Zephyr Box Set 2

by Warren Hately

  *

  LATER, I WILL recollect the glowing red pin-pricks of light reactivating about us. In the moment though it is nothing but sheer bloody panic as Negator and I are literally thrown into each other’s arms by the mad scramble of a collapsing universe – or that’s what the effect is like as a fresh portal opens beneath us, transporting us along with ol’ Shub-Niggurath to places unknown.

  Through the cataclysmic whirlwind one of the first things that starts making sense is the sound of small arms fire. The light seems to change, or perhaps just the angles within which the light operates. Up and down, left and right do much the same thing as the sense of a darkened veil being thrown over the world vanishes almost as soon as it manifests. Negator whirls away, disappearing within the rainforest of the Great Old One’s arms, and I flash fry several smaller tentacles that reach for me, more, I sense, out of its own sense of dislocation than any immediate menace – not that the outcome would be much different in either case.

  I backflip away from the monstrosity and light up a couple more pseudopods as I get a sense of our new bearings. Flying horizontally away and out of reach, I see the gigantic monster has rematerialized in another urbane setting, a huge and neglected Georgian-looking mansion.

  This one puts Gumbel’s place and even Twilight’s island to shame. On closer inspection, however, it looks like someone’s been cheating because the tennis courts, disused swimming pool, leaf-encrusted courtyards and a big gaping hole in one of the tile-roofed wings shows this isn’t a home, but a former school. I later learn it’s a derelict school for gifted students, or at least that’s what their mummies and daddies told them. Any excuse to pack their little darlings away in the most expensive babysitting known to man.

  The newly-transplanted alien leviathan at once does its best blitzkrieg attack through the middle of the grounds – while also paying little attention to the twenty-odd Mafia vehicles and about forty of Danica Azzurro’s employees.

  It is chaos at ground level. Blank-faced men in suits heft assault rifles and pistol grip shotguns with deleterious effects (mostly to themselves) as the hurricane god sweeps through tossing cars and men aside by sheer dint of its tumescent passage across the ground.

  Somehow, some of these Wop boys have time to aim my way, and tracer fire from a big DsHk mounted on a limousine roof (I kid you not) cackles like a mechanical bitch forcing me to swerve and dodge the enemy fire with yet more of my delusions of being a World War II fighter plane incarnate. I glimpse Negator doing much the same, but there’s no sign of Twilight.

  I am about to shout something to Negator when the grinding pitch of the creature’s thrumming ramps up about six notches. I throw my hands over my ears, dodging bullets be damned as most the men on the ground shriek like ghosts in Náströnd as their soft tissues explode and the ground goes crazily non-Euclidian for a moment as tremors ripple outwards from the monstrosity’s flailing base. The front of the huge manor house buckles inwards and one end is gone completely thanks to the passage of the summoned creature, the grounds like a war zone, like a natural disaster has passed through. Amid the wreckage are nattily-dressed corpses, many of them with burst heads and limbs so they look not so much like dead Mafiosos as carefully arranged mounds of ground sausage meat some landscape artist has patiently dressed in Armani and Hugo Boss.

  Negator comes right in close as we back away. Ultimately, the rampant god-creature will be our responsibility, but for now it is doing our job for us.

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?” Negator grins, unaware he has a vicious nosebleed.

  “But what about the friend of my enemy?” I yodel at him. “That’s still an enemy, right?”

  “I guess so,” he replies. “Where’s Twilight?”

  Right on cue there’s a splash of green fire inside the mansion that takes out a bank of windows. We exchange nods and drop from our momentary cover, flitting behind the towering behemoth’s back like we’re sneaking out from mother.

  Zephyr 17.14 “The Toecutter’s Daughter”

  IN THE DARKENED confines of the rotting mansion, Twilight grapples with two red-skinned demons as a third one hangs off his back, sawing at him with serrated limbs like giant lobster claws. I send a pulse into that one and it explodes, bright yellow goo painting the walls and roof before the main carapace liquidizes sizzling into the long-decaying carpet, just a further insult the old building has to endure.

  Several other molten organic puddles show Twilight’s been at this for a while, but before I can relax thinking he’s cleared a path, there’s a God almighty thunder of clicks and whistles behind my left shoulder and however fast I might be, I can’t beat Negator to the punch as he unloads with a sparkling blue blast that fells another one of Danica’s servitors like so much spare change.

  “This is bullshit,” I snipe. “Where is she?”

  My comment coincides with Twilight hurling one of his attackers out a broken window, allowing him to turn his main strength on the last, grabbing it by reptilian jaws and pulling them apart to the inevitable hissing shrieks such creatures make when unable to express distress any other way. There’s a sharp cracking noise and an eruption in white-hot gizzards from the science experiment of the thing’s ruined esophagus before Twilight dumps the whole thing on the carpet in disdain and steps over it like just another mess on the rug.

  “This way,” he says, every ounce the action hero.

  “Hey Twilight, what gives?” I snap in his wake. “I didn’t know practicing magic ran in the family?”

  Twilight stops. Eyes me a moment with a stranger’s look. Then a grim smile as he tilts his head in the direction we’re headed.

  “All shall be revealed. This way.”

  And he strides off through the next ruined archway.

  “How does he fucking know?” Negator whispers, dubious beside me.

  But I can only shrug and take the big lug’s lead and trust he’s either guided by some inimical inner force or making it up as he goes along just like the rest of us.

  *

  DANICA AWAITS US in the main ballroom like a refugee from the living storm outside.

  Clearly things are not going according to the plan, and I for one couldn’t be happier. Twilight on the other hand looks pissed beyond belief. Dangerously pissed. Homicidal, in fact. Negator trails us with a foreboding look as we scan the crazily-lit chamber.

  The Toecutter’s daughter stands in the middle of a big flaming seven-pointed star and I must confess, she looks pretty damned hot. I gotta say I’m getting tired of these freaking magic circles though. Trust Twilight to know these portals like the back of his hand (which would explain his recent entrance to the Flyaway instead of flying in from the roof entrance like regular folks).

  Also with Twilight’s cousin is a tall, sinewy man with a receding silver hairline and an expensive metallic-fiber suit. He wears his collar theatrically flared in the way of dime store magicians everywhere, but by the flash of recognition that crosses Twilight’s face I’m guessing we are facing off against the legendary black sheep of the family, “Plastic” Stan Vinci, rather than some wannabe Mandrake type.

  Why he’s dressed as a magician though is anyone’s guess.

  “Hello, cuz,” Danica says in a contextually inappropriate bawdy voice. “Good of you to drop by. Saved us the effort of hunting you down.”

  “I’ve come for payback,” Twilight says.

  “For you? Or your boyfriend?” She gives a laugh for some reason I want to describe as Christmassy.

  “What?”

  “I think she’s talking about me,” I tell him.

  Twilight scowls and stalks forward.

  The jig is up for Plastic Stan. Without so much as a word, he goes to leg it, but Twilight barely looks askance for me to know what’s required. I crouch, strike a cool pose, and Taser the prick before he’s taken six steps. Plastic Stan goes down like an aborted steer, spasming on the dusty ballroom floor like a reject from a solo jitterbug contest.

/>   Even in defeat, Danica Azzurro maintains her defiant beauty. Eyes flashing, she glares at each of us in turn as the pitch of the intergalactic monster raging outside reaches a crescendo, cars, men, the building in the finishing up stages of being torn to bits.

  “You haven’t seen the last of me, Dominic,” she hisses. “I’ve returned from the depths of the Abyss and I won’t rest until I’ve taken everything from you you hold dear.”

  The bitch includes me in that look. Talk about feminization. I’m still thinking to myself “Dominic?” as Danica shimmers, turning into a gas cloud and collapsing in on herself. For a split second she is the literal image of an unstable woman, and then the colored cloud she has become starts to dissipate.

  But I’ve been thinking about this.

  “Not so fucking fast, lady.”

  I snarl and fling out one hand, determined to govern the lesser-used realm of my powers, closing my eyes to abet concentration as I focus not on the sound of the destruction outside or the dust tickling my allergies or the taste of my too dry tongue, but instead the ever-present sensation of the room’s subtle barometry, the push-pull of air particles across my psionic field – and across which Danica Azzurro’s sorcerous particles now attempt to slink like a thief in the night.

  My open palm squeezes into a fist. With a simple gesture, I halt her escape as the winds about us bend to my will.

  “I need a vessel,” I say in a strained voice, ironically short of breath myself. “Something air-tight.”

  Twilight and Negator swap a look, but my spell-slinging companion can be quick off the mark when he wants to be. He vaults across the room, seizing on a forgotten but still intact metal vase.

  “Here.”

  It takes a mighty effort. No wonder I don’t do this sort of thing often, even if it would occur to me or even be required. By sense of intuition alone, I force the invisible air mass into the urn and Twilight squeezes the floral end shut, crimping it until absolutely satisfied. He then looks to me and relaxes at my nod.

  “I don’t think that went the way they planned it,” Negator says.

  “The fucking nightmare out there threw them for a loop,” I say uneasily. “Now what?”

  “Leave it to me,” Twilight says, putting the jar into my hands as he strides past. “Time to send that thing back to where it came from. She’s had her fun.”

  Twilight grabs an unconscious and wheezing Stan Vinci by his fashionable collar, and Plastic Stan comes to, struggling like the proverbial worm on a hook.

  “You too, Uncle Stan,” Twilight says humorlessly. “You wanna play with magic that bad, come have a look where it comes from.”

  The erstwhile Mob boss starts shrieking like a school girl, but the cries fade as they exit the ballroom for the disaster zone outside. Negator starts after the antihero and his burden like just another fanboy, but when I sag to the ground and slump back on my hands in exhaustion, at least Danny pauses to check I’m OK.

  “Go,” I say, shoo-ing him on. “Not every day you see a star-god banished. Have fun. Don’t talk to any strangers.”

  *

  I THINK I pass out for a while. All I know is it is still dark, but mercifully quiet, Twilight and Negator standing nearby just two more shadows in discussion in the pre-dawn stillness.

  “So what do you say?” I hear Twilight ask. “You’ll live like a rock star. A million a year. Most your expenses paid.”

  “I don’t want to kill people any more.”

  “I expect there’s plenty of meatheads who can kill people,” Twilight says calmly. “What you’ve got is a specialist skill set.”

  “Hang on,” I say, sitting up and trying to clear the crap from my mouth. “What the fuck is going on here?”

  “I’m offering Negator a job.”

  “Zephyr’s cool,” Negator says. “I’m not crossing him.”

  “And I’m not asking you to,” Twilight reassures him, though don’t ask me why he needs reassuring. Twilight adds, “He’s cool with me too. We go way back.”

  “And this isn’t the first time I’ve saved your bacon from the tender loving of some weird alien monstrosity,” I remind him. “And you still owe me, remember?”

  “The Matrioshka thing? I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Then what are you two talking about?”

  “Twilight’s offering me a job,” Negator says.

  “Yeah, I got that part. What happened to your uncle’s auto shop or whatever?”

  “Compared to . . . a million a year and living like a rock star?” Negator replies, black-eyed gaze impenetrable in the low light conditions. “Are you screwing with me, Zephyr? You know my life’s been in the toilet. I’ll take my chance. Thanks, Twilight.”

  I wipe drool from my chin and look to Twilight.

  “A chance to do what?”

  “You know nature abhors a vacuum,” he says and shrugs and gives that fey little self-assured grin of his that half the time I want to drive a bus into. “And it looks like my dear uncle’s criminal empire just lost its other uncle and its would-be usurper.”

  “Twilight,” I say and peer at him. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m thinking I should try my hand at this for a while. I’ve been looking for a new challenge. Something to give life a bit of meaning?”

  “You’re going to run a criminal empire to give your life meaning? I’m not sure what Camus would say,” I tell him.

  “Leave the existentialism to me, Zeph,” Twilight replies.

  He looks to Negator.

  “You in?”

  “Well, yeah,” the former villain says somewhat sheepishly, clearly uncomfortable now their little confab is under the spotlight. “Like I said, I don’t wanna kill no one.”

  “You’re already talking like a gangster,” I growl. “Well done.”

  Negator pales or at least I hope he does, while Twilight reclaims the crimped urn containing Danica Azzurro.

  “So what gives, Twilight?” I ask him. “I didn’t think the Toecutter had any heirs, hence the kingdom falling to you?”

  “He didn’t,” the big guy answers, voice mysterious with his face hidden by the half dark. “Or at least he’s not meant to. My cousin’s been dead ten years.”

  Zephyr 17.15 (Coda)

  OVER BURGERS, TWILIGHT explains Danica shared his interest in the dark arts when they were teenagers. Despite the taboo of it, they had been lovers, but things quickly soured when Twilight realized his cousin’s appetite for power.

  “It was the 60s, you know. We were all trying new things,” Twilight says.

  “Whoa. Hang on a minute,” I say. “The 60s?”

  “Jesus Zeph, how old do you think I am?”

  I can’t say anything to this, so Twilight chews a moment, then resumes his tale.

  “Danica took up with a guy called Grzz’zt or something like that,” he says, then adds needlessly, “That’s a demon name, you understand? She started fucking her way through the lower planes of what most people would call Hell, a bit like some kind of fucked up survivalist, shacking up with any otherworldly creature who could teach her the next spell, the next secret, the next trick. Things came to a head and . . . well, long story short, I thought she was dead.”

  “Long story short?” I prod him, wiping grease from my fingers on a clutch of paper napkins as we eye dawn traffic from our perch above the In-and-Out. “Sounds like a story worth spelling out at length.”

  “It’s not,” Twilight says adamantly.

  “You killed her, didn’t you?”

  “Well now you’ve gone and spoilt it all,” Twilight says tiredly. “People are gonna think I’m the bad guy.”

  “Jesus. You killed your own cousin?”

  “Apparently not,” he says drily. “Thank God! Mea culpa! The guilt, you know?”

  He gives another dry laugh, passes wind, and winks at me before crossing my unwitting personal boundaries to help himself to the serviettes.

  “So . . . how is she alive now?” Negat
or asks, spooking us because we’d forgotten he was even sitting there. So much for the homoerotic moment.

  “I’m gonna hazard a wild guess and say magic,” Twilight says.

  “Oh, yeah right,” Negator says thoughtfully. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “Occam’s Razor and all that.”

  I also nod, hoping it appears sagely. The dawn flowers beyond our concrete world, a tumescent glow that will within moments lighten and humanize the monoliths of the city. A flight of unidentified birds squawk past overhead in formation, their cries curiously echoed in the distant beeps of car horns, traffic picking up on the slow build towards rush hour on the I-98. Twilight shovels French fries into his gawping, comic book-inspired mug, grinning like a frat boy daring me to ask more questions, but my appetite for those mysteries is as suddenly departed as my hunger for the greasy food now broiling in the acidic cauldron of my guts. I look away, eyes finding a teenage girl hanging laundry in a cracked concrete courtyard a half-block distant, sagging shoulders somehow telling more about her life so far than I might get from an hour’s conversation, or at least that’s what I imagine.

  “You think it’s safe, at home?” I ask him.

  “I’ve got some cleaning up to do after her people ambushed me out there. Got some more hiring to do, too,” he says. “What do you say, Zephyr? You gonna keep me safe? Play bodyguard?”

  “I hated Mario Van Peebles in that flick,” I deflect him drily.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Twilight says in a sudden John Wayne drawl, like he’s really the one offering me a way out. “I can tell you’re sour about all this. I’ll shut down the Glow gangs, put the Mafia in line, get things back on track, and I’ll help you with your Matrioshka problem. Deal?”

  “You think you have some kind of way to find her?”

  “Magic, buddy. Magic,” Twilight says.

  And I nod and shake to the devil’s deal and Twilight grins back, pleased, stands, and we up, up and away.

  Zephyr 18.1 “Surgical Precision”