by Jim Butcher
Joe shrugged. “Whatever. I’m running out of patience, though, and you won’t like me very much once that happens.”
The Long Man knew this was his last desperate stroke. There was a much greater darkness coming, one that would wipe them all out, and he aimed to stop it. Winning this war was his ticket back home, and he wasn’t about to let it slip through his fingers. “Don’t make me kill you, Joe.”
The Night Marshal laughed. “The bonds between our sorry excuses for souls were severed the day I stuck that knife in your withered old heart. There’s no way for you to get back what I swiped. You kill me, all the mojo I stole from you goes straight to Hell with me.”
“Maybe I don’t care. Maybe just seeing you die will be enough.”
Joe grinned. “Shit, boss, if that was true, you’da done pulled the trigger on my ass as soon as I opened that door.”
Joe’s ancient truck rattled down the access road to the rear entrance of a world-famous brewery. Security cameras mounted on tall silver poles swiveled to follow the truck’s progress. “Nobody’s gonna stop us?”
The Long Man chuckled. “No, the people watching us know who we are. At least, they know who I am.”
The Long Man had owned this place for almost two centuries. He’d helped his first servants plant the foundation for the original building, and he’d overseen the first thousand batches of beer himself. This was one of the cornerstones of his kingdom, a part of the network of wealth and power that fueled his plans and guarded him from his enemies. Most of them, anyway.
But how long since he’d last come here? Two decades? Three? Time slipped away from him when he wasn’t looking.
They reached a security gate and the Long Man barked out four digits. His enemy, his onetime ally, maybe even his once-a-friend, punched in the numbers. “You can’t wield the power you’ve stolen, Joe. You don’t have the knowledge. You don’t know what’s coming or how to stop it.”
More than anything, the Long Man needed Joe to see the truth of this. They’d worked together for a long time, and he’d worked with Joe’s father for even longer, to hold back the rising tide of evil. Together they’d killed an army of demons.
Then things changed and new tactics were required to win the battles. The Long Man wanted to keep the world pure and untainted, but he’d had to make compromises. Joe had gone off the path, then, unable or unwilling to adapt to the realities of their fight. The Night Marshal had rebelled, and taken up arms against the Long Man.
The Night Marshal drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “All I know is when you had this power, you brought evil to Pitchfork. If I hadn’t stopped you, the whole place would’ve gone to shit.” Joe turned his attention back to the road and steered the truck deeper into the brewery’s guts. “You lost sight of what you were fighting to save, and became the very monster you were fighting to destroy. Maybe you’re convinced you did the right thing, but I know evil when I see it.”
The Long Man pointed at a tall building and the parking spot in front of it. One way or another, this had to end. He hoped Joe would see reason, but there were other plans if he didn’t.
The Long Man stowed the rifle in the gun rack in the truck’s rear window. He needed Joe to relax, and pointing a gun at him wasn’t going to help ease the tension. He had another surprise stowed away in the back of his belt, just in case, anyway.
“Let’s go inside, Joe. There’s something you need to see.”
The building’s guts reeked of yeast and hops. Great kettles of beer bubbled above a profusion of copper tubes that led into a vast refrigerated filtration system. Beyond that, a series of nozzles dispensed the heavy, amber brew into an endless parade of thick-walled brown bottles sliding across a chain of steel rollers. The technology was old, but it worked just fine to keep the beer flowing and the crates of bottles moving out into the world.
The rich, earthy perfume of wild yeast dragged the Long Man back through the years to those early days when he’d run this place himself. “This was the first brewery west of the Mississippi,” he said. “And now it’s the oldest and the biggest.”
Joe didn’t seem impressed, but he followed the Long Man up onto the catwalk overlooking the roiling fermentation kettles.
“This place doesn’t look like it would pass a health inspection,” the Night Marshal quipped.
The Long Man waggled his finger at Joe. “You always were a stickler for the rules. You’re right, of course, but this little corner of the business isn’t for public consumption. What gets brewed here is from my secret recipe, and it goes to a very exclusive clientele. They’re willing to pay very, very well for what gets bottled in this part of the plant.”
Joe snorted. “What’re you selling? Eternal youth? Ultimate wisdom? A little bit of your blood in every bottle?”
“Just the best beer known to man, Joe. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
The Long Man caught Joe licking his lips and suppressed a smile. He hoped his choice of venue for his pitch would soften the man’s obstinate resistance.
He took a long breath and swept his arm in an expansive gesture that encompassed everything they could see. “I don’t need any of this, not anymore. I have enough money squirreled away to last me a dozen lifetimes. Honestly, I could never spend all my money no matter how grandiose my plans.”
Joe leaned against the railing and shook his head. “That’s it? That’s your big play? You brought me out all this way to try and bribe me with a brewery? Shit, what would I want with this place?”
The monster hiding under Sean’s skin folded his stolen arms over his swollen belly. “Not the whole brewery, just this label. With no effort on your part, this little chunk of my empire will put tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of dollars in your pocket each and every month. There’s nothing you could do with that kind of money?”
Joe’s former boss and ally knew he could use the money. The Night Marshal’s wife was dead, killed in the same battle that killed the Long Man. But, even worse, his children had vanished in the aftermath, gone as if scrubbed from the face of the earth. There’d been no trace of them in the weeks since, and their disappearance was a millstone around Joe’s neck.
The Long Man held his tongue, knowing he couldn’t broach the subject of the Night Marshal’s family without setting off a fight. He waited and watched Joe struggle with the proffered bait.
A handful of long seconds crawled past, and then the Night Marshal pinched the bridge of his nose. “No amount of money will bring Stevie back.”
“True,” the Long Man whispered. “But it could hire a lot of private investigators. A lot of bounty hunters who could search for the rest of your family.”
Joe gnawed on the idea of hiring an army of men and women to bring back his wayward children, his thoughts plain on his face to his enemy. But, in the end, the Long Man saw his offer wasn’t enough to entice Joe off the path he’d chosen.
The Night Marshal shook his head. “If that’s all you got, I’m afraid I’m going to have to turn you down.”
The ancient entity trapped in borrowed flesh cursed himself for underestimating the Marshal, again. He’d gambled on a way to reclaim what Joe had stolen without violence. That bet hadn’t paid off. Now it was time to end the game in a different way.
He lunged forward with the hunting knife he’d taken from Sean’s truck.
The Long Man knew his attack had missed the second he threw it. The stolen body was too old, weak, and clumsy to do what he needed. Without the ancient power he’d always enjoyed, he was like a puppeteer trying to control a cheap marionette with tangled strings.
The Night Marshal leaned away from the clumsy slash and then punched his assailant, once in the ribs, and then a second harder hook to the jaw. The Long Man sank to his knees and looped one arm over the railing to keep from falling onto his face. Blood drooled from his mouth, thick and sticky.
The Long Man levered himself up onto his feet and wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand.
He showed Joe the red smear across the pale flesh and shook his head. “Pathetic, isn’t it? It wasn’t so long ago I could’ve crushed you like a bug. Now? I’m nothing. Less than nothing. Put me out of my misery, Joe.”
He wiggled the knife at Joe. He was weak, and he sorely missed the power this mortal had stolen from him, but this fight was far from over. He faked a lunge at Joe’s middle, then dodged back as the Marshal threw a punch at his face.
The knife darted up and ripped through the flesh on the underside of Joe’s wrist. The tip came away gleaming with blood, and the Long Man lifted it to his nostrils. He breathed deeply and the heady perfume of his stolen power curled into his sinuses and burrowed into his memories. The power was right there; he could taste it.
But it was no longer his. It belonged to this thief.
Joe bobbed from left foot to right foot, hands raised in a boxer’s stance. Under the brim of his cowboy hat, the Marshal’s eyes glinted like embers in a dying fire. “Neat trick with the knife, but it won’t save you this time. I don’t know how you came back, but your little vacation from Hell ends now.”
The Long Man dodged back, stumbling over his own feet as the Marshal unleashed a blistering flurry of jabs and roundhouses. Hard knuckles rocked his head back on the knobs of his spine and the Long Man felt the strength drain from his legs. The railing bit into his back as Joe blasted body shots under his ribs one after another.
The Long Man couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
The pain was horrible . . .
But invigorating.
He sucked it up and converted it to rage.
This man, this pathetic insect, had stolen from him. He’d cost the Long Man his pride and made him look a fool before the Father. It was time to put things to rights.
The Long Man pushed Joe back and whipped the knife back and forth with wild abandon. The defensive tactic gave him the breathing room he needed to get his wits back and his legs under him. He darted forward and flicked the knife’s tip at Joe’s face.
The blade opened the Night Marshal’s cheek from the corner of his left eye down to the edge of his jaw.
The Long Man’s strength was flagging, but the pieces of his plan were coming together. He could still win this. “I didn’t come all this way to take a beating. I gave you a chance to end this without pain. You don’t want to be rid of me? Fine. I’ll never be far from you again.”
The Long Man lunged and flailed the blade left to right, then right to left, then back again in a relentless sweeping arc.
The Marshal took a step back, then a second, and a third. The catwalk was a long skeleton of beams and steel lattice that stretched the length of the brewery’s old bottling plant. Every step carried the combatants across open containers of ale that filled the room with a rich, earthy perfume.
The Long Man pressed the attack, forcing the Marshal back with one wild swing after another, but his vigor was flagging. He wasn’t strong enough to keep this up all night, his reserves of endurance were limited by the body he was trapped in. I should’ve chosen someone else, someone fitter.
But he hadn’t. That was all right, he could still do what needed doing.
The Long Man let the knife’s tip drop and the Marshal took advantage of the opening. He stepped forward and threw a straight punch into his opponent’s flabby chest.
The monster took the blow full in the sternum. His eyes bulged with surprise at just how much the attack hurt. The Marshal had fueled his attack with the power he’d stolen from the Long Man, adding insult to the injury. The stolen body’s ribs crackled and separated from the muscle holding them closed around heart and lungs.
Joe’s former boss fell over the savage blow. He angled his left arm around Joe’s right, twisting them together and pulling the Marshal close. It was easy to get inside your enemy’s defenses if you didn’t worry about surviving.
“Give me what is mine.”
Joe snorted and slammed a head butt into the center of the sneering, demanding face before him. Blood splattered from the Long Man’s shattered nose and his thoughts splintered into jagged shards of rage.
The Long Man fell against Joe. He used his greater weight to push the Night Marshal back into the railing. The Long Man held fast to Joe’s arm and leaned in close. His mouth opened wide and his teeth gnashed the air an inch from Joe’s cheek.
Just one bite, he thought. He just needed one bite and he would be inside Joe. Like he’d been inside the squirrel, the pig, and now Sean. If he couldn’t beat Joe, he’d become him.
The Long Man growled and snarled, snapping his teeth like a rabid dog. His incisors grazed the Marshal’s cheek, but couldn’t find purchase. His tongue dragged across razor stubble and he tasted sweat and stale bar smoke, but he couldn’t get the bite he needed to possess his enemy.
Joe shoved the Long Man back. He punched the old bastard, a downward strike across the jaw that shattered teeth into bloody enameled chunks. “I done killed you once, it’s time for you to go back where you come from.”
Another punch loosened more of the Long Man’s stolen teeth and rattled his brain like a pea in a gourd. Through a concussed haze, the once-powerful spirit saw his future. There was still a way to do this. He should have seen it earlier.
He raised his knife to strike.
Joe grabbed his adversary, his onetime ally, his former mentor, by the hair and hauled him to his feet. He spun the old monster around and hooked a wiry forearm across the stolen body’s throat. Joe’s words were an intimate whisper. “This ends now,” he growled, crushing the Long Man’s windpipe.
The broken spirit gripped his knife with both hands, and turned the tip up and in. “Yes, it does.”
The Long Man convulsed as the knife punched up under his ribs. The weapon’s tip plunged through his diaphragm and into his heart.
With the last of his strength, the Long Man ripped the knife from his chest and flung it into the kettles below. A gushing torrent of blood followed the blade, splashing into the beer along with the shattered remains of the Long Man’s essence.
The Long Man watched the Cubs win the World Series through the eyes of a trucker with a mouth stuffed with chewing tobacco. He watched them win from inside a meth junkie swigging black-labeled beer in a desperate attempt to stave off the tremors of withdrawal. He heard that last game in Chicago through the ears of a cop listening to the game instead of keeping an eye on the pimps and prostitutes strolling down the alley outside his car.
The Long Man was no more, but he was also much more than he’d been before. The blood-tainted beer had gone out to his customers and they’d served it in bars, taverns, and restaurants across the Midwest.
He’d lost his body, but now there were pieces of him, scattered remnants of his personality and power, lodged inside the minds and bodies of the weak and the hopeless and the angry who guzzled beer in the vain hopes it would smooth out the ragged edges of their doomed lives. None of them were a match for the Night Marshal, but that was all right.
The Long Man lived inside each of these boozy disciples, and he had plans for each. His hosts smiled when they saw one another, secretive smirks that signaled a deep, dark knowledge the rest of the world wouldn’t share until it was far too late.
Weeks passed, and the Long Man’s spirit spread far and wide. His hidden army grew, their numbers swelling as bottle after bottle of tainted beer vanished down unsuspecting gullets. Some threw off his influence, but more—many more—welcomed him into their lives and bodies.
He gave them something they needed, even if they couldn’t articulate what had been missing from their useless existences.
He gave them a tribe to call their own. He gave them purpose. These bodies, each one weak on its own, would do what the Long Man, in all his glorious power, had not been able to accomplish. He would guide them on their missions, and they would do the dark deeds that would save the world. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, would die, but the rest would be saved.
One day, perhaps,
people would remember him not as a monster, but as the hero who saved them against a darkness much greater than their puny minds could comprehend.
Then, his power restored, the Long Man would return home.
He would show the Father.
Around Christmas, the Long Man decided it was time. A part of him wedged into the brain of a traveling salesman stopped at a pay phone alongside I-44. That piece of him fished out a fistful of quarters and fed them into the decrepit device, listening as each one clunked into the near empty coin box. Then he dialed the number burned into his memory from years of using it. It rang and rang and he began to wonder if Joe would bother to pick up the phone only the Long Man had ever called.
And then . . .
“How?” Joe asked. That one word held a multitude of questions the Long Man didn’t feel like answering.
How was he still alive? How was there enough of him left to make this phone call? What did he want?
Instead, the Long Man smiled. “I just wanted you to know, I’m still out here.”
The Night Marshal’s voice crackled through the line like a blazing whip of rage. “Where are you, motherfucker?”
He tutted into the phone. “Such language. Don’t worry, you won’t be seeing me again for a while. Maybe we won’t ever cross paths again. You did give me quite a beating last time, didn’t you?”
The Long Man relished the echoes of pain from that fight. More than that, he loved to relive the moment when he’d outsmarted the Night Marshal one last time. This hadn’t been his plan, but it proved to be more successful than he’d imagined.
“Where?” The Night Marshal’s voice cracked with rage and something else. Fear? “Let’s finish this. Tell me where you are.”
The old monster laughed, a long, loud peal that sent a flock of birds screaming into flight. “I’ll tell you where I am, Joe. Listen carefully.”
He looked at the pay phone in front of him. He watched a long string of unbroken highway unspool under his headlights somewhere in the heart of Montana. His eyes fixed on the clouds below him as she soared in a plane headed for Tokyo. He watched juicy bugs splatter against his motorcycle’s windshield as he roared down a strip of gravel road somewhere on the edge of Kansas. He sipped from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag and watched children playing in a park outside Seattle. In a thousand places, in a thousand different bodies, he smiled as the world ticked on around him, unsuspecting.