by J. R. Rain
By now, holding hands, we’ve walked almost all the way back to my house. I’ve been aware of cars’ headlights for some time, of movement, of dark shapes passing through us, of voices, and doors slamming in the land of the living, but only with a part of me; my consciousness these past few minutes has been totally focused on the boy lieutenant beside me, who’s just so utterly gorgeous and adorable that I don’t want to ever give him up. Or even leave his side again.
Then I hear a woman’s scream and the distinctive sharp, echoing firecracker banging of gunshots. Two of them. Coming from inside my house.
“Oh God!” Tamara―Kitty! A sudden horrifying sense of panic sweeps through me. “I have to go. Something’s happening.” I wrench my hand from his and take off at a dead run.
“I’m coming with you,” Wiley calls after me, and I’m aware of him following me. We cross my neighbor’s lawn, then mine. I’m just approaching my front door when suddenly my lifeline snaps taut like a bungee cord―and I find myself suddenly in bed in my fleshly body again.
Staring straight up into the face of Val Tabori.
ut he’s not a Val I know anymore. Maybe it’s the flickering light from the ring of candles on the floor illuminating him from below. Or maybe it’s the spooky werewolf expression on his face. Or maybe it’s me coming fresh from smooching Wiley Fontenot, whose features were filled with nothing but a bittersweet intelligence and a whole universe of tenderness and concern.
I don’t want to talk about what happens next. In fact, I don’t even want to think about it.
But I’m a cop, and it’s my job to get the facts down straight. If I were filing a report on this I’d call it a “0265. Criminal Sexual Assault Aggravated: Other.” In this case the “other” is Nancy, who’s pinning me down while Val criminally sexually assaults me. My bedclothes—and the salt in their pockets—have been removed, and I’m under her control. I’m helpless to move or resist, no matter how hard I try. I’ve got that same sick sense of powerlessness I had the night I shot Dooriya Uwanawich and Boiko Marks in Rosedale, the same tunnel vision and feeling of physical detachment. I’ve been summoned. I’m being controlled.
“I told you I wanted a baby from you, Richelle,” Val grunts at one point. “You obviously weren’t paying attention. I want a dhampyr, a son who will be immortal.”
Nancy reaches across me to slap him in the face. “Just get on with it, futubulangiu!” she says.
Which is when I realize they’re a couple—and almost certainly have been all along. That realization, the full knowledge of just how totally I’ve been tricked and used and manipulated, actually hurts worse than anything Val is doing to me at the moment.
They’re a couple, she and Val. It’s been the Gypsy Princess in charge all along―this was her plan right from the start.
She’s the one with the natural adolescent talent for working the possession magic; her aunt just mixes the stinkweeds and sprinkles the blood around and lights the candles and carries the bucket. It’s Nancy who made me shoot those two―and who made poor Burchhalter tear the Trapanis and their guests from limb to limb and then feast on the remains.
So there is absolutely nothing this monster won’t do. And I fell for her Little Miss Innocent act…she must have phoned Val the moment I was in bed and told him I was safely stuffed with salt and out of the picture. But why? To kill me and then bring me back to life again so that her lover Val could have his heart’s desire: to beget a son on my undead body.
So what’s in it for her? To possess me for her own ends, I figure, whatever those might turn out to be… Gana Kali was just the instrument, the one who supplied the magical know-how to get the ceremony done. And speaking of the old witch; here she is now, watching us from the doorway like in a bad dream.
She’s not quite the same Gana Kali I remember. No, I guess this version must be “Donna Nicholls;” she’s wearing a blue business suit with pearl earrings and an expensive silver necklace around her bullfrog throat; her hair has even been dyed a dark purple and professionally styled. She could be a successful, if overweight and grossly unpleasant-looking, lawyer or business executive. She sprinkles something from a chalice at me. Blood. And I recognize the all-too-familiar stench of wormwood and angelica root.
From somewhere else in the house, I hear Sluggo barking. Does that mean Kitty’s okay? And what about Tamara?
And then she’s in the room, too, her face frozen in terror and half-covered in blood.
But it’s not Tamara, not the living woman; I realize that what I’m seeing is her ghost. A ghost who’s saying my name over and over in a confused tone, as if she’s wandering all alone in a fog. “Rishya? Rishya?” Fuck, they’ve murdered her! I try to open my mouth, to tell her I’m sorry. But no words come out, and I can’t even close my eyes. Catching them, looking deep into them, Tamara’s expression turns slowly to one of sorrow and compassion. And love.
When it’s finally over, Val mutters to Nancy, “Help me get her dressed, chel.” Then looking down at me again, he smiles. Her blow has left a dark red mark on his cheek the color of wine. “You’ve got a big night ahead of you, Mommy. You’re going to rob the Money Ship for us…”
So everything the girl told me was a lie. The shipment is tonight, not tomorrow night. And instead of having Bull and the Gimp on hand to maybe help bail me out in some way, I’ve got them down at the docks scoping out shipping containers. Normally they’d check in with Lorna. But where the hell is Lorna?
Not that anyone can save me right now. Nancy—if that’s even her name—is in control, manipulating my movements like I’m a puppet or a doll she’s dressing. She puts me back in my regulation slacks and a dirty blouse with no bra under it, then makes me put on my cop shoes. Tying the laces using my fingers turns out to be too much for her, though, so Val, who’s now put most of his own clothes back on, kneels down to tie them for her. For me. He’s strapped on his shoulder holster, and if I could only move my hand a foot or so, I could grab the Sig Sauer from it and put a bullet through his head. I strain to do this with all the will at my command, with all my heart and soul…
It’s so weird that just this afternoon I was wondering whether or not Val might really be falling in love with me, whether what we had was really going somewhere, whether I could love him back and maybe live happily with him ever after. Ha fucking ha. Now all I want to do is kill him.
But I can’t. I can’t break free of the Gypsy girl’s hold over me; she’s my puppet master. Or mistress or whatever. After he’s done tying my shoes, Val straightens up and puts my Kevlar vest on over my blouse. Then he pats my belly. “To protect the baby…”
Which is how I know I’m really gonna hate whatever it is he’s got planned for me next.
On the way out of the house, I have to step over Rabbi Tamara’s body in the living room. There isn’t much blood, and they don’t give me time even to look down at her, but I’m filled with a terrible desolate sorrow―and guilt―at the brief glimpse I get of her. Somehow, I swear to myself, I’ll avenge her, even if it’s the last thing I do. I don’t see Kitty―or Lorna or Sluggo. I hear my cell phone ringing in my bedroom as the front door is closed behind me. I’m on my own.
We set off in a single car, one of the silver Mercedes; but I’m vaguely aware of headlights behind us, so there’s at least one more, no doubt filled with the murderous Horvath brothers. They’re probably armed to the teeth with automatic weapons; in addition to his Siggy, Val has the illegal Winchester 12 gauge shotgun Quirk gave me, along with an AK-47 that looks suspiciously like the one the brother of his victim was carrying in the jewelry store, and both Nancy and the foul-smelling Gana Kali, who is crammed into the back seat beside me, are packing handguns. So am I; Val tucked the two drop pieces the captain gave me into my belt, so now I look like Annie Oakley. Or Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde, who died in a hail of bullets.
Obviously, Nancy will make me fire them when she’s good and ready. Hopefully. Wherever we’re going, whatever she and Val
have in mind, I’m just praying she won’t make me use my bare hands instead―or my teeth…
At the very least, tonight is going to cost me my career, I know. Even if I somehow get out of all of this physically intact, which seems unlikely to me given the small arsenal we’re taking along with us. But that’s how the Romani ride these days. We Romani.
It’s begun to rain, and once we get on the freeway, this becomes a heavy downpour. Water sluices down the windshield between each stroke of the wiper blades; caught by the illumination of oncoming headlights, the remaining drops seem to form hundreds of demonic little faces before being wiped away and then reforming. The Gypsy girl keeps fiddling with the car stereo, hopping from radio station to station and turning the music up too loud; Val, who is driving, constantly reaches over to switch it off. Then Nancy sulks and lights a fresh cigarette, the smoke from which blows back in my face. Gana Kali and Val keep up a running dialogue about where we’re going, half in English, half in Romani cant; I can barely understand a word in either, her voice is so coarse and her accent so thick. When she isn’t talking, she just stares sideways at me, her eyes glittering like a poisonous toad’s.
“You are dindla to use this one,” she suddenly says to Val or Nancy, it’s not clear which. Maybe both of them. “She is big trouble.”
“Oh mam, the other one’s in bengratem,” says Nancy defensively. They switch to Romani and begin to argue. Finally, Val yells at them to shut up. They pay him no attention at the time, but after a while, the girl turns the radio back on.
Bengratem, huh? I remember that “beng” means devil, so bengratem must mean hell. Maybe this means that Burchalter and Howell are off her grid, have disappeared from her sight and she can’t find them, so she just assumes they’re dead. So maybe I should have listened to the advice I gave the boot and moved out of my house, gone someplace they didn’t know where to find me to spend the nights in the salt. If I had, Tamara would likely be alive now…
It’s a long drive. When possessed, I seem to have no way of keeping track of time, but from the tunnel-vision glimpses I get of the dashboard clock, I’d guess an hour has passed. Traveling north from the city, past subdivisions and small towns whose lights become fewer and more spread out as we go. Traffic has thinned. We turn off the main interstate highway, then drive up into the foothills, then into a mountainous spur. By now, the rain has turned into an occasional drizzle with fog, and Val is forced to slow down.
“Kai!” Gana Kali barks suddenly, and we make a slow turn on the mountain road. The trees on either side are illuminated by the red and blue flashers of a police Marsbar, and I see that one of the city squad cars is turned horizontally in the road, blocking it to traffic. There’s a line of red flares across the rain-soaked blacktop in front of it. Someone is standing in the darkness ahead, waving us on with a bright Maglite, and I see it’s the uniform rookie, Brady Howell. So the guy didn’t get away after all. I think of his poor wife, waiting for him at home. But who summoned him?
I suddenly realize from the hand gestures she’s making in the front seat that little Nancy is pulling his strings, too! But how the fuck is she doing that? How is it even possible for her to divide her consciousness like that? She must be like a symphony conductor, playing several instruments at a time. While smoking…
Howell is all alone in the night and without a partner. Almost certainly, like me, he’s not on duty. The department isn’t going to miss either of us. Until tomorrow, if then. Whatever the Gypsies have planned for us, we’ll have to get out of it on our own somehow.
Some kind of ambush is my guess. After we pass the patrol car, we turn onto a gravel path and climb sharply until we’re hidden from the road by the trees. There are two, no three, sets of headlights behind us as we slow to a halt. Val turns off the engine and gets out, followed by the two women. I’m left alone in the darkened back seat, as helpless to move as if I were stuffed with salt.
Except…no, I’m not. After all, this is no different than when I’m lying asleep in my own bed, right? So I float up and out of my body and through the roof of the car, slowly revolving as I float up toward the treetops. A heavy fog is rolling in now, hiding the peaks and shrouding the road in white shadow. The men in the silver Mercedes behind us have spilled out of its doors, their arms bristling with AKs, as a third vehicle, a brand-new Toyota 4Runner that looks freshly jacked, pulls up to park behind them. For a moment, I feel slightly disoriented―I’d been certain there had been another car behind that one. Then I spot something through the dark trees and the fog: ghost lights.
Meantime, the men from the cars are fanning out. One group, which includes the three Horvath brothers I spotted at the auto parts junkyard, walks past us and up the gravel track back toward the road. The other moves through the tree trunks down toward the place we’ve just come from, where the patrol car is parked. I float higher, over the treetops to hover above the stretch of road. Howell has laid down another line of red flares, cutting a stretch of the little two-lane mountain highway off from the three or four vehicles that, even at this time of night, have shown up to idle behind him. He’s waiting for something―we all are.
I swoop lower and try to gain the attention of his astral self; however, it’s trapped in his body and has its eyes tightly shut. Then I notice that one of the cars idling on the other side of the squad car looks familiar. As I spot it, Malena Ayon gets out, holding her badge. She must have spotted them taking me out of the house and then followed the Gypsy caravan all the way out here. All at once I realize that now she’s headed over to talk to Howell. Who will probably just shoot her down.
I land in the road just in front of her and shout her name. But she doesn’t hear―and walks right through me.
nd I find myself suddenly back in my own body, the Winchester being pressed into my hands. My detective’s shield has been attached to the outside of my bulletproof vest by Val, and his little girlfriend now sends me crashing through the undergrowth between the trees down to the highway below. As I approach the emergency flares and the multicolored mini-inferno of the police flashers, I spot Mal trying to talk to Brady Howell, the zombie boot. He’s got his Mossberg pointed at her in the very act of pulling the trigger.
Which is when it hits me how impossible it must be for Nancy to completely control both of us at the same time. Unless she’s making us do the same shit at the same time, like a pair of dancing marionettes, her consciousness must sort of split itself between us. You know, focusing on one of us for a few seconds before zeroing back in on the other. So there must be some moment in between I can take advantage of. It’s my only hope at this point.
Because I’m frantic inside at the thought of having to just stand there and watch Mal get killed tonight, too. As Howell’s finger tightens on his trigger, I pull mine. I don’t even know how, it must be one of those moments when Nancy is divided between us. Whatever, I’ve already assumed the same stance as Howell has, and my 12-gauge blast hits the rear passenger-side window of the patrol car and blows it out, scattering glass everywhere. A couple seconds later, this is followed by Howell’s shotgun going off. Luckily, Malena has already ducked, and it misses her. Her reaction to the twin blasts is faster than either of ours, jolted as we both are by the heavy recoil of the weapons; she scuttles back behind the police car and runs up off the road and into the trees.
Both the Winchester and the Mossberg are pump-action shotguns holding six shells, but neither of us has time to recover and fire after her now. We are interrupted by a blaze of approaching headlights from the opposite direction, those of a big rig rumbling down the road. Howell and I turn to face their glare, raising our weapons and aiming them at the driver.
Who doesn’t stop. Instead, the horns of his tractor-trailer start blaring.
The rig bears down on us, the first of a convoy of three huge tractor-trailer 18-wheelers in a row decked out with lights like outdoors Christmas displays. In that instant, I realize the Maltese Money Ship was never a “ship”, merely
a shipment, traveling overland in the middle of the night. But it seems impossible that there could be that much marked money in the world, enough to fill three big semis; surely they’ve hidden stacks of cash inside a legitimate shipment of something else, something that got them through weighing stations and state highway patrol inspections. And now they intend to keep on going right through us. Behind me, car doors slam and a woman’s voice calls out in panic. People in the line of idling cars are bailing―just like they ought to. But I’m still stuck standing in the convoy’s path.
It comes closer. And closer. Until I’m blinded by the headlights of the first truck, all but deafened by the roaring of its engine and horns. Then Howell and I both fire at the same time. The truck’s windshield dissolves, and I see the dark shape of the driver jerk in his seat. We both pump our weapons and squeeze off another round, and that’s all the time we have before I have to dive to one side, hitting the road hard, then rolling, scrabbling at the hard wet pavement between the guttering red police flares.
The truck’s cab whooshes past, so close I’m actually bowled aside by its slipstream, to crash headlong into the side of the patrol car. Tires scream and skid, leaving trails of rubber as the rig jackknifes, pushing the car along in front of it like the nose of a hammerhead shark. It’s still honking. I’m too busy scrambling away from the looming trailer to look behind me, but I hear the metallic crunch of the police car smashing into the first of the cars behind it, then the second. The trailer leans over me but somehow doesn’t tip completely over onto me. Slowly, the whole moving wreckage grinds to a halt.
For a few seconds, everything is quiet, except for the hydraulic squealing of the two big rigs behind the first truck as they slam on their brakes. One after the other, they shudder to a full stop behind the wreckage. For a fraction of a second, everything falls almost silent. Then all hell breaks loose. First, the gas tank of one of the smashed-up cars explodes with an echoing whoomph. Then the loud chatter of the AKs starts up from both sides of the road, echoing back from the rocks and trees. This is answered by automatic weapons fire from the men tumbling out of the two remaining semis.