by Aaron Crash
It was so unfair. Bailey had left him the second he’d started time again. She’d left him laughing, which meant she had probably bailed on her own accord. Or had starting the Tempus Influunt again swept her away? Her relationship to a body wasn’t all that clear to him.
Well, one more reason why he needed to get to Hugo Mundi.
He drove to the old neighborhood—little single-story houses with big cottonwood trees. The streets were bad, the sidewalks worse, as the roots broke through cement. Of course, Hugo Mundi’s house was the shittiest house on the block. The yellow grass was knee high. There was rotten leaf litter overflowing the gutters. The screen on the front door hung in tatters. There was a light on, though, through a greasy window.
Jack parked and thought about the weapon he should bring. He had his Beretta in his shoulder holster, but he also grabbed a baton in a scabbard he could clip to his belt. It was an ASP Talon Infinity, one of the perks of working for a security company. A push of a button, and he’d have fifty centimeters of steel rod—that was a little under twenty inches, Americans.
He was still damp from his shower time with Wanda. His life had gotten strange and fantastic. However, a few things had become clear. He would be going on leave from his jobs until he could figure out his shit. At the very least a vacation. Once he figured out his money situation, he might just quit them all.
Jack had the toy soldier in the pocket of his jacket, but his migraine meant he wasn’t about to use it. He’d just have to play this game straight. He walked up to the door and found a cracked doorbell. It still worked, and bongs went through the house.
And who answered the door?
A middle-aged woman with her big blond hair covered in some kind of scarf. She wore a housecoat and very unattractive slippers. She didn’t have the heavy blue eye makeup, but she was undoubtedly Evelyn Mundi.
She seemed to have slipped back into the Tempus Influunt.
“Yes, can I help you?” Her eyes were suspicious. It was clear that she wasn’t too thrilled having a stranger knock on her door at eight o’clock on a Sunday night.
“Hello, Mrs. Mundi,” Jack said. “I’m here to see your son.”
“Is he in trouble, officer?”
“I’m not a cop, ma’am. Hugo and I are...friends. We met at the bank.”
The woman nodded. “Yes. Good. I was afraid Hugo didn’t have any friends.” She turned and did the motherly thing of screaming into the back of the house. “Hugo!”
Then she opened the door to Jack. She frowned at the state of the tattered screen.
Jack moved past her into the living room, which had furniture from the 1980s: a bright blue couch, an easy chair with a floral pattern, doilies on colonial furniture. Stuffed black garbage bags sat here and there. It seemed Mrs. Mundi had come home and started cleaning up after her son. The place didn’t stink, it just smelled musty.
Rustling came from the back of the house.
Mrs. Mundi gestured to the kitchen. “You can go back there.”
He turned. “You don’t recognize me?”
The woman shrugged.
Jack wasn’t going to pretend crazy shit wasn’t happening. “I’m Jack Masterson. I work for Vigilance Incorporated, a security company that does business with the Rocky Mountain Bank. I was the guard, Friday, that escorted Hugo outside. And I saved you from a horned demon.”
Mrs. Mundi turned pale.
Hugo appeared in the doorway. Plaid button-up, sleeves rolled up, dirty jeans, and scuffed combat boots. He had the same scraggly beard and the same crazy eyes. He was less sweaty, which was good.
Jack noticed that Hugo was now about the same age as his mother since he’d only been a little boy when she’d been torn out of the timestream. “Hey. You’re that guy.”
“I’m that guy.” Jack stuck a knuckle against his head to try to at least calm a little of the pain. “So, I saved your mother from Horns, Hugo. But she doesn’t remember it.”
Hugo’s eyes went to the woman, who stood there, speechless, seconds from crying.
If that bitch cried, it might split Jack’s head wide open.
Hugo shrugged. “My mom’s gone. This is my aunt. Eva.”
Jack wanted to slip his security baton out and smack both of them. “That’s bullshit. She’s Evelyn, not Eva. Don’t fuck with me, either of you. I want answers.” Jack removed the toy soldier from his pocket. “And I want some answers about this shit.”
Mrs. Mundi went to the sofa, sat down, and put her face in her hands.
Hugo swallowed, clenching his jaw muscles. “You can’t tell anyone. It’s already complicated. There was a funeral. She has a death certificate. I mean, my old man, he...he had to say she was dead. To get the life insurance.”
Jack held up the toy soldier. He had to get out of there, drive home, and put ice on his temples. It was hard to think. “What about this, Hugo? You gave me this, and now I can use it to stop time.”
“It wasn’t me,” Hugo said. “I was off my meds. I mean, I collect toys like that. I have a ton of stuff. But as for why I gave it to you? I have no idea.”
“Off your meds?” Jack asked.
The guy nodded. “I have episodes.”
It wasn’t what Jack wanted to hear. He went over and crouched down in front of the woman. “Mrs. Mundi, what do you remember?”
She dropped her hands and sat back. “It was a Friday night. I was closing up, thirty-six years ago. Then? It’s only just hands on me.”
“Demonic hands? Rubbery skin, smells like shit, claws?” Jack asked.
Hugo leaned against the doorway to the kitchen. “Wait. You can stop time?”
Jack held up a finger. “My questions first. You’re the one who dragged me into this shit.”
Mrs. Mundi looked into Jack’s eyes. She didn’t seem bothered by the cursing, or that this was all so strange. Then again, she was alive, in a new world, time, and place.
She shook her head. “Not a demon. I mean, it’s hard to remember. She was very beautiful. She...” A glance at her son.
“Hey, Hugo, can you get me a glass of water?” Jack asked.
The guy nodded, turned.
Mrs. Mundi pulled Jack onto the sofa. She grabbed him. “She was all over me, Jack. I mean, I’ve had fantasies of being with a woman, but this woman? She was beautiful, with such delicious brown skin, and such dark hair, and her eyes, one was blue, one was red. She kissed me, and I melted. She was insatiable.”
“Did she use her tail on you?” he asked.
That was going too far. “What? Oh my goodness.” She was clearly shocked at first, and then she frowned. “I don’t understand. Or I don’t remember. It’s all so odd. I felt so tired for so long, dreaming but awake, like when you’re sick with a fever. Time, day, night—it all gets so fuzzy and painful. But not with her. With her, I felt like she was giving me something. In a very nice hotel, maybe that Marriott by St. Jude’s Catholic Church, if you can believe a woman like me would ever get to stay in such a nice place.”
Hugo came back with the water and a couple cans of Bud Light. “Hey, Jack, that’s my mother.”
Mrs. Mundi let go of Jack and scooted away from him. “Sorry. It was my fault, Hugo. I got a little excited. But next thing I know, I’m here, at the front door of my house. It took some convincing, you know, for me to believe it wasn’t 1985.”
“Does the name Beyazul Baal mean anything to either of you?” Jack asked.
Both shook their heads.
“Bailey?”
Hugo didn’t.
Mrs. Mundi blushed a bit, her eyes lit up, her mouth opened, then she frowned. “Maybe. Again, I don’t remember. Jack, can you tell me what happened to me?”
Jack pressed a knuckle into his temple. “I think a demon grabbed you and pulled you out of the timestream, and that demon fed on you, somehow. I don’t know for sure. I stopped time, drove the demon away, and pulled you out. Only another demon grabbed you, a succubus. That would be Bailey. And I’m sorta surprised she di
dn’t kill you. Instead, she played with you at the Marriott, ate up your lust, then wiped your memory. Instead of leaving you on the street, she brought you home.” Jack hadn’t seen that coming. What was Bailey’s true nature?
Hugo cleared his throat. “So, about my questions...You said I gave you a toy soldier, and it can stop time?”
Jack stood up.
Both of them were saying shit, asking questions, but he didn’t have much to tell them. And he wasn’t worried about telling them about his superpowers because who in the fuck would believe them? Shit like this didn’t happen, and it especially didn’t happen in Plum Creek, Colorado.
“Let me see your room, Hugo,” Jack said. “And I’ll take a beer. Then I have to go.”
Hugo gave a Bud Light to his mom, then opened the other one. He gave it to Jack, who took a sip. Just the one sip had him feeling less miserable. The real cure was going to be ice and sleep.
Then Hugo led him through a kitchen, which again was dirty, but you could tell that someone had wiped away at least the top layer of filth. That would’ve been the mom. The son had obviously lived in squalor.
Until Mom came back from diddling a demon and started cleaning.
Through the kitchen was a room that had been a patio at one point, but someone had enclosed it and added wood paneling and a crappy electric heater in the baseboards. The brick of the outside of the house was visible. This was Hugo Mundi’s domain, and it was full of shelves, which held toys. A lot of toys.
There were ancient toys, like the tin soldier, but there were also Star Wars Lego sets, and G.I. Joes, and Garbage Pail Kids crap, and Mad Ball monster toys. He even had old Fisher Price people, and their Adventure People sets. Of course there was a wide variety of Matchbox cars and Hot Wheels, including a racetrack with a loop-the-loop. Hugo’s bed was in the middle of the toy heaven.
“That’s where the windup guy would’ve lived.” Hugo nodded at a shelf of soldiers, some windup, but mostly they were small plastic army men—the bazooka guy, the kneeling guy with the radio, the dead guy laying on his back with his rifle across his belly.
“Can you really stop time?” Hugo asked.
Jack squinted at him. “If you get off your meds again, come and talk to me. Because I have some fucking questions that you might be able to answer if you were crazier.”
“And this isn’t crazy?” Hugo motioned to the toy chest that was his room, a grown-ass man sleeping among the ruins of his childhood.
Jack grinned. “After all the shit I’ve seen? No, man, this is pretty fucking normal. Besides, I hear they’re not toys, they’re collectibles.” Or at least they would have been if he’d kept them in the package and taken care of them. From the looks of it, Hugo played with his toys regularly; they were as dirty and worn as everything else.
Jack left the house, but not before exchanging numbers with Hugo. He hoped that Mrs. Mundi might remember something else. Maybe Hugo would go off his meds and start preaching insanity again, crazy as a shithouse rat. Jack just might need that crazy.
For now, he drove home, one eye closed, parked, and got up into his apartment. After dumping ice cubes into a plastic bag, he wound up in his bed, fully clothed, with the freezing-cold bag on his forehead.
He might need to get some morphine if the pain continued. Pinetree would have some.
Pinetree just might be able to help, but, no, Jack needed to talk with Bailey. And he needed to figure out his money situation so he didn’t have to work. That way he could search for Annie twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
It would mean stealing. What kind of a man would that make him?
Then he remembered that he’d saved Evelyn Mundi from a monster. She was back living a life, and that was probably why Hugo was on his meds again. If he stole money from assholes, and if he saved people, wouldn’t both cancel each other out?
He was in too much pain to ponder morality for long. He’d have to trust in his moral compass—it would let him know if he completely screwed up.
And Annie. He had to find Annie.
And it seemed that his only lead was Bailey, but where would she be?
Then Jack knew. And though he felt like someone was inside his head smacking his frontal cortex with a spiked baseball bat, he smiled. Of course.
Where else would someone find a horny sex demon who just might also have a heart of gold?
Chapter Ten
JACK CALLED HIS VARIOUS employers and friends to tell them he was sick and wouldn’t be at work that week. He mentioned headaches, migraines that left him incapacitated. Really, he was just growing into his power. He had no doubt that he’d eventually outgrow the headaches. He was feeling less and less pain each time he stopped time. It felt good not to go to work, not to rush, not to have to do anything other than what he wanted to do.
He didn’t stop time that Monday morning, but instead naturally took a few minutes to practice his guitar. Not too long, since he needed to find Bailey, get more information on the strange world he’d discovered, and then find Annie. She’d been missing for forty-eight hours now. Normally, that wouldn’t be a good sign. If this were a regular missing person case, the longer it went with her gone, the less chance she’d show up. Jack kept an eye on the NCIC and the CBI databases, but so far, there had been no movement on the case.
For Annie, though, Jack was pretty sure that some demon had grabbed her, most likely Horns. If Evelyn Mundi could be gone for over three decades, then Annie might be in a similar situation. It was strange that Mrs. Mundi didn’t remember her time being chewed on by Horns. However, that could be Bailey removing the memories. That just might be a kindness.
Was Bailey less evil than she let on? Jack was going to find out.
Monday morning, he headed out to St. Jude’s, a church off Rio Grande Avenue in Old Town, which was the nicer part of the eastern side of Plum Creek. There were fancy restaurants there, high-end shops, and a Marriott Courtyard. He parked on the street and popped into the hotel.
Jack showed the desk clerk a picture of Evelyn Mundi. He got lucky. The woman remembered Mrs. Mundi, who seemed drunk. She was with a dark-haired woman with dark skin in dark sunglasses. That would hide the different-colored eyes. The tail could be hidden under her dress, though this meant Bailey could manifest a body. It was something to consider. As he was about to leave, the clerk said, “Come to think of it, I think I’ve seen that woman before. I think she was coming out of St. Jude’s next door, though it was the middle of the week, not a Sunday.”
Jack thanked her, then went next door. He clicked the key on the toy soldier. The world stopped. He pushed through the doors into the church.
A few old people sat like statues in the pews. The altar was clear. The smell of candle smoke and incense hung in the air. Everything was silent. Of course it was—there was no wind, no talking, no movement.
“Bailey!” Jack called out.
From out of an alcove emerged the woman, in her red dress, in her black stilettos, with no sign of a tail or horns. She clicked across the tiles. “Well, well, well. You guessed my little home away from home. Nice sleuthing.”
“Evelyn Mundi mentioned the Marriott by the church, and the clerk remembered seeing you around.” He frowned at her. “You owe me information. I went into the shower. We had our fun with Wanda, but I need to understand what is going on. And you’re going to tell me.”
“And why would I tell you anything, mystery man?” she asked.
“Because I’m a mystery,” he said. “And I figured out your little home. I’ll come back here all the fucking time if I have to. Also, I know about what you did with Evelyn Mundi. After I saved her, you took her, and I’m a little confused by that.”
Bailey came swishing up in her dress, tits and hips wiggling. She smelled like the sweet soul of sex. She flashed those eyes at him, one icy blue, the other red and blazing. “You generated a bunch of Kairos, enough to get me going, but then I spent hours eating her sweet Ijjinaya. It was nice to have a body. But
I don’t see why I’m talking to you. I’m a fuck demon. I don’t have to tell you a thing, mystery man.”
And yet, she wasn’t disappearing, and there was a dizzy smile on her face.
Jack called her bluff. “I generated a bunch of Kairos, whatever that is. And you were able to have a body and an orgasm of your own. At least that was what you said. I would imagine you came with Mrs. Mundi just like you came with Wanda.”
Bailey’s smile was dirty. “Evelyn was a horny mommy. She’d been stuck for thirty-six years and even longer if you include her marriage to Mr. Mundi. With all of Evelyn’s lesbian fantasies, there was no way she ever should’ve gotten married. But back then, she didn’t have much of a choice.” Bailey sighed. “Sin was so much more fun back in the day.”
“And how old are you?” he asked.
She smacked his arm. Her fingernails were blood red. “You don’t ask a lady that. Nor how much I weigh. Or things I won’t do in bed. Which is nothing. I’ll do anything. As long as you generate that sweet Ijjinaya, and you do, more than most anyone I’ve ever eaten.”
She liked playing with him.
Well, Jack could play her games as well. He shook his head. “This was a mistake. There’s no way I can ever trust you. And you probably don’t know shit anyway. You’re just a big fucking waste of my time.”
He turned and walked out of the church. He walked into the middle of the street, in front of a car, the bearded driver as motionless as the car.
Bailey came charging out. “What are you doing walking away from me? Who are you to call me a waste of time?” All the sexy smokiness was gone, and she looked as pouty and as temperamental as a shunned teenage girl.
Jack shrugged. “I’m not going to deal with you. If you’re around, there must be other demons, or maybe an angel or two I can talk to. Or maybe a Fug, or a Fugit, or an Interim.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Fugs, Fugits, and the Interim are the same thing.”