by Nazri Noor
I wasn’t the perfect son. I never said I was. Still it got to be too much, between the push and pull of him being angry with me for the littlest things, but still wanting me around, begging me not to move out when things got too tense between us. “I’ll still visit,” I told him. “I promise.” I shuddered against the cold and smiled tightly. I always kept my promises.
Norman Graves was skinnier now, his face sallow, his eyes sunken a little further into his head than they should have been, but I knew I couldn’t just walk in there, tell him I was sorry, that I wanted us to be a family of two again. The last time I visited there was an argument. I left angry. He’d never been happy with how I couldn’t find something to do with myself, with my life, and the grandest irony was that now that I’d found something worth doing, I couldn’t even tell him about it to make him proud of me for once.
That’s why I knew that it weighed heavier on him, why he must have thought in some twisted section of his brain that it was his fault I ended up the way I did. That made it even harder to just knock on the door and announce myself. Ah, but that was the toughest part. I couldn’t even do that, not when he was there when they lowered my body into the ground.
Where to start? It was some weeks ago, the same night I had it out with my dad. I didn’t head back to my apartment right away, that shabby piece of shit I shared with those two roommates I didn’t even like, but hey, you have a shitty job, or no job at all, you put up with shitty living conditions. I didn’t know what possessed me to do so, but I took off and went to a park, just to walk around, to clear my head.
There were no joggers that night, as if everyone but me knew to steer clear of Heinsite Park. I saw a woman bent over a pond in the park, crying to herself, something about her dog. I went to help. I love dogs. And just as she was blubbering, explaining how little Sassy had fallen into the pond, something hard clubbed me across the back of the head.
When I came to I was in a dark room, strapped to a table, it felt like, what I now know must have been some kind of altar. Everything was dim, tinged with orange, like the only illumination was a whole bunch of candles.
And above me, all around me, were golden faces gleaming in the candlelight, people in bronze masks muttering, incanting. I tried to scream, but couldn’t. They must have drugged me. They strapped me down by the chest, but didn’t bother to bind my arms, like they were so confident I’d be too weak or doped up to fight back. They were almost right.
The dagger’s edge flashed in the light, a ceremonial blade that was so ornate, its hilt and guard covered in curved spines, like tendrils, its pommel gleaming with a gem that looked disturbingly like a single eye. It must have been the drugs, but I found it strange, just then, that I had time to identify the dagger’s different parts – who said video games were bad for you? – and to admire its craftsmanship. Then the hand holding the dagger brought it down.
So my life was complete garbage by then. No real job to speak of, a dad who, at the time, hated me, trash roommates, the works. But I didn’t want to die, and the pain – the fucking, searing pain of that cold dagger burying its way into the meat of my body, that reminded me of how alive I still was, and how alive I still wanted to be. But the knife hit home, biting into its sacrifice, and the screaming pain in my chest crashed across my entire body like freezing water. Everything went black. For all intents and purposes, I died.
Except that I came to again. Just as well, or you wouldn’t be here listening to this incredible tale of a near-jobless loser getting his redemption at the hands of the Lorica. I opened my eyes, and the first person I saw may as well have been an angel. That was when I met Thea for the very first time.
She had rescued me from the cultists, her and the team she’d brought from the Lorica. But the problem, she explained, was that the police had beaten them to it. The dagger hadn’t fully killed me. It was meant to, but with the ritual interrupted, it had only put me into a kind of magic-induced torpor, numbing enough of my body’s signals that I was fully a corpse by the time the cops came around.
The Pruitts, the dead god I found at their home, those were victims of supernatural circumstance, of arcane crime, in the exact same way that I was. One of the Lorica’s Eyes – Romira, in fact – had found my body already shoved into a freezer, barely steps away from being buried six feet under.
The Lorica rescued me, pulling out all the stops to infiltrate the morgue and retrieve my body, somehow replacing it with a simulacrum that was convincing enough to show the authorities that one Dustin Graves was well and truly dead.
They buried that copy of me in the ground. My father watched and wept as they lowered it into a hole, and I watched from the shadow of a tree as he cried over a mannequin, unable to tell him that I was fine, that I loved him, that I was alive.
And that was the price of this second life I had received, that the Dustin Graves I once was could no longer exist. I had to excise all parts of my routine from my former life, old haunts, what few acquaintances I had. I have to admit, I was mildly happy that my idiot roommates had to scramble to find some other loser to start making rent again.
The only problem was Norman, and that was a sizeable issue, too. I couldn’t just stride through the front door with a “Hey dad, been alive this whole time, what’s good?” I could tell his emotions were fraying as it was. “A secret society of wizards saved me. I’m not actually dead, also, I can do magic, and so can my coworkers.” I mean, where would you even start? He didn’t need the walking corpse of his zombie son strolling in and fucking his life up any further.
But there has to be a way, I thought, even as I watched him peering through the microwave window, waiting for his stroganoff whatever to finish cooking. Maybe a series of notes, or maybe someone from the Lorica could ease him into it. Maybe I could beg one of the alchemists to brew up a potion of forgetfulness, if that even existed, just to make everything the way it was again.
But I had no answers then, and neither did Thea, who had promised to help me find the people who tried to kill me. I sighed, stepping into the shadows in the garden, then breathed easier when I stepped out of the darkness directly onto the sidewalk, safely out of view of our old house. And the job offer was so attractive to begin with, being asked to become a Hound.
“How would you like to find your own killer?” she asked.
Fuck yeah. Which wasn’t how I responded exactly, but you get the gist of it. And it came with decent benefits too, and a bigger paycheck than I’d ever gotten from any of my godawful jobs. Sure, it’s the age of the internet and everything, but somehow nobody in Valero was ever hiring, especially not some kid with a scattershot job history, no recommendations, and oh, no degree. I might have mentioned it quietly before, but I’ll restate it now for emphasis: the Lorica damn near saved my life, then turned it around, and then some.
The paycheck was even enough for me to get a shitty apartment of my own. No roommates, even. It was no coincidence that it was walking distance from my dad’s place. I could afford a little more now, and considering how things ended between us, I figured it was good for me to have the freedom to check in on him every now and again.
My place was a tiny little studio in this block of apartments meant for college students, so it was livelier, well, noisier than I would have liked, but it was a place to keep my bed, and my unfortunate growing collection of gaming consoles. Don’t judge, my life could get super stressful. You try getting murdered some time.
Sure, I kid about it, but almost every day I would think of the same small set of questions. Who would want good old Dustin Graves dead? I had few friends, and no enemies, as far as I knew. Why did the cultists single me out? As I began the slow climb home, up on the third floor, I slapped my forehead.
Why didn’t I ever remember to do groceries?
Because I’d been away for a while. At least I had an excuse this time. But I’d been so tired from working straight through the night, then accompanying Thea to meet the entity. All that Chinese from lun
ch had burned off, too.
I groaned, thinking of how much more convenient it would have been to just pop into my place, heat something up, wolf it down, then pass out for twenty-four hours. Suddenly dad’s frozen stroganoff dinner was sounding pretty tempting.
I turned around and dragged my exhausted ass down the street, down a couple of blocks to the nearest source of food my frazzled brain could reliably find. There was this awesome place further down that did these incredible steak burritos, but who had the energy? I settled, mentally, for a burger. Salty, greasy, filling, just what the doctor ordered.
This place had been one of my regular haunts even before the whole human sacrifice thing, actually, but the staff changed so frequently that nobody ever stuck around long enough to remember me. Plus keeping my stubble and growing out a longer hairstyle made for a surprisingly effective disguise.
Good thing too, because the burgers were incredible. It was one of those places that was halfway between a proper restaurant and a fast food joint, the kind that tried to be hip and still serve the good stuff. There were neon signs plastered all over the Happy Cow – grim name, I know – in a kind of throwback to the twenties diner aesthetic that was supposed to appeal to us young folk.
The Happy Cow didn’t know what it wanted to be, in short, and the floors were almost always a little oily and slippery, but the food was top notch, so I couldn’t complain. And the lighting was kind of terrible, so much that not even the manager remembered me, probably because I still took the extra precaution of wearing a hooded jacket.
I ordered a double cheeseburger, a Coke, and both a large fry and a large onion ring because screw you, I was starving. I tucked myself into a corner seat, one of those high stools where you ate facing the window, maybe because I was daring anybody to judge me for the giant heap of food I was about to demolish.
Didn’t remember chewing very much, only that it was all delicious, the hot, juicy patties with the edges singed just a little, the crunch of fresh vegetables and the warmth of a lightly toasted bun, and all that melted cheese. That was all I really needed in life, you know? Cows, carbs, cheese. I knew that as long as I ticked off all the major food groups, my body was going to be fine.
But as I sucked down the last of my Coke, somehow still remembering enough of my manners to pat at the corner of my mouth, I realized that something was off, and not just the rodents. I watched aghast as a darting, frenetic procession of rats made its way from across the street over to the Happy Cow’s dumpster. Gross. My skin crawled at the idea of this happening all over Valero. How long were they going to be disoriented by Resheph’s death?
Yet it wasn’t the rats that bugged me. I looked around. Everyone in the restaurant was busy doing their own thing. A girl with tattooed sleeves and a septum piercing ignored her boyfriend while she tapped at her phone. An older bearded man sat alone, dissecting his burger, separating bun from patty to apply just the right sized dollops of ketchup and mustard, then putting it back together again. Everything seemed fine, but I just knew that it wasn’t.
Okay, I told myself. Play it cool. You’d think by now I’d have been smart enough to arm myself, but I wasn’t exactly a fighter. It’d be nice to have a knife on your person, sure, but someone could wrestle it away and use it against you. And I was nowhere near the point where I’d been taught any proper defensive magic – or offensive stuff, for that matter, but even if I could cast something I knew the Lorica wouldn’t take kindly to me frying people with lightning bolts. So I dumped my trash and walked out of there as calmly as I could, like nothing was wrong, like I hadn’t caught a whiff of something in the air.
I hadn’t made it two blocks when I noticed the two men on my tail. One was just as tall as me, the other even taller, and beefier. I knew just from the cursory glance over my shoulder that I wasn’t built to take on even one of them. I also knew that heading straight back to my apartment, as tempting as that was, would only show them where I lived, if they didn’t know already.
Damn it. What did they want? Call me paranoid but something in my gut told me that this wasn’t just a mugging in the making. These people had something to do with the Pruitt murders, maybe, or the cultists. Or both. The Black Hand.
The scar on my chest began to itch. I stuck my hands deeper down in my jacket pockets and kept walking, turning down the wrong way in hopes of shaking them off, maybe stepping into a shadow before they could see. But they were too fast, and they were gaining on me, too.
Persistent. Okay. Next corner, I told myself. The exact next corner, and I would step into the shadow of the nearest tree or lamppost, then try, for the first time, to emerge all the way back home. I almost didn’t care at that point that I might end up half-stepped into a fire hydrant. Whoever these guys were, they had no plans of stopping.
I looked over my shoulder one last time as I approached the next block, making another left turn as I noticed that only one man was still pursuing me, the taller, broader one. Where the hell did the other guy go? It didn’t matter. I turned the corner, my eyes darting wildly for the first shadow I could find –
And bumped straight into the missing man. I gasped at the sight of him, at the odd pallor of his skin, the marble smoothness of his cheeks. I raised my hands, I don’t know, I guess to show that I didn’t mean him harm, and in some hope that he wouldn’t harm me in return. He mirrored my pose with a chuckle, a low, musical sound, his eyes black and twinkling.
“Whoa there,” he said. “Didn’t mean to bump into you,” he continued, with the exact tone of someone who meant to do just that.
“What do you want?” I demanded, glancing over my shoulder again, preparing to shadowstep, just as I caught sight of the taller man closing in on us.
“Just to talk. Stay a while, Dustin.”
I froze. The man knew my name. These people had their sources, the way the Lorica had its Eyes. Someone was watching. Always watching.
The man grinned, his smile splitting his face and revealing a pair of sharp, unnaturally long canines.
“The night is young,” he said, in a voice that was at once husky, and hungry. “Let’s get to know each other.”
Chapter 8
Somehow the pale man had pushed me up against the wall without even touching me. He had this way of invading, no, bypassing my personal space. It was a creeping sort of presence that latched on and mesmerized me, long enough at least that the taller man had time to join our huddle.
“Look, Gil,” the pale man said. “Look what I found. He was gonna run away. He’s one of those – what does the Lorica call them again.” He cocked an eyebrow, then bent in, smiling. “Hounds?”
My heart pounded. Whoever these people were, they knew about the Veil, which narrowed things down in a bad way. My hunch must have been correct. These assholes worked for the Black Hand.
I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t say anything without incriminating myself. The taller man – Gil – grunted anyway. He stepped closer, looming over the two of us, and I pressed further against the wall, as if there was anywhere else to go. This man was powerfully built, dark and swarthy, with thick eyebrows and a beard that only pronounced his menace. Yet when he spoke, the steady calm of his voice surprised me.
“Get it over with. Just beat what you need out of him and we can get out of here.”
“Aww, Gil, you’re no fun. Stray little puppy’s out on his own when he shouldn’t be.” The pale man hooked a finger under my necklace, tugging on it lightly the way Bastion would, and it sent ice down my spine, this awful mix of indignation and fear. His hand made contact with my neck as he toyed with the leather thong. His fingers were cold, and I knew it wasn’t only because of the night air.
“I don’t know nothing about no Lorica,” I blurted out, too eager to save my own skin. It was the best thing I could think to say, and besides, it bought me time to study my options.
The pale man drew his face back, then grinned again. In the moonlight, his fangs gleamed. “Our new friend is a bit
of a liar, Gil.”
The man called Gil rolled his eyes and grunted again. “You do this all the time. Stop playing with your food and get on with it.”
“Your what?” Did he just call me food?
“Don’t scare him, Gil.” The fingers stopped playing with my necklace, then moved on to press lightly against my skin. “That’s not what we’re here for. Although now that you mention it, I wouldn’t mind a little snack.” He bent in, inhaled sharply, and grinned again. “He’s so hot, too.”
I cringed at his touch, still unsure of what to do, and somehow my brain turned to humor to defuse the situation. “Thanks,” I said, my nails digging into the wall behind me. “I try.”
The pale man laughed. “Oh, and cocky. I like this one.” His fingers pushed deeper against my skin, the edges of his nails digging. “I meant your blood.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Fuck this.”
I brought my knee up against the pale man’s crotch, as hard and abruptly as I could. As far as I was concerned there was no shame in taking every advantage I could find in a fight, not if it meant saving myself from a hypothetical vampire.
The breath rushed out of him in a rough gasp and he doubled over long enough to let go of me, and far back enough to cast a shadow on the ground. I stepped into it, more thrilled than I had ever been to walk into the gloom of the Dark Room, and emerged several feet away.
Gil looked around wildly, roared, then shoved the other man hard in the chest. “I fucking told you, didn’t I?”
The vampire stumbled, but only just. “Gil,” he choked out, between gasps of pain and stilted chuckles. “Did you see that? He wants to make this a game. A chase it is then.”
“Not this shit again,” Gil said. “Get your balls back together and come on.”