by J. R. Mabry
Highway 80 seemed almost deserted as they sped toward Oakland. The moon was down, streetlights were out, and the dark seemed like a malevolent, smothering presence. “Any idea what Richard had to check on?” Dylan asked, checking his rearview mirror.
“No clue,” Susan confessed. “Let’s just pray it doesn’t set him back. We may not be the only ones having this thought.”
“Yer prob’ly right there,” Dylan conceded. “What d’ya think? Which way should we go fer Alameda?”
“The Webster Street Tube is the closest,” Susan said.
“Yeah, but the trickiest to get to, bein’ downtown an’ all,” Dylan said.
“Let’s try it,” Susan said.
“Okay. Yer the boss,” Dylan said, signaling to transfer to the 980.
“I am not the boss,” Susan said.
“Name one fight you didn’t win,” Dylan narrowed his eyes at her before returning them to the road.
“Oh for God’s sake,” she looked out the window.
“Can you guys do this on your own time?” Terry asked. “I have my own nuptial disaster to nurse without watching yours.” Chicken started humming louder. “Beside, you’re upsetting the…Chicken.”
“How’s mah li’l pollo?” Dylan sat up straighter and strained to see her in the rearview mirror.
“I need to ward this car,” Terry said.
“What?” Dylan’s eyes flitted to the left to see Terry.
“The car. Let’s say we roll through the jurisdiction of an envy demon—what is going to stop us from getting out of the car and going on a looting spree?”
Susan turned to look at him. Her eyes were wide. “Do you…Could that happen? I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It could happen, and we’ve got to think about it,” Terry said. “Chicken, honey, can you move?”
“Okie-dokie!” she said, but she stayed where she was.
“She certainly learned that word,” Susan said.
“Is that one word or two?” Dylan asked. “Ah mean, it’s hyphenated, right?”
Terry moved Chicken onto the seat next to him, despite her protests. “The only thing stopping me and Richard from leveling a fucking rocket launcher at those gang-bangers was the fact that we simply didn’t have any guns!”
“An’ wasn’t nothin’ stoppin’ Kat from shootin’ up that morphine. She’d be at the morgue if we hadn’t burned that sigil when we did.”
“That’s what I’m saying. We’re not immune. Even people of faith can come under demonic oppression.”
“That’s a fact,” Dylan acknowledged.
“Will the wards do the job?” Susan asked. “I mean…they didn’t…at the friary.”
Terry looked down. “I don’t know.”
“Well, if we go through the jurisdiction of a lust demon and you start humping my leg, I’m going to put a thumb through your eye,” Susan told him.
“Noted,” Terry answered. “Wait, did you bring those maps?”
“Nope. Sitting on the kitchen table,” Susan admitted.
“Damn. We might have been able to navigate around the hot spots.”
“I didn’t think of it, Terry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He opened his kit bag and began to rummage through it. “I’ll set the most powerful wards I’ve got, and we’ll just have to hope for the best.”
“Fuck hope, Ah’m prayin’,” Dylan announced.
“That’s not a bad idea, either,” Terry said. He looked around and his shoulders slumped.
“What’s wrong?” Susan asked.
“This would be easier if I could get out of the car,” Terry said.
“Feel free to pass us something,” Susan said. “You don’t need to climb over us physically, do you?”
“Well, it would be better,” Terry said. He selected four stones from his kit bag and said a brief prayer, dedicating each of them to a different archangel. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” asked Susan.
“We’re in a moving car,” he said.
“Well, I should hope so!” Susan said.
“No, I mean—how do I do the correspondences?” Terry asked. “Michael is the archangel of the North. I can set a stone for him in what is north now, but as soon as we turn…”
“It won’t be north anymore. How important is that kind of…correspondence?”
“It is kind of a form of magick,” Terry admitted.
“Angel magick,” Dylan countered.
“Non-coercive angel magick,” Terry clarified.
“Look, I don’t care about your no-magick code right now,” Susan said, her voice rising with obvious panic. “I want to make sure I won’t be compelled by some disembodied entity to disembowel my husband. Without good reason, that is.”
“Amen,” agreed Dylan.
“Can you say a prayer that will compensate?” Susan asked. “Or can you set four sets of wards, so that each direction simultaneously corresponds to each angel?”
Terry sat up straighter. He looked at Chicken. Chicken looked at him. She touched his nose. “Terry,” she said.
“Did you hear that?” Terry asked. “She said my name.”
“It’s a fucking Kodak moment,” Susan admitted, smiling over her shoulder at the little girl. “What about the wards?”
“It’s a really good idea, the four stones in each corner idea. I’ve never heard of it being tried before, but…the problem is, I only have eight stones.”
“Does it have to be stones?” Susan asked.
“No, it can be any object,” Terry answered. “Stones are just…traditional.”
“You are Terry Milne. You are an innovator,” she fished around in her purse. “Here are eight tampons,” she slapped them in his hand. “Get busy.”
Terry gulped. He didn’t know how archangels might feel about feminine hygiene products. What were the likely correspondences? Plastic, cotton…his mind reeled.
“Get cracking!” Susan ordered.
“Dude, if ya know what’s good fer ya…” Dylan cautioned.
Terry separated the stones and tampons into four piles of four. Chicken picked up one of the tampons and would have put it in her mouth, but Terry snatched it from her. “Not for eating. Just for angels.”
“And for bleeding,” Susan said with a little too much cheer.
“This is gonna be one scarred child,” Dylan noted under his breath. He turned right on Webster. The streets seemed blessedly deserted, although Terry could hear the distant sound of car alarms and sirens. Before they’d gone a block, however, a gang of tough-looking youths stepped into their path, strutting out together into the middle of the road.
“These don’t look like gang-bangers,” Susan said. “They look like middle-class suburban kids.”
“Yeah, but they ain’t themselves,” Dylan said. “Look at their eyes.” Three of the kids were white and two were African American. All of them were dressed in the kind of torn jeans that cost $60 new. Dylan brought the car to a stop.
One of them broke away from the others and sauntered up to the car window. He tossed a cigarette away. “Hey, man.”
“Hey,” Dylan said, rolling the window down slightly.
“Whatcha doin’ out so late?”
“Uh…comin’ home from…a party?” Dylan asked.
“You don’t sound too sure of that,” the youth narrowed his eyes at him.
“It was kind of a party,” Dylan said. “We were playin’ cards and smokin’ dope, ya know. And there was pita chips and hummus. That’s a party, right?”
“Is that your wife?” the kid peered into the window.
“Yeah,” Dylan said.
“She’s kind of pudgy, don’t you think?”
“Wall, Ah’m kinda pudgy. We’re like salt and pepper shakers, ya know, like a matched set.”
“You think you’re a funny guy?”
“Ah think Ah hold my own,” Dylan said.
“Dyl…” Susan whispered.
“What Ah mean is, people u
sually laugh at mah jokes.”
“You sure they’re not laughing at you?”
“To be honest, no, Ah’ve never been too sure ’bout that.”
This surprised the kid, who straightened up before bending down again. This time he looked at the back seat. “This your little girl?”
“No, we stole her from some gang-bangers,” Dylan said. “Her name is Chicken.”
“Is that one of your jokes?”
“Yeah. And that’s mah buddy Terry. They’re playing a game of rocks and tampons. Do ya know that game?”
The kid blinked at him. “I don’t like you, fat man,” he said. “I think you should get out of the car.”
“Ah don’t think Ah will,” Dylan said.
Terry leaned over and whispered, “Okay, this could be worse. He’s a bully. That means we’re at the intersection of wrath and hubris demons.” Terry handed two rocks and two tampons to Susan. “Put these by the windshield, as far to the right as you can. And give these to Dylan, for the other side,” he handed over another set.
“I said, out of the car, fat man,” the kid pounded on the hood.
“Uh, young man, Ah’ve been really patient with you,” Dylan said, placing the stones and tampons on the dashboard as far as they could go to his left. “But Ah think you ferget just who’s behind the 3,000-pound projectile here.”
The young man pulled a gun out of the small of his back. “I think you’ll do as I say.”
“Aw, shit,” Dylan said. “Ya know, honey, Ah ken see the tube to Alameda.”
“So can I,” Susan said. “Gun it.”
“Chicken, down!” Dylan yelled. Terry dove for the floor and pulled the little girl toward him into the wheel well while Dylan stomped on the gas. He steered the car straight toward the youths, who wailed and scattered when they realized he wasn’t going to stop. Terry expected the tough kid who approached them to start shooting, but he didn’t hear any shots.
“Ah knew it,” Dylan said, making a beeline for the tube entrance. “That kid was bluffin’.” Just then the rear window exploded sending a shower of glass throughout the car.
Chicken screamed, and Terry pulled her tightly against him. “Shhh…” he said. “It’s going to be fine.”
Dylan watched the Webster Tube looming before them, only two blocks away, but he pounced on the brakes.
“Why the fuck are you stopping?” Susan almost screamed. Dylan pointed. Looming before them, previously hidden in shadow, was a whole parade of people. As the car’s headlights caught them, Terry saw that most of them were shuffling toward them, their faces twisted into malevolent grins. From the sides came dancers, leaping frenetically—desperate harlequins displaying an enforced merriment.
“What the hell?” Dylan breathed.
A taco truck rolled into the middle of the street, blocking their way, and stopped. Red paint had been sloshed over the menu that covered half the side of the truck, like the exit wound from a giant bullet. And fixed in the middle of the red spray was a sigil, it’s activation parchment nailed above it. Terry could see it shuddering in the wind.
“Oh, Christ,” he said. “That sigil is mobile. They’re taking it on the road.”
“Can they do that?” Susan asked.
“I don’t see why not,” Terry answered.
“What demon is it summoning?” Susan asked.
Terry pulled out his phone. “Inviting, not summoning. This working is as successful as it is only because it isn’t coercive,” he corrected her. Before he could pull up the Demonfinder app, however, a gloved hand reached through the broken window behind him and lifted him into the air.
“Awww, shit!” Dylan said, his eyes growing huge as he watched Terry get plucked from the car. Chicken screamed, and a moment later, her wriggling body was also lifted through the smashed window.
“You put her down!” Susan shouted. A split second later, a baseball bat shattered the passenger-side window. She ducked and covered her eyes, but then another gloved hand reached in, unlocked her door, and dragged her into the street.
Dylan’s own window shattered next, and he jerked his head aside as a shard of glass entered his left eye. “Motherfucker!” he howled, grabbing at his eye. A fist punched at his head, causing him to bite his tongue, and he whimpered quietly. An enormous man, big enough to be a longshoreman, forced Dylan to his knees next to Susan. Terry could have reached out to touch them, but he didn’t want to draw any attention. Instead, he cradled Chicken and tried to soothe her.
Another vehicle rolled up to the taco truck. This was a flatbed truck, a familiar sight in this area of Oakland. But on the bed of the truck was a man covered with bruises, defiantly upright, on his knees. Thick ropes bound each of his hands to two of the corners of the truck, ensuring that he couldn’t move either to the left or to the right, to the front nor the back. A woman leaped up on the flatbed with him, a wild grin slashing across her face. Her eyes were a little too wide, a little too manic. Her dress had been sexy and expensive hours ago, but now hung from her busty frame in tatters. Terry saw a flash in the air, and the woman snatched at it, holding forth the object she had caught—a filleting knife, it’s long thin blade shining in the Corolla’s headlights. With a wicked cackle, she began to carve at the man’s chest.
The man’s torso seized up as every muscle in his body tensed, and he threw his head back and issued a howl at the black morning sky. But the cacophony from the revelers was so loud Terry couldn’t hear him even though he was less than twenty feet away.
Terry gulped as he realized that she wasn’t just cutting him—she was carving the sigil into his chest. “It’s a sacrifice,” he called to Dylan and Susan. “To whatever demon that sigil belongs to.” He didn’t know if they heard him. It didn’t matter.
Dylan clutched at his wounded eye and bobbed back and forth, as if he were davening. Terry covered Chicken’s eyes and stroked her hair, but he couldn’t tear his own eyes away from the truck. With a flourish, the woman cut a final stroke into the man’s skin. He opened his throat to issue another howl of rage and pain, but she drew the knife across his throat next. A spray of black erupted into the night sky and the man fell forward onto the truck bed.
Terry felt the energy rise around him. The sacrifice had been efficacious and the demon’s presence suffused the street corner, oppressing every sentient being within sight. Terry felt his own bloodlust rise within him. He saw Susan howl with a rage that would have terrified him at any other time, but his own terror seemed to have hit its maximum peak. He watched her transformation with an almost scientific detachment.
The woman leaped off the truck and landed on bare feet a yard and a half from them. She marched up to Dylan and pointed her filleting knife at his good eye. “I smell blood on this one. Let’s feed him to our master next.”
38
Richard felt the wind of a bullet as it grazed his cheek. “Shit, not again!” He wiped at his cheek and wondered at the blood on his hand.
Marco’s eyes went wide. “We’ve got to get to safety, man. Quick, get in the van!”
“But we can’t go anywhere in the van,” Richard protested.
“Just get in. At least we won’t get hit by stray bullets while we think.”
Richard couldn’t argue with that, and when Marco slid the van’s side door back, he hopped up onto the seat next to Toby. Toby slathered a kiss on his cheek and looked surprised at the taste of blood. Marco jumped in himself and shut the door after him. “Duck,” he said, laying out on the floor. Richard lowered himself to the floor between the first and second seats, pulling Toby down beside him. Richard and Marco stared at each other under the seats.
“What now?” Richard asked. Marco blinked, apparently thinking.
“Let’s ask God,” Marco said and jumped up, scrambling for something on the seat.
“I’ve never known you to be a pray-er,” Richard said.
“No, not praying,” Marco said. “Asking. With this.” He held forth the Liahona box.
“Liahona,” Marco corrected him. “And it’s Jewish in origin.”
“By way of Guatemala.”
“Uh…right.” Marco lifted the small globe from the box and set it on the van’s carpet just below him. A loud “crack” came from the roof.
“I think we just caught a falling bullet,” Richard said.
“Or a rock.”
“Sounded like a bullet to me.”
Toby’s ears lowered and he whined, nosing at Richard’s hands until he petted him. Richard did, finding himself to be as comforted as Toby seemed to be.
“What should we ask?” Marco asked.
“Does it do yes and no questions?”
“I don’t think so. I mean…I don’t know. It’s not a fucking magic eight ball, though. Brian was going to decipher the stylized Hebrew, but he never got around to it before he took off. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
“What good is it going to do us?”
“Look, I don’t want to get all quantum theory on you, but perhaps it will answer according to what we understand it to mean.”
“I am not going to stake my life on that assumption,” Richard said. He and Toby touched noses. A fire truck raced by outside.
“Look, it’s a compass, right? So let’s assume it’s a directional oracle. Let’s ask it to point to the safest route to Alameda. By foot, I mean.”
Richard nodded. “Okay, let’s give that a try.”
Marco peeled back the leather strap that covered the cutouts in the ornately etched globe and stared at the twin dials inside. “Which way, O oracle of God—”
“Good Lord,” Richard rolled his eyes.
“—is the safest route to Alameda?” Then he hastily added, “By foot?” Marco reared back and studied the dials.
“What?” Richard asked.
“The red one is pointing this way,” he pointed toward the van’s door.
“Yeah, that’s south. Alameda is due south of here, on the other side of Oakland.”