by Anton Marks
Bad II the Bone
Anton Marks
Marksman Studios
London, United Kingdom
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www.anton-marks.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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Bad II the Bone/ Anton Marks - 1st edition.
ISBN 978-0-9562660-0-2
In memory of author L A Banks & dedicated to all the Mothers around the world who are the real world Guardians of the Light.
A woman and a katana are two of the most beautiful, elegant and dangerous things on earth; love and respect them both equally.
Anonymous
Prologue
What are the chances that in our vast solar system the planet we call home sits at the perfect orbital distance from our sun so that life could begin and flourish? I mean think about that for a moment. A few hundred thousand miles both ways and the Earth as we know it could be a smoldering lump of revolving magma or a spherical block of ice in the expanse of outer space.
I mean, what are the chances of you beating off the competition from a million sperm cells all jostling to reach your mother’s egg?
One in a million, one in five million?
Or was it fate, coincidence or happenstance that you are here?
More like destiny if you think about it, ordination even.
Three years ago, London is in the grip of a solar occultation, the first total eclipse in the city for decades. Three minutes where the moon positions itself between the sun and the earth, transforming day into eerie twilight. While the city is awestruck by the astronomical phenomenon a robbery has been planned. Its intent is to use the eclipses power to sway the cities focus from its routine, just long enough for the heist to take place. And it would have worked too if the three young women going about their business in their local bank had not been marked by destiny’s hand, foiling the robbery and single-handedly overpowering professional gun men, thugs for hire who prided themselves on viciousness and results, beaten and humbled by pedestrians.
It seemed the celestial event was a sign. And our gifted heroines were the recipients of the message.
Yvonne ‘Y’ Sinclair is a tall dark-skinned beauty with a sharp mind and equally sharp skills with a samurai sword. Gifted with the ability to channel her life force into the steel, she is their leader and not one to be trifled with. Susan ‘Suzy Wong’ Young - an empath of exotic Chinese and Jamaican mix, wise and lethal in the art of Wusu martial arts, she is their moral compass. Then there is Ramona ‘Cleopatra’ Jones – hood chick, statuesque, stunningly attractive with a gift of confounding the laws of probability to her advantage and blessed with a sweet right hook Mohamed Ali would be proud of. Patra’s unquenching love for life keeps them moving forward always to the next challenge.
They are three young women who started out as strangers and became more than genetic sisters ever could. They are reluctant warriors in a war that has raged for millennia and unknown to them share the collective consciousness of warriors gone by. They have been chosen as protectors, inseparable sisters who were predestined to be together, their destinies entwined by forces beyond their understanding; set with a purpose in the grand scheme of earth running’s that even they could not fully comprehend. You see the powers that be, masquerading as coincidence, had chosen them as agents to maintain the balance in the eternal struggle for dominance between good and evil.
When Bad II the Bone - a multi-tiered beauty, hair, fashion and fitness salon they had dreamt of opening, was violently snatched from them fate strolled into their lives testing the sisters worthiness on other matters of metaphysical importance.
Why them?
God does not endow you with a gift that in the fullness of time you won’t be press-ganged into using to accomplish its grand scheme of balance.
So soon they would find themselves toppling over an abyss into the unknown, locking horns with an adversary of unbelievable power and embarking on an adventure they could never have imagined, even after one too many pulls on a Westmoreland blunt.
And so it all begins with a situation that had been brewing long before they ever met, involving powerfully evil people they never knew, who held dark secrets that were best kept that way.
Secrets, which could cost you your sanity as well as your life.
1.
South London, Five years ago
The life blood was draining from Jimmy’s bullet-riddled body, drenching Spokes in crimson and all he could do was rock his best friend on his lap murmuring ineffectual prayers as if it would soothe his injuries. But he knew, even if instinct was trying to obscure the truth, his spar’s last moments on earth would be right here.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Jeeesus Christ.”
His breddrin was dying in his arms on the most ignoble of death beds and nothing in Big Jim’s Scrap Yard, including Spokes’ subdued wailing, would change that inevitable fact.
He was numb, he was confused.
Huddled together in shadows cast over them by the rusting architecture of cars and vans - rising from grease-stained soil as if it was the master work of some L’Enfant terrible of the art world – Spokes was sensing everything around him with what seemed like hyper clarity. The smells of rust were intense, the groans of contracting metal from the afternoon sun acute. He was sweating and trembling at the same time as the unfamiliar symptoms of shock played havoc on his senses. He was finding it difficult to remember even the journey here.
Damn, it was that fucking phone call.
His memory was like film stock being yanked through a cinema projector violently.
All the commotion in the background, Jimmy’s voice pitched with desperation, a car backfiring multiple times that now he realised were gunshots and a crazy expectancy for a shout of, “Cut!” from a director pissed off that Jimmy had stumbled onto his film set. But when the disgruntled shouts did not come he should have prepared himself for the worst?
It wasn’t his idea to meet up at some decrepit scrap yard in North London just after lunchtime. That suggestion left him brimming with questions and frantic with worry but this was Jimmy Éclair we were talking about. Jimmy Éclair a slick dresser, a smooth talker, a cunning mind under a neat fade that would be suited for defense lawyer duties if sales weren’t his passion. The same Jimmy Éclair who had never forgotten their roots from their mountainside village in St James, Jamaica and who had welcomed him to the UK seven years ago. Jimmy, who had never guided him wrongly and looked out for his welfare at every turn, now needed him.
And he was there for him no matter what the situation but maybe, just maybe, Spokes should have been looking out for his welfare much sooner.
What did it
take for him to realize something was not quite right?
The changes were subtle at first but still changes. Sudden deviations from how dem use to rest.
Jimmy’s dinner meetings and power breakfasts became gatherings and sittings. The mundane language of finance was replaced with esoteric symbols and secret handshakes. His business partners became brothers and apprentices and communication was mainly done face to face, leaving his precious Blackberry to gather dust.
Brother Enoch became a name he used with as much reverence as he once reserved for his bank manager. The man Jimmy ascribed his success to was a mystery at first. A name Spokes had grown to mistrust and even fear as this self-confessed obeah man subtly snuck into the life of his friend without introduction or fanfare, appointing Jimmy his financial advisor and his go-to-guy.
Then that goddamn call today.
Spokes was grouting a wall at the Catacombs nightclub, a gig he had fortuitously acquired from - a cash strapped client who was willing to profit share with him after his previous contractor left him high and dry. The icy fear in his friend’s voice, how he tried to force the words down the phone line with urgency but modulating his tone so as not to alert anyone around him. Then, in moments, his breathless speech, cut short with sounds of mayhem and gunfire.
The line suddenly went dead and no manner of frantic call backs could establish the connection again. He acted on what he had heard and came here.
Jimmy spluttered, thick streams of arterial blood from his mouth and Spokes daubed it with his shirt. He was no physician, barely competent with first aid if it came to it, but he knew his pardy had suffered appalling internal damage from three bullet wounds to his stomach region. He knew something had compelled him to drive a 4 ton truck across town, bleeding, delirious and miraculously untouched by Beast in blue to this point.
Travelling all this way to die in his arms but why?
What deh rass happened? Spokes’ question stuck in his throat like an errant herring bone bent set on choking him to death. And the only way he could breathe was not to leave any burning question unanswered.
He had fished a key from the bunch Jimmy had left beside him on the passenger seat. He undid the big padlock at the back of the van and nudged it up. Assaulting him first was an ominous feeling of unease, like old car oil floating above effluent water, separating itself from this bad situation with the prospect of something worst to come.
And he wasn’t the only one who recognized it either. Rats were scurrying away from the van, in a squeaking grey mass. They flowed like multiple tributaries through the wrecks. A throbbing, confused river of red eyes and sharp teeth with only one intention.
And that was to get away.
He shuddered and opened the shutter half way.
Old smells, smells of prehistory and privilege, rushed him then the undercurrents of leather, mingled with a tinge of Victorian chemistry and the faint rawness of desiccated decay. Then the overpowering overtones of twenty first century assaulted him with a bouquet of plastics, paper and metals.
Fully extending the shutter to the top, Spokes, with eyes wide, stood looking before he switched on his mobile for illumination and entered.
It was a veritable treasure trove of the ancient, the modern and everything in-between. Aluminum cases stuffed neatly with different denominations, combination locks helpfully set at 000, lined every side of the panel van, with gilded containers, silk bags embroidered with gold, antique puzzles and crates of obviously valuable artifacts and heirlooms that Spokes felt with certainty belonged to Brother Enoch.
Somehow, somewhere, Jimmy had been ambushed.
He let the theory settle and breath like a fine wine.
Jimmy had driven across London bleeding profusely; his will to live was uncannily strong. Spokes could see it in the set of his jaw. The intense muddy brown of his eyes, held an almost manic determination that seemed to be improved by the obsessive flexing of the fingers of his right hand into a fist. His arm was catching an unhealthy blue tinge through the surface of his caramel skin as if a rapid infection had taken hold. Spokes reached down to rub his fingers calmingly over his pardy’s arm, coaxing him into relaxing his fingers and the incessant flexing but he wouldn‘t stop, he just switched rhythms. Gently Spokes clasped his hands around Jimmy’s hand.
“Easy mi breddah.” He raised Jimmy’s hand up to his chest and watched intriguingly as the squeezing action of his fingers copied the beat of his own heart. Blood oozed from his palm as his nails bit into the soft flesh of his hand. Prying his fingers open one at a time was the only way for Spokes to help relieve the pain his friend must be needlessly inflicting on himself. Once his fingers were spread wide Spokes turned his hand over to see the depth of the wounds.
The bristling buzz like an angry bee startled him.
“Almighty father...”
He looked down and jerked backwards almost throwing Jimmy’s hand from his. Nestled grotesquely into the life lines of his friends palm, was a huge glistening black wasp, partially cocooned with a symmetrical red diamond shape on its thorax, its bloody wings fluttering protectively, lying in a nest of crusty and congealed blood, almost as if it was giving something to his host or taking something away. The arthropod’s underside throbbed grotesquely and the hairs on its appendages bristled with annoyance. It had obviously gnawed its way through Jimmy’s epidermis and was partially buried into the raw and exposed flesh. An uncontrollable shiver raced along Spokes spine.
“Kiss mi muma…!”He whispered his fingers over his mouth.
Immediately he remembered the Jamaican urban myth about being bitten by a Gallow Wasp and not letting it get to open water before you kill it or you would die instead and suddenly he was not sure it was an old wives tale after all.
Jimmy’s fingers reflexively closed around the wasp like a bear trap and Spokes began to wonder if that thing was helping to keep his spar alive somehow.
He absently made the sign of the cross.
Spokes could not take his eyes off the abomination that was concealed in his fingers and even if Jimmy was able to prolong his life with dark science, even with his exposure to the secret knowledge Brother Enoch possessed, no miracles would be performed today. Spokes was looking through tear-blurred eyes, on his knees cradling his spar and shivering in the sunlight. A heady mix of fear and bewilderment was attempting to cloud his judgment but he held fast.
D Lawrence, Obeah, dark science. Wha deh rass had Jimmy got himself involved in?
Spokes was surprised by his own mental clarity but was still unable to pull himself free from the anchor of panic that rooted him to the spot.
You try to put that into rassclaat words for his wife and kids, he thought. Try attempting to explain to the kids their father wouldn’t be coming back home ever. He had been murdered in what seemed to be a botched robbery, protecting items from some demented obeah man who was much more than he seemed.
Spokes was watching the life force ebb from the man who had welcomed him to London with open arms seven years ago, the man who had taken him in and allowed him to break bread with his family. A spar that was a constant source of encouragement and a font of knowledge now lying on his lap dying.
It felt pointless, fucking useless to blouse an’ skirt but Spokes undid his friend’s tie and wriggled him out of his jacket. His white shirt was soaked through with crimson and blood was congealing around the entry wounds. He still didn’t speak, maybe exchanging his remaining power with that fucking sumting in his hand that had preserved his life so far. Maintaining eye contact at all times, Spokes murmured a mantra of relief that was supposed to counteract the pain, something his old lady would have done when he hurt himself back–a-yard. Yet with every rise and fall of his chest Jimmy was losing the battle. His eyes were unfocused, his lips were chapped and blistered from fevered chewing in his agony but they still released whispers of sounds that made no sense to him but he chose to interpret them as pleas.
As his life’s candle flickered, it was i
f Jimmy was pleading with him to snap out of his stupor and take action. He hadn’t fought his injuries to be here for him to then be a useless tool in this unfolding crisis.
There were five aluminum attaché cases stacked with the cash and an assortment of artifacts, precious stones and books that looked old and expensive. The Wheels of Construction, his day to day heavy haulage van stood almost accusingly wondering when he would realize he could only do on thing. Who knows if he was followed here by the bandits? Who even knew if the police were involved? A bullet to the brain or a stretch at Her Majesty’s Pleasure was not an acceptable outcome to this? He wasn’t built for prison food, so he had to shift into gear now.
Transfer the money and stuff to his van and take Jimmy with him.
Back in the real world, he had a schedule to keep.
The refurbishment contract he had acquired demanded he be back to meet the night club owner. Everything had to seem normal so he had to be present. Spokes could do nothing to arouse suspicion and would go about his business as usual. It would fit into his lifestyle like a tailor-made suit.
Jimmy’s voice again.
Spokes stared down at him, the memory of his words not matching the pathetic figure on his lap. But that pathetic figure had power enough to be insistent in screaming its urgency. It was telling him to move now – don’t worry about me, time fi dat later.
Go!
With the imaginary voice of reason freaking him out, Spokes struggled to his feet and dragged his dying brethren to the van. He had work to do.
2.
Present Day
Ealing Broadway, West London
Thursday, July 4th
10.45am
