by Hunter
Leaf frowned as she shifted on her futon couch. Torching the clinic had been a good thing, but she wanted to do more. Take the war to the oppressive, undead patriarchy. Dr. Van Wyk had a point; maybe she should lie low for now, pretend she was just another drone like all the others. But she felt restless, she wanted to do some more good in a world that was getting worse every day. Leaf tried not to look at the clay bust she had done of Oaken for the second anniversary of their hand fasting. Ten weeks since she had kicked him out of the apartment and he still hadn’t picked up all his stuff. Men, she thought as she turned on her computer, who needs them anyway?
After half an hour searching the hunter database, Leaf found what she was looking for:
Seeking fellow Imbued in Chicago area for investigations and self-protection. No preferences but must be willing to fight the good fight.
— Cypherlou27
There was an e-mail address attached. Leaf composed a reply and sent it. By evening she had her answer.
• • • •
The coffee shop was in what used to be the fashionable section of Chicago, now rapidly going to seed. Leaf bought a ginseng tea from the tattooed girl behind the cash counter and found an empty table. As she let the tea steep, she casually looked around the shop. A middle-aged stockbroker was reading the financial section while sipping his cappuccino. A gaunt, pale-skinned man with shoulder-length, black-dyed hair was looking out the window. His black-painted fingernails drummed on the tabletop. A boy and a girl were giggling together in one of the booths. Their backpacks identified them as students from the University. Leaf snorted in exasperated condescension as the girl licked fudge icing from the boy’s finger.
They’ll soon learn what a pile of crap love is, she thought. Briefly she thought of Oaken, the last fight they had after he had killed that vampire infant. Once again, she wondered if she had been unreasonable about kicking him out like that. No, I did the right thing, she thought. He’s only a man, there’s no wa} he’d understand. Leaf poured some tea into her cup. I’m happy. I’m better off this way, she told herself as she took her first sip.
“Spare some fuckin’ change, bitch? ” A gloved hand snapped its fingers in front of her face. Leaf recoiled, nearly spilling her tea. The hand belonged to a homeless African-American, probably in his middle twenties. He was bundled against the cold and his mouth smelled like a sewer.
“Not with that attitude, you misogynistic prick, ” Leaf snapped back, shock replaced by anger.
“Fuck you, ho. ” Only now did Leaf notice the dilated pupils and scabbed skin that denoted crack addiction. He was shaking, his eyes wide with fury. “Gimme some fuckin’ money or I cut you, bitch! ”
Leaf threw her tea in the addict’s face. He screamed but his left hand caught her as she tried to duck past. Leaf twisted, gripped his wrist in her left hand and slammed her right arm into his tricep the way her self-defense instructor taught her. Leaf took him down to the floor, trapping his arm across her knee and twisting his wrist so he couldn’t fight back. The addict screamed curses as he struggled, his fury giving him unexpected strength. Leaf panted, barely holding onto him. He pulled an army surplus knife, the six-inch blade slashing the right shoulder of her poncho.
The homeless man’s screams cut off in a horrified gurgle. Leaf looked up. The little man with black fingernails was kneeling in front of the addict, a Glock. 45 rammed between the larger man’s teeth.
“You wanna shut the fuck up, asshole, or shall I feed you some lead? ” The little man’s breath was fast in his nostrils, almost as if he was aroused. He was dressed in what Leaf supposed was the Gothic style. His charcoal overcoat was open, partially covering black Dr. Martens with white laces. “Your call. ”
The African-American whimpered as he stared at the pistol. His right hand released the rusted knife. The skinny man grinned, showing crooked teeth. “Let go of him, lady. Dumb fuck’s got no guts. ”
Leaf stood up. As he stood up, the man kept the gun between the addict’s teeth, forcing him onto his toes. Leaf could tell the skinny Goth was relishing the terror in the larger man’s eyes. “Here’s the deal, crack head, ” his voice shook with adrenaline. “You run real fast, real far, and maybe I won’t shoot your stupid ass. Deal? ”
The addict slowly backed away, his hands raised. The skinny man twitched his. 45 and the addict turned, running out the door.
“Stupid niggers, ” he grunted as he turned around. The Glock disappeared in his coat. “You Potterll6? ” he asked before Leaf could make any comment.
Leaf, about to berate him for his racist language, nodded in shock.
“I guessed by the clay stains on your shirt. I’m Cypherlou27. ” He grabbed her arm. “We gotta get outta here before the cops show. ” He dragged her to the counter and slapped a fifty on the register. “You didn’t know what we looked like, righr? ” he said to the cashier.
The tattooed girl grinned. “My memory’s pretty erratic these days, ” she said as she smoothly slipped the money in her tank top. Cypherlou27 hustled Leaf from the coffee shop just as a siren began wailing.
• • • •
Leaf learned his real name was Lucimal.
“I’m a seeker of higher truths, just like you, ” he said as they sipped tea on his couch. Over his black t-shirt Lucimal wore a yin/yang medallion and another pendant, which Lucimal called a symbol of the Egyptian god Set. His basement apartment had garbage bags over the windows. A well-thumbed book on Aleister Crowley sat on a side table, next to a black candle and a bag of Norse runes. His Glock lay on top of a kevlar vest. Posters for bands like Deicide and Cradle of Filth lined the walls. In his sitting room, he had a large, velvet painting of a human skull with antlers. Three sixes were nestled among the points.
“You see, we approach the mystic energy from different sides, ” Lucimal explained between puffs on his cigarette. His colorless eyes were wide, almost embracing her with their intensity. “You worship the Goddess, the Mother, right? Well I look towards the Homed God, Pan the Destroyer, the one who brings change. And change can be painful, which is why normal people—” he made the phrase a curse “—think of him as the Devil, as evil, as something to be shunned. ”
Lucimal pointed to the yin/yang medallion on his chest. “But I’m really the other half of the same coin. The darkness to your light. And that’s why I think we should work together, because we’ll balance each other out; opposites allied together and being stronger for it. And I know I can trust you because I know your heart is good.
“The heart is the source, the wellspring of who we are, ” Lucimal continued, tapping his chest. His face was alive as he warmed to his subject. “The Egyptians believed that everything: emotion, intellect, strength, your very essence sprang from the heart. That’s why, when they embalmed their dead, they placed the heart in a special jar, and just threw the brain away. ” Leaf nodded, smiling. His words made incredible sense to her.
Lucimal was evasive about what happened to his old team. “We raided this apartment complex, burned the place down. You probably heard about it in the news. ” Leaf hadn’t but she nodded anyway. “I was the only one to make it out alive. It was one hell of a mess. ”
Leaf didn’t even mind his attitude towards the undead. “Let’s face it, Leaf, ” Lucimal said. “As much as you want to save the monsters, to redeem them, there’s no denying that many of them have chosen to be this way, to become monsters. At that point, the only thing to do is to destroy them before they kill some poor innocent bastard. ” Leaf had heard that argument many times from Oaken, during the last two months of their marriage but only now, coming from Lucimal, did it make any sense.
• • • •
Sander Morganfield was the second hunter who answered Lucimal’s ad. He was a massive African-American albino with an easy manner that reminded Leaf of Oaken.
“My Momma put too much bleach in the bath, ” he chuckled, running his fingers through his tightly curled blond hair. He carried a dogeared Webster’s
Dictionary with him. Sander took Leaf’s and Lucimal’s pictures, promising to make fake ID’s for them both. Leaf didn’t see the point but Lucimal agreed enthusiastically. Sander had been in the U. S. Army and had seen “too much death” in Bosnia. It was Sander who suggested their first mission.
“Little kids have been disappearing all over the South Side. I think I know who’s doin’ it. ” Sander’s affable eyes tightened in anger. He absently scratched slab-like pecs underneath his Buddy Guy’s Legends Blues Bar t-shirt. “No-one’s got anything on him, but I looked at him with second sight. He’s corrupt all right. ”
Lucimal grinned. “Nice, easy job to start with. I like it. ”
“Do we have to kill him? ” Leaf asked. “Maybe we can stop him another way. Find some evidence and give it to the police. Or maybe he’s sick; he’s got no choice but to kill. ”
Lucimal groaned. Despite her liking for Lucimal, Leaf bristled with anger. But before she could speak, Sander raised a hand.
“Mind if I have a say first? ” he asked gently. Leaf nodded unwillingly. “Cops don’t give two shits about the South Side. Hell, half of the cops are rots already. Call in a shooting, they show up two hours later to clean up the bodies. Now I appreciate you wanting to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. Not many of your kind will do that for a black man. But I know this asshole. He used to deal for the Italians. This makes this motherfucker worth killing, even before this shit started. And I don’t care what you say, anybody who hurts little kids deserves to die. ”
“You say this asshole’s got connections. Are we looking at tangling with organized crime? ” Lucimal asked.
Sander shook his head. “Naw, no-one would miss him. No-one in this town notices if a black man goes missing, you know that. ”
Lucimal nodded. For a moment, Leaf wondered about the smile playing around his lips.
• • •
Two days later, after giving them their new ID’s, Sander drove them to the South Side. Leaf rode shotgun, while Lucimal reclined on the van’s back bench seat. Once again, Leaf was struck by the squalor of the area. Graffiti covered one wall, above a vertical line of smeared shit reaching to the cracked sidewalk. Spilled garbage bags sat next to burned-out cars and the occasional used syringe. Sander parked the van next to an abandoned children’s playground. The late afternoon sun was hidden by some clouds.
“Our man’s got a place on the other side of that playground, ” Sander said, pointing to a low brownstone. A pack of Crips were crowded around an old Buick, hip-hop blasting out of the car’s speakers. On impulse, Leaf looked at them with her second sight. They appeared normal.
Lucimal looked around the van. “I’ll go check things out. Leaf could never get through and Sander, you’re just too conspicuous. ”
Sander nodded unhappy agreement. “Luck. ”
Lucimal slipped out of the van, slamming the sliding door behind him. He wrapped his scarf firmly around his neck to keep away the November chill. Leaf watched him get accosted by a skinny bum as he was walking towards the playground. The bum said something in a low voice and Lucimal pushed him away.
“I’ll suck your dick for some rock! ” he called after Lucimal in a shaky voice. For a second, Leaf thought Lucimal was going to pull his gun and shoot him. She looked over at Sander in shock. Sander just shook his head.
“What do you think of our man Lucimal? ” Sander asked after two minutes.
“He’s very intense, very driven, ” Leaf felt an obscure need to defend Lucimal. “He has some real insight into the sacred energy. ”
“He’s a little man, ” Sander growled. “He’s got a little man’s attitude, a little man’s problems. ” “I’m sure I don’t understand what you’re talking about, ” Leaf replied frostily.
Sander looked at her for a moment. “Forget I said anything, ” he finally muttered. “You packin’? ” Leaf, caught off-guard by the change in subject, could only gape.
“You got heat? A gun? ” Sander asked. Leaf shook her head. Sander dug in his coat pocket, fished out a snub-nosed. 38. “Son-of-a-bitch. Here, take this. ”
“I don’t need it, ” Leaf replied, lifting her hands away from the revolver. “I’ve got pepper spray. ” She hated guns.
“Don’t worry. There’s no serial number and you’re gonna need it, ” Sander insisted, holding it out. “Call it a feeling, intuition. ”
Leaf frowned as she heard a new sound, mixed with the bass thud of the Buick’s speakers. She looked in the rearview mirror. Several Crips were casually kicking the flailing crack addict, between sips of malt liquor. Blood sprayed from his ruined mouth as he screamed for his mother. One Crip was making out with his girlfriend inside the Buick, his right hand busy underneath her blue top. They both looked bored.
“Don’t get involved, lady, ” Sander commented as he watched her watching the beating. “But still think you can get by ‘round here with only pepper spray? ”
Leaf took the revolver. It felt warm and ugly in her hands. “Tuck it inside your pocket, like this, ” Sander took and slid it in her poncho. “Now no-one will see it. “
“What about you? ”
The sawed-off pump-action 12 gauge looked like a toy in Sander’s hands. “I also got a few other surprises, ” Sander grinned. “But do me a favor, ” he suddenly became serious, “keep the gun hidden ‘til it’s time. Just you ‘n’ me, okay? ”
“Why? ” Leaf was puzzled.
“Like I said, call it a feeling, “ he replied. “I hope I’m wrong. ”
Leaf nodded as she looked out the passenger window. Time passed slowly. The old Buick roared past, music blaring out the open window. An
“Where’s Sander, Lucimal? ” Leaf asked as he limped towards her. That scream still seemed to reverberate through the alley.
Lucimal shook his head, his face still in shadow. “You don’t want to know, Leaf. It got pretty nasty back there. ”
“What do you mean? ” Leaf stared at him narrowly. Lucimal had positioned himself out of the light. Only those colorless eyes seemed to glow.
“Sander’s dead, Leaf, ” he said. A trickle of blood along his leg caught the light. “There was one last goon. It got him. We gotta get outta here. The cops will be here soon. ”
“No, ” Leaf shook her head. “I have to see. Maybe I can save him. ”
“Leaf, no! ” Lucimal yelled as she dodged past him. Leaf could still hear him snarling curses as she rushed down the alley. Leaf was much faster. As she ran, she pulled the snub-nose. 38 from her pocket, just in case.
Leaf turned the corner and her stomach heaved. She slapped her hand to her mouth so she wouldn’t bring up her lunch.
Sander was lying on his back in a pool of his own blood. His bluish-pink eyes were wide open, shocked. There was a huge, bloody hole where his chest used to be. Sanders shotgun lay by his right hand, shell casings around it. A mutilated hulk was lying almost ten feet away. It looked as if Sander had emptied every shot he had into the thing. Leaf frowned. The hulk was carrying a double-barreled 28 gauge, but the wound in Sander’s chest showed no sign of powder-bum. Leaf carefully stepped closer to the dead hulk, her pistol at the ready. She slowly knelt, her left hand feeling for the gun as she kept her eyes on the corpse. The twin barrels were cool. It hadn’t even been fired.
Leaf looked back at Sanders body, horrified. From her angle, she could see the albino’s throat had been cut, a thick line of crimson from ear to ear Scuff marks on his boots showed where Sander had flailed before drowning in his own blood.
“Stupid bitch, ” Lucimal rasped as he leaned against the wall. His Glock was pointed at her head. “You had to come back, didn’t you? ” “Why did you kill Sander? ” Leaf knew she couldn’t get her. 38 up before he fired.
“‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’, ” Lucimal quoted with a twisted smile. His face, just below his nose, was a solid mass of blood “Sander’s decency and trust was his undoing. And his flesh and his power became mine. ’
> “So why did you—” Leaf stopped, putting the pieces together herself. “Oh, Goddess. You ate his heart. ”
“That’s right, ” Lucimal showed his bloodstained teeth. “The ancient Egyptians were right. The heart is the source, the strength. I get the strength, the power from his heart, their hearts. That trusting, Christian idiot, Joan—” Lucimal extended his left hand and a red, glowing sword appeared in it. “—she was the first. The first to die so I could gain her power. All the others followed her and I took their powers as my own. Their foolishness, their humanity, was their undoing, and they gave their hearts and their power so that one day I, Lucimal, could become King of Hell! ”
“Don’t come any closer! ” Leaf warned.
“You blind, trusting, Goddess-obsessed idiot, ” Lucimal sneered. “I don’t need your stupid heart. ” His index finger squeezed the trigger.
The Glock clicked on an empty chamber. Lucimal gaped. The. 38 smashed the silence. Lucimal jerked with the shot, collapsing beside a dumpster. Leaf looked down at her hands in shock. She, Leaf Pankowski, a woman who had never picked up a gun in her life, had just shot another hunter.
Lucimal groaned and rolled over, his eyes glaring at her. Oh shit, I forgot his vest, she thought as she fired another shot. The dumpster rang like a bell. Lucimal snarled as he rose to his feet, throwing the Glock to one side. Leaf turned and ran past him, her boots slithering among the newspaper and water.
“Mine is the power! Mine is the flesh! ” She heard Lucimal yell behind her. Leaf kept running, tears blurring her vision.
A sharp pain blasted her right arm. Leaf screamed as she fell into a row of trashcans. The . 38 skittered away, lost in the gloom and garbage. Leaf gasped for air as she saw the empty pop can, still glowing red, roll away from her. Her arm felt like it was broken.
