by Mark Tufo
I nodded.
“Of course you did. It is as if you seek them out, not the other way around.”
“We’re not getting any closer to the part about my dog.”
“Lunos asked about all the male children under the age of seven.”
“Pretty specific.”
“That’s what I thought, and I asked him as much.”
“Wait, you didn’t clear out with the rest of the refugees?”
“Sort of. I was safe. He said he would spare the town and its inhabitants if we would but bring to him the children.”
“Now, I get that Lycan don’t think like us, but how could he have ever thought those terms would be agreed to?”
“I don’t think he did.”
“So he threw out the carrot, knowing full well he was going to need the rod. That’s our Lunos.” Something niggled at the back of my mind, though I knew not what it was. At that point it could have been a brain aneurysm. It wasn’t until I actually laid eyes on all the little kids that the puny nugget of missing information dislodged from a darkened area within my brain and broke free into the light.
“He tore that Sheriff apart as a display of his power, then he lit the town on fire, or at least as much as he thought prudent before he began his hunt for us. The thing is, I think he already knew where we were. It was all theatrics; he wanted to put on a show. This was when the doomed battle inside the town started. It gave me enough time to leave and help the refugees.”
“Yeah...saw the results of that. Can you imagine if all of Xavier’s litter mates had survived? Each one worse than the next?”
“We set up camp along the banks of the lake. I’d hoped it was far enough away that he would not pursue. It was the only place that was even remotely defendable. We would not have lasted more than another hour had you not arrived when you did.”
“Well, I also have a flair for the dramatic, I suppose.” I flipped my hand back in a theatrical gesture. “I have not seen many children here.”
“There is an island in the middle of this lake. We had just got them all ashore there and were getting ready to move the rest of the populace out there. Never got the chance.”
“You had the supplies for an extended siege?”
Azile looked at me with a ‘What do you think?’ expression. “We were on the run with minimal notification. I had taken a few pages out of the Michael Talbot playbook.”
“You did alright for yourself.” I kissed her forehead. She’d recklessly endangered herself and the babies, but I was just thankful she was alright.
“We would have died here if not for you.” She closed her eyes, she was exhausted. I sat there another twenty minutes before Bailey poked her head in.
“Are you done?”
“Am I done what?”
“Doing what most couples do upon a long absence and subsequent reunion.”
“Sex you mean? You want to know if we just finished having sex? You didn’t know if we were or not, yet you did not knock.”
“I have seen your lily colored buttocks before.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Come, I think there is someone you are going to want to see on your world reunion tour.”
“Think I should get some t-shirts printed up? I’m hesitant to leave her alone. She seems so vulnerable like this.”
“I have two guards right outside this flap and one behind. She will be fine for a few minutes. You have already driven her into a deep slumber with your ramblings; perhaps you should let her get some rest.”
“You know, I threw BT out of my brother’s home when he got too mouthy.”
“As if you could have.”
“The women of my age were much more demure.”
“You forget I read about Tracy.” She helped me out of the tent and walked me down to the water’s edge.
I saw small rowboats, a dozen, at least, making their way to us. Figured this was the kids coming back; didn’t think much about it until I saw a very large dog standing at the bow of one of the lead boats. There was not a flicker of doubt in me about who that dog was. His bark echoed off the water and then he jumped in. I began to wade out after him. I was in up over my head by the time we met up. I wasn’t in danger so much from the deep water as I was by the constant tongue bathing from Oggie and the waves from his frantic paddling. I could hardly get a breath in lest I ran the risk of swallowing his tongue or the lake water. He finally rested his large paws on my shoulders and enjoyed the ride as I paddled us both back into the shallows.
“Obtain an enclosed location from which you can show your fondness in private!” Mathieu said from the shore.
“It’s ‘get a room,’” I told him.
“Oh, that does make more sense. It is good to see you, Oggie,” Mathieu said petting the large dog’s back. Oggie made sure to do a thorough shakedown, soaking Mathieu and anybody inside the area code with a pelting of water. Got to admit, it was nice to see my pup. With him, I didn’t have to explain why I’d gone, where I’d been, or how I’d come back. He was living for the moment, and right then we were together. That was all that mattered. He whined in delight, and would occasionally roll onto his back for a good tummy rub where he would push at my arms with his paws, sometimes biting at my hands when I wasn’t administering enough affection to him.
“I’ve been with less clingy women,” I told him. He barked his disdain back. So lost was I in the reunion with Oggie, I nearly missed what was all around me. Kids, dozens and dozens of little kids. It was a tow-headed little cherub that rattled some old memory loose within me, the golden ringlets that encircled his head a part of the memory. I recognized him, I just couldn’t figure out why. I avoided most kids like I avoided most teenage girls; they were a foreign species that basically scared the bejeezus out of me. It might have been the dour-faced woman claiming to be the boy’s mother that broke the memory free from its vine and allowed me to remember. The boy had been on his porch back when Tommy was first getting me involved in this whole Lycan shit-fest.
He’d waved maybe, and Tommy had said...what, exactly? That kid will be important someday. Was that it? And what did he know or suspect back then? Was it possible this was the very child Lunos was looking for? Dour-face picked up her son; she was looking right at me.
“I recognize you. You stay away from my son!”
She spat the words with such vehemence I was afraid that I had somehow ended up on the sex-offender registry. Then I got it. “You know something.” I said the words not even knowing what I meant. She backed up. “When Lunos came here looking for kids, you knew exactly what kid he was looking for.” I was moving closer, she was moving farther away.
“Step away mister.” A gangly man stepped between me and the woman. If this was the father I would have to rethink everything I knew about the commingling of genetics and just how lucky the boy was that he had been spared all of his parents’ DNA.
“What’s your name, son?” I completely ignored the man.
The boy did not sense the tension flowing freely from his parents at the moment.
“Don’t you answer him, hon,” Dour Face Deb said.
“Gabriel,” the boy said, his face lighting up as he spoke.
“Why wouldn’t it be. The Angel of Revelation.”
Gangly Man had moved closer; his breath reeked of rotten fish and turnips, and I’m not even sure what turnips smell like but I immediately disliked them anyway. He pressed the steel of a small knife into my side. Right between my fourth and fifth rib; he was not unfamiliar with the best way to kill a man.
“You leave us alone,” the man hissed.
“I have been through entirely too much shit in this life to be done in by a fish boning blade held by some yokel.”
“You wouldn’t be the first man I killed. I reckon you won’t be the last.”
A realization hit me. “That’s how you got the boy, isn’t it? I mean otherwise, you actually had to mate with that...female. I can’t imagine any penis, ev
en one as shriveled up and unwanted as yours, being able to stomach that kind of ride. Am I right?” I was pissing him off and I was alright with that. I had backed up. Oggie charged and bit deeply into the man’s leg. He turned his attention to the large dog only to end up with a massive fist to the side of the head as Mathieu punched him square in the temple, dropping him to the ground. Oggie released the man’s leg once he knew the assailant was unconscious. I bent down and pried the knife from his clenched fingers.
“You were going to stab me with a rusty blade? Fuck you, man.” I gave him a short stroke kick to the side. Not hard enough to break ribs, but enough he’d be sore for a couple of days. By now we had a much larger audience than I’d intended. “He had it coming! He was talking on his cell phone during the movie, crinkling candy wrappers; what did you expect me to do?” I asked those that were watching.
We were on a precarious precipice. I had a feeling no one was a huge fan of Gangly Man but he was a local, and that carried a certain weight within a closed community like this. An outsider taking it to one of their own was frowned upon. Bailey showed up with twelve or so soldiers; the disbursement happened almost immediately.
“How can you possibly turn allies so quickly against you?” she asked, directing a couple of her men to help a groggy Gangly up and over to a log seat where he could come to.
“He’s lucky he’s not dead. He stuck a damn knife in my side.”
“The question begs: why?”
“You can’t honestly be on his side.”
“I never said that, Michael. I am merely wondering why a man that obviously looks as if he works the earth for a living would want to bleed you out.”
“It’s the kid,” I said as I pointed to Dour Face Debbie and Gabriel. “That kid specifically is the one Lunos is looking for.”
“You are sure of that?” she asked.
“Even if I wasn’t convinced, it was Tommy that originally pointed him out to me. That’s as big a vote of confidence as I need.”
Bailey ordered a detail to stay with the small family. Dour Face looked like she was ready to spit venom, though she did keep her mouth shut. Gabriel, on the other hand, seemed to love all the added attention.
“I hate to do it, but we’re going to need Azile out here to confirm,” I said.
“She has just fought a battle and is about ready to give birth. I think she should be allowed some rest,” Bailey said.
“Naw. We’ll have her waddle out here, she does a little voodoo confirmation, and then she can waddle back to bed,” I said.
“You are indeed brave as long as you believe that she is away from you and aslumber,” Mathieu said.
“Is that not the case anymore?” I asked, not daring to turn back around and check.
“Oh, believe you me, I had to waddle over here. I’m just not sure if it was wise of you to point that out,” Azile said. “Mike, I take one small nap and you start an incident.”
“I found the kid Lunos was looking for,” I told her, happy to note we’d already moved past emphasizing the “waddle” comment.
“Just like that?”
“I had help from Tommy,” I told her. She was already moving closer to the boy. Dour Face was doing all in her power to shield the boy. He was having none of it.
“You’re the witch,” he said, not a hint of concern or fear in his voice. “My name is Gabriel.”
“That’s a beautiful name,” Azile said as she laboriously stooped to be at his level. “The boy, is he your son?” She looked up to Dour Face. Obviously, she’d made the same connection I had.
The woman’s lips pursed, giving her already unfortunate countenance a severely pinched look. “My good-for-nothing brother’s,” she said. “He stuck us with him almost five years ago and I haven’t seen him since.”
“Not a day goes by I’m sure the boy doesn’t appreciate the fact he’s with you,” I said sarcastically.
“Mike, do you mind?” Azile asked.
“I don’t, not really,” I told her. “Honesty is always the best policy. Unless, I mean, you’re dealing with women, then lying to cover your ass is the best assumed stance.”
“You’re dealing with a woman,” she sighed.
“I ain’t too particularly bright,” I told her.
“Could you please come over here?”
“I don’t want him anywhere near my nephew!” Dour Face yelled.
“It’s alright,” the boy said. Dour Face calmed down immediately when he laid a hand on her leg.
I might not be overly bright, like I said, but I know magic when I see it. That, or he just shot her up with a heavy dose of morphine. I was in for the latter, not so much the former. I had to step over Gangly’s outstretched feet to get to the boy. I got down next to Azile.
“Don’t be scared,” he told me.
“I was going to say the same thing to you,” I told him. He put his small hand out.
“I don’t think you’re going to like this.” He was peering into my eyes.
I grabbed his hand. I have no idea what the fuck I was thinking or why I did it. A surge of electricity made my entire body rigid as if I’d just shoved a fork into a 220-volt outlet. I was pretty sure I’d bit straight through my tongue and the pink chunk of flesh would be flopping around on the ground. I had the distinct impression I was being zipped through a tunnel of indeterminable length, though I was in another location in under a fraction of a second. Netherworld, underworld, alternate world...don’t know, don’t care. Ripped my hand free from him long before I could once again get stuck in a place with limited options for retrieval. I sat back hard, luckily on top of Gangly, who let out a largely exaggerated sigh as I forced the air from him. Gabriel thought that was one of the funniest things he had ever seen; his childish laughter filled my ears. As scared as I had been a millisecond before, I was instantly calmed.
“What the fuck just happened?”
“You tell me?” Azile asked, wondering.
“You don’t know? Touch his hand. Scratch that—don’t.” I put my hand out. “Do not touch his hand. Nobody should touch his hand.”
It was then she showed me that she’d had his other hand in hers the entire time.
“You’re kidding, right?”
She shook her head.
“You didn’t go for a ride on the Spiritual Express?”
She shook her head.
I looked from her to him. “Do you know where we went?” I asked him.
“You pierced the veil,” Gabriel said. “I stayed here and held the pretty lady’s hand.”
I didn’t know whether to approach him or go running off into the woods. “What does that mean ‘pierced the veil’?”
“So many worlds hidden by so very little.” The boy sounded wise by decades beyond his physical age. Calling him an Old Soul would not even begin to convey what I sensed from him.
“Are you of the earth?” Azile asked.
“I don’t know. Part of me, at least, is a six-year-old boy.”
“I’m officially freaking out right now. So the kid is a portal of some kind. Is that a safe assumption?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Okay, so how did Lunos hear about this and why would he want you? And more importantly, why was I the only one that went for a ride?”
Gabriel shrugged. For the first time since this little strange occurrence started, he very much looked like a six-year-old child. I had a feeling I was closer to six years old than whoever was driving his ship. I couldn’t help but feel bad for the kid; I was under the assumption he was an innocent caught up in much bigger events. Or what the hell do I know. Maybe he’d been planted here in this most benign of disguises and was actually a monster of unimaginable might that was going to tear down the very fabric of our reality then piss on us. That this was actually a possibility did not sit well within me, kind of like I’d eaten an okra and pâté glazed pop-tart. Yeah, that would sit like a stone in my gut. Shit. Now I have an upset stomach.
Dour Face was
moving closer, her fist was opening and closing; I’m thinking she was going to cold cock me and see how far she could get before someone stopped her.
“Listen, woman, if you hit me I will hit you back. We are not trying to hurt your charge.” I couldn’t bring myself to call him her nephew...I just didn’t want to saddle the poor kid with that. “There is a very dangerous, very smart Lycan out there who is extremely interested in Gabriel and until we can figure out why, he-and-you are in grave danger. And you and Gangly over there even more so because he cares naught for neither of you. You’re just an unpleasant impediment. I figure he’ll just feed you both to his werewolves and be done with it.”
“Mike!” Azile berated.
“What? It’s the truth.”
“Yes, perhaps it is, but there is no need to be so blunt.”
“Oh yeah? It wasn’t you she was planning on swinging those ham sized fists at. Put the damn things away,” I threatened her.
“What can he hope to gain by traveling to other realms?” Mathieu asked, studying the boy.
“Was I physically gone?”
“What?” Mathieu asked.
“When I touched him. Did I disappear?”
“No, not physically, but your eyes had immediately closed and you were unresponsive.”
“Do you know what happens, Gabriel?”
“I’m hungry,” he shrugged.
“Azile, I think it’s obvious what needs to be done,” I told her.
“Oh it is, is it? Why don’t you tell me, because even though it is soooooo obvious I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“We need to get this kid to a secure location and then I need to see where this leads.”
“Did you not, just less than five minutes ago, say you were not going to ever do that again?” Azile’s hands were on her hips.
“Yeah, but I thought I had disappeared. If that wasn’t the case then we need to figure out what Lunos needs him for.”
“There are other deaths besides physical,” Azile warned.
“Yeah, I’m thinking that’s not a problem for him,” Mathieu said.