Smoke layered the air around him as Junie got blunted up, tripping high on his weed as he took swigs from his forty ounce. When he was up like this, his simple thoughts and false courage turned dark and focused, a cold, sick churning in his head. In the corner of the hovel he called home, sweat trickled down the burnt marshmallow flesh of his grayish face. The life he envied when he saw the likes of Dred or Night roll through the neighborhood in their Escalades with their rims, their stereos, their bling, had come to this. His body ached and he stank of overripe fruit fermenting in a dark, moist place. His scraped knuckles were red and swollen from punching the plaster from his walls. Rumor had hit the wire that Parker was dead. That he'd done himself. Not that the word of junkies and prostitutes was to be trusted, however, Junie knew down deep in his soul that the story had the stink of truth about it.
A bout of sudden nausea sent him scrambling to the bathroom. The sink looked like someone tried to wash their abortion down it. Junie reached into his waistband and fished out the grip of his auto. Stainless steel, it was the most expensive gun they had. He flipped the safety then tucked it in his waist, the tail of his shirt covering it. He'd been punked, and that didn't sit well with him. He needed to come back on Green. He had built the corner down off McCarty Street into a real spot, had carried his demotion by proving himself. He had earned his way back up to Breton Court. But he still needed to step up, let his name ring out for real by taking out Green.
He had to correct a situation.
"Sounds to me like everything keeps coming back to Breton Court and the Phoenix," King said.
"How you figure?" Lott asked.
"Breton Court seems to be the flash point, but everything seems to come from the Phoenix."
"Like it's at the heart of the web." Lott followed King's thought.
"The dragon's lair," Merle said.
"But what about the fiends?" Wayne asked Tavon.
"They fell out. Sick or somethin'."
"Who?"
"My people them, down in Li'l Nam. We rode the Black Zombie blast. Knocked everyone right the fuck out."
"Except you?"
"I… got watered." Tavon studied his plate, not meeting anyone's eyes. Even fiends knew shame when they got played at their own game. Things didn't get much lower than that.
"They out for real? You call for an ambo or something?"
"Nah, I-"
"So let me get this straight: you got all worked up cause some fiends got knocked on they asses? Shit, I thought you had a real problem."
"I'm telling you, this was different."
"Look, here's my card." Wayne slipped his card across the table. "Outreach has a 1-888 number. Where they stay at?"
"Penn and 24th."
"Tell you what then. You go back there in the morning and see what's what. You got a problem, call 911. Either way, call the number and check in with me. The person on call will get me the message. I'll come out. I don't hear from you, I'm still coming out, but I'll be pissed."
"You smell that, Sir Rupert? He reeks of the dragon's breath."
"What's with the dragon shit?"
"The dragon… he's wide awake now."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Green was on it. There was no getting inside Green's mind. His was the primal thoughts of nature unbound. Elemental. A force of nature. The ways of a dragon were easier to understand. Most people assumed him to be a soldier, a corner boy, a thug in clean vines. Those things they understood. Those things — however violent, however toxic, however shallow and dehumanizing — wouldn't leave them screaming in the night. Green was Green. And Green was eternal. So when the bug-ridden girl — with too-thin arms but whose body wasn't too far removed from the voluptuous beauty she'd once been — ambled towards him, he was unmoved. To the casual observer, it might have seemed that pussy was pussy, easy to get, and thus none especially swayed Green. She could display her wares in the sauntering suggestion of seduction in order to mooch a vial, but it would do her no good. On a good day, he would ignore her with a glare of casual disdain which would freeze the blood in her veins. On a bad day, well, the streets ran rampant with tales of Green on a bad day. He was on it. If ambitious fiends tried to run game on him, if daring street thieves raided his stashes, or simply if fools just came up short, miscounting money or just losing shit cause they were careless, Green was on them. Eyes on point, never faltering.
There was a time when he enjoyed this time of the morning. The world was still fairly dark, but with the hint of sunrise, the day was still full of promise and imminent hope. Dew, an equal-opportunity shroud, blanketed windshields and grass. His blood afire against the cool of the fading night, he used to be at his most creative, his most alive. Now the mornings drained him. So much work left undone and yet to be done. Those fleeing the dawn's light still left a mess in their wake, and the day served only to remind him that night would once again return.
"Fellas, time to tool up," Green said to the latest bunch of workers he supervised. His was an ancient and dark voice, the sound of twigs snapping like brittle bones. Somehow he'd been relegated to middle management, too far separated from the pulse of the streets, too far from the thrill and experience of life; but he had found ways to make up for it. Supervising from street level, for one thing.
"What's up?" a young, rock-faced soldier asked because he was ready to call it a night.
"Just some business I have to settle. Make sure we have no other surprises."
• • •
The gray sky lightened with the rising sun. The street lights hadn't turned off, obstinately clinging to the embers of night. The Durham Brothers pulled into a side street on the other side of the bridge that crossed the creek that separated Breton Court from the rest of housing addition. Their long and ample limbs jutted ridiculously from the Ford Focus which creaked noisily when they exited. Pressing smooth their outfits, one last primp before their engagement, they shambled along the sidewalk, then veered off as they got to the bridge, careful to remain out of the direct line of sight from Green. They cut through the yard of the house they parked in front of, whose backyard opened onto a sloping hillside that terminated at the creek. The bridge wasn't the largest by any stretch, little more than a culvert, but it would suffice.
"He out there," Marshall said.
"I didn't see anyone, but, yeah, I can feel him." Michaela closed her eyes, double-checking the odd stirring in the core of her being.
"You think he can feel us?"
"He Green, ain't he?"
"Yeah, but we're in our-" Marshall started.
"Place of power. True." The bridge became an echo chamber whenever a car rumbled along it. The murky creek water lapped at the edges of the embankment, riffles of current thinned by the lack of rain. Overgrown with weeds, overturned grocery carts divided the channel. The yellow and brown of fallen leaves blanketed much of the embankment, blown under and trapped by the mild breeze. Michaela shuddered with her own chill. "But Green's outside. It's all his place of power."
"Be a good time to hit him. Late fall. Winter's only technically a few days away. Close enough."
"Not much of a plan."
"We hit. Hard. A lot. What more do we need?" Marshall blew out a snot rocket then wiped his porcine nose with the back of his hand.
"You're right. Ain't no plan at all."
The siblings did a fist bump.
"Let's do this."
Octavia Burke drove because she never trusted Lee's judgment behind the wheel and idly turned onto Georgetown Road from 86th Street. They had opted to grab a bite at the Thai House and then head back to Breton Court to do some follow-up interviews. Georgetown Road was one of those confusing streets. Remaining Georgetown Road until it crossed Lafayette Road, "Georgetown Road" picked up again a street light south on Lafayette Road and the winding street they continued to travel on became Pike Plaza from the corner strip mall for the few blocks until the street wound past a Meijer at which point it became Moller Road. Moller Road and High Scho
ol Road were the east and west boundaries, respectively, of Breton Drive, the side street leading to the world within the isolated world of Breton Court.
"I don't have to explain myself to you." Lee slouched in his seat, a vacant stare etching the glass of the window. The defensiveness of his voice bit at his ears, though it was too late to do anything about it.
"I guess it's OK to date hookers then."
"She's no hooker." Again his voice betrayed him, raised in too vehement a protest. Part of him wondered about her practiced ease of seduction, not wanting to confront the notion of what a beautiful woman like her might see in someone like him.
"So she says."
"So her sheet says. I don't pay for poon, pardon my fuckin' French."
"She's not a pro, but you ran her anyway. Nice." Octavia shifted in her seat turning as much of her back to him as possible. Some days, she didn't want to even look at him. "Play semantics all you want, just cause demanding a freebie ain't technically paying for it."
"Even if she was a pro, and she ain't, getting a little on the side — as long as no money changes hands — ain't a crime."
"It is if you let her walk rather than bring her in." Octavia fixed her eyes on the road, not deigning to chance even a glance in his direction. Once folks started getting on her nerves, she found it easier to block them out as if they weren't there.
"It's not like that."
"What's it like then?"
"It's like… none of your business." Lee, with his trailer-park features and sensibilities, wasn't going to admit that women who looked like Omarosa rarely took a second glance at guys who looked like him. Especially black women. And he was tired of the black women he encountered taking one whiff of him and deciding not only that they knew him, but that they were better than him.
His silence told Octavia everything she needed to know.
A call came across the radio about a fight occurring by the Breton Court bridge. Lee sighed. Civvies rarely understood the dangers of a fight, though, in light of the recent shooting, maybe they might comprehend them a little better. When folks closed in on you, it wasn't as if you could just draw your gun and back them down. In the heat of a melee, with hands and fists everywhere, folks kicking and punching with no skill or thought, your gun was only yours as long as you held it. Then the call came in about shots fired as they screeched to a halt at the intersection just prior to the bridge. The intervening silence brought its own ghosts.
For years, Octavia had been haunted by a recurring dream. She would be chasing a perp, his face always a blur, never quite coming into focus. Suddenly, he'd turn to face her and draw his weapon. She fired her gun first but the bullets never hit him. They'd be on target, center mass, but the bullets would stop a foot short and clatter against the ground.
Lee's ghosts were memories that brought to mind the old hates. He remembered his first day out with his field training officer, Maeda Graham, a bear of a man, even then. Everything was so new to Lee, hearing the sounds of the street and the language he'd never heard, from the cops' insider jargon to the hard language of the streets (even the streets he grew up on took on a new, harsh aspect). All of it was confusing as hell, like seeing life for the first time.
It was also how he learned to hate the animals over at the Phoenix. He and Maeda caught a call of shots fired over there. They arrived in the middle of a shootout, so they decided to wait for back-up. Fresh out of the Academy, all Lee could think about was protecting the civilians. As he and Maeda crouched behind their vehicle, garbage started raining down on them. On them. They who were trying to quell the violence perpetrated against the citizens, their community, their children. The guardians got garbage dumped on them. Amidst the chaos, the warring gangs declared a temporary armistice, and turned their guns jointly a-blazing at Maeda and him. Maeda, determined to go after anyone who dared fire on "true po-lice", yelled where to meet him — the intersection of two streets Lee had never heard of — then took off. Being a rookie, he had no idea where to go or if to go, since that meant abandoning his partner. So he squatted low, kept his head down and prayed, holding his gun with both hands praying his shaking alone squeezed off a few rounds. He'd never been so scared in his life.
Until he saw the figure covered in blood lumbering toward him and Octavia, a bloodied rock in one hand and a severed head in the other.
• • •
The three of them stood there underneath the bridge, all hard and eye-fucking each other like a gunfight scene from an old spaghetti western. Except that this wasn't every man for himself. Nor was this like any other bridge. The creek that the bridge spanned was a natural ley line, augmenting the bridge as a place of power for the trolls. Also for Green. The Durham Brothers were essentially one person. His protestations aside, Marshall was a follower; no shame on it since that was the way he was wired. In his size 17 combat boots and Army camo pants, topped by a black T-shirt with a heavy metal band no one had heard of (but the picture was cool, he thought), he needed someone's lead to connect with. His hands balled and relaxed, balled and relaxed, flexing into meaty clubs waiting for the go moment. He turned to Michaela.
"What you going to do?" Michaela asked.
"Probably get my ass kicked," Green said, "but I'll go down like a man. And there ain't no shame in a man being taken down by another man. That shit happens. There's always someone stronger."
Michaela's brown gypsy skirt flared in the slight breeze. It had a way of making her figure more squat than it should. Standing next to Marshall, she seemed like a man in poor drag with her bunchedup nose and porcine eyes. An old myth ran through her head: the Incarnation of Spring, must be slain in winter.
Michaela and Green's eyes met. His laconic glare was nothing but white death, snow-blind eyes staring into a blizzard. Michaela's eyes betrayed fear. Only a hint, not enough for her brother to see. Spit flew from her mouth.
It was go time.
Michaela charged Green, throwing a wide punch. He sidestepped the punch but hooked her underneath her shoulder and dropped her to the ground by back-sweeping her legs. He turned when his mind registered the approaching shadow only to have the full weight of Marshall's punch slam into his jaw, bowling him over.
Marshall dipped his head down and rammed Green in a tackle that pinned him against the concrete wall of the bridge. Marshall held Green up with one arm and punched with the other. Green clawed at the arm.
"Marshall!" Michaela yelled.
From her vantage point she could see what Marshall couldn't: with every slam into the embankment, Green's skin splintered through his clothes, leaves and branches jutting then retreating like an overstuffed garbage bag full of raked fall leaves — his skin knitting itself back under the illusion of flesh. Green turned to her, his eyes aglow with emerald fire, aiming one free hand at Marshall. In an instant, the length of his arm shot through Marshall's mouth out the back of his head. A wayward stalk, a jutting branch which pulled back into the shape of Green's hand as it withdrew from Marshall's skull, still gore-covered, bits of gray matter stuck between his fingers.
Marshall stood there, a fist-sized hole in the back of his head, still holding Green to the wall as if what remained of his brain couldn't process why he was holding the man when, in fact, he should be dead. Green fell from his grasp as the body finally decided to collapse. Limping aside, a mixture of blood and sap poured from Green's wounds.
"No!" Michaela charged him, wild-eyed and unthinking. Green hinged forward, doubled over by the force of her fist in his gut. His eyes bulged out and breath left him. She stepped in and kicked him for all she was worth, stomping on his side like he was a fire in need of extinguishing. He caught her foot, pulled her off balance, and toppled her. He scrambled on top of her and drove his fist into her face. The crack sounded like a tree branch toppling. She elbowed him in his side, the force of which knocked him from her, and staggered to her feet.
The two circled each other. Green held his side. What appeared to be green flames, mystical e
nergy, trailed from his eyes. His clothes a tattered mess, stained with blood and a viscous, clear fluid. Michaela spat out blood and a tooth. Snot ran down her face which she wiped with the back of her hand. Her eyes glazed with the resignation that perhaps it was not close enough to winter. Catching a glimpse of her fallen twin, she stood from her crouch, her legs a buckling mess.
They rushed each other one last time. Green's fingers raked across her face even as her meaty fists connected with his already-wounded side. His fingers dug deeper, finding purchase in her eye sockets and nostrils. His fingers extended into those cavities. Michaela's left eye burst, a mix of bone and blood, the eye dangling free from its socket. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as he kept pulling. He drove the talon-like nails into her face and pulled. Her skull cracked, a slow splitting egg, her expression a frozen rictus of — if not terror — with a sense of understanding eternity. Her head exploded in a rain of brain matter and blood.
Green staggered forward, his fingers slowly withdrawing into the approximation of a human shape. Michaela's body collapsed onto her knees and held that position, a headless supplicant in prayer before tumbling over. Slowly, he climbed the hill leading up to Breton Court. The shouts of his boys were a mishmash of sounds. He saw them running toward him, slowing as he came into their eyesight. His alien — the word their minds would scramble to elucidate was ancient, but to them he would simply be alien — elemental form, the disfigured form they knew as Green, horrified them. They raised their guns toward him. The weapons reports echoed, the flight of bullets whirred past him.
"Get down," one yelled.
Green was about to turn when a slug burned into his back. More emerald flames erupted from the wounds. His skin was like aged parchment sewn together by rough cords which now threatened to tear loose in sheets. He needed time to fully heal. Time that Junie — in his harried amble and eyes a mix of terror and frenzy — was not about to give him.
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