* * *
Kaylee gently pressed a paste of muck and slime against my eyes. “Is this any better?”
I blinked at the stinging goo, but my vision remained a mixture of dark and light blurs sloshed together like a child’s finger-painting. “No.”
“Is he… gone?” Adam’s restored fingers brushed my hand. “Is the soldier gone?”
“Yes.”
“Like.. Gone, gone?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t need sight to feel the pregnant pause in the air.
“For me…”
I ran my fingers across the broken piece of a cross. “Yes, for you.”
“Gene, I…” Adam’s voice was softer now. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not believing you.”
I pushed away from Adam and stumbled to my feet.
“Whoa, hold on there…” Kaylee’s hand slipped under my arm to keep me upright. “I still think you’ll get your sight back, but in the meantime let’s try not to ram into anything.”
I leaned on her. “Take me to the center of town.”
“Why?” There was confusion in her voice.
“Because I’m going to bury him.”
“The soldier?”
“His name was Michael.”
Kaylee guided me through the swirling Picasso of blacks and browns before stopping at what felt like a relatively open spot.
“Is this it?”
“Yes.”
I dropped to my knees and ran my palms across the blurred earth, brushing the stray leaves aside. The wet ground squeezed through my fingers with each clawing handful of dark earth. Satisfied I’d made a shallow hole, I took out the broken cross piece and turned it over, still unable to see it.
You stupid kid. You stupid, stupid kid.
I set the wood down in its grave, then pushed the mounded earth over top with my fingers.
“Get me one of the birds.”
“Huh?” Adam said, his voice closer than I expected.
“Here…” Kaylee’s warm hands placed the blur of pink and brown in my fingers.
“Goodbye, Michael,” I said, stabbing the tiny metal legs deep into the soft earth.
There was a shuffling noise and Adam grabbed my hand. “Hey, look what I found.”
“I can’t see, damn it.”
“Oh, right.” He placed a perfectly balanced saber hilt in my hand. “Looks like he left his sword.”
37
Not Lost
I left Sturkey and Private Michael Petty’s wooden marker with a heavy heart. Seeing his sacrifice in nine dimensions had all but fried my eyeballs, but maybe it was for the best, as I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what was coming for me.
Delia had torn us apart like tissue paper, and she didn’t hold a candle to my Darkling. Evil Gene was coming, I could feel it in the air—the mirror’s spent Magick would bring that collar-popping devil straight to me. The mirror I’d hoped to use to save my soul, and that he’d hoped to use to end me, now lay in broken pieces in the dark heart of Sturkey.
Without that mirror, and its Magick, I had little if any chance of stopping the Darkling and his Midnight Riders.
They’ll mow us down like tall grass.
My foot caught on a large knot of roots and I stumbled forward, losing my grip on Adam’s shoulder and falling face first into the swamp water.
“A little help here?” I said, pulling myself up and extending a hand.
Someone grabbed my wrist and dragged me to a standing position. I blinked my eyes at the sudden flash of brilliant colors. “What the?”
“You never cease to surprise me.”
It wasn’t Adam, nor anyone else in our motley crew.
The House.
“What do you want?”
“First, I want you to stop trying to look at me,” it said, placing a hand across my face. “The after-effects of Jerry’s stupid glasses are going to boil your monkey brain in its juices if you aren’t careful. Does it surprise you that I knew that nutcase?”
“I really don’t care.”
“He was one of the first to get a glimpse at the master plan. Fried his brain too, but then again, he was already bat-shit crazy by that time, so it’s hard to know for certain…”
“Lovely,” I said, closing my eyes and brushing the House’s hand away. “Are you going to talk me do death, or do you want something?”
“You know, it’s sad. We never talk anymore.”
“Talk?”
“Remember the early days? You were a real chatterbox back then. You’d go on and on about your hopes and dreams, your love of Magick. You were insufferable, in a cute, wide-eyed puppy sort of way.”
“That was a long time ago…”
“It was?”
My foot caught on another root and I pitched forward knocking my shoulder against a thick trunk. “Damn it. What do you want? Have you come to threaten Porter again? Or maybe you want to tell me the terrible things you’ll do to my children?”
“Gene…”
“No, I’m at the end of my rope. I’m tired, I don’t have my Magick, and I barely survived a confrontation with the Blood Queen. Now, to top it all off, I know you lied to me. I know Cathy is still in Hell and whatever that is walking around in my daughter’s skin isn’t her. So whatever you’re going to do to me, just do it and get it over with.”
“Where’s that signature Eugene Law fortitude?”
“Buried in a shallow hole.” I crept forward in the dark, groping the empty air for something to hold on to.
“I know you don’t get it, but I’m not the terrible person you think I am.”
“You aren’t a person.”
“True, but I’m also not terrible. Could you not compare me to a summer’s day?”
I brushed at the sawgrass running across my cheeks. “Nice try, Shakespeare, but I’m not buying it.”
“Gene, you of all people should understand.”
“How do you figure?”
“You are Eugene Law, hero of the masses, saver of the great unwashed. How many scary things have been banished thanks to your tireless efforts? How many Demons have you locked away? How many New Dead are back roasting uncomfortably in the pits of Hell?”
“Too many to count.”
“Exactly,” the House said, the excitement in its voice tangible and more than a little frightening. “You are a one-man force of nature and you know it. We aren’t together by chance, you and I. We are destiny.”
“No, Destiny is that dancer I met up in Micanopy a few months ago.”
“True. You really do have a type.”
I have a type?
“Yeah, you do.”
“I saved her from the ghost of her ex-boyfriend. What’s your point?” I said, feeling my way around the swelling trunk of a cypress tree that had apparently sprung up to block my path.
“That is my point entirely. You make the world a better place.”
“I should put that on a greeting card.”
The House’s voice took up a hard edge. “Thankfully, though, under my tutelage you’ve gotten a lot smarter.”
“How so? I’m stumbling around in the dark like a moron listening to you, I’d say that doesn’t put me up to high on the smarts scale.”
“Gene, what happened to your hand? Did you cut yourself?”
“You know damn well what happened to my hand.”
“I do, but please tell me the story.”
“Fine.” I dragged my foot across the wide root ball. “I was using this mirror to check out my man parts, because it's important to make sure you don’t have any strange growths or—”
A strong push in the back sent me crashing into the tree roots, knocking the wind from my lungs and cutting me off mid-sentence.
“I like your sense of humor, Gene—I always have—but it's poorly timed.”
“Fine, you want to hear me say it? The Blood Queen is dead.”
“There it is. Was that so hard?”
“I stopped her before…”
“Right, you ‘stopped’ her, but you didn’t finish the job. Your confused primate morality got in the way. You didn’t end her. Instead, you trapped her Darkling in that stupid mirror, virtually guaranteeing we’d be here years later, mourning the sober soldier back there who got his ticket punched to oblivion.”
I swung my bandaged hand in the direction of the House’s voice, but found nothing except empty air. “What did you want me to do?”
“Exactly what you did, Gene.”
“And what was that?”
“You’re coming around to it. It all started with that Old Dead in the movie theatre last year, then the monsters I’ve sent you after since, and now Delia. You’ve finally figured it out. Screw banishing and trapping—it’s time to get real and start ending things.”
“At least I’m good for something.”
“That’s the way to look at it, because you’ve got some real problems headed your way.”
“Well, they won’t be testicular cancer, because I check for that every day.”
“So do monkeys.”
Strong hands wrapped my skull in a vise-like grip. I tried to fight them off, but the visions that followed overpowered me: Evil Gene and the Midnight Riders, their convoy of destruction roaring up the interstate, Porter’s grave, and my son standing shoulder to shoulder with the Darkling.
The hands let go, and I fought to get air back in my lungs. “Has that happened?”
“Like I said, Gene, time and I aren’t on speaking terms, but I believe this is just one of a myriad of outcomes, most of which are really terrible for you.”
“And for you…” I said, pushing my back up against the trunk.
“Of course for me. We are linked. You’ve tried too hard to deny it for so many years, but you can’t. We’re meant to be together.”
“Like ebony and ivory?”
“I prefer to think of it like Smith & Wesson.”
“What if I do nothing? What if I just sit here in this swamp until the mosquitos and Alligator Men carry me away?”
I had the distinct feeling of someone sitting down next to me.
“Nice try, Magick man, but not tonight.”
Even though I knew it wasn’t my wife, the sound of Porter’s voice hit me like a gut punch.
“Please, not her…”
“But why, Dad?” It was Catherine’s voice now, the carefree lilt of youth ringing in my ears.
“Stop! Damn it, stop!”
“We love you, Daddy.” The giddy sound of Kris’s voice reduced me to tears.
“I love you too…” I said, my own voice cracking with each word.
“Good. Now that we have that out of the way,” the House said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Let’s get down to business.”
“Fine.”
“You've done a great job recruiting members of the 'A-Team.'”
“Whatever.”
“You’ve got the little wooden boy and his machete. Very ‘Wizard of Oz,’ if you ask me—not to mention the Swamp Witch. Nice work getting her to join the Flock without letting on exactly what that entails.”
“She didn’t ask—”
“You’re right,” the House said. “Sometimes it’s best if they don’t know the full extent of what they’re signing on for, eh?”
Bastard.
“Guilty as charged. Still, you’ve amassed a decent crew, but even I don’t think it’s enough to restore your Magick and get us back on track.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You need Magick, Gene. A lot of it,” the House said, dropping a large duffle bag into my lap.
“What’s this?”
“This is how you’re going to get it.”
I unzipped the bag and carefully slipped my hand inside. My fingers traced the outline of a smooth plastic flamingo and something else. Something smaller, muscular, and all together rubbery.
“The doll?”
“It’s crude, but effective. You are going to need a Thinning, and not just any Thinning. You are going to need to hit the motherlode, and that little rubber man is going to help you find it.”
I wrapped my fingers around the rubber doll. “I don’t get it.”
A strong hand pressed against my eyes. “You’re about to; just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Wait, what the—”
An explosion of light and color consumed my distorted vision. My hands no longer grasped the little rubber man; instead, they felt the cold bite of hard iron.
The cemetery.
I pulled the gate open only to be greeted by rows of graves, a seemingly infinite monument to the tragedy of war.
“The Florida National Cemetery?”
The hand fell away, and when it did I found my distorted vision slowly returning.
“Wait, what happens then?”
“You pull yourself back together, honey,” my wife’s soft voice said.
“Porter?”
“Hey, I found him.” Adam’s words were supplemented by the sound of feet sloshing through the swamp. “Gene, were you lost?”
I zipped the duffle bag closed and pulled myself up. “I was, but not anymore.”
Part III
Won't Back Down
38
Of Books, Bowls, and Buttons
Flickering orange light bathed the tiny house in its warm glow. The Swamp Witch didn’t have much of a dining table—in fact, she didn’t have much in the way of seating at all—but what she did have we’d pushed together around the tiny lamp.
“The House gave you that?” Kaylee said, pointing at the scuffed-up rubber wrestler standing in a fierce pose on her table.
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “Then we should unmake it.”
“Hey,” Adam said, standing up from his stool. “I made that.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t see you letting anyone unmake Little Ed.”
Kaylee’s face hardened. “That’s completely different.”
“Not to me it isn’t.”
The junior Demon Hunter shook his head and pushed back from the small table. “Stop, you two. We aren’t unmaking a damn thing. Listen to us. We’re squabbling about what few things we have when we know damn well Gene’s Darkling along with Donnie and my father are headed here as we speak.”
“He’s right,” I said, rolling up the sleeves of Ed Senior’s last leftover shirt. This one wasn’t quite as poor fitting at the ones before, but it also had twice the peanut oil stains. “Adam, what do we have?”
“We only have the book, and what I was able to salvage from the storage facility after I got your email.” My apprentice pointed to the mismatch of Magickal items laid out on the table.
“That’s it?” Little Ed said, leaning over to inspect the yard sale rejects strewn across the table.
I frowned. “You’re talking about my life’s work here…”
“Sorry, I meant, that’s it!”
“Much better.”
Kaylee shook her head. “Very funny, but some of these things are dangerous as hell. Is that the Five Star Toaster?”
“Yes.”
“Holy crap, Gene. You are certifiable.”
Little Ed picked up the silvery two-slot toaster. “I don’t get it, it’s a toaster.”
Adam jumped to attention and grabbed the appliance out of the young man’s hands. “Unless you’re ready to burn down the Green Swamp, that needs to stay exactly where it was.”
“I wasn’t going to turn it on.”
Kaylee yanked her son’s hands away from the toaster. “You wouldn’t have had to. Have you ever wondered why things like the Prussian Wedding Bowls worked for you?”
“I just assumed it was because I’m your son…” Little Ed’s words hung uncomfortably in the air.
A tear welled up in the corner of Kaylee’s eye. “You are like me, more than any other child could ever be. But no, sweetheart, you aren’t a Magician.”
&nb
sp; “I’m not?”
I shook my head. “A golem as expertly crafted as you exudes Magick. It’s in your body and it sets off other Magickal items without you knowing it.”
“Is that how I saw Private Petty?”
I nodded.
“Damn…” the junior Demon Hunter slumped back in his chair.
I turned my attention to Kaylee. “Wait, did you say Prussian Wedding Bowls, plural?”
“Yes.”
“You’re worried about the Five Star Toaster, yet you have more than one of those curse buckets?”
“I have a son made of wood.”
“Oh, right—that.”
Kaylee sighed and pushed back from the table.
I directed Adam to place the toaster back down. “We’ll keep it away from Little Ed.”
Kaylee knelt down in front of a tiny plaid couch. Its green and orange cushions had done their damndest to hide stains over the years, but at this point they’d all but given up, which was likely why no one was sitting on that couch right now.
She flipped up the furniture skirt and slid out a large brown box that had been stored underneath.
“Is that…”
Kaylee placed the box on top of the couch and pulled off the lid. “It is.”
The Swamp Witch gently removed tissue-paper packing material to reveal an exquisitely crafted bowl. Like something Porter’s mother would have used to serve the world’s largest salad, the Blue-tinged porcelain shined in the hurricane lamp’s light. Detailed patterns resplendent with woodland animals danced in relief along the scalloped edge: foxes chased rabbits, wolves howled, and bears roared.
“Where did you get that?” I said, stunned to see in person something I’d only ever read about.
“It was a wedding present.”
“You’re kidding?”
Kaylee wiped her eyes and stepped back from the open box. “No.”
“I don’t get it.” Adam joined me next to the couch. “I mean, it’s fancy and all, but I’m not getting any Magick from it.”
“That’s because it doesn’t want you to,” I said in hushed tones.
“Whoa…”
Kaylee ran a finger along the edge of the bowl. “Prussian Wedding Bowls are fickle things, and this one isn’t happy at having been tucked under my couch for the last decade.”
Beaten Path Page 21
