Diejuste tilted her head toward the boy. “I am a loa.”
He pointed out, “And a woman.”
“I am eight.” She sipped her milk.
Lucio scoffed, “And I’m 32. But we know what age means.”
She turned to look at him. “You can trust me.”
Lucio reached out as Diejuste was about to take another drink. He put a hand over the top of the cold glass. “It’s not polite to mess around with people’s heads.”
“You tink comin’ home to a green couch that was white when you left for work don’t mess with a woman’s head? And my grandmudder has a delicate ticker.”
“I thought you had the delicate ticker.”
“Grandmudder is old and I am not riding her. What is she going to tink about a green couch?”
“She loves green!”
“How you know that? She circles a green couch but you don’t know why.”
“If she hates it, I’ll change it back.”
“You must take care, Brownie. Your temper get away from you, you might make me feel bad.”
“I can do worse than that.”
Diejuste caught his eyes. “So can I.”
The music skipped. The dancers barely noticed. The world faded back for Junior and the others. He saw them each relax back into their accustomed existence in the world though that world was limited to the six of them there at the eastern end of the bar. He could feel that they were all still forgettable to anyone else in the bar.
Then Lucio’s deep brown skin paled to Junior’s shade. His lungs had to work hard to catch enough breath. He curled into himself and searched the take-out remains for scraps. Not finding any, he took his hand off Diejuste’s glass and reached for his own empty pint. Diejuste picked up her milk and took a long drink while Lucio banged a fist on the bar. He choked out a call to Seb. Seb didn’t hear him.
Diejuste turned to look at the captain, though she spoke to them all. “That is how Yaksha Morioka feel. All the time.”
Junior gasped in relief that he could not feel what Yaksha Morioka felt. Just looking at Lucio sweating, his face going through pale to red, Junior feared what kind of creature the captain was.
The thought struck him. He wasn’t alone here. All of these people were creatures of myth. Diejuste was a loa. The boys were brownies. The detective was Orin’s sister, but she wasn’t a brownie. Lucio had called her a banshee. He himself was some kind of half-boogeyman monster. What kind of myth was Captain Morioka with her kind eyes that Lucio would be having trouble breathing or speaking? What made him look like he wanted to kill everyone?
The creature in question was just as curious about Junior. He caught her watching him just before she turned her bland expression on Lucio’s distress. After a moment’s observation, she handed the brownie her gin and tonic.
Lucio drained the drink down to the muddled cucumber slices in the bottom. He chewed the meat from the lime wedge garnish before he slammed the empty glass on the bar next to his own mug.
“Seb! Another Leini!”
Seb made no indication he’d heard. He didn’t appear to notice the commotion at all. He continued calmly polishing the bar until Diejuste called him over.
“Seb, another round. And a wadda please, too, Brudda.”
Lucio watched Seb possessively as he poured the drinks. He delivered the water first. Then a refreshed gin and tonic for the captain. When he set Lucio’s Leini Red on the bar, Lucio grabbed at it.
Diejuste let him have a sip. “Drink the wadda, Lucio.”
The brownie set the beer down and picked up the water. The ‘Yaksha’ feeling drained from him like serum from a punctured blister. He breathed easier. He checked in on his friends and drinking buddies with obvious relief. And he drained the water.
Diejuste looked around at them all. “I am doing this because you must all know each udda. You are my family.”
Morton, Morioka, Orin, Lucio, and Junior all stared at the little girl blankly.
The ancient goddess bounced up and down on her bar stool, clapping her hands. “Yay.”
10
The Box
Immediately upon making the strange pronouncement, Diejuste spun around as if Seb had called her name. The music grew louder as did the patrons’ voices and dancing feet. Everything around the six became subtly more present as a sense of group isolation the others hadn’t recognized dropped away. Junior felt as though the barn doors had been opened and he was now free to roam though he hadn’t noticed being corralled.
Morton actually tripped backwards a little as the pressure keeping them together disappeared. She caught herself and addressed Morioka, dismissing the rest. “Kyle had a key on him. You know anything about that?”
Morioka paled just a shade but before Junior could hear her response, Orin pounded him on the back.
“You haven’t lived till you’ve had Seb’s glög, my brother. First one’s on me.” He laid another heavy paw on Lucio’s back but the younger brownie had turned back to his water. The nearly empty glass demanded his full attention. “We’ll just give him a minute.”
Orin physically pulled Junior farther down the bar towards Beth and her jukebox before he commented. “Good for him to get a shock like that. He gets out of control sometimes. He’s young. He’s Latin.”
Junior had heard just as much about Irish tempers as Latin passion, but he didn’t point that out. Instead he said, “The Captain is something awful but she controls herself.”
“You make a good point, Boogeyman.”
Junior bristled, as Lucio might have if he’d heard Orin’s Latin comment. “I’m half boogeyman.”
“Didn’t mean nothin by it.”
“You lost a wooden box earlier.”
“Yeah, I did.” Orin was wrong-footed by the change of subject but rallied with a sip of his beer. “Amal’s pretty pissed at me. He told me if the world ended tonight, I’d—”
Junior set the box on the counter. He kept it wrapped in the blue cloth.
The brownie dropped his beer to the bar. “How do you have it?”
Junior heard the shift in Orin’s tone. The change was immediate. It would be hard to judge how much of the brownie’s anger was honest ire at Junior’s theft and how much was because of the box. Knowing the box elicited anger gave Junior an advantage. He could assert more control over the small effect the box had on him. He wondered why the box had less effect on him. Was it because he was a monster already?
“What the fuck did—”
Junior interrupted. “You’re angry because of the box.”
“Damn right I am. You fucking stole that—”
Junior persisted. “No. The actual box.” He reached out to tap it but caught himself. He didn’t want to touch it. Now that it was out of his satchel, he didn’t want to touch it ever again. “The box causes an emotional response to everyone around it. It doesn’t affect me but it made you and Lucio and Diejuste irrational at her apartment.”
Orin took a long draught of his Red. Junior watched as a small part of the man’s rational brain exerted control over everything else. He didn’t punch Junior. He didn’t throw the beer in his face. He listened and considered the idea that he was being manipulated by a little wooden jewelry case. “That’s why Lucy, Amal, and I nearly killed each other over it this morning?”
“Yes. The whole bar started fighting. That’s why I stole it.” Junior ducked his head in shame.
“You went invisible.” Orin growled.
“I was invisible because you were scared.”
Orin tried to drink. His glass was empty so he pounded it on the bar. “Fear makes you invisible?” He raised a challenging eyebrow at Junior.
Junior considered this. “It’s more like I can be invisible if you’re afraid.”
“But we didn’t even know you were in the bar or what you were.” Orin spit this at Junior, his voice getting louder with every word.
Junior wasn’t sure Orin knew he was yelling so he answered as if the b
rownie was speaking in a reasonable tone. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. Fear of anything. Fear of the unknown. You fear. I go invisible.”
Orin grimaced like his guts were grinding. “It’s not the box. Whatever is inside this box is so frightening,” Orin gripped an edge of the blue cloth, “that even though we don’t know what it is or why it frightens us, we’re scared. And scared turns to anger.”
Orin twitched. The cloth slipped off like silk sheets revealing a naked hip. To Junior’s eyes, the box glowed. The carved faces, revealed through the weaving wooden oak leaves and branches, writhed in their agony. Orin’s gaze glued to the lock. He examined the iron padlock joining two intricately worked extrusions of metal heated and shaped to continue the tree carving from the wood into two interwoven branches. One small key, fit into that padlock, would reveal the answer. Hell, a sharp blow with anything heavy would break a padlock that small. Orin reached blindly for his empty pint.
Junior reached to take the glass out of Orin’s hand. Orin refused to let go.
Junior fought for words to reach through the red haze in Orin’s eyes. “New, strange things usually make humans scared and angry.”
“I don’t know what it is. Let’s kill it.” Orin agreed, eyes pinned to the lock. “That kind of thing?”
Orin’s knuckles glowed white around the pint glass. Junior couldn’t catch his eyes. “But Orin,” he said. “We’re not humans.”
“Then we can take it. Let’s just fucking open the thing and see what’s inside. No more unknown. No more fear. No more anger.”
His eyes flashed away from the padlock. He was aware that he was now talking a bit loudly. But few people around the bar noticed. The hefty woman and her slim partner had stopped dancing. They stood, hissing at each other in the middle of the floor. The two other couples danced around them but even their dancing had changed. There was less give and take in the leads, less bounce in their steps. The slim dancer yanked his partner into a basket hold and she elbowed his ribs. The large hairy man knitting in his dark corner was the only one staring at Orin’s outburst. His eyes darted from Orin to Beth. He couldn’t see Junior.
“Hey!” Orin turned back to Junior. “Maybe your dad’s in the box.”
Junior felt a cold fist sock him in the gut. He yanked the blue cloth over the box. He would shove it back into his satchel and flee to find the deepest pit he could to bury the box, his father, and his shame. But Orin’s eyes latched onto someone new coming into the bar.
“Bailey.” He screamed at the guy. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Junior turned. The front door floated shut behind a pair of skinny kids. The guy, brown eyes hidden behind thick glasses, took a step back. He flashed a glance at the small blond girl who had bounced in the door and straight up onto the stool Diejuste had climbed on earlier. The girl noted his attention but finished her conversation with Beth before she hopped down to follow Bailey. Her brown eyes glittered, her exuberance especially noticeable in the box-infused atmosphere. The two matched too closely to not be related. If she hadn’t looked twelve and he twenty, you’d believe they were twins.
Bailey held up a hand in a still wave. “What’s up, Orin?”
The girl looked up at Orin and then further up at Junior. “Woof.”
She had a hand up on the thick collar around her neck. Leather and fabric sewn together with zippered pockets around the length, the collar featured an actual dog tag hanging from the center. She zipped one pocket and unzipped another. “I’m Lee. This is my brother, Bails. Who are you?”
He stepped between Orin and the young man. “Junior Le . . . call me Junior.”
“A friend of the boys’?” Lee asked. She pulled a necklace from her collar-purse, a silver chain. “Here it is. Hey Orin, Dee gave us this key for you to keep. You’re not to supposed to give it to anyone but her.”
She held her hand out to Orin. A key slipped through her fist to dangle at the end of the chain. There was no doubt this key fit the padlock securing the iron branches of the box. It matched the box in beauty and craftsmanship as well as style. The key could have been a tiny branch off any oak tree. With barely a brush of his fingertips, Orin slid the blue cloth aside. The fabric fluttered over the brass rail and down to lay, forgotten, at the feet of the stools.
Bailey’s gasp was the sound of a man seeing his own death coming for him. For an instant the words he looked about to scream choked him. His eyes sparked, turning blue as he tore them from the box to respond to Orin’s ramped up anger. Beside him, Lee’s fist grew white around the chain while her face flushed red. Her entire body tilted away from the box as she tried to pull the necklace back to herself.
Too slow. Far too slow.
Orin dropped his pint glass and quick as a snake, snatched the key from her hand.
11
The Monster
Blood welled up on Lee’s finger where the silver chain scraped away her skin. A chorus of voices spiked over the tinkling piano of Moonglow starting up on the Jukebox. Orin didn’t hear them yelling stop. Or Orin didn’t care.
Junior dove for the box. Never mind the cloth, he grabbed the wood directly, but Orin was already there. The key slid home as if it were a living thing aware and eager to fulfill its purpose. Junior felt the pressure of power amassing behind him. He saw Amal flying up the corridor. Nobody else could move as the box lid flew back, slamming into Junior’s chest.
Junior’s hands sizzled. He was thrown from his seat. His head hit the brass rail and his spine struck another stool. Fireworks exploded behind his eyes. One flung arm hit either Lee or Bailey as he went down. For some reason his vision tunneled till all he could see was the panic on his new loa friend’s face as she climbed up onto the bar, reaching for him. The box was ripped from his burning hands. It flew to the floor, spinning and pin balling off the barstool legs.
Junior huddled under the bar, assessing his injuries. Smoke rose from the singed flesh of Junior’s hands. Blood dripped warm down his neck. A giggle threatened to bubble out of him when it occurred to him that he would never think of himself as a monster again. He was no monster. Not compared to the beast that exploded from the box and landed on hooves as large as hands.
He huddled under the bar as the creature grew. He’d never felt so helpless as he did watching the chaos unfold beyond the brass and wood legs of the stool between he and this buffalo-thing. Orin had been thrown into the tables, scattering the dancers. Beth alone bopped on by her jukebox. Lee and her brother Bailey stood together between the monster and the door. Beyond the still-growing creature, Detective Morton stood facing it, one hand on her holster. Lucio had pulled Diejuste off the bar, back onto her stool. Amal filled the archway to the back hall.
Captain Morioka was nowhere to be seen. Junior searched the bar for her, wondering if somehow, she’d been destroyed when the monster first leapt from the box. Strips of flesh had been ripped from his hands. Who was to say tiny Morioka hadn’t been incinerated completely?
The monster stretched out as he grew. He reached his bovine arms up, showing off his twelve pack of a torso. Instead of hands, he brushed the ceiling with three thick fingers that would look more in place on a pig. Like a satyr his human hips blended into fur-covered hind legs. His goateed snout was only modified enough to allow a shit-eating grin to spread across his buffalo face. He laughed as he grew, shifting further into a bovine state until his laugh transformed into snorting and bellowing as the horns on his furry head scraped plaster from the ceiling, dusting the demon in white dandruff.
The giggle finally burst out. Junior muttered, “Not my dad, then,” and clamped down on his emerging panic. He blew cold air on his palms though the pain barely registered past the fear filling the room.
The buffalo swung his head from side to side glancing over the puny humans and others scattered there on the floor beneath him. He laughed at the smallness of them. Apparently deciding they were civilized, he switched from the animal noises to some strange language. At leas
t he seemed to be putting groups of sounds together in a speech. He spit the speech at them and then waited. Not one of the terrified faces beneath him responded to his questions with anything more than whimpers.
A stink rolled off the shaggy haunches and worse, an ancient stale odor clung to the air around the monster. This long-dead air washed out over the bar in almost visible waves, much like the fear filling Junior’s vision. Trapped as he was in a cave created by stools and bar, Junior gagged as the stench coated him. There was absolutely nothing he could do to stop this.
With impossible speed, the buffalo reached out one impossibly long arm and swiped the bar. Glasses and bottles smashed. Mugs shattered. A book smacked into Lucio’s back, nearly knocking he and Diejuste from their stools. The pull handles broke off of several taps and the bar itself dented. Splinters of oak popped up and rained down in front of Junior.
The monster stretched out his other arm and grabbed a table from under two women. He smashed it on the ceiling and dropped it at their feet. He smiled at the room, pleased with himself. Then the smile dropped, his nostrils flared, and Buffalo Bob swung his head from the tables all the way around to Seb.
That twitching nose searched. Junior sat up. The monster knew fear. Something in the air around Detective Morton scared him.
Diejuste clearly felt it too. She extracted herself from Lucio’s protective hold to wave for Junior’s attention. “Be ready.”
He shook his head at her. Ready for what? There was nothing he could do against this nine-foot demon. He tried to whisper ‘no’ to stop her from doing whatever she was thinking of doing, but the vowel barely rasped from his throat.
The little girl in her zip up Elmo sweater ignored him in any case. She hopped down from her stool and circled around the detective to approach the gigantic buffalo man directly.
“Hello,” she said.
A tear slid down Junior’s cheek. He gripped the stool and the pain in his hands shocked him into more active terror.
The buffalo head spat on her so heavily it drove her to the ground. Morton didn’t move to help. Diejuste wiped the gelatinous loogie from her eyes. She showed no anger or disgust or fear. Her face showed nothing as she regained her feet to address the creature again.
Junior (A Wyrdos Tale Book 3) Page 7
