by Jadie Jang
After a few minutes, the shot-caller handed the stick off to the dude next to him and rubbed his hands. The stick went around the circle, with everybody wanting to hold it, and nobody wanting to hold it for more than a few seconds. Not everyone got a turn, though, because after a few minutes, the shot-caller snatched it back and started up his hand-to-hand shuffle again. I guess this explained why the San Antonios had had to hire supernats to guard the stick. I wondered what good the stick would do for humans if they couldn’t even hold it.
I sighed internally at their raptness. We weren’t going to get any info from eavesdropping on them. Not for a while. We’d have to hunker down and wait out their initial delight. Maybe follow them home and listen in on any immediate future planning. I’d done this many times before.
I grasped Tez’s arm again (not gonna lie, this was a perk) and tried to draw him away for a consultation but he had taken root in the ground and wouldn’t budge. I pulled again, and again he wouldn’t budge. I could have easily picked him up and carried him away, but long experience had taught me that guys didn’t like it when girls did that, so I only did it with guys whose bones I didn’t want to jump. Also, it would have made too much noise. We were only two or three yards away from the group at this point, standing a foot or two back from the werewolf’s pacing perimeter, and I couldn’t say anything to Tez without the werewolf, and probably the rest, hearing me.
I’d had a bunch of suggestions prepared, hoping to keep Tez from touching that thing. I didn’t care if the San Antonios got it, as long as Tez didn’t get possessive and start beefing with them. Whatever else was going on, this beef that had—apparently—killed three supernats so far wasn’t something Tez needed in his life.
But it looked like it was too late now, and there was nothing I could do to communicate with him. For a moment, I had no idea what to do. My grip on his arm slackened, and, as if I had signaled to him, Tez jumped forward with a deep, growling scream, and reached for the stick.
He must have dropped his hiding spell or glamour or whatever it was as he leapt. The werewolf reacted unbelievably fast, vaulting over a table and grabbing Tez around the waist before he reached the center of the 70s’ intent circle. He thrust Tez away from the others and displayed his teeth. Tez shrieked again—a chesty, coughing sound, but terrifying—claws sprouted from his thickening hands, and he swiped the werewolf across the face and chest. Four slices opened across his arm’s trajectory, and the werewolf yelped.
After a moment of shock—I’d been learning to think of Tez as somewhat retiring and cautious—I took up a guard position between Tez and the rest of the 70s. They’d also had their moment of shock, combined with a human inability to react that fast, and were just now scrambling to their feet and looking to protect their spoils. I, somewhat belatedly, went invisible, stretched my arms out to either side, and stepped quickly forward, crowding the six of them in towards each other against a picnic table, and none too gently.
“What the hell?” one of them cried.
“Did you see that girl?”
“What girl?”
“Where’d she go?”
“Someone’s pushing me!”
Since the guys had been in a rough circle to begin with, I easily collected them into a tighter one, with the presumed shot caller and the stick in the center. Then I pushed the two closest to me over, causing them to fall into the other four, and entangling them all for a few key moments. If I was lucky, they would start fighting each other and, in the chaos, I could extricate Tez.
I turned to address Tez’s situation and saw that he didn’t need my help, at all. The werewolf was a latticework of red stripes from Tez’s claws, his shirt in bloody ribbons. He’d be bleeding out right about now if he hadn’t had his accelerated healing. Tez was moving too fast and too aggressively for the wolf to respond adequately. I didn’t see more than a scratch or two on Tez, and, as I watched, Tez grabbed the wolf’s wrist, and, in a reversal of his arc-leap, whipped the wolf in a wide arc over his head across the sidewalk and into the street.
He didn’t stop to see what had happened to the werewolf, but dove immediately into the gangster scrum, his face one huge snarl. I knew he was after the stick, and, again, I didn’t know what to do, so I stood by like an idiot while he knocked 70s every which way and wrested the stick from the shot-caller.
Suddenly, everything went quiet, and I realized that most of the movement had come from Tez throwing people around. He stood in the center of a crater of fallen 70s, holding the stick and staring around at one face after another, as if trying to decide how best to kill them. Tez’s claws had shrunk back into his hands, but the stick was growing in his grip. It was back to the walking-stick length it had taken with Chucha, but was, if I was seeing right, growing thicker, more cudgel-like.
Behind me, I heard the werewolf recover its wind and get up. Werewolves are always more aggression than sense, and this idiot sped past me straight at Tez. I reached out to grab him as he went past, but Tez swung his cudgel at the same time and, somehow, it was faster than me. The stick connected with the werewolf’s chest and I felt a shockwave radiate out from that point that had nothing to do with physics. The wolf flew backwards 20 yards into the middle of the boulevard and lay still. As if following the wolf’s contrail, Tez, his face now so mobilized with snarling that it looked like a Francis Bacon painting, jumped after him, raising his stick—no, his club—over his head.
Somehow, in the same way I knew the stick for what it was, I just knew that if Tez struck the wolf again with that thing, the wolf would die. I didn’t care about the wolf: like I said, werewolves annoy me. But, without even thinking about it, I knew that Tez himself would not be okay with killing someone … when he was back to his usual self, I mean. Almost on reflex, I changed into an Anzu and shrieked.
The arc of Tez’s fantastic leap would have taken him to the middle of the boulevard after the wolf, but my Anzu’s shriek dropped him directly down onto the sidewalk from the top of his arc. The sidewalk added a few extra cracks, as did all the shaking buildings around me. Wow. I wasn’t even shrieking at top volume! Anzus rock!
Tez turned to look at me, momentarily confused. The 70s lay like bowling pins, holding their heads and their ears and groaning.
“Let’s go!” I cried and ran across the boulevard.
“No!” Tez shrieked, recovering his snarl. “They have to die! They all have to die!”
Hoo boy. I don’t know how we went from recon to mayhem to they all have to die!, but I was sure the stick was screwing with his poor, shocked, grieving head. I had to get him out of here. By the fastest means necessary.
“No, Tez!” I cried, as if in anguish. “They’ll take the stick back from you! We have to run! We have to get away from them!”
Tez’s entire body reacted immediately, by curving protectively around the stick. His face was a mess, a cubist confusion of alarm and rage. I waved him towards me again, then turned and, as dramatically, yet slowly, as I could, loped off down a side street, turning every other stride to wave him to me.
After a moment, Tez followed.
He could run fast. And with the werewolf out of commission, there was no one there to catch us up. Tez got out ahead of me and the distance between us grew, so I changed into a dog and sped up. I assumed he was taking us in a roundabout way back to the car we had left behind us on the other side of the boulevard, so I stayed a few yards behind him, letting him lead. But after several blocks I realized that he was just running on panic or adrenaline … or maybe he was really feeling the stick. I put on an extra burst of speed to get out ahead of him and get him to stop.
He saw me and stopped on a dime—no few staggering steps to throw off his momentum: just stopped. His face opened, like a flower. The look he gave me was so full of hope and joy and wonder that I took a step back. Wha— then I looked down at my paws and realized they weren’t the thick grubby white of my usual pit bull. They were long and elegant and … tan, changing to black halfwa
y up my legs. I had changed into a doberman, without being aware of it.
I had never seen Chucha in her dog form, but of course I knew she turned into a doberman. It must have been … something in my subconscious. Oh god, what did I do? I snapped back to human form in my horror, and watched Tez’s face crumple, then immediately go blank. He turned away from me and started stumbling back the way we had come.
“Oh, Tez, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean … it wasn’t what I was trying to … I didn’t know I was … it must have been subconscious …” I babbled for a few moments as he walked away, but then recollected myself.
“Tez!” I cried commandingly. He stopped. I walked to him quickly. He didn’t look at me, but straight ahead. “Where are you taking us?”
He dropped his head, then, in a strange, but graceful, movement, raised the stick to scratch his forehead, as if it were merely an extension of his hand. After a moment, he noticed the stick in his hand and raised his head to look at it. His blank face filled again with wonder, but not the joyful wonder of a moment ago. This, rather, was a kind of terrible, grieving wonder, as at something beautiful that was not what you asked for.
“Tez?” I asked, carefully.
He looked at me with that awful wonder and said “Isn’t it amazing?”
Carefully I asked, “What is it … saying to you?”
He chuckled without real humor. “Saying? Maya, it’s a stick.” He stroked it with his other hand. “It’s a very powerful stick.” He chuckled again, but the laugh was a little richer this time. “Very powerful. A tree … a branch … Huexotl …”
I started a bit, hearing its name coming from Tez. Had I told him its name? I scrabbled through my memory of tonight but couldn’t find the moment I’d actually said the word. Huh.
He continued communing with and stroking the stick. The unwelcome thought intruded that the stick, which had retained its thickened cudgel shape for Tez, was actually uncomfortably phallic. Jesus, what was with me throwing sex thoughts around Tez at the most inappropriate moments?
“What does it do?” I asked, trying to distract us both, then felt my face heat up as a flurry of images of things I could do with Tez’s stick blew through my traitorous mind.
He chuckled again, richer now, with more abandon, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. “How the hell do I know?” he said, and then laughed outright.
“Well, we should probably get it back to its rightful owners then,” I said briskly, and he stopped laughing. Giving me an angry look, he turned and walked again in the opposite direction, i.e.: where we were running to in the first place.
“Tez!” I called, and hurried after him, “We’re going the wrong way!”
“What is the right way?” he said, not stopping.
“Tez! The car is back there!” I pointed back in its general direction, somewhere behind and to the right of us. He looked over his shoulder in the direction my arm was pointing, but didn’t stop walking.
“Then we’ll loop back,” he said reasonably, and turned right at the next street.
I relaxed a little, but not entirely. I was going to have to keep him on track.
We walked on a few blocks, parallel to International, then, when I judged we were about level with where we parked the car, I turned us right again to head back. I would prompt him to hide us if there was any sign of pursuit, but he was acting weird, stroking the stick and, every now and again, chuckling for no apparent reason. So magic later. For now, I needed his attention.
“So,” I said finally, “how are we going to get that stick back to Juice?”
Tez stiffened, but didn’t say anything, and didn’t stop stroking the stick.
“It’s his,” I pointed out. “Or it’s the San Antonios’. And you don’t want beef with them. Not now.”
Tez’s stroking motion turned into a hard two-handed grip. “It’s not theirs.”
“It is,” I said. “It’s theirs.”
“No, It’s not!” He shouted the last word.
“Whose is it, then?” I knew better than to argue with him, but I couldn’t help myself. This weird possessiveness everyone felt was getting on my nerves. … And why didn’t I feel it?
He looked at it and smiled. “It makes me feel good,” he said. “Why should I let that go?”
“Because you needed me to remind you that you had a car and to get you back to that car. You’re acting drunk. Please, just give me the stick to hold until we get it back to Juice.”
He took a step back, his face showing horror. “You! You want to take It from me! I trusted you!”
“Jesus, Tez! I don’t want the damned stick! I just want it away from you!”
“That’s why you tried to trick me by turning into Chucha! You’re trying to … to confuse me!” He kept backing away.
“Tez, that’s the kind of crazy talk that’s making me really wary of the stick. Come on!” Plus, Monkey put in, if I wanted to trick you, you wouldn’t have noticed.
“No!” he cried. “No, you can’t have It!”
And he turned and ran as if all the legions of hell were after him.
I chased him a few yards, but quickly realized that that would only make things worse. He needed to cool off, and to put the stick down, get some perspective.
I turned into a dog—a pittie this time, I was careful—then went invisible. I ran back to the car and waited there, human, invisible, for Tez to come to his senses and remember where he parked. The 70s cruised by twice, obviously looking for us, but they had no reason to recognize the car.
After three hours I realized that Tez probably wasn’t coming back tonight. I pulled out a hair, turned it into slim jim, and broke into Tez’s car. Then I turned the same hair into a somewhat unformed key, fitted it to the ignition lock, and started it.
I drove around for a while looking for Tez, but he was gone, or gone invisible, making it harder for me to find him (I’d have to go entirely by eye-flare.) I told myself that he’d probably run all the way back to San Francisco, if my suspicion about the stick giving him energy was correct. But the truth was, I was exhausted, and cranky, and the sun was coming up. Monkey had passed out in the back of my head and the rest of me was not long to follow. He could handle himself for a few hours. I was going to bed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Wednesday/Thursday, October 19/20, 2011
Maya’s Apartment, San Francisco; Greg Brown Park, Berkeley
I didn’t get home until nearly seven in the morning. There was no point in calling Juice. We hadn’t done any of the things we’d said we would—find the shadow, spy on the 70s— and we’d done the one thing he’d said not to do. Maybe over the next few days I could reason with Tez and pry that damned stick away from him, but deep down, I doubted it. And that meant that Tez, and possibly the 23rd St. outfit, if they chose to get involved, was now going to war against the San Antonios.
Fuck.
I called in sick and let myself sleep for most of the day, but when I woke up late in the afternoon, Tez still hadn’t answered any of my messages. My monkey brain pouted, but my rational brain, which had been on silent since Tez had showed up last night, finally poked me and asked what the hell I thought I was doing. I was supposed to pass messages between Tez and Chucha, that was it. I had extended my own charge to encompass facilitating between the two because I knew I would be useful at it, and, let’s be honest, so I could spend more time with Tez. Well, let’s be perfectly honest, also, eventually, so I could steal Tez’s little sister away from him, a little bit.
Chucha. Oh no.
I had been thinking of her, for a moment, as still alive. The knowledge of her death filled me yet again, and I felt my heart pulled down like it had turned to lead. My loud downstairs neighbor came home from work and, as usual, slammed the entryway door too hard. Journey to the West fell off its precarious spot on the shelf and lay face up on the floor, staring at me, where I sat at the table with the remnants of a strawberry Pop Tart breakfast and a phone with no new mes
sages.
Seriously, what was I doing? Who did I think I was, acting like this was some kind of mission for me? I should have made a final report back to Ayo long before now, so I could be shot of this damned gig and get paid. I wasn’t really a part of this tragedy, and—let’s be brutally honest here—Tez was going to associate me with his baby sister’s death forever now. I had no chance with him, even though I was, apparently, self absorbed enough to make that a consideration at a time like this. Tez deserved some peace and quiet to be with his family and deal with his grief. And I was gonna give him that. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have a lot on my plate, what with Dalisay still missing and, and Wayland dead and the shadow creature running around, although I couldn’t think just now what my next move was, but there was also … also me trying to find out what I was … although I was weary of that question right now … and what else? … So much …
But … my brain immediately switched sides, as it often did, to point out that peace and quiet were exactly not what Tez was about to get, with at least two different gangs after the magical artifact he wouldn’t give up. And his extreme behavior of last night was no doubt a result of mixing grief and anger with the giddiness of the stick’s power. Its influence was certainly not going to abate as long as he was in possession of it, and he wasn’t going to want to give it up as long as he had it. Which meant that the only way to get it away from him …
I stood up. My mind was made up in an instant. There was no way I was gonna let anyone kill him for a stupid magic stick.
I sat back down and pulled my laptop towards me. A little way down on SF Gate’s home page I found it: “Oakland Drive-by Shooting Wounds Three/ Cops Suspect Gang War.” Truce over.
