The Left-Hand Path: Runaway

by Barnett,T. S.

  “We’re not really there yet. But he’s white, too. So probably not.”

  “I’m sure he’ll come to think of gweilo as a term of endearment,” he chuckled. He glanced out the window as a taxi pulled up to the curb outside. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “I need to go. I’ll try not to bother you for another six months.”

  “Take care of yourself, Elton. Don’t do anything stupid.” Her voice sounded slightly tight, but he had a faint smile on his lips.

  “No promises. Bye, Jo.”

  He waited until she said goodbye, and then he hung up the phone and took a slow breath. At least she hadn’t been angry.

  Elton stepped out from behind the counter and tugged Chris’s jacket hood up over his head, which did a passable job of hiding the talisman stuck to his forehead. Adelina directed the taxi driver to the hotel and sat silently beside the unconscious Chaser and the man who had, up until that very evening, been trying his best to take her father to be hanged. She didn’t understand why Nathan seemed to trust him implicitly—enough to invite him to stay with them in their hotel suite, enough to accept his help in rescuing Cora from the Magistrate, and enough to make a zombi for him. Whatever the reason, Adelina’s trust couldn’t be earned so easily.

  She smiled pleasantly and apologized to the bellhop who approached them in the lobby, assuring the boy that Chris had simply overestimated himself at a local bar, and she led Elton to the elevator with the Chaser half slung over his shoulders. Adelina unlocked the door to the suite and allowed Elton inside, keeping her eyes on him as he dropped Chris unceremoniously onto the sofa. Elton glanced around the spacious living room and let out a dry chuckle.

  “This looks about right,” he muttered. “A glamour’s paying for this, isn’t it?”

  “Of course.” She hung her coat by the door and moved through the suite to Nathan’s bedroom. One of the bedside tables had been taken over by his cluttered altar, piled with half-full bottles, coins, various bones, painted statuettes, and dripping candles in red and white. She knew that he would want to begin as soon as he came back, so she took the bag of cornmeal from his dresser and knelt on the floor to begin the veve. She could hear Elton moving in the next room as he took off his coat, and she felt his eyes on her as he approached the bedroom door.

  Adelina didn’t look up at him. She almost told him to leave. But it was Nathan’s choice to trust him. So she poured the scoops of cornmeal from her palm onto the carpeted floor, forming the broad circle and jagged lines she’d watched her father draw a hundred times.

  “That mark,” Elton spoke up behind her. “It’s the same as the one on Nathan’s neck. He said it represented something called Kalfu?”

  “Do not speak his name so easily,” Adelina chided.

  “But what is it? Just a spirit? Nathan said it saved his life as part of some agreement.”

  “Kreyol pale, kreyol komprann,” she muttered to herself, and she sighed before speaking up. “It isn’t my place to explain the loa to you. Especially not the relationship Nathaniel has with Mait’ Carrefour. Some things are too close to the heart.”

  “So he hasn’t told you, either?”

  Adelina frowned over her shoulder at the former Chaser. “Mait’ Carrefour is fire and darkness. He is fear, anger, hatred, and nightmare. My father is in his favor, and that is as deep into the matter as you or I need go.”

  Elton held up his hands in surrender, and he waited to speak again until she had returned to her work. “Is it everything you expected? Being with him.” His voice was softer now.

  She paused a moment before reaching forward to adjust one of the lines she’d made. “He’s...more.” The single word couldn’t possibly be enough to explain how incredible or how terrifying her time with Nathan had been, how surreal his life was, how at odds with himself he seemed. But Elton chuckled from behind her.

  “I know what you mean.”

  Adelina poured one final drop of meal onto the floor to complete the veve and sat back on her heels to look at her work. She dusted her hands into the open bag beside her. “When this is over, and your friends are safe, will you hunt him again? Bring him to your own kind of justice, outside of the Magistrate?” She turned her head to look at him. “Will you chase him even on your own?”

  Elton leaned his shoulder against the door frame and tucked his hands into his pants pockets. “I’m starting to think that the magic’s gone, if you’ll excuse the expression. The Nathaniel Moore in the Magistrate files isn’t the real one. He wants me to chase him, but it’s only because he’s bored. I was just his convenient excuse for using the arcela airet again. He isn’t evil. He isn’t a demon or a force of nature; he’s just a man. He’s definitely crazy, but he’s just a man. And there are far more malicious men in the world who deserve the Magistrate’s attention more than he does.”

  “That isn’t what I expected to hear,” she admitted as she stood. “Then what will you do when we’re finished?”

  “I have no idea,” he answered with a faint smile. “I suspect Nathan’s planning on making that decision for me. Since I’m out of a job and soon to be homeless, I suppose I’ll see what he has to say.” He tilted his head slightly. “You don’t want me interfering with your father-daughter road trip?”

  “I don’t know how much longer I’ll stay.” She bit her lip as she realized what she’d said, and she spun to face him. “You don’t repeat that.”

  “It’s your business. If I had the chance to start over 30 years younger, I probably wouldn’t want to spend that time with someone like Nathan, either. Even if he was my father.”

  “But you’ll let him make your next major life decision for you?”

  “I said I’d listen,” Elton corrected, “not that I’d agree.” He tilted his chin toward the carefully constructed veve on the floor. “This ritual he’s proposing...it actually works? Turning someone into a zombie?”

  “Probably not as you think.” She replaced the bag of cornmeal on the dresser and shooed him out of the way so that she could shut the door behind them. “The Chaser will still be alive. Just under Nathaniel’s influence—placid and obeying. When and if Nathaniel actually releases him, he’ll go back to his usual life with only a foggy memory of the entire process. It’s dangerous,” she sighed as she sat in an overstuffed chair, her eyes on Chris’s faintly trembling hand. “For both of them. And it’s unethical to take over someone’s mind, even if you mean to let it go later. But it may be the best option for getting someone out of the Magistrate without too much of a ruckus.”

  The door to the suite opened with a soft beep as Nathan slid his card key. He dropped a large, rumpled paper bag at his feet and shrugged out of his coat, but he left it on the floor as he scooped up the bag again and made his way inside.

  “You know, you wouldn’t think that a human skull would be the easiest thing on your grocery list,” he laughed. He breezed by them into the dining room and emptied the bag onto the table, spilling out bones, jars, paper envelopes, and one cardboard box that jerked halfway across the table on its own before he slapped a hand down on it. The box gave a rattling croak as Nathan slid it back toward himself. “Some of these are minor adjustments, but I think we’ll be all right.”

  “What the hell is all this?” Elton asked as he approached the table. He bent down to peer into the jars and found some very agitated millipedes, a tiny green frog, a pair of bright blue lizards, and a live tarantula bracing itself against its glass confines.

  “Magic, darling,” Nathan answered without looking up, and he kept one elbow on the croaking box to keep it in place while he reached for a shallow jar. He shook it to rouse the red, bristly worm coiled in the water inside. “Oh, very good.” Nathan scooted the box toward Elton with a bright smile on his face. “Hold this, will you?”

  “Are you about to piss in it?”

  “Not this time, unfortunately. Go on; open it up.”

  Elton slid a finger under the flap of the box to lift it. He had to scramble t
o catch the monstrous toad that leapt toward him at the first sign of daylight, but he managed to grip its slippery skin with both hands and just barely keep it from plummeting to the floor. “Jesus,” he muttered, a faint look of disgust on his face.

  “Keep it still.” Nathan unscrewed the jar and plucked the wriggling worm from its home without hesitation. It writhed around his fingers as he urged Elton to lift the toad higher, wriggling this way and that while Nathan tied the creature’s long body in a loose knot around one kicking toad leg. “There we are. Back in the box, if you please, Mr. Willis.”

  Elton gratefully replaced the toad in its cardboard shelter and shut the lid. “Now what?”

  Nathan had already turned his back on him and returned with a heavy book from a side table. He set it on top of the jostling box and gave it a gentle pat. “Now we wait. It’ll be dead soon.” He gripped the yellowed skull in one hand and stepped to the living room fireplace with it tucked in one elbow.

  “Dead?” Elton echoed, glancing back at the box uncertainly as the creatures inside scraped against the walls.

  “To make its poison more potent,” Adelina explained, a frown tugging at her lips. “It must die angry.” She watched with her chin resting on one hand as Nathan blew life into the fireplace. He prodded the skull into the center of the burning wood and tossed in a small something from his pocket that Elton couldn't see. He took a quick trip into his bedroom and returned with a handful of yellow oil that Elton could only guess had come from the grisly altar beside his bed, which he then dripped onto the burning skull in a loud pop of sparks.

  “Well, that’s going to take a bit,” Nathan sighed, standing back to watch the flames lick around the empty sockets of bone. He wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans and looked over at his shoulder at his two companions. “Is anyone else starving?”

  Elton wanted to object purely on the grounds that they currently had an unconscious Chaser on the sofa and human remains in the fireplace, but his stomach gave a low ache of protest at the mere mention of food.

  “I’ll order something up, shall I?” Nathan offered, already on his way to the phone near the television. “Best to keep an eye on all this business.”

  Elton shared a brief look with Adelina, but she seemed unsympathetic to his reluctance. When she stared at him, it was somehow easy to believe that she actually had sixty-some years behind her. She looked tired enough. Elton stepped around the back of the couch to check on Chris while Nathan chatted with room service. The Chaser’s skin was warm, but his heart was steady. He was fine for now—physically, at least. How he was handling the nightmare was another question entirely, but Elton told himself that the other man would manage.

  By the time the food arrived, the skull in the fireplace was blackened all over, so Adelina hastily shooed the boy away with a tip in his hand before he could see Nathan pick the skull out of the fire with iron tongs. Nathan set the charred bone on the coffee table with a thunk, dropping flakes of dark ash onto the wood.

  “Perfect timing,” he mused, and he helped himself to the large metal dome covering their plates, laying it bowl-side-up on the floor in front of the fire.

  Elton and Adelina excused themselves and retreated into the dining room with their plates, though the table littered with various jars of creepy-crawlies wasn’t a much better setting for a meal. Elton could still see Nathan over the half-wall dividing the rooms, and he watched the other man take a bit of his sandwich, still chewing as he made his way to the dining table and began to gather up the jars. He tucked them into his arms and picked up the cardboard box, which had long ago gone silent, tipping the book off of the lid before returning to the fire with his armful of animals. Elton sat up straighter in his chair to peer curiously over the wall.

  “Don’t look,” Adelina advised. “Not if you want to eat.”

  His brow knit into a slight frown as he glanced at her, but he couldn’t stop himself from watching as Nathan arranged his jars on the coffee table and set the metal dome in the fire. He took a cloth napkin from the dining cart and used it to tilt the makeshift bowl in the embers, ensuring it was heated properly. When he was satisfied, he sat down in front of the fireplace with one hand on the bowl and reached behind him to choose his first jar. He held it between his knees to open it one-handed and then dumped the twisting millipedes into the bowl, their carapaces hissing against the hot metal. He shook the bowl periodically as he emptied each jar in turn—the tarantula, the frog, and the pair of little lizards all scrambling against the tall sides of the bowl in an attempt to escape. The last little vial Nathan chose contained only a small amount of a clear liquid, but when he tipped it into the hot bowl, it spat back dark smoke. The smell burned Elton’s nostrils. Once the creatures went still, Nathan added the large toad to the bowl and gave it another shake as if to make sure the ingredients mixed the way he wanted.

  Nathan sat, nonplussed, while the poor things cooked, and then stretched to touch the cart and roll it within reach. Elton watched with equal parts horror and disbelief as Nathan reached up for his sandwich and took a bite, carelessly chewing while he swirled the bowl in the fire. Elton could barely look at the food on his plate for the smell filling the room. He forced himself to eat a few bites, wishing he’d taken Adelina’s advice, since she didn’t seem to be suffering.

  “Is this what it’s like all the time?” he asked, keeping his voice quiet. She looked up at him somewhere between amusement and resignation.

  “Always,” she answered.

  Elton jumped slightly as the bowl in the next room hit the floor with a ringing clang. He hesitated to look. He stuffed himself with a few more bites of his meal, but when he dared to peek over the half-wall again, his stomach lurched and threatened to bring every bit of it back up. Nathan had fetched what looked like an oversized pestle, and was now grinding the charred animal remains into grit, pausing occasionally to take a french fry from the plate near his knee. The bugs would have been bad enough, but a better-than-full-sized toad had been in that bowl. Elton grimaced at the thought of the creature's organs spilling out as Nathan crushed it.

  “How can you eat while you do that?” he finally asked, and Nathan looked up at him with raised eyebrows as he chewed.

  “Which would you prefer, darling, that I dawdle while your spare Chaser suffers your hallucination, or that I let my food get cold? Neither seems preferable.”

  “Shouldn’t you at least wash your hands in between? That’s disgusting.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nathan laughed, “should I perhaps take a page out of your book? Don’t Chinese witches render stillborn infants down to fat and bone, or fill them with molten gold for luck?”

  “I don’t do that,” Elton countered instantly.

  “Mmhm.” Nathan tucked another fry into his mouth and returned to his work. “Judge not, darling; this magic is going to save your tortured little friend.”

  “I told you not to look,” Adelina chimed in. “Try not to accidentally kill anyone. I’m going to bed.” She scooted her chair back from the table and offered a vague wave in Nathan’s direction before shutting herself in the second bedroom.

  Elton pushed his plate away and stood to watch from behind the couch as Nathan shaved pieces off of the skull and into the bowl. He handed him the little packets of dried plants when he asked for them. When it was all ground together into fine powder, Nathan poured the mixture into the large jar that formerly housed the tarantula, screwed the lid on tight, and shook the sticky powder in both hands, humming tunelessly to himself. Finally, he pried off the lid and whispered against his palm before sinking his teeth into the meat of his hand and letting a few drops of blood splat on top of the dark mixture.

  “Well then,” he said, pausing to suck a stray drop of blood seeping from the wound in his hand, “let’s get this done. Wake him up and get him on his feet, Elton.”

  Elton moved to do as he was told, not certain at all about the path he’d agreed to take to rescue Cora and Thomas. But it was t
oo late for questioning now. He pressed his palm against the talisman on Chris’s head, and the paper peeled away as Elton removed his hand, allowing the Chaser to take a sudden, sharp breath. His fingers scraped against the cushion of the sofa and his body gave a harsh jerk. He sat up too quickly, swaying as he attempted to scratch away the invisible insects from his arms and chest.

  “Easy,” Elton murmured, his hand firmly on the other man’s shoulder to steady him.

  Chris tried to speak, but his throat was too dry to make a sound. He just looked between Elton and Nathan with fury and confusion on his face.

  “Stand him up,” Nathan commanded, and Elton stepped around the couch to lift Chris to his feet by his arms. He told himself Nathan would let Chris go when they were done. “Shirt off,” Nathan called. He stood and moved to stand behind Chris while Elton tugged him out of his coat and shirt. The Chaser fought him, but his limbs would still be too numb to be of much use. It was all for a good cause, Elton told himself.

  When Chris stood shirtless in the living room, Nathan scooped some of the thick, foul-smelling powder onto the edge of his pestle and scraped a line of the filth down the Chaser’s spine. The man shuddered immediately, his back arching and his fingernails digging painfully into Elton’s arms as he struggled to stay on his feet. Elton tried to keep him up, but Nathan tutted at him.

  “Let him loose,” he said. “Face down. And for God’s sake don’t touch the powder.”

  Elton laid Chris down on the floor as gently as he could while avoiding bringing any bare skin near the other man’s back. Chris went completely still. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. Nathan set his jar aside and crouched down by the Chaser, tilting his head upward with one finger on his forehead and leaning to feel for breath against his cheek.