“Are you serious? Like Tom Petty?”
“Sir, the talking…”
“Right,” I said, keeping the young private between me and the Midnight Riders. “Okay, Private Petty—I can’t believe that’s your real name—I’m going to destroy your marker. That means we won’t trigger your ride, which could keep you here for a lot longer than you should be. It’s kind of a jerk move, but I promise I’ll find a way to make it up to you, okay?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
The kid had no idea what he was agreeing to, and I certainly felt terrible doing it to him, but the Riders were a lot smarter than they looked, and I wouldn’t last five seconds without him.
“I’m sorry, kid,” I said, pulling up his tiny roadside cross and smashing it across my knee. “We’ll find you another way to the good place.”
Oh yeah, how you are going to do that?
I kicked aside the faded plastic flowers and shoved a splintered piece of the white cross wood into my pocket. In doing so, I remembered what else I’d shoved in my pocket just a few minutes ago.
There’s just enough left—I hope.
I looked up just in time to find one of the Riders had broken away from Private Petty and had me in his sights.
“Hey, nice blade,” I said, backing away with my hands up. “Stupid Yankees, right?”
I wasn’t sure which side of the war the Rider had been on, but I figured either way I had a shot at buying a second to dig into my pocket.
The Rider hesitated, giving me all the time I needed.
“Baseball needs a salary cap!” I shouted, throwing a fist full of sea salt at his face before making a break for the gate.
The sizzle of the salt didn’t last long, but it bought me a few seconds, and I used each one of them to run like hell.
The gate was close, only a few yards away, yet the wild yell behind me told me I really needed to lay off the cheese fries. “Can’t have a decent conversation about baseball without it becoming violent anymore.”
The black metal bars of the gate filled my vision, just a few more feet and I’d be safe on consecrated ground. I reached for cold metal, but my foot caught on an errant tree root and sent me sprawling like a circus clown.
Son of a…
I rolled over to find the Rider standing over me, his blade high. The sound of Private Petty’s fencing prowess was on full display back at what had been his Death Spot, and not here, where I desperately needed it.
I closed my eyes and covered my face, bracing myself for the end.
I’m sorry, Catherine.
The end didn’t come.
I opened my eyes to find the Midnight Rider standing over me, now the proud owner of a shadowy fist through the chest. Vile black tar poured into that fist as my Darkling absorbed the deserter like a shammy. Evil Gene didn’t stop until everything that had been the Rider was gone.
“Hola! Me llamo—” the Darkling coughed, clearing his throat—“oh, that’s much better. I felt like a broken record.”
Well that’s a terrible turn of events…
Deserter tar filled in his gaps like child’s putty, leveling the empty spots before turning them a fleshy pink. Evil Gene was not the blackened Spanish-speaking shadow he had been—he now resembled me in every way but one.
He looked cool—damnably cool—and I hated him all the more.
“Son of a gun, that feels so much better. Do you have any idea how annoying that was? Look at me talking to you about annoying when all you’ve ever done is annoyed the hell out of me,” Evil Gene said, flipping up the collar of his jacket.
The bastard even pops his collar.
I shuffled backward toward the gate, my fingers catching the cool metal.
“All that crap about not enjoying the new job: guilt, frustration, shame. What a pain in the neck.” My Darkling took a deep breath. “You smell that?”
“Uh…”
“Of course you don’t. You wouldn’t know freedom if it crawled up your backside and laid an egg, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Can’t you feel it in the air? Something is going down—something big. It’s like the last few minutes before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, seven minutes to midnight, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, all rolled into one.”
Clang! Pling! Clang! Pling!
Beyond my Darkling, Private Petty was still locked in a dual of epic proportions, but something else appeared on the road behind him—the peanut wagon had come back.
Please remember what to do, Maurice…
I turned my attention to the Darkling, hoping to buy us a little time. “What are you talking about?”
Evil Gene scoffed and pushed up his sleeves. “You always miss the details, Gene, always. There’s a static in the air, I can feel it. We’re nearing the main event, but don’t worry, I’ll make sure we come out on the winning side.”
“But what about the—”
“House? Gene, I am you,” the Darkling poked a finger at my chest, “but I’m also something far greater. Unlike you, I’ve put it all together, and that means I know what’s coming.”
You haven’t put everything together, buddy.
Ed’s truck crept up behind my shadow-self, with Maurice and the Viewmaster standing in the truck bed.
It’s time to end this stupidity. I’ve got a daughter to save.
I grabbed hold of the Darkling’s wrist and pulled him toward me. “Now, Maurice!”
8
Prussian Pause
Maurice held the toy to his face and reached for the handle. It all happened so fast. Before that Demon Hunter could pull down the lever, Evil Gene pushed me aside and spun around to face the peanut posse.
“Irritum Facit!” my Darkling shouted, unleashing a shockwave of Magick at the rusty pickup.
An unmaking!
The Viewmaster shattered in Maurice’s hands, sending him reeling and costing me my best chance of reassembly. To make matters worse, the leading edge of that Magickal wrecking ball ripped through Private Petty and the remaining Midnight Rider, snuffing out the young soldier like a match on a windy day. The combined cosmic power hit me like a boot between the eyes.
I crashed into the tall grass, my hands trying desperately to squeeze the pain from my head, but the Darkling didn’t waste a second. He drove a knee into my chest and pinned me to the ground.
“What… did you… do,” I choked out, my lungs squeezed beneath his bulk. “That was our best chance of reassembly. You… needed that as… much as I did.”
“Still missing the details, Gene,” he said, fishing car keys out of my pocket. “We don’t need Team Legume’s toys. Have you forgotten what’s sitting in storage?”
“Storage?”
With Private Petty up in smoke the remaining Midnight Rider had his opening. He let loose a wild yell and charged the two of us—that horrifying scream would be his last.
Evil Gene took his knee off me and caught the tar-covered monster by the throat, not flinching when the black blade pierced his side. “Not bad. Not bright, but not bad.”
The Darkling absorbed the Midnight Rider just like the one before him, leaving nothing but a dried husk that vanished in the evening air.
Evil Gene pulled me up by my shirt, while I struggled to get air back in my lungs. That jerk slapped my face a few times. “Come on. Keep it together, little brother. You did all this to Delia, or don’t you remember?”
“I didn’t—”
My Darkling cut me off. “Oh yes, you did. You can’t lie to me. I was there. You split the Sangre Reina in two like you were cutting open an apple. Sucks to be the apple doesn’t it?”
My mind reeled. I hadn’t thought of Delia since Miami, but the dark half of me was right, I had done this before.
“The Skeeter…”
The Darkling nodded. “Yeah, see, you remember. Now, do you remember what we have in storage?”
“The mirror…”
“Look at you.” Evil Gene cranked a hand down on my already sore shoulder. “Now you’re getting
it. It’s time for us to get that mirror and put an end to this.”
“But if you’re holding the mirror…” My mind reeled.
My Darkling only smiled.
The truck’s door creaked in the misty evening air.
“No one is going anywhere,” Ed Lovely said, dropping out of the pickup, machete in hand.
“Don’t, Ed. He’s too powerful. He’s absorbed both the Riders.”
Evil Gene dropped me on the ground and rolled his eyes before turning to face the Demon Hunter. “Good grief, how many of you Demon Hunting peanut people are there?”
My old roommate pushed off his bandana and let it fall on the ground behind him. “It’s just you and me now.”
Evil Gene took a few steps toward Ed, then stopped to sniff the air. “Nice try, Lovely, but you can’t cheat a cheater. Facite!”
There was a surge of Magick followed by the explosive crack of gunfire.
“Donnie,” Ed cried, turning back to the truck.
“I fixed your math. Now, it’s just you and me.”
“What have you done to him?”
Evil Gene shrugged his shoulders. “I haven’t done anything to him. He really should consider taking a class on firearm safety. Never point a gun at something you don’t intend to shoot.”
My old roommate hesitated. My Darkling had Ed exactly where he wanted him—unsure.
“Listen, Lovely, you do your thing and I’ll do mine. I’m going to get on that bike,” Evil Gene pointed at the tar-covered chopper laying on the side of the road, “then I’m going to get my car and take this Gene with me. I need him around until our reconciliation is final.”
Ed held his machete out and advanced toward the Darkling. “I can’t let you do that.”
My black-souled doppelgänger slapped his forehead. “You can, it’s easy. You get back in your car before Donnie there bleeds out in your front seat, and you take him to the hospital. I’m thinking he has about twenty minutes before he’s pushing up daisies—nearest hospital is at least that far away. You better hurry.”
“Donnie?”
No response.
“Go, Ed! Just go,” I cried, finding my voice again. “You can’t beat him.”
My old roommate tried to keep his eyes on the Darkling, but risked a glance back at the truck. “Donnie, are you okay?”
The complete lack of response from inside the truck told me he wasn’t.
Evil Gene seized the opportunity, closing the distance in a flash and slashing hard with an oily black saber that appeared in his hand.
“Look out!”
The Demon Hunter whirled around just in time to parry a killing blow from my evil half.
Clang!
Not deterred, Evil Gene swung again, this time aiming for Ed’s jean-covered legs. The wiry old salt jumped backwards and cut down with his own blade, narrowly missing the Darkling’s over-extended arm.
I was too busy watching the sword fight to notice my old roommate’s son sneaking up behind me in the tall grass. I didn’t see him until he was practically on top of me.
“Gene,” Little Ed whispered. “We’ve got a plan. Give me your hand.”
“Huh?”
Ed’s son produced a porcelain bowl, ornate and painted with a wreath of expertly designed flowers. Magick pulsed inside that bowl, a deep and earthy power from a forgotten age that frankly scared the hell out of me. “That’s a Prussian Wedding Bowl. How the hell did you get your hands on one of those?”
“I don’t have time for the whole story,” the youngest Demon Hunter said as he poured a clear liquid into the ornate bowl. “Just give me your hand.”
I hesitated. Prussian Wedding Bowls had a history. There were only so many of them left, and pretty much all of them were cursed in one way or another. The exact nature of the curses were different, but the end results were roughly the same: uniformly bad. Still, there were a few bowls that remained that didn’t carry a terrible power, but even then they were more than terrifying enough to give me the willies, and that was when I had my Magick.
“What are you going to do?”
The sounds of steel on steel played out behind me, and I turned back to find the older Ed rapidly running out of steam.
“Do you trust us?” Little Ed asked, his voice calm and controlled.
“Do I have a choice?”
The younger version of my oldest friend shook his head. “Not really.”
I pushed my hand into the bowl and the icy cold water inside it. “Didn’t think so.”
Magick surged through me. It was like the time I’d tried to re-wire the kitchen and woke up twitching on the tile floor—except this time no one was going to call 911. My gut instinct was to yank my hand out, but it wouldn’t budge—in fact no part of my body was willing to move. I was frozen stiff, along with my doppelgänger.
Even with his back to me I could tell Evil Gene was fighting the Prussian Wedding Bowl, and I would have loved to have told that to the Eds, but my lips weren’t having anything to do with moving.
“Nice work, son.” The elder peanut vendor tried to catch his breath. “Hold him still while I check on Donnie.”
“I’m trying, Dad, but he’s strong.”
“Just keep the other one’s hand in it.”
Evil Gene’s Magick trickled through me like that oily sheen on the surface of a dirty pool. He was probing at the bowl, trying to find a weakness. He should have known better. Prussian Wedding Bowls were Deep Magick, and their long-dead creator had known what they were doing, meaning it was going to be tough to find a flaw in that expert design.
Unless it has a crack.
The moment I thought those words, Evil Gene’s Magick shifted. We were connected, him and I, and like an idiot I’d just reminded him what to look for.
Damn it.
The older Ed reappeared with a bloody Donnie. The younger Demon Hunter sported a bandana tightly wrapped around his leg.
“He’s bleeding bad. That evil thing wasn’t lying. We’ve got to go.”
“Dad…”
A hairline crack spread under my submerged fingers.
“What?”
“The bowl is dripping.”
I couldn’t see it, but the patter of droplets on the ground below was a dead giveaway.
“You know what you have to do,” Ed said, pointing Donnie back to the truck.
“Dad, you can’t be serious! He’s your friend.”
“He was my friend, but now I don’t know what he is. That isn’t Eugene Law, at least not the Eugene Law I remember.”
Like hell I’m not. Damn it, Ed. I’m still me!
The cool night air brushed the back of my hand. The water was receding, and as it did, my muscles stirred.
“I don’t… I don’t know if I can,” the younger Ed said, his hand retrieving a ruby red bottle from his jacket pocket.
Hold on a second now, guys. It’s me, it’s Eugene. I’m sure we can find a way to make all of this work.
“Damn it, son. Donnie’s not going to make it if we don’t get moving now. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it has to be done. Pour the vinegar in and stop his heart.”
Wait, what?!
9
Black Hearts and Red Blood
Little Ed held the dark bottle above the Prussian Wedding Bowl. Below that basin, a much wider crack dumped freezing-cold water on the tall grass at an alarming rate.
I could turn my head, but wasn’t expecting what greeted me.
Black tar crawled its way up my old roommate’s arm, dripping from his hand and onto Donnie’s make-shift bandana tourniquet.
I struggled to speak, my mouth still fighting the bowl’s power. “He’s not…”
“Don’t listen to him, son. He’s evil, and he needs to be killed. It’s what we do.”
Little Ed hesitated, his baby-face hovering above mine. “That’s not what we do.”
“Stop arguing with me, damn it. Donnie’s not going to survive much longer if we don’t do some
thing. Pour the vinegar before it escapes!”
“Don’t… do… it… tar…” I moved my eyes like a bouncing ball trying to get Little Ed’s attention. He uncorked the bottle and hit me with the scent of soured balsamic vinegar.
“Do it now, son. The Darkling is starting to stir!”
The tar-stained peanut vendor was right. Evil Gene twitched once, then again. His body was beginning to break free of the Prussian Wedding Bowl—in seconds that monster would regain control.
The first drops of vinegar hit the water and a wave of terrible cold washed over me.
“Do it. Pour the whole thing in, damn it. You’re wasting time. He’s got to die!”
It was hard to see my friend anymore, but that’s what the tar of the Eternal Shame did—it compromised its victims. It took their darkest instincts and amplified them. Sure, Ed would have wanted the Darkling gone, but the Ed Lovely I knew would never willingly sacrifice another human being. It would have gone against everything he stood for. The real question was whether his son would figure that out in time.
Little Ed pulled back on the bottle. “No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“I mean this is wrong and you know it. We don’t kill people. We don’t do this.”
The senior Ed fumed, his face turning red and the black tar on his arm expanding like the swelling tide. “I’ll show you what we do.”
“Let me go…” I said, my voice barely able to rise above a whisper.
“What?”
“He’s got the tar on him, and so does Donnie. They aren’t your family now—you’ve got to let me go.”
“What about the Darkling?”
I turned my face toward the cemetery gates. “We just need to get under that gate.”
“But what about my dad?”
“What about me?” the senior Lovely said, wrestling the vinegar from his son’s hand.
“Dad, don’t!”
The Eternal Shame swirled along the elder man’s arm. It moved fast, consuming my friend like an oily plague. “You’ll understand one day.” Ed held the bottle above the ornate basin and turned it over.
“No,” his son cried, yanking the bowl away before the deluge of heart-stopping vinegar could reach the surface. He slammed that cursed bucket against his father’s knee. Ed buckled, and the fragile Prussian Wedding Bowl shattered.
Beaten Path Page 5