Prologue
His magic, the force that had allowed him to live for over half a millennia was twisted and corrupted. Now every day it tried to rip him apart with animal cunning. It constantly tore at his soul, sometimes with no subtlety at all, sometimes with a man like intelligence that terrified him. He would wake up from dreams of his guts melting, his skin dripping off his face, his eyes exploding. He was used to waking up with his own screams in his ears.
A few infant souls had sustained him for two hundred years, but that type of transplant wasn't easy to perform, and now the very force that had allowed him to cheat death and retribution for so long had dried up and turned against him, ravaging his body more extensively than any cancer. Several important organs had given out more than once, and while it was a simple enough matter for him to rip what he needed from most anyone, these replacements were destroyed within weeks by the potency of his gift.
Transplanted organs and infant souls and the thousands of other acts that he had performed gladly in exchange for his long life were now buying him less and less time; Some of what he'd done had given him wealth and power. But you couldn't get any use out of a room full of gold coins when you were dead.
He was not a man prone to denial or self-deception. He knew that no amount of primitive tinkering with his physical body would keep death away for much longer, so he'd begun to plan.
His plan, which he'd started in the early seventies had at first only resulted in a few nicknames. In Florida, they'd called him Jack Rack. In Pennsylvania, they'd called him "Jumpstart Bill." he hadn't ever figured out where the name bill had come from. In Alabama, Texas, and Georgia, they'd called him skinner. He'd scoffed at the name back then because it was a name that lacked originality, but he wasn't in it for the nicknames, so when he went to Africa, and no one had cared enough to call him anything, he was not disappointed.
After forty-three years, he was almost done. All his bloody work would finally start to yield him dividends, and he wouldn't have to worry about transplanting organs or snatching souls for the foreseeable future which he hoped to count in centuries.
Most of his victims had been men. What he'd needed were unfortunate people to feel as much pain as they could, and women, with their higher pain tolerances, would have meant more work with lesser results. Now, however, what he needed was someone to exist in as much pain as could be humanly felt for the longest time possible, which was why he'd taken a girl. She was currently in good health, strong, and aware, three things which she would not be for much longer.
She'd screamed until he'd fused her lips to her teeth and her teeth to her tongue. This wasn't the time to be in any way distracted and if he vaporized himself because he'd started sympathizing with the screaming of some ignorant woman, he'd deserve death.
He didn't like to look at her. Crying women had always been hard for him to look at. He'd felt like that about cars when he'd first seen them which only proved one could get used to looking at ugly things.
Of course the town was in an uproar. the girls parents making wining appeals on The Today Show and on Good Morning America. He wasn't worried. He'd woven wards around this stolen house that would burn anyone who tried to cross them to cinders before they knew what was happening, so even if the American Police traced the disappearance of this girl to him, which was about as likely as Arthur returning from Avalon, he'd have the time he needed to collect his prize and move on.
He had not eaten or slept for seven days. He had drunk only water and that sparingly. In earlier times he hadn't needed to eat, his magic used to make food irrelevant, but placing that much trust in it now would be idiocy.
He opened his eyes and breathed in the wonderful air, the air of an old dank house, but there was no breathing when you were dead so he rejoiced.
The world’s details were too sharp, too complicated and too simple, too glaring and too subdued. The chandelier above his head caught the sunlight coming through the picture windows. It glinted off of the polished marble floor, and cast strange shadows on the walls. His hands were steady as he dragged the full length mirror, which had traveled from state to state and from continent to continent with him for forty-three years into the center of the room. It left trails in the thick dust on the floor. He coughed, the only sound he'd heard since he'd stopped the girl from screaming. He turned his mirror more towards the light.
He stood still, captivated by his reflection. He was tall and lanky. aside from his hair he looked to be in his middle fifties. His hair had gone the color of bleach a century ago. His face was sunken, his skin only emphasizing the prominent bones beneath it. Had it not been for his waxy looking skin and the bruises under his eyes, he would have looked aristocratic. He had been quite vane once, an age ago... "And so Narcissus drowned," he said, taking his eyes from the mirror.
Vanity was for the young. Vanity was for tomorrow. Looking at a point a foot above the mirror, he summoned up all of his will, and the final step of his plan began.
His magic came into view a sight twisted and hideous. He rose an inch off the floor, although he was only faintly aware of anything as trivial as the physical world.
His pale skin darkened, first to bronze, then to gray, his flesh continued to darken until it was soot black. His eyes glowed, infected with yellow, the eyes of a man dead four hundred years. He gathered all the power available to him, enough to level a city with a casual thought, and a person with a subconscious whim. The heat of it turned his clothing to fine ash and split the floor under him for twenty feet in either direction. The sheer sensory experience of it almost was his undoing. He had prepared as best he could, but holding so much power within him was like looking on infinity, like clenching all of humanity in his fist. Knowing it would kill him, he wanted to release all that energy with one vitriolic thought!
It would create a crater hundreds of miles across, sweeping away a tenth of America in one glorious firestorm. One drop of his power escaped and before he had time to think the wall to his right evaporated, one of the thick oaken beams above him split down the middle. The girl grunted through her mess of a face. The sound of fear not his own steadied him.
He drew back from suicide and found as much control as he could. Gently as he was able, he touched the mirror with his magic. He had hoped by not looking at it, he would not have to see what came out.
He had stretched so far beyond his normal senses that his closed eyes concealed nothing, the wraiths that filled the room were known to him in every detail. They were all screaming, and once again, he came close to killing himself. The sound of their torment almost produced an instinctual recoiling, when any sudden action, physical or mental would give him that glorious crater he'd wanted a minute ago.
Just contemplating possible failure had him balanced between life and death. It is all necessary, he reminded himself. They die so that I shall continue to live. That is all that matters. He made himself study every one. Some had been in agony for 30 years, and he knew that he would rather live their existence for time out of mind than die. He had given them a twisted immortality that he would have been glad of if he was forced to choose between pain or death. He looked into faces driven mad with pain and he did not pity them. "Silence," he whispered, and his slaves obeyed him.
Moving carefully, he let a tendril of the power ease out of him and into the mirror. The smoky people around him began to drip and then to melt together like wax figurines too close to a fire. As more and more power gushed from him and into the mirror he began to scream; he only had room in his mind for the most unbearable agony. He felt the minds of those he had trapped in the mirror burst apart. The power was leaving him as quickly as he had drawn it in. Summoning up the very core of his magic, he spoke. "You I have taken, for you I transcend. You have no thoughts but my thoughts. You have no desires but my desires. You I have broken through agony. You I have remade through determination. With your lives work my will!"
The face of the mirror boiled, sending drops of glass into the air like oil splattering up out of a skillet. Glass burned his face and chest. He only felt his power flowing out of him, through his house and over his grounds, shattering his wards and gaining speed. With all his will he clung to the last of it, a small amount, but all he would need. It twisted and bit at him like a snake, but he was ready, and he mastered the magic.
Now with this thing twisting to bite at his face he turned to look at the girl. Beautiful, nubile, naked and terrified. When he was younger he might have found the site pleasing but now, as it was he found it sad. But lots of things were sad. And he wanted to be alive to feel sad about them.
He faced her, looked into her eyes and let the last of his magic seep into her. Her head boiled. Bone began to bubble, skin dripped from her cheeks to her shoulders. Her mouth tore open and she let out a howl of desperation.
He screamed louder than she did, screamed and cursed into her face in thirty languages. Spit flew from his lips, blood trailed down his chest and he screamed and screamed in joy and desperation. He focused on the feeling of his power spreading, spreading, planting the seeds that would be his rebirth, and he was glad.
It spread west through the town chasing the beautiful sunset, and it spread east, retracing the day. Birds fell dead from the air, dogs and cats tore at each other mad with bloodlust.
People shut their windows and locked their doors and complained of a bad feeling to the night. They were right. The night would get worse.
The magic slipped through locked doors and windows to taste the people inside their houses. A bite here, a bite there. Those it liked it stuck to as cancer sticks to lungs. It wormed its way through cracks in souls, clinging to the core of people, feeding off their desires and motivations, their fears and weaknesses.
It was not a benevolent force. It rotted most people it touched from the inside, taking over their being like weeds in a garden. It made shells of many, driving away their sanity, replacing their awareness with itself. Some, though, it did not destroy. Those who were strong enough to fight it, or suited to embrace it, it made its peace with. A mutual cultivation began a symbiosis of wills. These people it began to change. Tempting, cajoling, twisting, it changed them all.