by Victor Koman
"The break in the clouds-was it round, square, oval?"
"A rip. A long slit, like a cat's eye." I watched her for a clue. Her face was impassive. "And then," I said, "we ducked into that apartment complex and everything stopped as long as we stayed inside."
She nodded and smiled. It was a cagey, smug sort of smile. "That has nothing to do with your problem. A pair of quite powerful witches once lived there. They stayed long enough to create a zone of safety. Many circles such as that exist. You don't see any blood drizzling in here, do you?"
"Can you determine the source?" Ann asked.
Bridget shifted her position and sighed. "That would require some effort to discover."
The customer bell rang. Kasmira stepped out front to handle it. Paying trade, after all, came first.
The old woman stood her ground. "You still haven't given me a reason I consider sufficient. It's not as though I can rattle off a quick prayer and an angel pops in with the answer by special delivery. Results vary according to the time and energy invested. You're asking quite a lot of an old woman." She stared at us, waiting.
I figured that she wanted her palm crossed with a little silver. I was wrong.
Ann's lips tightened to a thin line, then parted. Her voice took on an edge I hadn't heard before. In a low, cool tone she spoke, gazing at Bridget with a chilling gaze.
"
The lady requires your assistance.
"
The old crone stared back for a long moment, a silent communication ping-ponging between them. In that time, the lines from decades of frowns appeared as deep furrows above her eyes, only to fade when she broke into a warm, assured smile.
A wrinkled hand tightened and loosened around the cane's grip. Bridget nodded for a moment. Her eyes closed lightly, then opened. She turned to reach for the doorknob behind her.
"In." She pointed toward the darkened room.
Ann stepped in. Bridget followed, snapped on a light. I brought up the rear, wondering what sort of mystic
nonsense
would happen next. Only I wasn't too sure that the word nonsense worked as well for me as it used to.
The room enclosed an area not much larger than the waiting room of my office. Dark, heavy curtains bordered three walls, including the one with the door. Bridget closed the door and drew the drape across it.The wall to the left was covered with a bookcase stuffed ceiling high with books-old and new-and rows of computer plaques, each hand-labeled with its contents. In front of the draped wall opposite the bookcase squatted what looked like a cluttered coffee table. It supported candles and wooden carvings of deer and crescent moons. The obligatory crystal ball sat in a bronze eagle's claw right next to a ceramic incense burner shaped like a dragon. Every so often, little puffs of smoke snorted from its nostrils.
The wall across from the door had a low, Japanese sort of table near it. Bridget sat down on her heels and beckoned us to follow.
Ann sat in the same fashion. I creaked down on my backside and folded my legs in front of me. The parquet floor hadn't been waxed in decades. It felt cold, but not chilly.
"I'll do this for you," the old woman said. "Just sit there and be quiet."
I finally found my pack of Camels-they had migrated into an inside coat pocket I'd forgotten existed on the newer styles. Before I'd even pulled one out of the package, Bridget eyed me.
"No smoking."
I nodded and returned the pack to its hiding place. It was a reasonable request.
A second later, she lit up enough incense to fumigate a flophouse.
Ann straightened up to take a deep breath of the stuff. She closed her eyes. The only indication that she'd been through any sort of ordeal was her kinked and tangled hair. The rest of her bespoke the outer calm of a resting feline.
Bridget slid a deck of cards from the table's edge to its center. Her fingers nimbly shuffled the deck.
I noticed that the cards were larger and thicker than the usual cards I'd played with. She mumbled to herself most of the time, her voice as soft as silk against satin. She began laying the cards out as if she were playing Solitaire.
I had some trouble figuring out the suits.
There were paintings of a man hanging by one leg, men and women with swords and cups, cards with fools, lovers, and buildings being struck by lightning. Each one seemed to have been drawn by a different artist.
I had no idea the Tarot fad had lasted this long.
She finished laying out the cards in a sloppy pattern. For a long time she just sat and stared at them. Her dark gaze flitted between scanning the cards and glancing at me and Ann. She said nothing.
"Well?" I asked after a few minutes. I was getting antsy.
She held up one hand and scooped up the cards with the other. Ann opened her eyes to look at me and smile, shaking her head a bit. She turned toward Bridget and closed her eyes again.
The old dame reshuffled the deck, murmuring in a low tone. I sighed and looked around the room.
The curtains-colored a rich, earthy hue of redwood soaked in burgundy-blocked almost all the noise from outside. The only sound in the room was the slide and slap of cards being redealt.
When she'd laid out the cards, only silence remained.
After a long wait, Ann cocked open one eye to look at Bridget. The old woman gazed from Ann to the cards, then back again to Ann. She appeared amply astonished.
"Blessed be," she muttered in a breathless old voice. "
Kasmira!
" The shout sounded like a gunshot.
The girl entered quickly.
"Fetch me two orange candles and the large purple one. Remember to mark them down as office use in the inventory."
Kasmira nodded and whirled about to leave. Even in her haste, she maintained an air of otherworldliness.
"Over here," the crone said, making her way to the altar. Her cane tapped against the wooden floor like a skeleton's heel. She eased down, took a moment to adjust her dress, then began to arrange things on the top of the low table. She made with small talk all the while.
"What do you do for a living, Mr. Ammo?"
I shrugged noncommittally. "Find missing movie stars, prevent world wars, calculate batting averages-the usual."
She set a couple of white candles on the table around a chalked-in star. The five-pointed variety. She harrumphed and continued.
"The aura of death that you radiate-is that the usual, too?"
That made me frown. I never thought of myself as a particularly transparent person.
"A living soul projects many aspects," I said. That ought to amuse her.
"So it does, Mr. Ammo. So it does. On this plane and others. I see death in Malkuth-the sphere of Earth. Higher in the Tree of Life I see-other manifestations."
"I see." I didn't see.
Kasmira stepped in with the three candles. Bridget took them and thanked her. "Now watch the store, dear, and don't let anyone-or anything-disturb us."
"Yes, Grandmother." The girl tipped her head and ducked out of the room. The door swung shut, closing with a muted whoosh.
"It would appear, Mr. Ammo," the old dame said, "that you have an impressive destiny awaiting you."
"Mom will be thrilled."
"Yes, Mr. Ammo," she said, putting an orange candle on one of the points of the star. "She will be."
The old sorceress threw more incense into the dragon's belly. The room faded in a microcosm of L.A. smog.
Ann took a deep breath, savored it with a smile, and let it out slowly. I tried not to choke.
The lights dimmed. She probably had a switch under the altar. A dull red glow from the censer illuminated our faces.
"I must ask silence now, until you are requested to speak."
Ann and I nodded.
She struck a long wooden match, flooding the room with a surprisingly bright light. The flame touched the purple candle to ignite the wick. She lit the two orange ones next and finally the white ones. Five bright flames flickered at t
he points of the star.
She mumbled phrases that sounded like the echoes of a dying race's last words-or like the whispers of a new race's first. Sweet smoke wafted and swirled around her to catch orange light and black shadow. Her age-ravaged face became a harsh, angular mask mouthing her chant.
She broke the cadence of her invocation to say, "Join your hands." She resumed her mumbo-jumbo. Ann reached out, and I took her hands in mine. They felt smooth and lusciously warm, like ivory left in the sun. Our fingers entwined into a kind of quadruple fist and remained tightly bound between us.
Bridget's right hand reached out to clutch our fist. Her skin felt feverishly hot where I'd expected the cool touch of old age. Fingers like talons gripped the mass of locked knuckles and held on tightly.
A cloud of smoke from the dragon blew into my face, stinging my eyes. I blinked and tried to stop the irritated tears from flowing.
Bridget took a sudden sharp breath. In a loud, trembling voice, she mispronounced Ann's name-calling her "Anna Perrenina," as if she were Russian or something. The old woman's face grew placid, though her hand retained its iron grasp. She spoke in English now.
"The blood you see is the blood of the Maiden. The first blood. Blood of the Virgin, the Moon's tide. The tail of the Dark One points the way out and down, running near full circle."
She paused, her eyebrows wrinkling above sealed lids.
"The paradoxical one is the gambit. A thousand men, yet none. The obsidian blade is poised, the blood to flow greater."
Her voice rose in pitch, sped up. "Beneath the Earth is the realm of monsters born of fire who shun both day and night. The time of the Number is nigh! Two great forces must join, and two great forces must clash!" Her hand snapped away from ours and pointed at me.
I felt that terrible cold envelope me again.
"
The storm is in your center!
"
She seemed to be staring at me right through her shut eyes. Her finger wavered, drifted away from its target. She moaned.
Without warning, the candles fell over-knocked by something unseen. In the sudden, chilling darkness, I yanked my hands away from Ann and struggled to rise, listening for intruders.
Bridget breathed wearily somewhere on the floor to my left. Ann held her breath, made no sound.
From outside the room came the sounds of shattering glass. Kasmira's screams drifted through the walls and curtains with muted intensity, like a dim, nightmarish memory.
I made it to my feet and felt my way toward the door. Even the glow from the embers of incense had died out. I heard more glass breaking.
Ann found the light switch and turned it on. The bright glare of the overhead fluorescent tubes nearly blinded me. I saw her turning to attend to the fallen crone.
"Thanks, angel," I said, rushing to the door.
The crowd busting up the store stopped the second I stomped in. They were a strange lot-mostly young, mostly well-dressed. Trim, shaven, shorn. The black, leatherbound books they used to swat at the merchandise were like badges on cops. The crosses they swung as swords to smash bottles and panes told me the whole story. Or so I thought.
"Knock it off, kids. Go show your religious tolerance somewhere else."
They stared at me. I felt colder than ever.
The cleanest, most upright looking of the bunch-an auburn-haired boy in a blue serge suit-stepped to the front of the crowd and ogled me with the look of a rabid gopher.
"We know what you witches are up to." His voice trembled with rage. "God told us you're the one. You and these devil-worshippers have made a pact to-"
"Look, kid." I raised my voice to carry across the crowd. "I don't care what personal revelations you get in the bathtub, but I'm just a normal man doing normal things in a normal place of commerce. Scram before I call an atheist."
The kid held up his crucifix. The others followed his lead. I must have disappointed them when I didn't burst into flames or transmute into a bat. I made the mistake of letting loose with an appropriately derisive snort.
The youngsters took a collective step forward, broken glass crunching under their heels.
"Now you've done it," Kasmira said from behind the counter. "Jesus Chr-"
The ringleader's voice exploded. "A
witch
profanes our Lord's name!"
"Thanks, Kas," I said.
A cross spun through the air, whirring till it bounced off the steel edge of a shattered display.
I resorted to my parole officer image. "Can it, punks. You're not giving your faith much of a public relations boost."
"We're ready to die for our Lord," shouted a voice from the back.
"Right," I said, "and ready to kill for your Prince of Peace. You dopes give me a pain where I put chairs. For the second time-scram!"
The kids looked at one another nervously. The one with the loud mouth spoke in a voice that quavered with anger.
"There shall come a Rapture when all true Christians will rise unto Heaven, leaving you and your scum to the Earth and its Tribulation" "Well," I said, looking several of them in the eyes, "`the dead in Christ shall rise first.' Anyone want to get at the head of the line?"
The loudmouth in front suddenly looked as if he'd been struck in the face with a brick. He stared at a point somewhere behind me. So did the others, with varying degrees of alarm.
"We turn our backs on you. `Get thee behind me, Satan.'" He turned and spoke over his shoulder.
"Prepare yourself for Judgment, `for the Lord shall descend from Heaven with a Shout!'"
"I'll buy earplugs. Beat it."
He pursed his lips in repressed fury. "A lake of burning brimstone is waiting for you and your kind." He walked toward the exit as if in a daze.
Without so much as a parting shot, the rest of the flock ambled out of the shop. They mumbled among one another like JDs dispersed by a cop.
I turned around to see Ann standing a couple of feet behind me. I'd almost smacked into her. She had her hands over head, her fingers pointing forward. A smile of triumph spread across her lips.
"You can lower them now," I said. "This wasn't a stickup."
She smiled even wider until she took a look at the mess.
"Damned fishheads." Kasmira rose from behind the counter to start recovering the salvageable items. "It happens every year, right after Hallowmas," she quietly muttered.
"It looks like World War III," Ann said, stooping to pick up a red candle molded in the shape of a woman. She gazed at it with a sad frown.
"Bridget's all right," she said to Kasmira. "She's just exhausted. Do you have insurance?"
A weary voice from the back said, "Of course we do-through Bautista. Oh, shit." Bridget stared at the devastation.
"It's not too bad, Grandmother." Kasmira used a dustpan to scoop up multihued piles of incense. "Just a couple of windows and the main counter. They didn't take anything, and the expensive stuff's OK."
"Damned Christian of `em." The old woman paused to give me a twice-over. "You're a bright bit of luck that's stumbled into our lives. Beat it before I lose my womanly grace."
I glanced at Ann for a clue to my next action. She busied herself helping Kasmira.
"Go on," Bridget fumed. "You may not realize it, but you've got work to do!"
"Such as?" I asked.
"First, you've got to decipher what I relayed to you." She leaned against her cane, striving to look inscrutable.
"Why don't you save us all a good deal of time and tell me?"
"Because," she said with a sly smile, "I don't know what it means. I'm simply a vessel. I convey a message, using the best images I can. It's garbled by its transference through various spheres and planes of reality."
"I never cared for parlor games, lady."
"Mr. Ammo." Her voice was suddenly placating-almost friendly. "This game you've chosen to play involves far more than one mere parlor. This one is for the entire world and all it reflects."
I picked up a cou
ple of bruised candles from the floor, dusted them off, and placed them by the cash register.
"The whole ball of wax. Right, lady?" I nodded to Ann and turned to leave. Blondie stayed put.
"Hang on, Dell. I've got a question." She turned to Bridget. "Is there a new moon coming up soon?"
"It's tonight. Saturday morning, actually."
"That clinches it." Her demeanor changed to intense determination. She turned and beat me out the door. Her hair shone in the sunlight like ropes of gold chain. "Thanks for everything!" she called back to Bridget. "I owe you a million!"
She glanced back at me. "Let's go, Dell."
"Where?"
"Your office, for starters."
"It's a long walk downtown. Or would you prefer to go back for the Porsche?"
She blanched.
"Besides," I said, "the car's hot. It probably has a want out on it by now, and I know lots of old associates who'd love to see me put away for a minor felony. It'd be a great joke."
I shook my head. A Santa Ana wind had turned the day pleasantly warm outside. We strolled east on the boulevard. The Bible-thumpers had made themselves scarce.
We walked down to the freeway bus stop and waited for the connection to Old Downtown to show up. Unlike the true believers in the store, passersby didn't pay us much notice. Quite a few of them still seemed to be wandering around in shock.
Ann sat down on the bench beneath the overpass. She seemed unconcerned about the dust and city grime. "The important thing to do now," she said as if continuing some other conversation, "is to decode what Bridget said."
I sat down, stretching my legs out. "She said that even she didn't know what she meant."
She stared up at the grey concrete overhead. "The blood was the blood of the Maiden, the Virgin. A girl's first menstrual period. She said that it was the First Blood and linked it to the cycles of the Moon. That was pretty explicit. The cramps I experienced confirms that. Severe menstrual cramps, and I'm nowhere near my own period."
I nodded politely and watched the traffic speed by. I wasn't too interested in women's medical problems.
"Dell," she said finally, "We're going to encounter a lot of things that seem strange or inconsequential on the surface. We have to be aware of
every little detail.