Blood Magik- A Cold Day In Hell

by Corwyn Matthew

  Mac’s stare shifted, pondering the question. Then he glanced over at the three, still human spectators, all anxious to hear his reply.

  “…Maybe just the blond.”

  Marty and the rest didn’t look to be in the mood for jokes.

  “Kidding…” He reached out for his captain’s hand. “Actually, I don’t got much of an appetite right now… Can we put off breakfast ’til later?”

  Marty grabbed his dead friend’s palm and got him to his feet, but kept a sharp eye, still not sure of what side he was on. The Priests’ captain looked to his right and his winger did the same to his.

  “I’ll take Donny, you get Shye.”

  It would seem what “side he was on” would become clear soon enough.

  Bobby went straight for a hostage while Donny stood his ground. Jimmy noticed Bobby had him in his sights, but in an instant, a blurred collision exploded at a midpoint in front of him that left Marty standing tall and a Bobby-sized hole in the back of the building to his right. It seemed Marty wouldn’t have much problem taking care of the young Priest’s left-winger.

  As it turned out, Donny and Mac were more evenly matched. Mac wasn’t quick enough to dodge the swing of Donny’s metal pole so he got caught with an upward swipe. The blow lifted him off his toes and forced him into a sprawled-out, spine-bending backflip. He nearly landed back upright, but his momentum carried him too far. He rolled backward, heels-over-head, until he popped up to his toes and didn’t even hesitate before looking for retaliation.

  This time, Donny was caught off guard, contemplating if he could reach a hostage before Marty could stop him. Mac took advantage of his divided attentions and planted a right blow into his left cheek that knocked him back into the corner of Alex’s complex, a hefty chunk of the building breaking off with the heavy collision.

  “You never could take a punch, Donny-boy!” He peered back over his shoulder to see Marty already making fast work of Shye, towering above his squirming body with his Glowing Hand of Righteousness simmering the evil right from his bones. He turned back to Donny who’d just made it to his feet. “Why fight it, D? Yur a Priest. …You really wanna keep takin’ orders from Shit-Face?”

  Donny dusted off the cement from his jersey and delivered an estranged glare.

  “I like who I am now, Mac. For the first time in my life…I don’t have to hold anything back.” His voice had a sickness to it: the demented tune of the confessions of a madman.

  “What the fuck are you talkin’ about, man? Yur not a—”

  “A killer?” He scoffed at his ex-friends assumption. “This city’s not as empty as you think.” Mac looked closer with his new eyes and saw the tint of blood around the corner of Donny’s mouth. “Found some leftovers in the back of the building. He was injured; hiding out…nearly dead, anyway. Not a very tasteful kill but still fresh enough to savor the tang.”

  “You ate somebody?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘ate’ per se… Snacked on’s, more like.”

  Mac hesitated, troubled by the sinister gleam in his teammate’s eyes.

  “It was amazing, Mac! Like eating the sweetest snatch on Earth smothered in strawberry sauce and PCP!” He looked over to Tara who was still huddled up with the others close by. “A lot like what I imagine going down on Marty’s girl’s gonna be like. …But I think with her,” he checked her out from head to toe, “I’ll start with the tits.”

  Marty was helping Bobby to his feet in the distance but turned when he’d overheard his name. One look at Donny’s stare and he knew his amulet’s strength would be put through a gauntlet. The blood Donny consumed burned subdermally, visible only through Marty’s eyes, infesting his ex-friend with ravenous guile. Marty stepped up beside Mac with Bobby trailing behind to look deep into the aura of the young man he once knew turned dark and depraved.

  Donny’s eyes radiated evil and his shoulders tensed. Their stares were entangled, locked in anticipation, but Marty’s eyes held the key. Donny knew if he was going to make his move, it’d have to be now. Then his arm flinched as the metal pole he held shot from his hands like a five-foot-long silver bullet.

  Mac raised his hand to protect himself as Marty reached for it in midair. He caught the pole at its middle while the front-end extended through the center of Mac’s palm, spraying him with more of his own black blood.

  Marty looked over at his friend to see he was relatively in one piece, then in the opposite direction, beaming into Donny’s demonic glare. He decided he didn’t like the cocky look on his face so he pulled the pole from Mac’s hand and returned it to sender all in one motion.

  The throw was so fast and powerful it speared straight through Donny’s face, making it to the middle of the pipe before his reaction caught it in its path. He stumbled back from the impact but found enough strength to stay on his feet, the pole skewering through the center of his cocky grin taking his nose and eyes along with it. They all gawked afterward, amazed when he slowly pulled the pole back out of his own head.

  Marty decided he’d seen enough of Donny’s Polish Pole-Trick and began his approach to finish the job. He grabbed the metal skewer and yanked it from his enemy’s grip, then forcefully plowed its sticky end back through his blackened heart.

  “I wish you hadn’t said all that shit, Donny. It’s gonna make our friendship real fuckin’ awkward as soon as I turn you back to a Priest.”

  He slammed his hand onto Donny’s forehead, expecting the outcome to be the same as the others, but noticed immediately something was different. Instead of Marty’s signature green shine, Donny’s skin burned in flushed scarlet – his ensuing scream a shriek of agonizing pain, forcing those who still had living souls to quiver at the sound.

  “Fuck, Marty, wait…”

  Mac tried intervening, wanting to silence the excruciating howl, but Marty’s posture didn’t waver. It wasn’t that he needed to see Donny punished; he just couldn’t stop even if he wanted to – his hand unwillingly welded to his victim’s skull. He couldn’t move it away until there was nothing left of the tainted Priest but the echo of his cries and smoldering soot over a pile of bones.

  He watched the glowing remains scatter in the air under his palm as Donny’s skull fell from his grasp and settled to the ground, leaving a morbid mound of charred marrow and glowing embers behind.

  “What the hell just happened?” Bobby spoke up; a big-eyed, meerkat-stare peeking over Mac’s shoulder.

  Marty looked to Mac first, then to the doe-eyed Bobby Shye, then the three others who still stood watching fearfully from the center of the yard – there’d been way too much happening at once for them to take it all in.

  “Everyone get inside.”

  He figured it was a good idea to get out of the open. He walked past Mac and toward the three of his friends who still had a pulse. A rapidly beating, symphony of pulses, at that, which he realized he might need to address before he’d get any cooperation.

  “You guys okay?” The first thing he noticed in himself was that he addressed them all equally. He felt no more or less attached to any of them, despite the intimacy he and Tara had shared.

  None of them really knew how to answer. Terry eventually decided to be the one to speak.

  “Marty…are you…?”

  “Dead?” It was a strange question to have to answer, but probably the least unordinary of all that would eventually come up. “Yeah, man… Looks that way.”

  Tara and Jimmy just drooped pale and defeated at his reply. Terry had an expression on his face that begged the question, “How?”, as if he couldn’t quite believe it could happen to him, of all people.

  “I ran into our boy Duprie back at the cemetery last night. …He wasn’t exactly in the mood to ‘hug it out’.”

  None of them could find it in their hearts to respond. Then Bobby and Mac walked up from behind and they all just examined each other for
a moment, not sure how to interact.

  “Let’s talk inside. We all gotta lotta questions.”

  The masses seemed to agree on that, at least, and began walking toward the complex until Bobby spoke up.

  “Wait a minute… What about Donny? …Shouldn’t we…burry his bones or something?”

  Jimmy was quick to have an opinion on that.

  “That’s a terrible fucking idea… What if he just comes back again? We’ll do all that digging for nothin’…”

  “He’s right,” Terry decided. “Unless you guys know for sure how all this shit works…reburying what’s left of him doesn’t sound like a smart move to me.”

  Marty agreed. “Leave him. We don’t have time for that shit right now, anyway.”

  The Priests’ captain led the way into his sister’s apartment with Terry, Jimmy and Tara trailing; Shye and Mac weren’t far behind.

  Desi was still inside, waiting anxiously for the return of the cavalry. With all the commotion going on, she hadn’t had the chance to find anything more appropriate to wear. In spite of her awkward, partial nudity, she felt it only polite to speak up.

  “Is everyone okay?”

  It didn’t come as a surprise that Tara was the first to respond.

  “Who’s this?” If she sounded pissed, she meant to. She was risking her life coming into this hellhole to find her man, and when she finally does, not only is he a whole new breed of monster, but he has some half-naked floozy hiding out in his sister’s apartment.

  “This is Desi.” Marty didn’t take much notice to her tone. “I found her in Westwood, outside the cemetery.”

  Tara walked up to her and Desi firmly stood her ground. Tara bluntly looked her up and down before addressing her.

  “You’re not wearing any pants.”

  Desi responded to Tara’s challenge in-kind.

  “You don’t look like the type of girl who’d be bothered by that.”

  Jimmy felt now might be an appropriate time to intervene. “It doesn’t bother me…”

  Terry shook his head. “Jimmy…not now, dude.” He sounded annoyed but secretly was a little relieved to have Jimmy acting more like himself.

  “First thing’s first.” Marty was all business. He still had no clue as to where to find his sister and wanted answers. “I know what Mac and Bobby are doin’ here, but what about you three?”

  Tara still had her eyes on the younger, blonder Desi, and Desi eventually broke off their staring bout with a little smirk. Terry ultimately chimed in to answer Marty’s question.

  “Alex called us earlier…before all this shit started goin’ down. She said you were in trouble and she needed us to find you.”

  “You talked to her? Where is she?” His voice was booming and a little more aggressive than he meant it to be.

  “I didn’t talk to her, no, Jimmy did… But she didn’t say where she was goin’. She just said to meet her back here once we found you. But when all this crazy shit started goin’ down we had no idea where to look for you except here… So…here we are.” He looked over at Bobby and Mac who were standing near the door, still uncomfortable with them although they seemed relatively not homicidal. “So…what the hell’s goin’ on with you guys?” He looked back to Marty who continued his search of the area. “Why aren’t you trying to tear us apart? And what was all that glowing, green shit comin’ out of yur hands and faces?”

  Marty didn’t know much, but of what he did know he wasn’t sure how much he should divulge. Even though he thought he was among friends, he didn’t feel too comfortable trusting anyone right now. He decided to skip answering his teammate’s queries for the moment and present another of his own.

  “So yur saying Alex warned you about all this shit before it even happened?”

  “Yeah… that’s part of why we risked our lives to find you. None of this shit makes any sense to anyone, but Alex seemed to know somethin’…” He gave Marty a peculiar look. “…And you seem like you know somethin’ too.”

  Marty decided his friends had earned at least some answers from him. Like Terry said: they risked their lives to come this far.

  “I don’t know much…other than whether I’m dead or alive…I still got some kind of talent for kickin’ the shit out of people.”

  The unfulfilled stare on their faces told him that that wouldn’t be good enough. He decided to start from the beginning.

  “After J.C. tore out my insides and buried me in his own grave…I dug my way back out…just like all the rest of ’em… Except…somethin’ was different.”

  He looked around the room at the faces of his friends and decided that if the good guys were going to win this war, he’d have to trust somebody… This group seemed like as good a place to start as any. So, he reached under his torn shirt and lifted up his amulet.

  “This was my mother’s.” It shined in his hand when he spoke of her. “She asked me to give it to Alex when she was old enough… And Alex gave it back to me to hold last night in the hospital. It broke off when me and Shit-Face were goin’ at it, but when I climbed my ass out of the dirt, it…called to me. It took everything I had to reach it, but when I did…somethin’ happened – like what you saw with Mac and Bobby. It…set me free…of whatever it is that’s controlling the rest of ’em.”

  “Do you know what that is? What’s controlling them, I mean?” Tara decided to join in.

  “Not exactly…except…I think it’s…family…” His voice trailed off.

  “What family? What family do you have other than Alex?”

  “None that I know about…”

  “Her name’s Imala.” Mac figured now was the right time to ante up. “She’s the new Lucifer – a demon sorceress with a whole army of dead behind her… And that’s just the beginning.” No one liked the sound of that. “I don’t know how her and Marty are connected, but I know her throne is back at the cemetery… And that she’s more than any of us can handle.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “What about this ‘magic charm’ of yours?” Tara felt more vocal as the discussion went on. “It set you and these two free from her spell or whatever, but what about Donny?”

  “I don’t know… I guess—”

  “He wasn’t worthy.” Mac scornfully finished Marty’s sentence for him.

  Tara still didn’t understand, and was maybe a little more flustered about losing her boyfriend than she’d be willing to admit. She could see it in his eyes that he really had only a passing interest in her, nothing more.

  “So…what? It has some sort of built-in evil-ometer? Your inner Santa Clause gets to decide who’s been naughty and who’s been nice?”

  Marty finally noticed her outward frustration, and she shifted her eyes away from his when realizing she might’ve been out of line.

  “Yeah… And why’s Mac still have a hole in his hand?” Bobby finally had a question he figured was relevant enough to add. “I thought that charm thing was supposed to heal us.”

  Mac looked down at his hand, just now remembering he could still see straight through it. “This happened after that, genius.” He wiggled his fingers curiously to find an even more interesting question present itself. “…But how the hell can I still move my fingers? The tendons that control ’em aren’t even connected…”

  “I don’t think any of that stuff matters right now.” As usual, Terry was the bold voice of reason. “What does is that it turned both you guys from evil, people-eating shit-bags back to just…regular-eating shit-bags…” His timing may’ve been a smidge off, but he was sure not to let his passive attempt at levity downsize his point. “So, shouldn’t you guys go out there and start liberating every one of those decaying assholes you can find? Starting with our friends?” Then it hit him. “…waitaminute… Where’re the rest of the Priests?”

  “Most of us are scattered across the c
ity looking for hostages to lure Marty in,” Mac explained. “Me, Bobby and Donny came for Alex; Bryan, Newy, and Beezee went to Tara’s house;” Tara shivered at the thought. “Obie, Jack, Trev and Relly went to look for you two dicks; Commie went after the Coach, and Carl and Mace went to Marty’s pad…”

  “What about Truck?”

  “Truck?” Desi was trying to follow along. “You have a friend named ‘Truck’? …Is he from Alabama or Idaho?”

  “He’s our goalie.” Jimmy figured he’d be the one to make her feel welcome to join in. “And I think he’s from Portland…”

  “Your goalie? …What are you guys, Soccer players?”

  All six of them, including Tara answered in unison—

  “Hockey players.”

  Desi seemed to be the only one to see the glaring irony.

  “Hockey players in the middle of Hell on Earth…” Her brows rose as she mumbled, “Sounds like…really…bad writing…”

  Mac tried following Desi’s remark with an answer to Marty’s question, but for some reason found himself surprised by it.

  “No one went after Truck… I guess we really didn’t consider it since he’s not in L.A. right now.” He realized the question brought up an interesting point. “Come to think of it, I don’t think any of the dead have tried to make it out of the city yet.”

  “That’s a plus…” Terry was just thinking out loud.

  “Unless you happen to be trapped inside.” Jimmy, naturally, challenged his optimism.

  “So…what do we do now?” Desi was starting to feel more like part of the team.

  While the rest were going back and forth, Marty continued his search of the apartment for anything Alex might’ve left. When he was satisfied there was nothing for him to find, he decided on giving them all a direction, knowing they’d be looking to him to take the lead.

  “You all know why I’m here…” His every instinct was telling him to set them straight; let them know there was only one thing that really mattered to him… But his sister’s level-headed words once again tempered his thoughts. He knew she’d want him to think things through and not act rashly if he could help it, and thanks to his mother’s necklace, he could. “But since I don’t have any way of finding her right now…and since there’s much bigger things going on here than just me and my sister… I say we go and find out which one of our boys has been naughty, and which’ve been nice.” He gave Tara a glance to give her credit for her own words. “Mac, you said Commie went after the Coach, so I’m guessin’ that means Shit-Face didn’t do him like he did the rest of you?”