by Russ Linton
The sudden movement ripped the wedged musket from the soldier’s hands. Dropping the table, one quick thrust into his chest and he was next up for the Thanos snap. Through the fog of black powder and enemies going out like a bong hit, I keyed in on the leader.
Smoke cleared and the officer whipped out his sword in one swift and deadly move, saluted, and dropped into a guard.
Naw, this wasn’t a duel. No fair fights. I released the wrist sheath holding the sacrificial knife.
Before I could make a cut, the officer was on me. Clumsily, I swatted his blows aside. One after another they fell in a constant ringing of steel. I backpedaled toward the pub.
The bartender had already started our way. He stopped short as we came shuffling out of the tearoom in a flare of sharp edges and deadly points.
Convention guy looked up, a smile replacing his confusion. “Damn! I gotta get in on this con action!”
Phones were coming out of pockets and purses. 9-11 calls? Nope, time to go viral. Every lens pointed our way. People completely disconnected from the danger of two guys flashing razor-sharp yardsticks in a tight space.
The officer lunged with another rapid swipe. The swing gave me an opening and I went for it. He deftly switched up the sharpened edge, an effortless criss-cross.
He didn’t need any power on that serve. The ghostly blade bit into the heel of my swinging hand and cut deep. A frigid pain seared up my arm. I gasped and the Shaw Sword tumbled to the floor. I went down with it, pulling my arm close.
I held Atofo’s knife out to keep him off me. Not that I could parry with the short knife. But having my uninjured hand on the same side as the shoulder holster made the Scorpion a tricky draw. I didn’t have another choice.
“By my authority granted by the Spanish Crown and dominion over these here lands, you are under arrest! Surrender yourself or die!”
I understood what he said this time. I wasn’t the only one. Convention guy applauded enthusiastically. The owner shouted he was calling the cops. Half the bar had cleared out, but too many had stuck around for the finale.
But I wasn’t about to see another jail cell, This World or elsewhere. And Spanish dominion? El Capitan needed a history lesson.
I lowered the knife and bent forward. I had to play up the show of pain and surrender. Okay, so the pain wasn’t an act. And dragging my injured hand across the floor only made that worse.
The officer’s sword had sliced deep. No arteries hit, but plenty of blood flowed. Blood I needed.
I drew half of the circle on my injured side before settling back on my heels. Staring him in the eye, the oddly perfect hole in his head an empty void, I swept my arm and drew what I could reach. Nearly done, I had to dip the fingers of my right hand in the blood to reach behind me.
“What sort of devilry is this?” The officer watched with a disgusted frown.
“Hey Toya! Hey Toya!” I called out into the hushed pub.
I began the chant which Atofo had used to dump me in the deep end. The one where I got a nice welcome from his fellow trapped souls. I wondered if they maybe had something to say about Spanish dominion around here.
“Stop this, at once!”
“Too late. Happy hour is about to get lit.” With a powerful stab, I drove Atofo’s knife into the bloodied circle.
Nothing happened. I thought the spell had misfired. All my draggin’ cinched right up – here lies Ace, stabbed to death in ye olde Publick House, establishment of merriment and on fleek facial hair. Were these summoned spirits going to leave me hanging? This was some serious mojo and those friends of Atofo’s were always hungry to spend any amount of time in This World.
Then a velvety darkness dropped, leaving only the dim glow of smartphones. Soon, those winked out too. I heard screams. Frantic movement toward the door.
My vision faded in. I saw a world devoid of color. I felt the hungry pull of the Below. Okay, a little late, but we were on my turf now.
The officer cast blindly around. He swatted with his sword far enough off-target, I didn’t need to move. Hands tore through the floor and seized his boots. He reeled backward in shock but went nowhere as more spectral arms rooted him to the spot.
I could hear sirens in the distance. I sheathed Atofo’s knife and swept up the sword. I watched the long-dead Spanish officer struggle. Demon? Zombie? I couldn’t put a name to this new creature. It’s whatever. He’d gotten what was coming to him. But how and why had he ever come back?
The restless spirits dragged him down and I disappeared into the streets.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I went by the Fountain of Youth park to see if Atofo had any tricks for a sword wound to the wrist. I’d have been looking for him to suck out a musket ball too had the breastplate not saved me one more time. I’d found a little round dent in the smooth gold surface.
With my jacket tossed over one shoulder to conceal the injury, my sword swung free and proud as I approached the ticket booth.
“You finally applying for a job, Ace?” Estella eyed the blade as she waved me through.
“Naw, just wanted to be ready for the conquistadors.”
She smacked her gum and dipped her chin up and down to show how much she didn’t care.
Caleb had already gone home. It was strange not to see him talking up the tourists. An elderly couple wandered through the welcoming exhibit, aimlessly moving from sign to sign.
“Come back tomorrow morning,” I told them. “My man Caleb gives a hell of a show.”
I’d shocked the old white folk who nodded hastily, alert and suspicious. Whatever. If they prefer to read the faded signs, that’s their business.
Once again, when I got to the burial exhibit, Atofo wasn’t home. In the quiet hours right before sunset, I figured I could get him to come around. I hadn’t brought an offering, but I had blood to spare. The napkin I’d wrapped my wrist in was soaked through.
“Ghosts can’t ghost me. Where are you hiding?”
I thought about tearing aside the veil. The whole wall between realms had gotten gauzy lately anyway. But if Atofo was going to be cruddy, I needed to keep those magical reserves. The ritual at the pub probably shaved days off the healing spells holding me together.
Outside, the air had a damp chill. Usually, you could just about taste summer by now, getting ready to scour Florida and drive the populace into their natural, mostly naked state. Today, those promises seemed empty. Dead.
Then a note struck the air. Pure and ringing music of the Above, it could’ve been a beat dropped by the eternal sun. A blow to set the whole world right. Araceli was at her forge.
I crossed the grounds, sun setting behind me. When I cleared the replica village, I could see her hard at work, the forge matching the intensity of a fiery sky. All the demonstrations over for the day, she was putting sweat into something. I strolled up, casual, and leaned on the open wall.
She twitched her head as I approached, but didn’t say a word. Hammer falling, she continued to work a glowing piece of metal on the anvil. No nail this time, the deadly sliver looked like one of her knives.
She put the hammer down long enough to grab a glass beaker and pour a thin stream of liquid down the length of the blade. I watched it spread, leaving behind a mirrored surface.
“Quicksilver flux,” she said, answering some question I hadn’t yet asked.
“Thanks for the lesson, Sister Princess of the Order of Alchemists,” I replied. She cocked an eyebrow and went back to work. I turned my back on her, facing the grounds. Employees in costume gathered their equipment and tended the grass. A conquistador hauled away a bag of trash. Pretty sure he was an employee, but I kept him in my sights all the same. “Why exactly do you work here again?”
She was dropping hammer blows and I closed my eyes, feeling them tremble across the breastplate.
“I have a forge, free of charge. Not exactly something you put in a suitcase.”
Another strike, this one hard enough it rippled through my toes. I he
ard the hiss of steam and turned to face her. She was staring down the length of the blade as she grasped it between a pair of tongs, her eyes searching for imperfections.
“How does it look?”
She seized the scorching metal in a gloved hand and set the tongs down. Biting off her other glove, she ran bare fingers down the knife. Without warning, she lobbed it my way.
This wasn’t an attack, just a lateral pass. I scrambled to make the catch with my left hand, the right still bundled. As soon as the metal settled against my skin, heat seared my fingers like I’d brushed a cooling stove. I let the knife drop to the counter.
“A little warning?”
She was already on her way over, eyes narrowed. They went first to my hidden hand, then the sword.
“What happened?”
I grimaced and showed her the cut, the bloodied cloth napkin peeling away like skin. “I’d like to keep my one good hand, you feel me?”
Without taking her eyes off the cut she picked up the freshly forged knife and set it behind her. “There’s no edge on it. Not yet. That though...whatever did that had an edge.”
“Ghost sword.”
Her eyes found mine. Slowly. “Ghost sword?”
“Long story. Trying to find Kitterling and found some other clowns instead.”
She was already peeling back the rest of my makeshift bandage. “Any deeper, I’d be forging you a new hand.”
“Always full of surprises,” I said. “Make it Gucci. Maybe my name stamped across my fingers. Some diamonds and shit.”
“You don’t have enough fingers for ‘Eustace’.” With a light touch on my shoulder, Araceli guided me around the counter and into the forge. She dragged a stool over with her foot, forced me to sit, then laid my arm out across a table covered with her heirloom smithing gear: hammers, tongs, sharpening stones, files, all worn with age but meticulously cared for. I’d have cracked a manicure joke but I’d seen how she reacted to those. “Sit still.”
She dug through her kit. My relief at seeing the little alchemical silver ingot quickly went away when a needle and wire thread followed.
“You’re not going to—”
“Tranquil.” She told me, the Catalan response less angry for once. “Tell me about ghost swords.”
So I did. She listened while she stitched, the wire between her teeth. I yelped a few times, not gonna lie. When I mentioned Caliban’s pentagram and the alchemical symbols, she nearly sewed her own finger to my wrist.
Done with the torture, she applied the silver ingot with her own bare hand still feverish from the forge.
“Those weren’t ghosts, or spirits.”
“What then?”
She seemed reluctant to say. “Undead.”
“Like zombies?” Made sense. Their leader did have an entry wound on his forehead.
“From what you’ve told me, you’re a zombie.”
“Chill on me, now. Don’t need you starting up with Evens’ nonsense and calling me zombie. Fool nearly caused a riot.” Funny, I could actually use that former cellmate’s Voodoo advice right about now. “What do you mean, undead?”
“Zombies have their spirits forcibly captured.” She stopped to check the stitches, less concerned with the wound and more with buying time to get her words right. “Undead? They’ve willingly surrendered their spirit. They’re trapped entirely in the flesh.”
She’d put the needle down so I went for the tough questions. “What were all those alchemical symbols I saw Sykes use? Wait, this has to do with that necromancy you mentioned, right? The bad alchemy?” By the dirty look, I knew I’d struck a nerve.
Her lips firmed and she glared. “Necromancers are not alchemists.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, trying to back her down. “You mentioned necromancy when we fought Scorpion. The whole rabisu inspiring vampires thing. But I’m not sure how this all relates.”
Araceli lowered her head in thought. “I don’t know yet.”
More mysteries, very few leads. My connections to the spirit world had been pretty weak lately. Hearing these undead were separated from it all made sense because I hadn’t detected a trace on them or the guy who claimed to be the summoner. Sort of like Araceli’s alchemy. But the undead weren’t the only strange things happening around Saint Augustine.
“Could this explain why I saw a Gallu on the streets the other day?”
Her pressure on the silver ingot got intense as her eyes flashed up to me. “You saw a Gallu? Outside the Below?”
I nodded, mouth clenched shut against the pain shooting through my wrist as she ground the ingot against the stitches. When she realized what she was doing, she backed down. Maybe we should’ve had this talk about Gallu before she played surgeon.
“Cruising down San Marco,” I said. “I saw it standing in the old Huguenot cemetery and thought maybe he was making a house call.”
She left the ingot on my wrist and started to pace. “Anywhere else you want to tell me you’ve been seeing Gallu? Maybe at the coffee shop? Or the grocery store?”
Yeah, we should’ve talked about this before but she hadn’t given me much time.
“Sure,” I said. She wasn’t expecting an answer and her jaw dropped. “I saw all sorts of furred shit in prison. There was a Gallu in the infirmary. Then I saw one in the Above.” I had to start talking fast now because Sister Araceli was about to start speaking in tongues, I could feel it coming. “While I was hanging with Atofo in Timucuan heaven in Atofo’s boat. Not sure that was real.” Speaking of fever dreams, another instance came to mind. “And that time we were coming back from Fenwick Hall, after we first met, remember? I could’ve sworn on that ride I heard the waves and then voices. The Gallu and you...”
She clamped her mouth and her eyes flickered toward her tools. I’d never seen her at a loss for Catalan curses. She stalked away, sputtering, staring upward like the answers were written on the ceiling. Unsatisfied with whatever she found up there, she took a breath and slung her head back and forth.
“Use your words,” I said.
There we go. Araceli erupted Vesuvius style. Prayers and curses, Latin and Catalan. They continued as she slammed around the forge, tools thrown, stools overturned. Finally, the storm passed and she held still, staring into the barrel of water.
“You okay?”
She came over and snatched the alchemical silver away. I started to argue, but the wound had healed. Mostly. I’d been left with a thin scar, small whitish holes where the needle had been.
“It’s happening,” she said.
“What?”
“The End.” She’d calmed down and was packing her tools away.
“Armageddon or whatever?” I blew the idea off. “That’s always been going down. You said so yourself.”
“Dabblers conjuring the dead. You seeing Gallu walking This World. Diviners and mediums, the ones sensitive to the sight will begin to receive unwanted visions.” She hefted her bag onto the counter and stared into the open flap. “If the boundaries between This World and the other realms are that weak, then we can stop theorizing about the patience of immortals. We need to be prepared for the worst.”
“So when my friend, Tish Adelaide, sees visions, those could be related?”
She gave me a wild look of frustration. Okay, so maybe there were a lot of things I should’ve led this conversation with, but I hadn’t exactly had the time. She slung her satchel over her shoulder and grabbed a metal rod about a yard long then made her way out of the forge. I dropped in by her side.
“What did your friend see?” she asked.
“The prison. Me getting beat down. I don’t think it was a vision she asked for.”
Araceli thought it over as we continued across the broad field. Tents hadn’t been put up yet for the grand opening, but stakes marked the grass where they’d go. I couldn’t help noticing our path had us going toward the weapons demonstration yard.
“Long ago there was a schism in alchemy. Some sought magic, some science, o
thers, the necromancers, sought power over death.” She shook her head in frustration. “There are many forces at play here which you do not understand.”
“Then teach me.”
“I will,” she said.
A thick layer of hay covered the roped off weapons demo yard. On one end was a freestanding wooden barricade marred with dents and chips from axes, knives, and even the occasional crossbow bolt. Araceli slipped under the rope and dropped her bag. She didn’t drop the iron rod.
“Come here.”
I paused outside the rope and rubbed my freshly healed wrist. “Maybe I’m not feeling it?”
“You’ve pissed off gods and demons, you think they’ll give you a break?”
I let out a sigh. “Just don’t hurt the face. I got a date tomorrow.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t the kind that made you smile back.
Araceli could make knives sing, but she damn sure knew her swords too. She came at me hard. More than private lessons, this was about her frustration. Being saddled with a partner she never asked for and a rookie at that, one who’d cost her her biggest case. I felt the anger in every blow.
But while she blew off steam, she also taught. There was an art to sword fighting very different from a knife. Once you got in close, knife fights looked the same, desperate attempts to do as much damage as possible. With a sword, you do that damage quick, at a distance. The blade gave you reach and you had to respect that space.
Sister of No Mercy didn’t let up until the bulky iron rod she wielded had been cut in two by the Mickey D. I’d fought for what seemed like hours to get that one clean slice. What does she do? Picks up both ends and goes full Amazon on my ass.
“Again.”
We went a few rounds and she seemed to only be more dangerous, the severed iron rods maybe closer to her normal fighting style. She left the face alone, but the rest of me? I soon had to drop in surrender, taking in deep, rattling breaths.
“What’s next?” I asked, lying on the scratchy hay, sucking wind, and staring at the stars.
Araceli offered her hand. “We find some more soldiers to practice on. Any idea where they might hang out?”