Hector twisted his face if disbelief. “Shut the hell up, man!”
“No. And I’m telling you . . . everyone heard that cat’s neck snap loud as a shotgun blast, man. I almost hurled. And it went limp instantly. But then, check this out, I ain’t done. The honey that was on his lap? She goes down the path of pure stupid and says she thinks it was a parlor trick of some kind. ‘How’d you do that trick, baby?’ she asks. Then when people tell her it had to be real, she makes it worse. ‘Nah. That was fake you fools,’ she says.” A glassy-eyed look came over Curtis’ face. “And Güero, he looks at her and starts turning his rings in.”
“His what?”
“He wears rings like crazy. Three or four on each hand. They got weird symbols on them. Anyway, I didn’t know it then, but that’s his thing.”
“His thing?”
“Yeah. When he’s about to go off? Like, ya know, go psycho? He turns them rings in, towards his palms. I guess so as not to damage the stones or diamonds. And right in front of us? He beat that girl to shit. Jacked up her whole face. Blood on his hands up to his forearms before he stopped because—and this is when I knew this dude was for real, homie—no one, not a single damned person at that party tried to step in and stop him or even cool him off. They just let him pulverize the hell outta that bitch. People say he still has her, holed up back in his hometown in Mexico. Had her ruined face filled with studs and piercings to always remind her to never question him again.”
Chapter Fifteen
Parker was at the airport, finally clearing the TSA line, when he saw them: a group of three men, still in their military fatigues, working their way from the Vroman’s Bookstore pop-up shop nearby to the Panda Express in the food court just up ahead.
Of mostly equal height, one of them was Caucasian with blond hair and the other two looked to be Hispanic, with their hair cut the shortest. They moved in unison, probably subconsciously, as they were now in a civilian setting that was safe and that did not require such a united front. They were Army, for sure, but too far away to determine what unit or rank. It didn’t matter, really. Parker’s eyes had seen the image of them and a switch had flipped, somewhere in the back of his mind, to reveal a similar one from his memories.
Parker, Baer and Molchan were at Outpost Keating, the night before the attack. They were walking together, much in the same way, as they crossed the hot sand of the base, making their way from the mess tent to their temporary barracks for the night.
Somewhere between talking about football season and which drinks they were going to guzzle over poker that night, Parker took a moment to really look at his fellow soldiers. His friends. His brothers. It was just a quick appreciation of things, nothing more. But, since all moments are forever framed by those that follow them, it was a moment now of innocence and reflection. Less than twenty-four hours later, all three of them would find themselves in the firefight of their lives, and all of them would survive it at the price of never being the same again. They’d seen plenty of battle and plenty of casualties in the times of their tours, but none on the scale or with the ferocity of what was coming their way.
Big sun. Massive desert. Small lives.
Feeling dizzy, Parker quickly made his way to his gate, making sure, making damn sure, not to look at the soldiers again. He took a few deep breaths, like an asthmatic trying to fight off the inevitable betrayal of his lungs, and downed a swig of water from the bottle he was holding before he found a seat and collapsed into it. The pressure in his chest continued to mount, but this wasn’t asthma, it was the threat of an approaching panic attack, and the first time he’d felt this way since Beaumont when he’d ducked into that bar for a few beers before The Bread Man case had erupted.
Life was funny, and life was cruel. That night, the poker tent had been filled with the laughter of men who would be using the same throats the next day to be screaming orders or screaming in agony. What was it that Molchan called it? “The fickle finger of fate”? Yeah. But at least for that night, things had been good. They’d talked of sexual escapades between shots of tequila, while raising and calling each other’s cards, which made or broke their fortunes. He could still remember, all this time later, the clinking of beer bottles over toasts for this or that, and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Need All My Friends” blasting on the MP3 speakers in the corner.
Rope yourself back. Hand over hand. Pull yourself back, he told himself. Remember what the doc says. Leave the past where it’s at between therapy sessions, for now. You’ll be strong enough later. But not now.
He was early to the gate. A group of about eight people were crouched over their laptops or phones at a charging station and maybe a dozen more were near the check-in desk. He was seated alone, near the concourse. A few men in suits walked by, one of them casting a glance at Parker then looking away quickly when their eyes met. A woman in a black sweat suit and white sneakers wheeled her bag past him and to a row of chairs beyond, paying him no notice as she chortled into her cell phone to someone about where she’d hidden the house key for the dog walker. A cold sweat hit Parker. It started across his chest before rolling over his shoulders and down his back.
“Shit. Keep it together,” he whispered to himself. “Hold it together.”
But then a plane taxied by, gunning its engines ever so briefly, sounding nothing at all like an F-15 but not having to, thanks to what his therapist called “flashback by association”. Logically the sounds were dissimilar, but even more logically? The mind heard a plane. Plain and simple. And just like dominos of a different color can still fall together, so too did the sky outside the window over LAX and the sky beyond the boulder he was hiding behind at Outpost Keating, just two blue skies of a different time and different place.
And with that sky came bullets, exploding all around during that ambush, for what seemed like an eternity, before those F-15s finally arrived with the fury of the gods, ripping through the clouds with vengeful intent. There to save them. But mostly, only to save what was left of them.
Parker closed his eyes against an onslaught of images that came next: a bottle of German liquor that one of the younger soldiers, Stanton was his name, had brought to the game. Strong stuff that burned the whole way down. Stanton had drawn a royal flush one hand and chewed a toothpick while he played, like some character in a western movie. The next day he’d been strafed across his body and was dead before he hit the ground. The bastards had then used him as target practice from their positions in the high ground. Knowing it would mess with the heads of their enemy. Knowing someone would crack and try to get to him. That someone had been Carlisle, from Nebraska, who had no luck at cards and no luck at being a hero, either. He hadn’t even made it halfway to Stanton before he caught a round in the back and tripped face-first to the ground. They were just beginning to use him as target practice too, one bullet shattering his left elbow, another his right thigh, when the F-15s arrived and blew the enemy to pieces along with the hillside they were hiding on. So. There was that. But last Parker had heard, Carlisle had a prosthetic arm and was a raging alcoholic. So. There was that. Too.
A family of four, on full vacation vibe, came walking up. Mom. Dad. Two teenage boys. Then they realized they were at the wrong gate and changed course, heading back down the concourse. He was probably never going to have that life. That perfect, domestic life.
“Pull your head outta your ass,” Nap said from his seat right next to him.
Parker nearly jumped out of his skin. “Shit!”
“Sorry, but you needed a good shock. You’ll have that life. Someday. You’ll get well. Like anything else in life? You’ll have to do the work. But you’ll do it.”
Parker leaned over, his elbows on his knees. “Yeah. Whatever. I’m not so sure, partner.”
“Yes, you are. You just gotta quit holding off doing the work. You’re dragging it all out, rookie.”
“It’s too much to do it any other way.”
“You mean like when you go to the bar? Or buy a six
-pack? Or sneak a shot of brandy before you go to bed?” Napoleon said, shaking his head. “I tried that route, Parker. Trust me. One drink becomes a thousand and all that happens is you start refilling all that pain with new pains. Stop. Now. While you still have a chance.”
Shaking his head, Parker sat up in his chair and cleared his throat. “It’s cool. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
“No, Parker, you won’t.”
“Look man, I said—”
When Napoleon looked back to him there was something different in his eyes, something penetrating and overbearing, yet somehow still tinged with love. His old partner was the same, but not. There was a power now that resonated from him. “I’m not your therapist, Parker. I don’t need to ask you to tell me what’s inside you. I can see it, okay? And it’s like a cancer that’s eating you alive.”
Parker looked at the ground before nodding firmly. “Okay. I hear you. I do.” Moving to change the conversation, he said, “So, you on lunch break from training with your gray friend?”
“Hmm,” Napoleon said grimly. “Yes and no.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He’s working with a guy—kinda like the situation with Fasano—you wouldn’t understand. Regardless, his efforts are proving too daunting, to say the least.”
“Why? Guy doesn’t want to listen or something?”
Napoleon chuckled. “No. That’d be my situation with your sorry ass.”
“What? So you’re saying that I’m—”
“No. Your situation’s different. I’m learning—or supposed to be learning—how to counsel someone. Ya know, in the everyday sense.”
Parker smiled skeptically. “Everyday sense?”
“Yeah. We’re all around you, all of you, every day, ya know? Waiting to help. All any of you have to do is ask. We can’t wave any magic wands and only some of us can pull off an actual miracle, but still. Who knows? Maybe all we can do is get you through the day, but that’s something, right?”
“Yeah. I guess it is,” Parker replied. “But this guy’s situation is different?”
It was Napoleon’s turn to look out the concourse window. As his eyes traced a plane taking off into the sky, he nodded. “Yeah. You could say that.”
“How so?”
Napoleon thought about it for a second before he replied. “Well, Parker. He’s pretty much a kid in a twenty-something’s body. A lost cause on pause. He’s surrounded by evil, with a mission to carry out, in a prison where practically every other cell?”
“Yeah?”
Nap looked back to Parker with a grim look, and what he said next made Parker’s stomach drop.
“It’s like every other cell has a Bread Man in it, Parker.”
The crazy-assed witches had seen something, up in the ceiling or something, and Delva called to it. “Come,” she’d said, before more spooky talk about a stairway and blood being spilled and so on. Maggie had followed their gazes but saw only wood-beam rafters and a section of puffed straw that was evidently this home’s version of insulation.
All Maggie knew for sure was that it was scaring Luisa worse. The poor girl was looking up and around with bewildered dismay before Maggie screamed to her, “Just close your eyes, Luisa! Ignore them!”
Evidently having had enough of Maggie’s interference, Delva ordered her to be ushered into the room behind the black curtain, where she was tied to a thick wooden support beam in one corner. This room was decorated even worse than the other, with walls that were painted in a mix of chaotic colors and images, like a Día de los Muertos exhibit on acid. More inverted crosses of all sizes were hung on them. In the center of the room was a large wooden chandelier with round sconces that held several candles, none of them lit yet, so that the only light was cast in from the next room through a crack in the curtain. She remembered that this was where Ernesto had been dragged, and sure enough, there he was, his body piled like yesterday’s garbage along the wall to her left . . . his head missing. It was too dark to see where it was now, and she was thankful for that.
In the other room she could hear them remaking their ash-based concoction, the sound of the pestle grinding away again accompanied by Luisa’s occasional whimpers. Maggie had never felt so helpless in her entire life which—for her life—was saying a lot.
It was obvious that Eenie, Meenie and Miney were scared shitless of all the women around them; Sonia had killed the fourth member of their quartet. She had a big dagger and knew how to use it. But, still . . . against their guns, what was a dagger? And why be afraid of three little old ladies from Halloween Town with their witch-themed clothes and behavior? All silly hocus-pocus. Carnival shit for the weak-minded.
Still, seeing as they were Latin and most likely raised in Latin culture, gangster thugs or not, the three men had no doubt gone through the same Catholic Church rites and rituals that Maggie had. There was a certain . . . reverence . . . for the mystical. But this crap was off the charts. The only way to explain why these men hadn’t killed Delva, Sonia and the rest with ease by now was because they truly believed that they could call on evil spirits and powers. It was the occult that gripped them now, so much so that when Meenie had dragged her in here and tied her to this damn post, his hands were shaking the whole time. More than once he looked at Maggie with a hopelessness in his eyes that she imagined must’ve mirrored her own, his face changing from a mask of fear to a mask of worry, one second to the next, as he mumbled something about “the job”.
Maggie smirked bitterly at the memory. Yeah, Meenie. I’m guessing that you regret taking this one, huh? No matter how much Güero is paying you.
But she didn’t have this same irrational fear that they did. Okay. If she were honest? The inverted crosses really bothered her. But beyond that, survival had to take precedence over fear. If she could just get a hold of one of their guns . . .
The curtain shifted, casting a beam of light across a large cement block nearby that was probably the altar they kept talking about, and then she saw it: Ernesto’s decapitated head, three flies combing back and forth across it until one was brave enough to cross his eyebrow, dance over his eyelid and settle down directly on one of his eyeballs. Her stomach rolled. She diverted her gaze. Around the rest of the altar was a moat of some kind, now smeared with blood, which led to a channel that ran across the floor on the other side of the room and to the outside. She could make out some carvings at the base of one of the corners of the block. They were ornate and looked like owl heads of some kind, but the rest of the block was too hard to make out in the dim light.
Before long, the song and the chants began again. Luisa screamed. Maggie got up on her knees and pulled with all her strength against the post to loosen the ropes. All to no avail.
There was a gurgling sound, then Luisa was choking. A lot. Then she was crying and begging for them to stop. She yelled in pain, probably as they forced her mouth open again, and then there was utter silence for a minute, which felt like a decade, before Luisa’s crying came back and turned into a full-fledged wail.
Maggie Kincaid put her head against the post, closed her eyes and found her way back to all those days of Sunday school, growing up Irish Catholic in an Irish Catholic church. Lord God, Our Father. Please. Save her. Help her. I’m begging you. I can’t do this alone. We need help. Please.
Round and round the prayer went in her head, crossing her lips in whispers, reminding her of catechism and holy water. Her and her little sister Julie. Simpler times that were actually very complicated times, as it turned out. But none of it important now, save for the belief that God was always just one prayer away. Contradictory or not, Maggie wasn’t so sure she was down with the idea of demons and devils roaming the world, but she believed in God’s light at her core.
Finally, someone spoke. It was Sonia.
“What now, strange ladies?”
“We wait,” Delva croaked.
Then, as if to drive just one more dagger into Maggie’s already fading hopes, she added, “Fo
r the girl from The Hanging Forest to find that Stairway and join us. Once here, the fetus will have a host. And we will have succeeded.”
Chapter Sixteen
Father Soltera watched in terror as the fight before him broke out, knowing that his job was to run and find The Stairway, but now he had the added pressure of getting there before Tabitha did. Because if that vision was correct? If she got through? She’d head straight for Luisa.
La Patrona spun around and unleashed a swath of throwing knives in a tight arc. Michiko swung her sword, matching the arc in reverse and managing to deflect all the knives save one, which struck her in the forearm. She grunted and swiped it out of her with one hand as she advanced a few yards into another volley of knives, this time six in all. Four missed, one glanced off her left shoulder and the other sliced a deep line across her right temple. Father Soltera noticed immediately that the blood from Michiko’s cut was pure white, not red. She grimaced and advanced another ten feet, closing the distance between her and La Patrona by half now.
“He killed my sister!” La Patrona shrieked, before reaching to the belt across her chest and producing a handful of throwing stars. Sneering, she cast them with a wicked flick of her arm. They came out of her hand in a wider arc than the knives, but it was as if Michiko had not only expected this move but was counting on it. With blinding speed her sword darted down to the nearest star, up to the next closest and then finally down to the middle star. The sound of metal on metal was not dull and thick, as it had been when she deflected the knives, but lighter and tighter. Dink, dink, dink! Like tiny ricochets. And that’s exactly what they were.
Incredibly, each throwing star was struck and redirected by Michiko’s sword right back at La Patrona, one striking her in the right hand, which she used to protect her face, one into her right thigh and the last one into her chest. She stumbled backwards. Her face melted into rage. Looking to the trees towards the rest of her little darlings, she shouted, “Kill her!”
The Parker Trilogy Page 74