by Jon F. Merz
She was looking for something.
Memories? Thoughts? Feelings?
I didn’t know, but I did not like what was happening. And I wanted her out of my head.
“That’s enough.”
I blinked as she moved away. She turned back and nodded. “If you truly wish to learn magic, then you’re going to have to get used to me being inside of that pretty little noggin of yours.”
“Why is that necessary?”
“Because I have to ensure that the right protocols are implanted in the correct areas of your brain. It’s not simply a matter of memorizing spells or whatever other silliness you imagine being the province of magic wielders. It requires a bit of rewiring.”
“I thought you said it only takes days.”
La Calavera shrugged. “I said it depends. For some it only takes days. But judging by what I’ve seen in your head, it could take far longer. I’m afraid it might also be slightly painful.”
“Slightly?”
She laughed. “Or very.”
I frowned. “This isn’t sounding as good as it did earlier.”
“This is the choice you have to make, Lawson. You can either commit to me and the practice or you can die. Rather simple, really.”
“Two choices only?” I sighed. “And after volunteering to betray the Council no less.”
La Calavera put her hands on her hips and tilted her head at me funny. “I’m starting to think that perhaps you aren’t as sincere as you claim to be.”
“I’m just not crazy about painful brain surgeries that might not be necessary.”
“Let me ask you a question: if there were a member of the Council here with us right now, and I told you to kill them, would you?”
Uh oh. “Well, that depends on what they did.”
“It doesn’t matter what they did. I ordered you to kill them. How is that different from what you do normally?”
“Well normally, there’s a reason why people get sanctioned. The Council isn’t in the business of just handing out termination orders. That wouldn’t exactly win them over the hearts and minds of our people.”
“I have no desire to do that,” said La Calavera. “But I do need to know if I can trust you implicitly. And that if I give you an order to kill someone that it will get carried out without fail and without question.”
“Once we sign the contract, I’m as good as yours.”
She frowned. “What contract? There is no contract, Lawson. If you say you’re working for me, then that is what I expect you to do. There’s no negotiation. I will show you the ways of magic and you will be my surgical tool in the field when I cannot bring my other men and women into play. Is that understood?”
“Okay then.” I was leaning back against the wall and shifting back and forth as slightly as I could. While the ropes I’d been bound with were fair quality, I’d managed to locate a sharp-edged stone that was cutting through them. I could already feel them loosening. Just a few minutes more and I’d be free.
Of course, as soon as that happened, I had no idea what I was going to do other than get out of there and try to get reinforcements flown down to take care of this situation. La Calavera clearly had some big plans and her entire cartel needed to be dismantled.
La Calavera sighed. “Perhaps I’ve made a mistake.”
“What, with me? Nah.” I smiled. “I’m with you.”
She raised a hand and then I saw movement behind her. I hoped she hadn’t somehow managed to kidnap a member of the Council and brought them down here as a test for me to kill. Because that sure as hell wasn’t going to happen.
Well, unless it was Ava.
I still didn’t know why she hated me as much as she did.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the video camera. I could kill one of those, no problem. It wouldn’t even weigh on my conscience.
“You say you are with me,” said La Calavera. “So now I ask you to say it to the camera. Renounce your allegiance to the Council and I will take great pleasure sending it to them.”
“Your employe retention program needs a bit of help. If you’re going to use the threat of a Council sanction to get me to pledge my loyalty, then that’s not going to work. And why would you do that anyway? Let them Council think I still work for them. That way, I can still feed you intel and you have someone on the inside.”
“Yes, that might work, but I’d rather have you do this.”
The rock scraped my inside wrist and it hurt like hell, but I swallowed against the pain. “And if I say no?”
“I kill you for all time.”
“The soul thing?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, set the camera up.”
I watched a team of her guys put the camera on a tripod. The firelight was bright enough that they didn’t need any lights on me.
La Calavera held up her hand. “Wait.”
Now what?
“I want his hands untied. There’s no way the Council will believe he’s doing this of his own volition if his hands are still bound.”
Shit.
“No problem,” I said. And I jerked my hands free of the ropes. “Someone didn’t tie those things very tight anyway.”
La Calavera started to grow angry, but I redirected her attention.
“Are we going to do this or not?”
She nodded and turned to her men. “Turn the camera on.” She eyed me. “You will renounce your allegiance and tell the Council that you work for me now.”
“Sure.”
“Then you will tell them that if they send any more of your kind, that you will send them back in body bags, minus their heads and their souls.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “That’s quite descriptive.”
“It’s the truth,” said La Calavera.
“If we go at them too hard too fast, they’ll simply scramble a STA-F team and there won’t be any place in Mexico that you can run to. Believe me, I’ve seen them do it before. And they won’t hesitate, especially if it looks like I’ve gone rogue.”
“I don’t much care what it looks like,” said La Calavera. “Do what I say and then once that’s complete, we will discuss your future training. Preferably over a fresh kill and a glass of warm blood.”
My stomach turned at the thought of it. Warm blood makes me gag. But I only smiled and nodded. “All right.”
La Calavera waved her hand and I saw the red light go on over the camera. She turned back and smiled at me. “Action.”
I grinned. Then I adopted a stony stare on my face. “This message is for the Council. Fyar Chuldoc Erim. You know who I am. You know what I do. As of this moment, I am no longer in the service of the Council. I hereby renounce my allegiance to it. I am now in the employ of La Calavera, head of La Familia Catrina cartel.”
I could see the huge smile on her face. Clearly, she was enjoying this. I wasn’t too worried; there was no way she was going to live long enough to send it to the Council anyway. And they’d never buy it if she did.
“I have a warning for the Council,” I continued. “If you send others like me after any of us, they will be killed and their bodies returned without their heads. They will also no longer have their immortal souls. La Calavera is skilled at killing the souls of those who oppose her. And if she wishes it, I will be her dealer of death to those who seek to quell her ambitions. Let this be a final warning not to involve yourselves in our business. If you do, you will seal your own doom.”
“Cut!” La Calavera came toward me with the huge smile still intact. “That was amazing, Lawson. I’m very impressed. Have you ever thought about a career in film?”
“Not really. Was my acting that good?”
“Better than I expected,” said La Calavera. “And frankly, I didn’t have high expectations. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said. “I’m assuming you’ll send that immediately?”
She shrugged. “Well, first we put some post-production on it. Music to set the mood, that sort of thing.�
��
“Naturally,” I said. “Otherwise it’s just boring.”
“Where did you learn to act like that?”
“Well, it’s not really acting, is it?” I asked. “After all, I think it’s pretty apparent that I work for you now.”
“A good point,” said La Calavera. “But really...do you?”
I stopped and stared at her. “How can you even ask that?”
Her hand around my throat was cold and unyielding. There was strength in it I’d never felt before. Her energy poured into my head, snaking through all the defenses I thought I’d managed to mount. As she did, her smile grew ever larger and ever more lascivious.
“Yes, I see it now.”
“See...what?” I was struggling for breath.
“Your true intentions, Lawson.” She pulled me closer to her face. “Did you really think that I was such a fool as that? That I would fall for the lies you spin with ease? You think you’re the first Fixer I’ve ever come across in all my years on this planet? I know what your training is like. I know what you are capable of.”
“I’m not….lying.”
“But you are,” said La Calavera. “And as much fun as I’ve had watching you try to spin your way out of your predicament, it is time to finish what I’ve started. You’re going to die, Lawson.”
11
Before I could even think about attacking her, the two acolytes on either side of me tackled me to the ground, pinning my arms with strength that belied their diminutive stature. I didn’t know whether they’d just juiced or not, but they had some serious strength and I was helpless against them. Especially when they were backed up by the appearance of cartel members with assault rifles.
There didn’t seem to be any point in fighting just then.
They hauled me to my feet and re-pinned me against the valley wall where Juarez had had his nipple ripped off. As awful as that was for him, at least he was dead now. His suffering was hopefully over. I didn’t know if La Calavera had successfully killed his soul, I didn’t know how that worked. For Juarez’s sake, I hoped it was just a bunch of bullshit and that he was in a better place.
I wasn’t all that optimistic about my own future, however.
La Calavera watched as I was bound against the rock. “Make sure the knots are tighter now and give him no room to maneuver at all. I don’t want any unexpected surprises.”
I looked at her. “You never believed me, did you?”
“I wouldn’t be much of a cartel leader if I believed every fool who came through my turf with a story, now would I?”
“So, why let me go on like that?”
She shrugged. “I liked watching your hopes rise as if you were going to make it out of here alive. And then, when the time was right, I dashed those hopes. And it was utterly delicious watching them die.”
“You are not a nice person,” I said then. It wasn’t much of a line, but I wasn’t feeling all that witty at the moment.
“No,” she said. “I most definitely am not a nice person. But I can be an awful one, too. And you, my silly friend, are about to discover what awful truly means.”
With that, her two acolytes separated from me, leaving me against the valley wall. La Calavera raised her arms and a wind kicked up around the fire, blasting oxygen into the flames and driving them ever higher. It got hot - seriously hot - as the flames shot higher, but I suspected it wasn’t just the fire making the entire valley an inferno.
La Calavera was summoning the spirits of dead vampires to come and do her bidding. And her bidding wasn’t something I wanted to see.
I caught movement out of the corners of my eyes as things zipped past me in the firelight. They circled the flames and then rose higher and higher into the sky before blasting back down toward my face. They screeched as they closed on and I wanted to turn away, to shield my eyes from their empty dead stares.
I didn’t though, because that would have shown fear. And while I was terrified, I wasn’t about to let the spirits know that. This wasn’t the first time I’d dealt with the vampiric dead.
Unfortunately.
Yet even with the bad times in the past, I’d learned a lot about dealing with them. They didn’t respect fear. It empowered them to do even more horrible things to those they wanted to affect.
But if you showed that you could stare them down, they respected it. Weird that even in the spirit world there were rules and conventions. If you followed them, you could survive an encounter with the dead.
Not that I was crazy about dealing with the dead again. In times past, I’d always had Jack around me to help guide me on this stuff. But he was far away and I was without any sort of ally.
I tried to clear my mind and reach out to the spirits. I’d never asked Jack before about it, but I couldn’t imagine that the dead were all that pleased about being forced to help the living. What sort of leverage did an Invoker or other magic wielder have over them that forced them to do their bidding? I knew with Invokers, it was something they were born with - an ability to connect and communicate. What about other magic wielders, though? Did La Calavera have some sort of hold over the dominion of the dead?
My head felt warm as if I was about to break out in a fever. In my mind’s eye, I could see flashes of blue light shooting at me as the spirits continued to swirl around the fire. I tried to touch them in my mind.
Tried anything.
But nothing seemed to work. I opened my eyes and found myself staring directly into the vacant orbs of a spirit hovering in front of me. I nearly shouted in surprise, but willed myself to stay calm.
You know, as calm as you can be when there’s a dead dude hovering in front of your face.
“You are Lawson,” the spirit said. I think it was a man at one point, but I couldn’t be sure. And the voice seemed to echo inside of my head, making me wince from the pain.
“Yes,” I said.
I could hear La Calavera speaking in the background but couldn’t make out her words. Judging by the tone of her voice, though, she didn’t sound happy.
Good.
“Why are you here?”
“To stop her. I was sent by the Council to do my job. What she proposes to do threatens other members of our race. She must be stopped.”
The spirit said nothing for a moment and then its mouth moved again. “She says that you are here to kill her.”
“I am.”
“She has summoned us to kill you instead. She claims self-defense.”
I shook my head. “She is the guilty party and I am charged with delivering her sentence. She is lying to you.”
“Not in essence,” said the spirit. “You are, after all, here to kill her. She has the right to defend herself.”
“So do I,” I said. “But she has restrained me.”
The spirit wavered for a moment and then spoke again. “I can do little about that. But your name is respected among my brethren.”
“How so?”
Another pause and then a reply. “Bhutan.”
I nodded. When Jack and I had gone to rescue Talya from Xuan Xiang, we’d first journeyed to Bhutan to find the Cloak of Despar - an ancient relic that granted us invisibility and other protections. Without it, we never would have succeeded in the mission. But in order to get the Cloak, I had to do battle mentally with a spirit within the resting place of the Cloak. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, but I passed and the Cloak was given to me.
“So, will you kill her then?”
“I think not,” said the spirit. “But we will not do her bidding on this night.”
“She will use magic to try to get you to comply.”
There was something that might have been a chuckle. “She may try to use her magic, but she will be unable to compel us to obey. She has already used much of her strength tonight and it wanes now even as we converse. She is not as strong not enough to control us tonight, nor is she as strong as you might think. Fortunately for you.”
“Thank you f
or the information.”
“You are not yet safe,” said the spirit. “She will kill you by other means if she is unable to get us to obey her.”
“The rest of her cartel,” I said.
“Indeed. What will you do?” asked the spirit.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“You had better think of something quickly,” said the spirit. “Even now she grows impatient with us and demands to know why we are not carrying out her orders. When we tell her, she will quickly realize that she will have to resort to other means and at that point, she will banish us back to our realm. You are dead soon thereafter unless you come up with a plan in the meantime.”
“How long do I have?”
The spirit hesitated for a moment. I wondered if it was communicating with the other spirits nearby. But then it came back.
“Two minutes.”
I sighed. “Great.”
“There is nothing else we can do, Lawson,” said the spirit. “You must get yourself out of this on your own and without our guidance.”
“I don’t suppose you can blast some sort of energy at these ropes, can you? At least give me a fighting chance?”
There was another pause and I felt intense heat around my wrists. I smelled something burning and hoped it wasn’t my flesh. But then the ropes fell free.
“Consider that a gift from us,” said the spirit. “Perhaps one day you will be able to repay us.”
“I am honored,” I said. “Thank you.”
“You have hairy wrists,” said the spirit. “Our apologies for singeing the hair.”
I almost smiled. And if I wasn’t in imminent danger of being killed by means other than spiritual, I might have laughed. Instead, I merely nodded.
“She is banishing us now,” said the spirit. “Pray we do not meet again. Good luck, Lawson.”
The heat vanished and the fire died down almost instantly. I flexed my hands but kept them hidden behind my back. I saw movement behind the fire and then La Calavera stepped in front of me.