Jubal Van Zandt & the Revenge of the Bloodslinger

by eden Hudson

  She shut her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose. “You sound like Nick.”

  “So that’s what the real subtext was in those messages!” I giggled. “No wonder you didn’t tell him where you were going. And here I was thinking Nickie-boy was just this meathead goon who wouldn’t even help his girlfriend dump a couple dozen corpses in a swamp if she needed him to.”

  “I’m done with this conversation.” Carina stood up to leave.

  I grabbed the fish skull and followed her toward the door. “Good, it was wasting time we could’ve been talking about me.”

  Our waitress stopped halfway out of the kitchen with our bottled waters. She gave us a baffled look. “Will y’all be wantin’ that to go? It’s still a couple minutes out.”

  “Nah, fuck it.” I jerked my chin at Carina. “The stink of this place coupled with the weight of her own bad judgment is making her sick, so we’re leaving. But, hey, at least you didn’t open those waters yet.”

  I patted the waitress’s flabby arm with the fish skull and checked her pockets for anything worth taking as I passed.

  Nothing but a crumpled up candy wrapper and some lint. I growled, tossed the trash at the back of the waitress’s head, then jogged outside to catch up with Carina.

  “You forgot your shrine-in-a-fish.” I leaned around her so I could shove the skull into her field of vision.

  She grabbed it away from me and stopped in her tracks. “You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t want to!” I threw my hands up.

  She tilted her head, questioning my statement.

  “I mean it, Carina. I don’t understand why you’re mad or depressed or whatever, and I don’t want to. If I did, I would ask, but I sincerely don’t give a fuck as long as you snap out of it.”

  A heartbeat passed in stark silence. Then another.

  She shook her head, trying to suppress the smile, but she couldn’t.

  I grinned.

  “Did you see me pick that waitress’s trash pocket?” I asked, wishing I’d held onto the candy wrapper so I could flourish it dramatically. “Somebody’s been sneaking snacks on the job.”

  “I didn’t see that.” Carina started walking again, this time at a calmer pace. “What were you looking for? You have that incidentals account if you need cash.”

  “You get really hung up on the whys and what fors of life, you know that? Just take a second to appreciate how tightly those pants were stretched over that booty and how I’m so amazing that she didn’t even notice me digging around in them.”

  “That does sound impressive,” Carina said.

  “Don’t patronize me,” I said. “I prefer flattery.”

  Carina started to say something else, but stopped suddenly and turned around. A dirty little fat kid wearing nothing but bib overalls pulled his hand away as if she’d burned him.

  “Y’all the ones lookin’ for a fixer?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Carina said. “Do you know of one around here?”

  He shrugged. “They’s only one. Miss Re. She said I’s s’posed to bring y’all out to the catfish hole if I thought you looked all right.”

  “Well, I know how I look,” I said, then hitched my thumb at Carina, “But how do you feel about this ugly hag?”

  The boy grinned, showing off a set of teeth missing all four canines.

  ELEVEN

  The catfish hole the fat kid led us to was a wide, lazy spot in the river, not far upstream from our hotel. A woman in cutoff shorts and a baggy crop top was lying on the bank with a fishing line tied around her big toe. Obviously, what everybody in town had meant by not knowing where she might be of a day like today was on a good day for fishing.

  “Miss Re?” the kid called as we approached. “Miss Re, I brung ’em.”

  The witch stretched, showing off a pale, smooth tummy, then stood up and untied the line.

  “Thanks, Het,” she said. “I ’preciate it. Run along, now.”

  The kid nodded once, then took off back toward town as fast as his chunky little legs could carry him.

  The witch took her time pulling in the hook and winding up the line, then stuck the whole affair in the back pocket of her cutoffs. Once that was done, she adjusted the headband reining in her frizzy red halo of hair.

  “Now, what can I do for y’all?” she asked.

  “You were in Nytundi a while back,” Carina said. “Looking to stop something…or someone…that got out of Soam.”

  “So?” Re Suli slipped her fingers into the wide neck of her top and scratched her shoulder. “I don’t believe the Guild’s got jurisdiction in Nytundi yet.”

  “We’re not here investigating craft-users,” Carina said.

  “And just to be clear,” I said, “I’m not affiliated with the Guild at all.”

  Re Suli smiled. “Oh, I know all ’bout you, thief. You have yer daddy’s watchin’ eyes. I met Lorne when he was just a young thang—no older’n Het, I reckon.”

  “You seem to be holding up to time a mite better than him,” I told her.

  “Well, now.” She cocked her body and put one hand on her hip while she patted the back of her wild hair with the other. The move lifted her shirt enough to show the underside of one creamy breast. “We all got our little tricks.”

  “A fourths leech,” Carina said as if she hadn’t just figured it out.

  The witch frowned. “It’s no fun if’n you tell.”

  Carina went on, her tone all business. “We’re looking for some aguas brujahs you know, a coven down by Giku.”

  “Y’all want secrets, then,” Re Suli said. “Them’ll cost ya.”

  “Is there any reason you might want to protect this coven?” Carina asked.

  “Duh,” I said. “She’s a witch. They’re witches. It’s not cyborgcromantic science.”

  “Those gals ain’t proper witches a-tall. But y’all both know that already. This is just business, tryin’ to insult my craft so’s I’ll spill everythang. Don’t fret, I’ll let it go this one time.”

  “So, what you’re saying is you don’t have a reason to protect them,” Carina said.

  I was so proud.

  The witch smirked. “Y’all wouldn’t be askin’ if you thought I had any fondness for their sort. High-falutin’ revenant-wranglers is all they are. Let’s us dispense with all the beatin’ around the bush and talk money.”

  “How much do you want for the location of their village?” Carina asked, raising her wristpiece to the ready.

  “I meant money in the figurative sense, darlin’.” Re Suli dangled her bare wrists in our faces to emphasize her lack of tech. “I take payment in the form of blood, reproductive matter, and firstborn flesh.”

  “All of mine are already pledged to someone,” Carina said. “What else?”

  The witch bobbed her head back and forth, and I had the skin-crawling feeling of having seen someone do that before. The girl at the Sharp Right Turn’s club who liked hanging out with nice fellows.

  “Oh, I s’pose I could take a sentiment offering, just this once.” She pointed at the catfish head Carina was still packing around. “That oughta do just fine.”

  “This?” Carina looked down at the skull. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Somethin’ black and evil. Stick it on a false god’s altar upside down, paint the face a the beast onto the cruciform, use it in dark sex rites on the bleeding moon.” A grin broke across the witch’s youthful face and she giggled. “Naw, honey, I’m just pullin’ yer leg. I don’t invoke no evil shit if I can help it. I’m gonna use that there to poke fun at the old fart who sells them hardheads in the market. Me and him, we go back a few years. Friendly rivals and all.”

  Instead of forking over the catfish head, Carina handed it to me. “He’ll keep it until you tell me the location in such a way that I can see it when I get to it.”

  I stared at Carina. Rip-offs didn’t get much more obvious than the one she had just agreed to. Witches don’t trade down for inform
ation. Worse, if Re Suli had come into contact with my father and survived, then she was more dangerous than he was. That crazy witch was going to use the catfish head to fuck shit up. Either Carina was too stupid to see it or she didn’t care as long as she got those brujahs in return.

  “You’ll need more’n tellin’.” Re Suli folded her legs and sank back down to the riverbank. “That work they done up is a seein’ spell. Requires a visual aid to break through the blind. Come on down here, both of you.”

  I fought the urge to pitch the skull into the river, and crouched down beside them.

  Re Suli jabbed her finger into the mud and drew a square, a circle with squiggly lines in it, and a wide arrangement of peaks surrounding the circle. Then she drew an X on the circle’s edge.

  The witch pointed to the square—“Giku.”—then the peaks—“The Weepin’ Mountains.”—then the X on the edge of the circle with the squiggly lines—“Their bolt hole on the edge of a dark pond. Now that you seen this, when you get within spittin’ distance, y’all’re gonna feel it like a sodee pop right here.” She tapped her forehead about an inch above her nose. “Then you’ll see ’em.”

  “Like a soda pop?” I said.

  She nodded at me. “And then you’ll see ’em.”

  “They’ll be able to see us the whole time, though, won’t they?” Carina asked.

  “Y’all ain’t the ones under a blind. Long as you can see the dark pond, they’ll be able to see you.”

  Carina studied the mud map for several long seconds. “And you don’t mind selling these brujahs out for one measly catfish skull?”

  The witch shrugged her shoulder, making the sleeve of her crop top slide down around her arm until the thin fabric of the neckline was hanging on one perky nipple. “Not if y’all had come along a week ago. But like I said, me’n the old fisher been going ’round and ’round for years. It’s my turn to get a good lick in. You just so happened upon me smack dab at the right time.”

  ***

  After I handed over the catfish skull, Carina and I started the walk back to town. The sun had nearly set while we were at the river, and the jungle was gearing up for a loud night at our backs.

  “You realize that witch is going to kill your old fisherman buddy, right?” I asked.

  Carina shook her head. “I think you’re underestimating him.”

  “And I think you’re kidding yourself so you won’t have to feel bad when she uses him for cut bait.” I swatted at a swarm of tiny bloodsuckers. “If you’re actually capable of feeling guilt, then you would’ve been better off giving her some of your blood.”

  “Do you have any idea what witches can do with blood?” Carina pulled a curtain of thulu vines back so we could pass.

  “No, and I don’t know what they can do with one measly catfish head, either. But I do know when somebody claims that they don’t invoke no evil shit if they don’t have to, they probably invoke a ton of gratuitous evil shit.” As I said it, it occurred to me that maybe the witch’s plan for the skull didn’t have anything to do with the old guy at all, maybe it had to do with a Guild knight who was already on her way to breaking one of their major laws. How do you say The only person who can catch you is you, but in a way that a knight would understand? “Maybe she’s going to use the skull on you. Suppose she does some kind of spell to make sure you die instead of the entire coven of aguas brujahs you’re after?”

  “What did you want me to do?” Carina snapped, stopping to face me. “That witch was the only one who could tell us how to get through the lockdown. Who was it who told me that if I want off-the-books work, I pay off-the-books prices?”

  “So you just throw caution to the wind and dive in?” I threw my hands up. “If you’re going to pay someone without taking it back later, Miss Goods and Services, the very least you can do is not let them dictate the terms of the agreement.”

  “Next time I won’t,” she said. She started walking again.

  I stepped over a fallen branch and followed her. “Be honest. Everything you’ve said up until now is a lie, and this is actually your first trip out of Taern’s Guild building.”

  “I said I would know better next time.” She didn’t sound angry anymore, just resigned. She ducked under a hang of bearded moss. “I can’t go back and change it now. Whatever happens, happens, and I take full responsibility for it.”

  “Pretty easy for somebody with a dead man’s switch on her payment to say. You’re not the one who’ll have to go after Nick the Unfriendly Giant to get paid if you die.”

  The muscle in her good jaw tightened, but she didn’t respond.

  We turned onto Courten’s muddy main road. Carina seemed genuinely upset by the whole encounter with the witch. I couldn’t see a self-serving endgame in her openly admitting that she’d made a mistake. Evident flaws equal weakness.

  “You’re thinking you want to head out tonight?” I asked.

  Carina nodded. “I had considered it.”

  “Consider this—we haven’t eaten since the hostess at the hotel tried to serve us those nutsacks for breakfast.”

  “Sounds like somebody should’ve spent more time eating and less time complaining.”

  “I would rather fall anus-first into a dick patch,” I said. “All’s I’m saying is we get supper from somewhere in town, get a good night’s rest, then leave nice and refreshed in the morning.”

  “Have you ever been to the Weeping Mountains?” she asked.

  “Do you actually want to hear my answer to this question or are we back to focusing on you?”

  “There are no roads or rivers through to the center, just a couple of foot trails. The aid groups the Guild sends into the area have to be in top condition to make it through the jungle, and even then reports show it takes a minimum of a month one way.”

  I tried to remember how long we’d been on this revenge mission already, but couldn’t. “When we started, your official mourning leave was only for another two weeks. Then the Guild is going to miss you.”

  “Exactly.” She checked the time on her wristpiece. “I also don’t want to put my life in the hands of a local guide who might know who my father was and decide to put a tent peg through my skull while I’m sleeping.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I joked. “You just had a really bad dad.”

  “What was your father like, Van Zandt?”

  Dark brown eyes assessing my every move—always smiling, always watching—the intentional lessons in knots, locks, and sleight of hand—the unintentional lessons like evaluating and outmaneuvering—and what did she gain by asking this now, on the heels of admitting that she wasn’t perfect?

  “If you’re trying to get me to empathize with you, it’s wasted effort. My father’s dead, and you can bet I didn’t avenge him. If old age and the elements of prison life could receive gift baskets, I would’ve sent them one for getting the job done, but I had to settle for sending one to The Hotel warden instead.”

  Carina gave that crack the wry half-smile it deserved. “You laughed before when I said I knew what he was like. I thought maybe you’d want to set me straight.”

  “Maybe next time,” I said.

  She shot me with a poorly rendered finger gun. “Meaning never.”

  I shot her back.

  We stopped outside the hotel. Carina looked up at the sleeping porch, then back at me.

  “I’m going to go see if I can’t track down that old fisher from the market,” she said. “Apologize and let him know to watch his back. Want to get something to eat afterward?”

  “Nah, I’m too hungry to wait. I’ll fend for myself.”

  ***

  It took me a half hour’s worth of checking open family homes before I found the fat little kid who’d led us to Re Suli that afternoon. He was sitting by a fire, eating greasy meat off a bone while a middle-aged woman nursed a baby in a nearby hammock.

  The woman looked up at me when I stepped into the circle of firelight.

  “I need to bo
rrow Het,” I told the woman.

  She shook her head. “Oh, honey, Het ain’t mine. He just eats here of a clear moon night.”

  “Okay,” I said. I turned toward the kid. “Het, I need to borrow you.”

  The kid swiped some grease from his mouth with the back of one dirty hand, making a long smear across his cheek. “Whatcha need?”

  “To talk to Miss Re,” I said. I scrunched my eyebrows into the kind of overblown expression of worry even a stupid kid would pick up on. “Something I forgot earlier. It’s mighty important.”

  “She ain’t in. I might could take a message?”

  I pulled the little leather wallet that held a set of analog lock tools out of my back pocket. “I got to get these to her, Het. I promised.”

  He stuck his tongue in the gap where his upper left canine tooth had been while he thought about it.

  “Them’s important,” he said finally. “Them’s a sentiment offerin’.”

  They weren’t, but I wasn’t going to contradict him.

  “So you know what kind of trouble I’ll be in if I don’t get them to her,” I said.

  Het tossed his bone into the fire and wiped his hands on his bib overalls. “We best git goin’.”

  ***

  Rather than taking the path down to the river where we’d met the witch earlier, Het led me out of Courten in the opposite direction. Brambles and saw-toothed leaves snagged and jerked at my clothes as I followed him through the jungle. The little guy didn’t seem to get hung up on anything, and I never saw him hold branches or vines out of the way. Bloodsuckers hovered close to him from time to time, but never landed on his bare arms or neck. Me, however, they were happy to indulge in.

  The moon was up by the time we made it to a little shack tucked back in a clearing. This wasn’t open-air like the family homes in town. Rusty tin walls hid the inside from anybody who might be interested in looking in. A screen door that looked like it had been salvaged from one of the Courten big houses a hundred years ago hung slantwise in the shack’s rough approximation of a doorway. Moss dangled from the eaves, dripping with moisture even though it hadn’t rained today.