by Marcus Wynne
“Yes. Of course.” He turned on 35th, headed towards Lake Calhoun.
“The unit first. Special Investigations. Those investigations of a particularly sensitive and special nature. Which includes investigations regarding . . . anomalous phenomena. If there is a possibility of a threat to the homeland. And of course, there is always the possibility of threats to the homeland. There is a similar unit within the FBI. The rumor of it was the basis for a popular television series . . .”
“The X-files.”
“Yes,” he said. “I have seen this. The two agents were drawn from the founding members of the original FBI unit. A man and a woman.”
“I’d love to hear about the truth that’s out there, Otto, but right now I’m concerned about you and who the hell Eichmann is and who he’s working with or for.”
“My story is a long one, Marius. And very much intertwined with yours. There is the Middle World, and there are the Other Realms. I have been an agent of the Light, working undercover, in this body, since the Second World War. I am here, right now, to help you in this timeline.”
“You said you were of the Light, Otto.”
He pulled up in front of my house. The front door was shut, blocked off with a big X of yellow police tape.
“I am of the Light, Marius,” he said. “I always have been. I work for . . .” he paused. “I am a Son of the Light. Like you. And now, the story you want to hear? We don’t have time for that. You need to do what you need to do in order to find Jolene in the Other Realms and return her to her body, to take care of her. The attack has shattered your family here, and you must restore some semblance of order there—and that’s a delaying tactic.”
“What are you going to do right now?”
“This is your Work,” Otto said. “I’m going to leave you now. I will be back once I have released Dillon. I need to speak to the federal prosecutor who is on her way over from downtown. I will make sure Dillon is with Sabrina, to watch over her. I will check on Jolene’s status as I can, and then I will return here. I have been shown that it is the two of us who will decide this.”
“Yes . . .” Tigre whispered. Burt circled far ahead, a single sharp caw. First In Front stood by the door of my house, waiting . . .
“I’m going to get a few things,” I said. “Then I’m going to journey for guidance on the ceremony. If I’m not here when you get back, wait for me. I won’t go without you. I’ve also been shown that the two of us will work together on this.”
Otto regarded me, his face impassive, his eyes deep and intense. The scar on his cheek pulsed.
“Be careful, Marius,” he said. “You are being tested beyond what most can manage. Stay focused . . . and wait for me. I know that you wish to go now. I will be as fast as I am able.”
“I’ll wait, Otto,” I said. “Thank you. For all of this. And Otto?”
“Yes?”
“I’ll want to hear the rest of this story. After . . .”
He nodded. “When this is over, you will know everything, Marius. I look forward to that discussion. Till later, my friend.”
He pulled away, the heavy German engine fading into the distance.
I went up the walk to my door. Entered.
They’d trashed the place.
Couch overturned, books swept to the floor, everything upended. The kitchen in disarray, the icebox open and the freezer contents melting onto the floor. The bedroom was a wreck, but they had spent special attention on my healing room. All the pictures, the altar, the sacred objects . . . ground under tactical boots. The healing table overturned, and in one corner, the distinct sharp smell of urine.
The jackbooted thugs of the Dark Forces had left their mark.
Tigre prowled, her teeth pulled back. It was no smile. It was a killing looking for a place to happen. “This is motivated by deep hatred,” she said. “Deep hatred comes from fear. These are frightened men.” Burt said nothing, perched on the window sill.
First In Front said it: “Find your knife.”
“What?” I said. “Knife?”
“Your knife,” First In Front said. “The one you and I found.”
Ah. I rummaged through the wreckage. Beneath a pile of paper and the shredded altar cloth I found the old trade knife in its beaded sheath.
“Your car,” First In Front said. “It still runs. We need to go to the Mississippi River, where it splits, near the fort. Bring your knife.”
And the vision rose in me . . .
. . . a man, a man I knew was me, though he didn’t look the same, sifting through detritus on a seashore, piles of wreckage and ruin, huddled shapes I knew were the bodies of the drowned, washed up on a shore far from where the tsunami had taken place, looking, looking for something precious . . .
I tucked the knife into my waistband, hidden beneath my shirt, and went to my car. It was only a short drive to Fort Snelling, where the Mississippi and the Minnesota rivers split at Pike Island.
The parking lot was mostly empty.
Overhead, Burt circled, followed by three crows.
A flash of white behind a tree.
And First In Front, in full regalia, waiting for me on the grass.
I followed him. He led me to the hiking trail, along the trees bowed as though in prayer to the path that led to Pike Island. It was a longish bit. I followed the trail to the very tip of Pike Island, where the waters split. First In Front waited for me there, his head bowed in prayer. And I joined him.
“Father, Mother, Creator God, Great Spirit, Holy Spirit, Goddess . . . I call on you . . .” I began.
And the vision grew as though I were watching it on a huge movie screen: myself in tattered clothing, the remains of white sacred robes, digging with bleeding hands through the wreckage, and laying, with tears streaming down my face, the bodies of the drowned—men, women, children. But searching, searching for . . . what?
I finished my invocation, head bowed, eyes closed, the vision rising . . .
“Follow the vision . . .” First In Front said.
In the vision I turned and walked along the shore . . .
So I did. There was a tangle of water weeds, dead cattails, and some branches making a mass on the shore, right on the ’twixt and the ’tween, where the water became the shore. I bent over it and began to search . . .
. . . fingers filthy and bleeding, scrabbling through the detritus, something, something calling to me, a glimmer . . .
. . . through the detritus, and buried in there, a branch, probably from the oak tree by the water’s edge, where the river had crept up higher, and I brushed it free . . .
. . . caked in mud, tangled in kelp, something long, filthy . . .
I pulled the branch free, it was maybe sixteen inches long, shaped like a sword . . . I knelt by the water and rinsed it clean . . .
. . . a sword, gleaming, like a longer gladius, beneath the filth, as I washed it in the water filled with the bodies and the wreckage of all who had drowned . . .
. . . a long branch, the bark peeling . . .
Take your knife, warrior, peel the bark and expose the skin beneath, the flesh beneath the surface . . .
I took the old trade knife, and skinned back the bark, exposing the pale cambium below. My hand was sure, the knife was keen, and long strips peeled back. There was a natural hilt, where a ring of stubs that might have been budding branches were. I trimmed around the edges . . .
. . . and I washed away all of the filth from the gleaming length of the blade, still keen-edged. But the hilt had been wrapped with leather that had been cut or corroded away . . .
I carried the trimmed and skinned branch back to my car. It seemed as though the walk took no time at all. I drove to the Michael’s craft store in Bloomington and went inside.
“You guys still stock that deer-hide lacing?” I asked the girl at the front.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Aisle eleven, all the way in the back, little boxes on the bottom shelf. You can buy it precut, but if you need a specifi
c length, we can measure and cut it for you.”
“Thank you.”
In the back aisle, a glimpse of a white tiger’s tail, disappearing around a corner . . . First In Front examining boxes of beads . . .
At the bottom, lengths of deerskin lacing. I took the boxes, weighed them in my hand, selected one, paid for it, and sat in my car and tied a rawhide whip handle beneath the natural hilt on the branch.
Perfect.
As though it had been cut just for it.
Now . . .
“In your home, Marius, in the space defiled, carry the Sword and bring the Light,” Tigre whispered.
I drove home. Parked the car in front. Went back into the wreckage of my healing room. Pushed the rubble out, all of it, down to the wooden floor. Bare. Still the stench of urine. I fetched a bucket of soapy water, washed the corner down. Then I took from my battered box of herbals a stick of copal and a braid of sage and sweet grass. Lit it all together and smudged myself, the room . . . opened the windows and let the smoke carry the Darkness away and lift the energy.
Now we were ready.
I sat cross-legged on the floor, the carved and wrapped wand across my lap. Lifted it up in both hands, offered it up . . .
. . . and in the image, beside the sea, after I had wrapped the handle once again, I held it up, offered it to the rising sun . . . and then She rose up out of the waters, the Beloved Lady, the Goddess herself, Mother Mary, Isis, the Lady of the Lake . . . Divine and Powerful, and my head bowed as I offered up the Sword, and She raised Her hands, and the Divine Light of the Creator flowed through her, She Who is the Portal through which the Light of the Creator was Made Flesh, and it flowed into the Sword, and then I held it up, up to the sky, and the power of the mightiest Archangel of all flowed down into it and through me into Mother Earth . . . and I called out . . .
“MIIII-KAI-ELLLL!” I shouted, and the vibration ran through me and through the wand I held, empowered by the Light of the Creator, Blessed by the Mother, and channeled through the Power of the Mighty Protector, Michael . . .
. . . and there, by the waters, in the ruin of the Old World, the Light descended down and through the blade I held aloft, and through me into the Earth, so disturbed and twisted by the changes, like a Mother writhing in the agony of birth, and the energy restored order to the Grid, while the Earth shook and the sky split open and lightning descended . . .
. . . outside, a cloud passed across the sun and then moved, redoubling the light that streamed through the window, bathed me in its warmth, and the wand I held above my head seemed to throb with energy, pulsing down into me, through me . . .
. . . and then the vision shifted, and there were my guides: First In Front, Burt and Tigre, sitting patiently, behind them ringed the Mighty Three: Jesus the Christ, Light of the Creator Made Flesh; Mother Mary, Queen of the Angels, First Among Healers, the Portal through which the Light of the Creator was Made Flesh; and Michael the Archangel, General of the Lord’s Host, He Who Stands at the Right Hand of the Creator. Behind them gathered all the ranks of the angelic kingdom, triangle upon triangle in formation, the tips of mighty spears, gleaming in the Light . . .
“Marius,” came the Voice, and though I could not see Him, I knew that Voice . . .
“Not you, but through you, not by your hand, but by Mine, as a sword in the Archangel’s hand, you will be one of my Swords . . .
“. . . you are Chosen . . .
“And you will be guided, and you will be protected, and you will never be alone . . .”
I opened my eyes. Lowered the wand to my lap. Such a simple thing. A trimmed branch wrapped with rawhide for a handle. Simple, humble, just a stick, really.
But in the Other Realms, the ’twixt and the ’tween, so much more.
CHAPTER 24
I was finishing a light meal in the kitchen when there was a heavy knock on the front door. Remember hungry, horny, and tired? I was starved. Not horny. And while my body felt the strain in every fiber of my being, I felt sharp and alert, and if there had been fatigue, closing my eyes and letting the energy that radiated from that transformed branch flow from the sky through me into the earth rejuvenated me, reenergized me, lifted me to a whole new level of being.
It was Otto.
Behind him, the late afternoon sunlight hung just below the treetops in the park. Soon it would be dusk.
The ’twixt and the ’tween.
Time to go to work.
“Come in, Otto,” I said. “You are welcome. Are you hungry?”
He swept past me. He was garbed for night work: heavy black jersey turtleneck, dark gabardine trousers and low black boots, his long leather greatcoat rustling.
“Yes.”
“Come.” I led him into the kitchen. There was still raw sirloin, cut into thin strips, left on a platter; I took out some bread from Sun Street Bakery, cut some slices, laid out butter; I put on water to boil and prepared my French press for coffee.
Otto set his greatcoat aside and sat at the kitchen counter, perched on a wooden legged stool like a massive bear in the circus. The nearly invisible black leather straps of his shoulder holster rig held his MP5K-SD, three magazines on the off side, and carefully placed between the first and third magazines, was a thin sheath that held a knife.
I slid the platter across to him. “Try this. You may like it.”
He raised an eyebrow, took a piece of thin-cut sirloin and put it in his mouth.
“Yes. Quite good. Very fresh.”
“Only way to eat it . . . before Work.”
“I see.”
I made the coffee while he ate. Put extra cream and sugar into his oversized mug, slid it across to him, sat with my own.
“So?” I said.
He nodded that sharp head bob. “They are safe. All of them.”
“Where?”
“Sabrina and Dillon are in the Marriott downtown. Room’s paid for, they have room service, and the room is warded and guarded. The security there is good—cameras, in-house security, and the police have them under surveillance. They know that my people—DHS—are around keeping an eye on them, so I think that mischief will be stayed. At least mischief of the Middle World kind.”
He sipped his coffee, closed his eyes in appreciation of the coffee. “Thank you, my friend. This is quite good.”
“Jamaican Blue Mountain. Excellent coffee. I like to indulge myself sometimes.”
“Yes.”
He looked older now. His face was drawn with fatigue, long lines that had been hidden before etched from his eyes down to his mouth, crinkles around his lips. If he actually had been alive all these years—not a clone, not a construct—he’d be over a hundred years old.
I wanted that story.
But some other time.
“What have you seen, Otto?”
He considered that. Smiled wearily but with a hint of his great humor in his eyes. “I am to follow you, Marius. To the Gates of Hell and beyond. We are to recapitulate Orpheus, my friend, and descend into the Underworld to rescue the Beloved. Unlike Orpheus, you will not descend alone. And I hope that you will not look back.”
He raised his mug in salute.
“I’ve been to Hell,” I said. “Didn’t like it.”
“An unpleasant place, I agree. What was the nature of your previous visit?”
“Unfinished business on behalf of a client.”
Otto laughed. “Your client got great value.”
“Just my job five days a week.”
“‘Rocket Man . . .’ Elton John, yes?”
We both laughed.
“So where do we begin?” Otto said.
“Where we met.”
“Ah. Decanter. Truly a gateway . . . to Hell.”
“Where do you park that saucer of yours?”
“Over the city, below the FAA ceiling. Cloaked.”
“I need to hear that story, too.”
“You will. Perhaps tonight. But darkness falls. And duty calls. Yes?”
&
nbsp; “I guess that means we’re driving.”
“No. Tonight, I think a sky chariot is called for.”
Why not? After all, if you’re going to storm the Gates of Hell, why not fly first-class?
* * *
If you live a tame life, as I do, when I’m not battling demons, Cabal clones, goat-headed soldiers and Fallen Angels, you’ve probably seen outlaw bikers tooling down the road in formation, hair flying, colors flapping in the breeze, and felt a little bit of trepidation as those dangerous outlaws blew past you. Or maybe you’ve seen a movie with an epic fight scene like The Two Towers when the Rohirrim are coming to rescue the besieged at Helm’s Deep, or seen the faces of the Mongol horde assembling on the plains, preparing to loot and pillage a helpless village—in other words, you’ve probably seen major league badasses assembling and preparing to descend with wrath, wrack and ruin on some hapless foes, right?
If you’ve never ridden to battle with the Dark Forces in a tricked-out retro ’40s flying saucer with Otto Skorzeny, you have not yet lived.
I sat behind him in a jump seat that came out of the floor, and watched over his shoulder as we jetted along the highway towards the dim lights of Decanter, the sick yellow glow of the downtown where the ADM corn processing plants punched corn into corn syrup, the favorite toxin of major food manufacturers, and shipped it out via railcar to all four corners of the Middle World.
While I’m sure we could have traveled much faster, there was something appropriate about cruising at not much more than car speed, invisible to the eye—and apparently the radar as well, though there was a heads-up display that showed not only the location of all aircraft but the satellites above, including the ones with look-down capability, and the locations of all vehicles on the road. There was even a FLIR-type insert that showed the thermal signatures of animals and a few humans in the woods off the road.
Full dark was on us, and so even the ripple in the night sky as we passed would be invisible.
We were running light. Otto carried his machine pistol, and he had a satchel full of spare magazines and hand grenades. He had a well-worn Luger tucked into his belt and magazines for that as well tossed into his greatcoat pockets and the satchel. He bore no power-phernalia.