Anathema Read online

  ANATHEMA

  By Bruce Talmas

  Cover illustration copyright © 2016

  Cover Art by Justin Macioce

  Text copyright © 2017 Shadegrown Publishing

  All Rights Reserved

  To Stacy

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  BOOK ONE

  Hell’s Rejects

  Chapter 1

  “Last call, fellas.”

  I looked around the bar. There were about a dozen people left, all men, and none of them acted like they heard the bartender. I raised my glass and it was promptly filled with my ninth shot of Jack. I downed it before the bartender walked away. He filled it again with a scowl.

  “Last one, buddy,” he said as he leaned over my sagging head. “Time to go.”

  I gave him a short nod, but I didn’t bother looking up at him. It didn’t seem like the sort of place that required eye contact. Judging by the other patrons, I’d say it was probably discouraged.

  From the overhead speakers, I heard the opening strains of “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” I turned around to see one of the good ol’ boys that’d been pounding Jaeger bombs all night standing beside the jukebox. His body was swaying back and forth as though the earth were shifting haphazardly underfoot, but somehow he still managed to find the right buttons to play the most god awful music that the jukebox had to offer. If I were the paranoid type, I’d say he’d been sent specifically to ruin my night.

  It’d gone on like this since I’d arrived. Two groups of customers—the only customers in the bar besides me—had battled all night over control of the jukebox. Circled around one table, nearest the door, were Shifty and his buddies: a foursome of “Deliverance” rejects whose weapons of choice were out-of-tune pianos and even more out of tune vocals lamenting the loss of one’s wife, pickup truck, dog, etc. In the other corner, or at least the other side of the bar, was a quintet of young black men with customary crooked ball caps and pants around their knees. They were counterpunching the honky-tonk with extreme bass and lyrics about hoes and bitches and strippers and just about any other derogatory term you could think to call a woman.

  Between the two groups, I didn’t know who to root for in the jukebox wars. Best case scenario was that the bar blew up and killed everyone but me. And maybe the bartender. He was surly, but at least he was giving me booze.

  I downed my tenth shot and stumbled to the bathroom, more to get away from the music than any pressing need to take a piss. I fucking hated country music. The only thing I hated more was rap music. I should have just put a grand in the jukebox and played some death metal. At least I wouldn’t have a headache, and I might get the satisfaction of returning some of the hurt that’d been inflicted on me all night.

  I stood over the urinal for a long time after I finished, just shaking my dick and staring at the wall. The bathroom was a noxious mix of shit and disinfectant, which I found strange, thinking one offensive odor would come out victorious over the other; but apparently the competing smells had come to some kind of agreement and had collaborated to create a hitherto undiscovered stench that made it hard to breathe. I thought about going into a stall and waiting until I was sure the bar had cleared out, but then I saw the condition of the toilets and decided standing there shaking my dick for a few minutes was the better option.

  No one came in behind me, not surprising given the condition of the bathroom. In this neighborhood, pissing and puking in the streets might get you shot, but that was still a better way to go than choking on the stench of other people’s shit.

  When I got back into the bar, the last of the rednecks were pushing through the door and the black guys had already left. The only ones left were me, the bartender, and two very large men standing unobtrusively at the top of the steps leading to the offices upstairs.

  They’d been there all night, stoically taking in the scene below them, amused by the antics of the drunks in the bar. Neither one had moved all night. That told me they were disciplined. It also told me they were stupid.

  I threw a fifty on the bar in front of the bartender and stumbled toward the front door.

  “Thanks buddy,” he called out to me, surly no more. I waved at him over my shoulder without turning back.

  Before I got to the door, I made a staggering left and started heading up the steps toward the offices. The two bodybuilders started coming down the stairs before my foot even touched the bottom step. As they came down to greet me, they suddenly seemed even larger than they’d appeared before. Two extremely strong sets of hands grabbed me by either arm and carried me toward the door. They set me back on my feet when we hit the bottom step, but I had ten shots in me and fell over.

  They laughed. Drunks are always funny. “This guy’s blasted,” one of them said.

  “Hit the road pal,” the other one said. Or maybe it was the same one. They sounded nearly identical: the gym rat’s voice of artificial bass to go along with their artificial muscles. Either they talked that way on purpose because their 24-inch biceps weren’t enough to make them comfortable with their manhood, or they sounded strange simply because a human voice just wasn’t meant to reverberate in a chest that big. Either way, they were standing and I was on the ground, so they seemed pretty happy with their lot in life.

  But like I said, they were stupid. They hadn’t moved all night. Muscles get stiff, reflexes get slow. An already dumb guy gets dumber.

  I was sitting on the floor with my legs in a ‘V’ in front of me like I was getting ready to do some stretches. I looked up and brushed my hair out of my eyes. Long hair wasn’t fashionable anymore, which was why I refused to cut it.

  “I have to ashk Anthony a queshtion,” I told them with minimal slurring.

  They looked at each other for a second, then they started laughing again. I didn’t know what they found so funny this time, but I was guessing it was still me.

  “I have to ask Anthony a question,” I repeated with even less slurring than the first time.

  In my mind, they should have given me a high five for my precise diction. In the real world, that wasn’t going to happen. The one on the left—the bigger of the two—squared up to me, blocking the steps. “Why don’t you tell us your question, and we’ll go ask Anthony for you?”

  I struggled to my feet, thought about it for a second, and charged the guy. He was about a hundred pounds heavier than me and I didn’t have much running room, but I still managed to lift him off his feet and slam him into his buddy. All three of us toppled to the steps. I ended up on top somehow, with the two of them stunned and struggling to get out from under me. Chalk one up for the little guy, I thought. The element of surprise may have had something to do with it, but I was never the type to share credit needlessly.

  My position of relative strength didn’t last long. The guy I originally tackled worked his arm free and slammed his elbow into my face with a force I wouldn’t have thought possib
le in such tight quarters. I saw stars at the same moment that I heard the cartilage in my nose snap. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, but this wasn’t my first rodeo. I blinked the tears from my eyes and the stars from my head and did my best to ignore the pain as I started giving quick jabs to the top of the guy’s forehead.

  I was so preoccupied with my hockey punches that I didn’t even realize the guy on bottom had wriggled free of the carnage until he kicked me in the balls from behind. I fell sideways and that was all she wrote. The two of them went to work on me for what seemed like a very long time. I don’t recall the specific blows I received, but I know by the time they were done, I had the broken nose, at least three broken ribs, and enough facial lacerations to cast me in a George Romero flick without needing a makeup artist. I think my orbital bone was broken too, but I couldn’t confirm that, because by that time, all I had in me was enough energy to puke up my shots of Jack and give in to a void that was far more inviting than my current surroundings.

  ********

  Some part of me regained enough awareness to know they were dragging me up the steps and down a long hallway. I could have been out for a minute or an hour. There was no way to know. I didn’t seem to have any new broken bones to account for, but that didn’t tell me how long I was out. Hell, they could have had a celebratory drink or two after beating the crap out of me. Singing country songs about getting into bar fights and raising hell over my unconscious form. Surly the Bartender probably would have joined in just for the hell of it.

  Regardless, they had me now in front of a gigantic steel security door. It looked like something you’d find in a bank vault, except there was no spinning wheel. No visible method of entry at all to the naked eye. It was incongruous to see such security measures in a dive bar in the middle of New York City, unless you knew who owned this little dive bar in the scummiest part of a scummy neighborhood.

  I did know, of course. He was the reason I was there.

  ********

  I woke up again, this time tied to a chair. I don’t know when or how I lost consciousness, but a new pain in the back of my head suggested I hadn’t just decided to take a nap. This was not the first time I’d woken up to being bound and bleeding. I could almost call it a habit at this point. Despite my practice at it, it still induced a sense of panic that might have made me nauseous if I hadn’t left the contents of my stomach on the barroom floor below.

  Two men stood before me, but not the same ones that beat the snot out of me. One looked like the missing triplet of the two that had beaten me, except he was smaller. Not small, just smaller. He looked dangerous rather than just a meathead. Not bulky enough to slow him down, but still big enough to do serious damage. The other man was old enough to be their father, but he probably wasn’t. He was Japanese, while the three Block Brothers looked vaguely Eastern European.

  With great effort, I swung my head around to take stock of my surroundings. My vision was blurred from either drink or concussion or the matted hair in my eyes, but I could see enough to start to get a sense of the room. The other two Block Brothers stood behind me, the gigantic steel door locked shut between them. The same door I had seen before fading to black. Except now I was on the other side. I allowed myself a small smile at that.

  There were a couple more cuts and bruises, which suggested to me that they’d continued the beating after they got me into the room. It wasn’t too bad though: Apparently it wasn’t as much fun beating the ever-loving fuck out of a guy who couldn’t feel it.

  A hand grabbed me by the chin and lifted my gaze gently upwards. The Japanese man had a soft touch. I bet his fingers were manicured. My hair was sticking to my face, held there by a mixture of blood and sweat and some other fluids I couldn’t quite identify. I probably wouldn’t want to if I could.

  “You wanted to ask me a question?” The voice was deep and mellifluous, with just a hint of an accent. It was how you’d expect a classically trained singer to sound when he spoke. Soft hands, gentle voice. I had expected someone who presented himself in a more masculine light than that. I tried to focus on his face, but the hair was still in my eyes and my vision was still blurred to the point where I just saw a head with vaguely oriental features. The only definition I could put to that head was that it looked squishy somehow.

  Yeah, squishy.

  Somebody splashed water in my face. I had no idea why. I was wide awake. But it felt good, so I didn’t object. I wondered if they had the bucket on hand for just this type of situation.

  “You went through a lot of trouble just to ask me a question, so I suggest you ask it before we shoot you and dump your body in the sewer.” The same voice. Such a pretty voice for a man. I wondered if he’d sing me a lullaby if I asked him, preferably before he threw me in the sewer.

  I realized then that I was still a little drunk.

  I spit out some of the blood that was draining into my mouth from some broken part of my head. I think a piece of tooth came out with it, and I derived a fair bit of pleasure seeing it land on the well-dressed man’s expensive shoes.

  “No,” I said.

  He leaned closer. I could finally see him clearly. He looked just like he did in the pictures I’d studied after taking the job.

  “What do you mean ‘no’?” he asked.

  I hung my head for a second, lifting it quickly enough to get the hair out of my eyes so that I could finally look Anthony Jeung in the eye.

  “I mean, no, I didn’t have a question,” I said. “I just needed to get past the security door.”

  I didn’t know much about Anthony Jeung before I’d accepted the job, but the little information I had was enough. He was a dandy, as they used to say. A bon vivant. Although I’d never heard anyone actually use that term before, it was the phrase that popped into my head. He dressed well and had expensive tastes for everything from wine to women. I heard he liked them young—the women, not the wine. Maybe the wine too, but no one made that a topic of conversation. Such tastes demanded a lot of money, or, for the less discriminating, at least a Craigslist account. Jeung had money, most of it from less-than-legal enterprises, but I didn’t take him for the discriminating type. Unless it was in his choice of shoes.

  He was also extremely paranoid, which explained why he’d turned his office into a safe room completely encased in three-inch-thick plates of steel. I could do a lot of things: heal myself, drink ten shots and still have the wherewithal to do my job, and smoke three packs a day without getting cancer, for instance. I also knew ten thousand ways to kill a man, but I hadn’t figured out a way to get through three inches of steel to get to him. Which is why I had to let Jeung’s hired help beat me to a pulp. Uncomfortable, to be sure, but necessary. I was getting hazard pay, so what did I care?

  I also knew that he was an avid collector. Everything from comic books to stamps to—and here’s what made me really love the guy—samurai swords. Authentic samurai swords, made from some of the finest metal the world had ever seen, and made by hands that spent a lifetime learning their craft. Some swords took years to make, every facet, every exquisite detail of their creation taken into account by master swordsmiths. Even a thousand-year-old sword could slice through a man’s torso as if it were paper as long as the blade was properly maintained. And collectors always show utmost care for their collections. I knew a little something about that, too.

  And so it was with Jeung’s collection. Antique swords hung on the walls and were displayed on his desk and expensive tables bought specifically for the purpose of showing off his collection in the best possible light. They were all around me. All I had to do was get my hands on one. The men who’d dedicate their lives to making these swords certainly wouldn’t approve of their being here, hidden away by some perverted Yakuza wannabe to feed his delusions of grandeur.

  I had planned everything up to this point. Jeung had gone to great lengths to keep his inner sanctum hidden from public view. There were no pictures or blueprints of the room available online, and no pho
nes were allowed in the office itself. No strategizing from this point forward. Now came the fun part of the job. Improvisation had always been what I did best. The planning and research were all well and good, but I got paid to kill people. It’s an art form. You can’t plan a kill any more than you can plan a painting. Or I guess you could if you wanted to, but where’s the fun in that?

  Jeung still hadn’t picked up on my thinly veiled threat, so I had plenty of time to think through my actions. Thinking was overrated though. Instead, I hurled myself backwards into the bigger of the twins—who, by that time, I’d started thinking of as Jumbo. I mustered enough force to shatter the chair into several large pieces, and I was almost certain I shattered a couple of Jumbo’s ribs as well.

  Being double jointed in situations such as these can prove very useful. I could simply bring my bound hands up over my head and down in front of my stomach. If I were double-jointed. I was not, but I didn’t let that stop me. The same principles applied, it just hurt a hell of a lot more. The maneuver inevitably pops at least one shoulder out of socket, and sometimes both. I was hoping it would only be one: having two dislocated shoulders would waste precious seconds running around with no usable arms. Since three people were in the process of training their guns on me, those were precious seconds that I didn’t have. Hell, they might be able to shoot me enough times that even I wouldn’t get up from it.

  I got lucky. Only one shoulder popped, and I also managed to grab one of the slats from the back of the chair as I brought my hands around front. It was about a foot long. Not a great weapon, but it would do until I got my hands on one of the swords. I kneecapped the other twin with the wooden plank, then spun around and elbowed Jumbo in the face. With all my weight and leverage behind me, it was a knockout blow. As a bonus, the movement took me just out of the line of fire of the third bodyguard. I didn’t have time to think up a name for him, so I just called him Third Bodyguard.