by Russ Linton
“Yes, I witnessed your interactions with Ida. I’ve been observing her state for quite some time. It’s what led me to this pitiful creature,” he said, indicating the body wriggling in the bag like some larval beast. “Her advice might be useful. These shades plaguing the city would not have been produced with the proper phylacteries, but that doesn’t mean those containers don’t exist. History has a way of creating its own meaning, wouldn’t you agree?”
“What’s the soul Tupperware for a bunch of soldiers?”
Jabir smiled. “Soldiers have a lasting testament to their duty.” He turned to the window. Blocks away, flags flapped in the breeze over the Castillo. “I hear it has never fallen. Immortal in a way.”
Araceli surged around the corner dragging Wilson by his collar. She tossed him hard to the ground and he let out a soft moan. A knife leapt into her waiting hand.
Jabir gave her a short bow. “As-salaam ‘alaykum, Lady Araceli. Before you do anything rash, I have news for you from the Moirai.” She came to a wary stop as he said the strange name. “Your friend, Caleb, is in grave danger. It seems he’s run afoul of an ill-tempered spirit.”
Her fingers went slack and she almost dropped her blade. Dangerous eyes flashed from Jabir, to me, and then to my lowered sword. She growled, an actual growl, teeth bared. “If he’s been hurt by that savage...”
Atofo?
“No way he...” before I could finish, she dipped, riding out of the room on a wave of curses. “Araceli!” I called, running after her.
“Welcome peace, Mr. Grant,” Jabir called. “Now and for eternity. Expect an invitation to the trial. Soon.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
My breathing came hard and ragged as I reached the ground floor of the garage. I got there in time to see Bubonic squeal out of the parking lot, the throaty engine roaring in protest. I staggered around the barrier, arms waving, a shout rattling around inside my wrecked chest. Bent, one hand on my knee, the other swung the sword limply.
“Bitch boosted my ride,” I muttered, stretching to open my lungs. I stared into the endless blue above and shook my head. “Cold.”
Six blocks to Kitterling’s. I had a race on my hands, one I might be able to win with the tourist season traffic. I wasn’t sure how well Araceli knew the patterns. I damn sure knew how aggressive she’d be at the wheel.
I reached into the medicine pouch at my neck and felt a clump of hair form between my fingers. Great Sun’s gift was proving to be a significant upgrade from the Crown Royal bag. Dark and wiry, I couldn’t identify the stuff, but this critter had to be faster than a brother with lung cancer.
“Deer Woman don’t do me cruddy here. I don’t want to hear any noise about loyalties, I’m out to save your friendly neighborhood ghost.”
I slipped the sword through my belt behind my back and tried to cover it with my shredded jacket. Using the Shaw Blade, I started my blood flowing. A quick circle and a chant, I rubbed the hairs against my scalp, willing the transformation to take place.
Nothing was happening. Were the magical pathways that twisted? More tricks from the Above or Below or whoever was in charge of my life right now? Had those fickle motherfuckers decided I was all on my own?
I should’ve known better. Great Sun’s stash only had the dankest mojo.
The change dropped like an extinction-level beat, tearing down through the atmosphere and laying waste to the sound barrier. The impact had me on my hands and knees.
My lungs felt clear, my muscles loose and twitching for a chance to unleash explosive power. Fate of the world, lost chances with family, none of that meant a damn thing. I had one purpose — catch my prey.
I took off from a dead stop, hands and feet gliding over the pavement. Padded paws absorbed the impact. The six-foot fence at the edge of the property glided underneath with a powerful leap. Then I was back on all fours, alternating front and back as my arms fed concrete to my Timbs, the plunging reach throwing my knees up to my elbows.
Tearing up the sidewalk, I lunged across the street. A car screeched to a stop, the acerbic smell of their brakes a momentary veil. On the sidewalk again, I cut the corner, grass and soil spraying from two quick contacts. A man on a bike saw me coming and his eyes went wide.
Some shit you see you don’t even bother to process. His arms and feet started swimming and the bike wobbled. As I descended on him, he ditched and took off running, the riderless bike cutting a drunken route into the bushes.
Man? Beast? Whatever he saw had set off a primal fear. I damn near took up pursuit.
I shot down Valencia, the brick street matched by intermittent brick dividers in the sidewalk. Yard line markers which couldn’t keep pace with my speed. I hurtled past screaming students, tourists, and cleared the next intersection in a single leap, sailing over the hood of a stopped car.
Flagler campus was next, crowds getting thicker. I crashed through the landscaping, emerging from the ferns like a primordial hunter, a terror of the homo sapiens before they’d gotten word about fire and sharpened rocks. People scattered and I wanted to laugh, only able to give a breathy yowl.
Then I caught a whiff of my prey. Saltpeter, a taste of flux, oiled leather and some sort of heated stone. That smell of rubber cement lingering.
Bubonic sat on the curb of the Basilica of Saint Augustine, mired in a traffic jam. I slowed and felt a flapping off my spine. Had I grown a tail? Naw, the Shaw sword wagged there. I let out another mirthless purr and went back to full RPMs.
Two blocks to go. She was on two feet. I’d catch her. I took the open gate at the cathedral gardens, arcing over hedgerows in quick bursts.
Another barrier coming up fast. All the jumps had edged off my speed. The white brick wall ran close to the side of the Cathedral so I planted halfway up then bounded off, getting purchase higher on the adjacent building. Another bounce and I sailed over the outer wall, flying into the back alley.
Treasury street. Not an alley. Narrow, one way, you almost never caught traffic. Almost.
Unless you got Aced.
Bam.
A flatbed laid on the horn. The brakes hissed and the cab lurched. Me? I left a panther-sized divot in the windshield.
The driver hopped down, a big black dude who could’ve easily tested the load limit on that cab. The truck shuddered from his weight and he stared in disbelief from me to the wall. I rolled painfully on the brick, reaching for my back.
“Damn!” he shouted. “Damn! I mean, you okay?”
I waved him off as I staggered away. Somehow I hadn’t snapped the Shaw Sword in the fall. He kept yammering as I stumbled. “Y’all saw, right? I mean, no way I’m responsible! Flying brothers, you get insurance for that, right?”
The heady surge of magic had sputtered like a flame in a strong breeze. I shook off the pain and dug for the feeling again, chewing up pavement first slow, then back up to full speed. One block. No sign of Araceli, I hadn’t caught her but I needed to get to Atofo first.
At Kitterling’s, I cleared the back wall and crashed through the garden, crushing a spray of wildflowers. The spell flickered one more time. I straightened, going into a two-legged run.
“Araceli?” I shouted, slamming open the already busted back door. “Araceli?”
The show cabinet had been smashed. An antique chair from the study lay in splinters across the entry. I saw a trail of blood, smeared across the floor. At the other end, the front door had been kicked in too. The math wasn’t adding up. I dropped my tattered jacket and fumbled the sword out from my belt.
“Atofo?”
Crunching glass and a shallow moan come from the study. Working my way forward, I cleared the stairwell first and the back parlor with sweeping glances. A bloody handprint marked the vaguely floral wallpaper. I hugged the wall next to the study and eyed the formal dining room.
The coffin had been overturned and at least one wall-mounted shelf had been torn down, the contents in shattered heaps. I felt a trickle of energy from the Below, like a
gas main with a slow leak.
Another grunt came from the study. I cracked my neck and stepped around the corner, sword raised.
Atofo lay sprawled on top of a splintered table. He had the scrimshaw tooth in his hand and it had fractured midway down. Several of the animal heads and wall hangings had been ripped down. I checked around warily and he twisted his head to peer through his only good eye.
“Did Araceli do this?”
He shook his head and pain scarred his face. He was trying to sit up. I stepped through the mess and gave him a hand.
“They took the white boy,” he said.
“Who?”
“Not your fucking Spaniard, the other fucking Spaniards.” He scowled. I started to see fragments of uniform and dusted bone mixed into the debris. Atofo stretched his muscular arm and it gave a painful crack. “I tried to stop them.” His one eye swiveled in the socket to check my reaction. “Not that I care what happens to the pasty kid. Talks too much. Too many questions.”
My legs went slack and I slid down next to him. The transformation spell had worn all the way off leaving me with lungs full of rot and feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. Cause I had. The news Caleb had been taken prisoner? That was like they’d backed over me.
“Why Caleb? Why didn’t they just take you again?” I asked.
He fired a one-eyed scowl. “You sound like Sister I-Am-Superior.”
“So she was here? And she didn’t kill you either?”
“I’m not helpless,” he spat, raising the shattered scrimshaw, a nub of a weapon. A scornful huff and he tossed it to the floor. “Fine. She could have taken me. Her and her crazy knives,” he said, his hands waving wildly in the air. “But she said she’d given an oath to keep your sorry ass alive and I might be the only hope to help her do that. Little does she know how much I despise you.”
He said the last bit without any real shade, just a heavy exhaustion I shared. Getting off my ass was a two-step process, but I fought through it. When I was up, I offered him a hand.
“Get up,” I said.
“Why? My knife is broken. I’m stuck in this body.” He rooted around the mess on the floor until he found a bottle. Holding it up to his good eye, he peered inside. “I’d always thought coming back would be the shit. Instead, it’s just shit. Big, heaping mounds, like the plains after a passing herd of buffalo. And I feel...I feel less Atofo.”
Less. Araceli had said the longer since they’d been dead, the more of an echo the undead would be. Could it be just my blood holding him here or was it something else? I wondered Atofo’s disconnected feeling had anything to do with that or if it was just the two six-packs he’d downed. Then I remembered the fierce energy he’d had while wrecking those soldiers in the square.
“Get your ass up.” I offered a hand one more time. “Come on, I know what will make you feel better.”
“I doubt it,” he said, glum and defiant.
“We’re going to kill a whole fort full of Spaniards.”
He frowned thoughtfully and reached for the broken piece of scrimshaw. “I suppose this one could be a choking hazard.”
His big hand engulfed mine and I pulled him up to full height. The mass behind the effort felt off. He was Atofo, but he wasn’t. I stared a little too long.
“What? You want to dance?”
I was still holding his hand and let go. “Maybe later. First, we’re going to Caleb’s place. We need to find something personal of his. If he’s been tossed in the dungeons with Kitterling, I might know a way to get them out.”
Which reminded me. I went to the shattered display case and got Kitterling’s personal item.
“A jailbreak and euthanizing Spanish dogs? You really do know how to party, chemosabe!”
“We’ll need to get Araceli first,” I said and he moaned in protest. “The two of us can’t take out a castle full of Spaniards alone.”
“Fine. But the Castillo? That place has big magic. Never fell, not once. Your firebelchers couldn’t scratch the walls. You might need more than psycho Breaking Bad girl, you’ll need an army.”
Jabir implied the fortress was part of the key. Defeating the undefeated. But a national monument and one with over ten-foot thick coquina walls? We couldn’t just blow it to hell.
“Spirits aren’t talking,” he grunted as we stepped outside. Sunset had come and the narrow street out front was bathed in shadows. He watched them as if scanning a crowd for friends. “They never much cared for me. First they say I’m a traitor to my people, now they say I’m a traitor of the flesh.” He noticed what he’d said had stopped me dead. His expression went nervous and he jabbed me with an elbow. “Culture war bullshit. Never ends, am I right?”
I took my sweet time securing the smashed up door. Atofo being a traitor? First I’d heard the news. I was doing my best to at least make the door look closed when he interrupted.
“Can we take beer?” he asked.
“No. We can’t take beer to the siege.”
He wandered down the steps shaking his head. “Like you would know what to take to a siege,” he muttered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Caleb’s apartment was across the bridge just off the A1A. I’d expected somewhere closer to Old Town, but a tour guide’s salary might not stretch that far. The small complex had single-story units with two apartments to a building. Plain gray, asphalt shingles, chunky firewalls between units, the style had a pedigree lost somewhere in the 70s under a 90s coat of paint.
We’d recovered Bubonic along with a parking ticket. Araceli had even left the keys in the ignition. Luckily, nobody had taken the black beauty, but the hearse didn’t really inspire joy rides. She was an acquired taste. Atofo had started to nibble.
“You’re going to stay in the car,” I told Atofo.
“Okay,” he said. I expected more of a fight.
He fiddled with the air vent, his shoulders bent to squeeze under what should’ve been plenty of headroom. His height made it tricky and his feathered topknot had been crushed. His eyes trailed toward the steering column, soaking in the details. He twisted knobs on the radio until he found the power, the grating static of an empty AM channel filling the interior. His fingers wandered to the stick shift on the steering column and I smacked his hand.
“You gonna be like this the whole time?”
He crossed his arms and bowed up. “Annoying when some ignorant motherfucker shows up in your world and starts poking around your magic, isn’t it?”
I rolled my eyes and aimed my gaze out the window. “Fuck is you geekin’ for? You want to come in? Fine, peel your naked ass off my leather and come on inside.”
He didn’t budge. “I want to drive.”
I wasn’t having any of that talk. Zero. Less than zero. I yanked the keys out of the ignition and pocketed them.
“Not happening.”
“I was watching,” he said, looking hurt. As hurt as tattoo-covered, fanged and clawed giants covered in battle wounds could look. He mimicked a pull on the gear shift and hunched over an imaginary wheel, feet pumping in weird, alternating patterns.
“You look like you’re driving one of them clown cars,” I laughed.
He threw a hard glare, reached down and threw the seat latch, laying back until he was almost flat. His long arm draped over that same imaginary wheel. Now he was cracking jokes on my low-slung self.
I reached across and flipped his door handle. “Get out. Go ‘head.”
Sulking, he squeezed out into the lot.
I had way too many problems to go worrying about driver’s ed for a dead dude. That’s just one more thing I wouldn’t ever be able to show Izaak. Could I really stop the End of the World or was it time for me to just give all this nonsense up and take the easy way out? Maybe Araceli would be better off on her own.
Somehow this cancer had transformed. Changed into a magical power held over me. The idea that curse could be visited on my kin hurt worse than the growing pressure across my ribs. Cures sounded
good about now.
Then there was Sheila. I could spend more time with her all wrapped up in Kitterling’s fancy bed. No better way to forget my troubles.
A hard rap on the window and I looked in time to see Atofo, stooped, junk swinging from behind his wafting loincloth.
“We getting out of or into the burial wagon?”
I wearily shook my head and flung the door open far enough to earn some space.
We didn’t have keys to Caleb’s place. He’d offered before and I’d turned him down. There were plants to feed or something when he visited his mother, but I let him know I wasn’t the green thumb type. I checked under the doormat, felt around the frame of a folding chair, nothing.
Atofo grabbed the handle and landed a shoulder dead center. The door popped with a loud bang.
“You crazy?” I said, scanning the parking lot and keeping a close eye on the neighboring units.
“What?” he asked, blocking the partly open door. “You wanted to knock?”
I hustled him inside and closed the door behind us. “I wanted to see if we could get in without a 10-62.” His face scrunched at the words. “Breaking and entering.” His confused scowl got worse. “Kicking in doors isn’t legal.”
“Oh. That last place it seemed like that’s how everybody got in.” He turned and examined the apartment. “And this place, this place is a shithole by comparison.”
Shithole? Atofo was being cruddy. I wasn’t here to judge Caleb’s style. I was here to find something of personal value for the ritual. Kitterling had been easier. The object I’d selected for him had deep, personal meaning. For both of us.
Caleb...he’d be trickier. Mostly mismatched furniture filled his crib. The kind you buy and assemble at home with bags of bolts and specially supplied wrenches. He kept things neat for a bachelor pad. Atofo wandered into the bathroom and I let him go, not too worried about what he’d find there. I stuck to the main living area.
An out of place worn and faded green couch was the only real furniture, a permanent sag in the center cushion. It faced a wall-mounted television with bookcases on either side. Pictures littered the shelves, most of him and his reenactment crew.