Battle Hill Bolero

by Daniel José Older

  “Whoa,” Riley whispers.

  The form a cluttered half circle around us, and Blardly steps out into the middle. I lift my hand to him and he reaches out, places his cool, translucent palm against mine. His mouth, usually a little O shape beneath his beard, forms a sad smile.

  “Blardly blardly blardly,” Blardly says, shaking his old head. Specks of light dance and spin around him like tiny moons.

  “They’re sorry for our loss,” Riley says. He aced the ancient-ghost-languages class in ’Catcher Academy—something about a teacher he was hot for. “At least I think he meant ‘they’ and ‘our.’ They don’t differentiate plural and singular in their language. That is, everything is plural.”

  “Blardy blardly blardly.” I catch a glint of anger in my forefather’s tone, and the other spirits rustle and mutter behind him.

  “He says they’ll fight with us.”

  This I hadn’t expected. I’d just come for solace, not on a recruiting mission. A little pulse of joy opens up inside me, the first in a long time.

  “Blardly blardly blardly.”

  “Mama Esther was a good friend to them, he says.”

  “Blardly!”

  “Says they’ll bring down the Council.”

  “Blardly.”

  “One way or another.”

  I sniffle back a sob. “Tell him thank you.”

  Riley mumbles a blardly, and the old spirit nods, touches my face, then squeezes his mouth tight. “Blardly,” he says.

  “Something else,” Riley translates.

  Blardly launches into a lengthy speech, complete with head shakes and thoughtful hand gestures. Riley nods, eyebrows creased with concentration. Asks a question, nods again when Blardly explains.

  “Apparently,” Riley says, “Mama Esther was working on something before the Council killed her.”

  “What?”

  The ancient ghost raises his palm to me one more time. I touch it, and his bleary, old, glowing eyes meet mine. “They . . . ,” Blardly groans, squinting with concentration, “woant . . . ad . . . wat . . . yew”—he nods his old wooly head at Riley and then me—“woant.”

  “They wanted what we want? Mama Esther, you mean?”

  Blardly nods with a slight smile, retreats slowly back into the shadows of the forest. The others nod and gradually vanish. I look at Riley, my eyebrows raised, and then we trudge through the underbrush toward the park.

  “If she was working on something before she died—” Riley says.

  “And she wanted what we want—” I continue.

  “Then whatever she was working on has to do with bringing down the Council.”

  “Even though she’s always swearing she’ll remain neutral.”

  I scoff. “Mama Esther knows . . .” Shit. ”Knew . . . the neutrality’s a myth people use to make themselves comfortable.”

  “Of course, but she aimed for it. Or she made it look like she did. Remember all those times she told us to fuck off because she didn’t want to get involved in no infighting?”

  That stops us both in our tracks as the shitty truth settles once again in our bones. Mama Esther’s ferocity was matched only by her lovingness. Shit. “But even when she didn’t get involved,” I say after a moment of silence, “she always had the right . . . Oh shit.”

  “What?” Riley says.

  “Books.”

  “Speak, man.”

  We’re back out in the park field now, and it’s dark, that eerie moment when the sun has set but the streetlights haven’t gotten the memo yet. I’m fast-walking toward the street, which’ll take me to the train, which’ll take me to my place, where there are . . . “Books!” I say again.

  Riley’s huffing and puffing to keep up with me. “Sentences, dammit!”

  “Mama Esther gave me some books before she was killed. Gave some to Sasha too, I think.”

  “I mean, me too, but I didn’t think—”

  “Exactly! It was weird, but she shrugged it off with something cryptic about spreading the library around. Lemme find out she was being strategic all along.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me, knowing her. Where they at now?”

  “Mine? My place!”

  Riley almost clotheslines me with an icy, damn-near-solid arm. “Hold up.”

  “What?”

  “You just gonna cowboy back in there? You know the Council gonna have that place on watch.”

  I’ve been staying at a cheap motel on Atlantic Ave since they killed Mama Esther, on Cyrus Langley’s orders. Riley’s right, but I’m undeterred. “We’ll have to. Sasha will help and . . .” I stop talking because a shiny figure stands at the entranceway to Marcus Garvey Park. Riley follows my gaze, squints.

  “Is that . . .”

  “Krys!” I yell, breaking into a run. “You are literally just the ghost I wanted to see!”

  Sasha

  Anger flickers across the young ghost beside me like lightning teasing the edge of a dark cloud. Our backs press against a graffiti-splattered brick wall around the corner from Carlos’s place. Krys’s every move bristles with her loss. I want to offer my condolences, but it’s not the time for that. Any moment now, Carlos will text that they’re in position and we’ll move out. I steal a glance down the block; it’s empty. Which is unexpected—maybe bad.

  “Carlos says you went off the radar,” I say.

  Krys nods, eyes scanning the deserted street around us. “I just couldn’t listen to old Cyrus tell us to wait one more time. This rage is . . . it’s too deep . . . I don’t know what to do with it.”

  “I probably would’ve done the same thing.”

  “Hell, you basically did,” Krys says, and I know she’s talking about when I walked out on Carlos, and I know it’s a jab to test my defensiveness, and I know Krys is a teenager and that’s what teenagers do, even dead ones, and still I flinch. She catches that flinch and flashes a wry smile and, against my will, I like her. I roll my eyes, let a hint of smile flash so she knows there’s no hard feelings, and check my phone.

  Nothing from Carlos. An odd uneasiness settles into my gut. All the shit I’ve seen and done, in the past few months especially—it’s strange that a little grab-’n’-go should throw me.

  “There are Council goons around,” Krys says. “I can feel ’em.”

  “This is kind of a coming-out party for you, isn’t it?”

  She shrugs. “Only if one of the soulcatchers lives. Anyway, they been giving me the royal side-eye from jump, so, only kinda.”

  “But there’s a big difference between being under watch and being a full-on rebel. Ask Riley.”

  “Oh, I have. I’m ready.”

  “You tell Cyrus?”

  Krys scans the rooftops, pouts.

  “Oh boy,” I mutter.

  My phone buzzes: Unexpected holdup. ’Catchers headin your way from the south. Sorry, tried to get em all.

  Shit. “Heads up,” I say, drawing a blade. Krys unholsters two pistols, and I’m reminded momentarily of Reza, who always travels well armed. But where Reza is ice cold, Krys is all fury and hellfire. Either way, folks get dead, but I wonder who would win in a matchup. Hope to never find out.

  When no ’catchers round the corner, my unease gets shriller. Worn-down warehouses line the block. An SUV and two taxicabs are parked on one side; on the other, a huge black puddle reflects muddled, technicolor murals from the wall toward the sky. A few blocks away, a car passes.

  I text: Don’t see em. Where u?

  I dislike all of this. Carlos should’ve taken those damn books with him when he left for the hotel.

  Something flickers; then two burly soulcatchers sprint across the street at the far end of the block. They don’t stop or turn, just beeline out of sight without noticing us.

  “Damn,” Krys says, taking a cautious step to
ward where they passed. Carlos and Riley sprint after them, blades drawn. Carlos glimpses Krys and me, waves us away, looks behind him, runs harder. Then they’re both gone.

  “Krys,” I hiss. “Come on! We get the books and—”

  She raises both her guns, keeps walking away from me. She opens fire before I even see the ’catchers round the corner.

  From what I hear, even the great Council minds can’t really explain ghost ballistics. When the dead want something in their realm, they just keep it with ’em for a while and eventually it goes ghost, so to speak. Death always wins, as Carlos likes to say. But the mechanical transfer remains something of a mystery. Case in point: it’s taken them this long to figure out how to get things that shoot when they’re in physical form to also shoot when they’re in spooky woo-woo form. And even when they did that, it turned out not many ghosts could get the hang of shooting things, the notable exception being Krys.

  Guns never made much sense to me until Reza took me to a range out in Long Island and made me shoot till my whole body thrummed, and I got addicted to getting better and better with each squeeze of the trigger. Now I carry an old German Mauser Reza gifted me once she’d deemed me a halfway-decent shot. She said the swords were cute and all but if I was gonna run missions with her, I’d have to roll fully loaded. And she was right.

  Krys lets off a steady volley of shots, and I watch as three ’catchers stumble and collapse at the corner. Four more draw their blades and charge; one gets clipped just as she’s breaking into a run, crashes heavily into the pavement and fades. By the time Krys is backstepping to give herself time to change clips, I’m flushing forward, both blades out.

  One of their blades nicks me as I hurl into the throng. It’s a smooth, superficial slice across my shoulder that I barely register except for the eerie blue glow that pulses in the corner of my eye. I block a wild swing from my left and then behead the one that tagged me. Two more shots rings out, and I flinch and then gape as the last two ’catchers fall on either side of me.

  Krys isn’t smiling. She nods at me, and then we turn and head back up the block and around the corner just as Carlos and Riley come barreling around the opposite corner. We meet in front of his building. He’s panting and smiling; Riley looks annoyed.

  “These motherfuckers ain’t even putting up a real fight,” Riley says. “Gimme a smoke, C.”

  “You guys alright?” Carlos says as he lights a Malagueña and passes it to Riley.

  “Little cut,” I say. “I’m cool.”

  Carlos gives it a concerned frown but doesn’t get all gooey, which I appreciate, and then Krys says, “We going in?”

  “I need you on the door,” Carlos says. “Any ghosts get near, fry their ass.” He looks at me and Riley. “You two with me.” Being in command comes naturally to him, I notice. He doesn’t lord it over anyone or get extra polite; it’s his house and his operation, so he calls the shots. We hustle into the front hallway, and I begin thinking of ways to take his mind off all this mess when shit calms down. It’s a train of thought that’s been showing up on its own these past couple days. I fought it at first—just didn’t seem like a good time for all that, but all that doesn’t give a damn about timing, I’ve learned. And anyway: there I am, on my knees in front of Carlos, his hands gripping my hair—he’s about to explode.

  “We got ’catchers,” Carlos whispers, peering around the corridor corner. I snap out of it. We’ve gone up a flight of stairs while I was lost in my thoughts, and this is exactly what I mean about timing. I growl at my slippery mind and dropped guard, draw my sword. “You alright?” Carlos asks.

  I nod.

  He checks again, holds up three fingers.

  “What you wanna do?” Riley asks.

  “They just standing there,” Carlos says. “Lemme find out how much trust I still have with the Council.”

  I don’t like it and I say so—why put yourself in danger to find out something that doesn’t matter much anyway? But Carlos insists. “If it gets hairy, come through and dehairy it.” And then he strolls around the corner, whistling like an asshole.

  “Ah,” I hear one of the ’catchers say, “Agent Delacruz, you’re here!” He sounds genuinely surprised.

  “It’s my home,” Carlos says. “Question is really why are you here.”

  “Orders,” the ’catcher says. “What with the unrest, we wanted to make sure your property is secured.”

  “Thoughtful of you.”

  “You haven’t been home for a bit.” Smugness barely concealed.

  “Indeed.” Carlos’s voice gets cold. “What with the unrest.”

  I hate this.

  The lock clicks, and the door squeaks open, then slams closed. Riley and I trade an uneasy glance. A minute passes. Then another.

  “I’m going in,” Riley says.

  I shake my head. “Wait. There’d be a scuffle, something . . . He wouldn’t let them take him down without at least a yell.”

  Riley growls but stays put.

  “Think they’re somehow onto what we’re doing here? If they were gonna let him roll on in there unharassed, why would that squad attack you guys outside?”

  “Nah, we started that one,” Riley says. “Soon as we saw ’em round the corner Carlos dropped two and I took out a third. Then two more made a break for it, and you saw the rest.”

  My hit on the communication center must still be fucking with their telepathy. Or the whole thing’s a setup.

  “None of this is cool,” Riley says. “In fact, nothing been cool since we lost Esther.”

  “I know.” I put a hand on his glowing shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  He meets my eyes, knows I don’t do that kind of thing a lot, acknowledges it with a nod. Then: “Two minutes, then I’m going in there swords out.”

  I steal a glance around the corner. The fluorescents blink an erratic rhythm of shadow and light along the corridor. One ’catcher still stands outside Carlos’s door. He’s tall and carries a hatchet; his heavy cloak hovers a few inches above the tiled floor.

  I show Riley one finger.

  A minute has passed.

  “Fuck this,” Riley announces. He stands, draws his blade, and strides around the corner in a single, perfectly fluid motion. The ’catcher sees him, raises the hatchet, and then turns suddenly as the door bursts open and Carlos flies out, blade drawn. Carlos doesn’t stop, he yells “Run!” and cleaves a good chunk out of the ’catcher’s midsection as he blows past him.

  “The fuck?” Riley gasps. Then the screech takes over everything. It shreds through all our minds, turns the world into a vicious splattering of pain for a few seconds. The throng haint’s long, mouth-covered appendage emerges from the doorway a few seconds behind Carlos. The rest of it soon follows, a hulking, bulbous mass, barely contained within the narrow corridor. This one is about three times larger than the one Janey and I dismantled on Spine Island. For a second, the hugeness of it shocks me to stillness. It crashes into the far wall and then adjusts itself, reaching four, then six long-fingered arms toward us as it breaks into an off-kilter run.

  Carlos barrels past, grabbing my arm, and Riley catches up as we take the stairs three at a time, pivot off the landing, and almost hurl down the rest of the way.

  Through the window on the front door, I see Krys with her pistol raised at something off to her left. She’s talking; her glare promises the Deeper Death.

  The throng haint comes crashing down the stairwell, tendrils flailing out to either side, mouths screeching. We run down the front hall and then we’re out the door. A soulcatcher stands a few feet away, blade out. He’s decorated with imperial medals and armbands, a superior officer of some kind—I never bothered to learn their fucked-up little titles.

  “No luck,” Krys says. She lets off two shots: one smashes through his breastplate with a clang; the other shatters his face guard an
d then, presumably, his face. He crumples as we run past.

  “Throng haint!” Carlos yells. “Supersized.”

  Krys catches up running backward, both guns trained on the door. “What’s the plan?”

  “The plan is to fucking run! I got the books!”

  “Dammit,” Krys mutters. “I wasn’t done killing.”

  —

  We scatter into the industrial north Brooklyn back alleys, but the throng haint doesn’t make another showing. One day, someone will have to do a behavioral study on those things and why they don’t have much chase in ’em, but for now I’m just happy to be far the hell away from it. After fifteen minutes of random turns, I find Carlos and Riley at the small dog-walking park we’d agreed on. They stand side by side, facing the river, Malagueñas in hand.

  “Mission accomplished?” Riley says.

  Carlos nods. “Definitively.”

  “Where’s Krys?” I ask.

  No one knows.

  “If it was anyone else,” Carlos says. “I’d be worried. I mean . . . I’m always a little worried these days, but . . . Krys has been on that rogue shit for a week now.”

  “I’m gonna see ’bout the books Mama Esther left me,” Riley tells us. “Think it was poetry or some shit, didn’t pay it much mind, to be honest. You two stay safe.” He daps Carlos, blows me a kiss, and fades into the dying light of the afternoon.

  Bundled-up dog walkers bustle along behind their charges, stooping to scoop up droppings in plastic baggies, chatting idly, checking their phones. The night advances with that winter suddenness: the light purples fade to dark blues as our breath becomes gray; the city lights twinkle at us across the river, and a chill enters our already-cool bones, as if from within.

  Carlos is staring at the tome Mama Esther left him, but I feel his attention cover me in gentle, cautious waves. And sorrow radiates out of him, punctuates his every thought and movement.