Skeleton Crew tuc-2

by Cameron Haley

  “For the same reason we can’t just bushwhack her, Domino,” Honey said. “You have to defeat her in her place of power to free the Xolos.”

  “I’d like to have some time alone with whoever came up with these stupid rules.”

  “It doesn’t have to be you, Domino,” Adan said. “I’ll do it.”

  It was almost startling to discover it didn’t piss me off. I knew why he was offering. I knew he wasn’t challenging me. “That would probably be the smart thing to do,” I said, “but it has to be me. I’m the wartime captain, Adan. I’m Rashan’s champion. I can’t keep the title if I can’t do the work.”

  “She’s right, though,” Honey told Adan, “she’s a really bad fighter without her spells.”

  Adan looked at me and nodded. “That’s okay,” he said. “I was, too, at first. We’ve got all day to work on it. You’ll be ready, Domino.”

  We all make a lot of choices in life. Most of the time we can’t see with perfect clarity where those choices will lead. It’s only with hindsight that we can look back and judge the wisdom-or lack thereof-of the decisions we made. We choose that path less taken and when we find ourselves all alone in the middle of the woods at night, only then do we ask, “What the fuck was I thinking?”

  On rare occasions, though, we make choices that are so foolish it’s obvious even in the heat of the moment. We make them anyway because we seem to have eliminated all the options. I didn’t believe in fate. I didn’t believe in some magic in history that pushes us along in some preordained direction. But every now and then you really had to wonder. I couldn’t figure out exactly how we’d gone from “free the Xolos” to “kill La Calavera” to “one-on-one, toe-to-toe honor duel with La Calavera at the front gates of the Pink Palace.”

  Gangsters don’t do honor duels. We have fairly elaborate rules in place to make them unnecessary. You follow the rules, you don’t have to worry too much about getting clipped-unless someone else decides to break the rules. And if you do break the rules you don’t feel entitled to any honor duel. If you’ve earned it, you might get enough time to put on your best suit and there might be a pleasant car ride out into the desert, but that’s about it. Mostly, you’re just hoping they send a professional and the work will get done fast and clean.

  There was a kind of logic to what I was doing and it was even a kind of logic I was familiar with. It wasn’t the logic of the ordinary world-it was the logic of magic. With sorcery, actions had little significance in themselves. There was no magic in the quotations I used for spellcasting; there was no magic in the web surfing I did for divination magic. The magic-the significance-was behind and beneath those actions. The magic was in the symbolism. Honey had it right when she said I had to see the showdown with La Calavera as a ritual. The act of killing the spirit was just a symbol, and for that symbol to have magic I had to do it right.

  The true goal wasn’t just to kill La Calavera. It was to break her power. And that’s why I was standing alone at the front gate of the Pink Palace just after sundown with only Ned at my side to give me comfort. I knew why I was there. I knew what I had to do. Maybe it was fate. Or maybe that was just a word for actions noble, necessary and really fucking stupid.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I muttered. Then I tilted my head back, cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted into the cerulean darkness. “La Calavera Catrina,” I yelled, “I’m calling you out!” I couldn’t cast spells in the Between but I put some juice into it, just as I had that first time I called Honey.

  Then I waited. Being the glass-half-empty type, I’d given some thought to what I’d do if she simply ignored me. I couldn’t say I’d come up with anything that really broke new ground, but I had some good insults at the ready if it came to that.

  Fortunately, La Calavera was ready to play. With a ghostly creaking, the gates began to open of their own accord and I saw her walking alone down the winding, wood-lined driveway. The dress was black and white vertical stripes this time and the hat was smaller, more of a derby, with a wide silver band. She glided, swaying, and she reminded me of a lioness moving nonchalantly toward the antelope at the edge of the herd.

  She stopped and cocked a hip like she’d reached the end of the runway at a fashion show. “This is rather a surprise, Domino,” she said. “The usual custom is for my callers to ring the doorbell.”

  “This isn’t a social call,” I said.

  “What, then? I’m afraid you’ve caught me at an inconvenient time. I’m to entertain at the club this evening.”

  “I need you to free the Xolos. You could do it as a favor to me, if you’re so inclined. If not, I’m here to make you do it.”

  La Calavera laughed. “You’re not particularly skilled at asking favors.”

  “I’m not asking. But you could look at it that way, if it makes it easier for you.”

  “Why would I want to free the Xolos? Really, you’ve no idea the trouble I went through to acquire them.”

  “They don’t belong here, La Calavera, and they’re needed on my side. The dead walk in their absence. You might have noticed that if you weren’t so self-absorbed.”

  She brought a finger clad in black silk to her lips and considered it. “The dead walking sounds splendid, but I take it you find this somewhat objectionable. Perhaps we can arrange a trade.”

  “Right,” I said. “You give up the dogs. Or I take your life and then I take the dogs. That’s the deal.”

  The spirit gave me a brief glimpse of the full calavera, probably to make the point that her patience was limited. “Your negotiating skills are somewhat rusty as well, dear.”

  “So what’s it going to be?” I let my hand fall to Ned’s walnut grip. I guess I was giving her the full calavera.

  “Hmm. The dogs or my life,” she said. “Here is my counterproposal. When you beg me to kill you, I’m going to throw what’s left of you in the pit with the worst of my Xolos, the ones so maddened by pain and blood they-”

  In one swift motion, I drew Ned and shot La Calavera right between her black-rimmed eyes. A ragged hole opened in her phantasmal flesh and blue fire licked at the edges. A trickle of black juice ran down the bridge of her nose and onto her flawless, pale cheek. She wiped at it and then studied her finger. The juice pulsed against the silk, black on black. She put the finger between her lips and sucked it clean. La Calavera shuddered. Then she smiled.

  The flesh melted from her face and body in an instant. Her fashionable clothes aged decades before my eyes, falling to rags and dusty tatters as I watched. She raised a hand and pointed at me, and bony claws extended from the ragged fabric of her gloves. A chill wind blew up from nowhere and I felt a touch, light and cold as the Beyond, on my cheek. I looked up and saw motes of blue-lit ice falling from the darkening sky like manna. It was snowing.

  “My turn, bitch,” the spirit said.

  The force magic hit me full in the face and knocked me across the street and into the pole of a streetlight that didn’t seem to have much of a purpose in the Between. The impact sheered the pole in two and it crashed into the street, spitting sparks that periodically cast a hard, white edge on the battle. I kept going, into the high stone wall partially concealed in the trees and shrubbery that lined the boulevard. The masonry crumbled when I hit it and I was swallowed up in a cloud of fine, choking dust.

  I came out of the dust cloud with Ned leveled at La Calavera, my other hand fanning the hammer. The spirit moved so fast it left a ghostly afterimage in her wake and my fusillade burned away uselessly into the night. La Calavera had moved to the edge of the driveway, by the gate, and the metal shrieked as she tore a wickedly spiked, wrought-iron bar from it. I had time to notice it was pink before the spirit turned in a fluid motion and hurled it at me.

  I caught the deadly missile in my off hand and let the momentum spin me in a tight circle. As I came out of the spin, I twirled the spear around so the business end was pointing the right direction, and then I chucked it back at La Calavera. I
t struck her in the chest and pinned her to the brick pillar supporting the gate. You might think a skull wouldn’t have the goods to look surprised, but you’d be wrong. La Calavera looked down at the pink spike impaling her and her lower jaw dropped open. She looked back at me and cocked her namesake to the side.

  “You missed the training montage,” I said. Then I leaped across the street, tore the spike out of her chest and slammed it home again. Black juice bubbled from the skeletal grin and ran down the bony chin onto her ruined dress.

  The spirit laughed, her desiccated jaws and black-stained teeth rattling with the effort. She grabbed me by the ears and head butted me, and I felt the impact shatter my nose. She brought up a knobby knee and kicked me in the groin, and then the force magic pummeled me again and I tumbled into the street. I rolled to my feet and watched as she jerked and lurched forward, wrenching her body off the spike that impaled her. When she was free, she stepped into the street and turned to face me. Black juice flowed freely from her mouth and chest. It sizzled and smoked when it struck the snow-covered pavement.

  I have to admit, I was expecting her to take advantage of the break in the action and serve up a nice villainous monologue. Instead, she shrieked and launched herself at me. I got Ned up and fired a shot that tore away the side of her skull, but she kept coming. She tackled me and we went rolling across the asphalt. She came out on top. She grabbed two fistfuls of my hair and slammed the back of my head into the street. Then she leaped straight up and hung in midair for a second, her hand drawn back and contorted in some kind of kung-fu death claw. I saw black flames licking along the edges of her bony fingers.

  When she came down, I wasn’t there. I did a smooth little backflip and launched myself through the air, landing in a crouch by the downed streetlight. I picked it up and swung it in a full circle before hurling it at her. There was a resounding gong when the streetlight smashed into her. It carried her through the open gate and slammed her into a tree that spread its naked branches over the driveway. I grinned and went after her.

  This, it turned out, was a mistake. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I felt the strength drain out of me. It happened all at once, like I’d been running on borrowed fuel and the marker had suddenly come due. I sank to one knee and gasped; I didn’t breathe in that airless world, but I struggled to draw some strength back into my leaden arms and legs.

  Whatever power I’d lost, it seemed to flow into La Calavera. Her broken body straightened and she rose to her feet. She picked up the streetlight and lifted it above her head, and then swung it downward like a club. I tried to summon the will to move-and will, I had finally learned, was all I really needed in this place. But I was too slow. The streetlight came down on my back and a spiderweb of cracks blossomed in the asphalt as I was hammered flat into the driveway.

  I heard a sharp crack and turned my head enough to see La Calavera walking toward me with a splintered branch she’d torn from the tree. She raised it above me and drove it through the wrist of my gun hand, pinning it to the ground. My fingers spasmed and she kicked Ned away.

  “Are you ready now, dear?” the spirit said. “Beg for your death and I will show mercy. I will throw you to the dogs.”

  If I’d been in better shape, I might have challenged her peculiar understanding of mercy. Instead, I clenched my twitching fingers and then extended the middle one vaguely in her direction. La Calavera laughed and straddled me, sitting on my back. She grabbed my hair and pulled my head back toward her.

  “Have you guessed how I will finish you?” she said. “How I will take your power and make it my own? It’s not so different from what happens in the pit.” She leaned down and ground her teeth together next to my ear. It sounded like old stone crunching underfoot. “This is how we do it on the other side of death.” Then her teeth tore into the side of my face. She ground them together, chewing, gnawing, and pulled a large chunk of flesh free with a savage twist of her neck.

  “Oh, no, you didn’t,” I said, spitting the words through teeth clenched against my pain and revulsion. I reached across my body with my free hand and snapped the branch that impaled my other wrist. I twisted under her and grabbed the spirit in a headlock, knocking her hat loose, and then I drove the sharp, splintered wood underhand into La Calavera’s mouth. The point burst through the back of her skull, dripping black juice. I twisted it, pulled it out and shanked her again.

  The flesh-eating zombie bitch still didn’t die. She grabbed the end of the stake and wrenched it from my grip, pulling it out the back of her own head. Then her body disintegrated, collapsing into a squirming heap of plump, white maggots. I jumped back and brushed a few of the disgusting creatures from my clothes and hair. The maggots churned and a form began to take shape from the wriggling mass, growing and solidifying. Then La Calavera was standing there again. She bent down and retrieved her hat, placing it at a jaunty angle on the remains of her skull. Snowflakes fell and stuck to the black magic that drenched her face and chest, and they winked like glittering diamonds from the ruin.

  The spirit clenched her hands into gnarled claws and I saw the black fire dance along her fingers again. “You cannot defeat me here,” she said. “I will kill you now.”

  She shrieked and launched herself at me, and I let her come. I extended my hand to the Peacemaker lying at the edge of the driveway. “Ned,” I called, and it leaped into the air, tumbling end over end until the smooth, polished grip settled in my palm. La Calavera crashed into me and I enfolded her in an intimate embrace. I felt her bony hands around my throat and the black fire searing my flesh.

  I thrust Ned’s twelve-inch barrel into her chest and it tore through shattered ribs and gristle until it reached the black pit at the center of her. I held the trigger down and thumbed the hammer, firing again and again as her skeletal body jerked and twisted in my grasp. She raised her face to the sky and screamed, and azure fire burst from her eye sockets, nose and mouth.

  Ghosts answered her call. They drifted out of the trees, silent and murderous, and came for me with grasping hands and empty eyes.

  “That’s game,” I said. “I win.”

  Honey and Jack spiraled down from the darkness, and the pixie dust they dropped on the ghosts was nearly invisible amidst the falling snow. When it touched them, the apparitions hardened and cracked like old china and crumbled to dust. Adan appeared at the gate with his rifle slung over his shoulder and his sword drawn, and he charged to engage the ghosts that made it through the piskies’ blanket of destruction.

  I leaned in close to La Calavera. “No one,” I said, and pushed Ned’s barrel up under her jaw. “Tries.” I squeezed the trigger and the top of her skull exploded. “To eat.” I threw her to the ground and jammed the gun between her grinning teeth. “Me.” I fanned the hammer and let Ned kick and dance inside her mouth until the skull began to dissolve into black juice. I pumped a couple more rounds into the center of her torso and it, too, ran liquid, collapsing into a bubbling pool that spread slowly across the asphalt.

  A high-pitched, keening wail tore through the stillness and then faded like a bad memory. With it went the feeling of oppression that had weighed on me since I crossed the threshold on La Calavera’s estate. The wind died, the snow stopped falling and the night seemed to brighten to a lighter shade of blue.

  I regrouped with Adan and the piskies, and we walked up the driveway toward the house. We followed a stone-tile walkway around the side and down a set of wide stairs to the patio that spread out behind the house. The heart-shaped swimming pool was choked with detritus and stagnant water, and we skirted it to the lightly wooded lawns at the rear of the estate.

  The ramshackle kennels were lit from within by the soft, golden radiance of the Xolos. As we approached, I realized we wouldn’t have to open the cages to free the dogs. One by one, the lights winked out as the Xolos crossed back to the mortal world. My friends had been right. It was La Calavera that held them there, not the pens or the pit.

  Still, not all of th
e Xolos made it back across. The piskies flew through the warren of crates and cages, checking each one and counting the dead. There were seventeen of them. With their lights snuffed out, the dead looked no different from any other dog of their breed. We couldn’t think of anything else to do so we laid them out on the grass and dug graves for them. We buried them one by one. This was the spirit world and I wasn’t sure how much sense it made to return them to earth that wasn’t even real. But for the Xolos, perhaps it was fitting. The Xolo that had fought for me in the back room of the Mocambo club wasn’t among the dead. My Xolo had survived, and he came to me and licked my hand before crossing back to the mortal world.

  Our work complete, we turned and walked back across the lawn toward the house. Without warning, a deafening roar crashed over us and a jagged line like cracked glass appeared in the air before our eyes. Hateful, red light spilled through the crack and waves of heat washed over us as it widened. Writhing tentacles curled around the edges of the crack and a dark, bulbous shape began to pull itself through from the other side.

  “Demon,” Adan snarled, drawing his sword. I glanced at Adan and back at the gate. The thing that squeezed through the fracture looked more like an oversize octopus crossed with a hairy black spider than the almost human-looking giant we’d battled at the Carnival Club. Apparently, demons came in all shapes and sizes.

  The massive, swollen thing oozed through the crack and plopped wetly into the grass, spider legs twitching and tentacles waving madly. Its maw looked more arachnid than cephalopod, with razor-sharp mandibles that clicked and scraped like fingernails on slate. Pearlescent slime dripped from the evil fangs, and the grass wilted and browned where it struck the lawn. The demon sat back on its bloated hindquarters and a fleshy slit opened the length of its abdomen baring row upon row of small, pointed teeth. Okay, so maybe that was its mouth and the bit with the mandibles was…some other disgusting part of its anatomy.

  Honey’s musical voice brought me back to my senses as she began singing battle glamours. I opened fire with Ned and scrambled to my right, maneuvering along the demon’s flank. Jack dived, twisting in and out of the writhing tentacles like a jet fighter with a bogey on his six. Adan ran at the thing and then leaped in the air, flipping over the grasping tentacles and landing on its back. He slammed his sword two-handed into one of the demon’s eyes, and red-orange juice like lava boiled from the wound. The monster screamed and a tentacle snaked in and lashed around Adan’s neck. It lifted him into the air and he hung there for a moment, strangling, as he slashed at the tentacle with his sword. Then the demon flicked the tentacle and hurled Adan through the night to smash into the back wall of the house.