Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3)

by J. Davis Henry

  “Ha, ha. Fire and feathers. I always seem to get an overload of water and silver. Whatever, you’ve got a lot riding on you as you learn the tricks.”

  “It just dawned on me. Pan and his family already know where the major geographical areas that I need to interact with, are. The alley, the valley. And now you and Fish Man will probably shepherd me until I find the right track.”

  “Sounds about right, but does it matter? Best to just trust in that melody Pan’s playing and dance our part.”

  I didn’t answer as I reflected on who had the greater pull on my life—the Shadow Creature or Pan and the immortals?

  Chapter 35

  A sea lion yelped at us when we popped out from a quick tunnel-hop onto the jumble of an old stone jetty near where she was sunning herself. She flopped and flippered to the edge, then slid into the water. Seconds later, Fish Man bobbed up in the salty foam of her wake.

  “We should travel by sea for now. There’s a pod of orca traveling north about a mile out that’ll ride escort.”

  Fish Man dunked his head beneath the surface, and a jet of air shot from his mouth, the water churning as a bubble-dampened call was sent out. A few minutes later, a chattering and clucking orca raised his head just beyond where waves were breaking on an offshore barrier of low-lying rocks.

  After skulking from one hideaway to another in the back tributaries across Los Angeles as I received minor tips about tunnels, it seemed a major leap to jump into the Pacific with killer whales.

  “Underwater, with man-eaters? How’s this going to work for me? Where’re we going?”

  “Anywhere fast. Sheoblask’s lords have begun making moves against Earth tunnels, trying to shut Pan down, and you’re a target. You’ll be safe with Orcas. They never developed a taste for humans.”

  We all froze momentarily at the sound of screeching brakes from the nearby highway. Then an engine roared and a cloud of dust moved down an ocean access road. Doors slammed, and with a worrying horror, I watched four street-corner Filomena look-alikes bound down boulders towards the thin strip of stony beach and the jetty. Two men, two women.

  The demon children’s eyes burned red. All of them were waving handguns. Large white crucifixes bounced against their chests.

  Behind them, Sheoblask stepped out of the Cadillac. Patches of his mottled skin simmered with deep red blooms of heat, distorting the air around him.

  A flock of seagulls shrieked and cackled, wings beating as they lifted in a mass of reckless confusion into the air. A wave broke past the barrier and crashed onto the beach. In the wave’s receding wash, globs of wet muck flew up from a rapidly forming hole. Whatever was causing that commotion, with armed demon children charging, and Sheoblask on the scene, it didn’t bode well.

  Fish Man whistled and the orca took off with a change in plans, joining its pod and swimming north towards a tumultuous froth that had appeared in the channel between the mainland and a nearby offshore island. In an instant, I saw a half dozen sharp blades jut from the water. They glowed with the same heat and manic fervor of the land attackers and were closing rapidly to surround the killer whales.

  Fish Man yelled, “Nobody jump the tunnel. We don’t want to risk Sheoblask charging in and causing another collapse.” Laying in shallow water a few feet off shore, he bobbed his head, came up with puffed cheeks, and shot a rocket of seawater at one of the pistol-wielding sisters. It knocked her off her feet, and she tumbled hard between two boulders, becoming wedged. Unable to dislodge herself, she fired wildly in our direction. Her siblings scurried behind the shelter of different rocks. One of them raised his gun in my direction, and I jumped off the jetty into the water. I surfaced with my head concealed between two slabs of broken concrete. Green seaweed covered my shoulders and hair.

  Plumes of wet sand were now billowing high into the air from the unwelcome hole forming near the tide lines.

  “Tuma, there’s something coming up through the sand. Any ideas?” Fish Man yelled. He then gulped more water and sent another stream of water at Sheoblask’s troops. I heard a female scream and figured that was two down, at least temporarily.

  “Probably that Andromedan zealot that ambushed us a few years back,” Tuma answered just before a bullet blasted a hole in some driftwood near him. He tucked himself under a shelf of grass and sand. “I can’t see a damn thing. Am I well-hidden? Where’s Deets? Sheoblask?”

  “I’m here. You’re good for now, but I can’t see Sheoblask anymore. His wheels are still on the road.”

  A snakelike head burst from the widening sand pit. Razor teeth glistened with a black sheen. The creature pulled itself from the wet crater with a rapid, whip-like motion, head raised about six feet off the ground. It wasn’t as long as the anaconda Johnny and I had met on that distant swampy road, but its slithering body was just as thick. And faster, so much faster. With a swift jab, it eluded a water shot by Fish Man and locked onto his arm with its jaws. Fish Man flailed desperately, whacked it with his mertail, tried to dip his head to fill his mouth again, but the monster jerked him upwards and onto the beach. The worm-snake had a stinger on its tail that Fish Man kept trying to evade while punching at the thing’s snout. Unfortunately, the beast was loaded with weapons. Lightning-like jolts of electricity crackled from the its nostrils, striking Fish Man. With each shock, my friend’s body grew limper.

  I started to swim towards the terrifying melee. Six bullets plunged into the water around me. I ducked underwater, sliding along the sandy bottom, bubbly tracks of more fired slugs slicing past me. Surfacing, I splashed ashore on hands and knees. Tuma charged past me, rage imprinted on his milky eyes. Gripping an eight-foot length of rebar, he raised it above his shoulder and screamed, “Deets, take out that gun crew and Sheoblask. Remember, goddamn the gods, you’re his match and he knows it. And hell, if you get out of this mess, remind every one of them again who you are.”

  He swung wildly, baseball bat-style, then slashed with an overhead samurai chop at the deadly worm. The iron rod slammed into its neck both times, and with a hiss, the thing dropped Fish Man and turned towards the blind man. A bullet stuck Tuma in the back. He staggered, using his weapon as a crutch to hold himself up. Fish Man dragged his own sagging body towards the sea, leaving a bloody trench in the sand.

  We were being wiped out.

  I hadn’t done a thing to help yet. Had it been ten seconds or ten minutes since the battle had begun?

  Not knowing why my power hadn’t turned on instinctively, I raised my hand, sweeping my fingers deftly through my power symbol. A red wedge of energy followed by a bevy of fiery pellets flew towards the demonic gun bunker. The ledge above Sheoblask’s spawn shattered and a large rock splintered. One gunner scrambled from his hiding place, and another blast of red sent him reeling.

  Attack, no room to hide. The primordial howl of battle survival stole me away. Guns cracked, red beams shot from my hand. The serpent screamed. Fish Man gathered himself and pumped out water bullets. Tuma fell, but kept flailing and jabbing. Suddenly, I saw the war-painted spirit hallucination from the Poconos. The Indian was creeping, knee-deep, along the edge of the jetty, tomahawk in hand.

  He signaled me with a motion of his weapon and a telepathic command. “The demon’s moving quickly to the other side of the jetty. Jump the tunnel to get behind him.”

  Fish Man’s warning to stay out of the tunnels flashed briefly through my mind.

  Sheoblask will fry me. He’ll break open another tunnel, and I’ll end up dead forty million years ago. How do I jump at will? Christ, my pack of Kools are soaked. Damn knapsack’s strangling me. Nothing’s right. C’mon. Got to get into the tunnel. C’mon, fingers—do your thing.

  I sprinted across the sand, a volley of red blasts aimed at Sheoblask’s kids flying from my right hand. Returning to the jetty, I splashed into deeper water and buried myself behind the tumble of boulders.

  A major t
unnel’s near here. I know it. Gotta make Sheoshit believe I’m concentrating on the gunners.

  I crawled up the rocks for a clear view, sent a finger zap that came out as a crackling blurry whiz. A terrible scream followed.

  Christ, I think I just killed someone. A demon. The one I wounded earlier. Damn it. Okay, one less. Damn.

  Pushing that thought away, letting the intuition of unfathomable magic sweep me on, I flicked my fingers through the dog-star pattern, touched my wrist for good measure, and there I was, still crouched on the jetty, but with the now familiar pull and intermittent, luminescent flicker of a god tunnel encircling me. The Indian held a finger to his lips, then swirled it in a circular motion, signaling me to follow a trail to loop behind Sheoblask.

  Then I heard one of the demi-god’s sons call out, “Pop, he’s gone. He was in the water near the jetty, but he’s not there.”

  I spotted Sheoblask, close, but on the other side of the jetty.

  Behind me, the sand serpent kept yowling and spitting as Tuma cursed and coughed up bits of his life. I couldn’t risk a glance back at that battle—I had to keep my eyes on my target. Any moment, Sheoblask would tune in and tunnel-see my ambush.

  I took a step, hoped I could steer the god passages consciously, and found myself in a forest. Pine cones littered the path.

  Where am I? How?

  Startled by an entanglement on my shoulder, I quickly brushed it away and was relieved when it turned out to be just seaweed that fell to the forest floor.

  The beach. Tuma and Fish Man are in trouble. Indians have used this path before. Stealthily. Circle behind the demon.

  Another step and I remembered sliding and spinning on the New Jersey turnpike.

  Move now, before he figures out my maneuver.

  One more step. And with it, I felt the prayer of a despair so deeply entrenched in itself that its roots were lost even to the wisdom of the gods.

  The cry of the ruined tunnel. It’s palpable, close.

  My hand shot out through the pale veil that separated me from Sheoblask. It was at that moment some essential part of how the universe operated cracked and lost its way. Shards of solid light shattered and flew into a never-ending darkness that surrounded my hand. I had reached for the demon’s throat, striking like a three-step fer-de-lance to rid the world of him.

  I expected a blast of scalding red magic to shred him.

  Instead, I found myself spinning, my hand a bright golden sun as I dragged Sheoblask into the tunnel.

  He was screaming, writhing in agony. I was falling, clutching him. Auric energy poured from my hand as I tumbled through an eternal emptiness, lighting a trail where nothing had been.

  Shadow Creature’s voice echoed around me, like a mad dream, like an incomprehensible set of instructions to the universe.

  I held on to Sheoblask through forever, past planets being born and great nebulae coalescing into galaxies, through scorching showers of cosmic cancers and storms of poisonous liquids drenching deep space.

  He screeched and roared, slashing his head back and forth in agony while trying to rip me with his piranha teeth. His fingers turned to claws, but where he raked my arm, a golden light flew from the wound, closing it immediately. He howled in frustrated fury while gouging at my eyes. I flinched backwards. He twisted, but I managed to tighten my grip on him.

  I realized I was still in some kind of passageway when my surroundings began shaking with uncontrollable, buckling spasms.

  We rocketed along the tunnel, continuing to strike and strangle each other, but now with a unified helplessness, as titanic forces pulled us along ancient and secretive paths where no mortal or demi-god had ever traveled. I lost my sense of equilibrium and spun recklessly. My right hand banged against the passageways, leaving smoking gouges and streaks of fiery cracks in the walls and floors and ceilings of the tunnel of the gods.

  I was destroying the tunnel.

  It rumbled. It screamed. A great rattling filled the passage. A concussion of energy hurled us past burning and bubbling and steaming mountains and oceans. It’s strange to say, but right then Sheoblask and I were both torn to pieces, even as we grappled with each other. We disintegrated into particles of light and thought, ghosts of life, demonic and human, scattering ourselves through passages and tributaries and great gaping highways of the divine tunnel in our violent struggle. Another gust that felt like all of time was being sucked into a vacuum, flung and squeezed us, and we became a vapor of darkness that misted the walls of the tunnel. We both heard Chaos itself, from the beginning times of the gods, rocking and pummeling the outside walls of the tunnel.

  Then everything that had ever existed, disappeared, and I heard Shadow Creature say, “Okay, break it up, guys.”

  We rolled out of the tunnel onto the beach. Or maybe something pushed us out.

  I was still in one piece.

  What the... where... just happened?

  Sheoblask lay unconscious. Heat still throbbed from his mottled skin, except for an area of gilded light emanating from where I had grasped his neck. An image of trees and mountains danced in the radiance of the wound. I dug lightly with a finger at the edge of the glowing area. I need this. And I peeled the skin of living light off him.

  I was entranced by the patch of glowing demon hide, thinking it to be the culmination of the golden visions I had left behind in the apartment above Mandrake’s Folly. I could easily discern shining details of a path through a thick forest, all etched in gold.

  I looked up when Sheoblask’s surviving son staggered across the sand and fell to his knees next to his father.

  I growled, “Get him off this planet. Take him home. Tell your gods to leave me be.”

  The demon child raised his pistol at me, cold and angry.

  “Don’t be a fool, Jeremius.” The rasp of the voice from the jetty turned to a rough inhalation as Doctor Steel lit a cigarette. “Your tribe was blown to bits here and suffered heavily elsewhere. Retreat until next time.”

  I dropped the patch of light into my knapsack and climbed silently past Steel, trudging wearily towards Tuma’s unmoving body. The giant worm lay just as still, oozing a green bile from where the spear of rebar had penetrated its jaw and exited out through the brain.

  The bullet wounds in Tuma’s back were visible from twenty steps away. I knew he would have survived them if I had reached him while he was still alive. But the worm’s venomous stinger and jolts of electricity must have done him in while I had wrestled Sheoblask through eternity for another damn clue.

  Fish Man sat on the shore staring out to sea. He greeted me with a silent nod, acknowledging our survival and the loss of Tuma. His arm was torn and shredded. I gently gave him a golden zap, and he raised himself to stand over Tuma. We carried his body through the shallows out to the rocky barrier offshore where small waves broke. The pod of orcas rode high in the water about a hundred yards further out.

  Fish Man tucked Tuma under his rapidly healing arm, let him float beside him. “Tuma’s going back to the sea. I suspect he never really believed he hadn’t died when he went into the water in that wreckage in the Caribbean.”

  “He was a good guy, man. Taught me a lot about jumping.”

  “You’ll figure it all out, Deets. For all of us. You will.”

  As I stood in the chest-high water watching the pod escort Tuma and Fish Man, I heard a solemn trill of a flute reaching across the waves. Pan’s melody was joined by a mournful, canine baying rising from the hills behind me. Somehow, despite the loneliness I heard in those sounds, they filled me with promises of a clearer path to my destination.

  I trudged back to the beach and called over to Steel, “Where were you and Monkey Man?”

  “I was in Pan’s Valley, helping to hold off an assault on the portal. Mostly Sheoblask’s rabid brood mixed with some mercenaries, much like that dead worm or those ra
zor sharks. Monkey Man was protecting New York with Amelia and Jenny. It looks like Pan’s foes have admitted to the danger of blasting the tunnels near Earth and have decided to grab major portals and get rid of you instead.” Steel pinned me with his cruel eyes. “You’re going to be tempted to travel by tunnel more, but I’d advise against abusing your new found skill. You might have dealt a blow to Sheoblask’s crew, but remember Beelzebub? He’s always watching for ways to sneak across to this universe.”

  “Do you think he knows where the tunnel collapse is?”

  “Not yet, but you can be sure he’s sniffing around you for clues, though.”

  I didn’t bother mentioning to Steel the cracks that had formed in the battle with Sheoblask. Apparently he wasn’t aware of them. The creep could see everything else I did except when it involved secrets between Shadow Creature and myself. I hoped Shadow Creature had understood what had happened in that tunnel and had any problems under control.

  I shivered, not from the breeze on my wet clothes, but with a disquieting thought. Somehow, in some convoluted, out-of-sync time nightmare, I suspected I had just instigated the destruction of the time tunnel.

  Could I not only have been called on to heal the tunnel, but have been the one to destroy it too?

  Chapter 36

  I climbed past the battered rocks where three dead demons lay broken. Water leaked from the eyes and ears and mouth of two of them while the third had half his head scorched to the bone. Sirens were whining on the highway. Doctor Steel smiled with a crooked sneer and lifted his cigarette to his lips, then jumped away by tunnel. Small waves lapped gently against the giant sand worm, dead on a world it hadn’t been born to. Jeremius was staggering under the weight of a slumping Sheoblask as he loaded him into the black Cadillac.

  Cops are gonna have a hard time puzzling this out.