I crawled backward, unable to stand up anymore, given that it felt like my damn foot was broken.
Bigfoot slowed down, looking me over with glee materializing across his dark eyes.
This was it, and he knew it. After all this time, after chasing me for all these decades, he was finally going to end this. He was finally going to do what his slave drivers asked of him, and with it, maybe earn a little rest.
The idea of that almost made me happy in some weird way. Of course, it was completely outdone by the very likely threat of being crushed beneath a giant ape foot. It wouldn’t kill me, of course. But it would cause me enough pain and suffering to put me on the dl for at least a generation.
Bigfoot settled over me, drool dripping from its open maw.
My mind started racing. I had to do something to get away. But what?
Andy still wasn’t back up from the basement. This had all happened so quickly. There was no way he was going to get up here with the painting.
And that was it — the painting. If I could get to it, I could use it to save my trifling ass.
I took a deep breath and pointed the gun. Emptying the rest of the shells right into the monster’s nads.
Though, it didn’t have the same effect it would have had on me, which was to say, complete and irrevocable incapacitation, it did send the monster rearing back far enough for me to get an open shot to the basement door.
I hauled ass toward the door as Bigfoot howled in pain. Not even slowing down, I slammed into it, knocking it open and taking a nasty fall down the stone steps.
Luckily for me, Andy and the painting was halfway up the staircase and there to break my fall.
He let out a loud ‘oomph’ as I collided with him, knocking him back down to the concrete basement floor.
“You get a little antsy?” He asked, standing up and pulling the painting upward to inspect it.
Lucky for me, I hadn’t damaged it.
I grabbed the damn thing as Bigfoot rushed toward me.
“Knife and a brush,” I said, looking up at Andy.
“Couldn’t find a brush and you never asked for a knife,” he said, his eyes widening as he caught sight of the behemoth lunging toward us.
I looked down at my gut. I didn’t want to do this, but I was running out of time and I didn’t have much of a choice.
Whipping my shirt off, I pulled the bandage off. It stung like a bitch, but that was going to be nothing compared to what I was about to do.
“Get behind me!” I yelled to Andy.
This time, he wasted no time in listening.
I jabbed a finger hard into my stitches, opening the wound back up.
“What the hell are you doing?” Andy asked from over my shoulder.
Bigfoot was nearly on us now.
“I took the juice out of this painting ages ago. This is me putting it back in.”
I pulled my finger away. It was now covered in my own blood.
I moved it across the eye of the painting, creating a clockwise circle across the perimeter.
Then, I moved my bloodied digit up and down it horizontally, cutting the circle in half.
The monster reared back, ready to smash both me and Andy right into the next life.
But, he was too late.
The painting started to glow. The eye was open.
Time to get the party started.
A loud rumble sounded from the painting and then, with the strength of gale force winds, it began pulling things toward it.
The junk in the basement was first. Old paint cans and tennis shoes. They flew toward the painting and disappeared into it. Then larger things came hurtling into the painting.
The railing of the stairwell then uprooted itself and rushing into the painting’s glowing eye.
Realizing what was going on, Bigfoot turned to retreat.
He had no chance of escaping though. I knew that. I had seen this thing pull a redwood into it. A bigger than average ape wouldn’t be a problem.
The monster clawed at the walls, as he began to be pulled toward the painting. A whirling, whistling sound began to howl from inside the painting, and Bigfoot lifted into the air.
His huge arms flailed about helplessly as he flew toward the painting, fighting it every inch of the way.
He roared as the painting began to take him into itself.
His fingers grappled at the edges of the frame, trying to use his considerable strength to pull himself back out.
Instead, I bitch slapped his snout with the butt of the pistol, sending him winding into the painting.
Once he was inside, I dropped the pistol and stuck my finger back into my wound, wetting it with fresh blood.
I made the circle again, this time halving it in the opposite direction, closing the eye and stopping the magical whirlwind.
Dropping the painting, I sighed loudly and stumbled backward, leaning against the wall as Andy steadied me.
“You weren’t kidding,” he said, eyeing the painting and leaning against the wall beside me. “That is a fucking death machine.”
“What can I say?” I said, shrugging exhaustedly. “I do good work.”
8
The rest of the night consisted of me once again stripping the magic from the death machine painting; a draining task that involved me bleeding for what felt like the tenth time tonight. And moving Andy and myself from his house —which now, would be better described as a giant pile of house shaped rubble — to my apartment on the other side of Savannah.
As we drove the thirty-five minutes through the heart of the river city, it seemed insane to me that I had gone this long without seeing him.
Is that all that had separated us, a half an hour and a quarter tank of gas?
No, I knew better than that. It was nights like this that stopped me from seeing Andy. Even now, after just a couple of days, my presence had been enough to destroy his house and almost get him killed.
I just wished he hadn’t followed in his father’s footsteps and become a detective. Why couldn’t he have been a butcher or something?
Sure, this would still be happening to me. This was my bed, complete with the piled up bodies of dead girls with my belongings, ghosts of my dead brother, and furry assassins itching to rip me a new asshole. Like it or not, I was going to have to lay in it.
But Andy didn’t. He could have had a good life. Hell, maybe he’d have even been able to hang onto his wife.
I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building, throwing my red convertible in park and looking at Andy tiredly.
“Mi casa,” I said, pointing to the top floor.
The Riverside Royal Suites were neither fit for a king nor particularly close to the river. It was a midsize apartment building on the low rent side of town with a gate to keep criminals out and a couple dozen invisible runes to keep troublemakers of a more supernatural variety from coming in too.
I could have done better, sure. I had enough money to keep me in diamonds and Lamborghinis for at least the next half dozen lifetimes. But, I had never been the type of guy to get all excited about the stuff that glitters.
Besides, I had always found that people who live above the fray tend to stick out. And, at this point in my never ending life, I knew enough to try to blend in.
For his part, Andy didn’t seem phased by the downgrade in living space. He just nodded, grabbed an overnight bag full of the stuff we could salvage from his house, and followed me up the stairs.
We were about halfway up the climb when I couldn’t take the silence anymore.
“Sorry about your place,” I said.
“It’s not your fault,” he answered quickly, like he was expecting me to apologize.
“It is. I should have never been there in the first place.”
“I didn’t leave you much of a choice,” he said.
“What? Like I’m going to start listening to you now?” I scoffed. “I should have known better than that, or at least throw up some protective incan
tations before I hauled ass in there.”
We settled in front of 6F, my door. I pulled out my key and slipped it into the slot.
“The truth is, it was nice not to be alone for a while,” I said without looking at him, opening the door and shuffling inside.
My apartment was small, with a combination kitchen/dining and living room, a bedroom off to the side, and one measly bathroom. But it was filled to the brim with some of the cooler and rarer stuff I had collected in my travels over the centuries.
Trust me, when a girl sees that you have both a signed picture of Joe DiMaggio and a ring worn by Queen Elizabeth (the first one), all bets are off.
“You don’t have to be alone,” Andy said, tossing his bag on the sofa. “You’re family, you know that.”
“My family is dead, Andy,” I said, closing the door and turning to him.
“Don’t say that,” he answered, squinting at me like the words confused him.
“It’s true,” I sighed. “Look, I get what you’re trying to do for me, and I appreciate it. I really do, but I can’t let you. You can’t be family to me, Andy. You’ve got a family; a family that you need to protect. And keeping me around won’t help you do that. I’m an albatross. I’m dead weight. Worse than that, I’m dangerous dead weight, and you can’t afford to have that around your daughters. I won’t let you get yourself killed for me.” I nodded. “So, I want you to take yourself off the case. Don’t dig into it. Don’t go snooping around for other bodies that might have some kind of connection to me. Don’t do anything. Take a couple of days off. Go get your woman. Barbecue, have sex, and do normal stuff.” I sighed again. “Just let me go.”
Andy moved closer to me, his jaw set.
“Who the fuck do you think you are anyway?” he asked, shaking his head at me.
“Excuse me?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
“Did you forget who I was? Do you not know what the badge on my chest stands for?”
“This isn’t police work,” I answered.
“Why don’t you let a policeman decide on that, Uncle C?” he answered. “I didn’t do this for you. I’m not doing any of this for you right now. Why the hell would I risk my life for somebody who couldn’t die if he tried? I do this for the same reason I do anything, because I want to build a better world for my girls and for all the girls just like them.” He shook his head again, “And yeah, it might be dangerous. It might even get me killed. But you know something, Uncle C. I don’t mind that. If it takes my life to make sure one more lunatic isn’t on the streets, regardless of where they came from or what crazy ass superpowers they have, then I’m going to do it, with or without you. So, instead of telling me what I am or am not going to do, I think you need to decide whether or not you want in on this. Because, like it or not, I am.”
When I got up the next morning, still smarting from the verbal beat down Andy had given me, I had a text from Meredith.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought she might be canceling on me, something that had never happened to me in my millennia on this earth. Instead, she told me she had been called into emergency surgery and probably wouldn’t be able to meet me until nine o’clock or later.
She texted me the address of a fancy little Greek place on River Street. I hadn’t been there in forty years. So, I pretended I had never eaten there. She told me I had to try the flaming cheese, and I told her I couldn’t wait.
And, for whatever reason, it was true in that moment.
Maybe I was losing it after all. Maybe the whole ‘being alone’ thing I had lamented about with Andy last night was more than just hyperbole.
It had been a while since I’d had any meaningful relationship. The last few generations had been so hot on the one and done idea of sex, that it was never necessary to build a relationship with a woman to get my needs met.
I just found a pretty thing at a bar who looked like fun and told her how pretty she was. Another thing my long life had taught me was that simplicity worked almost every time.
I exited my apartment, leaving Andy snoring across my couch, and locked the door behind me. The runes on this place would keep witches, demons, and the like out. But this was a bad neighborhood, and the only rune that worked for that was a bolt lock.
I found a yellow parking ticket on the windshield of my convertible as I neared it. Turned out, I had inadvertently slid into a handicap spot in my hurry last night.
I cursed a little under my breath, because I’d have never done that on purpose. I might have been a murderer, but I wasn’t a monster.
Stuffing the ticket into my pocket, I hopped into the car and typed an address into my navigation system.
The electronic lady told me I’d reach my destination in ninety minutes, and I cranked up the radio and decided to zone out for a bit.
I had plenty of memories to fall into and plenty of things to stress about. So, the drive felt short, even for someone who had (literally) all the time in the world.
I pulled up to the diner right in time for the lunch rush. I grinned walking through the front door, hearing 50s music that half the people in here weren’t old enough to remember and getting hit with thee sweet smell of dessert.
I didn’t come here for the pie, but that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t treat myself to a piece. After wrestling Bigfoot into a death painting, I figured I’d earned it.
Mimi didn’t catch sight of me as I walked in, which was good. She’d have probably thrown me out on my immortal ass if she had any idea I was here. That was, if she even recognized me at all. It had been years since I’d seen her, and even longer since she’d seen me.
I shook my head, seating myself and thinking about the times I used to park outside this damn diner just so I could catch a glimpse of her as she walked to and from her car at the beginning and end of her work day.
She was really something back then; a girl with her entire life in front of her.
And now, watching her slide what was probably her fifty-thousandth piece of apple pie across the same old table, I wondered where that life had gone and just how much of it I was responsible for.
Mimi settled in front of me, eyes on her notepad and a snarl on her lips.
“What’ll ya have, sweetheart?” she asked, smacking on gum and not bothering to actually glance up at me.
“That depends on how happy you are to see your grandpa,” I said, setting my jaw and waiting for the worst.
That wasn’t true, of course. Mimi wasn’t my biological granddaughter. The specifics of what the Big Guy did to me made that impossible. Nothing grew for me; not crops and not kids.
But Mimi’s grandmother was a mom when I met her, and that made my infertility a non-issue, at least for a while.
Mimi looked up at me blinking. Her eyes narrowed and she swallowed hard. I was pretty sure she had gulped down her gum when she answered.
“What the hell do you want, you sonofabitch?”
Well, can’t say I wasn’t right.
“I just want to talk,” I said, lifting my hands in front of me and motioning for her to sit. “Just for five minutes. Give me that, and I promise I’ll leave you the tip of a lifetime.”
“Ain’t enough money in the world to make right what you did wrong,” she answered.
I sighed, because I knew she was right. I had done her wrong. I had done them all wrong. And, to me, she was still that kid who clutched onto my leg and begged me not to leave her.
But the thing was, I wasn’t that guy anymore.
“You might be right,” I answered. “God knows you haven’t even touched what I left for you in the bank account.” I leaned forward. “You know it’s more than enough for you to quit this shit hole.”
She huffed at me, still standing. “I happen to like this shithole. It’s consistent, which is more than I can say for most everything else in my life.”
“I guess I deserve that,” I said.
“You deserve more than that,” she answered. “Maybe being burned alive, shot
in the crotch with a rocket launcher. But that’s just off the top of my head.”
“I’m not the same person I was back then, Mimi,” I said, staring up at her. “I know you probably don’t want to hear that, and maybe you don’t even care. But it’s the truth.”
“You look like the same person,” she answered, shaking her head.
“Yeah, that’s the thing about never getting older.” I tapped my fingers against the table. “Doesn’t mean you don’t grow though.”
“Look, I’m busy,” she said, looking away from me.
“I know,” I said. “And, if you want, I’ll leave. I won’t ever come back. But the thing is, I’m trying here, Mimi. I know it’s late for me to make it right for you, or to undo all the damage I did. But I can’t give up. I don’t have the luxury. All I can do is try to be better, and that’s what I’m doing.” I stood to meet her, which garnered the attention of a couple of customers. “People are dying, Mimi. And I think they’re dying because of me. Now, I wasn’t the type of man who would have done anything about that before, but I am now. And I’ll save those people if I can, Mimi. But I need your help.”
She stared at me for a long moment. Finally, huffing loudly and rolling her eyes, she sat down across from me.
“What do ya need?”
“That’s the thing,” I said, leaning toward her. “I need to talk to your grandmother.”
As I expected, Mimi’s eyes went wide. “My dead grandmother?” She shook her head again. “Oh mah Lord.”
9
Mimi couldn’t get away until after the lunch rush, leaving me to sit in a side booth, eat too much pie, and watch her work.
I didn’t mind. It had been way too long since I’d seen that girl — now woman — and doing so (even if she hated me) did my heart good.
I was polishing off my third slice of blueberry when she marched toward me, taking off her apron, and throwing it over her shoulder.
She ran hands through her dishwater blond hair and settled in front of me. The hardness around her had tempered just enough to stop me from thinking she was going to slug me in the nose, but it wasn’t like she was going to ask me to walk her down the aisle or anything.
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