by N. P. Martin
Gerard and I were friends, but he obviously didn't remember that. It was very strange having to look at him and have him not recognize me at all. Normally we would have exchanged a bit of banter when I came into the pub. But as he didn't now know me anymore, all he saw was some scruffy dude whose eyes lingered a little too long on his precious daughter.
After giving my order to Gerard (not bothering with small talk because I knew he wouldn't respond) I looked around the pub for Leona and saw only a couple of old men at separate tables, betting pages spread out in front of them, eyes on the widescreen TV on the back wall watching the horse racing. When the drinks arrived, I gave Sinead a knowing look that I think freaked her out slightly as she didn't know whether to smile or be creeped out it seemed. Then I moved to the back of the pub and sat at one of the small tables there while I waited on Leona arriving. A few minutes later, Leona came striding through the doors of the pub like someone out of a Western movie entering a saloon, pausing for a second while her eyes scanned the place. Knowing Leona, she was scoping out the exits, just in case she had to get out quickly.
Did I mention Leona was an ex-soldier? Well, she was. An Army Ranger, highly trained and highly skilled as you'd expect. She was the toughest woman I knew. Had ever known. It was part of her appeal. Her toughness brought out the teenager in me, the one who used to fantasize about warrior women and their dark and dangerous sexuality. Leona was certainly one of those women (see kids, never give up on your dreams). Her boots clunked on the pub floor as she strode across it towards me, Sinead giving her a look of death that many women seemed to reserve for Leona. Her absolute confidence and impressive physical stature often made other women jealous and hostile. They hated her but wanted to be her at the same time.
“Creed,” she greeted me as she pushed her leather coat out behind her before sitting in the chair opposite. “What gives? This mine?” She lifted the orange juice and drank half of it in one go before slamming the glass on the table again.
"What gives?" I asked. "I thought you had information for me?"
“I do. Jesus, what’s wrong with you? You always this tetchy?”
“Tetchy?” I barely laughed and shook my head. “No. Things have just taken a turn for the worse, that’s all.”
Her blue eyes regarded me with a detached sort of interest. “Why, what’s happened?”
“You first.”
“I don’t have much.”
I tried to mask my disappointment by sipping my pint. “Tell me anyway.”
"Well, forensics came back on the girl's body," she began, looking towards the front door as if someone was going to come in and hear what she had to say. "The girl died from having her throat cut, which was obvious anyway . The symbols carved into her were all done before she died. We're still trying to match the symbols in the database but so far we've come up empty. As for DNA of the killer, there was none."
"It wouldn't matter, you wouldn't be able to match it to anyone. That's all you got?"
“Pretty much.”
“Jesus, you weren’t kidding when you said you didn’t have much.”
"We're still working on it, like I said. Brentwood isn't happy that the media have picked up on the story somehow and that they're stressing the ‘Satanic' elements of it. He thinks we have a leak somewhere. This isn't the first case were details have been leaked to the press."
“He ask about me?”
“I didn’t tell him about you. He’d only have you taken in for questioning.”
I nodded. “I know how he is. He interrogated me for two days straight a few years ago if you…I was going to say remember, but you obviously don’t.”
“No.”
“He doesn’t like me all that much, considers me a rogue element.”
Leona laughed. “Sounds like something he’d say. So what do you have?”
“More than I’d damn well like.”
“Okay,” Leona said, frowning.
"Turns out the spell I was hit with was powered by some very dark magick. The girl I found was a sacrifice to a Dimension Lord called Rloth. I haven't checked yet, but the symbols carved into the girl will most likely all point to Rloth in some way. The reason they were carved was not only to do with ritual magick. They were done to cause suffering to the girl before she died. Without suffering, a being like Rloth wouldn't accept the sacrifice."
“So this nutjob is making sacrifices to a Dimension Lord in return for, what? Power?”
"It would seem that way, and going by the power of the spell that was cast, he seems to be doing quite well. Makes me wonder what he has planned next."
Leona shook her head and took another sip from her orange juice. "Dimension Lords. Jesus. Sometimes I just can't fathom this universe. Things were easier when I lived as a Sleepwalker, and all that existed was normal shit. These days it's fucking magick and monsters and beings from other dimensions. My brain still struggles to process it sometimes."
"I know. But that's why the Sleepwalkers are kept in ignorance. It's easier that way."
“Can you imagine if the whole world woke up to the supernatural? What would happen?”
“The Sleeping Tiger would turn on the rest of us, that’s what. It’s happened before, a long time ago. Ancient Egypt. Why do you think the whole civilization crumbled? Then there was Rome…”
“That’s why Rome fell? I never knew.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know. Probably safer for your sanity that way.”
“What about yours?”
“My sanity?” I laughed. “My sanity crumbled a long time ago.” She probably thought I was joking. I wasn’t. Being a Mage, chasing and slinging magick for decades, that carry-on takes you to the brink of madness. Shit, it demands it.
“You don’t seem too bad,” Leona said, moving her fringe from her face.
I smiled. "Is that a compliment?"
“Fuck no.”
We both laughed, and for a moment, it felt like we knew each other again, which made me feel slightly better, glad that I had decided to meet her. “This is what it’s normally like between us, you know,” I said. “You enjoy jesting with me in your own barbed way.”
“I do, huh?” Her eyes focused on me a moment, her guard down for once. “You miss that?”
“You’ve no idea.”
"Well then, we need to reverse that curse you're under, don't we?"
“That might not be so easy.”
“Why?”
I explained to her the nature of the spell, the effect it was having on my soul, and about the demon I needed to summon to try and counter the dark magick whose influence I was under. “There’s a great likelihood that I could die at the hands of any demon I summon.”
"And that's the only way?"
"Yup." I took a large swallow of my pint like it was going to make things better. "But since I barely have three days before my soul departs, I have no choice but to risk it. It's either that or become a goddamn ghoul for the rest of my days."
“Shit,” she said.
“Yup.”
Her phone rang, and she answered it. “Yeah, got it. On my way now.” She sighed as she put her phone back in her pocket.
“Trouble?”
“Yeah, reports of some teenager running around Gadsden Park biting people in the neck.”
I rolled my eyes. “Newly turned vampire it sounds like.”
“We get them all the time. Fucking vamps, they’re like rats, I swear, the way they multiply.” She drank the rest of her orange juice and stood up to go. “Thanks for the drink, Creed.”
The thought of being alone after she left filled me dread and loneliness, so I stood up as well. "Fuck it, I'm coming with. Newly formed vamps are dangerous, like wild animals. You might need my help."
“This isn’t my first rodeo, you know,” she said, somewhat rhetorically. She knew I knew that.
“I could use the distraction.”
She nodded. “Alright. Let’s go catch us a stinking vampire then.”
>
As we got up and started to walk out of the pub, I saw Leona turn her head towards Sinead. Sinead was behind the bar cleaning glasses and smiling at me, until that is, her eyes went to Leona and her smile disappeared as they scowled at each other for a long second as if they were rivals in a game where I was the prize. Or they just didn’t like each other.
Flattering myself, I chose to believe the former as I left the pub.
13
Darkness Calling
GADSDEN PARK WAS across the river in Bankhurst. We took the Monaghan Bridge in Leona's SUV, her driving as aggressive and erratic as ever as she weaved in and out of traffic, cursing and gesticulating at other drivers for not getting out of her way. As usual, I gripped the handle above the door to stop myself from crashing into the dash or flying across into Leona's lap, which wouldn't have been the first time. "I've mentioned this to you more than once over the years," I said to her, raising my voice over the loud metal music pumping out of the car speakers. "Not that you listened before, but I'll get it out there now anyhow, just so you know. You maybe want to think about slowing down occasionally."
She gunned the SUV harder to overtake a truck as we came off the bridge as if to prove that she didn't care what I had to say about her driving. "I have advanced driving skills," she said. "I know what I'm doing. I've been driving since I was seven."
“That doesn’t make me feel any safer, but thanks for letting me know.”
“You already knew.”
"I did, but same answer as before."
A smile crossed her face as she barreled on down the expressway, still weaving in and out of traffic like she was playing some crazy video game. "The Army taught me to drive like this. I also grew up with four brothers who loved cars."
I knew all this already, as I did most things about her, but I was happy to let her talk as if I didn't know anything. Honestly, it was cool having her tell me things as if for the first time. Sure, the glee of hearing new information wasn't present, but I was enjoying the feeling of us getting to know one another again like we'd just met. It helped me take my mind off the impending doom on the horizon. "You still see your brothers?"
"Sure," she said, mercifully slowing down as she screeched off the expressway onto 20th Avenue before heading for the nearest park entrance in the distance. For some reason, it always seemed sunnier when you got to Bankhurst, partly because Freetown always seemed dark and dingy, and partly because Bankhurst was populated by relatively young buildings, most of them grand steel and glass structures that reflected the light onto the pristine streets. "Three of my brothers are still in the military, posted in Iraq. One of them is in a cemetery back home in West Virginia."
“I’m sorry.”
"You knew that already, right?"
I nodded. “I know you were close with your younger brother. Jessie, right?”
She looked at me surprised like she didn't expect me to know that. "Yeah, Jessie. It's been three years, and I still miss him every damn day."
Leona's younger brother Jessie was killed in Iraq while they were both on assignment together, part of a four-man reconnaissance team that was sent into the desert to try and find a suspected mountain hideout for terrorists. What they found instead, once they stepped inside the mountain cave system, was an old man who proceeded to pick off the team one by one. The old man, who Leona described to me as being like Yoda in a turban, was able to walk through walls, conjure fire in his hands and get inside the minds of the soldiers, forcing Jessie Lawson to shoot his Sergeant and best friend in the head before turning the gun on himself. The other member of Leona's team was lit up by a fireball hurled at him by the old man, who also tried to bring the cave roof down on top of Leona shortly after. Leona moved just in time and evaded the collapsing boulders, sprinting from the cave and making her way back to camp, distraught at her brother's untimely death, her mind reeling at the impossible abilities of the old man in the cave. There was just no way an ordinary human being could have done such feats, defying the laws of physics completely. She didn't want to believe it, but it could only have been…magick. There was no other word to describe the power wielded by the frail old man. Leona said as much in her debriefing, and that's when The Division stepped in, the secret government organization she came to work for shortly after.
The Division, and its leader, Brentwood, offered Leona a chance to do right by her brother. If she wasn’t able to prevent his death at the hands of someone with powers she didn’t understand, then she could at least prevent other deaths at the hands of people with powers she would hopefully come to understand. That’s why she stuck at the job and continued doing the dirty work that The Division demanded of her. She did it all for the brother that she couldn’t save as if saving others from similar fates would somehow alleviate her guilt over what happened in those caves. For despite everything, she blamed herself for what happened. Some would call that survivors guilt. Leona called it a reminder of her failure as a soldier. Either way, it was mostly what drove her, and also what made her such a formidable agent in the field. There was rage in her, and by the time you saw it, it would be too late. She would already be putting a bullet in you by then.
"It's not easy," I said. "I lost my whole family over thirty years ago, and I still think about them every day."
“Shit.” She looked shocked, possibly more so than the first time I told her. “That must have been hard.”
I smiled plaintively. “You could say that.”
Leona was silent for a moment as we passed by the Blackham City Historical Museum with its green copper roof and huge pillars along the front entrance. Then she said, “Wait, you said thirty years ago you lost your family. You only look thirty now.”
“I know,” I said. “The wonders of magick.”
“So what age are you then?”
“A gentleman never reveals his age.”
She shook her head at me. “So what, you’re immortal, is that it?”
"Not exactly, but I can stay in this body a long time if I want. I'm kinda under the gun for the next few days, though, so living a long and happy life is looking less and less likely at this point."
“You’ll find a way.”
I wished I had the same faith in myself as she seemed to have. “This is strange, you know.”
We had arrived at the park entrance. Leona steered the car through the main gates, taking note of the ambulance parked up near Cedar Lake. “What is?” she asked, as we passed the tennis courts.
“You being so…friendly towards me. I remember you being a lot more hostile when we first met. It took you a while to warm to me.”
“Who says I’ve warmed to you now?” She flashed me a wicked smile.
“I guess you were going through a lot when we first met, what with your brother and everything.”
“Probably,” she said, stopping the SUV behind a Park Police car. “Can we just focus on the job now, if that’s okay? Or do you need a hug first?”
“A hug would be real nice actually.”
She shook her head. “Let’s go.”
Smiling to myself, I jumped out of the SUV and followed Leona to the Park Police squad car where two uniforms were standing looking out of their depth. One of the uniforms, a middle-aged guy with a gut like an orangutan and the same color hair to match, came saddling towards us. "Sorry, but—"
Leona flashed her ID at him, shutting him up mid sentence. “Homeland Security,” she said. “You can go now.”
“What?” the park cop said. “We didn’t call you.”
“You didn’t have to,” Leona said.
The cop looked at me as if for an explanation. “Hey,” I said with a shrug. “Count yourself lucky the professionals are here.”
“Screw you,” the cop said. “We got it under control.”
“Oh really,” Leona said, pushing past him, throwing the other cop—a young guy with curly dark hair who looked like it was his first day on the job—a look that made him avert his gaze immediately. “I
don’t see the suspect in the back of your squad car, so that must mean he’s still out there hurting people.”
“Actually,” said the younger cop, almost apologetic for interrupting. “He’s down by the lake there, feeding on…someone’s dog.”
“A dog?” I said. “He hasn’t hurt anyone then?”
"Yeah, he has," the fat older cop said. "He's attacked three people so far. Luckily they all managed to get away. He took a chunk outta one, though. A jogger. She's in the back of that ambulance over there."
“So why haven’t you stopped him?” Leona asked.
“Because the kid’s a fucking animal, that’s why,” the older cop said. “I ain’t risking going near him. We don’t get paid enough, right?” He looked to his partner for confirmation, who just nodded weakly.
“You called anyone else?” Leona asked.
“Yeah, of course. Local precinct said they’d send someone out. That was a while ago.”
“Okay. Call back and tell them everything is fine. Also, get the fuck out of here and let us handle this.”
“You gotta a real attitude, lady, you know that?” the cop said, looking Leona up and down.
Leona stepped towards the cop, towering over him. “Are we going to have a problem here?”
The cop dropped his head slightly. “No problem.” He headed back to his squad car. “Come on, Jimmy. Let’s leave this to the professionals." He threw Leona another look before plopping his weight into the car and driving off.