by J. P. Rice
The door swung open and slammed into the wall with authority. The king entered in his signature purple robes embellished with golden thread. He focused on Alayna like she was a magnet. The three remaining wardens entered the room with a smaller figure between them.
As two of the warden’s lined up to flank the king, the figure was exposed. That fiery red hair had taken on a drab appearance. Her desperate eyes were glossy and bloodshot. Lips trembling. It was a shell of Burn’s former self. The fire was gone.
A spark lit up her eyes momentarily, and then quickly disappeared as she seemed to understand what I had done. I wanted to run over and give her a hug, until I realized she was staring at a monster. A monster delivering his mentor to death’s doorstep. She was a mother figure to me. She’d saved my life.
Who would be happy to see that monster? Burn didn’t know about the implant. She probably thought I was doing this on my own volition.
The king spoke in his screechy voice, “My, my, my. I thought this day would never come. I can hardly believe Montidore was telling the truth. He said he could deliver her to my doorstep, and hot damn, he was correct. I’ll gladly pay the price he set for this prize.”
Alayna’s staring burned holes in my soul. Her eyes were screaming, do something, don’t just stand there like a fucking doofus. She was blinking, sending the signal for me to meet her in our dream-like state. Unfortunately, her complaints only fell on deaf ears.
The Warden of the West asked, “What are we going to do with this one?” he gestured with his dagger at Burn.
The king’s eyes didn’t leave Alayna. “Kill her. Let her go back to earth with this guy. I don’t care. We have our prize.”
The Warden of the South cut the ropes around Burn’s hands and she ran over to me. I wanted to hug her, touch her, anything, but my body stood like a stone. Unmoving. She wrapped her arms around me and I pushed her away like a stranger.
“Leave the gag in, but take these bonds from her wrists and ankles and be gone,” the king announced.
Like a robot, I moved mechanically over to Alayna. I took the bungee cords off her and the king shoved me away.
“Primero. Scan this man with our disintegrator. If he tries to enter again, just hit him with the scepter to activate disintegration.” The king tapped his hairy chin. “Unless. Unless that is, he comes back with a tooth from Cerberus. He can die trying for that.” He laughed evilly.
Primero took a long golden scepter with a glass globe at the top. The colors of the rainbow swirled around inside the glass as Primero traced it over my entire body. He set the scepter down, opened the door to the entrance shack and the fuzzy portal appeared. The bouncer for Sleepy Willow pushed Burn, then me into the return portal.
As the pressure increased, I prayed that it would kill me. Put an end to this monster. Unfortunately, thirty seconds later, I stood in the green valley outside Pittsburgh.
Burn said, “What the hell is going on? Why did you deliver Alayna to the enemy?”
I didn’t answer her. Instead, I walked in silence toward my car. Burn followed me, bombarding me with sensible questions. Unaffected and still silent, I got in the car and turned it on. Wisely, Burn jumped in the passenger seat before I could take off.
We drove for about an hour and finally, the robotic, alien feeling of my body subsided. I was back in control. I explained everything to Burn. The implant, the vampire fiasco, Cyclone Woman and the sorcerers. I kept a few things secret.
Burn talked briefly about the conditions of her treatment. I didn’t want to pry too much, assuming most of it would be painful to recount.
I pulled up in front of my house. Checking my phone, it was 1:23 a.m. “There is one thing I haven’t told you about. I want you to have a nice surprise after all you’ve been through.”
The front door was still open and I wondered if Dante had taken off. I walked inside and started turning on the downstairs lights. Dante was nowhere to be seen. I’d left him alone for more than twelve hours. The vampires could have snagged him to leverage me into admission.
I ran up the steps and pushed open the door to my room. Sitting at the end of my bed reading an Iron Man comic was my little boy. “Hey Dante, there’s someone here you might want to say hi to.”
“Not interested,” he said casually, and didn’t look up from the book.
“Get up off your ass, right now,” I deepened my voice to let him know I meant business.
He set the comic down on the pillow and hopped off the bed. Reluctantly he followed me down the steps. As we entered the living room, Burn exclaimed, “Dante. What are you doing here?”
The little goblin smiled, ran across the room and hugged Burn. It was the most emotion I’d ever seen him show. She picked him up and he buried his face into her shoulder. “What is he doing here?” Burn asked me.
I told her the rest of the story about the implant and how they had been willing to kill Dante. The three of us had a bittersweet reunion as I tried to keep from thinking about Alayna.
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I snatched it out. Text message from Felix.
Felix to Mike-Somthings up. Need 2 go 2 fukutama house asap.
I looked at Burn, and said, “I need to go with Felix to finish this mission.”
Chapter 27
Felix pried open the door to Fukutama’s tree house. “It opened much easier than every other time. Be on alert.” He gestured for me to go first.
I paused and suggested, “You sure you don’t want to take the lead?”
“Nah, you go ahead.”
Little bitch. I entered the dark interior of the tree trunk and started up the ladder. My arms went numb quickly because I hadn’t had time to rest up after the exhausting trip to Japan.
I kept climbing in the dark and saw the tiny pinprick of light shining against the ladder. It was coming from the door to Fukutama’s house. I took a backwards step onto the platform in front of his door.
Felix had said he was worried because he couldn’t connect mentally with Fukutama. I leaned into the door with my right shoulder, turned the knob and pushed gently. Entering the room, I scanned left and right and couldn’t spy Fukutama or anyone else.
A shaft of golden sun poured in through one of the windows, lighting up most of the room. A hazy shadow darkened the area near the hammock and I moved across the small room to check it out. Nothing. Fukutama’s little mattress was unrolled and a sheet was tossed off to the side of it.
That mattress had never been unrolled on any of my previous visits. It had all the hallmarks of somebody snatching him in his sleep. “I don’t see him anywhere.”
“Me neither. What the fuck. I wanted to brag to him about filling the Goblet,” Felix complained.
That struck me as a strange thought to have when you’d just found out your mentor was missing. It caused me to think about my mentor, until I flushed those thoughts aside. I was a terrible person. No need to rehash it now.
As I looked around the room, I said, “I don’t see anything indicating a great struggle. Can you mind mesh with him to find out where he is?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do. It’s not working like it normally does.”
As I searched around the room for a clue, I found the long bamboo pipe sitting on a shelf on the wall. A red opaque antique snuff jar filled with Fukutama’s special herb sat next to the pipe. “Maybe you need to get into the zone,” I suggested, picking up the pipe.
Felix shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t hurt to try.”
I popped the cork on the snuff jar and poured some of the herb into the bowl piece. Calling on fire, I watched a tiny flame grow out of my index finger. I held it near the herb and gave Felix a thumbs up. He inhaled, drawing in the flame from my finger and lighting the herb.
Felix choked on the smoke, expelling a huge cloud and blanketing the small room. I tucked my nose into the collar of my shirt, although the smoke smelled nice and minty. Felix stopped his coughing fit and hit the cherried bowl a few more
times.
“All right. I think I’m ready,” he announced in a deep voice as he exhaled a tiny wisp of smoke.
Felix sat down in the center of the room, cross-legged. He wedged his right ankle on top of his left knee and looked satisfied. He stared straight ahead, and suddenly, his irises and pupils disappeared.
I waited with bated breath. His lips moved around but no words came from his mouth. The mage said, “I see him.”
“Where is he at?” I asked.
“I can’t tell. I haven’t meshed with him yet, but I see this image. He’s tied up. Someone is next to him. It’s a woman. Long dark hair. Oh shit. It’s Cyclone Woman.”
I suggested, “Ask him where they are. Does it look like the last house they were at?”
Felix waited a few moments, and said, “No. I’m trying to connect with him, but something is preventing us from talking. I assume the sorcerers got to him. I don’t see any of them, but he’s with Cyclone Woman.”
“I agree.”
Felix started to shake and twitch, and in a blink, his eyes returned to normal. “Holy shit. That was crazy. I’ve never done anything like that. He couldn’t see me. I was like hovering near the ceiling of the room. I couldn’t figure out where it was though.”
“What was the room like?” I needed to know.
Felix closed his eyes, and said, “It was a small room. Walls were painted white. No windows. There was a poster on the wall. A green demon with a bottle of alcohol. Nothing else but the multi-grain hardwood floor.”
“I think I might know who to ask about this. I have to warn you though, it might be the last time you see me. But I’ll set you up,” I promised him.
Felix cocked his head to the side and squinted. “What the hell are you talking about? You’ve been acting weird since I picked you up earlier. What’s going on?”
Maybe the Alayna thing was bothering me more than I’d realized. It was hard to act normal right after you had sold out one of the people you cared most about. “Nothing. It’s just in this business, you never know when your time might be up. Guess I’ve just been thinking about that a lot lately.”
“Well, stop.” Felix spoke as he turned and went for the door, “You sound crazy and you’re scaring me, bro. So when can I get that money for taking out Shuten dōji?”
Of course. Glenda hadn’t called me about her bonus yet. I liked Felix for the most part, but he could be frustrating sometimes. It made me wonder if he was really my friend or just a business associate, which was a scary proposition.
I had many business associates that wanted to kill me and vice versa. This crazy game made for some strange bedfellows. Devils, demons, vampires, shifters. Creatures I’d never expected to talk to, let alone carry on a business relationship with had become an integral part of my life and staying alive.
Many on that list wouldn’t think twice about stabbing me in the back if I turned around. I didn’t even delude myself into that line of thinking. But sometimes you didn’t have a choice. Felix was at the top of the list of people I could trust, but you never knew what could happen in this game.
“We can stop at the bank on the way back to my house and I’ll take care of you. Then I’ll talk to Blodeuwedd to find out where those sons a bitches are hiding out,” I told him.
Now we just needed to find out where the sorcerers were staying so that we could launch our attack.
Chapter 28
I rolled the golden whistle between my fingers and thumb as I waited nervously for Blodeuwedd to show up. Sitting on my low windowsill, I looked at the duffle bag full of cash sticking out of the skirt of my bed. I got up, took two steps and kicked it under the bed.
It was time to pay the piper. I had to turn myself in to the Gods and face punishment for what I’d done to Alayna. While I was at the bank with Felix, I had taken out a huge withdrawal to leave for Burn and Dante. Inside the bag, I’d also left a note for what could have been my new family.
I prepared for the worst, which seemed commonplace in my life right now.
The sound of beating wings caused my neck to jerk to the left. A beautiful owl flew in the window and landed on the edge of the sill. A little scroll wrapped with a red bow hung out of her mouth. She dropped the scroll on the ground and said, “I found an address for the sorcerers. You need to act quickly because they have been moving around every couple of days.”
I lowered my head. “About that. There’s something I need to tell you.”
Lifting my head, I saw that Blodeuwedd had started shifting into human form. An overwhelming, sweet flowery smell filled the room. The owl’s feathers disappeared, and the bird grew drastically in size. The shape formed into a female figure with her signature pavonine cloak covering her milky skin.
Beautiful flowers were woven into her hair and covered her natural blond locks completely. It looked like a rainbow cascading over her as she looked around my room. The red pansies and orange snapdragons blended perfectly with her feathered cloak.
“What is it, sweet child?” she asked, reaching out and touching the side of my face with a chilly palm.
I hated being called child, but coming from an immortal Goddess, it sounded much better. “I committed a heinous act.” I lowered my head and she pulled her hand back. It was time to confess and take my medicine.
She looked me up and down, nodding. “You took Alayna to Sleepy Willow. We know.”
“Then why aren’t the Gods hunting me down to make me pay for my sins?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“You are going to make mistakes. You’re human, silly.” She picked the Iron Man comic off my bed and leafed through it as she spoke, “Even Gods make mistakes. Do you know much about my history before I became a God?”
I cringed. “I know a little, but probably not as much as you,” I said with a giggle, and immediately felt guilty for it. This job prevented me from studying up on a lot of subjects.
“Stop beating yourself up for a minute and listen.” Blodeuwedd tossed the comic back onto my bed. She turned to me and her blue eyes met mine. “I once conspired with my lover to kill my husband, Lleu Llaw Gyffes. He’d told me all the secrets of how he could be killed and I remembered them meticulously. Armed with this information, my lover Gronw Pebr struck Lleu with a spear, killing him. My husband’s friend turned me into an owl in an act of revenge. I remained in that form for years until I learned how to shift back into a human. And that is just one of my stories.”
I felt foolish that I didn’t know her story, but her words did put some of my shame in perspective. “I guess that is pretty extraordinary for a Goddess.”
Blodeuwedd said, “So you see there is always room for redemption no matter how low we sink. Often times, we need all our walls to be torn down before we can build our castle. How do you react to this travesty? How can you make it right?”
I didn’t really have to think about how I could get redemption. “The only thing I can do is rescue Alayna. But what if something happens before I get there?”
“Then you will be dealt with accordingly,” she added casually, reminding me that, although she was my friend, she was still a Goddess who enforced the laws. “I have to believe that you have time to rescue her. They are going to have fun torturing her for a while, I should think.”
She dropped the last sentence so matter of factly. Like she wasn’t even friends with Alayna. And that was why she was a God. She could separate that kind of stuff and eliminate feelings from the equation. I had to remember that the same would go for me.
“I have something for you.” She reached inside the cloak into her cleavage and produced a golden band. “Dian Cécht designed this for you. It will cancel out the effects of the implant. He said he is close to figuring out how to remove it for good, but he’s not quite there yet.” She extended her hand and I took the warm object.
It seemed too little, too late now. The damage had been done. “Thanks for this,” I added, holding the band in the air.
“You can atone for your actio
ns by saving Pittsburgh from the weather disasters and by rescuing Alayna.” She touched the side of my stubbly face again and made eye contact. “You’ve sunk low, but you can soar again. And with that, I bid you adieu.”
Blodeuwedd shifted back into an owl, beat her wings and flew out my window and into the Pittsburgh air.
The words ‘rise again’ made me think about Reg. Panic raced through my busted heart when I thought about all the wrongs I needed to make right. I’d fucked up. I’d fucked up bad. I had to get my ass up off the mat, and make this shit right.
The first step was lying on my floor. I unrolled the scroll and looked at the address. It was a farmhouse out in Dorseyville. I texted the address to Felix with a message to get ready for action. With the address in my phone, I set the scroll on the sill and closed the window.
I grabbed my skintight protection suit that had been blessed by the Gods and laid it on the bed. My phone buzzed and I picked it up off my bookshelf.
Felix to Mike-I’m picking Glenda up in an hour, then I’ll get you
The duffle bag full of cash could still come into the picture if something were to happen to me. The three remaining sorcerers were as dangerous as they came. I got suited up, slid the golden circlet around my calf, covering up the implant and went downstairs to wait for Felix.
As I entered the living room, Burn peered up at me from the couch and Dante continued to read his comic as if I wasn’t even there. I said, “I’m going to have to run out for a little bit. Just got to tie up some loose ends on a current project.”
“Why haven’t you asked me to come with you?” she asked, appearing flabbergasted.
“Because...” I turned to my little goblin. “Hey, Dante, why don’t you go upstairs for a little bit. I need to talk to Burn.”
Dante got up off the couch, grabbed another comic off the bookshelf and ran up the steps.