by Ryan Hill
“What are you doing?” I asked. “We can’t fight.”
The wind whipped Sam’s curly blonde hair around her face. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. It didn’t matter. I knew what she was trying to say, and I wasn’t having any of it.
“No,” I said. “You’re not martyring yourself. That’s not going to help anybody, especially me.”
She smirked. “Since when do you need help?”
I gestured toward the storefront with the mini-sword. “Besides now?”
“I can buy you time.”
Pieces of the back wall broke apart, spilling rock-sized chunks of cinder block onto the floor, and on the opposite end of the store, the beaded curtains disappeared outside. Even the desk screeched away as the Mop Tops took charge.
“Don’t give up.” I pushed her hands down. “I’ll think of something.”
“I know you will.”
The last thing I remember was everything going white.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Extra Muscle
I came to sometime later. I didn’t know how much later, since Sam’s Hand of God mojo swallowed me whole, knocking me out. My bones ached, in particular my head. Sam must’ve blasted me to safety, but where? Texarkana?
There was a sharp, whirring pain in my temple. I reached up and pulled out a three-inch splinter. It helped, but the pain would take a little while to dissipate. In the meantime, I tried to get a bearing on my location. Using my keen sense of deductive reasoning, I knew that I was surrounded by trees. Where those trees were in relation to the House of the Rising Sun, however, required a bit more thought. There was a whooshing sound in the distance, like cars passing by. Maybe I was near Capital Boulevard, basically across the street from the store? It made sense for Sam to use only enough force to get me to safety.
Ozzie woofed and I glanced over. He was sitting off to the side; his tail wagging and tongue hanging out of his mouth.
“I don’t even want to know how you got here.” I lay back down on the ground and closed my eyes. My mind needed to stop swirling and ringing like it was at a twenty-four-hour rave in some obscure Eastern European country. Since I didn’t know how much time I’d lost, I needed to put together all the pieces as soon as demonly possible.
I dove back into the well of my deductive reasoning. It was obvious Sam got me to safety with her Hand of God special, knocking me out in the process. I got the splinter in my head as I was shot out of the House of the Rising Sun, or when I crashed through the trees and landed in my current location. It didn’t matter which.
What did matter was Sam being under the care of Remy and the Mop Tops. Did she martyr herself? Surrender? Get tarred and feathered?
Bless it all. If I wanted to find out what happened, I had to get up and move. Sometimes it didn’t pay to be in my line of work.
Ozzie and I emerged from the forest to see that—I’m trying to avoid use of the phrase ‘Sam blew me’—I’d been hurled a good half-mile from the House of the Rising Sun. The Hell Hound and I made our way to the store, only to find that there wasn’t anything there. Where the store once stood was nothing but dirt. Less disheartening was the fact that the Mop Tops had also sucked up the Corolla.
Ozzie put his nose to the ground, sniffing for a sign of Sam or Duffy. Finally, the Hell Hound sat with a hmpf and cried. There was no sign of either of them. They must’ve been taken by the Caelo.
I took my cell out to call her, but my phone was in pieces. I threw what remained onto the pavement. It was always something. There wasn’t even a need to check if my suit was ruined. That was a given. I reached for my pack of cigarettes.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” I felt my leg through a hole in the pants pocket. The smokes must’ve fallen out at some point while I was unconscious and mid-air.
“Let’s go,” I said to Ozzie. “Regroup or whatever.”
The Caelo in Terra, with help from Remy, had taken Sam and Duffy. Even a flamingo with their head in the ground knew that. The problem was finding them. The Mop Tops knew their meeting place at the community center was blown. It was doubtful they’d return. Nobody was that stupid. This left the Caelo in Terra lost in the storm and almost impossible to find. Those buttheads could’ve been anywhere.
Ozzie and I found a gas station that was still open, the fluorescent lights illuminating the pumps buzzed with electricity, and Ozzie stayed outside while I went into the station’s store to buy a phone.
I’d expected an onslaught of horrible elevator music to greet me inside, but there wasn’t any music playing at all. In a night full of unspeakable garbage, I considered that a minor victory.
“Got a phone I can use?” I asked the cashier, a Latin-American woman with her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“You can buy a pre-paid one, but that’s all we’ve got.”
I grabbed the first phone I saw and slid it across the counter to the cashier. “Some cigarettes too,” I said. “Menthol.”
The cashier held up the phone, which I now saw was pink. “You sure you want this one?”
I waved her off. “Just ring me up, will you?”
I paid for the items with my American Express Centurion credit card—because every rewards point counted—then ripped through the phone’s package and pressed the power button.
Nothing.
I pressed it again, using more force.
Still nothing. Unbelievable.
I looked to the cashier. “No charge?”
She shrugged. “No sé.”
Bless it all. I squeezed the phone out of frustration. “Do you sell any chargers?”
“Car charger.” The cashier pointed to a rack next to the burners.
I couldn’t help but laugh at this point. Things couldn’t have gotten more ridiculous. After a moment, I was laughing so hard that I had to lean against a stack of Twinkies to keep my balance. It was one of the best laughs I’d had since Galileo told me he could convince people the world was round. Not only did he fail, but he was almost hung for his trouble.
At that moment, some guy in an expensive black overcoat marched through the entrance toward the cashier. He glared at me with judgmental, “I’m better than you” eyes.
“Jesus, I hate this,” he said. “Why isn’t my credit card working outside?”
The cashier studied the cash register, trying to figure out which buttons to press. The man in the stupendous black coat snapped his fingers—and that caught my attention. Anyone who snapped their fingers at a gas station attendant like that probably also got off on dumping toxic waste in the water supply of a third-world country. I didn’t have a problem with that; I was only assuming about the water supply stuff. But the snapping was important.
“I asked you a question,” the man said. “You shouldn’t be here if you can’t speak English.”
“Si, si,” the cashier said. “I’m trying.”
“Try faster.” The man grumbled something unintelligible, though it didn’t take a genius to figure out it had to do with immigrants.
I peeked outside. The man was driving a white Audi A7. Not bad, but not on the same playing field as a Mercedes. Given the circumstances, though, it’d do. I looked for Ozzie. The pooch was rummaging through an empty fast food bag lying on the ground. I left the man in the overcoat to berate the cashier, slipping out the door with as little fuss as possible.
Ozzie ran to my side as I shuffled over to the Audi, extending my claws in case I needed them. I hoped the man in the overcoat, who probably considered himself a “titan of capitalism,” had left the car unlocked. When I tried the door handle, it popped open. I glanced back at the man, who was still harassing the cashier. In a weird sort of way, I hoped “borrowing” his car would knock his pride down a few pegs.
I let Ozzie hop into the Audi first. He scooted over as I sat down. The driver’s seat wasn’t as comfortable as mine, nor did the steering wheel seem like it was molded to fit my grip. It also felt kind of greasy, making me wonder what
kind of B-grade material Audi used. I closed the door and pushed the start button, and the Audi’s engine hummed to life. A display screen appeared on the windshield. Ozzie barked.
“Right?” I said. “Because glancing down at the speedometer is too much to ask these days.”
I pressed my foot on the gas, moving the car to the exit, then turned left onto the road, heading toward downtown. Ozzie put his paws up on the passenger door to look out the window, his nose rubbing against the glass, and I pressed my foot on the gas pedal with authority, wanting to see what this poor excuse for a luxury vehicle was made of. To my surprise, the acceleration was quick and nimble.
“Still not as good as a Benz,” I said.
I thought about what it meant to steal the Audi. In some ways, it didn’t feel like I stole anything at all. The act had more a sense of giving the man his just desserts. Righteous indignation hummed through me. So what if the guy had a nice black overcoat? He was a self-obsessed jack hole for talking down to that cashier. More so, he deserved to lose all his money in a Ponzi scheme, dooming him to a life of poverty and sickness. Since I had no clue if that could happen, stealing the Audi felt like a suitable consolation prize.
Wait.
A terrible, horrible, no good and very bad thought crept into my mind. Yes, I’d committed a sin—and Grand Theft Auto—by stealing the Audi, but I’d spent the past few minutes justifying my actions like it was a good thing. Like I was teaching this guy a lesson for being an ass clown. That … that was something …
No.
I squashed the thought before it could germinate in my mind like a weed. I took the Audi because I needed a car. I needed a car because mine drowned and the Mop Tops sucked my rental into oblivion, or Cleveland. One or another. I also needed to get to Sam–
Nononononononononononono.
Teaching a rude, condescending rich guy a lesson? Rushing to find Sam and Duffy before the Mop Tops could do who-knew-what to them? This was almost the behavior of a goo–
I slapped my cheek. Hard. The skin burned and my jawbone throbbed with pain. I slapped the other cheek, letting the pain dull my hyperactive mind. Ozzie hopped away from the window, rushing to lick my face.
“No.” I shooed him away.
He curled into a ball, burying his face underneath his paws.
“Don’t pout.”
But he ignored me. My mind raced from one thought to another. I was stuck on the idea that I’d committed a string of deeds that some would consider goo–
Go–
The opposite of bad. Which, oddly enough, was bad. Sure, I’d killed a couple of Mop Tops, but it was self-defense. And in defense of Sam.
Sam! Argh!
I pulled over on the side of the road. Having a pair of demon horns pop out of my skull would’ve been really useful right about then, to remind me that I was a rogue. Not some Boy Scout.
I strengthened my grip on the steering wheel and screamed. Enough was enough. I sat there, staring at the Audi logo that lay on top of the steering wheel’s airbag. Ozzie laid a paw on my arm and whined, like he felt bad for me. Dogs, let alone a Hell Hound, shouldn’t sympathize with me. Nothing should. This was me. A badass of ethereal proportions. It was high time I acted like it.
A few halfway decent decisions couldn’t erase all the terrible things I’d done during my existence. I was still bad to the core. I glanced over at Ozzie.
“Ready to be a Hell Hound?”
Ozzie growled. It wasn’t a typical growl, either. If I’d closed my eyes, it would’ve sounded like a real Hell Hound. I rubbed his head.
“That’s a good Hell Hound.”
The tires screeched as I sped back onto the road. I turned onto Capital Boulevard, which gave me a straight shot downtown. Some dirty deeds were about to be done. Dirt cheap.
I parked the Audi on Cabarrus Street, a couple blocks away from the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts. It wasn’t far from where I used to live … before Arthur Powell and some of his goons destroyed the place.
The Audi’s clock read 10:51. There was never anything in the news about Jurgen leaving the Raleigh Symphony Orchestra, so he must’ve gotten home safely after Sam and I hid his body at the construction site. Tonight’s concerto performance wrapped up almost an hour ago, but I figured Jurgen hadn’t left the center for the evening. At least he better not have. I didn’t know where he stayed, but I wasn’t in the mood to check every hotel in downtown Raleigh looking for the pianist. Not when I needed his help to stop the Caelo in Terra.
Ozzie followed me out of the car, and the two of us rounded the corner to Salisbury Street at a brisk pace. The Duke Energy Center was within sight but as we approached, I worried that the front doors were locked. Then someone exited. Ozzie and I rushed to grab the door before it closed. Nobody seemed to pay us any mind as we slipped into the center.
I strolled through the lobby, moved past the marble flooring, and made my way through a door leading to the auditorium. Walking down one of the aisles, Ozzie stopped to pick a program up off the floor with his teeth, then caught up. He hopped up and down like he was excited to see a show.
As we walked down the aisle, past the rows of empty red seats, Ozzie, program still in his mouth, surged ahead, waiting for me at the front of the stage. I debated pulling the program out, but figured what was the bother? Ozzie would get around to dropping the thing, and in the meantime, it wasn’t hurting him. I picked up the Hell Hound and leapt onstage, disappearing behind the curtains.
I felt a mix of dread and excitement. Jurgen was the only one strong enough to help me, but that didn’t mean he would. The idea of facing the Magister Caelo might prove too overwhelming for the musician. I felt confident that wouldn’t be the case, but stranger things had happened.
There was an eerie silence backstage. Nobody was around, and thanks to the center’s fantastic acoustics, even Ozzie’s breathing had a heightened volume. There was a burst of laughter from a group of people down a hallway, and I followed that and found a handful of orchestra players standing in a semi-circle. Jurgen was in the middle, regaling them with a story about playing in Russia. The joy in his face washed away the second his eyes met mine. He excused himself and joined me in the hallway.
His face crinkled like a wad of paper at the sight of Ozzie. “What is that doing in here?”
“That,” I said with the same amount of righteous indignation as Jurgen, “is Ozzie. He’s a therapy dog.”
In that he’s helping me cope with no longer being associated with Hell, but that’s a story for another day.
The pooch dropped the program and looked up at Jurgen, tail wagging. The Hell Hound wanted some acknowledgement, but the pianist refused.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “I almost had to leave town after the other day. Come to try your luck at ruining things a second time?”
“Quite the opposite,” I said. “I came to see if you wanted retribution on the one who made you what you are.”
Jurgen leaned back against the wall, his breathing heavy and mannered. Keeping his emotions in check. “You found him?”
“Sam and I did.” I knelt to pat Ozzie’s back. “But shit’s gone sideways and he’s got Sam. I mean to put a hurtin’ on him, but I need help.”
“My help?”
“You or your alter ego.” I stood. “There’s nobody else I know that can help me right now.”
Jurgen glanced down at his feet. He didn’t say anything, which irked me a little, considering I wasn’t flush with time.
“Hey, I need an answer.”
Jurgen held up a hand, gesturing for me to slow down. “I need to think a moment.”
“There’s only time for a gut feeling answer, not a well-thought-out one.” I moved closer. “I’d think both sides of you would enjoy the satisfaction of killing your maker.”
Jurgen rubbed his chin, mulling over the idea. What was there to think over? The Magister Caelo had tortured Jurgen to the point that he turned into an impossible-to-kill m
onster to protect himself. I’d have jumped at the chance to get revenge on someone who coughed on me. Jurgen’s situation was a total no-brainer.
“Do you know where Sam is now?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know how many you’re up against?”
“No idea.”
“Let me get this straight,” Jurgen said. “You don’t know where your friend is and you don’t know how many stand between you and her?”
“Pretty much.”
“What in God’s name makes you think I can help?”
“I… I don’t know.” Things started to fall into perspective, then. I’d been so focused on rationalizing my recent behavior and getting help from Jurgen, whose “other side” could lay waste to most anything the Magister Caelo could throw at it, that I never stopped to think. Details, like where was Sam? And sure, where was Duffy?
Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
“This is why you always fail,” Jurgen said. “You half-ass everything. Do you think Chopin ran head-first into one of his concertos, or do you think he spent months, years even, planning them out?”
“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “About all of it.”
“Get a clue.” Jurgen started to rejoin his orchestra-mates. “Of course I would love to face the man who made me what I am, but I’m not going to be a damned fool about it.”
“I never said I didn’t have any ideas.”
Jurgen stopped, eyebrows raised in curiosity. “Play me a chord.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
To Catch a Mop Top
As we walked up Fayetteville Street, I outlined my plan to Jurgen, who responded with a grim hmm more than once. Not that I blamed him. Most of my plan involved using the pianist as bait. If he told me something similar, I’d probably respond with a few hmms myself.
“I like it in theory,” Jurgen said. “An old fox understands a trap. Just…”
