by Joey Ruff
“Omri!” I called again, making my voice as loud as I could without feeling like I was screaming. “I challenge you to a duel!”
It was silent for a minute before a shadow stepped away from the Rhino and stepped in front of the headlights. “I owe you no honor,” Omri answered. “A challenge can only be issued by a member of the tribe. You are an abomination.”
“Then you’re scared.”
“You are beneath me.”
“Accept my challenge, or you die right here and now.”
A chorus of riotous laughter erupted from the Rhino, but it was quickly silenced as one of the headlights flared bright and exploded in a loud pop. Before the Edomites had time to register what had happened, the other light exploded in the same manner. I was thankful London had such good aim.
With the sudden onset of darkness, I slipped the sunglasses over my eyes. While they looked like something a snowboarder might wear, they were obviously not regular sunglasses. They were a type of night vision issued by the Hand of Shanai and served to register local ambient heat signatures in hues of red, orange and yellow. Occasionally, for extreme heat temperatures, you would see white. It made the Rhino look like a terrible thunderstorm was rolling in over the Doppler radar. I counted two bodies on the back of the vehicle, another two sitting in the front seats, another standing on either side of it, and Omri in the front. Seven total. They had brought a couple of reinforcements.
My hand started to shake. I took a deep breath to steady myself and called, “I have tasted the fruit and was found worthy by Dusares. Now, I challenge you, on your honor and as equals, to a duel.”
“I will kill you quickly,” Omri answered. There was a faint tremor in his voice that betrayed him, but despite that, he strode forward without hesitation. As he walked, I saw him discard his bow and unhook his quiver, letting it fall to the ground. I didn’t move as he approached, but steadied myself with my cane. I put a little added pressure on my weak leg, finding it more stable than I expected. I drew another breath and held it. Fifteen feet away, Omri drew his blade and began to sprint straight for me.
He laughed as he leapt at me, bringing his blade down in a wide arch aimed at my head, but I stepped to the side and threw my arm out, striking him in the ear. He staggered a half step to his right, regained his footing and swung in low, aiming for my knee. I blocked with the cane, but the force of his strike knocked my cane into my knee. I shrugged off the sting and stepped back, drawing the blade in the same swift, fluid movement. I swung for his neck.
Omri was younger than me, which likely meant faster and stronger, and he was certainly more ruthless. I challenged him on the assumption that he had been prettily heavily wounded by the Foo, if nothing else, but he moved quicker than I anticipated, easily ducking my blade.
He countered quickly, bringing his own blade in an upward arc that sent me back a few steps. With a flick of his wrist, he changed the direction of the arc, sending it straight toward my face. I blocked with the blade. With my cane, I hit him squarely in the side of the knee.
While he made a soft, muted noise, he didn’t cry out. He took a step back and thrust forward with his sword. I didn’t see his other hand move. The sharp pain caught me completely by surprise, and I dropped my cane as my hand moved to my side. I felt a knife handle, likely the same one that he had used on London.
It caught my breath, sent fire through my body and up into my head, screaming behind my eyes. Gripping the knife, I pulled the blade free and dropped it to the ground. I threw a couple wild strikes, which he easily blocked. He ducked the third and caught me with a glancing blow on the inner forearm.
I winced, but held the blade, threw it forward, faking high and striking low, getting him on the thigh. I was doing my best to fight him one-handed, keeping the other pressed firmly against the knife wound in my side. It was bleeding freely, and the more I exerted myself, the faster it would bleed, the slower I would become. If I was going to beat him, I had to do it quick.
He swung hard, and even though I blocked it, the force carried my blade off to the side, leaving my body exposed. He landed a solid kick to my midsection, knocked me backward, and sent me rolling. I landed on my back, sprawled out, and Omri was on top of me immediately. He brought his blade down on my head. I managed to get my sword up in front of me, managing to block, but as our blades connected, I thrust mine upwards, jarring him unexpectedly. His blade arm moved off to the side, and I followed through with the strike, hitting his blade and knocking it loose from his hand. I was a little forceful in my action, a little too overzealous in my force, which loosened my own grip, and as I brought my hand back in, he brought a foot around and kicked my blade away, as well.
His eyes followed the trail of my blade to where it landed somewhere in the dark, and I took advantage of the distraction, striking my palm flat against his chest and knocking him back. His weight shifted enough for me to scramble out from under him, and I moved for the cane.
With my fingers less than an inch from it, he fell on top of me, crushing me to the ground. He flipped me over, staring me in the face, and he leveled his arm at me. I knew what would come next, and I also knew that the flame device he used had to have some sort of hosing, cables, some kind of air intake, some kind to tank to house the combustible material.
I struck him in the chest once, twice. He punched me in the face, twisting his body just enough that the fabric on his side rode up a little, exposing the bottom coil of a hose.
I let my head fall back against the ground, let my arm sprawl out above my head. I was hoping to make him think that I’d gone limp and dizzy from his strike while I worked my fingers around the end of my cane. It seemed to work. He focused on bringing his hand back down to meet my face. He snapped his fingers. The small flame kindled to life on the tip of his thumb. With the first wisps of smoke, I threw the cane forward, aiming for the hose.
I struck Omri’s elbow so loud that I heard a crack, and as he fell to the side, I put the cane through the loop in his hose and jerked it down. There was a pop as the hose disconnected, and a thick, dark fluid seeped from beneath his clothes and dripped onto the grass.
I was on my feet, raining the cane down onto Omri’s head. He sat there dazed as I looked to the side and found my blade glinting in the grass, and grabbed it, placing the tip against Omri’s throat while I placed my foot squarely on his chest.
Behind me, I could feel the other Edomites gathering. Omri was panting pretty heavily as he said, “What are you waiting for? Finish me off.”
“I’m not going to kill you,” I said. “I’m sparing your life. I’m not a killer.”
“That makes you weak,” Omri said.
“That makes me smart. Smart and strong, right?’
“No,” Levi said, stepping forward. He had a look of disgust on his face as he said, “That makes him aluf.”
Levi took a knee and bowed his head, and as he did so, the other Edomites walked forward and did the same. All of them, that is, except for White-streak. The latter had stayed back, remaining near the Rhino, unseen by the other Edomites.
I looked at Omri. “Can I put the blade away?”
His eyes shot daggers at me, but he didn’t say anything.
“He will concede,” Scar said. “It was a clean victory.”
“We are at your command, honorable one,” another said.
Slowly, I moved the tip of my sword from Omri’s neck and sheathed it back into the cane.
“My name is Avim,” the man with the full lips said. He stood first and addressed the others as they stood, also. “You have met Levi, of course.” He motioned to Scar and said, “This is Kol.” Beside him were two I hadn’t seen before, the reinforcements. They were introduced as Silvan and Erez.
“And then there’s Boaz,” Levi said, looking around. “We are at your service.” Levi adopted a puzzled look and said, “Where is Boaz?”
I figured Boaz was the real name of White-streak, and my eyes moved to the Rhino, where he had
been standing a moment ago. He wasn’t there.
Kol pointed to the edge of the pond. “There he is.”
“What is he doing?” Silvan said.
Boaz stood at the edge of the water. In his hand was an orb of some kind, just smaller than a soccer ball. The orb was light in color, not white so much as a pearly translucent. He held it near his face in both hands, like a bowling ball about to be thrown. I don’t know if he kissed it or talked to it, or what he was doing, but then he stooped down to the water’s edge and let the pearl roll from his fingers. It bobbed on the water’s surface as it floated ten feet or more out into the water. Then in a blink, it sank beneath the surface.
I remember Levi’s words earlier. He’d said something about a creature. I turned to him and said, “Is this the mission?”
Levi’s expression was blank as he watched Boaz. He looked at me and shrugged.
Before I could say anything else, the calm water of the lake began to bubble and froth. The cane in my hand began to glow, the white kanji emitting a soft, violet light. And the water of the pond began to bubble.
34
Swyftt
DeNobb was sitting in the passenger seat of the rental car. At his feet was a box of ammo and the magazines for the guns we’d brought. Since airline policy did not permit weapons to be transported while loaded (and since I didn’t finish the task earlier), I tasked him with filling the magazines while I drove.
In his lap was the Seeker sack they’d bound to Ezra, and I could hear him complaining about the heat as we drew nearer to town. We were still a few minutes out.
I held the wheel with one hand and my cell phone in the other. The phone was on speaker, and Ape wasn’t answering for the fifteenth consecutive time. I clicked the phone off and tossed it angrily into the backseat.
“Why are you getting so worked up?” DeNobb asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s closer to dawn, DeNobb. Ape doesn’t sleep that heavily.”
“Maybe he took a pain pill and is sedated?”
“He knows I needed help. I don’t…”
“Take a breath, Swyftt,” Huxley said. “Everything is going to be okay.”
I looked around the cab, not seeing him, forgetting for a half-second that we’d tied the golem to the roof of the car. It was too big to fit inside. Despite knowing his voice was more in my head than actually spoken, it still made me feel like a nutter to have him speaking to me.
“That’s easy for you to say,” I said.
“What if he’s hurt?” DeNobb said. “Terry? What if something happened, ya know? Maybe he’s not answering because he’s at the hospital?”
I looked over at him. “Are you really offering that to fucking console me?”
He shrugged and fell silent.
As I drove, I remembered something Ape had said earlier, about dealing with his own stuff. Suddenly, there was a word that came to mind. “Hux, you ever hear the word Ouroboros?”
After a brief hesitation, he said, “Sure.”
“I know that one,” DeNobb said. “It’s the symbol where the snake is eating its own tail, right? My last girlfriend had that bracelet.”
I rolled my eyes and ignored him. “You, uh, wanna share with the class, Hux?”
“Ouroboros is a… Every 700 years, there is a process that happens.”
“What process? Like a ritual?”
“More like a lunar event or the passing of a comet. It is a naturally occurring phenomenon. It involves beings of great power.”
“What, like a Sidhe lord?”
“No,” Huxley said. “Like an angel. I don’t know much about it. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
We’d just entered the town limits, speeding through the first intersection. I pulled into the first parking lot I came to and threw the car into park. DeNobb followed my lead, and as he stepped from the car, he took a pocket knife and cut through the rope that held the golem to the roof.
“You’re awfully high strung,” Hux said.
I looked at him, throwing my hands up. “Do you fucking blame me?”
DeNobb fished in the back of the car and came out with my phone. He handed it to me, his hand shaking a little. His eyes were a little wild, but he was keeping it together in a way that was impressive for someone with his level of experience. “You need to get centered, Swyftt. Maybe take a second, check on Anna. It’s like watching a fish tank for you, right?”
“Why do you care?” I asked, taking the phone.
He shrugged, turning away and taking a couple loaded magazines from his passenger seat.
Huxley in golem form lumbered closer to me, creating a faux-sense of intimacy and closeness. “Your apprentice draws strength from your strength. If you lose it, he will, also.”
“How do you…?”
“Because I’ve been at this longer than you, Jono. It is one of the reasons for the rule, Always appear confident.”
I only nodded at him. Holding up my phone, I said, “Give me a minute, then, will you?”
DeNobb looked in my general direction, trying quite hard not to meet my eyes. He nodded.
I closed my car door and leaned against it, putting my back to the others as Huxley lumbered away. As I pulled up Anna’s camera app, I realized that it had been nearly a day since I had checked on her. The application opened, and the spinning circle appeared as it tried to connect. For a second, I didn’t think it would, just like with Samedi, but then the circle blinked away and the camera feed was displayed.
Or rather, wasn’t. While the feed usually revealed Anna’s pool, this time, all I got was complete and total blackness. As if it would help, I tapped the screen with my finger. It didn’t do anything, but just as I was about to shut it off, I noticed something I’d never seen before. From top to bottom, the numbers one through five appeared along the side of the screen. Two through five were barely visible in a faint grey color, but the one was displayed in yellow. This seemed to suggest there was more than one camera, but Anna’s pool only had the one. It only needed the one.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked, getting even more frustrated.
Nobody said anything.
I touched the two. Nothing happened. I swiped the screen, running my finger first from top to bottom, then bottom to top. The feed scrolled up, revealing another picture. This new image showed Ape’s bedroom. The bed was empty, unmade. The room was still.
When I realized what had happened, I said, “Fucking Nadia.”
“What?!” DeNobb said, his voice a little too excited.
“She changed my phone at the diner to look at Ape and forgot to change it back. Do you know…?”
I scrolled to the next camera feed. This screen showed the front door, also on the interior. The door was shut, nothing to see. Except… The right portion of the screen faded off into a hallway, a hallway that was…filling with smoke?
“What the bloody…?”
“Jono?” DeNobb said. He started around the car towards me.
I swiped to the next screen. It was the camera that hung in the kitchen. I’d had Ape install it after DeNobb moved in to make sure he wasn’t sneaking out of his room at night to find Nadia. Or the other way around.
Waves of anxiety and helplessness flooded over me. The breath froze in my throat.
As DeNobb came around the corner of the car, he saw the screen and froze.
The kitchen wasn’t empty. Three men in all black stood against the cabinets, while a fourth towered over the table and chairs in the breakfast nook. In one chair, London sat. The angle was from above and to the side, but it appeared that he was bloody. What was even more suspicious, was that he wasn’t armed. Ape sat in the other chair, his eyes glazed over. I had a better view of his face. I saw the blood. Saw the knife in the hand of the fourth masked man. He screamed at Ape. The knife plunged down into London’s leg.
I closed my eyes and looked away.
DeNobb made a whimpering noise.
I
took a deep breath and forced my thoughts to clear. I had to run through my options. Obviously, I couldn’t be there in person. Who could I call? Stone was somewhere on a case. Hunter? The Hand? They weren’t taking my calls. I... All of a sudden, the idea hit me.
I moved to the rear of the vehicle and popped the trunk, then pulled DeNobb’s suitcase around. “Get over here, Jamie!” I said. I unzipped the suitcase and fished around for a second before finding what I was looking for. He came around the car, and I thrust the Tikbalang’s braid against his chest and said, “Make your bloody wish. Send it to protect Ape.”
His eyes went wide with realization. “You mean, we can do that? We could have summoned it at any time and had him do stuff?”
I had absolutely no patience left. “It’s a wish, DeNobb. That’s what wishes do.”
“You never explained how it worked. I thought we had to be at that magic tree or something for it to work…”
I didn’t say anything, just stared at him. I could feel my blood beginning to boil.
“We should have summoned this thing to find Nadia the second she went missing.”
“Good thing we didn’t.”
“It’s my wish, right?”
“Why are you even hesitating?”
“Nadia’s my girlfriend, Jono. I care about her. And she’s your daughter. She’s been gone for hours, and the only thing that was keeping me together was knowing that you would do everything you could to get her back. After they hauled you to jail, I was a fucking wreck, man. You have no idea what I’ve been going through all night. I didn’t think there was anything I could do, but it turns out, there is.”
“Nadia is fine,” I said, staring him down. “The Seeker sack proved she’s still alive.”
“You just killed a man trying to find her. How can you suddenly abandon her like this?”
“You obviously don’t realize what is happening back home or who is coming for Ape.”
“No. I don’t, but….” He took a deep breath, looking around. “Nadia…?”
