I remind him that summoning anyone in the middle of a neighborhood is asking for attention.
I put myself behind the wheel and set us back on the highway. I make sure to obey speed limits though my heart wants my foot to put more lead into it. Being pulled over will only create delay, not to mention potentially raising some questions about the folk in the back. Caution is good; we have time.
During the ride, my mouth is engaged continually, going over what ifs.
“What if they have guns? What if there are explosives? What kind of traps could they set? Do they understand the nature of summonlings or do they think I’m a true necromancer?”
Everyone shares in nervous conversation. Everyone except Arix and Sil. Arix because he doesn’t seem or sound nervous at all; in fact, he sounds supremely confident and in a way that is reassuring. I’m sure that’s what he intends. Sil, though, is silent. Not a peep the entire time. So I bend the mirror to survey what’s going on.
Sil is in the very back. Her eyes are closed, and she’s intent on something. Then I notice that her hand is inside her skirt and she appears to be rubbing away slowly. I’m sure none of the others said anything because she does that all the time without regard.
“For the love of Christ, Sil!” I bark back.
She jumps to awareness, startled. “Oh, sorry!”
“What the hell– Sil - is this getting in the way of your personal time? Should we have left you home?”
I am totally pissed and judging by her reaction, that anger is leaching through my every word and smacking her with an almost physical response. I learned a while back that when I get very, very angry with them, it causes them real, almost physical discomfort. And the opposite holds, when I am very pleased with them, it’s like euphoria.
“I’m sorry, it’s a nervous habit… There’s something about this situation that feels more wrong than I can explain.” She looks over from me in the mirror to Arix. “I am very uncomfortable.”
Arix immediately jumps her case; his glowing purple eye opening in all its horrific glory.
“What is it that bothers you temptress other than our wielder’s very life and legacy has been threatened? What do you have to say?”
In the mirror, I see her blanch away from Arix’s glaze, the soft purplish glow of his open third eye adding more light to the back. She turns her eyes to me in the mirror, but only for a moment as Arix barks, “Well?” Her eyes return downward.
Shey, in tiny Tinkerbelle mode, has my ear.
“Do you think she’ll fight?”
Sil animates immediately.
“Of course I will, Pixie! How dare you! You are not the only one who has watched Arthur’s family grow… bitch.”
Sil turns away toward the rear doors - scowling, pouting, sullen and just maybe, scared.
Damn it. We don’t need to be fighting among ourselves. Before I can pipe up, Arix booms, “This will stop now!” in the voice of doom.
I swerve the van because a foghorn just went off in the back. Shey falls off my shoulder into the crevice between my seat and the door.
In a lower more controlled tone, Arix continues. “We can all return to our petty differences after we rescue our wielder’s family.”
There is a silent pause.
“I be agreein’ with ye on that, demon, gods help me,” Pffif adds leaning back from the front seat.
Hjuul barks.
Vets adds, “Indeed.”
Shey flits back on my shoulder and says nothing; which is good.
Sil, motionless and not looking at anyone, says, “Let’s just get this done.”
“Oh, it shall be done, temptress,” Arix says.
The purplish light goes away. Arix has closed that eye of his.
The next hour goes by quickly and is relatively quiet. Shey sits on the dashboard, and I go over what we need in aerial reconnaissance. She is very engaged; this isn’t her first dance.
We pull into Myer’s Park, and I park us two blocks down the street from Jerry’s house.
I tell Shey, “We have a little over three and a half hours until sunrise, so be thorough, but don’t take too long.”
I roll the window down. Shey kisses me lightly on the cheek and buzzes out the window, shrinking even more.
Now we wait. I think I’m going to be sick.
Shey returns after fifteen minutes and I manage to not have puked from the tension. Her report is to the point: “I see nobody in any of the cars around the house. I did not see where anyone was spying from other houses. There is nobody in any of the little forests around the houses. The lights are on at Jerry’s, but I saw no movement. I believe it is safe to approach.”
”Thanks, Shey. Are you sure you didn’t miss anything?”
She looks at me hurt.
“This is serious, Shey, I have to ask, and you have to consider it.”
She nods and closes her eyes. I assume she’s reviewing her sortie. She opens her eyes, “I am sure.”
I look over to Pffif in the seat next to me, “You’re up.”
He nods and begins to do a quick inventory inside of his red lined jacket: lock picks, daggers, climbing cord, and flask. I ask for the flask.
“Me flask?”
“Yes, not the time for liquid courage. We need the real thing.”
“Aye,” he says, and hands it over.
I twist the key in the ignition, and slowly move the van down the block, stopping two houses before Jerry’s.
“I’ll be vera sneaky, figurin’ at least one of ‘em has true sight,” Pffif tells us. “Donna you have a worry," then he winks, opens the door and slips outside.
Time to wait again. Hello, butterflies… Let me introduce you to my stomach. At least we still have hours before sunrise.
Twenty-seven minutes later the door opens, and Pffif jumps into the car. He is trembling, and tears are streaming from his eyes.
He looks over to me and in a low quivering voice says, “Master Arthur, they been killed, most badly… Jerry and Marge… They be dead.”
Chapter 9
My heart stops. I can’t breathe. Like a shock from two electric paddles in the emergency room comes a blood-curdling screech of “No!” from the back of the van.
Sil.
I spin around to see two eyes blazing luminescent green. In what feels like slow motion, she tears from the back of the van toward us. Vets tries to stand in the way and is cast aside like a paper doll. There is a purplish light, and I hear a word of power. Sil flies backward, crashing through the rear van doors, spilling out onto the street head over heels, and landing sprawled out on the pavement.
Arix.
He looks back to me and hisses, “We don’t have time for this foolery!” and stalks out of the van toward Sil.
I look to Pffif, who is outright crying. Shey, making him look like a giant in comparison, is looking up at him, saying “Please… no.”
Hjuul is hyperventilating. Vets raises herself up from the back of the van. I hear Arix tell Sil “Compose yourself.”
The light on the top of the post away from us blinks on and off. The insects swarming around it don’t seem to care about any of it.
There is a sick clarity to this moment. The clarity of knowing my only son and his wife are no more. There are sounds around me now, but none of them breaks through this wall of clarity. My world implodes. There is nothing but me and pain: Dory, Jerry, Marge - all gone.
How? Why? I was early. I called. I did everything asked of me. Why? My pain begins to turn to rage.
I feel a hand on my arm that brings me back – Arix.
“We all need to calm ourselves and evaluate the next moves.”
I don’t want to hear that. He looks at me, the third eye still open.
“You can be sure they are.”
I look over to Pffiferil who is trying to compose himself.
“Are those bastards still there?”
He nods no. “Bests I be tellin’, they done the deed hours ago.”
Arix interjects, squeezing my arm again, “My wielder, they may have left something. If they did, we might scry their location.”
The van tips lightly and all attention shifts. Sil climbs back in. She looks at me and then looks away, shaking her head.
“Close the damn doors,” I say. “We’re heading to Jerry’s.”
The rear doors close and we slowly make our way up to Jerry’s pulling into the driveway.
“I left the back-door open. But what you see in there, you don’t want to be seein’.
I know he’s right, but what I don’t want to see comes second.
What I must see comes first.
We leave the van and enter the house, except for Hjuul, who I ask to cover our backs. Pffif warns me not to touch anything – all those episodes of CSI must have left a mark. I walk into the kitchen and look at the landline phone. There are no voicemails. They must have listened to my message; they knew I was coming.
Pffif takes me by the forearm, and we go upstairs. He stops us before Jerry and Marge’s bedroom.
“Ye step through that door and ye cannot unsee what is there.”
I tell him with my eyes that I understand. He lets go of my arm and opens the door.
The carpet is blood-soaked. Jerry, my only son, lies curled on the floor, his neck cut wide open. His eyes look upward, and his face is in a grimace. Marge is suspended by one leg hanging from the ceiling fan. She has been violated with a curling iron. Her belly is splayed, and her entrails dangle from her. Her eyes are open too, and her face in agony.
It is horror. More than anything I saw in world war two.
And I saw horror there.
I take a deep breath. I hear Shey gasp, cry, and then run back down the stairs. I hear Pffif take a deep breath and feel his hand on my back. I hear a dull thud and turn around. Sil has fallen to her knees and is staring blankly in the doorway.
Arix pushes her aside and enters. Sil’s head bounces off the door jamb. She doesn’t seem to notice, she just stares blankly at Jerry and Marge. I try to make eye contact with her, but nobody’s home.
Arix immediately assesses the room. “I only see evidence of one assailant, there is one set of footprints in the carpet. Based on the size of his foot I would say just under six feet tall, wearing dress shoes.” He opens his monstrous third eye and scans the room. After a moment, he walks toward Marge and looks about. He reaches into the blood-soaked bedding under her and produces a golden-hilted dagger.
“This we can use to scry their location.”
In my mind, the words police evidence scream out.
“Police evidence,” I say absently.
Arix looks at me with all three eyes and says, “The human police? Perhaps they find these beasts in a few months, maybe a few weeks? What damage to your family could they do in that time? We find them now and put them down.”
He closes the third eye and holds up the dagger with two fingers. He’s right. I ask him to let me see the dagger. The hilt is ornate. On it is a symbol of a crown with two keys in a cross mounted on the round pommel. I’ve seen it before, but can’t focus to think where.
Then it comes to me: the Church. It’s the Roman Catholic Church. The insignia is definitely papal. Damn, this is a witch-hunt. Torquemada all over again.
But when did the Inquisition take to killing the families of the accused? This evening apparently …
I look around at the horror. I want to hug Jerry. I want to take Marge down from the fan. I want all of this to never have happened.
Pffif snaps me out of my thoughts.
“Time to be a-goin' Master Arthur – or time to be calling the police.”
The choice is there. Find these bastards, or hope the police can.
“Let’s go,” is my answer.
I turn to head out and go downstairs, Sil is gone – just as well. We make our way downstairs, and I go over to the phone in the kitchen where the message machine is. I take a paper towel out and take the phone off the hook.
“Get in the van and get ready to go,” I tell everyone. They head out. I punch in 9-1-1. No way am I leaving Jerry and Marge like that. No way. I let the phone fall to the ground and leave.
We make our way to interstate seventy-seven, and I’m desperate to find a hotel. I have to think, have to plan. I need to find these bastards. The van is silent. All are waiting to hear from me. Except for Arix.
“Get a map of the town, we will find them,” he says.
I pull off at an exit that has a Carriage Motor House Motel and a Shell. I send Pffif in for a map at the Shell. I get us a room at the Carriage.
We all pile into the room. Arix takes the map and tears a strip off of one of the towels. He tears the strip again to make it even thinner and attaches it to the end of the dagger. He stretches the map across the table and suspends the dagger by the ragged cloth. He closes his eyes and silently mutters unintelligible words while spinning the dagger around the map. His body sways, and he releases the dagger. It embeds in the map and the table beneath.
He comes out of his trance and looks down. “They are found.”
Vets pulls her sword and says, “I am ready.”
My head is swimming with thoughts of revenge. Then for whatever reason, another thought enters to muddy the water further. Revenge won’t bring Jerry and Marge back but will put blood on my hands. Is that how I want my great-greats to remember me? Or if I do nothing, then they might get away with it. Or come after other family members. He said they would…
I come back to the moment, as Arix sets his hand upon my shoulder. “I feel your conflict, my wielder, as I am sure we all do. These vermin have committed an act that must be responded to.” His eyes pan from me to around the room. “If this was a slap to the face we must respond with a closed fist. To do anything less is to encourage and embolden them. If these cowards even for a moment feel that they can cause us harm without retribution, they will certainly bring more death upon our wielder’s family. They have said as much. This is war upon you and ours - you must act. Or other generations will pay.”
He is right. What I saw was beyond atrocity. It was a message to me. It is war. I look at the map and ask, “what say you all?”
Shey doesn’t hesitate – “The fuckers need to die.”
Vets agrees with a fist thump to her chest armor.
Pffif nods gravely and says, “aye."
And Sil is silent. Again, she is in her own world, touching herself, leg raised over the wooden chair onto the a/c unit with one hand disappearing under her leather skirt and the other slowly running through her hair. Her eyes are open this time and gazing out the window. My anger registered with her before my words even had a chance to come out, as she sits up straight in the chair and looks at me.
“I told you, it’s a nervous habit!” She takes a deep breath and looks around. “Nothing good can come from this. But I will stand with you if that is what you choose.” She looks back outside, and I see a tear run down her cheek.
What a manipulator. Go bring on the waterworks. Next up, she has to console me. Right…
The real truth is we are going to bring it to those bastards.
I turn to Arix, “So where are they?”
Arix examines the map where the dagger stabbed into it. “It appears they are around the streets of Buchannon and Dilworth.”
I enter those streets into mapping software on my phone. The most likely culprit is The Cathedral of Saint Patrick.
I think it’s time to visit the church. But I won’t be the one paying penance today.
Chapter 10
Midway to the Cathedral, I stop us and grab my phone. I am besieged with questions of “Are we there?” and “What are we doing?” A quick browse of the internet and I have what I need.
“We need weapons. We’re heading to Fat Daddy’s and Pffif – you’re going to get them for me. Get your lockpicks ready.”
“Aye, Master Arthur,” he says, and immediately fishes them out.
“We have mo
re than enough magical firepower,” Arix says.
"It’s not up for discussion. We can get you a gun too.”
Arix sneers.
“I’ll take one,” Sil says.
Pffif turns around to her pointing a finger, “Consider it done, demoness.”
“Anyone else,” I ask.
Vets of course pipes up, “twelve-gauge shotgun or large caliber semi-automatic rifle.”
I look to Shey, who reaches into one of the folds of her dress and pulls out the small cylinder that expands into her bow. I’ve seen that thing in action back in the war – she doesn’t need a gun. It contracts in her hand, and she puts it away. There is a full arsenal, knives, short-swords, the bow, an unlimited quiver - all locked away in that light flowing dress; it’s some kind of fae dimensional magic I could never understand.
All needs discussed, I take us to Fat Daddy’s. I park us across the street.
“Get going Pffif.”
He climbs out the front door, and away he goes. I wait a bit, knowing that he’s scouting. Then, poof, he appears at the front door. He clambers up the security grate a bit, jumps down, and looks back at us. He puts his hands over his eyes telling me to look away. He can’t go invisible if someone is looking at him. So we do.
I keep looking out for police and listening for alarms. Eventually, the door opens, and Pffif hurls his thief bag onto the seat. The thief bag is an amazing item. It’s a dimensional pocket and can hold an enormous amount of stuff – assuming it can fit in the top. I have no idea how it works; more fae magic.
“We best be a-goin' now.”
Hint taken, I put us back on track to the Cathedral. As I drive to our destination, Pffif pulls what appears to be a Remington shotgun out of the bag and hands it backward.
I hear Vets' approval, “Six in the magazine, one in the chamber – this will do.” Pffif digs into the bag some more and pulls out a box of shells and tosses them back.
“Birdshot?” comes Vets' deep and disappointed sounding voice.
“Ach!” is Pffif’s reply and he digs back in the bag, head first. Pffif's head comes out of the bag with another box in hand that he tosses back.
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