her eyes remained as she crossed over boundaries between every world she could imagine.

Then he was back, ignoring the Whispers. Looming over her, Michael’s hand radiated an eerie warmth, hovering just above her weeping injury. A sharp sting of pain spread from there throughout her whole body, like an invisible explosion, taking her back into the world of the living for a violent split-second in which all things flashed bright white.

Then she started to fade again, fingers slipping from the sleek surfaces of glassy darkness on the edges of her vision, all creating a tunnel in which the last thing she beheld was Michael’s gritted white teeth.

Parker knew he could hear it.

The voice. The Whispers.

Michael’s face was twisted with fear and desperation. The stink of fear erupted from his pores, while he did all he could to stop her from slipping into the cold embrace of death.

Drifting through a sea of stars, she caught glimpses of the shot-up walls and windows of Klemens’ old ranch house. The roof of the porch outside sagged where one of its thin beams had been blown away by bullets. The old dry wood and rusty metal and glass, all torn to shreds by automatic gunfire and rifle shots.

An odd sensation flowed from her digits through her limbs, all the way into her center, until she perceived the warmth of her own blood soaking the worn rug beneath her lower back, and the fabric of her clothing having absorbed it like a heavy sponge.

Where a bullet had torn up her insides, more pain flared up as reality checked back in with a hammer to her forehead, and another bright flash of light from her inner eye. And Michael’s hand, burning with power, was slowly drawing all the bullet fragments out, sliver by sliver. His deathly magick drew the deathly mundane to his palm with a painful slowness.

Then the pain eclipsed all. Darkness engulfed her again. And through that darkness, the Whispers reached her anew.

No longer speaking to her. Riding the waves of invisible wavelengths in the ether, dark tendrils of nothingness caressed her fingertips like thin and silky tentacles. They wormed themselves though this oblivion, while she wriggled her fingers between them. A gentle, soft touch.

It was like catching stray radio waves.

Words not meant for her. Not meant for her to hear them thus.

Mikey, I’m sure your mommy told you not to talk to strangers growing up, but surely you must see, our goals align. I know you want that book, and I can help you use it. You know I know how to. You know I’m the only one who knows how to use it right.

You can do whatever you want with it. I’m only interested in what follows. The world beyond. Chalk it up to shared curiosity. From one explorer to another. We yearn to poke our wee little fingers through the fabric of reality, and see what light shines through? Right?

“What are you?” Michael whispered through gritted teeth, a hiss that reached Parker’s ears, pulling her back into the realm of consciousness.

She wanted to respond. Her spirit waned, failing to reach the Whispers and demand any explanation. Her lips moved and her lungs only pressed out a wheezing gust of air, attempting to warn Michael of listening to the Whispers.

Her signal fell upon deaf ears and a walled-off mind.

Another sharp spike of pain and a flash of light followed instead. The darkness encroached again as explosively, dragging her back under. The cosmic ocean’s surface distorted her vision of Michael above her, of his hand wielding magick to heal her, of the shot-up ranch house.

It was like being pulled deep down by the undertow.

When she next could see a face, it was no longer Michael’s. She sat in the leather chair in Doctor Wolff’s practice, surrounded by Gothic windows and extravagant paintings and bookshelves and ornate busts of ancient Greek philosophers and… a scene of pure carnage.

Another flash, another world, overlapping with the one in which her life was fading, and the one in which she drifted in the ocean of darkness between the stars.

Here, too, in the psychotherapist’s office, bullets had torn up furniture. Here, corpses lay strewn about, resting in the gore of an obliterated skull, and a human body torn in half by a shotgun blast, and a sea of blood, pooled beneath a man with a hundred stab wounds.

The face she saw was no Michael’s.

Nor was it her smiling mirror image in the Shadow, dripping with tar as it rose from a strange hole in a stranger Earth.

Nor was it Wells, nor Aria, nor anybody else she was familiar with.

Instead, she stared into the eyes of Jericho Kane. Glittering blue like crushed gemstones, they darted all over to scan Parker’s face in return, flitting about in complete confusion.

“How the fuck did she get here?” asked a vaguely familiar voice.

The woman in the track suit from the crime scene. The one who could teleport through windows and doors.

Her symmetrical face leaned into the way. Dark brown eyes and long dark hair obscured the vision of Jericho’s face. She, too, studied the helpless Parker closely.

“Beats me,” Jericho said. “But if this is our ticket out, I’m fuckin’ takin’ it.”

The two of them crowded around Parker and Jericho waved his hand in front of her eyes, as if to check her for consciousness.

“Yo, what is up with you?”

Parker’s lips parted to respond but she only eked out a croaking wheeze. A sharp pain in her belly almost dragged her off, and the entirety of Wolff’s practice shuddered. Quaked. The whole room shook, and spiderwebs of cracks started spreading across the walls with alarming speed.

Yelled the dark-haired woman, “Shit, what now?”

Jericho Kane gripped Parker’s shoulders. He shook her.

“You gotta get us outta here! Now!”

Parker swallowed and squeezed her eyes shut, like she used to do, growing up, to center herself whenever things became too much. Shutting down.

Maybe it would fuse all worlds together?

She coughed, and found blood on her hands when she groped her own belly. The wound was still there, and the practice still around them—its walls tilted inwards, groaning under the weight of a collapsing world. The window panes in the Gothic frames clicked and then cracked before exploding, showering them with a rain of broken glass, eliciting shrieks of surprise from the two other people in the room.

Parker finally managed to breathe out weak words, “I… want… I… don’t know… how.”

Huh? You say something, Mikey?

With the Shadow’s reply, the room quaked more violently.

A panic to mirror Michael’s now gripped Jericho, twisting his face in similar fashion. He shook Parker by the shoulders again. Karma gripped his shoulder in return.

“You—you tell Klemens Weidmann! The Way King!” Jericho shouted into her face, as if trying to reach a person hard of hearing. His face scrunched up when a hot gust of wind swept over them, and an unnatural howling filled the room. Yet Jericho continued. “Tell the Way King! Tell Klemens! It’s me, Jericho, we’re fuckin’ trapped here!”

Karma shouted at Jericho, “We gotta get the hell out of this room, dipshit! It’s fucking breaking apart!”

“We can’t—you fuckin’ psycho! We can’t just leave her here like this! Look at her!”

THOOM.

The room shuddered again and the ceiling dropped inches lower. The walls screeched and bricks exploded from shredded wallpaper, obliterating wood and glass and brass parts of furnishings, showering them all with more debris.

No light shone in through the cracks and the holes in those walls.

Only liquid darkness seeped out from the cracks. A tar emerged, bubbling and squelching and—

Oozing.

A viscous, awful mass now pumped and squeezed its way inside, pouring in through every seam and hole.

That wasn’t you, was it, Mikey? That was…

Booming laughter ripped through the void. It sent the cosmic ocean into turmoil. It caused the darkness around Parker’s vision to grow again, and it caused the vision of the shot-up ranch house to shimmer over everything like a third, ghostly layer.

The dark-haired woman grabbed both Jericho’s and Parker’s wrists before the ceiling collapsed on them.

That was the last thing Parker saw before the translucent vision solidified. Bright outlines of daylight reflected from every surface in Klemens’ home, and Michael’s face once more dominated Parker’s narrowed field of vision.

He smiled and a bead of sweat dripped from the tip of his nose, landing upon her lips to spread a salty taste of despair.

“Welcome back to the realm of the living,” Michael whispered.

Good job, Mikey. You’re the new MVP!

Anima mundi. All-connecting.

The dying old man on the other side of the room coughed, then wheezed.

Klemens Weidmann himself.

All connected in a marriage of worlds and souls. He coughed again. Parker was unable to speak. Her throat felt like sandpaper. On fire. Her vocal chords disobeyed.

“Where are Jericho and Karma?” asked the old man, feeble in volume, fighting to sit back up, and failing.

The homunculus that resembled Agent Parker sat by his side, resting his head on her lap.

“You need to stay calm till Michael heals you,” said the homunculus in Parker’s own voice. “It’s—your injury is severe.”

Parker felt no more fear over seeing her doppelganger. It seemed so harmless. So helpful.

The darkness returned, threatening to drag Parker back down into the depths. The shimmering surface, where stars glittered on the ocean of the cosmic sea, started taking shape again.

Her vision blurred.

Healed, yet still hovering on the brink of death.

Had Michael only done so little to save her life, or had it been so bad that he had to limit himself?

Parker understood too little of his magick. She knew nothing of the necromancer’s sacrifices made to fuel it, nor of the true extent of his power.

And the fog of darkness encroached further.

Easy, Mikey. Be cool. It’s probably tempting to gloat over the old man now, but you know better. You should…

Be cool.

Michael’s sigh sliced through the different worlds, cutting so deeply that it sent an anchor into the sea of Parker’s fading consciousness.

Her feeble spirit fingers wrapped around the silvery metal until they found purchase and she locked it into her grasp, keeping her sinking any deeper.

“They are trapped,” Michael said.

What is this? Why are you doing this now?

“What?” Klemens scoffed. The wizened old man stared past Michael as if the shot into his spine had not only paralyzed him from the waist down, but also robbed him of his eyesight. The old man’s lips quaked like the walls of Wolff’s practice in the otherworld. “What do you mean, boy?”

“They’re trapped,” Michael repeated, then with more resolve. He wiped the back of his hand across his face, smearing Parker’s blood across it like a crude war paint. “Your favorite proteges are lost in the House of Change, Klemens. I saw it all in a vision.”

“And you… you only tell me of this now? Why? Michael, what is the meaning of this?”

Michael smiled at Parker, seeking the light of life behind her fluttering eyelids. Banishing the encroaching darkness.

Why indeed, Mikey?

“This—this is the end, old friend,” Michael said, finally peeling his gaze from Parker to stare at Klemens as he cast his final verdicts. “I will now tell you, out of respect for all you have done for us, and this world, and all your good intentions. You deserve the truth.”

Klemens was not blind. His foggy gaze met Michael’s.

Maybe I spoke too soon about my MVP.

“You are old and going to die,” Michael continued. “And your kingdom will crumble with you. The king is dead, and long live the king!”

“And you, my boy, you fancy yourself a new king?” Klemens asked.

Smiling on his own. A strange smile.

Michael loomed above Parker like a statue. Majestic in his disheveled appearance, as still as a pillar.

“No, old friend. But I will give birth to a new world. The Shadow speaks, and I listen. Agent Parker’s consciousness swims at the edge of oblivion, and I will use this to finally locate the book. All according to plan. Well, minus me getting shot. And once I have the book—”

Are you that arrogant or just plain foolish? You really don’t need to tell him every single thing, Mikey.

Parker heard every Whisper. They no longer resembled the Whispers she had known. The Shadow spoke no riddles. It spoke to Michael with clarity. With authority.

It spoke with—

SUBSTANCE.

Klemens chuckled, cut short by a choke and a cough.

“So be it,” wheezed the old man. A feeble old hand patted the homunculus-Parker on her forearm. “Dear, please help me… bring me into the Heart.”

“Shit,” Michael hissed.

Does it matter? Just keep moving, Mikey. We’re close. Really close.

I can taste it. Tastes like vanilla milkshake.

Light shone through the bullet holes in the walls, where motes of dust danced. Light bulbs deeper inside the house crackled with electricity, responding to all these surges in unnatural power.

Another invisible light flashed.

A surge of strength shot through Parker’s limbs and forced a groan from her throat. The surge of energy crossed the boundaries of otherworlds and a fading consciousness and—

The same way she gripped that silvery anchor in the cosmic ocean, she gripped Michael’s wrist like an iron vice, causing him to jolt, and stare into her eyes.

The homunculus spoke with the same detached coolness as Agent Parker when it offered, “I can kill him. Right now.”

Klemens shook his head. “No, my dear. Your mission is one of peace, as we discussed. Please, now, take me back… into the Heart.”

The homunculus rose, lifting up and bracing Klemens to help him into the darker bowels of his home. To where the light bulbs glowed. To deliver him into the Heart of THE HIGHWAY. The clockwork machine at the center of all ley lines, the system controlling all systems. The dying heart of a withering world.

Michael stared at her, but he addressed Klemens.

“You won’t be able to do anything to stop me, even when you recover in there. I know a good retirement home, you know?”

Klemens chuckled again, though it bore no charm nor amusement.

Only pain.

“I won’t do anything to stop you,” said the old man. “My reign has crumbled. It is… like you said. All pot holes, and decay. Broken homes, and a broken country. I did all I could. Now, I leave things to you. I hope your brow is not crushed under the weight of the crown.”

Unable to walk thus, the homunculus hooked an arm under the gaunt old man’s legs and hoisted him up with a grunt. She carried him like a newlywed partner, right over the threshold, into the darkness of the corridor beyond.

“Goodbye, Agent Parker,” echoed the Way King’s weak voice through the ranch house halls, gaining distance with each strained step the homunculus took to carry him away. “A shame we never got to speak more…”

You’ve been listening all this time, haven’t you?

The Shadow was addressing her. Agent Parker.

Heard everything I was telling Mikey?

“I owe you nothing,” she finally managed to press out, followed by new waves of pain.

Her body refused to move.

Michael squinted, studying her face as she lay helpless in his arms. He cupped his hand around her cheek and supported her head with a firm grip.

“You are,” he began, then breaking it down into a whisper. “You are speaking to the Shadow, aren’t you?”

Well, this is new.

Parker’s nostrils flared. She took sharp breaths and gritted her teeth to stave off the new waves of pain washing over her belly region, spreading through her body like shockwaves.

The fog of darkness had not been dispelled entirely. It still lingered around the edges of her vision, and whispered like white noise from the fringes of her hearing. The tar-like SUBSTANCE crept up behind her like the Shadow, crawling from dark recesses in her mind, from where she had—

Let it in.

Just a polite request, followed by a polite answer. A simple ask in a game of low stakes. A hand extended in friendship, hiding its other faces. A talking cat in a dream, warning of danger, to conceal the true menace it represented.

You know, I can hear your thoughts, right?

I’ve been here all along.

“What are you, exactly?” Michael whispered, staring at Parker.

I am the future. And I am the thing that can snuff her out right here, right now. I doubt we need her any longer, Mikey. Seems to me you picked up the slack just fine.

Parker smiled. The first time in a while she had felt such a thing.

Schadenfreude.

What are you smiling about? You let me in. So I can just shut you down if I want to. It would be like flipping a light switch.

“Easy on the trigger finger,” Michael said. “We still need her. I still need her to get the book. Unless you want to find someone else to work with, I suggest you follow my lead on this one.”

Parker still smiled, now projecting her Schadenfreude at Michael. Convinced his endeavors were fated to fail.

Like her failing body, her fading sense of self, helpless in his arms, there was nothing she could do to realize his dreams, even if she wanted to.

But did she want to? Was all of this a mistake? Had everything been a mistake?

She knows it herself, Mikey. We don’t need her to use the book at all, you know? She was just in the right place at the right time. A string of coincidences. Nothing special about her.

She walked through the door you’re going to open, and she brought the book with her.

“Tell me where the book is,” Michael said. His eyes sparkled with wetness as he begged. “Please.”

Parker emitted a revolving, rasping sound. The closest thing to mocking laughter she could muster.

“I don’t know where it is,” she breathed. A shade of strength returned to her, and lent her words more vigor. A cold sense of superiority returned. “It wasn’t… me… it wasn’t me who walked through that door. It was the me from another world. So I couldn’t tell you, even if I wanted to. And I don’t.”

Like I said. Nothing special about her.

The wetness in Michael’s eyes intensified. Tears welled up in their corners. In contrast, his smile widened, and he wiped the tears away with the back of his hand, smearing more of Parker’s blood there, completing the death mask of his face painting.

He inhaled sharply.

Exhaled.

Then Michael chuckled.

The smile faded from Parker’s face.

In all her work at the FBI, she knew that kind of shift. That shining confidence. It shone through the fog of her fading consciousness, a brilliant and terrible light.

She had seen it when interrogating the serial killer Freddy Fletcher, and others like him.

A confident smile, looking down at her where he loomed, knowing he had won.

Michael said, “It’s wrong. So, so wrong. You… you are very special. Everybody in this world is special. Like I have visions, I see the special things in you… in all of you. All beautiful, even when you look like coal. Just add enough pressure, and… you turn into… diamonds.”

Oh, Mikey. When you’re done waxing poetic, can we get a move on? I think I see where this is headed.

Her face flushed with heat, and a fury flowed from her heart, a yearning to break free and rise up and fight back and—

Agent Parker found herself trapped in her own body. Awash with pain, paralyzed with—with magick? Had he done something to her beyond healing her lethal wound? She couldn’t even budge.

A helpless sack of meat in his bloodstained hands. He hadn’t even healed his own gunshot wound, but acted like someone in perfect health.

“You,” Michael said, ignoring the Shadow’s whispers. “I don’t need to add any pressure to you. You’re perfect. Perfect the way you are. And you’re all I need to find her—the other you. You’re a living effigy. Like the homunculi Klemens created in your image. Silver threads connect you all, and as it so happens, I am an oracle.”

He blinked away the tears, still smiling.

Confident over his victory.

“Man, I do kinda feel like gloating,” he rambled. “At least a little bit. But… it’s unbecoming.”

The world spun around her. Michael grunted as he lifted her up off the ground. The absence of the rug soaked in her own blood opened a cold spot on her back.

The warm breeze of desert wind swept over her burning cheeks. Michael kicked open the screen door, causing it to slap against the outer wall.

He grunted again with another sharp breath, readjusting his slipping grip against the slick of her blood, then carried Parker over the threshold to the world outside.

Into the bright light under a bright blue sky. Wind whistled through the husks of vehicles on the Way King’s ranch, this lonesome graveyard of cars. Gravel crunched underneath Michael’s boots. The world bounced in sync with Parker’s head bobbing upon every step.

A world upside down.

He carried her through the heat and past the creaking, whining metal of a rusting old gate, out into the dead fields behind the ranch house.

I understand now. Clever boy. We’re all connected through the same primordial soup. Didn’t realize that one of you good people could do the same thing I could.

The Shadow’s laughter reached Parker’s mind like cackling on the wind.

Michael carefully placed Parker in the dust of the dead field.

She gasped when another sharp sting of pain spread from her belly—where Michael had jammed his finger into the wound.

Riding the waves. Surf on, brother.

Her own blood dripped from his finger once he withdrew it.

He used it to paint occult symbols onto her forehead, then cheeks, then neck. Trapped inside her own body, she still burned with curiosity to learn what exactly those glyphs represented, blind to his workings, straining to catch a glimpse.

The smile had long faded from Michael’s face. A stern and stony expression had taken its place.

The world darkened—no longer through a fog of fading consciousness, as Parker now found herself painfully aware of her presence in this world—her world—helpless to Michael’s workings—as he lowered his palm upon her face, gently covering her eyes.

Thump.

A cloud of dust rose where Michael dropped into the dust beside her, joining her in the dirt. His callused, warm hand found hers, holding interlocking fingers with her like a lover.

They stared into the infinite blue sky above them.

“The oneiromancers of yore coined the term of astral travel. Now, as fate weds us, we travel together. We will see what awaits at the end of those silver threads, connecting you and her.”

You’re not going to like what you find. Neither of you, kiddos.

Another Shadowy cackle rode on the winds.

Where horizon kissed desert sands, blue melted into yellow. The burning sphere in the sky widened, turning everything bright white until it had engulfed all of creation.

“All I need is for you to accept this bond,” Michael said, a ghostly voice through the blinding white.

“Why would I… why would I?” Parker breathed.

“Because you want to know.”

“Know what?”

Hidden in the shambles of Klemens Weidmann’s ranch house, and the decrepit ruins of the chapel, the Shadow smiled as it watched.

As it listened.

“To know what lies beyond. Beyond every door. Beyond this world. You’ve always wanted to know, even as a little girl. But now, as a woman, you possess the vocabulary and the knowledge to ask the right questions,” Michael spoke in a dull monotone, with the relaxing calm of someone drifting off into slumber. Of something peaceful.

Something hypnotic.

“We are explorers. We burn bright, exploring the mysteries behind those doors. And together, we may open such a door, and shine light upon another great mystery.”

A gentle squeeze upon Parker’s hand.

“Do you accept this bond?”

The bright glare of the blue sky only lingered like a memory. Parker saw nothing but blinding light. For long, she pondered her reply. Her decision.

She mulled over every moment that had taken her here. Everything she had done and wanted.

Wells couldn’t help her now. Nor could Aria. She felt their distance like a hole in her heart.

Nobody could save her now. Nobody could stop Michael now.

But maybe she could. She herself.

Breathe. One, two, release.

Fidelity. Bravery. Integrity.

Hm. Interesting.

“I know you want to. All I await is your consent,” Michael breathed beside her, a disembodied voice in the unfathomable ocean of light.

Elicitation technique, first bullet point: pretend to have associations in common with them.

“I do.”

He smiled. Squeezed her hand again.

The infinite brightness exploded into a sea of glittering stars.

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spookyspaghettisundae · 2 years ago

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I Got Plans for Tonight

In the hot and dusty winds of the desert, dead fields surrounded the ranch. Where the setting sun cast its dying rays, shadows danced inside the decrepit remains of a chapel.

Old rusting husks of cars lined the dirt road and circuit before the ranch’s house. It sometimes felt like they multiplied in number on some days, thinning out on others. Today, it felt like half of Nevada’s old wrecks had gathered here to attend court. A graveyard of cars to celebrate a strange king.

Unlike the myriads of metal carcasses, picked clean for spare parts, one single vehicle stood out, intact, parked near the porch. The Way King’s beaten-up old pickup truck rested there, cooling in the shade, caked as always with layers of dust.

Sand and stone crunched underneath the wheels of Michael’s van as he pulled up into the circuit, riding the gentle curve until he parked his chariot next to his King’s truck.

He remained sitting still for several moments, surveying the quiet ranch. He peeled a stick of chewing gum from its wrapper, then popped it in his mouth. Artificial strawberry flavor exploded against his taste buds, and he slapped the outside of his door twice before exiting the vehicle.

Halfway to the ranch house entrance, he paused. Stared into the distance. The recent grave on the dead fields no longer looked fresh, even though the shovel used to dig it still stood staked in the dirt like a simple headstone.

Where Klemens and Michael had buried one of the Way King’s victims alive.

“How does that make you feel?” Klemens asked.

The gaunt silhouette of his master stood in the shadows of the porch, rubbing his hands with a rag.

Michael had not heard the old man emerge from his house.

“Pleased?” asked Klemens again. As Michael dithered to answer, Klemens’ words kept cascading out. The German refugee’s accent surfaced more with every word. “I always wondered how you feel about your handiwork, my boy.”

Michael paused from chewing his gum, shielded his eyes against the blinding light of the red sun, and smiled.

“Would it surprise you to hear that I don’t take pleasure in taking lives?”

The motion of rubbing wizened hands against a greasy rag froze.

“No,” said the Way King. “It is common for men to do work as a means to the end. Lucky is a man who finds joy in his work, but not all men are so lucky.”

Michael turned fully to face his king, and bowed his head in reverence.

“What about you, my King?”

The silhouette shook his head.

“I take pride in some of the things I accomplish, but I do not cherish every difficult decision I make.”

Michael gestured to the dust on the road, and the metal husks behind him, and the recent grave.

“How did it get this way, my King? Is this the world you envisioned when you took to its throne?”

The floorboards thumped as Klemens descended from the porch. Gravel crunched underneath his boots as he neared.

Brows furrowed amidst a roadmap of wrinkles, and the Way King’s eyes glistened with sorrow.

“We envision many things to be better than they turn out to be. When I did what I did, I was not afforded the luxury of youth, or idealism. I always knew there would be a cost.”

Michael shook his head this time. “Forgive me for asking, but did you choose this squalor for yourself?”

Klemens stared him in the eyes. A burning gaze.

Magnetic.

Powerful.

“I was inspired by the great Jesus Christ,” said Klemens. “Now, please, do not misunderstand. I do not see myself as he, or as some kind of saint. But the principle of one man shouldering the burden for all the others, for suffering for all of them to alleviate their suffering—it made sense to me at the time.”

Michael flinched at the thought.

Not one for religious beliefs, he nevertheless felt a brief pang of regret. Some part of Michael liked Klemens. And he here he stood now, having done almost everything he needed to do to become his personal Judas Iscariot.

Chewing the gum a few more times as he chewed on an answer, he masked his regret by playing with fire.

Risking to expose his true intentions, hoping to bury his true feelings underneath a philosophical rebellion.

“I don’t know if the world needs another martyr. And I wonder if the way the world is going is because when you bleed, the world bleeds. You fathered this world, and I’m starting to think it has… inherited your suffering. As above, so below.”

Klemens stood frozen still, like a statue. Half a head shorter than Michael, old, and with what felt like only years left till his end, the Way King nevertheless exuded a majestic and overwhelming presence.

He smiled. Michael felt compelled to mirror it.

Klemens said, “I am very grateful for what this great country has done for me. I decided to change very little, and only weed out the… criminals who escaped justice. Do you feel I have steered you wrong in killing some Nazi-Schweine to bring about a new world?”

Michael shook his head again.

“No. The people you had us execute… I don’t question your judgment.”

“But you question my judgment over the world I dreamt up?”

A pit formed in his stomach. Michael paused from chewing, licked his lips, and pointed down the dirt road again.

“I think your dreams are distorted, my king. Blinded by faith, blinded by… I don’t know. Just look at all the potholes on your HIGHWAY, look at… look at all the trash and all the filth piling up. The plastic and metal refuse, and the human garbage we snatch up and dispose of to power our rituals. How many people go missing, never to be found again—not for sake of searching, but… because people are hopeless? Nobody cares anymore. Everything is ruled by the almighty dollar, and all dreams go to die in the growing poverty of this country.” Michael took a deep breath, and Klemens did nothing to interrupt him. “Like your homeland in the past, America has committed its own genocides, and I have seen a future in which there are more to come. If this is the world of your dreams, my king, then we need to do something about your dreams.”

Klemens listened with the patience of a saint. Even allowing for several beats and breaths to be taken after Michael had concluded his torrent of disapproval.

Michael shuddered.

Did he know? Did he know of the betrayal he plotted? Could he sense it? But there was no such thing in the stories of such kings.

Klemens smiled again, sending more shivers down Michael’s spine.

“You are not wrong, my boy. Even ascended as I have, I am but a man. You may think me blasphemous to compare myself to the savior, but it is a limited comparison. I am no savior. I am only a man. We are all but men in this vast cosmos, and no matter how desperately we try to shape the world into a better place, we are all prone to mistakes. Prone to… delusions.”

One of those wizened old hands—with dirt under the fingernails, and stains of grease from endlessly working on the clockwork heart of THE HIGHWAY—clapped down on Michael’s shoulder.

“I am not much more longer for this world, my boy. One among you will take my place, and bring about a world I couldn’t even dream of.”

A fat lump of nothing formed in Michael’s throat. He swallowed, accidentally swallowing the tiny lump of chewing gum with it.

He shook his head. Placed a palm on Klemens’ hand.

“I said it before and I will offer it again—I can extend your life like I have for others,” Michael said. “Just say the word and—”

“No,” said the Way King with the gravity of the moon. Thunder clapped from the cloudless sky. It continued to rumble in Michael’s heart for the next few seconds. “You are not wrong about the state of this world. That is why we need Agent Parker and that book. With her on our side, one of you will use the jade book to change the world for the better.”

Tears welled in the corners of Michael’s eyes.

He had been working so long to undermine and usurp the Way King that he never thought to consider Klemens might invite someone to ascendence—to take his place without conflict.

Michael had sacrificed so much. So many.

People he cared about. All in the way of his necromancy, all for the purpose of shaping a new world. A world of his dreams.

The tears tasted salty when they met his lips.

Klemens smiled again; that eerie knowing smile. A callused thumb wiped a tear from Michael’s cheek.

“I believe Jericho would be suited to dream up a world we cannot even imagine. And he would need someone of your wisdom, patience, knowledge, and visions, to guide him,” Klemens said.

Michael swallowed again and the pit returned to grip his stomach.

And twist. Mercilessly twist it.

“Jericho?” Michael’s face contorted with unmasked disbelief as he repeated that name. That damned name. “Jericho?”

“I have given this a lot of thought,” Klemens said. “If I am to abdicate, I would want to pass on the torch to someone of radical thought, of someone who is not afraid to let the past burn down when fire takes, to guide people around him to safety, and build a new future upon the ashes.”

The pit kept twisting, churning, until Michael almost felt sick to his stomach.

Jericho?

Jericho Kane?!

Was he out of his fucking mind? That fuck-up?

Almost as if he had heard his thoughts, Klemens continued. An almost musical tone mingled with his words, as if the very thought amused him. “He is unwise, still, and impulsive. He will need all the advice and help he can get, but my belief is firm, he would make a good king. He has seen many hardships that shaped the way he is. For him, a crown would be no greater burden than the ones he already shoulders, but a new opportunity. Trading one weight for another, and understanding the depth, the gravity of his decisions. Unlike men like us—men with visions—he has no delusions about himself or the world. He could make the next one… a better one. Such is my belief.”

Michael burned. Invisible hellfire scorched his body, searing the sweat away from his pores. A silent fury smoldered, deep within, but he knew better than to give in.

He never gave in to such impulses.

He took a long, deep breath. He exhaled, venting some of that anger.

Then he remembered: Jericho was trapped in the House of Change, together with that insipid woman, Karma. They would lose their minds.

And Michael… well, his puzzle pieces were all locking into their proper place.

He took another long, deep breath. As he exhaled, he vented the rest of all that sudden anger.

And the fire was gone.

In its place, a cold and calculating void remained. Where the shadows roiled.

Michael smiled. A genuine smile, smiling to himself—knowing his plans would come to fruition soon, his visions a reality awaiting eager hands to shape it—

And he lied.

“You are… you… it’s strange, a truly strange choice I never would have considered. But you are right. Jericho might just be the right choice to continue where you left off.” He stared at the metal husks of the cars, and the dirt road. As he let the smile fade from his mien, he added, “I will do my best to guide him to where he needs to be. To where the world needs to be.”

Klemens returned that smile and patted Michael on the shoulder—like a father, proud of his obedient son.

Michael spoke again, “This is a most fortuitous time for us to speak about this, because I have very good news, my king. Why I came here…”

Klemens’ weary brows lifted. His bleary blue eyes sparkled with expectation.

“Yes, you guessed right,” Michael said. “I have finally located Agent Parker again. She is currently at the Molly Stark Hospital in Ohio. Shall I arrange for us to deliver her here?”

Klemens swiveled with an energy that defied his age.

He slapped the rag against his own palm and shook his head as he met Michael’s gaze anew.

“No. I will summon her here myself.”

Michael nodded and dug around in his pocket to retrieve a tiny red plastic bead.

It looked like something broken off a cheap toy or piece of children’s jewelry, but it thrummed with power. It teemed with the wrath of eleven ghosts, bound to it by Michael’s magick.

They silently screeched in anticipation, dreaming hate-filled dreams of release.

Yearning to find her.

To find Agent Parker. To her, they reached out to, pin-pointing her precise location.

The tiny red bead dropped from Michael’s fingers into Klemens’ palm. It weighed almost nothing, yet it disobeyed the laws of gravity. It did not bounce in Klemens’ hand.

As if it bore the weight of a boulder.

The old man’s fingers closed around it. He stared at his own fist in disbelief.

Kicking up a dust cloud in the distance, a black Lincoln town car neared, trailing down the endless alley of vehicle carcasses.

Both Klemens and Michael only paid it a passing glance.

The Way King said, “I will use THE HIGHWAY to bring her and her companions here immediately. The time for letting others do my work for me is over. This is such an important moment that I must do it with my own two hands.”

Michael smiled.

He had foreseen this event.

In visions, he had seen Klemens in the backrooms of his ranch house, deep inside the labyrinthine heart of THE HIGHWAY, where intricate meshes of copper and steel and brass parts made up the living walls. Where occult machines hissed and ticked away as they clicked and churned in their indecipherably complex operations. Shifting and changing the network of roads with each pull of a lever, each pressing of a switch, shortening paths, and elongating others, all in perfect mathematical balance.

Aided by his automaton homunculus Fritz, Klemens toiled away in that vision, hovering over strange clockwork mechanisms, operating his Magnum Opus in a final ritual, with the homunculus clone of Parker sat upon his throne in the center, to channel the summoning with complete precision, and deliver the real Agent Parker to his doorstep.

That very vision… it still stuck as clearly in his mind now as it had a year prior.

Michael had been counting the days, wondering when everybody would finally conspire to turn his visions into a reality.

The Lincoln had almost reached the circuit. They glimpsed FBI Director Collins as the man behind the steering wheel.

“Will you need me here?” Michael asked.

Klemens cocked a brow.

“Things should go peacefully. But you are kindly invited to stay and witness this incredible moment. I would have thought that you of all people would have wanted to bear witness. We are standing on the precipice to a new world, after all.”

Michael feigned a sigh. He shed another genuine smile, knowing his plans were all falling into place. All visions coming true.

At least the ones he desired.

“Unfortunately, I got plans for tonight. Many people seek the counsel of the Oracle of New York, and the personal sacrifice it takes to power such sorcery is endless toil, I’m afraid.” Staring Klemens in the eyes, he added, “Besides, I’ve all seen it already, if you catch my drift.”

Klemens emitted a raspy chuckle. He clapped Michael on the back.

Gravel crunched under wheels where the Lincoln rolled up to them. Collins cut the engine and emerged from the vehicle.

Beads of sweat dotted his forehead. Even with his jacket off, he looked miserably hot in the rest of his suit.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I’m sorry to say, we’ve learned nothing about the whereabouts of the House agents.”

The Way King replied, “No matter, Anthony. I had almost forgotten about those pests.”

Collins adjusted his glasses and cast a skeptical glance in Michael’s direction.

“Why, then, did you summon me here?” asked the FBI director.

Michael answered. “I could use your help on something. An extracurricular task, really. The good news is, we can forget about the House of Change. In a vision, I saw them die. We—”

Collins groaned. “Ah, great—thank you for letting me waste all those resources on unnecessary legwork.”

“I’m sorry, Anthony,” Michael said. The FBI director squinted at him, clearly in disapproval over hearing him refer to him by first name. “It was a very recent vision. If I had seen it any sooner, I would have let you know.”

“There’s this invention called the telephone, and I’m easy to reach by it thanks to another marvel of technology called a pager. But I guess you sometimes forget about basic technology when you have the occult on your mind 24-7.”

Michael nodded and said, “Again, I apologize. If it’s any consolation to you, we now know where Parker is, and our king will summon her here personally. Our work is almost done.”

Collins squinted at him again.

Klemens patted Michael on the back one last time.

“If you hurry with your plans for the night, you might make it back in time. It would otherwise be a shame if you are all absent for my first meeting with the elusive Agent Parker.”

Michael nodded and cast another radiant smile towards Klemens.

All good things come to those who wait.

To Collins Michael said, “Then we’ll have to step on the gas. Come on, we’ll take my van.”

Without as much as a farewell, Klemens shuffled off towards the ranch house and Collins followed Michael to the side of the van, where someone with serious artistic talent had airbrushed on a glorious image of a wizard on the moon, whose fingertips projected a ball of lightning to engulf the planet Earth.

Looking over his shoulder to assure they were out of earshot, Michael intercepted Collins’ questions by saying, “We’re headed to the Castle on the Cumberland.”

Collins stopped dead in his tracks.

“Come again?”

“Supermax. Kentucky State Penitentiary. There’s someone there we need to visit, and you being able to pull some strings would make things a lot easier for us.”

Collins frowned. “You know, if you keep stretching my strings thin, they’ll eventually snap.”

Michael smiled again. Felt another pang of anger creeping up on him.

He exhaled sharply. Vented it again.

He stepped up to the FBI director, whose posture turned as rigid as a statue in response. Gingerly, Michael straightened Collins’ collar.

“Now’s hardly the time to turn uncooperative, Anthony,” he said, letting his name drawl out with subtle shades of contempt. “Unlike Klemens, I will never blackmail you for your�� past deeds. When I have that tome, and I use it, I will not just remake the world. I will make all your troubles go away. They will all be buried in the past.”

Anthony Collins’ frown twisted into a grimace and he averted his eyes in shame.

Michael wiped some specks of dust from the man’s shoulder and then opened up the van’s sliding door for him.

The stench of methamphetamines billowed out from the vehicle’s bowels.

“Step into my office. It’s a long ride from Vegas to Kentucky.”

Collins hesitated. Thumbed over his shoulder to the Lincoln. His grimace shifted, cycling between different shades of grief, regret, and defeat.

“Hold on. I’ll get my stuff.”

Michael leaned against the airbrushed wizard on the van’s sliding side door. He crossed his arms as he waited, smiling to himself.

Jericho witnessed all this through a television set. The grainy image showed enough for him to understand it all.

Even so, he slapped the top of the device in growing anger and despair.

“Why are you showing me this? Huh?”

Karma banged against the tall black door, rattling at it as it refused to open, still shouting for someone to let them out of their strange prison within the House of Change.

The room around them offered no response. Mirrors made up every wall from floor to ceiling, reflecting them in a vast infinity of reflections.

Jericho’s face was red with rage, veins popping, spraying spittle at the yellowed screen. He helplessly watched as Collins joined Michael in the wizard van. They drove from the Way King’s ranch, riding into the sunset.

“Why the fuck are you showing me this? Do you want me to do something about it? Stop it? I can’t do anything in here! Let me out! Let me the fuck out! What the fuck do you want?”

Where he smashed the television set, sparks and shattered glass scattered across the marbled floor.

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