Blood Hound

by James Osiris Baldwin

  My body sucked up through my chest. Mind inverted.

  I was a million miles above the ground and a million miles underneath as every vein, every organ, every cell filled with heat and sound. The sound penetrated everything, moved everything with its mass, moved between every atom and every moment in time.

  ...EverythingEverythingEverythingEverythingEverything...

  I looked into sleepy eyes so blue they burned the heart out of me, and through them, a memory unfurled:

  We were running, the White Woman moving ahead. Everything was frozen, the buildings cracking and crumbling, the ground itself churning to dust. The Earth, dipped in liquid nitrogen. The sky was orange, blazing orange, but there was no sun. I was myself, but not. My legs were missing from the knees down: I wore prostheses, recurved sprinter's legs, as something chased us like boiling, ghostly clouds of lightning.

  ...EverythingEverythingEverythingEverythingEverything...

  The freeze was right behind us. Where it crept, color and light disappeared. I caught up to her, and as she turned to face me and offer her hand, I killed her. I watched my fist plunge a rainbow-hued knife right into her chest. She gaped, wide-eyed with shock as I pulled it free and pushed her, still alive, into the roiling gray sea.

  ...EverythingEverythingEverythingEverythingEverything...

  I licked her silver blood from the knife, as sweet and floral as GOD’s own perfume, and then I turned into the frigid wind preceding the wave of ruin. Everything cracked dry and fell apart, a ripping cold so intense that it pulverized. It bathed me in fiery agony, a global necrosis that swept to the water’s edge and took me as the sea froze and I opened my mouth and—

  Oh GOD.

  The pieces of me sucked back in and reformed, drawn by the inevitable pull of gravity. I came to on my bathroom floor, guts roiling with remembered pain. My mouth was open, throat wheezing as I screamed without sound. My body was bathed in sweet-smelling sweat that evaporated without a trace, just like the Phi.

  “It’s her.” My voice cracked like a boy’s. “She’s the Fruit. The woman. That Phi was blood.”

  “I told you that it was too soon. Yes... she is a Gift Horse.” Kutkha loomed at the corner of my eye. He was projecting again, perched on the rim of my bathtub. Just like the first time.

  “Which means what, exactly?” I rolled over, surprised to find that I wasn’t in pain, that I wasn’t bleeding or fucked up. My knee no longer hurt. My cheek no longer burned. My bruises were gone.

  “Will you accept an explanation once you are centered and calm?”

  I was fascinated by my knee. The crooked joint was straight again, almost as perfect as it had been when I’d first broken into Vincent’s house. “I suppose.”

  “Then get a bathrobe. Get in the shower.” Kutkha sounded as though he were standing right beside me.

  I shivered my way through the shower, scrubbing Jana out of my skin. When I came out of the bathroom, I nearly ran headlong into Vincent in the hallway. The small man had his blanket clutched around his shoulders like a cape, framed by the doorway of the kitchen, eyes huge with surprise. They were sunken and bruised in his deer-like face.

  He made a small, cracked sound. “Hi.”

  “Get back inside,” I said. My voice came out like a whip. I hesitated, checking my tone before I spoke again. “Look... you can’t even speak yet. I'll get you some water.”

  He turned and lurched back towards the den without a word. I double-knotted the belt of my robe and followed.

  “Never seen a guy in bathrobe and gloves before.” Vincent sounded like he’d been gargling glass. He collapsed back onto the sofa, pulling his blanket in around him. "Heard ya screamin'."

  “You were hearing things. I’ll get you some water.” I didn’t sit. “Stay here.”

  “Hey, before you run off… Who the fuck are you?”

  I looked back from the doorway. “I was paid to find you.”

  “That kinda answers the question. I guess.” He glared sulkily at the radio.

  I left and got two glasses of warm water. When I brought them back, Vincent reached out urgently.

  “Slowly, now, or you’ll make yourself sick.” I took my own chair, setting my glass aside on the reading table.

  He had the look of a guzzler, but he had enough compos mentis to listen to the order and sip.

  “You’re one of the Russians.” His voice was clearer after a drink, but vaguely accusative. Vincent was smiling, though, which confused me. His voice was higher than I was used to in men, a bright buzzing yellow. “Never thought I’d be glad to be in the clutches of the Russian Mafia.”

  'Clutches'. How dramatic. "I've been through a lot to find you, and seeing as you can speak, you’re going to answer some questions.” I rested my fingertips on the rim of my glass. “So let’s start with Carmine.”

  “Oh, shit.” Vincent grimaced as he sipped at his water. “Carmine’s a total dick. I’m real sorry.”

  “Who is he?”

  “You gonna at least tell me your name? Because I ain’t answering nothing to someone whose name I don’t know.”

  I sighed. I was too tired for the intimidation act. “Alexi.”

  “It was either gonna be Aleksey or Boris, wasn’t it?” Vincent exaggerated the pronunciation of my name and offered me another hopeful, uncomfortable smile. “Do they make you great white shark motherfuckers in a factory out in Siberia or something?”

  “I was born here.”

  “No shit? Okay, Alexi... you uh…” Vincent shuffled back against the sofa. “You deal in woo-woo, don’t you? Big woo. Like Carmine.”

  Did I? I’d worked half-assed uncontrolled magic in desperation, botched one summoning, and managed to turn a bullet while I was naked and in fear of my life and virtue. Only the last one counted. “You could say that.”

  “I thought so. That blonde bitch had more woo on her than I’ve ever seen. I mean, that was some crazy, fucked-up shit she was doing in there. Torturing guys, cutting their fucking dicks off-.”

  “Wait.” I lifted my hand. “No tangents. Start from the beginning. I want to know about Carmine, what happened to you, and whatever you know about the Fruit. In that order.”

  Vincent’s face drew into set lines. He glanced at me, eyes flashing, before he curled back against the cushions. “Well... that’s a real long story.”

  “We have all the time in the world.”

  “See, that’s the problem. We don’t, really. Not if the White Lady’s got a thing to say about it.”

  I frowned. “The girl in your dream diary.”

  “You read my diary?” Vincent scowled, but he was too nervous to do anything about it. “Okay, look... I left my old man’s place a few years back, for some real personal reasons. Things he couldn’t deal with, you know what I mean? Meant I was out on the street. He’s disowned me now. I lived pretty hard for a while, but I did what I had to do. I was having surgery for something when this voice in my head starts talking to me.”

  “Go on.”

  “Now, I remember Nonna, see. She was a Seer, full-blown Strega. My family’s real superstitious. So I’m like, okay... I have this voice in my head now, and it’s keepin’ me from getting too down. Problem is, I start dreaming about weird shit. Probability. The future.”

  “Right.” I sat back, steepling my fingers against my jaw. “You inherited her gift.”

  “Yeah. The Sight’s a family thing. Goes right back to Roman times.” Vincent sounded unaccountably tense. “So anyway, one of the things Spook-voice says to do is go see old man Laguetta. So I do that. It tells me: ‘go to Cali.’ Turned out two of my old street buddies were making it good in Colombia, so I hook Laguetta up with the two biggest coke suppliers in South America. Not just coke, either. Scopolamine, M.J.… So that’s part of this, the drugs. But that’s not the same as the Fruit.”

  “Where does that come into this?”

  “Hang on. So there’s two brothers in Dad’s Family, right? Frank and Rob. Rob owns a fish
ing boat. Both of them love their coke, but my old man doesn’t let his wiseguys ride the line. I could supply ’em, so they were my last link back to the Family, you know? I dealt to ’em after setting up with Laguetta, and they kept me in the gossip. So last time I sees Rob, he’s all excited. Tells me that he and Frank were out dumping a body in the bay, and they found something weird. Super-weird.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Vincent giggled. Not chuckled. Giggled. “Yeah. We’re talking, like... a giant chestnut. James and the Giant Peach shit. Seven feet around. They find this thing out in the middle of the Atlantic, and they fish it out. No idea what it is, but they’re opportunists, you know? Figger they can make money off it somehow.”

  “Naturally.”

  “After that, the weird shit starts happening. They put it somewhere, and nearly everyone that sees it forgets it exists. The few guys that do remember—because they keep seeing it in its hiding spot—they tried to crack it open, right? Some kinda goop shoots out of it and burns them alive. As soon as that happened, Dad calls in Carmine from my uncle’s office in Vegas. He got real serious real fast, and Rob tells me that he put him under some kind of protection. We take magic pretty seriously. Rob shows me this pendant Carmine was making him wear, and he tells me that Carmine is looking for me.”

  “Because you’re a Wise Virgin?” I glanced at the door to the den as Binah trotted in, her tail arched high.

  Vincent’s discomfort visibly increased. “Anyway, around about this time, I start having these dreams about the white land. Well, the Glass Land, is what she calls it. Eden. Every night after this thing is hauled ashore, I dream about her. First it was small stuff, then it got more and more intense. All these fucked-up, vivid scenes of this garden, and her in New York or Chicago getting killed, the world being wrecked and shit. She asks me to choose, but I can never answer her. I dunno what to say. Choose what?”

  “I dreamed about her, too,” I admitted, after a pause. “Soon after... being sent to find you by my superior.”

  “Lev, right? That guy is a total spook.” Vincent’s mouth quirked. “I got the Eye, man. I can see when someone’s got woo.”

  I patted my thigh, and the cat jumped up onto my lap. “But no one can find the Fruit?”

  “Nope. Frank, Rob, and Carmine knew where it is, but I saw Jana tear up Frank and Rob, and they both forgot long before she started torturing them.” For a moment, the young man’s face grew sober. “I don’t even think you can use magic to find it. Jana tried a couple of different ways. The only one that knows now is probably Carmine, maybe my dad.”

  I thought on it, caressing Binah's ears and considering the puzzle pieces I’d been handed. “Jana was working for someone in Chicago, and she knew that the only person who can handle this Fruit is a Wise Virgin. That’s a part of mythos related to unicorns. The only humans capable of gentling a unicorn were learned adult virgins, typically maidens. Nuns, priestesses. But not necessarily women.”

  For several long seconds, Vincent was silent. I watched him weigh up what to say and what not to say. “Yeah, I guess... But man…do you know how hard it is to find even normal virgins in the Mob? The Families ain’t the place to be looking for virgins, I can tell you that much.”

  “Jana wanted to open the Fruit, and so does Carmine. I think he learned of Frank Nacari’s death by accident, and then Jana manipulated him for all this time.” I frowned. “But if he’s looking for you, he’s learned something of this mythos.”

  “That’s what I figure, too. Carmine will want that thing, man. He’s like a nuclear reactor deep inside. He loves magic, he loves power. He’s been obsessed with it his whole life. He was in a skiing accident way back. Got stuck in the mountains for a couple days with a broken leg. He survived, and he came out of it with this crazy woo he has now. He ain’t normal. Most guys keep their spooky voices in their heads, but Carmine? There’s something wrong with him. He has Fido and Goofy with him everywhere. Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don’t, but they’re real as shit.”

  His Neshamah could project a true physical form. Kutkha had said it, and I agreed: there was something wrong about it, but other than an odd feeling of unease, I didn’t know exactly what. It was unnatural to expose your soul like that, I supposed. “You were close?”

  “Me and Carmine? Hell no.” Vincent shook his head. “Like I said, he’s an asshole.”

  “Now, this is all fascinating,” I said with a sigh. “But there is one problem. Carmine has no idea who you are.”

  Vincent drew in on himself in sudden agitation. His eyes went dark—dark and dangerous. “And it better stay that way. He’d fuckin’ kill me.”

  “You need to give me the whole story. It’s not only your life that’s at stake.” I matched his intensity, leaning forward on my knees. Vincent’s eyes flicked from side to side. He was mapping his cover, his escape route.

  When Vincent next spoke, his voice held bitterness far too concrete for his age. “You got no idea what’s at stake. There’s different ways of being killed.”

  “People tend to exaggerate and distort their personal issues,” I replied. “And I have a reputation for discretion. Whatever it is, it won’t leave this room.”

  Vincent glared at me suspiciously for several long moments, his blanket drawn up to his chin. “Mom and Pap had five boys. Two of us were in a car accident as kids. My bro died, and I got real fucked up. Jaws of Life, intensive care for six months, physical therapy. I lost half my colon, and my cock and balls.”

  I blinked rapidly. “Is that all?”

  “What do you mean ‘is that all’?” Vincent bristled.

  “No, I don’t mean it in a dismissive sense. I mean it is as in that was all that drove you from your family? Losing some parts of your body?”

  “You don’t understand, man.” He wrapped his arms around his shin. “The Mob’s just like a pack of wolves. They sense weakness, think you’re not a ‘real man’? I couldn’t get a leg up after that. No promotion, no work, no respect. No one let me cover for them, or go on runs. They pretended to be all kinds of sympathy, but called me all sorts of shit behind my back. My dad told me that I was the most disappointing thing he'd ever made. So yeah, that’s why I fell out with them. I faked my death, changed my name and everything. I wasn't called Vincent back then. No one else but you, Lev, and Georgie Laguetta knows I was part of the family. I’ve had guys put down for trying to speculate, you know what I mean?”

  I nodded and clasped my hands together in thought. It was so completely irrational, but as Nic and I had pointed out to one another the week before, the Mafia were not known for their common sense. “It certainly explains why Carmine didn’t know who you are, though I’d warn you now. He’s found your house.”

  “He couldn’t have.”

  “Jana knew I was going there and tipped him off. Do you know who or what the 'Temple' is? She might have called them the TVS.”

  “TVS? Nah. I heard her rant on about how she knew someone in Chicago, but she never said anything useful.” Vincent twisted his fingers together. “I tell ya, this thing they caught out in the bay, it’s nothing but bad news. So many guys are dead already, not counting whoever else is going to get fucked up. Dad’d have me done in the ass with a broomstick if they found me now.”

  “You’re safe here, for the time being.” It was a hollow assurance, but it was all I had.

  “Sure.” Vincent didn’t sound particularly convinced. “So is that it? I need to catch more zees.”

  I thought for a space, looking at the spines of the books surrounding us in the den. “You said you saw the girl in your dream, on a dying world?”

  Vincent sighed softly, tiredly. “Yeah?”

  “Did you... see me with her?”

  Vincent scratched his jaw, eyes narrowed in thought. “No. I saw someone, I dunno who it was. I called him the Bird Man, on account of the birds that always hung around him. Crows and shit.”

  With a shrug, I scooped Binah up over my shoul
der and stood. “Well, time for sleep. Rest well. We’re going to talk again.”

  “Yeah, man. I will. G’night.”

  With the cat wandering the floor, I stripped off in the hush and sudden privacy of my bedroom, head ringing. It wasn’t until my head hit the pillow and the sheets were up around my ears that I realized the depth of my fatigue. The smallest edge of relaxation, and my bones began to throb in sympathy with the rest of my aching body. When had I last eaten? I reached up and ran a hand over my face. The stubble rasped against my leather palm, and I frowned in consternation. When had I last shaved? It was the last thing I remember thinking.

  When the alarm went off, I stirred groggily and looked aside. It was going on six p.m.—only six p.m.? I couldn’t remember the day of the week.

  It took a great effort to sit up, and even more to turn on the bedside light and find my diary. Wednesday the 12th, a day ahead of what I’d thought.

  Wednesday? I groaned and rubbed my face. The meeting at Sirens was supposed to start at eight.

  It took a disproportionately long time to get out of bed, get dressed, and reach the phone. I dialed Nic’s office number. Lev turned his handset off during meetings.

  “Security,” grunted the voice on the other end.

  “Nicolai, it’s Alexi. Can you put me through to Lev?” I had no energy for nicety. Fortunately, Nic never cared.

  Nic hung up, and while the muzak played, I composed an address to my Avtoritet. I wasn’t going to apologize for being late. I’d found what I’d been sent to look for, and I wanted my money and some reprieve while I considered what to do—if anything—about Jana’s magical fruit.

  “Alexi. Glad to see you’re still with us.” Lev’s voice was slightly crisp.

  “I have Vincent.” I spoke in Ukrainian, snapping each word off cleanly so I didn’t stammer from fatigue. “He’s asleep in my living room. Beaten up, but otherwise sound.”

  There was a thick pause, and then Lev exhaled with relief. “That’s… that’s fantastic news. Thank you, Alexi, really. Where did you find him?”