Last Call

by Lloyd Behm II

  “Lou, good to see you again. I’ve got a table for you in the back,” the woman said.

  “Good to see you, Rachel,” Lou said, turning to me. “Diindiisi, this is Rachel Lee-Evens. She owns the Howlin’ Coyote.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said simply.

  Lou turned back to Ms. Lee-Evens. “Is Ryan here yet?”

  “No, not yet. He called to say he’s running a bit late and asked that you wait. He said he’d cover your bar tab,” Rachel replied.

  Fred grinned evilly.

  “I don’t think he was aware you’d be bringing…those people with you, though,” she said.

  “No worries. Those people,” Fred said, “pay for their own drinks.”

  “Phew, what a stench!”

  Ms. Lee-Evens lost control for just a moment, her face going totally rat. “I’ll take care of that.”

  “No fucking wonder. Who let these short shits in here?”

  A figure bulled its way through the crowd.

  “Jameson, they’re with Lou,” Lee-Smith said, stepping in front of the approaching therianthrope.

  “Fuck him, too, polluting our space with…holy fucking shit! Hunters! Lou Garrett brought fucking Hunters in here?” Jameson roared.

  Lou walked over and slapped Jameson.

  Jesse and I have been watching many movies—he says it is to help me understand modern culture, but almost all of the movies are older than he is. I think he just likes old movies, and I’m his excuse to watch them, but he’s big on a genre called ‘Westerns’ for some reason—none of which have a factual connection I can find with the 1870s I remember, other than a few names, but he says ‘Hollywood’ like that answers for a multitude of sins.

  Most of these movies have a scene where the good guy challenges the bad guy to a fight, usually by striking him—but the key thing is, the room goes silent. I’d never thought to see that happen, until Lou slapped Jameson.

  “I’m going to kill you, Garrett!” Jameson roared, kicking off his shoes and starting to transform.

  “HOLD!” a huge, bear-like man shuffled out of the crowd. He was wearing the robes of a druid.

  “This was a fucking set up,” Fred said sotto voce.

  “You think?” Lou replied.

  “Ryan, I’m going to kill him,” Jameson rumbled.

  “Challenge has been issued and accepted,” Ryan replied in a ritual tone. “Do you agree?”

  “Yesss…” Jameson hissed.

  Ryan turned to Lou. “Submission or death?”

  Lou took off his coat and hat and pulled on a pair of gloves. “I’d have preferred submission, but Jameson seems to be courting death, so to the death.”

  “Clear the pit,” Ryan intoned.

  Everyone moved off the dance floor; one of the bartenders spent a moment spreading sawdust on the floor. Lou entered from one side; Jameson circled and entered from the other. Ryan vaulted the rail between them and walked to the center of the space.

  “Challenge being issued and accepted, the rules are those of the jungle—there can be only one alpha predator!” he shouted.

  “This is such bullshit,” Dalma said. “Animals don’t usually fight to the death.”

  “Humans fuck up everything,” Fred said, a huge mug of beer in hand.

  “You’re not going to stop this?” Padgett asked me.

  “What was that Polish saying? Not my monkeys, not my circus,” I replied. “Ryan obviously set this challenge up for Lou. There has to be a reason for it. Lou knows what he is doing.”

  Jameson transformed into the middle form—wolfman. It gave him an upright stature, and the ability to use his hands as weapons. Lou stood there in human form.

  “Shit,” Fred said, taking a pull at his mug.

  “Is that bad?” Stephanie asked from his far side.

  “That’s beyond insulting in werewolf culture,” Fred replied. “Lou’s saying he doesn’t need to change form to beat Jameson’s ass into a bloody hole.”

  Jameson screamed and leaped, slashing at Lou. Lou wasn’t there when Jameson landed. He’d moved left and behind Jameson. Lou’s foot snapped out—you could hear Jameson’s leg break over the roar of the crowd. Lou kicked Jameson twice more before he fell, once on the thigh and once in the crotch. Jameson hit the ground in a ball around his abused groin. Lou, being a fan of putting the boot in when the guy he was fighting was down, kicked Jameson repeatedly, bouncing him off the low walls surrounding the Pit like a soccer ball.

  “He’s not giving him time to recover!” someone in the crowd protested.

  “Jameson wanted ‘Death.’ What did you expect?” Ryan roared back.

  It ended quickly. Lou must have been lining up the last shot—he kicked Jameson’s head, snapping it back and exposing Jameson’s throat. I missed the second snap kick to the throat, but everyone heard Jameson’s neck break.

  Lou stood in the Pit, drawing in shuddering breaths.

  “Is there anyone who wishes to challenge for leadership of the Pack?” Ryan said, vaulting onto the rail surrounding the dance floor/Pit.

  The crowd went silent, except for a small form collecting money.

  Lou vaulted lightly to the rail. “Idiots. Do you want the humans and others actively hunting us? I suspect we’ll find Jameson here has new implants…”

  POP!

  Lou jumped down, picked up Jameson’s now severed head, and jumped back to the rail in a swift motion.

  “This. Is this what you want? Thralldom in exchange for power? Know this,” he said, lifting the head to stare at the crowd through dead eyes, “in the end, the devil worshippers will kill those who take their gifts!”

  Lou jumped down from the rail and walked over to where I stood.

  “Sorry, Diindiisi. I didn’t know Jameson was going to do that,” he said, dropping Jameson’s head to the floor.

  “Who will handle the cleanup?” I asked.

  “Rachel will, why?”

  “Sola said something when he and I were speaking, after I was debriefed, about a new theory he has on the implants. I think he needs the bodies to verify his concept.”

  “Hmm…yes, that could be useful. Rachel, come here, please.”

  The wererat scurried over, her posture that of a prey animal before a predator.

  “Yes?”

  “Bag Jameson and send him to Sola Stellus at the QMG compound, with my compliments.”

  “Yes, Lou.”

  Ryan came over, standing just outside the empty space that surrounded us. “You ready to talk, Lou?”

  “If you are.”

  Ryan led us to an area on the far side of the dance floor. There was no one anywhere near it. Most of the other therianthropes and their hangers-on were doing everything they could to ignore us. We had become what Jesse called “someone else’s problem.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 5 – Jesse

  I’d thought we were going to work on getting me out of Limbo. Instead, after breakfast, we mowed the lawn. I say we, though I was the one doing the pushing. I’d always thought mowing the grass with a lawn mower without power to the wheels sucked. Billy introduced me to the concept of the push mower—a cage of twisted blades that worked because the idiot behind them was pushing.

  “Looks good,” Billy said, handing me a glass of tea.

  “I have to admit,” I said, after a healthy slug of tea, “the clatter of the blades is soothing, and it’s nice to see that you’ve actually accomplished something.”

  “Thanks for doing it,” he replied. “I’ve been talking to a couple of other Spirit guides I think I can trust. They’re willing to give us a hand trying to get you out of here.”

  I drank more tea. “Good. When do we start?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not going to be that easy.”

  “It never is,” I said, walking the lawnmower over to put it back in the garage. “Have I got time for a shower?”

  “Yeah, take all the time you need. They’re both doing a little research before comin
g over,” Billy said, taking the tea glass and walking into the house.

  I followed him inside.

  “I need to look over a couple of things,” Billy said, going into the living room.

  “Right, then, I’ll take a shower,” I said to his back.

  One thing I’ll say about the 1950s—they may not have had pulsating shower massage, but they had decent water pressure, since the guy who’d designed the first low-flow shower head hadn’t even been conceived yet. I took my time showering, giving Billy whatever time he needed to do what he was doing. I’m a great guy that way. Okay, so it was the first time since Iraq I’d had access to unlimited hot water.

  I tried not to cut my throat with a Gillette single-edge safety razor, and I managed not to donate a large quantity of blood, though I was glad Billy had shown me where the styptic pencils were.

  I was changing into a pair of slacks and an A-shirt—luckily, I’m in the one-size fits most category, as was Billy’s dad—when there was a knock at the door. I could hear a rumbling voice speaking what sounded like Latin, which wasn’t a good sign—my Latin was limited at best, and very modern Church Latin. The voice was speaking what sounded like the Latin of Julius Caesar.

  “Hi,” came from the doorway in a familiar, low, throaty voice.

  No fucking way…I thought, rushing from the bedroom to the front door.

  She was standing there in a beam of sunlight that was streaming in through a window—framed in the dust dancing on the light breeze.

  “Mel?”

  She turned.

  “Hi, Jesse. How have you been?” she asked.

  A “real” man would tell you he manned up and took the shade of his dead first wife in his arms. I guess I’m not a real man—I grabbed the back of a chair.

  “You ok?” Billy asked.

  “I guess.” I eased myself into the chair. “Next time warn me, ok?”

  “Quot antiquas uxores servientes quasi spritus ducibus habetis?”

  “Wait, that was Latin,” I said, taking a glass of water someone handed me.

  “Jesse, this is Iulius Gaius,” Mel said.

  I swear when she said it, I saw the I and heard the J. Frigging magic.

  “Iulius.” I offered him my hand.

  “Video vos sin armis,” Iulius said.

  “Something about no weapons?” I asked.

  “It takes a bit, but you should start to understand him soon,” Billy said. “Why don’t we move to the kitchen, where we can sit around the table and talk about what we’re going to have to do to get you out of here? Unless you two would like a moment?”

  He glanced at Mel and me.

  “Yes,” we both answered.

  “Iulius, let’s give them a minute.”

  “Etiam.”

  Mel and I waited until the others had moved to the kitchen.

  “Mel, what the fuck, over?” I asked when they were gone.

  “I’m dead. You should know, you drove the stake through my heart,” she said.

  “Damn, quia dura!” Iulius shouted from the kitchen.

  “He’s right, that was a bit harsh,” Mel said. “I was grateful when you released me, Jesse. I just…”

  “Didn’t expect to see your still-living husband short of the Trump of Woe?” I asked.

  “Something like that, yeah. How’s life treating you?”

  “Oh, you know, I’m travelling the planes, pissing off ancient gods, that kind of thing. I…I got married again, too,” I said.

  “Oddly enough, that was in the briefing papers,” Mel replied with a small smile.

  “Briefing papers?”

  “Limbo is run on efficient, modern lines,” she said, making a similar gesture to the one Billy used to pull a phone out of the nothingness. She came up with a laptop computer and a projector.

  “Oh, fuck no,” I said.

  “Oh, fuck yes,” she replied, with a truly evil grin. “Death and Limbo are no escape from Death by PowerPoint.”

  She turned and went into the kitchen, where a screen was waiting for her presentation. Someone had made more iced tea, and a pitcher sat on the table. I filled a glass and grabbed a seat. Mel set up the computer and projector. It was a bit disconcerting to see the power cables disappear into nothingness. I’m guessing even with serious application of divine magic, the electrical wires in a 1950s house weren’t up to the requirements of modern computers.

  Finally, she turned to the rest of us. Iulius had a bowl of corn chips at hand that he slid into the center of the table as I sat down.

  “If I were you, I’d dip in this,” Billy said, sliding a bowl of salsa across the table. “Iulius has strange tastes in ‘proper’ dips.”

  “How so?”

  “Garum,” Iulius said, sliding his bowl across the table.

  I dipped a chip, and then tasted the mysterious garum.

  “Okay,” I said. “Fish sauce. Admittedly that’s a bit saltier than Nouc cham, and I’m not quite sure it goes with Fritos, but otherwise, I’ve eaten worse.”

  Iulius gave me a big grin.

  “If you’re done showing how cosmopolitan you are? Thank you. From what we’ve been told—” Mel said, queuing up the first slide—a fuzzy picture of me with Jed beside me.

  “Shit, that long ago?” I asked, recognizing Eyelash in the background.

  “That long ago?” Mel asked.

  “Yeah, that picture’s almost a year old—Jed and I took out a couple of vampires in that club just before I went to San Marcos.”

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with that,” Billy said. “Mel looked it up on the internet, and it says the photo is from the Statesman.”

  “So whoever put this briefing together for y’all has access to the internet?”

  “Something like that, yes,” Mel said. “Those of us who have the knowledge to use the ’net can access it from here, so we can help recent arrivals who have no understanding of why they’re here.”

  “What does Iulius here use?” I asked, fascinated—the insight I was gaining alone might be worth the trip to Limbo.

  “Magic volumen,” that worthy replied, making the gesture and pulling out a scroll.

  I was starting to pick up words in Latin, at least I thought, while Iulius laid the scroll on the table. He used the bowl of chips to anchor one end, and the tea pitcher to hold the other.

  “Tange. Tange,” he said, gesturing with a hand to the scroll.

  “Iulius, are you sure that’s wise?” Mel and Billy both asked.

  “Brevis hic tactus non sit cause, quaestio esse. Quod magicae volumen ad Billy scriptor operator ut clipboard—ad hoc sumus in tutum zona,” Iulius replied.

  It was like watching some of dad’s old anime on videocassette—I grinned at the English loan words and wished for subtitles.

  “What happens when you leave here?” Billy asked. “I’m pretty sure the whole reason Apuulluunideeszu knows Jesse is here is because he touched my clipboard. Sorry, Jesse.”

  “Couldn’t be helped.” I shrugged. “Besides, if we can get me out of here, y’all don’t have to worry about it.”

  “Yes, but we want to get you out of here safely—turning you over to Apuulluunideeszu’s gentle ministrations is not what we’re going for,” Mel said.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 6 – Diindiisi

  “Sorry about that,” Ryan said as we sat down.

  The Howlin’ Coyote’s staff shoved several hastily cleared tables together after ejecting the patrons who were sitting there. Someone put up a silence spell as a band took the stage.

  “You could have warned me,” Lou said as a round of drinks appeared for everyone at the table.

  “If I’d warned you, Jameson’s group would have known. I’m being watched.”

  “Everyone’s being watched,” Fred said with a loud belch.

  I was watching the band—the drummer removed a cover from her drum set with a flourish. The bass drum read ‘Parade of Stimulants.’

  “I’ve hea
rd of them.” Dalma sighed. “Wanted to hear them at some point, but…”

  “It is a private meeting, hon,” I said.

  “I know,” she replied, flagging a waiter down. “Water.”

  “But there are drinks on the table,” the waiter replied.

  “I don’t see any water. I want bottled water, with the cap on it,” Dalma said.

  “You don’t trust us, human?” the waiter asked, sprouting hair and claws.

  Dalma laughed. “Puppy, please. I’ve killed scarier things than you. Hell, I get scarier things than you in my breakfast cereal,”

  In the silence of the waiter drawing a breath, there was a double click.

  “Dalma. You’ll pay for the table if you shoot him,” I said.

  “You’re no fun,” Dalma said, laying a cocked and locked 1911 on the table.

  The hair and claws retracted, and there was a smell of ammonia as the waiter withdrew.

  “Got to love apex predators who are cowards,” Dalma said.

  “You sure there’s no dwarf in your family tree?” Andre asked.

  “If you’re done terrorizing the wait staff and trying out pickup lines?” Lou asked with an arch look.

  Andre grinned at him.

  “Dwarfs,” Lou said, tossing his hands up and turning to Ryan. “Now, what’s the issue?”

  “Not an issue per se; more of a problem,” Ryan said. “Even with what happened in the park a couple of days ago and what happened earlier this morning, we’re still losing members of the pack to the implants.”

  “Yeah, we killed a couple of those idiots this morning,” Fred said. “By the way, Lou, are your therianthropes here getting a bit inbred?”

  Ryan started to puff up at the insult. Lou laughed, and Ryan deflated.

  “It’s possible. Alternatively, the wrong folks have been bitten. Why?”

  “Those idiots this morning. I don’t know what spell they were using, but they were standing around on slimy limestone wearing full scuba gear. When we showed up, they tried to transform,” Fred said.

  “Without removing the gear?” Ryan asked.

  “Yeah. I mean, I get doing the shredded clothes wolfman look,” Fred said. “It looks hot, if you’re into that kind of thing. I’m not, but I can see it. But there’s a hell of a difference between the tensile strength of denim and the nylon strapping used for dive gear.”