Blood and Rain

by B. L. Morgan

  The dealer went down like he'd been shot. Both his legs were stiff straight out and twitching.

  I turned to Jamal and put my hands up.

  He yelled, “Oh no, not the nose again!”

  So I kicked him in the balls. He went down on his hands and knees.

  I grabbed him by the back of his collar and the belt in the back of his pants and ran with him into the dark alley. I threw him as hard as I could and heard him bounce off of a dumpster in the darkness back there.

  I walked back to where Lisa was looking down at the dealer. His head looked lopsided, like it had caved in on one side. Blood had run in lines from his nose down the sides of his face. His legs didn't twitch anymore. I checked the pulse on the dealer's neck. He was dead.

  I turned to Lisa, “What the hell you got in that purse?”

  “Just a brick,” she said.

  CHAPTER 24

  A LOST CHILD

  We were still the only ones out on the street. Around here, hearing screaming and yelling was nothing unusual. Nobody came out to investigate and unless there were gunshots nobody would even be curious.

  I grabbed the dealer by his feet and dragged him back into the dark of the alley.

  Lisa followed me.

  “Damn. Damn. Damn,” I muttered half under my breath. I took my Thirty-Eight out of the dealer's pocket and put it in my holster.

  Lisa said in a small child's voice, “I'm sorry.” After a pause she said, “Was he a friend of yours?”

  “No, hell no!” I told her. “I needed to find out where his supplier lives. You see he's got this little girl he's going to kill at midnight. If I can't find him in time, she's dead.”

  Even in the darkness I could see Lisa’s smile. “You're still out there saving little girls,” she said. The memory flashed to me of how Lisa had clung to me the day I'd taken her away from those guys just outside Kansas City.

  “If you're talking about Tor Ambrose,” Lisa said. “I know where he lives.”

  * * *

  In the darkness I heard Jamal moan from where he lay.

  I spoke to him slowly and clearly so he would understand each word I said. “Jamal, If you ever fuck with me again I'm going to send you to meet Jesus. The next time we cross swords is the last.”

  Then I asked Lisa, “What's Tor’s address?”

  She said, “One night they came and picked me up to work a party for them. So I don't know the address but I can take you there.”

  We walked out into the light and I looked at my watch. It was about ten till eleven. I picked up the dealer's black bladed knife from where it lay and slipped it into my belt. “Let's go,” I told her.

  Lisa directed me where to drive and within a few minutes we were about five miles out of town where the houses were spaced farther apart.

  Lisa turned to me in the car as I drove through the residential neighborhood toward Tor’s house.

  “Mr. Dark,” she said. “How come you never took me up on my offer? You know I would do you for free.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments.

  Then I told her, “Because I like you.”

  I could almost feel her smile.

  She said, “I thought it was cause I was ugly or somethin.”

  “You're not ugly,” I told her, “You‘re pretty.”

  I glanced at Lisa and saw that she was underweight. The crack that she was doing was taking its toll. She looked as tired as I felt.

  We came to a neighborhood where there was a large patch of woods behind the houses. Each house was a good fifty to one hundred yards apart and all of them were large.

  Lisa indicated a large black brick two story home with a patio over its double garage.

  “That's it,” she whispered. “Tor Ambrose lives there.”

  On the surface nothing looked unusual about the large house. The upper floor looked dark and lifeless. It had large plate glass windows and there was a sliding glass door from the balcony to the inner house.

  But looking closely, I saw that the light coming through the curtained windows on the lower floor had a deep redness to it. There was a flickering to the illuminations within. I had no idea what kind of bulbs could create that kind of eerie effect.

  The other thing that was not normal was the guy sitting on the porch in a lawn chair. He had a shotgun laying across his lap.

  Around the house was a waist high chain link fence. Nothing unusual about that. To build a fence any higher would have been to attract attention. The last thing someone in an illegal business wants to do is attract attention.

  I drove to the end of the block and turned to the side that Tor’s house was on. At the end of that block was where the woods were. The woods border was the back property line of the houses. I parked there.

  I started to get out of the car and Lisa started to get out too.

  “Stay here,” I told her.

  “I'm coming with you,” Lisa said.

  “No,” I told her. “I don't want you to get hurt.”

  “What,” she said, “Are you serious? You're gonna tell me you care now!”

  I looked at Lisa and saw the lost child she had never stopped being.

  “You're not any different from anybody else,” she said. “You don't give a fuck.” A tear ran down her face. “You should have left me to die. At least it would be over now. I sell my ass on the street cause I have nowhere to go. No one to go to. Got no home, got no man, got no family. I wish I was just fuckin dead.” The tears poured from her like a waterfall now and she covered her face with her hands.

  I pulled Lisa to me and held her while her body was rocked with sobs. After a few moments she was able to calm down and catch her breath.

  I don't know why I said it but I told Lisa, “You're gonna come stay with me.”

  I kissed her on the forehead and she drew back from me.

  “You don't have to do that,” she said wiping the tears from her eyes.

  “I know I don't, “I told her. “We'll talk about this later. You know I've got to do this tonight.”

  I started to get out of the car, then as an afterthought, went back to her.

  I told Lisa, “What I do need you to do is to call the police and get them out here. Tell them to tell Joe Briggs that I found Felicia and I'll need their help.”

  “I'll do that,” Lisa said.

  I reached over and smoothed Lisa’s hair.

  “Everything's gonna be all right,” I told her.

  She smiled. “I think it will be.”

  I went out into the rain.

  CHAPTER 25

  TOR’S HOME

  Lightning and thunder crackled through the sky and shook the ground as I walked through the woods in back of the houses. I was wondering just what I had gotten myself into by telling Lisa I was taking her in.

  The rain came down. The trees stopped most of it from getting down to me. I was thinking that I didn't really know Lisa Rios. I knew that she lived on the streets and did drugs but I assumed it was by choice. Maybe the way she lived was not her choice but just some way to make it from day to day.

  This was not a romantic thing. Lisa had always been a kid to me and I would always see her like that. Well, I'd just help her out and see what would happen.

  An Oriental voice in my mind spoke to me. The voice sounded like Me Ly and it said, “When you save someone's life you are responsible for them, because you changed their destiny.” I wondered where I'd heard that before, probably Charley Chan Theater. Well, anyway I was going to help her and then just wait.

  I could use the company anyway. Maybe I'd keep her from doing drugs and she'd keep me from drinking myself to death. Well maybe. There was no time to wonder about this shit now.

  I came to the rear of Tor Ambrose’s house. There was no sentry at the back door. But I guessed that was because there was no back porch. Who wants to stand outside and get soaked all night? Someone probably watches through a window.

  I decided to walk to the far corner and climb t
he fence there. Then I would go up on the balcony above the garage.

  When I got to the place where I was going to climb the fence, I realized I was going to have to throw the shotgun over to climb the fence fast. My hands were empty.

  Right then I realized that I had left the shotgun in the floorboard of the car.

  “What an idiot you are,” I told myself.

  There wasn't any time now to go back for it.

  I felt for my Thirty-Eight in my holster.

  It was there. Thank God I didn't forget that. I guess I'd forget my ass if it wasn't attached to me. My watch said eleven fifteen.

  “Well now,” I thought. “It comes down to this.” I climbed the fence and dropped to the other side flattening myself in the grass.

  Time to play.

  * * *

  There are reasons for all the things that I do. You may not understand them. I might not understand them, but there are reasons.

  I sure didn't understand how I ended up on my belly crawling through some guy's backyard.

  Blind luck, chance, fate, I didn't know. Maybe one, maybe all of them. Maybe none of them. Maybe the chess master in the sky just moves us around until he gets bored. Then he cleans the board off.

  All I knew was I was going in that house, killing some people, and then taking Felicia home.

  I tried to remember to crawl like I did in the Special Forces in Nam. To tell you the truth, I think all crawling is the same. You just keep your ass down.

  I made my way to the blind side of the house where the garage was. An empty garbage can was next to the garage. It served as my stepladder to the balcony. I grabbed the balcony's railing with my hands and hoisted myself up. The rain was falling a little slower now but lightning shot down around the area like a fireworks display.

  A hand grabbed me by the hair and I was jerked over the rail and flung to the balcony's carpeted floor with a thud. The wind was knocked out of me. All I could see in the rain and lightning was a large shape standing over me.

  From my side on the floor I spun around and scissor kicked the guy, catching him behind the knees with my right foot and in front of his ankles with my left.

  He fell forward but caught himself. I rolled away and came to my feet. The guy's pistol was on the floor and I kicked it. The gun flew off the balcony.

  I started to draw my gun and realized if I fired everyone in the house would be up here and my ass would be dead real quick.

  He got to his feet and I saw that my first impression had been correct. The guy was around six two and weighed around two hundred and twenty. He looked like he was in shape too. His rain soaked shirt told me this guy had quite a bit of muscle.

  He came at me in silence and that was strange but that was what I wanted. He snapped out two jabs in my face and I barely slipped under an overhand right that had good-night written on it. I spun to the side and circled to my left.

  This guy was fast.

  The sequence of punches the guy had thrown showed me this guy had some good training behind him.

  He missed with a left hook and I hit him with a straight right square to his nose. I tried a left hook that he backed away from.

  The tall black guy had a grin on his face now. Well, that was great. He was enjoying himself. But I didn't have time for ten rounds of dancing and sparring. He wanted to box. So I played his game.

  He came in with two left jabs again and this time I beat him to the punch with my own right hand. He grabbed me to clinch. This is where the rules stop, I thought. I brought my knee up into his groin. He didn't even grunt, so I did it again. His knees buckled.

  Now I grabbed the dealer's knife from my belt and brought it around and buried it to the handle in his back.

  He went down to his knees and his breath whooshed out of him. That was the only noise he ever made. So I ripped the knife out and buried it in his chest this time. He fell to his back. His eyes rolled up in his head, his mouth wide open like a silent scream.

  Then I saw it as I looked in his mouth. He didn't have a tongue. It looked like his tongue had been cut out.

  Why the hell had that been done, I asked myself. But there was no one to answer me and I would never know.

  After wiping off the knife on his shirt, I slid it back into my belt.

  I went in through a sliding glass door from the patio into the house.

  * * *

  The house was hot.

  The air was thick.

  When I say the house was hot, I mean it. Stepping into that upstairs room temperature wise was like stepping into a Mexican desert in August at noon. It must have been over a hundred degrees in there and it was a dry heat. If I hadn't have been as tired as hell already, which I was, the heat here would have made me that way.

  The air was thick because it was smoky. A heavy haze hung in the air that burned my nostrils and my throat. Even though it had been a long time since I'd smelled it, I recognized the smell of that smoke right away. The smell was marijuana. These guys must have been burning it by the buckets downstairs to make it this smoky up here.

  Stepping into this room was like stepping into a cave. It was extremely dark and it took me a moment or two to realize why. The walls were painted black and the only light was that weird flickering redness coming from below.

  Past the doorway where the red light filtered through, I saw what looked like a staircase that led down. I drew my gun and moved toward it.

  Through the floor beneath my feet, I felt as much as heard, a rhythmic drum beating. I wasn't going to be surprised if I saw some idiot with a bone through his nose banging on a bongo when I went down the stairs.

  Tor was evidently trying to create the illusion of a voodoo ceremony taking place on a South Seas Island. He was doing a good job.

  I went to the staircase where I was still in shadow and squatted and looked down on the scene below.

  CHAPTER 26

  BLOOD AND FIRE

  The red light I saw right away was created simply enough by a red light bulb in the center of the ceiling.

  There was a pentacle drawn on the floor. At each of its five points was a stand with a burning oil lamp. There was a large bowl that looked like a goldfish bowl on each stand also. Each of those had something in it that was dark red. I'm not a doctor but they looked like human hearts to me. They floated in a clear liquid.

  At the foot of the pentacle was the guy who I'd heard beating the drum. That was what he was doing now. He was sitting cross-legged with another black man. Both were large and had on black T-shirts with blue jeans. Both were chanting something that sounded like:

  “Astaroth, Astaroth, Sarganatos, Nebiros, Astaroth, Astaroth, Sarganatos, Nebiros . . .”

  The pentacle was enclosed in a circle.

  Tor Ambrose was bare chested with only a leopard skin loincloth on. He was at the head of the pentacle. He waved a black bladed knife in the air.

  Felicia Richardson was naked and bound to stakes driven in the floor at four of the five points of the pentacle. I could see her weeping and mouthing the words, “No, No, No . . .”

  I heard myself say, “This ain’t gonna fuckin happen.”

  Tor raised his hands in the air and held the knife high overhead.

  “Gods of darkness,” he yelled and his voice boomed through the whole house. “I have opened the gate.”

  There was an answering loud crash of thunder and the house shook. The red light blinked off and on.

  “I call on you,” Tor shouted imploring the elements. “I call on you to come and take this gift. I give to you my own daughter's soul.”

  The lightning crashed four times in quick succession.

  Felicia screamed.

  “And as it was written,” Tor continued. “You must, because of this offering, share your powers on earth with me. You must make me immortal.”

  Behind me I heard the floor creak.

  I stood and spun around just in time to see someone rushing at me with a baseball bat. He swung the bat and I steppe
d backward, into space.

  I had forgotten the staircase was now behind me. For only a moment I hung there then I let myself fall backwards. At the same time while falling I leveled my Thirty-Eight on the guy's face and pulled the trigger.

  His head exploded like a ripe watermelon dropped from a building and I tumbled backward down the stairs. As well as I could, I rolled down the stairs all the way to the bottom. When I came to a stop at the foot of the stairs a shot blasted at me. A chunk of wood from a stair flew out beside my head.

  It was the guy beside the drummer and I put a bullet in his throat. He went down choking and spitting blood.

  The drummer dove for a rifle propped against the wall and I hit him between the shoulder blades. Then I shot him in the back of the head and his brains fairly exploded from the top of his skull.

  The guy shot in the throat tried to get to his feet.

  I took aim and pulled the trigger. The bullet roared through his forehead and his brains and blood smeared the wall behind him

  I took aim at Tor, “You're dead motherfucker,” I told him and pulled the trigger.

  Just a hollow click. I was out of bullets.

  Tor laughed. “You can't kill me,” he said. “I'll never die.”

  The front door burst open and the guard rushed in. He leveled his shotgun at me.

  “Hold it!” A voice yelled from behind him. The sound of another gun cocking was what I heard and Lisa Rios peaked at me from around the big man. She held the shotgun against the guard's back.

  She said, “I thought you'd need me.”

  The guard jerked suddenly to swing the gun he had on her and Lisa let him have it with both barrels.

  Chunks of the guard flew past me and he went down in two piles of red meat.

  Tor reared back and threw the knife he had. It flew straight at Lisa.

  I leaped to try and knock it away.

  And missed.

  Lisa screamed as the knife sunk into her chest.

  I looked at her and she coughed blood.

  “It hurts,” she said weakly.