by D V Wolfe
“Did he say where?” I asked, almost coming out of my seat. Before, Walter had never been able to see where the cannibals were. Of course, before, they hadn’t been snacking on supernatural beings that Walter could track.
“Bane,” Rosetta barked again and she stood up, hands braced on the table. “That wasn’t all he saw.”
“What else?” I asked. “Any landmarks? Any phrases that might give me an idea of where…”
“Bane!” Rosetta boomed.
“What?!” I asked, losing the reins on my annoyance.
“Walter saw you,” Rosetta’s face was twitching as if she was trying to hold back some emotion.
“I was there?” I asked. “Did I kill the tribe?”
“Bane,” Rosetta said. “You were dead.”
16
“Dead?” I asked. I’d never heard of Walter having a vision about a hunter. “Wait, Walter only has visions about supernaturals, not regular humans. Are you sure you didn’t mishear him and he only wished I was dead? I mean, we kind of fucked up his house today while we were trying to put his wife to rest.” I looked around the table. Every face was stony. Everyone’s faces were grim, their eyes on me. Everyone except for Noah. He was pale and like me, he was looking from face to face.
“I mean, it can’t be that unusual that there are visions about Bane being dead, right?” he asked.
I didn’t see the conversation starting back up without a nudge so I said, “I think I know who the tall man is.” I could almost see everyone but Stacks and Noah, leaning forward several inches to listen. “It’s the new leader of the H.A.N.D. tribe.”
“What?!” Rosetta, Tags, and Gabe bellowed.
“Yeah,” Stacks said, piping in to confirm. “We saw him.”
“Where?” Rosetta barked, rounding on Stacks. She glared back at me. “You said the cannibals had already left Lancaster…”
“Camera footage,” I said to Rosetta. “From St. Louis.” Stacks got out of his seat and moved down the hall into the living room. He came back with his laptop and started typing.
“I’ll show you,” he said. Rosetta, Tags, and Gabe all stood up and huddled around behind Stacks’ chair to watch.
“Holy shit, that guy is huge,” Tags muttered.
Without taking her eyes off the computer screen, Rosetta reached up behind her and snatched a few hairs out of Tags’ salt and pepper beard. “Watch your mouth when you’re in my house, Taggert Sinclair.” He muttered something and rubbed at his beard before inching away from her.
Rosetta shook her head, still watching the screen. “She’s just an old woman.” Rosetta looked up at me and then Noah. “Sister Smile. She’s been this terrifying creature in my mind for so long.” She looked back down at the screen and cringed. “But seeing this. She’s just an old, frail woman.” She jerked her hand up and poked the screen. “What’s that? What did that man just put on?”
I got up to go re-watch the footage and I stood beside Tags, leaning in. “It’s a necklace,” I said. Rosetta gave me a ‘no duh’ look. “It’s the same symbol we found at the campground. Do you recognize it?”
Rosetta shook her head, squinting at the screen. “I can’t say that I do.”
I moved over to Rosetta’s junk drawer and dug around until I found a marker that wasn’t completely dried out. I grabbed a napkin off the table and sketched the symbol. I handed it to her. “Recognize it now?”
She shook her head, studying the napkin, and then looked up at me. “No. What is it?”
I shook my head. “I know I’ve seen it before. I just can’t remember where.”
Tags reached for the napkin and Rosetta jerked it away. Tags sighed. “May I see it?” Rosetta handed over the napkin and Gabe caught my eye. I grinned and he gave me a wink. Rosetta and Tags were like a living, breathing sitcom sometimes and I was willing to suspend my annoyances at Gabe for a minute to enjoy it. Gabe moved around Rosetta and I traded places with him so that he could study the napkin over Tags’ shoulder. I moved into Gabe’s place next to Rosetta and we watched the tribe’s exit from the building.
Rosetta made a disgusted noise and gave a full-body shiver next to me as we watched the tall man licking his crony’s blood off his fingers. “I think the tribe has traded one psychopath for another.”
“Fear,” Gabe said. “Fear of an old woman with clout has been replaced by fear from a giant of a man who can snap necks with his own hands and rip throats out with his teeth.”
“Well, he’s proven he’s willing to take the tribe’s hearts and minds, one way or...another,” I added.
We were all quiet, staring at the frozen image on the screen when the recorded playback stopped.
“So he’s supposed to kill me?” I asked. “And call down...tornadoes?”
“On the full moon,” Rosetta added. “Which is Friday, four days away.”
“It’s Walter’s code,” Tags said. “Destruction. He’ll bring destruction.”
“Not necessarily,” Stacks said, leaning back to look at Tags. “It could also mean change with the tornadoes clearing a path.”
“Walter said the tornadoes would ‘consume’ everything in their path,” Gabe argued. “He’s obviously talking about the tribe itself.”
“Why would he bother with the ‘tornadoes’ bit then?” Stacks said. “The smiley face in the vision already tells us it’s the tribe.”
“He can’t control what the visions give him. If it gave him a smiley face, a full moon, and tornadoes, he’s telling us about a smiley face, a full moon, and torn…”
“Alright,” Rosetta boomed, interrupting, and ending the discussion. “It’s past four in the morning and way beyond everyone’s bedtimes. So, no one leaves this house tonight.” She glared at me. “Turn in the keys to your modes of transportation to me and find a place to bed down. I expect every one of your sorry hides to be sitting back at this table in time for brunch tomorrow. Eleven-thirty on the dot. Belgium waffles, crepes, omelets, and three breakfast meats. If you’re here, you’re in the clear, if you’re not, you’re gonna get shot. Crystal clear?”
We all muttered that we understood her and Rosetta walked around the table with her hand out, collecting keys. She paused at me.
“Noah and I haven’t brought in all our stuff yet.”
“I’ll help you,” Rosetta growled.
She followed me out to the truck while I grabbed my duffle bag and Noah grabbed the ten gauge and the sawed-off. “Rosetta, this is silly,” I said. “Why are you taking my keys?”
“Because I’m not stupid. Just this last time you were here, you tried to sneak out in the middle of the night. Now hand them over,” Rosetta said, thrusting her hand out at me.
I sighed and handed her Lucy’s keys. Rosetta stuffed them in the pocket on her dress and headed back up the porch steps. Noah and I looked at each other, both of us with raised eyebrows, before following Rosetta back into the house.
“Stacks has already settled into the guest room upstairs,” Rosetta said. “So you three,” she paused to glare around at Noah, Gabe, and I, “will have to bunk down in the living room.”
“What about your other guest room upstairs?” I asked.
Rosetta cut her eyes to Tags. “That’s where Taggert is sleeping.”
Yeah. Sure he was. After what I’d walked in on in the supply closet at the Johnson Meredith building back in St. Louis, I was pretty sure that Tags staying anywhere but Rosetta’s room was a ruse. However, I felt like keeping all of my anatomy attached in its current configuration, so I didn’t challenge her on it.
Rosetta stood in front of the back door and glared around at all of us. “Alright, now scoot. All of you.”
Tags and Stacks lumbered up the stairs and Noah and Gabe headed off to the living room behind me, leaving me and Rosetta alone in the kitchen.
“Rosetta,” I said. “Walter had just seen me. He’d had to relive his wife’s memory. He never has visions about regular, old, human hunters. Don’t you think you’re overreac
ting a little bit?”
Rosetta shook her head slowly. “No, Bane, I don’t. A Harbinger had a vision of your death at the hands of that…” Rosetta looked over at the spot on the table where Stacks’ laptop had just been sitting minutes ago. “...thing. In four days. Four.” Rosetta returned her gaze to my face and locked eyes with me. “You’ve got five months to live and if you die, I know there’s a good chance you won’t make it back up here before the buzzer. I’m sure as hell not going to hand the remaining months of your life over to that monster, even if you’re willing to.”
I felt the heat of anger rising in my face and chest. “Rosetta, those aren’t your months. That decision is mine.”
“We’ll see,” Rosetta said, patting the pocket in her dress where she had Lucy’s keys. “We’ll talk more in the morning when everyone is feeling more rational and less suicidal. I think four am makes everyone suicidal.” Rosetta started moving for the stairs.
“Or homicidal,” I muttered.
“Sleep tight, Bane. I’ll see you for brunch.” She flicked off the kitchen lights as she headed up the stairs and I stood alone in the dark kitchen.
By the time I headed into the living room, Noah had claimed the couch and was already snoring away, and Gabe was stretched out on the floor on top of one of Rosetta’s quilts. He was reading something on his phone. He looked up when I entered and patted the quilt he’d left folded next to his. “I saved you a spot.”
I paused and raised an eyebrow at him. He held up his hands in surrender. “I promise I won’t try anything funny.” He grinned. “I mean unless you want me to.” I sighed. Gabe’s expression turned serious in the low light from the single lamp they’d left on. “Bane, can we...I don’t know, call a truce or something? Just for tonight so we don’t end up brawling on the floor, working out whatever this bullshit is between us?”
I thought it over for a minute, trying to push away the image the thought of ‘brawling on the floor’ with Gabe had just given me. “Just for tonight.” I dropped my duffle bag on the floor and dug out my .45. I checked the clip and the safety and laid it on the floor next to the quilt he’d spread on the floor next to him. I looked around. “Nice spot you left for me. A scenic view of Noah’s dirty sneakers, and your biker boots. Do I detect a hint of foot spray? Man, it’s like mimosas on a summer night.”
“Mimosas the flowering bush or mimosas the alcoholic beverage?” Gabe asked.
“Either,” I said, sitting down next to him. “Both.” I looked over at him. “So where were you when Rosetta shined the Baptist signal and summoned us all here?”
“Glen Park, Virginia,” Gabe said.
“On a job?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Gabe shook his head. “No, Order business.”
“Ah yes, the Order of St. What-the-hell.”
“Raphael,” Gabe said, with a sigh.
I nodded. “Yes, him. How’s Brother Benny doing, by the way? Is he all healed up from his raccoon attack?”
Gabe shook his head. “I should have never told you that story. When you meet him in person, don’t you dare bring it up.”
“Why?” I asked. “And what makes you think I’ll ever meet him?”
“Because,” Gabe said. “When I told you that story, I was drunk and we were naked and Benny knows that’s the only way I would tell someone that story since he swore me to secrecy.”
I shrugged. “So, he’s a monk that sleeps in the nude and likes to eat cake off his stomach while he’s falling asleep. And he tends to sleep with the window in his cell open, in the monastery, in the woods, with the wild animals. I kind of feel worse for the raccoon who had the shit scared out of him when Benny woke up and threw him across the room.”
Gabe groaned. “See, this is why I should sew my mouth shut when I’m with you and drinking.”
I grinned at the look of defeat on Gabe’s face. “Well it would be hard to do the drinking part then...or the being with me part,” I said. The words were out of my mouth before I realized how that had sounded. “Because we fight all the time,” I said, quickly.
Now Gabe was grinning at my discomfort. “You’re right,” he said, his smile getting wider as I felt the heat rising in my face. I turned away from him. He hadn’t answered my question about why he thought I’d ever meet Brother Benny, but I didn’t want to bring it up again. I had a feeling that I knew where that line of questioning would go and it would feel like ripping out old stitches to pull the skin apart and look at the wound underneath. I had a job, he had a ‘destiny’ and they were two parallel lines with no crossover. Our mutual interest in the tribe was the only reason I could think of that would explain why Gabe’s Order had let him off assignment long enough to come to Ft. Hope and take part in Rosetta’s dramatics. I flopped back on the quilt and stared up at the ceiling. Gabe set his phone down on his chest and we were both still. I could hear his deep, steady breathing beside me.
“Do you think there’s really anything to Walter’s vision?” I asked.
“Yes,” Gabe said. “He’s a Harbinger and he’s never been wrong.”
“So you think tall-dark-and-bloody is going to punch my ticket?” I asked. I didn’t wait for him to answer. I shrugged. “I guess it’s a nice change from continuously hearing from Rosetta and Nya that big Dukey demon is going to do it. Nice to have different types of fiber in my doomsday diet.”
“Bane,” Gabe said, and his voice was much quieter now. “I don’t know what Walter’s vision actually means. I’ve seen you come through some impossible situations, beaten to hell and bloody, sure, but you survived. I have to say, I’m a little skeptical about some crazed cannibal being able to end you.”
“Thanks,” I said quietly. “For the vote of confidence.” I hadn’t been expecting Gabe to say anything that didn’t start with ‘you’re screwed’. My hand was by my side and I could feel the soft heat rolling off of his hand, an inch from mine. Before I did something stupid, I sat up. “I’ll get the light.” I moved over to turn off the lamp and glanced down at Noah who was mouth open, snoring, and drooling on the arm of Rosetta’s couch. I switched the light off and felt my way back to my spot on the floor.
“Of course,” Gabe said in the dark. “I’ve been wrong before.”
I swung out with the couch pillow he’d left for me and I grinned in satisfaction when I heard a muffled cry of shock as it connected with his face. “Good night, jerk.” I rolled over, facing away from him.
“Night, Bane,” Gabe said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
To say brunch was a chilly affair would be an understatement. It started in complete silence as we all wandered to the table. Rosetta had been banging around in the kitchen for two hours before we were supposed to join her and so we’d all been awake, listening to her composing her pot and pan aria, “Brunch in Hell”, debating whether we should go ask her if she needed help or just pretend to be asleep to avoid one of the pre-meditated ass-chewings that were clearly brewing in her head. At eleven-fifteen, Gabe, Noah, Stacks, and I were sitting at the table, alternating between watching Rosetta and evaluating how quickly we could get out the back door if we needed to. I thought I was ready for anything, but then Rosetta turned around to look at all of us and the hard smile on her face scared the shit out of me.
“Good morning, all,” she said in an eerily cheerful voice. “How did everyone sleep?” She kept that hard smile on her face, her eyes focusing on each of us like a predator, waiting for us to answer her.