Carphax perched, bird-like, on a crossbeam in the warehouse and waited, listening. Actual birds, pigeons mostly but a few sparrows as well, rustled and cooed from the shadows. The night creatures were restless. Bats hanging from the ceiling high up in the peak of the roof. Rats scurrying about in the trash below. Even the spiders were ill at ease; Carphax could see a few of their webs shimmering in the faint moonlight, the designs ever so slightly askew and strange, as if the spiders had been driven to madness by their fear. The night creatures shivered in the shadows, but not for him. There was a man, or at least something that wore the shell of a man, standing outside the door at the far end of the warehouse. The door was shut and Carphax had been as silent as he could possibly be (which was very silent indeed) yet the man had still noticed him. For an assassin, particularly one who followed The Way of The Shadow, to be detected so easily was unacceptable. He should have felt ashamed. Instead he found he was merely intrigued.
Carphax shifted his weight and tumbled gracefully from the beam, twisting in the air, and landed in a crouch on the floor below, soft and silent as falling dust. He crossed the room in an instant, scarcely stirring the air around him or the detritus beneath his feet, and stood before the closed door. The man who was not a man knew he was there. Finally accepting that his stealth had become pointless, a first for him, Carphax opened the door and stepped out into night.
The man who was not a man stood beneath the beam of a shaded lamp on a narrow bolt of metal that jutted out form the side of the warehouse like a stray hair. He floated inside a hooded sweatshirt that was too big for his slight frame, the hood hiding his face in deep shadows. It was probably maroon or burgundy but it looked reddish brown, like old blood, in the lamplight. Carphax stepped into the light and looked at his would be employer. His senses fed him as much information as they could about him but much of it was conflicting. He looked like man; medium height, a little thin. He sounded like a man; his heart beat slow and steady, he breathed, with a bit of a rattle, as though he were recovering from a cold. His scent was strange in Carphax's nose, a rank and unfamiliar ordor, that for some reason reminded him of the ocean. Then there was the other thing, the other sense. This one told him this creature was not a man, perhaps he had once been, but no more.
“I have come as requested,” Carphax said, the faintest hint of the middle east hiding in his carefully neutral accent. “Your message spoke of a proposal.”
The message had come, as most messages did, on a slip of paper under his door. Carphax knew it was not this one who had left it, his scent would have lingered if he had.
“Indeed I do, ‘yeqtel sh’ebh’”, the not-man said.
Five years before Carphax had left the order of assassins. They had tried to stop him, to kill him for his arrogance, for no one was allowed to simply walk away from the brotherhood. A dozen of his brothers had died by his hand. He hadn't wept for them, they were fools. He had seen in their eyes that they had known they could not kill him and they were going to die. Still they had come, as they had been ordered, and thrown their lives away. They had branded him, “يقتل شعبه”, “kills his own people”. It was meant to be a mark of shame and dishonor, labeling him both heretic and traitor, but Carphax had worn it with pride. For him it simply meant that he had no equal. For five years they had hunted him relentlessly, seeking to erase their shame, and for five years he had killed all who came. “Yeqtel sh'ebh” – The Killer of Killers. No one outside the order, even if they knew that name, had ever dared address him by it. It should have earned this stranger a quick death. Instead Carphax smiled and waited to hear what he would say next.
“I am Gang. Proposal? Yes, one that I think you will find most appealing. I want you to be my protector, walk by my side and bring death for me, as I do my work.”
“You want a bodyguard? I'm afraid not. You waste my time.”
Gang stood closer now, close enough that Carphax could feel the heat spilling out from beneath his hood. He had not seen him move, had not heard him move, had not even felt him move. Carphax smiled again and waited.
“What time do you think you have, killer? The ticking of the world will wind its way down. Come with me and you could wrap your black fingers around its heart for the final beat. I'm of a mind makes the world change. Is that not what you want, what you have always wanted? Isn't that why you left them?”
It was true. He had outgrown his brothers. His life with them becoming tedious and boring. Killing old, fat men for other old, fat men. He had been trained to be an engine of death, a living blade waiting the dark, not a tool for the endless games of pointless people. He had gone into the world seeking something more, an end to the monotony, some way to feel alive again.
Gang pulled back his hood. Thin black veins crawled across his bald scalp like cracks. His neck was wrapped in a tight web of quivering tentacles that grew out from the line of his jaw and disappeared into his shirt. His eyes burned behind the dark lenses of his glasses like embers and Carphax could feel them pushing into him, peeling away the layers of his mind. He pushed back, as he'd learned to do, but it was useless. This one was not like the others he'd encountered.
“No feary tingles? This face holds no surprises? Is it true what they say: that The Killer of Killers has acquired a taste for strange blood? Hunting monsters and magicians? I think they say true. Better sport I suppose but such a waste of what you are.”
“What are you?” whispered Carphax.
Gang looked up at the sky and spoke low into the night. “Something else. Chitter chatter in the void. Dark claws on the starlight. Signals from secret constellations. A riddle within a riddle within a riddle.”
Gang's face began to change. His skin flexed as though something else lived beneath its surface, a thing that only pretended at being a face. A wave of twitching movement rippled through the tentacles around his neck and Carphax watched it roll down beneath the fabric of his shirt, straining against it for a moment before quieting again.
“I offer you revelations and salvations. This world of chirping insects is done. In my new world you will be a god of pain and mercy, risen up to break the sky and drag it down on them.”
Carphax listened as Gang continued to speak, the words losing meaning and yet gaining more. The words carried something else with them, a tape hiss current that slid into Carphax's ears like cold wind, seeding themselves in his mind and growing beyond the simple confines of language. He understood and he knew his answer. Was it his own or was it one the thing before him had put there? Did it matter?
“I am yours.”
“And we are theirs.”
Carphax turned away and looked out across the long expanse of concrete that led away from the warehouse and out to the harbor. Far off, hidden in a shadowy pool of broken lights, there was something lurking.
“You know we are being watched.”
“Oh yes, but you needn't worry about her. She's expected, a very important lady, come as you have seeking her way.”
Dimes sat in her car watching the two men talking in front of the warehouse. They were little more than shapes at that distance but she didn't care for the look of them just the same. The taller of the two turned suddenly and looked directly at her. It seemed impossible that he could be seeing her, in the dark and so far away, but she knew he was. She wanted to leave and felt that she still could. There was time. She could start the car and drive off. Stop all this before it ever started. Instead she opened the door and climbed out into the night. When she looked back the two men were gone. A wave of fear rolled through her body and she pushed it away. Too late for that now. She'd made her choice.
“I'm so glad you came,” said Gang. “I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't.”
He was sitting on top her car, legs crossed, looking up at the sky with an expression of childlike wonder. His head turned back and forth as though he were watching something gliding about unseen above them.
“If only you could see the stars I see. Old stars that shone on this place long before we blighted things crawled out of the muck. Perhaps you'll learn to see them too... in time.”
Gang looked down at her, filament eyes swimming in the dark under his hood. “Lady of words, keeper of names, come to me for help. And I will. As will you me.”
Dimes looked to her left as a brief ghost of movement caught her eye. The other man was there, though she was certain he hadn't been a second before, leaning against the front of her car. He was dressed all in black, his clothes light and loose fitting, with a heavier jacket that hung on him like a molted skin. He looked at her steadily, reading her every motion, with dark eyes. He smiled a mirthless grin at her, white teeth materializing in his dark face. The expression – combined with his sharp, masculine features and scalp plastered black hair – made his head looked skeletal.
“Dimes, this is Carphax. He kills things,” said Gang from beside her. She hadn't heard him move at all. “Don't worry, he's not here to hurt you, quite the opposite really. Of course you already know who I am.”
Dimes turned her head, opening her mouth to speak, and her voice vanished. Gang's hood was down now and looking into his face made her want to scream. Gang slid an arm over her shoulder and pressed a clammy finger to her lips. A calm washed over her from nowhere and she relaxed against him.
“There, there. No need for fears. We're all friends here. Look, you've even brought me a present.”
Dimes lifted her hand and found she was holding her map, though she didn't remember picking it up. She handed it to Gang and he smiled a warm, cheshire grin at her. He carefully shook the map opened and examined it intently.
“Such a thing of wonder you are, Dimes. A rare gem in this dull world. Together we will do great things, great and terrible things. You and I will stand in the cold light of our new dawn and sing the chorus of a world's end.”
“And you will help me?” She'd tried to sound strong, possibly even demanding, but her strength was gone, replaced with the weakness of a wounded animal, whimpering to be healed.
“Indeed I will, my sweet word girl. Fret you not.” Gang pulled in closer to her, conspirating in her ear so close she feel the unnatural heat of his breath reddening its folds. “We shall give a name to that which quakes in your teeming brain, little sister, and through its naming call it forth to be tamed.”
And somewhere in the back of her mind Dimes could hear a faint titter, like the laugh of a lunatic child.
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