Serena saw it as her opportunity to land a jab at me. “The jury is still out on that one,” she said. “But it doesn’t look good in his favor.”
Harry started sweating. He looked at Serena. “Do you know what the Recurrence is?”
I snapped my gun in and covered the Glock with my coat. “Of course we know.”
“You’ll never make it back,” he said. “Even if you make it to wherever you’re trying to get to, if it’s the Recurrence, you’ll get lost and end up spending a thousand years in a dimension that hates you.”
From my peripheral vision, I could see that Augie was visibly upset.
“What’s he talking about?” Augie asked. “Why won’t we make it out?”
“The Recurrence is a land of nightmares,” Landon said, gesturing with his hands. He moved two fingers like it was a person walking and being swallowed up by his other hand, as if it was a pair of jaws. “You are literally walking through people’s nightmares, the things they fear the most. The things that haunt people for their entire life. Dread, death, destruction. These are the things you’ll encounter, but they’ll be even worse than you can imagine, because they’re in the form of monsters.” He put on his best pirate accent. “There be monsters here.”
The blood drained from Augie’s face. He ran his fingers through his hair and scowled.
“Harry,” I said, “where’s the gateway?”
“There is no gateway.”
I sighed heavily. I hated when people wasted my time by lying. “You wouldn’t have given your dramatic performance about the perils of the Recurrence if you didn’t have a gateway in mind. If you didn’t go there before. You would have simply said you don’t know.” I leaned forward. “Tell me where it is.”
He bit his lip. Then smiled. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”
I cracked my knuckles. “Tell me where it is.”
“If I tell you now, you’ll just kill me,” he said. “Or worse, break my vintage Super Friends toys like you did last time.”
“I already apologized for that,” I said. “I didn’t know they were vintage.”
“They were irreplaceable!”
“Fine, you can come with us,” I said.
“But I want something in return,” he said.
“Everybody wants something.”
“I want some Forever blood.”
“Forget it,” I said. “Why?”
“I have my reasons, Solomon.”
“If that blood got in the wrong hands, you have no idea what it would do,” I said. “People would kill to get a vial of their blood.”
“I’m willing to take that risk.”
“I’m not,” I said. “Why do you want it, Harry?”
He unbuttoned his shirt over his chest. He had a scar from his collarbone to his naval. From surgery. “I’m dying, Solomon. Congestive heart failure. The chambers of my heart aren’t filling with enough blood.” He buttoned his shirt back up. “They’ve done everything they can. I’m on a wait-list, but I’m at the bottom. Seven hundred people are on that list. And I have crappy insurance. Why would they save a forty-nine-year-old overweight philosophy professor when they can save a five-year-old girl who was born that way? It’s better for PR.”
“How long?” I asked.
“The doctors say I have six months. It’s out of their hands now. Forever blood is the only thing that can heal me.”
I glimpsed Augie and Serena. They were looking at each other, unsure of what to say.
So I said it for all of us. And said what they were thinking. “Cry me a river, Harry. Break out the pity party. Want some cheese with your whine?”
Harry jumped off the couch and stomped to the kitchen. He grabbed a bag of Doritos and stuffed his face. “You are such a fucking asshole, Solomon.”
I crossed my arms. “Are you going to help us or do I have to persuade you?”
“What are you going to do to me that hasn’t already been done? Break my fingers? Torture me?” The Doritos fell out of his mouth as he walked back to the couch.
I didn’t have time for tact. Or time to play the long game. No chance for subtlety. We needed to get to the point.
“You have six months, Harry,” I said, cracking the knuckles of my right hand. “You could have six minutes.”
“You’re still such a dickbitch, Solomon,” he said. “I’ll help you. I suppose I have to, don’t I?” He licked the cheese off his fingers. “But I’m still not telling you where the gateway is until we get there. When do we leave?”
“There’s something we have to do first,” I said. “A piece of the puzzle we have to retrieve. We’ll contact you when we’re ready.”
At this moment, Harry was probably thinking he would ditch us again. He’d pack his bags and by tomorrow morning he’d be gone. I knew Harry. Fear would get the best of him. I had to protect him from himself.
I got up and moved away from the table. “Serena?”
Serena walked toward Harry and climbed on his lap.
Harry smiled. “If this is your new torture tactic, Solomon, I have to say, it’s improved.”
She started grinding on his crotch. She pulled his face into her breasts. Kissed his cheek. His neck. And pulled his mouth into hers, giving him the deepest, most sensual kiss he ever had.
At least one he didn’t pay for.
When she pulled away, she whispered in his ear. “Did you like that?”
He was speechless, but he nodded, yearning for more. Serena stepped off him and walked to my side.
I said, “Harry, you’ve just been tagged.”
He scrunched his brow. “Tagged?”
Serena cast a shrewd smile. “I can now find you anywhere, anytime. Whether you’re in this dimension or the next. You can’t escape me.”
You could see his mind working as he processed the situation.
And then it hit him. “Oh, shit. You put a spell on me.” With her arms crossed, she nodded. “I should have known,” he said, wiping her taste off his lips. “No one would ever kiss me like that. You’re probably using a Glamour Spell right now, aren’t you? An illusion? Have the years been unkind, Serena? You probably turned into a ninety-year-old hag who could turn steel into rubber with one look, am I right?”
“Not all of us are hags, Harry,” she said.
I handed Harry my phone. “Add your number. The correct one.” He punched in his number. I called it back. His phone rang. He gave me a dirty look. “Just checking.” We headed to the door. I turned back one last time. “If you try to run, you’ll be visited by the worst kinds of monsters.”
Serena added her own flavor. “They’ll eat you from the inside out, Harry. Slowly.”
Harry grumbled. “I hate you all.”
We left down the hall with one purpose in mind: find Alexander Poe. But if we were going to survive, I needed people by my side who could handle themselves.
I needed to teach August McKenzie how to fight.
Chapter 16
A Diamond in the Rough
We all slept in a hotel until morning. I got Serena her own room, which neither she nor Augie appreciated. Serena, because she wanted to cause dissension and mess with me. Augie, because he wanted a piece of ass.
I found a park off the beaten path. Out of the way of any main roads and almost completely forgotten about by the public. And being Sunday morning, most people were at church anyway. We were alone to do our training.
I set several weapons on the picnic table, including the demon knife, my Glock, and a butterfly knife. Serena sat at the table, sucking on a lollipop she bought at the 7-Eleven. Personally, I think she just wanted to distract Augie. It wouldn’t take much.
Augie jumped up and down like an idiot, pretending to be Muhammad Ali, trying to psyche himself up. “I’m ready, bro. Let’s do this.”
“Did you learn anything from last time?” I asked, setting my coat on the table.
“Not to let my guard down. And yesterday, I was in no shape to fight. But now?
I just sucked down a two liter of Mountain Dew and twenty ounces of Amp. I’m ready to go.”
I opened a fresh can of Killer Grape energy drink. I gulped it down. The flavor danced on my palate like a swarm of tiny ballroom dancers doing the cha-cha.
Augie stopped and stared. “What is with you and that drink? You have a dozen empty grape cans in your truck.”
I smacked my tongue against my teeth. “Ahhh. Refreshing.” I set the can on the table. “Every other flavor, strawberry, cherry, even lemonade, they all taste different depending on the drink. Grape is the only flavor that’s consistent. Reliable. No matter what kind of drink you get, Grape will always be grape.”
“Grape is grape. Got it,” he said. “Come on. Let’s do this. Finish your can of grape so I can give you a new one.”
“A new can?” I asked.
“I have a new can of whoop ass for you and I don’t know how much longer I can hold it.”
I sighed. He set me up for that one. I walked from the table and put my hands behind my back. “Show me what you got.”
“No hands, right?”
“No hands.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
“Here comes the fury, bro.” He danced around like a moron, having watched too many Rocky movies. He swung at me. I leaned right. His fist cut through the air with such momentum, he almost fell down on his own.
He turned and sprung at me. I drove my knee into his gut, spun around and swept his feet with my right foot. He dropped like a bag of bricks.
“That looks like it hurt, Jean Claude,” I said.
“You got lucky.” Lying on his back, he put his hands above him and tried to kick himself into a standing position, like they do in Kung Fu movies. It’s called a kip-up. And he was failing miserably. He ended up falling forward on his face. He finally gave up and got to his feet normally.
He started kicking. His kicks sucked. They were quick and fierce, but the only danger was him kicking his leg out of its own socket. When he kicked the third time, I bent down and knocked his standing leg out from under him. He crashed on his tailbone.
He yanked a handful of grass from the earth and chucked it at me with an angry grunt. After taking his frustrations out on the grass, he jumped up, roared, and charged me.
Why he thought charging at me would have a different effect than any of his other attacks, I did not know.
So I charged back.
Out of fear, he stopped short. I rammed into him, sending him flying across the lawn. I didn’t remember having this much fun in a fight before.
Serena sat at the picnic table, clapping and laughing her head off. “August McKenzie. My hero. Bravo, Superman. Bravo.”
There are very few things in the world that hurt more to a man than a beautiful woman laughing at him.
On his hands and knees, Augie peeled his face from the grass and pounded the dirt. “Okay, I suck,” he said. “You proved your point.”
“The point isn’t that you’re a crappy fighter,” I said, relaxing my hands to my sides. “The point is you have a lot to learn. If you can’t stand up to me without my hands, you certainly can’t fight Forevers or any other type of monster.”
“What was I supposed to learn with this exercise?”
“First, you looked at my jaw before you tried punching it.”
“I have to look where I’m punching.”
“Never give your opponent the opportunity to see your actions before you take them. You’re telegraphing your intent. Might was well turn on a blinker and tell them where you’re going next.”
“Where should I be looking? The sky?”
“Don’t be a smart ass,” I told him. Serena giggled loudly. She was in a laughing fit and couldn’t stop. Or didn’t want to. Augie was turning red, embarrassed at being laughed at. I looked back at the witch. “Will you stop?”
She pretended to zip up her lips and throw away the key. She stopped laughing, more or less. The occasional giggle escaped under her breath.
I returned to Augie. “Look your opponent in the eyes when you fight, not the point you’re aiming for. You’re telegraphing your move when you do.”
“Look in his eyes. Don’t show my next move. Got it. What else?”
He was hungry to learn. He may have been a 150-pound weakling, but he had spirit. And was teachable. Two things that matter the most in life.
He started practicing his worthless kicks again, kicking wildly in the air.
I grimaced. “My grandmother kicks better than you and she’s on a walker.”
“Very funny,” he said, dropping both feet to the ground. “Did you just want to humiliate me or is there an actual lesson here?”
“Mostly humiliation,” I said, grinning. “But when you kick, you leave yourself open for attack. You’re not ready to kick in a fight. Don’t do it.”
He stopped kicking and looked at me, dumbfounded. “How is your grandmother still alive anyway?”
“She’s in the grave. And she can still kick better than you.”
“Whatever, dude. What else you got?”
“Your last attack was in anger. You attacked in frustration.”
“So? You were kicking my ass. I was sick of it.”
“Don’t use emotion when you’re fighting. Emotion is energy in motion. It’s meant to be your fuel, not your steering wheel. Never let it decide your actions or you’ll lose every time. You need to be objective, to think straight. You can’t do that when you’re emotional.”
“Don’t get emotional. I’ll put a pin in it.”
“And when I charged, you hesitated.”
“Because you have twice the muscle mass I do. I’m a skinny dude,” he said. “I thought you’d demolish me. And you did.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think. Or believe. You let fear control you. It’s the courageous who run into the fire, knowing they might not make it out. It’s the coward that runs away.”
“Busting my balls again?”
“No, a lesson.”
He scraped the grass off his jeans. “What was I supposed to do? Keep charging? You would’ve killed me.”
“I killed you anyway. But now you lost honor and respect. Not to mention self-esteem.”
“Geez, thanks.”
“Rule number three,” I said. “Burn your boat.”
“What does that mean?”
“Go into battle with no way out. It’s either do or die.”
“Keep my dignity and die in the process,” he said. “Got it.” He meandered to the picnic table. “I’m just not good at fisticuffs. I would do better with a weapon.”
“You’re not ready for that yet.”
“You always say I’m not ready. I think I am.” He grabbed my butterfly knife and unlatched it. He flung it around his fingers like a pro, like it was a part of him, opening and closing the blade in a spectacular and graceful dance. I knew that dance. I invented it. It was mine.
I moved toward him. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“That move. Have you ever handled a butterfly knife before?”
“No,” he said. “I’m just messing around. I’m surprised I didn’t cut off my finger doing that.”
I reached for the knife. He closed it quickly and gave it to me. “Let me see your hand. Open it.” I examined his hand and turned it over. He didn’t cut himself. Not once. Not a single scratch. Which was impossible if it was his first time with a butterfly knife.
When I fist learned, I bled so much I couldn’t use my hand for weeks.
I set it on the table and grabbed the demon knife. The blade is a foot long and three inches thick at the hilt. The handle is made of iron and gold knitted together in an organic pattern.
It was forged by a fallen angel who cast it in the bowels of Hell.
Not many people can handle a weapon like this. Not without cutting their hand off by accident. I flipped it around and handed it to him. “Try this.”
“No way?” He had a huge grin on his face. He took the blade and admired it. “Awesome.”
I walked several yards away and braced, hoping he wouldn’t trip and impale himself with it. “I want you to attack me with it.”
“What if I cut you?”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I’ve come back from worse.”
“I’ve never fought with a knife before,” he said.
“Let go of your logic,” I said. “Feel the blade and let it do what it was built to do. It has a purpose. Let it fulfill that purpose.”
“Be the ball,” he said. “Yes, sir.”
He came at me. I dodged easy. He waved the blade around like he was in West Side Story. He dived at me. I jumped back. He stabbed. I moved.
None of his attempts connected. Maybe my suspicions were wrong.
He stopped moving around like a monkey. Stood straight up. Shifted the blade in his hand and pointed it down. He ran toward me.
He seemed almost possessed. He jumped through the air, higher than I thought possible. I grabbed his wrist and rolled him over me, grabbing the knife from his grip in the process.
He rolled sloppily across the grass. I threw the knife at his feet, the blade sticking in the grass in front of him. He grabbed it, switched hands, and moved in a way I’ve rarely seen a human move. It looked like a Chinese martial art called Wushu. And it takes years of practice to perfect.
Before today, this kid could barely walk straight.
His feet flailed through the air in organized and systematic kicks. I blocked, but the blade came at me from above. I grabbed his wrist and, using his momentum against him, rolled him over me and out of the way, putting distance between us.
The knife swayed between his fingers with ease, spinning between hands like an extension of his body.
He dropped it in the air as he twisted his body off balance, catching it with the other hand. The blade moved up his arm as his hand slid behind his back to catch it. The knife switched between hands so fast I couldn’t keep up.
It looked like he was performing drunken boxing technique, using the knife with the movements of his body, hands and legs. That should be impossible for Augie.
Memoirs of a Monster Killer: Killing Forever Book 1 Page 9