by Levi Black
The sand dweller collapses in on itself as I stand and slip the Knife of Abraham into the coat’s pocket. Sometimes otherworldly creatures do that when you send them off this plane of existence; their essence being the only thing that holds their physical form together, once you kick it gone the whole thing falls apart. One quick slash of the Aqedah across its throat and the thing was over for this world.
Maybe that’s why killing them doesn’t bother me. They aren’t human. I’ve killed humans. Humans die; otherworldly things like the sand dweller are just released from their meatsuit.
Or sandsuit, in this case.
Sure, that’s why it doesn’t bother me.
What does trouble me is the thing it spoke before being released.
It said one name.
One damned name that confirmed what I didn’t want to hear.
“Hey … Charlie…”
Javier is walking over. I look and the girl is gone.
“She okay?” I ask.
He looks confused for a second and then nods. “Oh yeah. She’s good. Like she had too much to drink. But he didn’t get to … well, you know. I sent her inside.”
“Why didn’t you walk her in?”
He lifts his hands. “No offense, but I wasn’t doing that. Drunk white girl comes in from the alley with someone like me? Naw, ain’t trying to get my ass handed to me.”
I see his point. “I’ll let it slide.”
“Cool, cool,” he says.
I turn away.
“Hey hey,” he calls.
Javier is getting on my nerves. “What?” I say.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“Um…” His hands go deep in the pockets of his jeans.
“What, Javier?”
His mouth is pulled sideways. He’s chewing the inside of his cheek. “Could I, like, go with you or somethin’?”
“No.”
Hell no.
“Uh, okay.”
I stand there, coat rustling around me. Javier doesn’t leave.
“It’s just … well, I never seen no shit like this. I want to see more.” Slim fingers scrub along his scalp. “I can help.”
“I don’t do sidekicks.”
“Not like that, chic—Charlie. I can help, like I just did.”
“Go home, Javier.”
His shoulders draw into a hard line, one that matches the angle of his narrow jaw. “I owe you. I was gonna do something stupid before I met you. You saved me.”
Oh yeah, the gun. Fuck.
“I don’t save people.”
“Bullshit.” Hands out of his pockets, he becomes animated, worked up, jerky motioned like a string puppet worked by an epileptic. “Bullshit. You saved Laura, you saved me, you—”
“Who the hell is Laura?”
The question stops him cold.
“The girl. Her name is Laura.” He tilts his head like an owl, brows drawn tight over dark eyes. “You don’t know her name?”
“I wasn’t saving her. I was hunting the thing that attacked her. That’s what you don’t get, kid. If I had found that thing by itself in the desert I would have gone after it there. I wasn’t here to save anybody. That girl, Lorna—”
“Laura,” he interrupts quietly.
“Laura—whatever—” I continue, “and you weren’t in the plan at all.” The questions ride my tongue, pushing against the back of my teeth. Why did you have a gun and who were you going to shoot? But I clamp down and don’t ask. Asking is just stalling, dragging my feet to avoid doing the thing I have to do that I do not want to do.
The sigh leaks out of me before I can stop it.
“Find help, Javier. Go into therapy, work it out, and get your shit together.”
His face goes hard, bunching up like a piece of paper in a fist. I turn to go. His voice is thick, laden with accent as it reaches my ears.
“Hey, chica, your fucked-up coyote is back.”
13
THIS TIME HE could close the space between us in one leap.
He could crouch on skinless haunches, raw muscles contracting with power, and be on me in the blink of an eye.
I go cold, adrenaline rush stealing my body heat, and slide into a fighting stance, moving my feet apart, lowering my center of gravity, spreading my arms. I don’t have much left in the tank, but training takes over. The coat tightens around me, the tattered edges of it hardening into sharp spikes. It murmurs nervously in the back of my brain and I think:
I hear you.
The skinhound is panting, vivisected chest expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. A long, raw-tuna red tongue lolls out between bone-cracking teeth, hanging off to one side as thick ropes of saliva swing in time to his breath.
We stand, staring at each other. Time laces tight around us.
I pull at my magick and it’s sluggish, resistant. I’ve been pushing hard and I’m running low. I need to rest, recharge, replenish.
The coat murmurs louder.
I push its voice aside and my mind slides into threat assessment mode, working at high speed like I was trained to do in all the years of self-defense classes and martial arts.
The skinhound is close. I know how fast the damned thing can move and he’s too close.
I don’t have a weapon in my hand.
I don’t have time to draw my weapon before the skinhound can reach me.
I’m diminished, low on strength.
I won’t win.
Sensei Kim’s voice rides over the singsong worry of the coat in my mind. First option, run. Only fight if cannot run. Then only fight to be able to run. Run at first chance. Better to run and live than fight and die.
I have enough strength for that.
I hope.
“Javier.” I don’t look back at him.
“Here.” His voice is close and sounds tight. He’s scared. I think. I don’t know him well enough to really tell, but he sounds scared to me.
I don’t blame him.
Moving easy and keeping my eyes on the skinhound, I reach back, hand outstretched. “Take my hand.”
“Charlie…”
“Don’t question; just do it.”
I sense him move a second before his hand slides into mine.
His palm is sweaty.
I can only do this once (can I do this once? do I have enough magick?), so I pull the name the sand dweller gave me to the forefront of my mind.
The skinhound lifts his head, tongue rolling up into his mouth, and he takes a step closer. Razored crescent nails strike the asphalt. Click-clack-click-clack.
I clamp my fingers on Javier’s hand as tight as I can, kick my sluggish magick in the ass, and wish with everything I have left.
14
DAMN.
I can’t see.
I can’t hear anything.
I can’t feel anything.
I’m locked in a cocoon of nothingness. I have been emptied out. I am without form and void.
Just after the realization that I have no feeling my brain kicks into gear, berating me in a voice that sounds a lot like my own.
You can’t lie here—get up; get UP! Push through this!
I’m on my back. I can feel that now. Something hard underneath me.
Cold on the back of my head.
Move.
I open my eyes and the world floods in, but it makes no sense. Long stretches of metal loom above me, starting at the edge of my vision and rising straight up toward the clear night sky. Turning my head, I see tires, big tires about a foot from my face.
I sit up and I’m between two big-rig eighteen-wheelers in a parking lot. That explains the sloppy slick scent of diesel fuel and oil. I can hear the thrum of a highway nearby.
I need to stand up, need to find the kid, who’s got to be close by, but I feel like hammered shit. Even the coat lies limp against my body, spent from five wish jumps in a short time. I’ve never teleported this much in one night.
The night that started all of this shit.
The night the Man in Black walked into my life, made me an Acolyte, and dragged me into this world of magick, monsters, and bullshit.
Enough with the hate. I need to find Javier.
I roll to my knees and push to my feet. The coat tangles around my feet, almost throwing me back to the ground. It wasn’t intentional—I hear the babble of its apology in my head, quiet murmuring along the bone in the back of my skull—it’s just exhausted and slow moving like me.
As I stand, it hangs on me, feeling like a regular leather coat that is too big on me.
“Javier?” I don’t shout it, just say it. He should be nearby.
I find him under the truck on my right.
He’s curled up and shivering on the asphalt, but he’s awake and it looks like he didn’t throw up.
I hold my hand out. “Come on.”
He shakes his head and it makes his whole body rock. “I can’t do that thing again.”
“Yeah, me either, but you’re under a truck.”
“I’mma stay here.”
“Javier, you are under a truck. You can’t stay here. Come out.”
He glares at me. Somewhere nearby in the lot another big rig rolls by, close enough to vibrate the ground. I feel it through the soles of my shoes; I’m sure he feels it lying on the ground. He crawls out, ignoring my hand.
“What now?” he asks.
I point down the line of the trucks we’re standing by to the warm yellow glow of the diner that sits in the middle of the lot. “Let’s get something to eat.”
I start walking and he follows.
“I’m not eating. That magick messed my stomach up.”
I’m struggling to walk straight, my mouth tastes like I’ve been chewing mothballs, my head feels like someone has it in both their hands and is trying to twist it off my body, and the coat is dragging on my shoulders like it’s made of wet cement, and he’s complaining about a little post-teleportation upset tummy?
What a wuss.
15
THE BELL OVER the door jangles as I walk in, gargling out a warning to all inside that we have arrived. The noise of it bounces around the inside of my head. I don’t hold the door for Javier, but he catches it and follows me inside. Damn, it’s bright, tubes of fluorescence slinging white light from the ceiling to bounce off the white tile floor and the matching white Formica counter that runs from one end of the place to the other. The only decorations in here are poster-sized prints of food evenly spaced along the walls, mostly breakfast, with a steak, a burger, and a bowl of spaghetti that looks like noodles coated in blood thrown in for variety.
Two waitresses perk up as we enter. They hawkeye us to see in whose section we’ll sit. I’d bet it’s been a slow night. Right now there are only three other customers, all scattered around the place in front of empty plates and cups, all looking like the same man from three different time periods.
One is young, has a beard and longer hair under a cap. He’s hunched over a phone his fingers are flying over.
One is middle-aged, thicker than the first but still similar, cresting the hill of life and sporting a shorter beard and hair than the first with gray touches but also wearing a cap. He’s hunched over a newspaper.
The third is old, grandpa old. Gray and bent and twisted like a piece of driftwood. His cap is battered and filthy and his beard is nearly pure silver save for the yellow patina of nicotine around his mouth. He hard-knuckles a steaming mug, his eyes the same milky colour as his coffee when he looks up at me.
My life is so weird I actually stop and think, IS this the same man from three different timestreams?
Probably not.
And if so, it doesn’t have anything to do with me.
Probably.
I move to a booth on the far end of the diner and put my back against the wall just in case.
The old man lifts his cup as I slide into the booth and gives me a nod before dropping his eyes.
And now I want coffee more than I ever have before.
Javier slides in the other side of the booth. His fingers slip over the hard plastic tabletop. The menu is printed underneath it. Dozens of items with pictures laid out before us, divided straight down the middle so he has his menu and I have mine.
“Damn, they got a lot of food.”
“You hungry now?”
“Might be so. My stomach feels better, not like it’s flopping around inside me anymore.”
“Got any money?”
His eyes flick up at me and his cheeks get darker. I pretend to not notice. “Yeah, I got some.”
“Some I can work with. Order what you want then.”
The shorter waitress has broken off and is moving toward us, coffeepot in hand. She arrives and puts two mugs down. I nod and she fills mine.
Javier pushes his away. “I’ll have a cola.”
“I’ll bring it right over.” She smiles big and it feels fake, strained, but hey, that’s her job. “You need anything, dearie?” she asks me.
Dearie? What the hell?
“Creamer.”
She nods. “Ready to order? Everything on the menu’s available twenty-four hours a day.”
I order the red-eye special: country ham, mixed greens, and sweet potatoes. Javier goes with a bacon cheeseburger and fries. I drink the coffee and it begins working its way into my system, sharpening me like steel on stone. Javier’s fingers never stop moving, touching everything in a round-robin of fidgeting.
“Knock it off.”
He freezes and looks down at his fingers on the salt and pepper shakers. He pulls his hands in and drops them to his lap out of my sight.
“What happened to your ear?”
It’s not the question I expect and my hand is halfway there before I catch myself and stop it. I shake my head though, not that my hair is long enough to cover the top of my left ear, the one he’s asking about, the one with four jagged rips in what’s left of the cartilage on the top rim. The one that looks like a piece of mangled plastic.
“Got bit by the skinhound.”
“The fucked-up coyote?” He says coyote as “ko-yo-tay” in one long, warbling almost syllable.
“Yeah.” I look at his face in the bright light. This close I can see the dark line of the split on the corner of his lip. His left ear hugs the side of his head, but the right one pushes out, looking like a wad of chewed bubble gum. Cauliflower. “What happened to yours?”
The skin under his eyes goes dark, flushed with blood, and he looks away. “Wrestling. At school.”
I study him, looking over his narrow shoulders, long, thin arms, and lack of definition to his trapezoid muscles. There were grapplers at the dojo I studied at back home, mostly jujitsu fighters but some Greco-Roman wrestlers, and they were built wide on the top. Hours and hours of practice, the amount of hours it would take for him to build enough scar tissue in his ear to cauliflower it, changed their bodies. It spread their chests with lats, the slabs of muscle that makes wrestlers look like cobras when they flex and thickened their necks and shoulders into steel cables. I compare his slight figure to theirs.
Javier isn’t a wrestler.
He’s lying.
I let it go. It’s not like I don’t understand lying to new people.
“So, where are we?”
I nudge toward the logo across the top of the menus and read it out loud. “‘Mabel’s. Home of the best food east of the Mississippi.’”
“East?”
“Probably.”
He thinks for a long minute. “I guess that’s why the air smells different here. Don’t smell like concrete.”
I just take a sip of coffee. I didn’t notice a difference in the smell of the air. The waitress comes over with our food and slides it in front of us with a practiced lean.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Javier says, and his manners surprise me. “What state are we in?”
“You don’t
know what state you’re in?” She breaks into a big grin. “Why, I’d say a state of confusion then.”
“We’ve been driving all night and must have missed the sign.”
“Shoot, darlin’, you two have made it to the great state of Kentucky.”
Javier smiles and it’s warm and it makes his face turn into … something. Not handsome but attractive. If you like that sort of thing. He winks at me. “Told you, Sis.”
“Yeah, you were dead on the money,” I say.
The waitress laughs and touches him on the shoulder before walking away with a promise to check on us real soon. I guess she likes Javier’s smile.
Once she is gone I raise my eyebrow at him. “Sis?”
He smiles again, smaller this time. “I didn’t want her to think we were a couple and, y’know, ruin my chances.”
“First of all, slick, she’s all grown-up. You’re way too young for her.”
“I’m almost eighteen and she ain’t too old.” He glances around at her. “She could take me under her wing.”
“You’re going to move to Kentucky, settle down, start making babies, and what? Work here at the truck stop?”
“Chill, chill; I’m just goofin’.”
“You’re not funny,” I tell him.
“Maybe, but it was slick how I came up with that cover story, right?”
I shrug.
He takes it as a yes. “Yeah. Told you I could help.”
“You’re right; you absolutely saved me from the waitress discovering I don’t have a car.”
“You didn’t know what state we are in.”
I shrug and take a bite of ham. It’s a little tough and has a few streaks of dark brown caramelization from the griddle, but the flavor of it lights up the inside of my mouth with saltiness. City ham is sweet, the kind of ham you have at Christmas; country ham is mostly for breakfast and is cured like they used to cure ham, with a thick layer of salt and a ton of smoke. The sodium is off the charts and I feel it raising my blood pressure almost immediately. It’s so good I talk with my mouth full. “I can leave here as easy as I came.”
He starts eating and we don’t talk for the next several minutes. I guess his stomach is better because he makes short work of the burger. So I lean into my meal and at the end of it I feel full and my plate is clean.