by Bill Bennett
A car drove slowly into the servo. A silver BMW SUV with blackened windows. It didn’t stop at the pumps though, it drove across to the parking lot near the diner and pulled up in the shadows, engine running. No one got out.
Skyhawk turned and stared across at the vehicle. Lily quickly used the opportunity to sneak out of the car, and run across to the rest rooms, a small cinder-block building beside the diner. She walked into the Ladies and pulled out her phone. She didn’t have much battery left. She dialled Freddie but the call failed. No signal. Probably because she was inside a concrete toilet block, she figured. She’d have to call from outside. But first, she needed to use the bathroom.
There were cubicles down one side of the room, washbasins on the other, with strips of fluoros above a row of dirty and cracked mirrors. Lily walked into a cubicle, closed the door and used the toilet. She flushed, walked out and over to a basin. She washed her hands, looked at herself in the mirror. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her pale skin had a greenish hue from the lights. Her freckles were barely visible and her lips were bloodless.
She walked over to a pull-down paper-towel dispenser, and was about to dry her hands when she felt a sudden tingling in the fingers of her right hand. The stinging bees again. She quickly looked to the entrance, immediately on guard, her heart skittering. No one was coming, thank God. She spun around fast and looked at the line of cubicles. All the doors were closed, with the green VACANT sign showing. The room was empty.
She twirled her fingers. Another swarm of stinging bees rushed through her. She held up her hand like she’d done outside the cop station, like a Geiger counter, and panned it across the cubicles, but got no more bees. Her breathing was fast, shallow. Her skin prickled with a thin sweat. She turned abruptly and walked out. They were around somewhere, but where? She had to get out of here fast, and call Freddie.
As she left the washroom two figures stepped out from the shadows behind her, and jabbed a syringe into her neck.
Lily swung around.
The two bikers – the tiny one and the squat one – stood staring at her, the tiny one holding the empty syringe like a smoking gun. Lily felt the earth tip. She watched, with a strange detachment, as her phone fell from her hand, and dropped, tumbling through the air in ultra slow motion before smashing onto the concrete pathway. Then she noticed with fascination how the path was rushing up to her. I wonder if my head’s going to smash into the concrete like my phone, she thought.
And that was her last thought.
Kritta and Bess lifted Lily’s inert body onto a large roll of industrial sheet plastic, then they began to wrap her up. Bess trussed her with duct tape, like a spider a fly, then she stood back, looking with satisfaction at the tightly bound package. ‘You’d never guess there was a girl inside,’ she said to Kritta, and laughed like a dog yelping.
They picked her up and began to carry her back to where they’d hidden their bikes – behind some industrial dumpsters at the rear of the truck stop.
Kritta was delighted. It had taken a little longer than she’d expected, but if you were cold and pure in your resolve, then you’d eventually pull down your prey. Her victims were always weaker, and they always made at least one mistake. That’s all she ever needed. Now the only thing she had to do was arrange a handover with the Fallen Priest, and her work would be done. And hopefully the Grand Master would see fit to reward her with a promotion.
‘Put her down,’ Skyhawk said, walking up out of the shadows behind them, his large hunting knife gleaming in his hand. Kritta spun around and smiled, a chilling smile that anticipated the horror to come.
‘So you like knives, do you, boy?’ she asked, mockingly. She whipped out a double-edged blade that looked lethally sharp. She began to circle him.
Bess dumped Lily on the ground and joined her, both of them slowly encircling Skyhawk, sizing him up with simmering glee. Kritta suddenly lunged with her knife but Skyhawk sidestepped nimbly, slamming the butt of his blade hard into her wrist so that she dropped the knife. It skittered off into the dark. Swift as thought, Kritta pulled out another blade, furious.
Behind him Bess swung a vicious punch. Skyhawk swivelled and grabbed her arm before it connected, kicked her hard in her chest. She splayed backwards, gasping for breath. Kritta rushed in, her knife raised, about to plunge it into his neck, but Skyhawk turned and struck at her blade with his own, metal on metal, sparks flying, the sound ringing out harsh and cold, like two swordsmen of old.
Kritta parried then lunged hard. Skyhawk lashed out with his foot and kicked her back just as Bess rushed him from behind. She locked her thick arm around his neck and squeezed tight. Skyhawk couldn’t breathe. She leaned in, mouth opened wide, her sharpened teeth ready to tear open the pulsing artery in his neck. He reached behind and grabbed her, and with a sudden twist of his body he hurtled her over his head at Kritta as she came rushing back in. They both crashed onto the ground, the wind knocked out of them.
Kritta was back on her feet straight away and launched herself at Skyhawk, knife raised. She slashed him across his shoulder. He stifled a gasp as he manoeuvred around one of the dumpsters.
He didn’t see Bess until the last moment. She’d found a crowbar and was coming at him fast out of the dark. She swung with full force and he ducked, the crowbar grazing his hair. It lodged in the side of the industrial bin and Bess quickly tried to wrench it out. Skyhawk slammed his fist into the side of her head and she went down. Enraged, she screamed at Kritta, ‘Turn me!’
Kritta snapped her eyes shut, and with a quick spell she turned Bess into her pit-bull form. The massive dog sprung to its feet and growled, revealing huge jaws of green-yellow teeth. Skyhawk turned and faced the onrushing dog, holding his knife loosely, squatting like a tennis pro awaiting a serve, his eyes locked on the beast coming at him, drool whipping from its slavering jaws.
Kritta took out a throwing knife, and with a fluid flick of her wrist she hurled it at Skyhawk. It spun through the air, end over end, its lethal blade hissing like a snake about to strike.
Skyhawk quickly glanced into the bin beside him, spied a busted fender, grabbed it, and angled it so that when Kritta’s blade hit, it ricocheted off and struck the dog. The pit bull screeched and tumbled back, the knife lodged in its thigh.
Kritta screamed in rage and rushed Skyhawk with a knife in each hand. Her eyes were ablaze as she slashed at him like a mad harpy. Skyhawk ducked and dodged, using the fender as a shield and a weapon, swinging at her, but she was always too fast, swerving out of the way at the last moment. They circled and wheeled, Kritta’s knives like silver streaks cutting up the night. The tiny woman attacked him with a demented fury, as though she was quite prepared to die to kill him.
Skyhawk stepped back to avoid a slashing blade and tripped over the injured pit bull. He sprawled onto his back. Kritta was on him in a flash, her knee on his chest, raising her knife to plunge into his heart.
A shot, from behind.
A metallic CRACK as bullet struck blade.
The knife went cartwheeling off into the darkness. Kritta screeched and looked up as a very large black man stepped out of the dark, a silver handgun aimed at her head. He wore a loose-fitting suit and dark glasses.
‘Get out of here,’ he said in a calm, resonant voice.
Kritta teetered back. She had no more knives. Her pit bull was whimpering, her blade lodged in the dog’s hind leg. She looked over at the bundled package that contained Lily.
‘Touch her, you get a bullet through your heart,’ the black man said quietly.
‘You got no idea what you’re dealing with,’ Kritta spat, as she stepped back to her bike. She mounted the gleaming machine, kicking it into a raging roar. ‘You’re going to wish you stayed outta this,’ she screamed, over the ear-splitting noise. Then her bike screeched and wheeled out of the parking lot, leaving the wounded pit bull to follow, limping.
Skyhawk raced over to Lily, quickly peeled off the tape and unwrapped the plastic.
He looked down at her. Her eyes were closed, her skin was alabaster white. He was momentarily struck by her tranquil, elfin beauty. He put his hand on her chest, felt her heart. It was beating, but it was faint, and very slow. He touched her brow. She was deathly cold.
He carried her over to his car, opened the back door and placed her carefully on the rear seat. He shut the door and ran around to the driver’s side but then he stopped, and looked around. The black man was gone. So too the silver SUV.
He hopped in behind the wheel and gunned the Caddy out of the gas station, hitting the highway with a crunch of metal on tar. He turned east, the road ahead a straight ribbon across a flat desert plain, the last of the stars fading as the sky started to lighten with the coming dawn. He watched the speedo climb. He held the wheel tight and quietly prayed to his spirit world to help keep her alive.
Further down the highway, where the night was darker and the air colder, Kritta pulled up. She swung her bike around and waited for the injured Bess to catch her up. She watched the boy’s car speed away into the day’s first blush.
Who was he? Kritta wondered. And the black man with the sunglasses? Were they Cygnet? If they were, then they were of a very low order because they had no special powers.
Bess limped towards Kritta, leaving a glistening trail of blood on the tar behind her. She’d been wounded badly and she would need treatment. An injured familiar meant a deprivation of a part of her, and already Kritta was feeling weaker, a drain on her energetic core.
She nodded to the pillion seat and the dog jumped up. Kritta would keep her as a pit bull for a while – a wounded and bloodied Bess in her human guise attending a hospital’s trauma clinic would draw too much attention, perhaps even the cops. Better they go to a vet. A dogfight was simpler to explain.
Of more concern to her was that she’d failed to complete her mission. She would argue in her defence to the Hag that it was the woman they were really wanting – the girl had always been a bonus and could be picked up later. And after all, there was still time to get her before Unholy. But she knew that Baphomet wanted the two of them for the Fallen Priest, and the Golden Order’s upper echelon rarely listened to reason or argument if a task was not completed. She would have to bring them the girl.
As well though, Kritta hated failure. She hated to be beaten, to step back from a fight and allow her foe to simply ride off into the sunrise. It cheapened her. It made her feel smaller. It fuelled those demons that screamed deep within her. So getting the girl would be her sole mission, her fixation, her obsession, and she would convince the Hag that this was now her consuming passion. And perhaps then they would give her another chance and allow her to live.
She felt her phone start to vibrate. She shunted it to voicemail. She’d screen it later.
She watched the boy’s red tail-lights recede down the highway into a newly bled dawn. She would give them space, give them distance, and when they saw her next, it would be when they least expected it.
__________
Kritta’s voicemail greeting was just like her – short and aggressive: ‘Leave it!’
Kevin Johnstone left a message. ‘Hey, it’s me. KJ. From the market. It’s about Lily Lennox.’ He paused, as if deciding, then said, ‘If you’re still looking for her, I want to come help.’
He took the phone out of his navy-blue silk Yves St Laurent jacket, pushed his chair back from the wide mahogany desk, stood and turned to the large bay windows that looked out over the city’s stateliest park. Impatiently, he took the call. It was the Hag.
‘Yes?’
He was a tall imposing man with immaculately groomed silver hair, steel-grey eyes, and the unmistakable bearing of a leader. He looked down to the park. A young couple was picnicking under a large tree. They’d laid out a mat and were lying beside their hamper, kissing.
‘We don’t have the girl,’ the old woman rasped nervously. ‘What do you want us to do, Grand Master?’
‘I thought you had this under control,’ he said quietly. He didn’t need to shout. He instilled more fear with stillness and hush.
‘The police got to her first. And then a boy.’
‘What boy?’
‘I don’t know. An Indian. He’s taking her east.’
‘East . . .’ He went back to his desk, sat down and pulled up a map on his computer. Stared at it. ‘The woman has a brother in Santa Fe, doesn’t she?’
‘Yes, Hallowed One.’
‘Then that’s where they’ll be taking her.’
He quickly thought through the ramifications should they lose the girl. The Inner Sanctum wanted both mother and daughter. They would not be pleased if his quadrant failed to deliver. Within the hierarchical structure of the Golden Order, he would ultimately be held responsible.
He kept staring at the map, aware that the Hag was waiting on the other end of the phone. He let his silence do its damage. Finally, icily, he said, ‘Are you sure the priest has the woman?’
‘Yes, Grand Master. He has her.’
‘And the Inquisitor?’
The Hag paused. ‘She failed us. But she’s determined to track the girl down. She’s proven her worth in the past, so if you are in agreement, we should spare her this time and let her try. We have nothing to lose.’
He stared out the window at the young couple, still kissing. What wasted emotion, he thought.
‘All right, let the Inquisitor try and find the girl,’ he said. ‘If she’s unsuccessful, you know what to do.’
‘Yes, Hallowed One,’ the Hag replied. He detected a note of pleasure in her voice. He was sure she would enjoy meting out the Inquisitor’s punishment should she not deliver.
‘If I were you, Hag, I’d go help the Inquisitor, make sure you get this girl. Because if she fails, then you fail too. You know what that means, don’t you . . .’
There was silence on the end of the phone. Only rasping breathing. She knew what that meant. He terminated the call. There was a tentative knock on the door.
He turned. ‘Yes?’
His executive assistant, a pretty young woman in a tight-fitting suit, poked her head through the open door, gave him a concerned smile. ‘They’re waiting, sir.’
‘Thank you, Tammy,’ he said, and watched her leave, closing the door behind her.
He touched his long elegant fingertips together in perfect steepled symmetry. He looked down at the large hand-woven rug on the parquet floor, embroidered with the seal of the Justice Department. He swivelled in his high-backed red leather chair and saw that the couple were now on the ground, their bodies entwined. Animal passions, he thought. How primitive we all are at heart. Bestial. He smiled.
His name was Randolph Chapman Waterstone the Third, but his wife, Mary, called him ‘Chappy’. His children – David, now eighteen, and Alicia, twenty-two – just called him Dad. Those in his office, and around the state, knew him as the DA. But to a very select few, he was the Grand Master of the Northern Quadrant of the Golden Order of Baphomet. One of the most powerful witches on the planet.
If all else failed, he thought, he would call in the Twins. They were Baphomet’s most effective and feared assassins. Graduates magna cum laude of the Academy of Darken Angels, the teaching staff still talked about them in whispered awe. The Twins were a last resort though, because the Inner Sanctum wanted the double extraction. And that meant both woman and girl had to be alive. But if there was any chance the girl could escape, he would get the Twins to simply kill her, and the extraction on Unholy would proceed with just the mother. She was the prize catch after all. The girl was a bonus. A nice bonus, but killable.
Running. Gasping for breath. Searching. She was looking for something but she didn’t know what. She could hear the beast’s snorting breath behind her, charging down the stone corridor. Ahead was an iron-studded door. She knew that whatever she was looking for was behind that door. She raced up and grabbed the bronze latch, but it wouldn’t open. She tried again and again, frantically.
The beast
was getting closer. It had two heads: a goat’s head with long twirling horns and a boar’s head with razor-sharp tusks. As it thundered towards her, it lowered both heads to impale her. She could smell its putrid breath. She turned to face her inevitable death.
She woke.
Lily’s heart was thumping. She gasped for breath. She was lying spread-eagled on some kind of table in a darkened room. Moonlight streamed in through a gaping hole in the ceiling, and glinted off a gigantic crystal suspended above her chest.
Where am I? What have they done to me?
She tried to get up but her ankles and wrists were bound to the table. A drip was attached to one of her arms, its bag full of her blood. Suspended in the blood were thousands of tiny crystals, and on each heartbeat the crystals glowed bright as her blood circulated, before returning into her body through a tube in her neck.
What’s happening to me? Where the hell am I?
She looked around the room. It was bare, except for a clock on the wall that said 3:33. Underneath, there was a metal trolley containing medical instruments.
She looked up at the huge crystal hanging over her. It was shaped like a gigantic spinning top, with the base angled up to the moon and the tip hovering just over her chest. It seemed to be gathering the moonlight, magnifying its power and directing it into her heart.
What is going on here?
She started to panic. No. She had to take control of herself. She had to think. Figure out what was happening. The last thing she remembered was pulling into the truckstop in the middle of the night. And the boy. The Native American boy.
Was this his doing?
Had she foolishly fallen into his trap?
She pulled at her binds again, harder this time. She rattled the metal table-frame, but she was well and truly hog-tied. She slumped back, feeling dizzy. There was a cold breeze coming in from the open vent in the roof. Why was she imprisoned here like this? And what were they doing with her blood? Were they poisoning her? Changing her into something else?