by Marcus Wynne
To a shaman, even the grass and dirt has life and spirit. To override that in the service of the Dark . . .
That just pisses me off.
This thought-form looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy run through a sod farm. It swung a rusty length of pipe in one paw.
“There goes the sprinkler system,” I said.
Dillon considered that. “Should I shoot this thing?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
Dillon opened up. Divots of grass and dirt flew like a bad day on the driving range.
The thought-form lumbered forward and swiped at Dillon’s head with the pipe.
We both ducked.
“Maybe it would hurt,” I said.
“Gee, thanks, Marius,” Dillon muttered. He crouched low and tried to get behind the Lawnmower Man/Dough Boy.
I summoned power; felt the shift and saw the shimmering as the veil between the worlds thinned. Then the grass beneath the thought-form shifted, drew and wrapped long strands and tendrils around the legs of the form, bringing it down. My shamanic vision showed me black lines like puppet strings running from the back of the thought-form, disappearing into a murky gray swirling fog—somewhere back there a human figure, square-headed, familiar . . .
A massive black crow whipped by my ears and tore at the tendrils.
“. . . never the easy way with you, Marius . . .”
“Thanks, Burt!” I shouted.
The thought-form rose and stretched out its paws, fingers growing Freddy Krueger-like, swiping at me as I ducked back. Dillon poured shot after shot into it with no effect.
Time for another pass—
—and time to call for the heavyweights.
“Archangel Michael, I call on you, to bring the Sword of Michael here in the service of the Light . . .” I whispered.
A brilliant flash of white light, hotter than the heart of the sun, brighter than the sum of all days rolled together, and something slicing down—
The thought-form came undone. Tendrils and threads fell backwards into a shrinking gray hole, swirling like dirty water down the drain.
There was only a sadly torn-up lawn and a bent piece of rusty pipe.
And four bodies huddled on the lawn.
Dillon walked to me, reloading his AK. The barrel smoked. There was a sear on his left sleeve from a grazing gunshot or the hot barrel of his own weapon.
“You okay?” he said.
“Yeah. You?”
He looked at his coat sleeve. “Damn. I like this coat. Nothing a Korean tailor can’t fix.” He surveyed the wreckage of his lawn. “Good thing I don’t have neighbors. Guess it’s time for the three S’s, yeah?”
“Shit, shower and shave?”
“Shoot, shovel, and shut up.”
I looked at the rolling cornfields around us, miles from any other houses. “Seems very ecologically conscious to me.”
We walked over to the bodies. Despite the damage the bullets had done, they didn’t leak much.
“This isn’t right,” I said. “Back up, Dillon.”
I called my spirits close and opened my shamanic vision to encompass the bodies.
. . . the lines of connection and control hung, floated like tendrils in murky water, tracking back . . . were they alive or dead or thought-forms? . . . flashes, brief glimpses, and then long rows of stainless steel coffers, glass-fronted, pale bodies floating within . . .
“Ah, no,” I said.
“What?”
“This just went from worse to worser.”
“What?”
“Cabal.”
“What?”
“You’re getting repetitive, Dillon,” I said.
“What?”
I pulled some shells out of my pocket and thumbed them into the Remington.
“Cabal, Dillon. These guys aren’t really human. They were grown in tanks, animated by the Dark Forces.”
“Grown in tanks? What’re you talking about, grown in tanks?”
I looked up at the sky. Down the long road.
Empty.
At least to the naked eye.
“The Cabal grew them. Clones.”
“Like Star Wars?”
I had to laugh. “Yeah, dude. Like Star Wars. Cabal grows them, the Dark Forces empower them. They use technology to embed skills and training in them.”
“They’re human?”
“It’s a toss-up, Dillon. They’re grown from human stock, using human DNA, but essentially they have no soul, no Light from the Creator. The Dark Forces breathe a kind of life into them; they possess or inhabit them, but whether they’re human in the same way . . . I don’t know. They’re like zombies, but different.”
“‘Like zombies, but different?’ Oh, dude,” Dillon said. “I should have stayed on the boat. Number one rule is: ‘Stay on the boat!’”
“‘The horror! . . . the horror!’”
Dillon shook his head. “It’s murder in this world, Marius. Guess we better find out who they were, since we figured out what they were.” He bent down and took out a credential case from the hip pocket of the closest body. He opened it up. “Department of Homeland Security, Special Agent.” He sighed. “Dead federales?”
“Cabal, dude.”
“I’m gonna need another long talk, Marius.”
“Let’s clean up your lawn first. You still got that chipper in back?”
* * *
“Why do you pray over them if they’re not human?” Dillon said.
We washed our hands after spreading the bloody new mulch into his big compost pit.
“Not for me to decide whether they have souls or not,” I said. “I leave that up to the Creator. Just my default. Enemy or not, I honor them and wish them passage to the Light. I do it for you and me, too. Keeps the karma where it’s supposed to be.”
Dillon considered that for a long moment, his stillness a marked contrast to his fluidity in a fight. He nodded and handed me a clean towel to dry my hands.
“So, what now?” he asked.
“They’re moving on me hard, which begs the questions: Why do it this way? Why send Feds after us instead of a midnight attack by the undead or the demonic? Where is the controller?”
“These are Socratic questions.”
“Your liberal arts education is showing.”
“English degree’s got to be good for something.”
“You got an English degree?”
“Yes, Marius, I gots an English degree. To use the vernacular.”
“Every day I learn something new about you.”
“Every day I learn something more about you, and frankly, it scares the crap out of me.”
“There’s that,” I said. “Scares me, too. Most days. I think they want to tie us down here in the Middle World. If we have problems with the cops in this world, it degrades our ability in the Other Realms. So we’re going to have to measure twice and cut once. We’ll get more action like this. But this controller and the Cabal . . . this is different.”
“Refresh me on this Cabal thing.”
I sighed. It always feels strange to say the words out loud. All the layers of reality come together in a strange way. It’s tin-foil-hat territory to the uninitiated, but to those of us who actually experience it—and live to tell of it—it’s as real as any other inanity of daily “ordinary” life, like mortgage foreclosures and Happy Meals.
“It’s a war, Dillon. Conflict. The essential conflict. Dark against Light. It’s been playing out since the dawn of time. There are those who rejected the Light and were tossed down. There are those who stayed with the Light. Some of them come down into the Darkness to rescue those who want to return to the Light. The Dark Forces only rarely can work directly against us; they have to work through us. Just like the Light works through us. We’re all portals and we all have the choice to work with the Dark or the Light. We struggle with that, all of us—it’s the blessing and the curse of Free Will. Those that choose what the Dark Forces offer—power, influence, money, sex,
whatever—provide a channel for the Dark and make themselves into a tool to use against the Light. They try to corrupt and squash the Light wherever they go.”
Dillon nodded. “Okay. So how do the Feds fit in?”
“You know the story of the bank robber who was asked why he robbed banks?”
“Refresh me.”
“When he was asked, he said, ‘Because that’s where the money is.’ That’s why the Feds. That’s where the power is. Cabal infiltrates at a key level where they can influence power and act without fear of getting caught. They’re afraid of discovery.”
I rubbed my forehead. This was giving me a headache.
“Cabal’s been around in one form or another for a long time,” I said. “There’s always been humans who work in allegiance for the Dark Forces. Nazis were a good example. The creeping fascism in this country . . . maybe another. So where do they hide? In plain sight. Behind classification, need to know, law enforcement and military and security. Not all of those are Cabal; some of them are good people doing necessary work. But it’s hard to tell sometimes. The intelligence and military people have a vested interest in the Cabal agenda—they get influence and control in exchange for technology, help, whatever . . .”
“Man, this is way over my head and into the yard,” Dillon said. “Just tell me who to shoot when it comes time, okay? We’re going to need heavier weapons if I’m going to be fighting animated lawns.”
“Somewhere, someone or something is thinking the same about us,” I said. I felt a sudden brush against my neck, a heaviness that lingered till I called on the Light . . .
CHAPTER 10
“You put them in the chipper?” Jolene said, aghast. “A wood chipper?”
“Dillon’s got that whole permaculture thing going on. Organic compost and all that . . .” I said.
“Marius!” She shook her head. Leaned back in the comfortable chair she’d staked out in Gigi’s. Crossed one long, Armani-trouser-clad leg over the other. Laughed the laugh I live for.
“It has a certain twisted symmetry to it,” she said. “Organic matter returned to organic matter . . .”
My attempt at levity faded into worry. Her energy was cloudy and disturbed. She was worried about me, and as a powerful intuitive herself, she felt the energy swirling around me, the weight of the Dark Forces probing for me.
And she knew I was worried about her.
Here’s the thing: deep down, beneath my feminist exterior, I’m a sexist pig.
Sorry.
I love women. I celebrate women. I love sex with women. I worship and venerate the Divine Feminine.
But hand in hand with that open love and respect of the Feminine Power comes the fierce protective instinct of the Masculine. Yes, Jolene is a full Priestess of the Wiccan Circle, a powerful sensitive and intuitive in her own right, and she is a woman.
My woman.
That activates something deep inside me, a fiery part that rises up bloody handed if there is even a hint of a threat to her.
And that brings up her own fierceness in reaction, because if ever there was a woman who went her own way, who prized the independence she’d fought for her whole life, it would be my Jolene.
“How does this connect, Marius?” she said. “Something about the woman you worked on?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve journeyed on it, but with the Cabal involved, it’s murky. Maybe this sorcerer was connected in some way to her father.”
Jolene pursed her lips, drawing a fine array of razor-edged lines around the red pout of her mouth. “I’ll look into it.”
“No!”
She gave me the Look.
“No, really, Jolene,” I said hastily. “It’s best not to draw attention with this . . . I don’t need to be distracted worrying about you. Just be conscious of your own protection and shielding. I’ll be away for a while . . .”
Inwardly I groaned as she straightened, then leaned forward, her brilliant blue eyes blazing.
“I won’t be rescued nor will I be told to sit on the side, Marius,” she said in a clear, scarily calm voice. “You don’t tell me what to do in matters of the Way—or anything else. Ever. How does that make me feel? ‘Oh, poor me, I’m so fragile, I’ll just sit at home and darn while my big manly man goes off to do battle with sorcerers, undead mercenaries and crooked cops’? I don’t live that way. As you should know by now.”
“Um, I didn’t mean it like that . . .”
“I hate it when you stammer. Really. You said what you said. I say what I say. I’ll look into this myself. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, I’m already involved. With you. Remember that? We are joined by the Power of Three and I make my own decisions about what to do when someone I love and join with is under threat.”
“Ah, okay, look . . .”
She fixed me with a basilisk glare. “No.”
That heated me up. I know, it’s crazy, but she’s crazy sexy when she’s mad. I almost said something, but then that would have immediately led to something physical, for better or worse, so I chose discretion.
This time.
A faint whisper from my guides . . . “Chicken . . .”
I took a deep breath.
“I respect you and your work, Jolene. You know that. As sure as the breath we both breathe. Okay? Here’s the thing: this is already a violent fight. Dillon and me, we’ve been down this road before. And yeah, so have you. I know this. This is focused on me. I need to keep my mind in the fight. And yes, it’s a character flaw, and I’m painfully aware of it, but I can’t concentrate when I’m thinking or worrying about you. I can’t help it. It’s my nature.”
“Like the scorpion and the frog.”
“Sure. Whatever. You in this makes me more vulnerable.”
“What?”
“It’s warrior strategy, Jolene. You’re my distraction. You’re my weakness. That’s how they’ll try and get to me. They tried the straight-on frontal. All it did was add to my body count and Dillon’s compost pile. But with you . . . they’ll try to get at me through you. It’ll add fear and uncertainty . . . you know how they feed on that.”
She studied my face, sat back, touched one finger to her drink. I saw understanding in her.
“Yes,” she said. “I know what they feed on.”
“Will you do this for me? Please? It will help me get through this. Just stay out, look to yourself. I know you can take care of yourself. I need you to be my safe harbor if I need one. I mean, when I need one,” I added in a hurry.
She got up and went to the counter. “Johnny?” she called to the extravagantly tattooed and coifed rockabilly manager. “Would you get me a refill please?”
“Sure,” he said. “House?”
“No. The Guatemalan organic.”
He decanted some for her and dropped me a knowing wink as she turned back to join me at the table.
Thanks for that, Johnny.
She eased into her chair, all black-clad lissome length of her. A waft of her perfume, heated by temper and the body I knew so well, filtered my way. I grew a raging erection which didn’t help my overall discomfort.
She studied me over the rim of her glass.
“I’ll leave it alone,” she said. “For now.”
“Thank you.”
She nodded, turned away, stared into space, sipped her coffee.
I took the cue and leaned back, tasted my too-cool coffee, afraid to move to get a refill.
Faint and far off, I heard laughter . . . “Women, can’t live with them, can’t live without them . . .”
No lie, G.I.
* * *
Beard’s Plaisance is a park on the southwestern curve of Lake Harriet. It’s overlooked by the crowds that circle the lake on foot, on bikes, on skates or skis—in the winter the long hill is popular with local kids who plummet and swoop down the hill on sleds. But it’s most often missed, even by the people who live nearby. There’s a stand of old trees at the top of the hill, and then a long grassy expanse th
at drops sharply down to the Parkway, bordered on one side by a tennis court. These hills that ring the lake are built of rubble dragged there by the glaciers; when they melted they created the lakes, and the debris fields around these last pockets of ice created the hills.
The Lakota Sioux, who lived here long before Minneapolis was a thought in the heads of the white men, kept seasonal encampments on the shores of this lake. The hill that Beard’s Plaisance is part of is where the Sioux medicine men and women lived; it’s the place where they had their gatherings to share their insights from journeys into the Spirit World. There’s a long tradition of honoring the sacred here. Just a block away, where the most senior medicine people lived at the apex of the hill, the missionaries built a church. It burned down at least three times, the most recent in a fire ignited by a dramatic flash of lightning during a service. It was only after the Lakota medicine people were called in to do a healing and a clearing of the land did the atmospheric and fiery disturbances cease, and the Christian church morphed into a nondenominational house of worship that, depending on the night, housed Christians, Wiccans, Lutherans, and Unitarians as well as a rotating cast of other spiritual practitioners.
So it made sense that I was drawn here often, especially when I needed to commune with the nature spirits, here in a sacred spot bordered by roads traveled by those who did not see what I saw. I’d done ceremony here that even the passers-by didn’t notice; it was as if there was a cloak of invisibility wrapped around the hill, especially at the top amongst the stand of trees. There’s a minigrove there, a loose ring of mature trees off to one side, with a low hedge of shrubs between the grove and the street. It made you essentially invisible if you sat in the circle.
I sat cross-legged on the grass. Dillon stood off, far enough away to watch me and still see all the approaches, a short-barreled rifle, illegal as can be, in a padded tennis racket case slung over his shoulder.
My spirits beside and around me, and my warrior brother standing by.
I was as safe as I could possibly be.
I prefer to use a real drum when I can, but one thing I’ve learned is that sometimes it’s to one’s advantage to keep a low profile. Drumming in public can draw unwanted attention, especially if you are trying to remain hidden from view. So one of the benefits of modern technology is the iPhone or the iPod—I used my iPhone and its headset to provide me with the full sense-surround experience of drumming in a completely private way that allowed me to focus on the nuances of my journey instead of drumming and stopping to explain what I was doing to the curious.