“What?”
“You’ve fallen for Victor Fuentes’ propaganda. You do not know your enemy.”
I tried to struggle but my breath came too short, too fast. Escape was a useless hope.
“If the Ra get into our world, you’ll treat us like we treat cattle. It’ll be baby burgers, breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Key’s laughter sounded metallic. “Perhaps, if you’re lucky, you will make an entertaining pet, Iowa. Once your spirit is broken, of course.”
“Won’t happen.”
“Said bravely, but meaningless. Even now, you allow me to carry you like a child.”
“You’re like…what? Seven feet tall and I’m…not. What’s the plan? You gonna take me home and feed me kibble?” I was actually kind of hoping for that. Monster or not, I assumed he had to sleep sometime. Then I’d make my move.
“We are not the Darkness Visible,” Key said. “We are the Ra.”
“Then why do you work so hard to keep yourselves a secret? You’re as undercover as we are.”
“Strategies are best when secret, little one. We won’t hide our existence for much longer.”
“What are you doing? What is Peter Smythe doing in Ra?”
Key ignored my question. “He ordered me to spare you and so I did. I suspect you will both regret such false mercy. You fought well tonight, considering the circumstances. I saw what you did for your friend. Well done. I would have killed him myself, but I was busy with Samantha Biggs and the fire, of course.”
Getting praise from Key for killing Clyde made me tear up. If Key liked what I’d done, it had to be wrong.
“There is no dishonor in this.” He nodded at my broken arm. “Go, and heal. Someday soon you’ll need to be able to fight and you won’t be fighting my kind. You’ll be fighting what you once defended.”
He set me down on my feet. We stood beside an old Toyota Camry covered in a dusting of snow in the back of the church parking lot. My legs were too wobbly to fight.
“This one will return you to your people,” Key said. “Enjoy this time hating me. Imagine the worst about us. When you understand why we do what we do, you won’t hate me anymore. You will understand that pity is more noble than all your self-righteous anger.”
The car’s engine started and the passenger side window rolled down. I bent to look in. I’d hoped to see Sam. Instead, it was Lynda. She looked at me through her circle lenses.
“Where’s Samantha?” I asked.
Key cleared his throat. “Tamara. I have a message for you to take to Victor Fuentes. Tell your friends at the Keep to kill the magic folk. Then abandon your fortress. In two nights we come for you. You say we hide. I say we are clever, choosing our time and place. You say we are evil. I say we are trying to survive. To deny us entry to your world is genocide. You have so much and even now you’re throwing it all away, just as we did.”
“Invasion is invasion,” I said. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”
“You think humans are so pure.” The monster harumphed.
(I didn’t know a monster could harumph.)
“You scurrying creatures have no patience or appreciation for nuance,” Key said. “You pride yourself on your charity when you give, even when you give so little. You suppose you are thinking when you are merely repeating what others have told you. Pathetic.”
“Is that it?”
“Not quite. I’d add that I don’t judge you for how you look. You think us ugly but the Ra are merely a different species. Many of us, our masters, are beautiful, even by your standards. Perhaps you’ll live long enough to learn this.”
“You’re Obi-wan and Yoda wrapped up in one teachy, preachy Mr. Miyagi package, aren’t you?”
Key surprised me. “Star Wars has become overrated, but I did enjoy The Karate Kid. The original one, I mean.”
He laughed when he saw my look. “I know my enemies. You don’t. That’s one reason the Ra will win this war. Here’s another: take this message to your conductor, too. Tell Victor that those of the Choir Invisible who kill the magic folk and abandon the Keep will be spared. Tell your friends.” He turned and disappeared into the darkness beyond the tombstones.
Lesson 123: the French have an expression: “L’esprit d’escalier.” It’s pretty much all I remember from French class, but it’s a good one. It literally means spirit of the staircase. In practice, it’s that perfect, cutting reply to something nasty someone says. It is what you wish you had said.
As I drove away with Lynda, I came up with several responses to Key: “I’ll eat your heart!” or “Spartans never retreat! Spartans never surrender!” A simple, “I’ll rip off your arm and beat you to death with the wet end!” would have been acceptable. I knew that one from elementary school.
However, looking up into Key’s glittering ebon eyes, my mind had dropped to the bad kind of Empty Mind again.
Instead, I shouted through my closed window, “Oh, yeah?” Then I said…nothing.
Give me a break. I was off my game. A taunting zombie, destruction, double decapitation, murder, loss, a broken arm, a beating, strangulation, a pounding head, smoke inhalation…when’s the last time you had to deal with all that in one evening?
Worse? I’d seen my father through the rift but I couldn’t kill him.
Worse than that? Sam must be dead.
Worst of all, instead of killing Peter Smythe, I’d killed Clyde Bonnet.
On the brink of D-Day, I wasn’t ready to defend Earth and the innocent. I couldn’t even defend myself.
Chapter 17
Lynda wiped her tears and drove — appropriately, I suppose — like a little old lady. Her head jutted forward, barely peering over the wheel. Her gnarled hands made me think of tree knots. She drove so cautiously, I worried Key would catch up to us if he changed his mind and decided to kill us.
While she steered us through dark, slippery streets, I clutched my broken arm. I wanted to cry and scream, but I tried to hold it in. Funny thing about trying to hold in anguish: it leaks out in little gasps and bursts and lasts longer than if you settle down for a full and rich wail.
Lynda glanced at me. “Studies have shown that swearing decreases pain. The more scatological and imaginative, the better.”
I tried it. I used every nasty word I knew and screamed it out. It worked. The pain eased, at least a little. Call that Lesson 124.
When that was done, my head cleared and I tried to assess my assets and liabilities. As Mama would say, my ass was in a sling.
I wanted my mother with me. There was a time, especially after Brad’s death, when all I wanted was to get away from Medicament, Iowa and never look back. I couldn’t imagine how I lived there as long as I did without going crazy. Brad had made Medicament okay. Training hard in hapkido with Mr. Chang had blown off steam in exercise and sparring that I couldn’t discharge with my boyfriend.
Despite everything I had seen and done since Medicament, all I wanted now was to go home and lie on Mama’s couch.
I wanted Mama to say, “Aw. Tough day, Tammy Honey Muffin Girl?”
I wanted her to call me Peach Pie and cover me with the hideous red, white and orange afghan in her living room. I wanted Mama to make me steak and garlic mashed potatoes and buttered toast and hot cocoa like she did when I was home sick from school.
A few times every year, on mornings when I really didn’t want to go to school, Mama would give me a vacation from reality. Those days would start like any other. She would wake me as part of her usual morning routine. I’d pull the covers over my head. If she couldn’t pull the covers away, sometimes she would have mercy upon me.
“I hear they’re expecting a really bad snowstorm in Maine,” she would say. Or, “there was a tornado in Kansas last week.” Or, “Chernobyl sure was a terrible nuclear meltdown, wasn’t it?”
“When was that, Mama?”
“A long time ago. Still….”
“It doesn’t sound safe out there, does it Mama?”
“It sure doesn’t, does it?”<
br />
“What should we do? Maybe I should stay home from school today, just in case.”
“Just to be safe,” Mama agreed. “Do you think this should be a hot cocoa day?”
“Would that be safer?”
“I think it might be, Peach Pie, if you don’t spill it on the couch.”
I would nod sagely, snuggle under my covers and fall back asleep. When I awoke, Mama would be in her pajamas, too. After calling in sick to the pharmacy, she’d set about making the hot cocoa.
When I was about to graduate from high school, Mama took Brad and me out to dinner at Eisner’s, the best diner in Medicament. I thanked her for everything, but especially my hot cocoa days.
Mama shook her head and thanked me instead. “We aren’t lazy people, Tammy, but what’s the point of owning a business if you can’t tell it to go away for a day once in a while? What was the point of having a great kid like you if we weren’t going to steal time away together? Without you in my life, I might have worked those days instead of staying home and watching Spongebob Squarepants beside you on the couch.”
“Tamara? You still with me?” It was Lynda, bringing me back to awful reality in Brooklyn.
“I’m here, quietly feeling sorry for myself. Hey! How come you aren’t totally freaked out?”
The old woman glanced my way and shrugged. “Should I be? That doesn’t sound like a very useful response to this situation. Perhaps if the situation improves I’ll have time to sniffle and curse like you.”
I felt like my brain emerge from its fog and slowly crank back up to speed. “You know about what’s going on, don’t you?”
“Ghosts, demons and holes between dimensions of the multiverse? Of course, I know. Do I look stupid to you? Did you really think it takes three full-time employees to keep the books on one funeral home? I’ve been one of Victor’s employees since long before you were born. I know where all the money goes. I was Victor’s accountant when he was a defense contractor for the first Bush administration. Before the Choir had the Keep, Victor was selling Exocet missiles to South American countries. I started as Victor’s personal secretary in 1978.”
“Sorry. Didn’t know you knew, that’s all. Um…the other Lindas are dead.”
“I know. I saw it happen.”
“And Clyde.” I didn’t mention how Clyde died. I made a mental note to have a long freak out about that particular aspect of the evening when there was time. I’d have to clear my calendar for that much freak out.
“Sam’s gone,” she said.
Tears slid down my cheeks until I couldn’t see the road ahead. Lynda seemed reasonably fine, which irritated the shit out of me. I wanted her to hold my hand and have a nervous breakdown with me. “How is it that you’re alive, Lynda?”
“He spared me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m already old and weak and dying. I’m rotting from the inside out and that…that thing somehow knew it. Good sense of smell, maybe, like one of those cancer-detecting dogs. The Ra see no honor in killing something that isn’t dangerous. That’s what Key told me, anyway.”
“I’m sorry, Lynda.”
“Why? At the rate you’re going, you’ll be in the cold ground long before I get a chance to die.”
That shut me up and led to some dark thoughts. Lynda drove me to the Keep without any need of directions.
“Lynda?”
“Yes?”
“I tried to save Sam.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
I was hoping she’d at least reach out and pat my hand. If I couldn’t have Mama cover me with an ugly afghan and make me hot cocoa, a little compassion from a grandmother figure would have been nice. Instead, all Lynda had for me was, “I know.”
“You’re a tough bitch, Lynda.”
“I know.”
Chapter 18
As soon as we crossed inside the bounds of the Keep, the air was taut with fear and rage. Instead of parking under the Armory, Lynda turned up a ramp so we entered the West courtyard from under the Greenhouse.
“You really know your way around,” I said.
“I know the plans for everything that belongs to the Choir in Brooklyn,” she said. “Somebody had to take care of the budgets. It’ll be a pity when ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”
Hers was a grim smile. I saw no pity in her eyes.
Wilmington ran to me as I got out of the car. Her eyes went wide when she saw my arm, but she didn’t pause to ask questions. “Victor wants you in C&C.”
“No. Wait,” I said. “What about Rory? What happened to Rory?”
“He’s gone.”
“Gone, gone? Or just gone? Gone where?” You can’t kill a ghost, of course, but you can send him on to nothingness or somethingness with a blessed blade against his will.
I worried Rory had been sent Elsewhere. He might end up on that big farm in the sky where all the dead dogs go and everything’s strawberry shortcakes and Kool-Aid. I worried more that the old misty wistful had just faded to black, end of movie, without a hero’s reward.
Wil put a hand on my shoulder. “We don’t know for sure exactly where, but Victor didn’t send him on. He’s still on the planet. The magic folk say he’s north of the Arctic circle, far as he can get from people and sacred ground. Chumele broke the binding spell, but not before Rory was pretty far gone.”
“When will he be back?”
Wil shrugged. “Technically speaking, he’s kind of immortal, Iowa. He’ll be back in his own time. We might be considerably older by the time he’s up to serving in the Choir again.”
Lynda opened her car door but was struggling to get out. “Unlikely you’ll get much older, kids.”
“Just a minute, lady!” Wilmington kept her eyes on me. “We’re trying to figure out how Rory got caught in a binding spell. They’d have to get close and they’d have to catch Rory within our walls. He was caught in a binding circle in the middle of the courtyard.”
“A traitor in your midst,” Lynda said.
Wil glanced at Lynda as she slowly pulled herself from the Camry.
“This is Lynda. She’s with me. Castille’s burned up. I had an demon encounter.”
“Take us to Victor,” Lynda said. “That way you only have to tell the story once.” Lynda moved with great difficulty and it occurred to me I’d rarely seen her walk farther than the space between her desk and the office coffeemaker.
Wilmington pulled a cell phone from inside her tunic and called for a medic to meet us at Command and Control.
At that same moment, the Keep’s alarms sounded. The Choir tries to keep a low profile and we really didn’t want to wake up all of Brooklyn. However, the klaxons echoed off the walls of the Keep while section maestros bellowed orders.
The ranks of the Choir Invisible poured into the courtyards, armored up, sharp and ready. The archery section ran along the walls, sticking close to the edges of the courtyard. Their strategy would be different this time. They could fire arrows at long range, but they were ready for close combat this time, too.
The sword singers and pikemen formed ranks behind shields. We hadn’t had enough shields to go around last time, but we had more now. Many shields had been sourced from museum collections around the world, buffed up and blessed by clergy. We’d even sharpened the antiques’ edges for jabbing into demon throats.
We had two more gatling guns in the East and West towers, too. Gunners could stand back to back to rain death on demons. After what happened during the destruction of our library, Victor said we needed to cover more fields of fire. The old man then added that we would run out of sacred ammunition faster.
I’d asked Victor then what we’d do if we were overrun. I thought the backup plan would be more mainstream law enforcement and military.
“They’ll be occupied trying to evacuate the city as quickly and as safely as possible,” the head conductor said.
“Then what do we do? Pray at the bad guys?”
Victor had gazed at me for a long moment. “To my great regret, we’d have to unleash the nuclear option.”
I felt useless. Lynda struggled to keep up as Wil ran toward the C&C. I trotted, keeping Lynda in sight. If the demons invaded at that moment, I might have to sling the old lady over my back and carry her, broken arm or no broken arm.
Lesson 125: When the shit goes down, no whiners.
Chapter 19
The entrance to the C&C was little more than a trap door in the ground. To descend the steep stone steps, I had to walk past a demon’s grave. My father was supposed to be in that grave but, of course, the Well of Sorrows had shown me otherwise. Either way, I didn’t feel any better going near it to get to C&C. Too bad the wrong body was down there in the dark feeding worms.
I helped Lynda down the stairs with my good arm. I was afraid that if she fell, she’d snap a hip. She was old and sick enough that one bad fall down the stone staircase might turn her body into instant soup.
The Keep’s C&C stood within a labyrinth guarded by magic folk. Instead of Command and Control, some Magicals liked to call it the Music Factory, a reference to C&C Music Factory, a dance pop band from the ’90s. That was kind of clever the first time I heard it.
There were several kinds of practitioners of magic beneath the Keep. Visit any second-rate fair or the back of a Denny’s on a Saturday night and you’ll see card tricks and sleight of hand. Go to Vegas and you’ll catch some first-rate illusionists. The Magicals are different, and by different, I mean weird.
When members of the Choir started seeing ghosts, for instance, most of us soon learned to deny what we saw. Magic folk embraced the weirdness. They were less concerned with what the Normies thought of them. Magic folk seemed to agree the Choir Invisible was a crude instrument to deal with D-Day. Despite dressing like refugees from a fire at Goodwill, many of the Magicals looked down on us. Maybe they needed a cooler name for their group to feel better about themselves.
The various clergy rarely spoke to each other to avoid arguments over scripture. However, everyone was friendly with the two blondes who studied Kabbalah because they were young and hot. Even the gay priests seemed to enjoy talking to the chicks with the big fake boobs, new noses and brunette roots.
The End of the World As I Know It (The Ghosts & Demons Series Book 2) Page 8