The New Hero Volume 2

by ed. Robin D. Laws

  The girl was waiting for an answer. Jacob shook his head.

  “Maybe we don’t need the help.”

  Before Olivia could respond, Jacob slapped her horse on its hindquarters, sending it trotting forward. From his low hill, he watched until beast and rider entered the cluster of buildings.

  The girl never looked back—but then, she didn’t need to.

  Jacob turned and spurred his mare east into the rising sun.

  Stalking in Memphis

  Jean Rabe

  The fire for the most part out, smoke pulsed from what had been a furniture warehouse and stretched toward Confederate Park and Wolf River Harbor, joining the early-morning fog that clung to the banks. The stench warred with exhaust fumes from cars that inched by as the lookee loos inside them strained to absorb the destruction. Everything was all grotesquely concatenated, Sabine thought.

  The bitter odors settled heavy like cement on her tongue. She couldn’t work up enough saliva to get rid of it, and yet, mesmerized, she couldn’t leave to find cleaner air. She perched on the corner, just beyond the barricade, ice blue eyes peering into the smoldering wreckage and watering with the sting. A tall, hooded man loomed behind her, statue like and seemingly oblivious to the bustle of firemen and police and the coroner’s people who were bagging a half-dozen bodies.

  Sabine had summoned the man too late. Her calculations had been wrong. She had expected the fire hours from now, close to noon, when she and he would be ready, waiting.

  “What did I miss?” she wondered aloud. At least she’d gotten the building correct, but people had perished because she’d misjudged the timing.

  They stood there until her legs were stiff and her toes cramped and she’d sucked so much of the acridness into her lungs that she struggled for breath.

  “Follow me,” she ordered the tall man.

  They wound their way through the crowd on the sidewalk—men and women dawdling on their way to work, shopkeepers come out for a gander, and the street people who held out paper cups and hats for coins, relishing the donations that seemed a little more generous this close to a tragedy.

  Sabine’s bookstore was on Peabody Place, just north of the historic district, narrow, but deep and wedged between a resale shop where she bought most of her clothes and a delicatessen that catered to the health-conscious with its tofu burgers and organic bean puree.

  “Won’t be able to look around until dark comes,” she said. “Fire marshal will be poking through it all day. He won’t find anything, though. He’s a smart one, but doesn’t know what to look for.”

  The man stood just inside the entrance, watching her turn on the lights, flip the closed sign to open, and rearrange a few books on the front display table. Sabine busied herself with the routine of work for several minutes, pausing to wait on a customer who came in, a young woman with a bulging backpack who gave the tall man only a passing glance.

  “Here’s the book you were looking for, Miss Swails,” she said. “King Leopold’s Ghost by Hochschild, first printing, 1998. Near to mint as I could find. It covers everything—his incursion into the Congo, the dismemberments, mass murders, burnt villages. Grisly, but it should help with your history paper.”

  Miss Swails paid for it and left.

  “The fire marshal is thorough, I know,” Sabine continued. “I’ve seen him work the other fires downtown. He just doesn’t understand the pattern.” She pulled out a city map, spread it on the counter, and motioned the man join her. “I’ll show you.”

  He brushed back his hood and leaned close. He wore a skull cap so black that it seemed to absorb the fluorescent light cast from above. His short beard, braided and pointed, was shot through with gray, his eyes intense pinpricks. His skin was dark, but he was not a black man, it was all over walnut brown, looking burnished and oiled, his muscles well defined beneath a tunic that resembled a sleeveless T. In his right hand he clutched an ankh made of gold and inlaid with lapis lazuli in symbols representing life, the sun, and rebirth.

  She stabbed her index finger at Xs she’d marked. “Here and here. These were the first two. I hadn’t thought anything of them at the time. The first dismissed as a grease fire in the kitchen, and from this old hotel a man they’d guessed was smoking in his cot in the basement.” She jabbed at a few more. “But then there were three more fires, all downtown and close together, and the buildings total losses. Something niggled at the back of my mind, and so I mapped them. Do you see?”

  The man shook his head and growled from deep in his throat. “I see colorful, thin papyrus with markings I cannot fathom.” He stood away from the table, seeming even taller than before. “So you have called me for this? For ink scratches? You have ripped me from my comfortable sleep for burned buildings?” That he could speak her language was part of the magic in the summoning, but that magic did not extend to the written words. “Scratches on papyrus, inky insects that mean nothing to me. Worthless.”

  “I summoned you, Ptah, he who the Egyptians called the creator god, because I haven’t the power to stop the fires myself.” She paused and brushed her fingers over two more Xs. “I need help.”

  “And I have the power you need?” He looked down his long nose at her.

  Sabine was barely five feet tall, and slight, a woman who appeared to be in her middle years, but who was far older.

  “This is Memphis,” Sabine said. “Memphis was made for Ptah.”

  “This may well be Memphis. But not mine.”

  “Your Memphis was the first capital of united Egypt. It remained the capital of Egypt for at least eight dynasties.”

  “During the Old Kingdom.”

  “Yes, I read extensively of it.” She waved a diminutive hand at a section of bookshelf crowded with titles about King Tutankhamen, Giza, the pyramids, and various translations of the Book of the Dead. “In the sixth dynasty it was the center of worship of you, Ptah, the deification of the primordial mound, god of craftsmen and potters they called you, builder and regenerator.”

  Something that passed for smugness lit his face.

  “But you were not a god, just a being with immense power, you and your kind, members of a race that was ancient when the Egyptians arose.”

  “They worshiped me,” he said.

  “They built for you an alabaster sphinx to guard your temple.”

  “It still stands,” Ptah said, “unlike your ugly buildings that appear so easy to burn. That Memphis was for me.”

  “This is my Memphis, and though not so large and imposing as your great city was, it is far more important in that proverbial scheme of things. I felt it fitting to summon you to it.”

  “Ptah in Memphis. But your Memphis is not a capital of anything.”

  She shrugged. “That would be Nashville, but that is not so crucial a place—”

  “—as your Memphis,” he finished.

  “Yes. This Memphis is vital to all mankind.”

  He chuckled, the sound like pebbles rolling down a hill. “Ptah in Memphis once more. I will tell my consort Sekhmet and my son Nefertem of this when we are done, woman—” The word sounding like a piece of spoiled meat. “When this is done and you dismiss me.”

  “Sabine. My name is Sabine Upchurch.”

  “Sabine. It means?”

  “I was named for the Sabine River that runs through Louisiana.”

  “Which is—”

  “A ways from here. We don’t have time for this, Ptah. We—”

  “—will take time, for I will know of you before I aid you. I will know the loins you sprang—”

  She gripped the corners of the counter, squeezing so hard her knuckles turned bone white. “My father was a preacher, the fire and brimstone kind.”

  “Does he still live, or is he relegated to—”

  “The fires, Ptah, are what concerns us this day, and—”

  “What concerns me, Sabine Upchurch, is the woman who summoned me. I will know of you, or I will not help.” He closed his eyes and stood still, as if
he was listening to a voice from elsewhere.

  She relaxed her grip on the counter. “My parents came to Louisiana about the time it became a state.”

  “A considerable while ago,” he pronounced, his eyes still closed.

  “My father had a fierce sense of right and wrong, shared by my mother, who had … gifts … that she passed to me, their only child. That’s all you need know of them.”

  “These gifts? The ability to summon?” He’d opened his eyes and was studying her.

  “Yes,” she said. “I have dealt with otherworldly threats all of my life, Ptah, traveling throughout the south and settling here because the ley lines cross and the energy is strongest. There is something special about this ground.”

  “This Memphis.”

  “Yes, Ptah.”

  “And you are its keeper.”

  She stepped back and let her hands relax and drop to her sides. “I intervene when the threat is beyond the ken of the people who live here.”

  “Such as this threat, the fires.”

  “Yes.”

  “To this Memphis.”

  “Yes.”

  Ptah smiled, showing an even row of pearl-white teeth. “My son must see this place. Perhaps you will bring him here now to help and so that he might see this garish and stinking new Memphis for himself. And so that he might hear the cacophony that—”

  “—passes itself off for music.” A restaurant had opened across the street, and a bluesy piece, Wynton Marsalis’ Deep in the South, poured out the open door and found its way inside Sabine’s shop. “I haven’t the power to bring more of you. Not for a while. Summoning magic is taxing and difficult.”

  “It weakens you.”

  Sabine nodded and pointed to more of the Xs. “Do you see the pattern?”

  “How is it you summoned me?”

  She let out a breath that whistled between her teeth. “Truly, I don’t have the time to discuss the intricacies of my … magic I guess you would call it. Others I have summoned—”

  “From Egypt?”

  “No. Genghis Khan, Thomas Jefferson—”

  “I know of the former, Sabine Upchurch, daughter of a fire and brimstone preacher. This Thomas Jefferson, I have not heard—”

  “Edward Rickenbacker,” she went on. “Julius Ceasar—”

  Ptah’s eyes lit up in recognition of the last name. “That spirit I have met in my otherworld existence, and I—”

  “—have asked more questions than any of them. Suffice it to say that with effort I pull beings from the past, those who have skills to assist me.”

  “Skills the people of this Memphis lack.”

  “Perhaps I am the last of my kind, Ptah. And I use my abilities to safeguard—”

  “Your Memphis. You have told me.”

  “Yes, and thereby the rest of the world.”

  His eyebrows rose in question.

  “And so I ask you again, do you see the pattern? The symbol the fires are creating?”

  He shook his head, and she took a marker and connected the Xs like a child would connect the dots in a coloring book.

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  At first glance the line looked like sword that had bent over at the tip, as if made of a noodle. Then she connected the side points, what would be the pommel’s crosspiece. “The first two fires,” she said. “It took me more than a little while to realize what the symbol was … is becoming. Familiar to me, but in that faraway manner, something I’d read or looked at and had nested itself at the back of my mind. And so I traced this into my computer.”

  The last word had no meaning to Ptah.

  “And it came back with this.” She retrieved a printout from under the counter.

  It was not a sword but a khet, a hieroglyph that represented a lamp or brazier, the “bent blade,” fire arcing away.

  “Fire is the embodiment of the very sun,” Sabine said, “and the symbol for that is the uraeus—”

  “Which spits fire,” Ptah finished.

  Sabine looked up as the bell chimed, announcing customers, these two older men who always came here together, a couple, she guessed. They favored her offering of mysteries. They headed toward the back, aiming straight for her section of Mary Higgins Clark.

  “Odd that this Memphis, so far removed in time and distance from my Egypt, would have a khet carved out of burnt buildings in its landscape.”

  Sabine met his gaze. She realized he had no eyelashes, and she could not discern pupils. “Fire was key, Ptah, in your time. And is still dangerous in mine. It played a role in ancient Egyptian’s concept of the underworld.”

  “The fires of the underworld,” he said. “Where souls went if their heart did not balance with the feather of truth.”

  “Fire is the commonality between Egypt’s old religion and modern Christians’ belief of hell.”

  “Fiery lakes filled with fiery demons.”

  “Yes, eternal suffering in flames.”

  Ptah watched the two men pull down one book after another until their arms were loaded. They shuffled to the counter and deposited their treasures, barely registering the creator god’s presence.

  “Ought to last us a month or so,” one said as he handed over the bills.

  “We’ll buy all of your Connollys next,” the other told her. “When it’s my turn to do the picking. Police procedurals with a bit more zip.”

  “They ignored me.” Ptah said after they left, not hiding the offense in his voice.

  “They don’t see you for what you really are,” Sabine explained. “Part of my summoning magic.”

  Ptah looked even more offended.

  “You don’t need the people of my Memphis to worship you,” she said. “People today are more skeptical, iconoclastic and—”

  “Oblivious to the destruction they face.” He traced the line that formed the khet. “It is not yet complete. If the mark were to continue to here—” His finger touched the intersection of Second Street and Beale. “The khet would be complete.”

  “And what would that mean?” She rocked back on her heels. “That all of my Memphis will burn in the fiery pits of hell?”

  “The End of Days,” Ptah pronounced. “Even my people knew of that. I believe if the khet is finished, it will mark the end of this world.”

  “The fire marshal, he’s a smart man,” she repeated. “But he doesn’t see this symbol. And if he did, he wouldn’t understand it. The End of Days, I thought that a possibility, the indications point to that. Oh, I suppose I might have this all wrong.”

  “You would not have summoned me if—”

  “Summoning is serious magic, reserved for critical events and—”

  Ptah pointed straight up. “This was critical?”

  An old building, Upchurch Used Books had a high ceiling, roughly sixteen feet. It was covered by a detailed painting that the fluorescent lights hanging from it did not properly illuminate.

  The creation of Adam was in the center, God stretching out a finger to touch him, the colors predominantly beige and peach, eggshell and tan. Unlike in the Sistine Chapel, Adam’s loins were swathed in a rosy cloth, the same shade used in the rendering of the separation of land and water and the section depicting the separation of light and darkness.

  “My ceiling needed to be redone two summers past,” she said. “His technique improved since his previous ceiling work. A painted ceiling was crucial to me.”

  “Your customers—”

  “The astute ones notice it.” A pause. “And appreciate it.”

  “Who have you summoned to tidy your shelves? To catalog your books?”

  She scowled at him, but said softly: “William Shakespeare and I have discussed literature.”

  Ptah made a snorting sound. “When I am returned to the land of spirits I will search for others you have summoned, and we will talk. I am not limited to conversing with only the dead from my time. We will talk at length, Sabine Upchurch.” He returned his attention to the map. �
�You thought this morning’s fire would not come so early.”

  “No. I thought I understood the time within the pattern.”

  “Tell me when each of these fires occurred.”

  The pair spent the next few hours going over details of the fires—when they were called in, what the fire marshal had noticed and had subsequently reported to the press, how many people were killed, how long it took to put each blaze out.

  “Your fire marshal is a fool,” Ptah decided. “That he cannot see this … that he cannot see the ultimate danger … that—”

  “I don’t think he’s studied ancient Egypt or can read hieroglyphs, and he likely knows nothing about the End of Days beyond a handful of thriller movies made to capitalize on supposed Mayan myth.”

  “You summoned me for my great wisdom, yes?”

  “And for your power.” She rubbed at the back of her hand.

  “I am wise above strong.” He thrust out his chin, his mien haughty.

  “Ancient wisdom is clearer. It is not cluttered. People in this Memphis are—”

  “My time was no less complicated. My race, and the Egyptians that sprang from us, were not primitive. Their deeds are unequaled even in this day. I challenge the residents of … this Memphis … to build pyramids so great and perfect. Their language, mummification, and—”

  “People today rely on computers.” Sabine smiled, enjoying that she used a word he could still not comprehend.

  His eyes glimmered darkly, showing that perhaps he did grasp it. “They let other things do the thinking for them, and in their reliance they have grown dull. And so the people of this Memphis will never be as wise as the people from my Memphis.”

  “And so I need your help, creator god, to save them.”

  “And thereby all of mankind.”

  “Please.”

  She closed her shop at sunset and they melded into the exodus of people leaving work. Music came from a variety of sources now, second and third floor apartments that offered jazz, hip-hop, and oldies rock, and the taverns that provided live fare, all of this one incarnation of blues or another. Sabine thought that Ptah was actually enjoying the clamor.

  They kept to the shadows when they reached the site of this morning’s fire. Two police cars and a fire department van remained. Traffic was slow around it, more lookee loos taking in the aftermath.