Jerome has heard the screams too, and he races to Terry’s room, making it there before Willa. “What’s wrong?” he asks as he bursts in. Regina is kneeling over Terry, but he isn’t moving. “Terry?” Jerome shouts.
Regina stops screaming, but she continues to speak without opening her mouth. Jerome doesn’t hear her, but Willa does. And so do I.
“Terry, wake up,” says Regina without moving her lips. “Please wake up.”
I recognize Regina’s voice now. Somehow, by connecting with her mind, I have changed her, passed something of myself to her. She is speaking with my tone, my inflection—my voice.
Jerome drops to the floor and throws his ear against Terry’s chest, listening for a heartbeat. “He’s alive. He’s okay.”
Terry begins to rouse. He looks around, confused—but not frightened. He seems unchanged, unaware of what has happened. His mind, instinctively protecting itself, has treated the images as nightmares. The visions—my memories—that he saw have been buried deep in his unconscious. Just like his memory of his first encounter with Van Owen. The poor boy is a walking history book of horrors and secrets.
Finally, Willa makes it to the room. Leaning against her cane, she stands in the doorway, her face etched with concern. “Regina,” she whispers, hoping that Jerome is too busy with Terry to listen, “I heard your voice, but you sounded just like my grandmother, Amara.”
As Jerome attends to Terry, Regina opens her mouth, but Willa holds up her hand and whispers, “No, child. Don’t speak. I can hear you”—she points to her head and whispers—“in here.”
Willa is being cautious. If Regina were to speak—at home or anywhere—no one would understand why she suddenly has a Southern accent. Even more frightening, she may not be able to control her power. Her words might resound in others’ minds. So this is why the child stops speaking. Willa teaches her not to bring attention to herself. Willa doesn’t want Van Owen to hear her. Which means the poor child must pose as mute.
But even as Regina follows her grandmother’s instruction and remains silent, Terry rises from the floor. He stares at his sister, and she stares back, and he senses something.
“Are you okay?” Regina asks him, her voice speaking into his thoughts.
And Terry’s eyes widen. So, the bond between them—which I have seen in other visions—is formed here. By me. I can change the future even from here. I can communicate with my descendants.
But I have so little time left.
I return to the memory, watching Terry stand, dazed, leaning on Jerome for support. But then the scene abruptly ends, and I am drawn back to Terry’s present.
“What are you thinking about?” a voice bellows, a voice I know so well.
Hands rip at Terry’s face, tearing away a duct tape blindfold, and Terry’s eyes strain at the dim light, unable to focus.
“What are you thinking about? “ Van Owen asks him again. “You were shaking like you were watching something in your mind—a dream or a vision of some sort—but I couldn’t see it. Let me see what you saw.”
Terry’s eyes start to adjust to the light. He can make out the tall figure in front of him, framed in silhouette by the light of a chandelier that hangs overhead, identical to the one I saw in Van Owen’s mansion more than a century ago.
“What,” asks Van Owen, “were you watching, boy?” He swings his left arm, slapping Terry across the face with the back of his hand.
Terry’s mouth is still covered, so he can’t respond, except to moan with the impact. And he can barely hear the questions, drowned out as they are by a very old song that plays in his head. He doesn’t understand the words that repeat over and over, but I do:
Dji mi sarro ti kee la ti na-arro
Dji mi sarro ti kee la ti na-arro
Dji mi sarro ti kee la ti na-arro
Thirty-One
Hippolyta glided through the clamorous streets, through the pelting rain. As Carl Kelly rode her bareback along the median between the stalled Eleventh Avenue evening traffic, he looked down at the city rushing beneath him and felt for a moment like an Olympian god astride a mythical horse. He felt like he was flying.
Hippolyta had never even walked through such traffic before—and there had been no time to mask her to keep her from seeing the madness of New York City—and yet she simply raced through gridlock as gracefully as she ran around an empty dirt track. She’s fearless, Carl thought to himself. As he neared the stable address that Warren had given him, Carl knew that he would have to be just as fearless as Hippolyta this night. But what is Van Owen trying to achieve by kidnapping Terry—that our confrontation takes place on his turf? Carl was certain of one thing: an ambush awaited him.
He steered the mare through Hell’s Kitchen, past the Intrepid Museum, past the Lincoln Tunnel entrance. He leaned low, his arms almost hugging her neck, ignoring the strangers who stared up at the Black man storming through Manhattan on an unsaddled white horse.
Finally, he saw the street sign that read 37th Street, and he slowed Hippolyta to a walk. She shook her head side to side and whinnied, the rain spraying off her mane in all directions. As he turned west, the street was dark and narrowed by the parked cars that lined both sides. Just past the middle of the block, on the left side, the massive double doors to the stable loomed between two aging, wrought iron gas lamps, their fires dimly burning. A dispirited spotted gray horse exited the wide entry ramp, pulling a hansom cab. The driver, a young Black man, looked like anything but a caretaker of horses. He wore a leather jacket and dark glasses in the evening rain. He steered the carriage westward, not even noticing Carl, who was barely fifty feet behind him. At the end of the block, the carriage made a right turn and headed uptown toward Harlem. Carl realized then why these horse carriages had become so prevalent in Harlem. They weren’t offering rides; the hansom cabs were Hendrik Van Owen’s business vehicles. He used conveyances from his era—carriages—to peddle his filth. More than a century ago, the slaver had taken his pleasure from capturing and transporting and killing and enslaving Black people, but he made his living then from the whites who bought his tobacco. In this new era, it was newer drugs like heroin and cocaine and crack that kept Van Owen wealthy. He had found a vocation through which he could both hurt Blacks and make money from them at the same time—by corrupting Harlem with his drugs, trying to ensure that this era’s African descendants would be just as downtrodden and defeated as the African-Americans of his time. Carl lowered his head and rode Hippolyta up the driveway and through the dark stable entrance.
At first glance, the stable was hardly distinct from many that Carl had seen or worked in—high ceilings, wooden beams, haylofts. But the smell was rank. Horse stalls flanked the left and right walls. They were tiny, dirty chambers unfit for any animal, let alone broken, ancient carriage horses desperately in need of comfort and care. Carl was sickened by the smell, by the repellant conditions the horses were forced to endure, by the fluorescent lights that hung from the ceiling. Yet he saw no horses. And there was only one hansom cab carriage remaining—an inoperable one, missing a wheel, which lay abandoned near the center of the stable. The facility appeared to be empty, but then a man’s voice rang out from the rear of the stable.
“That’s a mighty fine filly you got there.”
Carl spun his head to see the speaker, who was standing in shadow near a glass room that ran across the width of the rear stable wall. Dark curtains had been drawn, concealing what was inside. The man opened the steel door at the center of the glass wall, pulling something behind him. He wore a sleek black suit and shiny leather shoes and walked with the slightest limp. As he passed under the dim overhead lighting and stopped about forty feet away, Carl saw the stringy, white-blond hair, the skeletal face. There was no doubt—it was Hendrik Van Owen, and behind his back he was dragging something, a chair. Bound to the chair, his mouth gagged, was Carl’s son Terry.
Carl swung both his legs to one side of Hippolyta and slid down her rib cage until he lande
d on his feet. He patted her on the nose, whispering, “You run along now, girl. Wait outside.” She obeyed, trotting out through the doors and stopping by the curb.
“Let my son go,” said Carl calmly, but he could feel the anger brimming inside him. Around his feet, the dirt and hay began to swirl.
Van Owen seemed not to notice the wind, though. He smirked. “Oh, this thing? Is it yours?” He swung the chair in front of him and stood it upright on the ground beside him. Terry’s head bobbed from the motion, and he squirmed against the duct tape that held him. Van Owen stared intently at Carl for a moment and then nodded. “I remember you. From Saratoga. I recognized you on the security camera as soon as you rode in.”
Carl didn’t answer. He just moved slowly toward the pale man.
“You know I searched for you and your family for some time—researched every Kelly I could find—to no avail. You’re apparently quite good at keeping yourself hidden.”
“I’m not hiding now,” said Carl. “I’m right in front of you.”
“But you are way out of your element. Your wife’s not here to protect you this time. Now you’re just like any other nigger, aren’t you?” His hand began to glow.
Carl couldn’t understand what Van Owen was referring to—wife not here to protect him?—but he had no time to dwell on it. He saw the glow forming around Van Owen’s hand, sparks crackling, and he readied himself for the fight he had anticipated for years.
“You were like a little puppet to Dara, weren’t you?” Van Owen taunted him. “Tell me, was it demeaning that she was the one with the strength? That she had to fight and die for you? That you were nothing?” His hand grew brighter. He raised it, pointing it at Carl. Electric currents formed in a semicircle around his wrist and extended toward Carl—slowly, as if passing through water. He was showing off his mastery over his power. “Don’t bother answering. Those are rhetorical questions. Let me explain…”
“I think you’re a little confused,” Carl interrupted. “Let me explain.” He held his right hand in front of him, the fingers pointed toward Van Owen. Instantaneously, Carl’s entire hand was covered in a greenish glow. Lightning crackled, rotating around his fingertips like a fishing line before surging forward to meet Van Owen’s current in mid-flight. For a moment, the two opposing lightning branches fluttered in the air, intermingling and undulating like competing sine waves. Then Carl closed his hand into a fist. His current enveloped Van Owen’s, and the two electrical streams dissipated in the air above them and vanished. “You don’t want any of this,” Carl told him. “Now step away from my son.”
Van Owen contorted his face like an angry child. Before him was another man—a Black man—who wielded the same power that Van Owen did. But Carl was even more adept. Infuriated, Van Owen riveted his attention on Carl, his blue eyes boring into Carl’s thoughts.
Carl was ready for this tack, though. He could feel the tendrils of his enemy reaching into his mind. He had no defense for it except a variation on his offense. He closed his eyes and lifted his left hand. The dirt began to dance more vigorously, swirling around his legs like a miniature cyclone. Just as he could feel Van Owen’s gaze beginning to penetrate his mind, Carl held his hand out in front of him, folding it into a fist. The cyclone traveled up his body, growing more intense as it climbed. It curled about his chest like a twister, the tiny spirals advancing in ever widening circles around his shoulder, his arm, his hand. Then he opened his fist, and all of the spirals seemed to collect in his palm and rise outward—all of this in just seconds.
At first, Van Owen felt only a breeze, a tickle against his face, but then it grew. The wind struck the walls of the stable, bouncing off, growing stronger, whistling. Van Owen tried to plant his feet. He even reached for Terry’s chair to anchor himself, but it was too late. Carl motioned with his arm, and the wind slammed into Van Owen, knocking him backward into the glass wall at the rear of the stable.
Terry, his mouth still covered, struggled in vain against his bindings. For a moment, his eyes met his father’s, and Terry nodded with excitement.
Yes, son, Carl wanted to tell him. This is what your father can do. He didn’t want his son to see this fight, to see his father kill a man, but he had no choice. Van Owen had to die.
The slaver’s lips coiled into a sneer as he spoke without a trace of fear in his voice. “I see the resemblance now. I never forget a face. You’re the image of that slave boy who dove from my ship all those years ago. You’re right. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to sully my hands with the likes of you.” He pulled himself to his feet and strode toward the entrance to the glass room. “I can already sense the girl. She’s so very like Amara. I can’t hear her thoughts yet or her voice. But I can feel her getting closer. I’m going to keep her. You can have the boy. You can have him dead.” He looked up toward the second level loft, which was filled with hay bales and wooden crates. “Kill them both,” he shouted.
As Carl looked upward, Van Owen tramped through the steel doorway to his sanctum, shut the door, and slid the bolts across.
From above, from all sides, Carl could hear rustling sounds. A slew of men aimed their guns. He had been right; it was an ambush.
Thirty-Two
I see a white horse in the darkness. She is beautiful, regal, a magnificent creature. If this is my ride to Valhalla, where are the horse’s wings?
Weak and dying, I force myself to focus—remind myself I’m watching a vision. I concentrate on the horse, certain that I’ve seen her before. Yes, her name is Hippolyta. Carl’s favorite. She mills about in front of a stable on a dark Manhattan street, waiting for him. Everything is familiar now. This is Van Owen’s stable, the place from which he distributes his drugs to pollute my people. How fitting that it’s situated in a place called Hell’s Kitchen.
I’ve seen this stable before—in a vision many years ago; it’s the place where everyone comes together. Terry, Carl, Jerome, Warren, Regina, Willa. Even Marco. I told Marco about this day. But I knew so little then. The visions were rarely as forthcoming as those I’m seeing now as I lay dying. Perhaps today, then, I will finally know how it all ends.
Terry is in the chair still, his mouth still covered, but he is watching something glorious. He knows of his father’s abilities—he just regained those memories—but seeing the power so close up is something entirely different. Finally, he understands the terrible burden that Carl carries—that it isn’t only the loss of his wife that has damaged Carl so, rendering him so withdrawn, so isolated from the world. Carl’s instability stems from something just as terrifying—he is both blessed and stricken with godlike powers over the elements. And what man could remain sane and whole with powers like these?
“Warren…come back...” Marco’s voice interrupts, and the vision shifts.
Ninth Avenue. Warren can hear the old man shouting in the distance, but he doesn’t look back. Marco isn’t the worthless rat that Warren had always assumed him to be. Willa had told him once that his grandfather “…was a good man… he just couldn’t stay with me. It wasn’t his fault.” She had told them little else, so Warren had created an image in his mind of a cold man, angrier and sullener even than his father. Someone to hate. Someone to blame. But Warren understands now: Marco is a good man, just a flawed one. And Warren knows all about flaws, and he won’t lead the old, flawed man to his death.
He runs down Ninth Avenue to Thirty-Seventh Street and turns right. Rows of warehouse buildings and former sweatshops line the dark street. He passes two junkies huddled for shelter in a doorway. It’s good, he thinks to himself, that this is ending today, or I’d probably end up like them. I’d rather die fighting.
The stable is west of Eleventh Avenue, Warren knows. He’s been there once before—to buy heroin. It was where he met Akins for the first time. That day, the stable was full of hansom cabs and dealers spilling through the double doors with the day’s spoils. Tonight, the block is too quiet. As he nears the stable, though, he sees a large, white shap
e, eight feet high, moving about slowly by the entrance. Warren’s first thought is that Van Owen has invaded his thoughts and implanted the image—a vision of a beast of some sort. He slows to a walk, angling closer to the creature. It faces the door as if waiting for someone inside, but then its head bobs up and down in a stiff, shuddering motion that Warren recognizes. Hippolyta! Warren has seen his father riding her through Macombs Dam Park many times, though he has never let his father see him watching.
Hippolyta jolts at his approach, but Warren has been raised around horses. He holds up both of his hands in an unthreatening manner, and she lowers her head submissively, pressing her nose against his palms. Nearby, tires squeal. Warren spins as the red pickup truck pulls to a stop, parks across from the stable, and Jerome climbs from it.
Warren is surprised at how big his brother looks. He knew that Jerome always hung his head and hunched his shoulders in his older brother’s presence—he’d done it from the day he’d outgrown Warren at age 11—but tonight Jerome is standing at full height and with his shoulders back, and he is massive. Warren pauses a moment just to admire him. “Damn,” he says.
“Warren?” Jerome asks. “What are you doing here?”
“Same thing as you, I guess.”
“Yeah,” nods Jerome. “Pop told me to go to the house to look after Regina and Grandma Willa, but they weren’t there, so I came here.” He looks up again at the horse. “You brought Hippolyta?”
“No,” says Warren. He smirks at his brother and sees that Jerome understands: their father has reached the stable first, and he’s already inside.
They began moving toward the stable entrance, but then a hansom cab makes the turn from Eleventh Avenue and heads toward the stable. Another one follows, and two more behind that one, each one with a young Black man at the reins.
“Those are his people,” says Warren. He slaps Hippolyta on her rear, sending her running up the block, away from the action.
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