Children of Darkness

By Wesa

Series: Crossover War of the Worlds/X-Files/Brimstone in the Brimstonian universe.

Disclaimers: Ezekiel Stone and the Devil belong to Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, Warner Brothers, and SciFi. The Lone Gunmen belong to Chris Carter, 10-13 Productions, and Fox. Paul Ironhorse belongs (damn it!) to Strangis & Strangis and Paramount. Malzor, Ardix, and Bayla belong to whoever it was that ruined War of the Worlds in the second season.

Category: Angst?

Warning: Although I deliberately didn't go into detail, there is reference to a particularly gruesome crime.

Re: Halloween story challenge: the requirements were: 1) A pumpkin, 2) A stripper, 3) Jello (jelly for UK readers), 4) A rabbit's foot, 5) Aliens dancing, & 6) Paul in an embarrassing position.

***********

For those unfamiliar with the Brimstonian universe: Zeke Stone, a dead cop, has been sent back to Earth to recover 113 fugitives who escaped from Hell. Those already dead, like Zeke and the fugitives, cannot be killed, nor even feel pain unless it's inflicted by another damned soul. However if anyone, alive or dead, destroys the eyes, the damned get a one-way ticket back to Hell.

For those unfamiliar with the War of the Worlds universe: Why are you reading this? In 1953, Earth experienced a war of the worlds. Earth's bacteria stopped the aliens, but it didn't kill them. When they were exposed to radiation in 1988, it killed the bacteria and set the aliens free. The Blackwood Project was set up to fight the aliens. In 1989 the second wave of aliens arrived. They cloned Paul Ironhorse, the project's head of security, and sent the clone to destroy the humans who had so far thwarted their attempts at takeover. With some help from his friends, the original Paul escaped, returning to their base just in time to realize that the only way to prevent the clone from killing 13-year-old Debi McCullough was to cut the clone's life-energy off at the source.

**********

Point 1) Suicide is a mortal sin. (I personally disagree with this opinion, but it makes a better story this way.) 2) The clone had no soul, at least not in this story. 3) Paul would treat Hell as a POW camp, from which it is every officer's duty to attempt to escape. 4) The "you come back with what you had when you went out" rule applies to the damned as well as to Zeke. It apparently did to Sally Ann McGee. But since the clone was an extension of Paul, he comes back with what the clone went out with as well, so he has his dogtags, his uniform, 2 guns, his knife, and his tomahawk. And $43.72 (He went out five years after Zeke did. Inflation would mean it was about the same amount of money; rough estimate.) 5) Malzor would certainly have gone to Hell. 6) Aaaagh! Kay, what have you done to me???

By Wesa.

He put the pistol under his chin and fired.

Paul Ironhorse woke with a start and a gasp, clutching at the mattress. Every morning the same dream tore him from his sleep, until sometimes he wondered why he bothered sleeping at all, or in fact why he had taken part in the breakout. He was still being tortured.

This morning he shook his head and told himself softly, "You came with them because they offered a way out. And it's not as bad as it was there. And you sleep because you don't want to admit that you're dead." He sighed and got up to take a shower before he started his day.

At least he had finally managed to buy some less-conspicuous clothes than his fatigues or the grey work clothes he had had on when he died; thank God for lay-away. The price of Levis these days was outrageous. Wearing his combat boots and using his battle fatigue shirt as a jacket, he looked no different from all the other veterans who haunted the district, although with winter coming on, he would soon want a heavier coat. Great, that meant another month or more of daily trips to a department store to pay five bucks on a lay-away. They must think he was weirder than weird. He laughed shortly. "You are," he said as he checked his reflection in the mirror, making sure that all his weapons were out of sight; cops had funny attitudes about Indian ex-soldiers who carried big knives, not to mention two guns and a throwing tomahawk. Satisfied with his appearance, he headed out to the nearest cyber cafe.

While it was no substitute for Norton and his Cray, the computer he logged onto at the cyber cafe was a far cry from the PCs available at the time of his death. And whoever had come up with the idea of places where people could come to use their computers and drink coffee was a genius. Norton would have loved it. The internet that had just been getting started when he died was in full swing now, and after a quick search of the newspapers' and TV stations' websites for any information that looked like alien activity, he logged into his favorite chatroom. Sipping at his coffee, he wondered again whether the handle he'd made up on the spur of the moment, 'deadindian,' had been a mistake.

There was still activity all over the country, according to the Lone Gunmen (of which, perversely, there were three). People were being abducted, cloned, or killed, and apparently some of the people in the government knew about it. Damn Kincaid, anyway. Paul had reluctantly entrusted the young rebel with his friends' lives, as well as with destroying the alien menace. The kid had had ten years; why weren't the aliens all dead?

Dissections had always been part of the alien study of humans. Paul signed off and headed for the red light district.

**********

Zeke hated the bus, but when you're working for the Devil and he hands you a ticket, you go get on the damn bus. When he got off the bus in San Francisco, just outside the bus station he saw the Devil walking away from him, not looking at him. He sighed. It would be so much easier if Lucifer would just tell him where he wanted him to go, but there seemed to be some kind of prohibition against it that even the Devil wouldn't break. Oh, he made it sound as if it was his own decision, but if that were so, why did he drop any clues at all? And since he did drop clues, why did he usually make them so obscure, unless he wasn't supposed to be dropping them? So, resigned to trying to figure out the mental processes of a near-deity who had never been remotely human, Zeke turned in the direction the Devil had been going.

He walked for nearly an hour, until he came upon a taped-off crime scene. Behind the tape, reporters and cameras crowded together with the merely curious. On the other side, a forensic team worked under the supervision of a detective. Everyone looked a little green around the gills, and their rubber gloves were covered with blood and gore. Zeke watched until he noticed a slender dark figure detach itself from the shadows on the other side of the crowd and slip past the crime scene tape otherwise unnoticed. That would be his quarry, he guessed, but he wondered why he would be returning to the scene of the crime.

**********

Going past the carved Halloween pumpkin on the doorstep and through the open door, Paul kept his hands in his pockets until he got to one of the forensics techs, where he asked for a pair of gloves. His fingerprints were on file with the Army; he didn't need to leave any here and have someone suspecting that he wasn't really dead, let alone the killer. Thus armed, he walked through the scene, looking for any indication this had been done by aliens.

The kitchen had been the actual scene, the perpetrator's operating theater. The corpse was gone, but there was a lot of blood. "She was still alive when he did it," a softly husky voice said.

"How can you tell?" Paul asked, allowing disgust to color his voice. He looked over his shoulder at the cop, who was about the same height as himself, but with sandy hair and an unshaven face. Who did this guy think he was, Don Johnson? No, the clothes weren't nice enough.

"Blood spatter pattern," the cop explained, pointing with one gloved hand. "It never looks quite like this unless it was still under pressure. Zeke Stone," he introduced himself.

"Paul WhiteCloud," Paul told him, shaking hands. It wasn't exactly a lie. It was his mother's maiden name, and his tribe had traditionally traced descent through the female line, until the coming of the white man. "Just one killer?"

"You think there were more?"

"Maybe. If she were awake, she would have struggled. If there was just one, wouldn't there be more damage to the house?" Paul asked. He threaded his way through the forensic people, each of whom seemed to have a different task, and looked more closely into the open refrigerator. There was something bright green in a glass bowl. Why would she have alien blood in her fridge?

Zeke watched as the Indian picked up a bowl from the top shelf of the refrigerator then seemed to realize it contained only Jello and put it back. He wondered what WhiteCloud had thought it was. He honestly didn't seem to know who had killed the woman. In fact he seemed to be seeing the house for the first time, which if true meant that he hadn't killed her. But he definitely wasn't a cop. "How many do you think there were?"

"If - and it's a big if - If it was the ones I've been hunting, there were probably three."

Zeke watched him a second longer, then jerked his head toward the doorway. "Let's go outside to talk for a minute, give these guys room to work," he suggested.

WhiteCloud looked at him suspiciously, then agreed and led the way out the back door. Zeke snagged a set of car keys from the counter on the way. In the back yard, he confronted the Indian. "You're not really a cop," he challenged, one hand on his gun. "What's your real name?"

"If you're a cop, why haven't you arrested me, if you don't think I'm one?" WhiteCloud challenged in turn.

The two men stared at each other. "Okay," Zeke said, figuring it wouldn't hurt to be reasonably honest. "I used to be a cop. Now I'm a bounty hunter. The guy or guys who did this may be among those I'm hunting. Now you."

Paul looked at the other man. He wasn't being wholly honest, but he sensed no malice in him. "Paul Ironhorse," he re-introduced himself. "I was part of a government anti-terrorist team. Our Pentagon contact disappeared and our team was attacked. I got separated; I don't know if any of the others are alive. I have made other contacts, unofficial ones. And the terrorists we were fighting have been known to kill this way."

Zeke nodded slowly. "Then the next logical move is to team up."

Paul nodded to the rabbit's foot fob hanging on the key chain. "You have a car? I'm afoot."

Zeke looked at the keys in his hand. "Not mine. It's borrowed, so keep it clean."

"Then I suggest we start at her workplace. Maybe some of her co-workers will be able to give us a lead," Paul suggested.

**********

The strip club where Sabrina Woods had danced, The Kitty Korner, was one of the more upscale clubs in the rundown part of town where such businesses flourished. Once there, while Zeke ignored the stripper on the runway at the time, Paul stared at the beautiful young blonde, afraid for a moment that he knew her. But she looked back at him with no recognition, and after a moment he gratefully realized she was too young to be Debi, who would be 24 now.

When Zeke realized Paul wasn't with him, he went back to tug at the fatigue shirt that the other man wore as a jacket. "Hey, c'mon. What's wrong, you never saw a naked woman before?"

Paul scowled at him and followed, saying, "I thought for a moment I knew her," allowing Zeke to assume he and the woman who resembled the stripper had been lovers.

They went into the back to the girls' dressing room, and Zeke gained them access by using his police ID.

The women had not yet been notified of their friend's death and some of them took it hard. One of them who didn't show her grief called herself Jasmine Smith. Instead of being shocked and upset, Jasmine was angry. "If she wouldn't hang around with the sort of creeps she was seeing," she began, breaking off when one of the other women shushed her. "No, dammit, if he killed Sabrina, I'm gonna tell the cops!" she flared. She turned back to Paul and Zeke. "There's this guy," she said. "At first he was approaching the hookers who work the streets around here, but when a couple of them disappeared the others got real cautious-like, y'know? So he starts comin' into the clubs; some of them allow the girls to 'date' the customers. Usually the guy just wants to use one of the back rooms, but this guy wanted to go to the girl's home."

They got her to a sketch artist. Zeke frowned at Paul's reaction to the result. "You know him?"

"I believe his name is Malzor," Paul replied after a moment. "He's the leader of the terrorist group we were trying to stop."

"What else do you know about him?"

"Not much. He's intelligent, crafty, and in my opinion completely evil."

Zeke nodded. Ironhorse wasn't a target after all, but this Malzor was. Maybe the entire 'terrorist group' was made up of fugitives from Hell. "Ironhorse," he said intently, "when we find him, let me take him. You could get hurt."

Paul glared at him angrily. "Listen, Stone, I'm West Point trained. I was in Special Forces. I can take care of myself."

"You have no idea what you're dealing with," they told each other. They both stared. "You know," they said in unison again.

"Wait a minute, wait," Zeke protested. "What do you think you know?"

Paul hesitated. "It'll sound crazy," he warned.

"It can't possibly be as crazy as what I think I know about him," Zeke retorted. "You first."

Paul sighed. "You'll need a drink," he told Zeke. "Let's go get a beer somewhere."

**********

In the bar, the two men sat in a corner away from the majority of the patrons, sipping beers. Finally Zeke said, "I think it's time for you to tell me what you know, or what you think you know."

Paul still hesitated. Knowledge of the alien revival had been classified Need-to-Know. But if Stone was going to attack or try to capture Malzor, he needed to know. "The 'terrorists' aren't terrorists," he said. "They're aliens."

Zeke almost laughed, then he realized Ironhorse believed what he said; and the Indian didn't seem the sort that would go in for fantasy. "What makes you think so?" he asked.

"I've killed enough of them. They bleed green."

Zeke frowned. Why would the Devil send him chasing an alien? Unless ...

"Now it's your turn," Paul said. "What did you think he was?"

"Dead."

Paul felt his mouth twitch. "Sometimes that's not enough," he said softly. Before Zeke could respond, he caught sight of a middle-aged couple moving onto the dance floor. Paul sat up very straight. "That's one of them," he told Zeke. "That man. He's one of the ones who cloned me. She has no idea what kind of danger she's in." He slipped from their darkened booth and headed for the alien couple on the dance floor.

Bayla was not at all sure this experiment in behaving like humans was a good idea. Morthren did not touch this way except at mating, and certainly not in public. She was trying to keep Ardix at arm's length despite his attempt to pull her close in imitation of the human couples around them when she saw the two humans coming toward them. "Are there consequences for performing this ritual incorrectly?" she asked.

Ardix didn't hear her, too busy staring at Malzor, who was coming through the door.

Paul pulled Bayla away from the alien man who had assisted at his cloning, shielding her with his body, while Ardix attacked Malzor, screaming, "Traitor!" Malzor casually brushed him away.

Paul pulled one of his guns and shot Malzor, who fell to the floor in pain, but didn't die as Paul had expected.

As the other patrons of the bar scrambled out into the street, Malzor pulled one of the Morthren energy weapons and fired it at Paul.

Paul screamed in pain and fell, dragging Bayla down with him, but of course he didn't die. It burned like hell, though. On the floor beneath him, watching as he healed, Bayla gasped, "What are you?"

Zeke finally found a clear shot and fired twice, putting a bullet through each of Malzor's eyes. Bayla, Ardix, and Paul stared as Malzor was sucked screaming back to Hell. Of the three of them, only Paul knew where Malzor was going. He turned to look at the detective just as Zeke hissed in pain and grabbed at his right shoulder, pulling the collar away from his neck. There, a triangular tattoo with a circle near the top and three lines coming from the center boiled and evaporated from under his skin.

**********

"How many are there?" Paul asked after Zeke had explained about the tattoos.

"There are ninety-eight left," Zeke replied. He looked at the two aliens who sat staring from one to the other of the humans.

"Where - Where did you send him?" Bayla asked.

"Back to Hell, where he escaped from," Zeke told her.

Paul listened to Zeke's explanation in growing alarm. He wasn't sure he bought Ardix's description of the war or its end, but he bought Zeke's explanation of having been sent to capture the fugitives with only one question. "Is there no way for any of them to - to be able to not go back?"

"Not that I know of," Zeke told him. "Ironhorse, I have to send you back," he told him reluctantly. "Before I do, I'd like to hear your side of it."

"We cloned him," Ardix said when Paul hesitated. "Malzor ordered the clone to go to their headquarters and kill the others. Somehow the original escaped. We knew that at least the clone had died when the engram died, but we were unsurprised. It was a suicide mission."

"He had Debi," Paul said. "I couldn't get a clear shot." He closed his eyes. "I was weak. It was draining my strength."

Ardix confirmed it. "The clones we made derived their energy from the originals," he said.

"There was a bomb," Paul said. "I had to get Debi away from him, and the only way I could see to do it in time was to cut off his life-energy at the source." He looked at Zeke with misery in his eyes. "I put my gun under my chin and fired."

"Suicide," Zeke sighed.

"It wasn't like I wanted to die!" Paul protested. "I had a good life. I wanted to keep living it. But Debi - Debi was more important."

Zeke nodded. "Listen," he said. "I don't have any leeway; I have to try to send you back. But you're doing good work here, and I don't have to send you back right now. I'll leave you 'til last. If something happens to me, if one of them is better than I am, the Devil will have to replace me. I'll recommend you, Ironhorse. If he comes to you, drive a hard bargain."

"Until you come back to finish the job," Paul said slowly, "is there some way we can keep in touch? You got email or something?"

Zeke laughed and gave him Max's email address, then rose to go. "Gotta take back the car," he said with a little grin. "Ardix, Bayla, it's been ... interesting."

They watched until he stepped out the door of the bar, then Paul turned to the aliens. "The war is really over?" he asked. "Do you know what happened to my friends?"

"Mana may know," Ardix said. "She took over as leader when Debi killed Malzor. For a time she worked with the human scientists to repair the damage we had done to Earth."

"Wait, back up," Paul stammered. "Debi killed Malzor?"

"We will help you find them," Bayla promised.

**********

The Devil joined Zeke as he drove back to Sabrina Woods' empty house. "Why didn't you send Ironhorse back to me?" he demanded angrily.

"Oh, who's he hurting?" Zeke responded. "He can wait 'til last. Besides, if I should fail - which I'm not planning to do, mind you - he'd be a good choice to replace me. He should never have been in Hell in the first place."

"Sacrificing oneself to save another is no excuse," the Devil insisted. "He's mine, as he should be."

Zeke nodded. "If you say so. Say hi to Jesus for me."

The Devil looked at him in horror. "What?"

Zeke grinned. "He could have gotten down off that cross any time," he said. "How is sacrificing yourself for billions of people any different from sacrificing yourself for one frightened little girl?"

Without a word the Devil disappeared, leaving behind only a wisp of sulfur-scented smoke. Zeke grinned and resigned himself to hitchhiking back to LA. It was worth it to get a little jab in under the Devil's skin.

End.