Prelude: Nick Weiss (part 2)

Prelude: Nick Weiss (conclusion)
by David J. Bouchard


"Come on Frank, it's late. I'll buy ya a drink." Jim was putting on his coat as day-shift police filtered out past him slowly. The campus precinct had a surprisingly well staffed building, but the office end of things ran light once regular office hours closed. Frank sat at a desk in one of the spare offices they had on hand for such occasions, visitors being common enough, filling out paperwork. He looked up at Jim with a sigh and cracked his knuckles; between filling out hand-written forms in triplicate and typing for hours, his fingers felt like knotted nails.

"Is it?" he looked at his FBI counterpart, standing in the doorway as men and women moved both ways behind him. The night crew was punching in, and soon their cars would be hitting the roads around campus, wandering the school grounds with flashlights watching the cages, covering the front desk. There was one kid in for vandalism, a flight risk. His trial was pending. They brought him his coursework in mail crates every day.

"Yep. C'mon, let's go. It'll keep," Jim said. He was no better off, of course.

"I guess it will at that. And sure, I could use one." They headed for the bar the local police favored, a short way from campus. After dealing with some of the most eccentric and smart college kids in the country, maybe the world, the police here sometimes really needed a drink after work.

Frank was quiet all the way to the bar; the case had been weighing on him ever since he came to his conclusion. It didn't seem possible, but the evidence kept stacking up. The forensic teams had gotten mixed DNA, but were able to find six unique signatures. Meanwhile two hard drives had turned up a wealth of data. The first was notes, schematics, pieces of a thesis, even all the paperwork for a grant application – Nicholas Weiss had expected nothing less than absolute success. He'd planned on getting government funding and getting rich selling his technology to the US Military. It would change the world and make him the richest man alive.

If he'd lived through it. If it worked. If, if, if. Nicholas hadn't seen 'ifs' but 'whens' instead. He was wrong in his assessment. Arrogant didn't begin to cover this kid. His overconfidence had cost six lives and sent him god-knows-where, probably killing him in the process, or the destination. At the bar he shotgunned two shots before switching to beer, trying to relax. It had been a long week and it was only Wednesday.

"Do you really think he made it work?" Jim asked, breaking the silence for the first time since the station.

"Hmm. Yeah," Frank replied seriously. "I really do. But," he paused to finish off the first beer and flag down the bar tender for another one. "But... I think it was the death of him anyway. Maybe its for the best. Can you imagine the power of that sort of thing? Being able to send people anywhere, any time?

"Yeah, it would be dangerous in any hands alright."

"It makes you wonder. How many of these kinds of experiments do you not hear about?"

"I don't know if I want to think about that," Jim replied after a moment lost in thought.

"Yeah," Frank replied, holding his new beer. "Me neither."

***

"Here it is." Beth said simply, a shiver in her tone. Nick looked at the cliff before him, a huge wall of black basalt that rose in a sheer face for what seemed forever upward. In it, at the base, was a doorway fit for giants, a distorted red frame, warped as if pulled here and there while soft, then hardened into its tortured form. "Through there, the guardian."

"Alright, let's get this over with." Nick replied, his tone grim. He buttoned up his coat, protecting himself better, and held his gun in his right hand. He had a few other tricks up his sleeves, literally, but this was what would get the most damage in the fastest. With Beth a few paces behind him, he walked into the dark doorway.

The darkness that seemed to fill whatever lay beyond the frame vanished almost instantly as Nick stepped over the threshold, revealing the room to him finally. It was large and circular, supported around the sides with equidistant pillars cut into the white stone of the chamber. Above, a dome rose over the room, its center sporting an Ætheric device. It was elaborate, ancient bronze and silver, and brilliantly glowing white crystal or gemstone that flooded the room with its light, eliciting a wince and light hiss from Beth.

At the far end of the room, a straight, intricately carved doorway that sported a variety of unusual carvings, perhaps depicting the destination of the doorway in some pictographic language that Nick didn't know. Before it stood a tall man in armor that shone, reflecting the light of the device high above. The style of the armor was unfamiliar to Nick, which surprised him; he'd been to many museums and read even more books. The design must have been native to this place, he decided, or else so old that its appearance was lost to time. He held a sword and round shield, one in each hand, and though his eyes were invisible behind his gleaming helmet's visor slit, Nick could feel it looking at him.

"Elsbet, you are forbidden here," intoned the suit of armor, the guardian. Nick had never heard intoning before, but for some reason, he knew it when he heard it now.

"Be silent, old guardian. I've brought a champion to fight you. He too seeks freedom from this place. He doesn't even belong here, after all." Nick frowned at the guardian.

"None may leave this place, no matter the reason. Moral, leave here, or perish."

"Sorry Monty, I'll take Door Number Three." Nick whipped his pistol up so fast that not even the demon behind him could move back to the wall and clear of the battle as it began. The guardian tried to defend himself, raising his round, glistening shield before him as Nick's arm still moved. The white beam of light flickered and faded, some of its light scattering off the shield, the rest being absorbed into it. Clean craters formed in wall, floor, and ceiling where the thinner beams touched, and the shield vaporized, and strangely it knocked the guardian back into the door frame.

He fired again, his brain working overtime through its weariness and pain, adrenaline thundering in his veins. The beam has no concussive force, but the guardian reacted as if it did; therefore its concussive force is limited to Ætheric entities only. It doesn't react conclusively with the environment, so the stone must be real. The second beam connected with the warrior square in the breastplate, but it merely staggered him, and seemed to do no damage.

"Damn," he said, tilting his head. The guardian stalked forward, his feet clanking on the floor. Nick began to run. The room was large, the floor flat and even, and keeping ahead of it wasn't too hard, until it began to move faster, and faster. It would catch up, of course, in time. It adapts to whatever I do, Nick thought, adjusting his gun, and turning mid run. He pulled the trigger repeatedly, and flickers of white light streaked into the knight. They staggered him, but just barely. Enough to slow him down.

"Shit," he cursed, dropping the gun. He flicked his wrists and a mechanical device beneath each coat sleeve engaged, sliding a slender, foot-long rod into each hand, gold-embossed circuitry guiding Æther from their gemstone butts to engraved metal disks at each tip. "Suck it!" he shouted defiantly, engaging the devices. A bolt of jagged electricity, more powerful than a bolt of lightning, ripped from the rod in his right hand, while a beam of blue light shot from the left rod, washing over the suit of armor with thick ice. Ice popped and exploded in steamy blasts as the two opposing forces combined on the single metal surface, and the guardian staggered backward, loosing ground step by step as Nick poured it on.

"No Ætheric critter is going to keep me in his shithole," he growled through his teeth, advancing slowly. The rod weapons were working, and as he expected, they were holding out far longer than they should; the ambient Ætheric energy of this realm was feeding them as fast, or almost as fast, as they burned through the energy.

"Your efforts are futile!" Intoned the guardian as, through the blinding fog and light, he stepped out from the hail of power. His form was brown stone flecked through with white, and the ice didn't slow him, neither did the lightning faze him.

"Oh for fuck's sake," he spat, tossing aside the rods. Backing off from the frighteningly quick stone monstrosity, he popped one button on his coat and reached inside, grabbing something to fight with. He was too slow; the guardian caught up. It swept one hand at Nick, narrowly missing his raw and blood-crusted face with a stony fist twice the size of his head as he leaned back. He ducked and the other hand brushed its hair, so close was its swing. Slow swings, he noticed, and panting, drew a sword, of all things, from his coat.

Nick had never been good at fencing, but the sword was short and had a different purpose. Good thing too, he thought, as his foe was no swordsman now. The blade of the simple blade glowed green as he swept it across the front of the golem, where the metal skittered and scratched, but did little but leave a mark. Stepping back he blanched as its hand formed a sword from it, a stone blade that the guardian wielded with sudden grace and speed.

"You've got to be kidding me!" he shouted, throwing up his sword to meet the other's. They met with a strangely echoing clank, and Nick grinned at the monstrosity before him. "Hey big guy, ever hear the story of King Arthur?"

Nick grabbed the stone blade with his free hand, drawing blood, and drew back, letting gravity and the force of the giant's next swing take the blade into the ground in a blast of stone chips. Green fuzz was visible across the guardian's chest, where he'd been scratched, and it was there that Nick aimed. So intent was the guardian with recovering from his miss, that he failed to even attempt to block Nick's stab, trusting his stone form to guard the simple, if enchanted, blade.

The short sword sank into the wound like butter, and Nick released it instantly, buried to the hilt in the mossy skin covering the scratch. The capstone of the pommel, a huge beautiful emerald, suddenly exploded into a brilliant green light. The guardian roared wordlessly as vines and roots ripped out of the point where the sword was struck, entangling the guardian and digging into the room's stone floor with tremendous power, fed by the sword's Ætheric channel.

"Normally that thing would have powered down by now," he told it. "But I think here you're fucked."

"Well done, my champion!" cried Beth, or rather Elsbet.

"Yeah, I'm pretty fucking... awesome..." he trailed off as the plants that were containing the guardian began to shift into a new, humanoid form. "Oh crap."

"Flee!" Elsbet shouted, and without pausing to ask questions, flee Nick did. The pair dashed madly for the far exit and its dark opening. It was like passing through a curtain of lightning, but as again the darkness vanished and Nick found himself standing in a dimly lit room, he knew he was free from the clutches of Hell.

"Mine Gott," he gasped, staggering, fighting to catch his breath. The door was gone when he turned; an old, damp, brick wall replaced it. Elsbet stepped in a rush out of the wall, staggering into Nick with a gasp.

"Finally!" she said with a smile. "Finally, free..." she muttered, holding onto Nick while he stood there. "Promise kept."

Nick felt her push something into his chest and was thrown across the room by a sudden blast of raw electricity. Stars swam in his vision, his head bleeding again where it struck the wall, and from the thunderclap the rod had created.

"I must thank you, my strife maker, for without your help I would be rotting another thousand years in that pit. But now there is the matter of keeping myself from it that must be seen to." She stood over Nick, imperious in her white dress, looking down at him as if a disappointing child, or perhaps a dog that had peed on the rug.

"God damn you bitch," he muttered, spitting out blood.

"Too late," she said with a laugh, firing the rod's payload again. She yelped when the bolt discharged, dropping the rod, charred and ruined, to the floor. It cracked to bits, ash and chips of slag falling to the floor. "Oh, it seems I've overtaxed your toy. No matter. I'll make another."

"Over my dead body," Nick managed, reaching into his coat.

"No my lovely champion," she answered, her hands finding his neck and wrist with speed the eye could not match. Nick gagged as he felt himself quickly pulled up to and off of his feet. "No, you will live, for I have use for you; we will do great things together. But I will weaken and fade soon if I don't find an anchor. Fortunately, I have just the vessel.

Nick had a split second for his eyes to widen in sudden horror before she slammed him into the wall again, then yet again. He saw lights and his head rang like a bell, and nothing would focus.

"It will hurt far less if you don't struggle, my champion," Elsbet crooned, and Nick lost consciousness as his mouth gaped wide and the demon poured into his body.

***

"Frank Wilcox, FBAA," Frank said, holding out one hand while the other struggled to keep the high winds from blowing away his hat.

"Maria Klemp," said the raven-haired woman in a heavy duster, high collar shielding her face from the late winter bite. "Welcome to Germany."

"Thank you. I wish the circumstances were better. Where is our perp?"

"Herr Weiss, he was last seen near the French border, over thirty kilometers by auto. He has been using an alias, calling himself 'das Streitmacher' und speaking very strangely, according to witnesses. Right now we are prepared to move to arrest him und perform an exorcism as fast as possible."

"Wait, an exorcism?" Frank asked increduliously. "The man is sick, not possessed, and this isn't the seventeen-fifties."

"Not so, Herr Wilcox. This may be the twenty-first century, ja, but our Ætheric analysis is second to none. Whatever happened to Herr Weiss, his arrival here three days after his apparent death in America was heralded with destruction. He has been possessed by a demon, or an Ætheric creature if you prefer. We must drive it from him and back into the Æther."

"I've never heard of the Æther being home to monsters that can possess people, Ms. Klemp."

"Ja, und I have never heard of a man going into the Æther and coming back from it. But the thing is still killing people and must be stopped, ja? Good. Let's go."

They arrived at a staging area a little while later. Frank had taken three planes to get here, and now a ride in a police car had brought him near the French border, to the small town of Schweiz. It had all the amenities of a typical village, even a courthouse and church. The population was of mixed German and French ancestry, and spoke both languages fluently, and many spoke English or something else as well. They put the average American, Frank included, to shame, but in their defense, the entire United States was bigger than all of the European continent, plus every island and some of Asia.

It was late morning, several months after the accident at MIT. While Nick seemed to have returned just after vanishing, he hadn't been easy to pin down. He'd turned up several weeks later, looking half-dead and armed to the teeth. He then spent week after week killing. Not just killing, either, but doing horrible things to the corpses – before and after death. Frank felt numb thinking about it. Finally somebody had gotten a clean read on him and figured out he was possessed by some kind of alien creature native to the Æther; how, nobody could say, but cited historical prescident.

They planned their moves, but Frank mostly listened; he'd be part of the frontal assault. They were going to surround the place with cops – mostly locals mixed with Interpol, himself, and aparently this priest – a bishop actually, Cardinal Marcell. They would subdue him via any means necessary and then clean his brain out before arresting him and hauling him off in cuffs to the hospital. Simple; what could go wrong?

They found him waiting for them, that's what. Heavily armed and hunkered down, Nick, possessed or not, went down fighting hard. He'd put up Ætheric warding to keep anything shy of an artillery strike from punching through, so the police had to whether a storm of fire and lightning, which seemed to be his prefered weapons. The siege ground on for hours, but the German police had skilled Æther wielders that could use complex Ætheric devices, a variety of tools anyone could use, and even an Artificier who made the damned things. Though none was as good or could craft as well as Nick, the boy was outnumbered. Possessed or not, he couldn't hold off that many people forever.

Late afternoon came, and the firefight had simmered down. It was quiet, and had been for a half hour, when the order came in to rush the place. Nick had held some of his weaponry in reserve, firing from the window as we charged. Covering fire kept his head down though, and enraged, frustrated, haunting screams were clearly audible as Frank, Klemp, and two others rammed through the front door.

'Das Streitmacher' was a wretched sight. Gaunt, with sunken eyes that were little more than black pits, he snarled as he opened fire directly into them, wide waves of fire washing over their fire-warded clothing and bodies. His voice was ragged, harsh and raspy, but overlain with the hauntingly musical tones of a woman, or perhaps a banshee.

"Open fire!" Maria Klemp shouted almost before the door was open, and the four of us laid it on with a hail of gunfire. It didn't make Weiss bleed; he was wearing a heavy coat that undoubtedly served as armor. It hurt him though, like impacts on soft armor always do. He'd be sore in the morning, if he lived to see it.

The back door of the house was battered down, and voices and footstomps echoed through the small building. Weiss shrieked, fighting fiercely; a rod that shot ice, shock grenades, lightning from a staff that nearly took Frank's head off, but he was getting surrounded, and soon he was on the ground with three bullets in his left ankle and foot.

Frank watched the exorcisim through to the end. It wasn't pretty, and not everyone could make it through. A few emptied their stomachs before the worst of it. The thing, Frank started calling it the bitch, inside the poor kid was vicious and stubborn. It really didn't want to give up its host, and Frank was sure it would drag Nick to the grave before it gave him up.

Bishop Marcell was skilled, and a powerful Æther wielder in his own right; he fought on, the power of his tools, his faith in God, and the weight of the power and ritual of the Catholic church pushing down on the demon within Nick, until it was forced out. Nick's mouth was the conduit of its exit, gushing forth like a white cloud of steam that formed above his body.

The creature was female in shape, with withered black flesh stretched taut over old bones beneath a ragged white dress, red pinpricks of light hovering in the depths of its skull. The creature looked exhausted and weak, panting as it squatted atop the half-dead man it had been piloting for months. It had plenty of breath to spare for shrieking, though, and shriek it did. It hissed, it spat, it swore, until finally it collapsed, evaporating, boiling away, unable to hold its self together without a supply of fuel and a body to live in.

"Is it dead?" Frank asked, his voice weak, exhausted.

"It has returned to Hell where it belongs," Bishop Marcell replied. He was native to the region, and his peculiar German/French hybrid accent reflected it. "Such a devil cannot live in the world without someone to possess."

"It must have been damned powerful to take him over." Frank said quietly while the German EMTs moved in to stabilize him from transportation.

"Ja," interjected Maria. She was sporting a char mark on her arm. She was lucky; they'd lost five local and two Interpol officers, including one who'd gone in the door with them. "But he will never be the same. This will leave a mark."

Frank nodded, watching as the stretcher was rolled out to a waiting ambulence, one of several that were treating officers that had been injured. This one was specifically for Nick, if he lived. "I need to know when he's awake and talking," he told the driver. Klemp spoke with them firmly in German, undoubtedly reitterating the same thing far more sternly. It wasn't a poetic language, but when spoken with authority, it was a very forceful one.

***

Nick sat in a cell, wearing bright orange clothes made of flimsy cloth. He wanted to be furious, but he couldn't make himself. Mostly, he just felt tired. Not physically, of course; he'd spent over a month in the hospital, recovering. Sort of recovering. He ran a hand across the stubble on his cheek. He was gaunt, corpse-like, with sunken eyes. His skin was stretched tight over his bones, like a corpse left out to dry. He hadn't gained an ounce in twenty-nine days. His injuries had healed, with help, and scan after scan showed that the demon, Elsbet, was gone.

But a residue remained, like a stain after a spill is cleaned up. No expert that had come in could figure it out. Nick didn't need them to. He knew. Somehow, he knew. The creature had fed off of him even as she'd used him, and taken something, something important. He noticed how people got goosebumps if they came too close. He'd noticed a service dog bark at him fearfully, then whimper and flee when chided. He'd watched flowers his mother had put at his bedside wilt and die in minutes. She hadn't been back since.

But for all that she'd taken, she'd left something behind as well. He could feel it deep in his mind, his soul, down where his power sit, his tallent for forging and manipulating Æther and devices that channled it. Power. She'd given him more power than he'd had before. He wasn't sure how much, but he was sure of how it worked. The ability to draw out and focus Æther was not unlike a doorway; he pulled a flow of energy out of the realm where Æther originated. She'd pushed that door open wider, and it had already been open wider than anyone in the last century or more. It was raw, unadulturated power, and soon he'd be able to focus it.

He sighed, leaning back into the cell's bars. He missed Marla. The thought of her brought tears to his eyes again. He'd been through this cycle a lot since he'd woken up. He thought of Stephano too. They'd been friends for years. The others were saddening too, but they were lab-mates, he didn't know them that well. That didn't make their deaths feel any lighter. He wondered what those cops thought when they looked at him. Did they think he was a murderer? Maybe he was. He may not have been running his body when he killed those people in Germany, but he sure as hell had been when building the machine.

It had worked, though, he thought. Hadn't it? He didn't want to think that Marla had died for nothing. I'll make it work, somehow, alone from now on. For you baby. They may think I was a self-centered bastard, but I'll prove them wrong there too.

The door at the end of the hall opened, and Nick heard voices. English, but hard to make out. He sighed and looked down the hallway; that cop with the hat, Wilcox? He was with that pretty German cop. She looked down the hall, seeing him clearly through the bars, and scowled. The pair began to walk toward him after a moment.

"I don't like it, Herr Wilcox. He is German, und he killed German citizens." she said. Nick liked her less.

"That was the demon, Elsbeth. The magistrate made his decision, and the extradition paperwork is all approved. Now he has six dead college students to answer for, and I've got the damned State Department breathing down my neck because the Indian kid's parents are rich as hell, and money greases the wheels of democracy the world over." Nick liked him less now too, but he had a dry, tired wit that matched his mood these days.

"Well when you are done with him, see if you can't send him home, ja? I want to keep an eye on him."

"Jesus, lady, cut me a break – I just got back from hell and had to puke up a fucking demon," he said, smiling as she glared at him.

"Enough with the smart mouth kid, let's go," Frank said wearily. Nick chuckled. What were they going to do, arrest him? A strange feeling of freedom lay across his thoughts suddenly. His life could never possibly get worse. Fuck it.

"Sure thing," Nick replied snidely, grinning at them both as he slid his hands through the bars to be cuffed. "I mean you've been able to dodge your wife for three months, but hey, let's go home and tell her all about the hot German lady cop you've been getting to know."

They both glared at him then, and his smirk grew even wider.