by R. B. Tetro
“There! Over there…” the old lady croaked and pointed off to her left.
Poet saw it next and then Reverend. Sticking halfway out of the sand was Angel’s crucifix, tied to a stick stuck in the sand. Poet grabbed it and held it close to his heart. “It’s hers! She’s still alive, and she’s helping us catch up to her,” Poet mumbled, and stumbled forward in the ankle deep sand with renewed hope.
The old lady followed him closely, as per usual.
Reverend just stood there, looking skyward, mumbling a soft prayer of thanks. Not just for keeping them safe and showing them the way, but for showing him that he was still there, and that he still had their backs.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED
A day away from the Keep, Daniel and his group of doomed soldiers were in surprisingly good spirits. Juggernaut and Scout were arguing in their all too familiar comical fashion and the rest of the men were enjoying the show.
“We go that way, we die today,” argued Scout.
Juggernaut pointed in the opposite direction. “That is the way, you unwashed little man. Your directions are as twisted as your hair.”
Scout was in his face- or navel- immediately, both of them posturing, the scene comical; like a modern day, David and Goliath. Everyone except for Pops was enjoying the impromptu performance. He stood off by himself, looking nervously at the trail Scout was pointing at. “It’s this way,” he said, right before Daniel stepped in and took Scout’s side on this particular argument.
The men looked at him, each one of them seeing the concern on his face.
“Told you, I did…on your mouth put a lid,” Scout gloated.
The men started laughing, and Juggernaut had to laugh as well. “On my mouth, put a lid…really, Scout?”
Scout gave a slight bow, whirled and trotted out in front of the group.
“Won’t be long now, we’re going to run into Magnus’ Blood- eyes,” Pops said out loud; as if he were in a trance. Everyone looked at him and then up the trail. “How come you know those things, Pops?” Basher asked.
Pops blinked and looked at him like he was seeing him for the first time. “When I was a boy, we used to go down to New Orleans and stay the summer with my granddad. He was older than the earth and could foretell things. He taught me a few of his ways.
The men seemed to buy into that and began to check their weapons.
“When I was a kid, we spent our summers at a crystal blue lake up in the mountains. It was cool because our parents knew everyone, and everyone knew everyone, and we could basically do whatever we wanted to do all summer long.” Daniel’s voice trailed off as he remembered.
“Me and Chains…when we were kids in the orphanage, we used to spend our summer blacktopping the roof of the juvenile detention center.” added Basher. For a moment, everyone stopped and stared at him.
“Shit man, that sounds like it sucked. When Lucky and I were kids, we used to get shipped off to my aunt’s house in Cleveland. She let us do anything we wanted and we did,” laughed Juggernaut, sobering as he remembered his dead brother.
“I remember when we were kids, Fury beat up the night-watch man and we all escaped and took his wallet and went to the bar and bullied the bartender into serving us,” laughed Chains, punching Basher affectionately on the arm. Basher laughed and punched his brother back. “Fury was always a spark in a powder keg, waiting to go off.”
Chains put his arm around his brother. “I know brother. I miss him, too.”
The men continued to tell stories as they wound their way up the trail towards the Keep. As they climbed, they spoke more quietly, each of them all too aware that things were about to get real.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED ONE
It took two days and it damn-near killed them but Reverend, Poet and the old lady were finally able to catch up to Buckets and his slavers. That night, Poet snuck into their campsite to get food and water and count their numbers and to find out where they were holding Angel.
The next day, they hid under an empty water wagon surrounded by supplies, waiting for the camp to fall asleep before making their move. They were hot and sweating and the sounds of the captured being tortured and savaged was driving them mad, but they forced themselves to lie still and wait to take their revenge.
Reverend remembered the famous bible verse- Revenge is mine sayeth the Lord.” Yeah… I know Lord. It’s just that maybe you arranged for me to be here and to administer some payback,” he thought. As usual, the Lord wasn’t answering nor did he show any signs of appreciating Reverend’s humor.
Finally, the hellish sun went down, the night air cooled, and slowly but surely, one by the one, Buckets and his slavers succumbed to a full day of drinking. Using their knives the three rescuers eliminated the four guards around the tent holding Angel. Sliding into the tent on their bellies, they saw Buckets standing directly in front of her, drinking from an almost empty bottle of tequila.
In the far corner of the tent lay his mother, her throat slit, her eyes staring defiantly at Buckets while he toyed with the woman he’d killed her for. Buckets had decided to kill his mother as soon as she’d hit him with the shovel. When he’d found her sleeping in the tent, he’d wasted no time in cutting her throat. He snorted and smiled as he remembered the shocked look on his ball-busting bitch of a mother’s face and the way she’d thrashed around on her cot like a gutted fish.
Buckets finished the bottle and snorted, slapping Angel hard across the mouth before walking over and pissing on his mother’s corpse. He was chuckling and putting his business away when he turned around and saw Poet standing there with a wicked looking, long-knife in each hand.
“Shi…” he managed to say before the Poet threw one knife, sticking it hilt-deep into his throat. Buckets grunted and moaned, staggering forward. He growled, yanked the knife out of his throat and rushed Poet.
Poet side- stepped him, stabbing him twice more in the neck with his other long knife as he went by. The three of them watched him sink down to his knees, trying to keep himself from bleeding to death, the light in his eyes growing fainter and fainter.
Poet knelt down beside him, staring hard into his eyes. Buckets looked like a dying child, afraid of the hell that he knew he was heading to.
Reverend unlocked the chain from around Angel’s ankle, using the key they found around Bucket’s shredded neck.
“Thank you,” she managed to whisper into his ear before collapsing. Her face had been beaten black and blue and her breath was shallow and out of rhythm. “Where’s Chloe?” she managed.
“Back with the main camp, still heading toward the Star Towers with the children. The slavers must have thought she was dead and skipped over her,” the old lady told her.
Poet draped her over his shoulder and the three of them slipped out of the tent, taking the same concealed route they’d taken into the camp. They could hear the sounds of the camp coming alive behind them, making them scrunch up their shoulders and keep their heads down. They’d just managed to stumble over the top of the nearest sand dune and out of sight when they heard the first alarm.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWO
Red Robin was barely able to pull himself up to his desk to write. He’d been assigned a personal assistant, which at first he’d thought laughable, but after Siros’ spell had diminished him to nothing more than a voice in a rotten husk he realized the extra help couldn’t hurt. “Thank you,” he managed to say, trying to turn over his journal and unlock it. He could not, so his assistant stepped in and did so with the warmth and gentleness of a trusted friend.
Red Robin poised his shaking hand over the pages, willing his hand to write what was in his heart and in his mind but no matter how hard he willed it, he could not make his hand move. Disgusted, he tried to throw the pen but was unable to do anything but push it away from his fingertips. “Please, can you write what I say?” he asked his aide.
The man didn’t hesitate. He pulled another chair up and sat down at the end of the desk. “Okay…”
“Good. Start with, my dearest son and grand-son.”
While the aide wrote down his words, Red Robin looked out the window. They were in the highest of several towers and he could see for miles in any direction.
Since Siros put this cursed spell on me I have deteriorated down to nothing. I fear, my boys, that my time for life on this planet is fast approaching its end. Unless Siros mysteriously dies, soon I will be no more. I wonder who will speak to the lost masses after my soul flies free from this tower. I wonder if anyone will care enough to step in and let freedom ring from their mouths and out onto the airwaves.
I hope that someday, my son and grandson, that you or, at least, someone you know can help spread the message of freedom that was genetically encoded into our family’s DNA.
Now I must … Red Robin paused for a moment, smiling at his aide who was fast becoming his friend. The man stopped writing and smiled back at him, patiently waiting for him to begin again.
My greatest regret is not being able to live long enough to be re-united with the two of you. It was my greatest wish to be together at least once before this vile curse killed me but alas, it appears as if that wish will be one of many, not granted by the good Lord upstairs.
My second regret goes out to you, my son. It is that I wish I’d been less of a personality when you were younger and more of the father that you so desperately needed after your mother died. I want you to know, son, that after she left this earth, I was unable to look at you because you were so much like her, both in personality and in appearance. So I became another person- a famous person, so I wouldn’t have to face the pain of losing her. And in the process, I lost you too.
I remember you watching me from the audience, always trying to get me to make eye contact with you, ravenous for my attention. So lonely you looked…so desperate. I never turned your way, although I knew you so desperately needed me to, but I couldn’t, because to look at you was to see her and I could not allow myself to do that.
I regret not telling you more about your mother. She was beautiful and rare in the way her energy shone. Everyone that was lucky enough to spend time around her knew it, and wanted more of that energy until I think, in the end, that special energy killed her and took her away from us. She was a stunner, a one in a million piece of exquisite humanity. That is what God created when he created her. When she died, she took the best parts of me with her and I miss those parts of me almost as much as I miss her.
I’m sorry for all the times when you needed me and I was too selfish to be there for you. I’m sorry you grew up alone and frightened all the time but I did love you and you never lacked for anything except, of course, the one thing you needed the most, which was me. I see that now and I want you to know that I see that now and that I’m so sorry.
Don’t ever do that to your son…my grand-son. It takes the shine right off your soul. I regret that me and my grandson will never be able to go fishing together and I regret me and you will never go fishing together but most of all I regret not being with you as the darkness closes in on me and I feel my mortality tapping me hard on the shoulder, pestering me to turn around and face my destiny.
I regret that when I was a younger man I didn’t spend time with your mother and younger sister. That’s right, son. You had a sister for a while. You were too young to remember. She got that damned cancer and it ate her up like a burrowing maggot until there was nothing left. Your momma held me up and needed me to hold her up but I didn’t. I hid behind the microphone and have stayed hidden behind the microphone ever since and will probably die, hidden behind this microphone.
Red Robin stopped talking because he was violently coughing. His aide came to him, rendering water mixed with a cough-soothing medicine. For a few moments, the two of them looked at each other. His new aide wanted more than anything for the Red Robin to recover, but he’d seen, first hand, what Siros’ spell had done. Almost daily Red Robin continued to deteriorate and there didn’t seem to be anything anyone, including him, could do to stop the process.
“I’m…ready,” the Red Robin managed. The aide nodded that he was ready as well and the Red Robin began to speak.
Regrets will gnaw at you and eat at you worse than cancer, so treat life as a test that you want to ace every damn part of, because once you mess up and do something that you can’t undo, there’s something inside of you that will keep bringing it up over and over, each and every day, until it drives you mad.
I regret not hugging you more, son, and not telling you that I love you every chance that I could and never being affectionate with you and always having to be so tough…too tough for you to see just how very much you meant to me. I regret never telling you that I was so damn proud of you, every time you lettered in sports or made the honor role. Your grandfather would call and tell me, wherever I was. I would always brag to everybody around me and try and act like it was my parenting skills that brought all those trophies to you and scholastic awards of achievement which was so very far from the truth. It was you, and I knew it was all you, trying to impress me. I hate myself for being such a selfish hard-ass that I could never just tell you how you made me shine on the inside.
When you became a soldier, I realized that you had the same fight inside of you that burns inside of me. Even now, as I watch myself deteriorate everyday… the same fights rages inside of me. But I’ve never been a physical fighter like you which was always been one of my biggest regrets so I took my fight to the air waves.
Red Robin fell asleep and his new helper sat in silence, pen poised to finish the letter as soon as his hero woke up.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THREE
A half a day away from the Keep, in the middle of the night, the first wave of Magnus’s troops surprised them, or so they thought. Thanks to Daniel’s careful planning, they were more than ready to hold off many more than attacked them. Not that it was easy. The troops were some of Magnus’ most highly trained, seasoned veterans with many kills notched in their weapons.
The enemy attacked their decoy camp first, paying dearly for the costly mistake. Their real camp was more like a miniature fortress with huge boulders for walls high above the staged camp below, allowing them to toss down rocks with pinpoint deadly effect.
The second attack came three hours later. Back and forth, the two sides battled, until only a few remaining Blood- eyes were left and those were released to go and tell Magnus the battle story.
After they’d treated the wounded and buried their dead, Daniel noticed that Standing Wolf and his warriors were keeping a safe distance away from them. “I see the way you watch us. Is there something wrong?” Daniel asked Standing Wolf.
“My people are disturbed that you and so few men could kill so many. It seems like some sort of magic and yet it is real. They say that you and your men are death spirits. They say wherever you go…death is close behind you,” Standing Wolf informed him.
Daniel listened patiently, while Scout sewed some stiches into his upper shoulder. He reached inside of his shirt and pulled out his most prize possession, a simple wooden crucifix that his son gave to him the day he gave him the hulk doll. He held it up with two blood-stained fingers, showing it to Standing Wolf. “Tell your people not to fear us. Tell them our strength lies not in magic. Tell them our strength comes from the Great Spirit, the same Great Spirit Red Feather and your tribe worships. Tell them the Great Spirit has not forgotten his followers. Tell them he’s just getting started.”
Standing Wolf listened to Daniel’s words, studying him while he was speaking. He saw no deception, only truth. “I will tell them,” he grunted and headed down to his people without further comment.
Daniel watched him go, frowning at Scout when he accidently pushed the needle a little too far into his half- open wound.
Pops came over and watched Standing Wolf walking away from them. “What did he say?”
“He said that his warriors are afraid of us. He said we’re using some sort of dark magic to fight so many, b
eing so few.”
Pops snorted and shook his head. “What did you tell him?”
Daniel frowned again, giving Scout a look that said stop jabbing me with that needle, before showing Pops the crucifix and tucking it back in his shirt. “I told him we fight for the same Great Spirit they do. I told them God’s using us to get a little pay back. What do you think?”
Pops looked at Daniel and the dead and dying all around them, “I think they should be scared of us. Hell… I’m scared of us. Maybe it’s God, or maybe we are under some sort of spell. All I know is…I’m ready to finish it.”
Daniel stood, pushing Scout’s trembling hands away from him, taking over the stitching himself. “Yes…one way or another, it’s time to finish this.” Maybe Standing Wolf is right. Maybe he and the rest of his lethal group are messengers of death.
Maybe that’s what it will take to stop Magnus. Maybe God knew all of that and was okay with it. Maybe…
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOUR
Before she was taken away from her parents, Angel and her mother were inseparable. Angel’s mom was a powerful natural healer, known far and wide throughout the territory for not only her ability to cure most illnesses but to also discern things such as dreams and visions.
Angel’s skills as a healer were much more powerful than her mother’s but her ability to stay in touch with the in-between places and beyond always left her feeling drained and terrified. “There’s just so much out there and it’s nothing at all like we think it is,” she’d tried to explain to her mother one time.
Her mother had stroked her hair and smiled at her. “Of course it’s different, my sweet Angel…that’s why we’re needed from time to time. That is our gift from the Great Spirit and we must not hold back our gifts. No my treasure, we must share our gifts and our knowledge with the world, no matter how bad it scares us.”
