by Sean Platt
“Silly rabbit …” Wolf licked his lips, then got to laughing. “Tricks are for kids, and you done hornswoggled me out of my power. So cheers for you coming in peace, but jeers for me having to leave you in pieces.”
“Ah … so you do remember.”
“Like my first whiff of whisker biscuit, Friar Thief. And don’t think I’m about to ever forget it again.”
“Your memory is not accurate. We did not trick you. You begged us to take The Darkness, after confessing to having done many terrible things under its influence, and deeply hurting someone you loved. We merely offered to help you.”
“Maybe.” Wolf didn’t remember any of that. “But ain’t no way I said you could take away The Light.”
“We were not aware of The Light until it escaped you.”
“You fucking stabbed me!”
“No.” Friar Liar shook his head. “I did not.”
“I remember!”
“Your memories are … faulty.”
Wolf got out of bed and stood in front of the old man.
But Brother Faith refused to flinch upon his approach.
“Where’s the girl?” Wolf asked.
“She is in her room.”
“We’re leaving.”
“I am afraid that’s not possible.”
Wolf got closer, staring into the monk’s fearless and unflinching eyes, itching to sink his shiv into the fucker’s scrawny neck.
“We’ll be watching live TV again before I’d leave my offspring with you abbots of amethyst ayahuasca, or whatever the fuck you are.”
“She is very gifted.”
“No shit, Brother Obvious. She’s my kid. I bet in a world with better ingredients she could toss an omelet tasty enough to change the way you feel about your tongue.”
“There are bad people looking for her. People who want what she has, and would harm her in ways you can’t even fathom.”
“Begging your pardon, Monsignor, but I can fathom just fine. Impurity is a flower in the garden of our human soul. Humans were made for depravity. Sometimes a merciless mind is but Mercury to a Jupiter of agony, since on some level the injured believe they can earn their healing by hurting someone else.” Wolf drew a trickle of blood on his neck. “So, guess what I’m fathoming now?”
The old man still refused to flinch. “You won’t kill me.”
“Quick, what color am I thinking of?”
“You may wish me dead, and you may try to make it so. But I assure—”
The tip went deeper. The trickle thickened. “I’d rather not kill you, but a man is what he thinks about most, and guess what I can’t keep myself from picturing?”
Wolf pulled the shiv away and slapped the monk to keep from killing him. “You’re gonna take me to Emory’s room, then she and I are gonna hightail it outta here. If you or any one of your band of freakshow prayer-party pajama-wearing padres tries to stop me, I’ll make sure y’all are meditating on the new layers of pain I’ll introduce you to on our way outta here.”
Wolf spun the monk around and barked another order. “Now march toward the door before you never get to wrap your dick in prayer beads again.”
“You are making a mistake. You cannot protect her from them. You are too old now. And too weak.”
“Pot meet kettle. I can smell you starting to rot already. The body goes, the mind follows. So, you’ve got what—” Wolf looked at his wrist even though he wasn’t wearing a watch “—a couple of hours?”
“Stay here. Let us teach her how to fight the enemy.”
“Hard pass. I’ll teach her to fight, and how to avoid Friar Liars looking to exploit her.”
Brother Faith opened the door as Wolf continued to walk closely behind him, the box spring shiv still to his throat.
The man standing guard reached for his sword.
“Don’t,” said Brother Faith, still perfectly calm.
The guard looked confused, staring at Wolf while slowly removing his hand from the sword.
“Keep walking,” Wolf growled.
They passed the guard and entered the old building. Rock walls and polished stone floors. Memories flashed.
Wolf had been here before.
He saw himself walking next to Brother Faith.
Except … it wasn’t him.
It was the man in the tree.
The other me.
How did I get his memories?
Wolf had been here before, so his memories clashed with the other Wolf’s, making him wonder if they had tricked his doppelgänger, too.
He hoped Emory could unlock more of his memories.
“Brother Truth said that you were missing pieces of your mind. I can help you.”
Wolf said, “I remember enough not to trust you.”
“You came to us wanting your demons exorcised. I brought you to the tree hoping to help you, without any knowledge of the Gods harbored within. I did not deceive you.”
“Gods?” He laughed. “They ain’t Gods. It’s Light and Dark, like bread on both sides of a sandwich.”
Faith shook his head and looked at the floor. “You were never worthy of being a steward for the Gods.”
“I suppose you would be?”
“No. But I would have been a better custodian. And I would never have scared them away.”
“You did scare them away when you shoved my face into that tree!”
Two young monks emerged from a door up ahead.
Wolf barked, “Get the fuck back in there or I’ll cut his holy throat!”
Their eyes widened and they quickly obeyed.
“Walk faster.” Wolf gave him a shove.
Faith followed the order, still campaigning for Wolf to hear him out. “A war is coming between our kind and theirs. We need you both.”
“Well, she’s a kid and you ain’t getting her.”
“You do not understand your daughter’s evolution.”
“I saw what she can do, but from now on it’s an exclusive engagement with me and her. Tickets will be available never.”
“They will find Emory and take her away from you. Even at your strongest, you could not battle an army alone.”
“And you can?”
“Many of us here understand what is at stake. We will fight for you and for her and for all of our kind.”
“How much farther?” Wolf asked, approaching a stairwell.
“Not far.”
“So, what’s this war, and why does Stratum want her?”
“They’re experimenting on The Touched, hoping to weaponize them.”
Wolf looked back at Brother Faith from the third stair. “Isn’t that what you’re doing here? Building your little army of Touched monks?”
“We are not trying to destroy anything. They want to obliterate everything and anyone standing in their path. Including the Gods.”
“The Gods?”
They entered a long hallway like the one on the floor below, lined with several wooden doors on either side of them. His raw senses were ready to act, waiting for a door to fly open at any moment to unleash an enemy attack. Who knew how many Alts they had here, or what they could do.
“They think killing the Gods in The Ruins, along with killing or enslaving The Touched, will return the world to what it was. But they cannot kill the Gods, so they will slaughter as many of us as they can.”
“That still doesn’t mean—”
“They know the Gods have touched you. They know you were chosen. Letting you live is too dangerous for them.”
“What is that tree? The one with the man that looks like me? The one that took my Darkness?”
“I promise to tell you everything if you stay.”
“Better deal: you tell me everything and I leave without killing you.”
They rounded a corner at the end of the hall into a shorter hallway with one door and a sword-bearing monk standing guard outside it.
“Tell your brother to put it down,” Wolf said.
“You’ll have to kill u
s both if you want her,” the monk replied.
“You think I won’t?”
Silence.
Wolf pressed the shiv harder against his skin.
“If you do it, you’ll never know,” said Brother Faith.
“Never know what?”
“What she is.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“But that’s not all.”
“What are we opening?” Wolf looked at the guard. “The door or an artery?”
The guard stared at them, not moving.
Faith nodded at the guard. “Stand down. He may leave with her, but they’ll be back once they see what they’re up against.”
The guard sheathed his weapon and opened the door.
Wolf saw Emory, sitting in a nicer version of the room he had woken in. She sprang out of bed and ran over to him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Grab your stuff. We’re getting out of here.”
Emory went to her bed and snatched the book, Alice Unfolded.
She was reading it to me.
She looked at Wolf in confusion. “Why are you doing that to him?”
“Because these people won’t let us leave unless I threaten them.”
Brother Faith shook his head. “That isn’t true.”
Wolf said, “Shut your prayer hole.”
“He wishes to take you from us, dear. But he cannot protect you from them. He is going to get you both killed.”
Wolf nicked the monk again, his neck now pocked with a constellation of tiny bleeding holes. “I told you to shut the fuck up.”
Emory was staring at Wolf wide-eyed, obviously scared.
“These people want to use you. They stole my powers and my memories.”
“That you begged us to take,” Faith reminded Wolf yet again. “You could no longer stand yourself, or what you had done to this child’s mother.”
“To my mother?”
Faith kept talking, ignoring the shiv. “He hurt your mother, then asked us to help him forget.”
Emory stared at Wolf. “What did you do to my mother?”
“I … I don’t know. But I swear on my sack that I loved her.”
“Maybe he did, but this man also had a Darkness inside him. A Darkness he came to us—”
“Tell another goddamned story!” Wolf yelled with an aggressive shake of his head. “Enough of this shit. We need to get out of here.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you did to my mom!”
“I don’t know.” And that was the truth.
Her icy blue eyes stared through him as she approached, lips pursed tight. “Touch my hand.”
Wolf was afraid to. Terrified of the sins he might remember. Horrified by what Emory might see. If she witnessed the true him, she would probably loathe him forever. And once she learned he was her father, it would only make that hate more intense. And maybe decide to stay with these monks.
“I saw things the last time we touched,” Emory said, still staring. “Now I want to see more.”
“We also ended up on our asses. I need to keep pressure on this man’s throat or he’ll tell his goons to kill me.”
“I won’t let that happen,” she promised.
Wolf laughed. But his daughter stayed stone-faced.
“I’ll let you see whatever you wanna see once we’re outside. If you hate me afterward, I promise not to stop you from coming back. But, for now, we need to get out while we still can.”
“Touch my hand,” Emory ordered him again. “Now.”
“Fine.” Wolf swapped the shiv to his left hand and gave her his right, placing his big rough hand in her delicate one. Then—
—BLINK—
Sixty-Three
Slum Lord
It was late when Sebastian, Yugo, and his army of young men and women entered The Baxter through the underground tunnels.
There were fifty of them, armed with bats, blades, and staffs.
They made their way to the top floor of The Baxter where he expected Jackie to hit him.
Yugo instructed his people to wait as Sebastian brought him to his office for a talk.
“Nice,” Yugo said, admiring the furniture and decor. “If your city is ‘The Slums,’ how nice are the other cities?”
“Some are better than the others. But anything beats living in the garbage mountains.” Slum Lord sat back in his chair and invited Yugo to take a seat across from him.
Sasha and Axl were keeping watch for Kiril to distract or detain the man if he showed. To keep him from warning Jackie’s people away. But Sebastian didn’t expect to see him. Kiril was either in his room hiding and waiting for shit to pass, or at one of Jackie’s places, drinking or getting high.
Slum Lord offered Yugo a cigar.
He shook his head. “Nah, I don’t do that shit.”
Slum Lord nodded, clipped the cap and lit one for himself, then rolled the foot until it was smoldering. He drew the smoke into his mouth, enjoying the body, weight, and flavor before blowing it back through his nose and feeling the relaxation wash through his body. A calm before the bloodbath to come.
“You don’t know what you’re missing, kid.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“Well, I’m not an old man. I’m thirty-one.”
He smirked. “That’s old enough.”
“Well, the years pile up faster than you think. You’ll be looking back wondering where they all went soon enough, thinking that your teenage years were just yesterday.”
“I doubt I’ll live that long.”
“Wouldn’t you like to?”
“Going out young and fun is better than getting old and waiting to die with a bunch of regrets.”
“Who says you can’t live long and have fun?”
“How’s that workin’ for you?”
“I didn’t exactly have fun when I was a kid, either.”
“So, you’ve been this miserable your whole damned life? Shit.”
Sebastian laughed. “Who said I’m miserable?”
“Your face. You look sad and old. Too serious and waiting to die.”
“Not always. I’ve just got a lot of shit on my mind.”
Slum Lord wondered if Yugo was trying to size him up to probe for weaknesses. Surely at least part of him was.
Sebastian had already shown Yugo the back way into The Baxter, though that in itself was a trap. Neither Yugo nor his people knew that anyone who entered without tripping a hidden device would trigger a cave-in once they were deep enough to make escape impossible.
“So, what you gonna do after this lady come at you?” Yugo asked.
“Demand that The Six replace her.”
“With who? You?”
“I was thinking you.”
“Me? Man, you gotta be jokin’.” Yugo laughed as he shifted in his seat, looking back and forth before meeting Slum Lord’s eyes again.
“I’m serious. If this goes well, I don’t see a reason we can’t form an alliance. Work together, share the profits, maybe better your community.”
Yugo looked at him suspiciously. “Why you so concerned about me or my people? Ain’t you got your owns to worry about?”
“Seeing those kids living in the shanties like that. Not just you, but the really young ones … it just isn’t right.”
“It is what it is. The Gods don’t give a fuck about us.”
“But I do. And there are others like me. We can do better. We can have more. Why settle for trash heaps?”
“That’s the only thing left for most of us. The rest was taken by the folks that already lived in these towns. Minute the world ended, walls were raised to shut us out. Even in The Slums.”
“I wasn’t in power then.”
“Maybe, but you ain’t exactly opening your doors to us now.”
“I don’t run things on my own. I represent The Six. I make things smooth, acting as a buffer between them and the people. I don’t have enough say to make heavy demands
. But I can work on them from inside.”
“And what happens then? You got room for us all to flood in?”
“We’ll need to figure something out, but there must be something better than the way it is now.”
“So, what are you gonna do?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Enter,” Slum Lord said.
It was Sasha. “Kiril was last seen at The Sacred. Hasn’t come out. And there’s movement in the streets, some people on the other rooftops that aren’t usually there.”
“Let’s get ready, then.” Sebastian stood and grabbed his sword.
Then he went to the rooftops with his people and told Yugo and his men to cover anyone coming up the stairs or elevator.
He would eliminate any and all attackers.
Then go after Jackie and finish this.
Slum Lord, Sasha, Axl, Gordon, and Solomon reached The Baxter’s rooftop to find it packed with Jackie’s assassins. Men and women he recognized, people he’d broken bread and drank with, all there to take him out.
A dozen of his former friends, armed with swords, knives, and bats.
Four versus twelve.
Well, a dozen up here. Who knew how many more Jackie had recruited that were now making their way up the stairs?
Jackie’s soldiers charged.
Slum Lord thrust himself at the closest two, slicing through the first one’s stomach before sliding through and stabbing the second through his back.
Clashing swords, blood and guts spilling, the movement of so many people on the rooftop — it was a cacophony of noise, so overwhelming that Sebastian never heard the woman attacking until she was on top of him.
She swung the bat against his right forearm with a mighty crunch, sending a blast of agony through his body and forcing him to drop his sword.
His dominant arm was now broken.
Sebastian didn’t even look at it, afraid he’d see bone sticking through his shirt. He grabbed his dagger and slashed at the woman with his left hand, missing her entirely.
She reared back to hit him again, but Sasha rushed forward and severed her arm at the elbow.
The woman’s bat fell and she belted a string of flaming curses before Sasha yelled out and buried her blade in the woman’s chest.