Battle Hill Bolero

by Daniel José Older

  “Now go,” I tell them. “And report back immediately when it’s done. There’s a war coming, and you’ll be needed here.”

  They stand, and the bar quiets again as they make their way out into the cold night.

  “Paisley, baby, baby paisley hey! Your love was brazen baby paisley hey!”

  I’m done here. I collect my papers and am heading for the door, waving vaguely at Ennis and Bellamy and whoever else may care, when I come to a full stop a few feet from the door.

  The ghost with no face stands there, leaning on his cane. He looks like shit—more hunched over than usual, and his cloak is tattered. He looks down at me, that shimmering emptiness its own kind of glare.

  “Come with me,” Juan Flores says in a choked whisper. “I have need of your skills tonight.”

  —

  “You sure you want to do this?” I say. Flores and I are standing on Franklin Avenue where it meets Eastern Parkway. The winter night has frozen all this gray slush into a solid shiny coating. Down Franklin, new Thai restaurants outshine dusty ghetto Chinese joints, and fancy gluten-free fruit stands edge out the last few bodegas. “She won’t go down easy.”

  Flores shrugs. “She’ll go down, though.”

  “Maybe. And she’ll take us with her if we’re not careful. It’s a suicide mission, Flores.”

  He turns toward the parkway, where soulcatchers are emerging from the darkness. “That’s why I brought backup.” There must be four, no, five full squads of them. All decked out in full battle regalia, the ’catchers stride directly through passing traffic toward us.

  “We march!” Flores hollers. We launch forward, and the collective momentum of all those single-minded warriors clears Franklin for blocks ahead of us. Some trash tumbles down the street in the icy winds, but otherwise the place is empty. We pass laundromats and bistros, the last dive bar standing, and a Panamanian spot, and three coffee shops.

  I like this whole thing less and less the closer we get. Flores seems to be running on some half-crazed impulse, and I’m positive the ’catchers don’t know what they’re in for. But I told Botus yes, I would join his strange cabal as the first living subminister of war. I would help him squash the resistance if need be, or forge a fragile peace. Even with Delacruz. At least for now. Because the truth is, right now: I’m no one. An orphan, brotherless. Powerful yes, but to what end? My dwindling dozen of Blattodeons hardly constitutes an army. I live on a wretched, forgotten island in the New York Harbor. The offer caught me off guard but also couldn’t have come at a better time.

  We’ll sort out the details in the next few days, Botus assured me as we strolled through the park two nights back. Ha.

  Flores stops us before an abandoned brownstone on a residential block. The ’catchers fan out behind us, and I can feel their uneasiness finally settle in.

  “House ghost!” Flores yells. “In accordance with New York Council of the Dead Measure 8-12 Section 5, we are here to notify you that you are in violation of Council protocol. We request that you remo—”

  A wide, gigantic face appears at the front of the brownstone. It looms over us like an unimpressed moon. Mama Esther doesn’t speak; she just glares.

  “Remove yourself from the premises immediately and without delay.”

  An uncomfortable silence follows. Some cars pass; the wind whips through us; soulcatchers adjust their positions. A block away, the shuttle train rumbles by, screeches to a halt, collects some passengers, and then rumbles on its way.

  “House ghost,” Flores says again. “You have been advi—”

  Mama Esther sighs a monsoon—trees shiver, and plastic bags take flight. She shakes her head. “No more talk.”

  “On behalf of the Council!” Flores roars.

  “No more talk!” The world shudders. All five soulcatcher squads flinch back a step. Only Flores and I stand firm. “Come get me,” Mama Esther says, disconcertingly quiet all of a sudden.

  “Very well,” Flores mutters. He flicks his hand, and the two squads on either end of the line flush forward, blitz across the street, and bum-rush the front door. They make it to the third step. Mama Esther closes her eyes, and a glistening wall of spirit matter booms forth, decimating them entirely and pushing the rest of us back against the opposite row of buildings.

  “Squad 7,” Flores growls, recovering himself. There’s a pause. Mama Esther stares down at us as the ’catchers stumble around. “Squad 7, I said!”

  They’re up and then in formation in seconds, and then they move in, and I gotta hand it to them, they’re not as shaken as I probably would’ve been in their shoes.

  This time, the front door flies open.

  “Where are my manners?” Mama Esther chuckles. “Please, come in.”

  They flood inside. The door slams shut, and soon the howls of soulcatchers fill the night.

  The two squads left are on the brink of scattering. Flores turns to me. “Fix this,” he says. No desperation there. I’m sure he knew how this would play, and now he wants to see what I’m made of.

  So be it.

  I send my mind across the trembling front line of ’catchers—Squad 3. They tense as I reach up inside them, then straighten and draw their blades. They are mine.

  I’ll tell you something most people don’t know about ghosts: they’re made up of a fiber that includes particles of many elements. Tiny flashes of water, air, and even earth course through spirit matter, so miniscule as to be virtually inconsequential. Unless you stimulate them. My mental tendrils surge through the phantom DNA of all twelve ’catchers, sort through the water, past the air, beyond the microscopic rocks, and finally coil around that singular flash of light buried deep within their cellular framework: fire.

  I clench down. Ignore the swirling sky and gathering hurricane of Mama Esther’s ferocity. The force builds inside me, and I send it out through the line of ’catchers, tempering it so it doesn’t spill over. My shoulders hunch forward, and Squad 3 takes the first step toward Mama Esther’s. Then the next. Even through my closed eyes, I can see the twelve red glares flicker to life as the soldiers break into a run. When I open my eyes, it’s still just a warm glow; they’re halfway across the street.

  Mama Esther’s eyes go wide, then narrow to slits. She’s reaching toward me, a huge hand crashing out of the sky, when the first soulcatcher bursts into flames. He’s fast, and the fire only accelerates him into the brownstone’s tattered doorway.

  Mama Esther’s hand flies back up with surprise. I force the others forward with the last of my energy. Two, then three, then another two flaming soulcatchers crash into the front wall. The flames are real, not spirit flames, and by the time the last four reach the doorway, the whole building has caught.

  “I’m impressed,” Flores says. And then a horrible, echoing laughter erupts over the flames. Mama Esther’s mouth hangs wide open, her giant hands reaching out into the night. “Finish this,” Flores says, and the last squad of soulcatchers rushes past us.

  The laughter gets louder, and I know something’s wrong, and then she looks down at us, suddenly somber. I’m turning to run when the whole world becomes a bright light. Bricks, metal, and stone flash through the air—something glances off my arm; something else nicks my face before I collapse as another blast tears through the night, and then everything is dark and I hear a single voice, laughing and crying at the same time.

  And then there is nothing.

  CYCLE THREE

  FIREBALL

  Ayy, espiritistas inciertos,

  Que muchos hay por allá,

  Porfiaban con terquedad

  Que los del Trío habían muerto.

  Ayy, those uncertain conjurers,

  Of which there are plenty over there,

  Insisted stubbornly

  That all of us had died.

  “El Trío y el Ciclón”

  Trí
o Matamoros

  CHAPTER NINE

  Carlos

  Cyrus Langley shakes his head slowly. “We wait.” It seems like everything he’s done has been in slow motion since they killed Mama Esther. No one’s seen him cry or raise his voice even, but he moves like he’s sifting through a swamp.

  The room erupts into growls of dissent. We’re in a vacant project basement up in Harlem. Since the attack on Mama Esther, we’ve been switching locations each time we meet, releasing the info at the last minute. Cyrus raises a hand, and gradually the murmurs die out. A week ago, the same motion would’ve brought instant, rapt silence.

  “I know you’re upset,” Cyrus drawls. “We’re all upset, trust. And no one”—he looks up, meeting our eyes for the first time in days—“no one, wants revenge more than I do. However . . . this is not the time.” He nods, his eyes faraway again. “We wait.”

  It’s been two weeks.

  Two weeks and the constant jackhammer of grief against my chest hasn’t dulled so much as become the new normal. Some days, rage replaces the sorrow, and I storm through the streets, blade ready, hoping to bump into some passing soulcatcher and exact a cheap mockery of vengeance.

  But Cyrus has been very clear: We wait. What’s less clear is how long the assembled anti-Council forces will continue to care what our broken leader says.

  “Now is exactly the time,” Saeen says. “The Rebel Districts have reached an unprecedented unity. Calls for the destruction of the Council ring out across New York. We may never be this strong again, Mr. Langley.” Her voice slides from ferocious to pleading. “Mama Esther was beloved by everyone. The Council made a grave error in this, and they will pay.”

  “Did they?” Cyrus says. “Or did they do something very strategic, knowing this is exactly what would happen next? The worst thing we can do right now is be predictable, and launching at the Council full force is precisely what they expect us to do. Mark me, they will be ready for us. We are stronger than we’ve been, yes, but that doesn’t mean we’re strong enough.”

  Riley sits stony faced beside Cyrus. His eyes narrow like he’s clenching back a scream of pain; his translucent hands grip the bar. Riley knew Mama Esther longer than I did—he’s the one who brought me to her place when he found me, and she took care of him after our attack on the ngks went sour. I’m sure that’s not the only time she’s saved his ass. All our asses. I shake my head. None of this feels right. Nothing feels right.

  A bearded ghost in a bike helmet stands. “We’ve been hitting Council soulcatchers with small, coordinated ambush attacks for the past week,” he says to murmurs of surprise and a few cheers. “They started traveling in squads, not pairs like before, because they’re expecting an attack. Still, we found that they’re not hard to catch off guard, and soulcatchers can be tracked when off duty and dispatched quickly. Now they’ve cleared the streets almost entirely. Can barely find ’em.”

  Cyrus squints across the hazy backroom. “You are with the Ghost Riders, no?”

  “Aye,” the man says.

  A woman stands up beside him, one of the ones from last time. They both straddle white bicycles. “We had a change of leadership,” the woman explains. “Sharon was . . . handled.”

  “When we last saw you,” Cyrus says, his voice barely above a whisper, “you could barely get consensus on whether to join our movement. Now you’ve taken it upon yourself to take out Council troops.” The room gets very quiet. “Understand that they may be easy targets now, but the next time you hit them, or maybe the next after that, they will be ready for you. And if they have cleared the streets, it’s only in preparation for a final attack.”

  “We’ll be ready for them!” the bearded man says.

  Cyrus just shakes his head. “The battlefield has changed. A war of attrition will wear us out and destroy us slowly, even with public opinion against the Council. An all-out assault on Sunset will see us broken in a matter of minutes. I want to destroy the Council, not lash out with no plan. When one of you brings us a strategy for winning, not dying, we will move forward.”

  He stands, his slender arms supporting him on the bar, and glares out at the rebels. “That’s all.”

  The crowd disperses with a resentful mutter, and soon it’s just me, Riley, little Damian, Vincent, and Dag Thrummond, Cyrus’s huge axe-wielding bodyguard from the Burial Grounds. And Cyrus, who remains frozen with his hands splayed open on the bartop, eyes fixed on the empty room.

  “Mr. Langley?” Dag says.

  Cyrus shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know what?” Riley asks.

  “Don’t know what the move is. I don’t even . . .” He looks at Riley, then me. “I don’t know how to move.”

  “We’re all a mess,” I offer. “You’re allowed to be a mess too.”

  Cyrus offers a gentle smile. It fades fast. “We can’t afford inclarity right now.”

  Riley nods, his eyes closed. “It’s true. But I’ll be honest: everything in me wants to strike. I know there’s no endgame for that, but . . . when is there ever? If we keep waiting for some kind of foolproof plan, the moment will pass and . . . then what?”

  “The moment,” Cyrus repeats, back in his faraway place.

  “It’s not a foolproof plan we’re waiting for,” Damian explains. “We don’t have any plan. Hit them and then hit them again till they hit back and break us is not a strategy.”

  “Where’s Krys?” Cyrus says. We all look around. I figured she’d been hiding during the general meeting like she usually does, but she would’ve shown up by now. “Has anyone seen her?”

  “She’s been taking Mama Esther being gone pretty hard,” Riley says. “We spoke the day before yesterday and . . . I know she’s hurt. I mean, of course we all are, but . . . you know, she’s young, in a way.”

  “We need to keep an eye on her,” Cyrus says. “Keep her safe. Krys must be protected at all costs.”

  Riley and Dag nod.

  “What now?” I ask.

  Cyrus just puts his head down, doesn’t say a word. We leave slowly, sorrow pounding us.

  —

  It’s a bright early afternoon, and 125th Street is bustling with families, hustlers, cops, and vendors. Here you can get a bucket of shea butter, a DVD of Malcolm X speeches, an unknown rapper’s mixtape. There a bearded man sells body oils and incense in front of a fancy clothing store. Some old soul song blasts from an old man’s boom box as he struts through the crowd wearing only a puffy jacket and underpants.

  “Let’s cut off the main drag,” Riley says. “Too much going on.”

  I nod. I hadn’t even realized he was beside me, honestly, but I’d been meaning to swing through the park anyway. We hang a right, and immediately the whole world is calmer. Up ahead, patches of snow cluster like filthy, frozen waves on the fields of Marcus Garvey Park. The last time I was here was before they killed Mama Esther. The last time I was most places was before they killed Mama Esther. A simple thought, but the hollowness seems to deepen inside me in response to it. I suppose this’ll keep happening until I’ve been everywhere, and then it’ll keep happening anyway.

  Riley glances at me as we step through the gate into the park. “I know, man. I know.”

  I shake my head, holding back an unexpected rush of tears. “I just want to . . . kill things.” My teeth are clenched, my fists too.

  “All I can think about doing is war.”

  “You think the old man’s making a mistake?”

  Riley scowls. “I’m not sure if it’ll matter one way or another pretty soon. The Rebel Districts lookin’ like they bouta be fed up with waiting. Hell, those spandexed fucks already started their own little insurrection. Won’t be long before there’s another hit from one side or the other.”

  “And then all-out war.”

  “Which the Council will win.”

  I nod
.

  “It’s the general’s dilemma,” Riley says. “We want blood; he wants to win. At the moment, those two wants are incompatible.”

  “I want blood and to win.”

  “Word. What I’m worried about is, what’s the endgame? All the COD really has to do is stay holed up at HQ and wait for either the wrath to die down or the RDs to fuck up and rush in unprepared.”

  The sky is white and gray. We’ve strolled across the main field and up a small hill to the edge of the forest. It’s darker in there than it should be at this hour of the day—a gloom hangs over the woods that can only be supernatural.

  “Park spirits are mourning too,” Riley says.

  Garvey Park is home to a cluster of particularly old, mellow spirits that mostly hang back amidst the trees and bear witness to the odd comings and goings of the living. One of them is an ancient great-uncle of mine; I don’t understand the way-back-when language he speaks, but I call him Blardly, mostly because pretty much everything he says sounds like blardly-blardly-blardly-blardly.

  “You going in?” Riley asks.

  I nod. I hadn’t really known I was coming here for this, but now I’m sure I need it. I’ve passed through a few times since I learned about my ancestor, usually when I’m all fucked up trying not to think about Sasha and the kids. I always leave a little more intact than I am when I came, cleansed somehow. There’s something to that ancestral magic, something reviving. Usually, Blardly shows up and I talk and talk some more and then, occasionally, burst into tears, as the towering, bearded spirit nods sagely and mutters: Blardly blardly blardly blardly.

  Riley looks around with a frown. “The joint is morbid,” he says, then walks in beside me.

  It’s a warm winter day, but the world cools around us as soon as we enter the shadows. I exhale, and my breath becomes a ghostly little cloud and then disappears. Something glints in between the trees, and then, very suddenly, we’re not alone. It’s not just Blardly this time; he brought all his friends too. They’re all tall and decrepit, folds of wispy, shimmering flesh drooping along their towering frames.