of the Light Sleeper
Phil Morgan
The Shadow. The side of reality that never showed its face in public, the deep dark secret the universe held in the bottom of its heart, the land of fantasies and nightmares and only the insane or damned didn’t roll up their windows when they drove through it. My name was Allen Crowley. Yes, that Crowley and I don’t care what Paul Simon says, you won’t call me Al, if you know what’s good for you.
I had another name, one that people only said in a whisper, with the doors locked, and the lights off. The Believer. Like my father before me and his father before him, I had the power of utter belief. Anything I believed came true and anything I didn’t vanished, which came in handy when ex-girlfriends were stalking my Facebook page.
I was from Evercity, the magical city, the one that truly never slept; where everything that didn’t fit in anywhere else ended up. It wasn’t the only city though, there were others in the Shadow. Port Innsmouth, dark and silent and best left that way in case the things that slept beneath its waves ever awoke. Lake Olympus, ski resort for the Gods, beautiful, otherworldly, and every bit as pretentious as it sounded. The Flipside, where the Fae let it all hang out. I would have preferred to be in any one of them instead of where I was, with the possible exception of the Flipside. That place was just too crazy, even for me.
My current job had brought me to Futuretown. Towering spires, gleaming in the twilight of the Shadow, stretching into the clouds above, dizzying in their majesty. The streets were clean but crowded with all manner of alien and robot, tourist and traveler. There was no traffic on the ground, instead all the vehicles flew through the sky in vast, ever-morphing rivers, silver streams, transportation, red in thruster and wing. You weren’t anybody in Futuretown if your ride actually had wheels. That shit was only for the tourists.
I leaned against some sort of kiosk selling fourth dimensional newspapers and magazines and waited for my contact. As I waited and with nothing better to do, I indulged in a little future people-watching. There were the unusual assortment of space pirates and time travelers wandering about on their inscrutable missions, voluptuous sex robots selling little bits of their battery life to the highest bidders - love for sale and none of it completely virus free, aliens of all stripes, some hideous, some gorgeous, some that looked as normal as I did and all of them far too stuck-up for their own good.
I recognized a few people by sight or reputation. Dr. Clockwork, steampunk supervillian who probably could have ruled the world like he always wanted too if he had chosen a more reliable power source for his specialty. Commodore Hawkins, whose ships had conquered galaxies and whose libido had conquered him. Taryn D’Amour, half-Rigellian, half-French, dread pirate and as deadly with her blasters as she was in your bed. None of them were my target. I hoped.
Sure, I was powerful. I was the most feared assassin in the Shadow and with good reason. I could bend reality to my will, wipe the slate clean with a thought, change the world in whatever way I wanted but that didn’t make me special. Not here. In the Shadow, in the night that never ended, everybody was special. Everybody was a power or a domination, a God or a Monster and sometimes they were all of them at the same time.
My power of belief wasn’t my only gift though. I could also freeze somebody by locking eyes with them, using my willpower alone to paralyze them. My coat could snatch a bullet out of flight, which was useful when I couldn’t believe a gun away fast enough. I always filled my pockets with various items I thought might come in handy, silver crosses and holy water, salt and wolfsbane, bell and book and candle and anything else I could think of.
I had a fairly mean right cross and a natural tendency to fight dirty. Being an assassin for as long as I had and surviving had gifted me through pain and fire with an almost sixth sense about being watched. I could feel it tingling and glanced up to see a form materialize out of the crowd a few feet away.
He grinned at me in that easy way that only friends or enemies have. His brown hair was long and shaggy, his face lean and wolfish. His suit was sharply tailored and his nails expertly manicured. He moved with a predator’s stride, as if he was constantly stalking something. He was Harry van Helsing, the Night Slayer. At least most of the time, he was.
Harry had contracted lycanthropy through some means that he had never really elaborated on but you just knew involved the words menage a’trois. So, when the full moon came out, he became Harry van Helsing, the Wolf-Who-Walks-the-Night and pray to whatever Gods you hold holy that Little Red Riding Hood was somewhere safe. Or at least, still remembered her safe word.
“You’re slipping Allen. I got within claw’s reach that time.” Harry smiled wolfishly.
“If anybody is going to be able to sneak up on me, it will be you.” I grinned back. “Why are you here? You aren’t the type to accept messenger duty. Don’t tell me this is some lame competition thing where we have to run around town finding clues and the winner gets the Maltese Falcon, or at least this week’s Chinese knock-off. I am not in the mood for any treasure hunts tonight.”
“I got a message. It said there was a big money job here tonight. I didn’t have anything better to do, I’m in-between seasons of Teenwolf on Netflix so here I am.” he shrugged. “If it does turn out to be a competition, let’s just tell whoever is running it to kick rocks and go grab some drinks at the Grassy Knoll.”
“Now, that is my type of plan Harry.” I said and we probably would have kept bantering back and forth, Harry was one of the few people I almost trusted, if our contact hadn’t arrived. Both of us felt him coming long before we ever saw him, tricks of the trade and all that. We swung our gazes simultaneously to track him moving through the crowded sidewalk.
He crashed to a halt in front of us, as his kind was wont to crash. His simple yet expertly crafted red robe stood out, even in the gleaming chrome and steel of Futuretown. It marked him as a member of the Balancers. The Balancers, acolytes of the Temple of Balance, keepers of the status quo except when they were intentionally disturbing it. We tended to not get along, old history never truly went away. He threw back his cowl and we could see that this was no normal Balancer, this was the head of the order, the head honcho, the big man himself and that was worrisome. He definitely wasn’t the type to do fieldwork. That meant this particular job was high-profile, dangerous, and more than likely impossible even for people like us.
“Helsing. Crowley.” he said without preamble. “We are waiting on the last member of the team and we can begin.”
“Last member?” Harry asked.
“Team?” I asked. “I choose my own teams. You know how I work.”
“I do know how you work, that’s why you are on the team. When you hear what is out there, you will be glad I got who I did as your backup. You are going to need some heavy duty firepower. Speak of the Devil, and she shows up.”
Harry and I looked up, following his gaze. She floated gently to the ground on the wings of an angel. It would have been hard to pinpoint what physical characteristic caught my eyes first, the lustrous brown hair, the liquid depths of her brown eyes, her slender body barely covered by the traditional little black dress but it was her aura that captured our souls. She was glorious and divine yet stern and regal and in that moment she changed. Her angel wings morphed into scaly dragonskin, her halo faded and in its place stubby horns grew, claws sprouted at the tips of her perfectly manicured hands and from somewhere I tried to not imagine, a long red tail with an arrowhead tip peaked out.
“The name is Sarah Phim, demon-girl. The bastard offspring of an archangel and one of the fallen, bringer of blazing judgment and dazzling temptation, and the most fashionable party girl on the scene.” she said with a bright and toothy smile as she lightly touched down on the pavemen
t. “It’s definitely your pleasure to meet me.”
“Very definitely.” Harry said with a wolfish smile.
“Stick to business Harry.” I said sideways as I elbowed him.
“This is my business, Allen.” he replied indignantly.
“Why have you called us here? What’s so important that you called two of the greatest assassins in the Shadow and the legendary Sarah Phim. Yes, I’ve heard of you.” I said in her direction as she flashed a smile full of fangs at me. “I didn’t see End-of-the-World on my calendar this morning so what’s the deal?”
“The Insomniac is waking up.”
“Okay. Count me out.” I replied without missing a beat. The Insomniac was serious business. The closest thing to a true immortal in a land when immortality was as common a gift as freckles, unstoppable for all intents and purposes, and homicidal on the best of days. The Insomniac had only two states, blissful coma-like sleep and rampaging, raging wakefulness. Guess which one I preferred him in?
“As usual, Crowley, your cowardice is legendary in a land of