One Plus One (The Millionth Trilogy Book 3)

by Tony Faggioli

  The boy was done for. There was just no way…

  The Raiders cap exploded suddenly—meat, bone and flesh spraying into the air. The goateed cholo took a small step forwards, dropping his gun, before his body realized that most of his brain was gone, and then he fell over onto the grass between second and third base like a dead tree.

  Parker didn’t have to ask. He knew. Napoleon. He’d taken his time, he’d even taken some bullets, to make sure that his shot would be true.

  “Efren! Dive!” Parker screamed. And the boy, as he glanced over his shoulder and saw the cholo within closing distance, his machete on the down swing, thankfully did just as he was ordered.

  The gun bounced in Parker’s hand as he ran, but it didn’t matter. Fuck aiming. The boy was down flat to the ground and he was going to empty the whole clip if he had to. One of them was bound to hit the son of a bitch. He squeezed the trigger, feeling the sweat on his index finger on the curved piece of metal.

  The first shot ripped right through the cholo’s stomach. The next two missed, but the one after that caught him in the upper left shoulder, jerking him back and at an angle that allowed for the next bullet to rip through his cheek and blow out his jaw. Parker stopped pulling the trigger as the cholo crumpled to the ground, his body landing with a thud, a cloud of infield dirt rising around him.

  Parker scanned the area around Efren as he slowed to a stop. A dozen or so uniformed police officers, Murillo and a few other detectives had filled the diamond, weapons drawn. The remaining cholos were on their knees with their hands behind their heads. The boy was safe.

  As he knelt next to Efren, Parker could see that he was crying. He assumed it was out of fear, until he saw that Efren was looking into the outfield, his eyes flooding with desperation.

  “Tioooooo!” he screamed into the ground.

  Parker didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to turn around, or even be here in this park anymore. Because he knew what he was going to see, and he didn’t want to. He told himself not to look, that nothing good could come of it. But he looked anyway. A quick glance, just to confirm what he already suspected; Napoleon lay in a heap, motionless, his face turned away from them, blood pouring from multiple wounds, two in his side and a massive one that took off half of his neck. Parker had seen enough wounds to know which ones were fatal.

  “No,” Efren cried. “My uncle, mister! My uncle’s dead!”

  “Don’t,” Parker said, feeling small, feeling inconsequential and completely overwhelmed. He grabbed Efren, picked him up and held him to his chest. “Look away. Just look away.”

  Then, even though he wanted to be strong, even though he knew he needed to be strong right now, Parker just couldn’t be.

  Detective First Grade Evan Parker sat with the little boy from East LA and sobbed right along with him.

  CHAPTER 32

  THE CAVE HAD BECOME warm and suffocating. The Lantern Man was emanating the heat of hell. But to Kyle Fasano it was no big deal.

  He’d been there. Done that.

  They moved in semicircles across from each other, shuffling first to the left, then the right and then left again. Kyle heard a distant soundtrack of screams and profanities coming from somewhere, before realizing that they were coming from the small open door of the lantern, which burned alternating shades of red and orange.

  “So, human? What will it be?”

  Kyle’s hands throbbed with the blue, which was aching to escape the confines of his skin. With such a tall, large target, it should have been easy. But Kyle knew, no, he sensed better. He was being baited to strike first.

  But he wouldn’t allow himself to. No matter how badly he wanted to do so. Instead, keeping his hands open in front of him, his fingers splayed as if he were gripping the air, he waited, shuffling side to side, mirroring The Lantern Man.

  “C’mon. When have you ever waited for anything? When have you ever, in your entire life, not acted selfishly?”

  The blue was filling Kyle up, flowing like a stream through his torso and down his legs, pooling in his heels, alive. Kyle felt almost drunk on it.

  A moment of clarity came, again, except this time he took a break in wonder at himself.

  He wasn’t human anymore. Not fully. He realized now that he’d begun leaving that part of himself behind over that first slice of pie with The Gray Man, way back when, and since then he’d been gradually evolving towards this state. He had no idea what exactly this “state” was, only that he was now standing face-to-face with a creature from a very real hell to defend humanity and the heavenly realms, two things that only six months ago he would have dismissed as impossible.

  But then he’d sinned, been rescued and been brought into the light. The light that lit up all the dark spaces inside you. For a second he fixated on his sorrows and pains, the damages that he’d caused in his life and in the lives of others, but the morbid reflections were short lived.

  The blue, the spirit of the very essence that coursed through it, wouldn’t let him continue.

  When he was in hell it was all about suffering, but here, now, it didn’t have to be. Here and now it was about life: both its potential and the fulfillment of that potential. Janie and Seth had entire futures ahead of them, and so did Tamara. And she deserved more than what he’d given her. If it was the last thing he did as a human being on this plane? It was going to be that: to give his family the future that they deserved, to make sure that they would be safe.

  And the only thing standing in his way now was this miserable, pathetic bag of bones from a place where all that was wrong and evil dwelled.

  His left hand shot a bolt of blue at The Lantern Man as he held the blue in his right hand in reserve. Just in case.

  He needn’t have worried, on two counts.

  First, The Lantern Man deflected the shot with ease, his lantern coming up in a half-arc to block it. The sound of the blue on the metal of the lantern let loose a loud twang as the bolt bounced off and dug into the wall of the cave, sending rock shrapnel exploding in all directions.

  Second, Kyle’s left hand refilled immediately with more power. No delay. No weakness. Just instant power.

  The Lantern Man charged forwards, throwing the lantern down on the ground between them like a bomb. It erupted in hellfire, flames and lava going in all directions, as a good half-dozen gobs struck Kyle. The pain was beyond belief.

  He backpedaled desperately, away from the fire and the heat, only to feel his back crash against the wall behind him so hard that his teeth rattled.

  Through the flame The Lantern Man came, his large frame silhouetted by the fire as his hands crossed over one another and reached into his jacket. When they reappeared he held long, curved knives with ivory handles, their blades as black as coal.

  “These are what I use on them, on my servants, in the end, did you know that? Century after century they come to me with their wants, and I give them to them. They know the day of accounting will come, and yet still, you wouldn’t believe how much they scream when it does.”

  He moved with unbelievable speed across the cave, a black whir zigzagging his way closer. Kyle fired a bolt from each hand but both missed.

  The first blade came point first, right at Kyle’s head, as if to spear it like a coconut. He ducked at the last second and the blade dug deep into the cave wall. The second knife was swinging upwards toward his midsection, and Kyle realized there was no way he was going to be able to avoid it. To save being completely disemboweled, he rotated sideways and down. The blade cut through his side, struck something solid, probably a rib, then was pulled out again with vicious speed, stabbing a half-dozen times more but catching only Kyle’s shirt and more of the cave wall behind him as Kyle deflected the arm holding it, the blue in his right handing letting out a loud crackle as it touched the flesh of the demon.

  Kyle screamed first, but The Lantern Man’s wasn’t far behind. They pushed off one another and then stood apart again.

  That’s when Kyle realized
that, in stepping through the flames, the cloth had burned off The Lantern Man’s head, revealing his face.

  His eyes were a deep, burning red. Like tiny stones, they were set into a rotted skull covered in black and brown decay, cracks in the bone most prevalent around the eye sockets and in the chin.

  “You struck me? Me?! You maggot!”

  He charged again but this time Kyle was ready. He let loose with a double blast, and struck The Lantern Man square in the chest, the force lifting him off his feet and launching him across the cave. There was a loud “Hrumph!” as he went, his top hat flying off and one of the knives clanging as it fell to the floor.

  Immediately, the flame from the lantern on the ground began to ebb.

  Kyle waited. And waited. Surely The Lantern Man would rise from the back of the cave now, one blade left, filled with murderous rage. Or perhaps he would reveal wings covered in spikes and fly from the darkness with those burning eyes.

  But… nothing.

  The lava began to run down the walls and join the droplets that were on the ground, each blob flowing slowly back into the lantern.

  Kyle stepped forwards cautiously and saw him there in the half-light of the remaining flame. He was on his back, his legs splayed out in front of him, his neck and head against the far wall, the teeth in his skull gnashing away at nothing as he waved the knife in his right hand helplessly before him.

  The blue in Kyle relaxed and receded. He asked it to light up the cave and it did, making his body glow brightly.

  The Lantern Man screamed again and brought his blade hand up to cover his eyes. Kyle now noticed that his left arm had been blown off at the elbow, leaving behind two sharp points of bone beneath the tattered, smoking bits of his jacket.

  “Get away from me! Get away!” The Lantern Man screamed. His bravado gone, blown away like a wisp of smoke that had been caught in a sudden gust.

  Kyle walked towards him, sure as he closed the gap that it was a setup of some kind and that The Lantern Man was just playing possum.

  It wasn’t until he was only about ten feet away and could hear the gurgling sounds of hell rattling to barely a murmur inside The Lantern Man’s mouth that Kyle realized it was over.

  At first he was surprised, but the blue would have none of it.

  Kyle smiled and nodded. “I should’ve known,” he said softly. “We should all know.”

  The Lantern Man shook his head weakly as the second blade fell from his hand.

  “You and your kind? You’re all nothing, except what we make of you. You have no power, except that which we give you.”

  “You know nothing,” The Lantern Man spat weekly, his jaw snapping at the words, the rotted crack in his chin growing wider with the effort.

  “All this time, you’ve bandaged your head together just so it wouldn’t fall apart,” Kyle said. The blue still coursed within him.

  “Get away from me,” The Lantern Man repeated before a sea of words in languages, both modern and ancient, exploded from him. Incantations. Curses. Profanities. Useless spells.

  “Not a single word you say will work,” Kyle said, nodding weakly. “I’m beyond your tricks now.”

  The lava was coalescing at the lantern and disappearing. The Lantern Man’s red eyes burned brighter. Even demons have emotions, Kyle realized, and right now The Lantern Man was feeling betrayed.

  “I wonder,” Kyle said, “how you will scream when it’s your turn. When whomever you made a deal with to have the power you’ve had meets you at the door when you get back there, to hell.”

  The Lantern Man turned to face him with a hateful sneer.

  Kyle heard the blue in his heart and nodded his understanding. “So. You know that I have to ask you, right? Do you—”

  “Don’t,” The Lantern Man spat. “Don’t you dare.”

  Kyle stepped forwards as power again filled his hands. “Do you wish to repent?”

  The red eyes flashed wide and bright, one last time. “I will never kneel to your pathetic, weak way. Your master is a piece of—”

  Kyle blew The Lantern Man’s head clean off his body, the blue burning so harshly that it melted his spine at the shoulders.

  When Kyle turned to leave, he noticed that the lantern had disappeared.

  He blew a hole in the cave entrance and walked wearily out into the desert sun.

  Out into the light.

  THE TINY POTION bottles were lined up like little soldiers. Herbs. Medicines. Condensed soups. Bone broth. Hearts of Flower. And, of course, the only medicine she said that she ever needed, a bottle of Chianti. “From Genoa,” she would always say with a smile. “It’s supposed to be a very nice part of Italy.”

  His grandmother sat on a small wooden stool in the corner of what looked like an old wooden cabin. She wore a white cotton dress and a baby blue shawl that was wrapped around her neck and chest in two separate folds, one end disappearing over her shoulder and the other end, dotted with a colored pattern, resting on her arm. Her eyes were still brown, but her hair was now all white and tied upwards in a tight bun with a small blue piece of wood stabbed through the middle of it.

  But it was her smile that finally brought him around from the hazy fog of the deepest sleep he’d ever had. “Hello, mijo,” she said.

  Then her hands, those wonderful hands, reached out to cup his cheeks.

  “You’ve grown up so much, Napoleon,” she said. “Oh my.” And happy teardrops hovered at the bottom of her eyes like tiny globes.

  He was lying down, with his head on some sort of coarse pillow. Looking up at the roof of the cabin, he could see that it was old but sturdy. A few dozen plants hung on chains from the rafters, some decorative, like ferns and wildflowers, others fragrant, like jasmine. There were windows in the cabin but, on his back as he was, he couldn’t see out of them. He tried reaching up to her, but it was no use, he was still too weak.

  “Don’t, mijo. You lie still for a bit. Take it easy now, my little troublemaker,” she said, the last word forcing a big smile to erupt across her face.

  He was a never a troublemaker, and they both knew it. It had always been their little joke. The boy who tried his best to get good grades and protect the kids that got picked on at school—the same kids who would grow up bitter and each join three different gangs, without ever letting Napoleon get jumped in somehow, as if he was going to be the last good thing they did before all the crimes they would commit—and the same boy who once organized a search effort for a lost dog in the neighborhood, because the little girl it belonged to wouldn’t stop crying, yes, but also because it was what Encyclopedia Brown, the hero in the books he was reading at the time, would have done.

  Ever the detective.

  They never found that puppy, but the little girl never forgot Napoleon for trying so earnestly. Three years older than him, there was no room for romance. Instead, even better, there would be a good friendship. She would grow up, move away, do well in school and eventually join the LAPD. She would also be the one who got Napoleon onto the force.

  Because she knew it too: Napoleon was anything but a troublemaker.

  “Wh-where am . . .” he began to ask, then stopped. Not because his throat was dry, even though it was, but because he knew. Just knew.

  He’d told himself when he’d first opened his eyes that this was a fantastic dream.

  Then knew, instantly, that it was no dream at all.

  Heaven. He was finally there. Like a sojourner unaware of his intended destination until, at long last, he arrives, and then says to himself, “This is where I wanted to be all along.”

  His grandmother said nothing. Instead she smiled again and then stood. “I’m going to make you some tea, baby boy,” she said. “Okay?”

  He nodded and smiled back.

  The secret to all her “magic” was no magic at all. A massive assortment of crushed tea leaves, from all over the world, some bought in Chinatown, others in Koreatown or the small South American imports shop off Figueroa, were stacked
in equal-sized glass containers on a series of shelves against a nearby wall, just as they had been back in Boyle Heights. The cabin was not a full reconstruction of their old home, just a partial replica. There were new things too. Like the hanging plants and the series of watercolor paintings on the far wall, resting over a rickety wooden easel. It didn’t matter. Just by being here in this room, with her, in surroundings that were at least somewhat familiar, he realized just how much he’d missed her, all these years.

  He looked again to the teas.

  They would come to her for help and healing.

  She would pour them tea. Sprinkle in some sage or cinnamon, or some habanero oil, maybe even some dust of frog leg. All hocus pocus into the hat, for the rabbit of faith to come.

  Relaxed, filled with hope for healing, they would be ready. She would ask them about God. Share together. Be together. With them. With Him.

  Then she would pray for them after they left, for days on end.

  That was her real “magic”—God.

  “And because I pray for them, in faith, without doubting, like James tells us to, God hears and he helps them. Simple as that. Sometimes that help means calling them home, so it’s harder to see it that way for those they leave behind. But here’s the thing, mijo: he always helps them,” she told Napoleon one day after making him a packet of Top Ramen, which she thought was disgusting and only bought and made for him because he begged her to. Because, really, there came a point when you’d just had it with beans, rice and tortillas.

  As he continued stirring awake, she returned with a cup of tea and placed it on a nearby table. She propped him up on a few extra pillows, then straightened his hair with her fingers and chuckled, pointing at his midsection. “It doesn’t look like you got tired of beans and tortillas, mijo.”

  Napoleon felt a smile form on his face. “I didn’t know I said that aloud.”

  “You didn’t, mijo. Here you learn that there are more ways to hear than one. And see. And feel.”