by Rink Wester
It was Christmas outside and the streets buzzed with yuletidings and overly festive activity. In that sparsely lit office nook, sitting slackshouldered and beaten on his throne, Xiao Yu thought of things far from that mistletoe shore. While Kuan Yin and Ti-ts'sang scryed, the remaining doublet of their brood of five readied themselves for their mission. Manjusri and P'u-hsein, quieter than their other 3 siblings, with their neck ringlets, face piercings and dragon markings, impressed their grandfather. Their sister and brothers were social etiquette conformists but they were the rebels. They were the cryptid monsters of legend that made sure you knew to fear the darkness in the trees and look up. Xiao Yu secretly loved them best.
He watched them under scaled lids gather weapons and mågÿckal tonics and the various knickknacks of war and reconnaissance. Suddenly Ti-ts’sang burst into their grandfather’s chamber, tearing the door completely from its hinge, carrying his sister Kuan Yin, moaning and flailing in desperate and collapsing murmurs. Her eyes bleeding white blood, trailing the crags of her skin, now mountainous in wet streaked dragonfire, she pushed her brothers aside with a sudden release of anguished witchcraft. Eyes opening like parting snowdrifts, she shrieked, caught in shifting perceptions, releasing a sea of trapped voices scryed from the olympian Fields of Fæ. Thousands of voices dread locking into one monstrous language, she sang out,
With Vodon, Voodoo, Gris-Gris and Verve,
Let swim the living darkness you serve,
We are The Łöå of old, the choke on the vine,
Göd, Göddess, Bondye Spirit, unnerve,
In Heka we dwell before all that was will,
Mother and Father Divine, Bôkörs listen we still,
The seed and the Beast and the binding of might,
The blood knife that joins boy left and girl right,
Sangré vida will come and sacrifice all,
And up shall bloom ruinous gröötslâng delight,
For if Mother and Father Hiklorim’s bell toll,
And the queen that eats mågÿck, has gulped down their soul,
On the altar will burn young trapped and old prone,
To feed on the göds of the seven blood stone,
And Brothers inter the skull and the bone,
For on these are written the tongue and the win,
When daughter unborn shall return from within,
And break The Amulet protecting his skin,
When one and then two and then three know their name,
Then all will be well and well just the same.
Xiao Yu reared and bellowed and thrashed in excited mischief. His mind immediately remembered Aeyitria casting hidden frantic spells in their brother’s relentless onslaught so very long ago. She had reached out across the vast murk and mågÿckally carved a language map in calcium grooves on the bones of his skull and spine. He would bet any sum that similar words torn from a Mother paralyzed in her own terrible trauma, had been fire-etched in calcium and carbon on the bones of his six other brothers as well. Each bone adding another piece to their Mother’s secret mågÿckal missive. Seven blood stone. He knew how to get them all. His mental plan, however, came to abrupt exclamation point as he thought about Örên. Örên would side with Gærüt in all things. At all times.
Asshole fly in my eternal ointment!
His anger returned as he flew into fresh paroxysms, frenzy flushing out all glee, as his granddaughter, following his cue, floated over, now in her own full metallic dragon form. She blew on her grandfathers nostrils trying to calm him as he tore his Carlo Bugatti throne to splinters. Never overly fond of being needlessly kind, he snapped at her impertinence and blasted her into the adjoining wall, where she huddled beside her brothers, licking her wounds, lesson learned.
There are concerts of despair yet to be played granddaughter. Now fly, all of you, and bring ME the human woman my brother Gærüt seeks and the Pörø Witch, Grynn Xanthopoulos.
As his grandchildren took to the air, mission and purpose and voodoo words now galvanized, Xiao Yu shut his dragon eyes, went to sleep and dreamt. The voices of The Łöå met him and there he welcomed their power fully. Like all claimed children he smiled as he slept. Because like them, he knew the big bad was coming. He knew it’s name but no longer cared what it was called.
It’s rarely pleasant to walk around the mind of a göd, Xiao Yu turned the page in his dream as he entertained the Bôkör of The Łöå , Very few who live survive the lap.
The dead, however, are another story. You have got to love the dead.
45
Divåd and Ptøshä Nirrêp eavesdropped on the only göd they worshipped and feared in equal measure and on his brothers. They had not been summoned but felt instinctively a silent command had been issued. That was their mandate. To monitor all psychic channels in service of their Master Gærüt. The Bödhisåttvås thought they were being clever. Divåd and Ptøshä knew all about their devious plan. Their grandfather, Xiao Yu, had left them with no shortage of genetic duplicity. But they were the Ájøgün. They manned every psychic and mystic avenue in and out of Hiklorim and the Fields of Fæ realms of cryptid mischiefs.
The Fæ Fields were what cryptid göds and demigöds called the fount of the Seven Øgdöåd. The hallowed vending machine down whose mågÿckal corridors every make and flavor of cryptid monster göd tumbled. The seeping dripping mågÿcks of Gærüt’s seven Øgdöåd brothers, infecting the history of men, imbuing their lineage with Hikloric RNA creating vampires, wendigos, werebeasts, unicorn ufitis, afancs, ahouls, Bödhisåttvås, taotei and all of Xiao Yu’s Dark Asian progeny, mothmen, Tokoloshes, the orange eyed chupacabras and cave dwelling bunyip demigöds born to Örên’s mågÿcks, the Sasquatch and gnome goblins pruned from the cotton white tree of Aren White, the Onikuma pantu-bear göd of the Øgdöåd, and hundreds of other unintentional children deities of Hikloric and Pörø human lore.
Three of them now circled the bistro where the human woman and the transformed boy who had just battled their Lord’s brothers and won now sat eating trifles. Invisibly masked in a cloak of intangible hex mågÿck they stalked unseen by prying eyes. By all save the eyes of the Ájøgün. The rite of Sihiosian mågÿck dragging the smoke from the mirror removed all glåmöûr and subterfuge turning predator into unwitting prey. The first dragon crouched low to the ground. Blähn Båhkû could feel the wind brush the top of his hair as his two-headed enemy’s leathered wing passed harmlessly over him. Tightening his leg muscles, he leaped into the air, his own Myrmidon wings extended. He aimed directly for his enemy's chins, as he snapped his legs out. His kicks connected, and his enemy's heads snapped back, spitting flames as the left head popped. He heard dragon neck vertebrae crack from the whiplash as it landed in a leathery jester’s heap. Divåd aimed a Sihiosian bolt at the head of the second dragon approaching from his right knocking it into the fire escape in a huff of tattered wing and lava fyre. Then, with a sweep of her ëgbë staff of the göddess Øyä, Ptøshä joined her husband and the third dragon was on its back, crackling and convulsing from a current of blistering rainbow wind and lightning.
A fourth dragon, larger than the other three, landed on the Bank of America building and transformed back into her human shell. Her golden amber dragon eyes dripping liquid white menace in her human face she raised her hands and released a sonic ripple of sorcery so powerful that reality itself shook. Lead, iron and sister metals popped, warped and scraped across neighboring girders. The sound sent shivers through Q. Åkäniÿh’s bones. It was an unholy sound, a sound of collapse and destruction. The windows above popped as easily as bubbles in a bath. Tiny shards of tempered glass glittered through the air, falling at her feet.
She looked up, casting a protection spell as the sun disappeared behind a cloud of ash trees and the Bank of America building twisted, shuddered, and began to drunkenly lean to the side. Papers, desks and people spilled from broken windows, fluttering down to the ground like confetti, organic fear colored and cut into human ribbons. Q. Åkäniÿh reached out wit
h telekinetic mind and mågÿck catching grouplets of frightened falling humans, placing them gently aside and returning her thoughts to the chaos of dragon sorcery. Divåd, Ptøshä and Blähn Båhkû joined her repelling and reversing the downtown destruction threatening to derail their plans and give unsuspecting Bank of America building patrons a very unpleasant financial morning.
In their frantic efforts to remake reality, wipe minds and thwart catastrophe neither warrior of the Ájøgün had noticed that the Bödhisåttvå witch had once again taken dragon form and now hovered quietly over the bistro, eyes trained on its door. Just then Vickie walked outside to inspect the commotion and see what calamity had befallen all of their early Atlanta mornings.
Kuan Yin dove in a blur, unzipping her own powers as she attacked Vickie’s mind, with help from The Łöå, catching her off guard and hamstringing her, a split second before grabbing her in talons meant for other things and flying straight up over the din with her quarry. She whispered in dragonspeak and three streams of plasma white fyre surrounded the bodies of her fallen brothers as they all disappeared in a haze of teleportation and confused street venders.
Divåd stared up at the clouds once again on their march across the patter of that slowly darkening midday sky. They had failed their Sky Lord Ôlörûn a second time. He trembled visibly, his warrior’s genius dipping to that persistent place of the göds where fear becomes dread. Their gröötslâng Sovereign would not show them anything warm and fuzzy. He looked across the growing gloom of that cityscape and at that slowly emptying bistro as his eyes met the boy now become man, standing there in the doorway, seething in functioning rage, his body casting off arcs of mad licking electron static. A falcon flew from its perch on the adjoining building in alarmed flight and landed on a nearby lamppost, painting itself in that scene playing itself out below. Divåd watched that falcon fly from its new perch and land on the outstretched arm of the boy now become man. They both surveilled him, eyes tapered in minacious approach. As the boy now become man’s face contorted in hateful red wizardry, skin already shimmering and taking on the telltale promise of gröötslâng peril, Divåd looked at him and said the only two words one would, should and could say in moments like these.
Oh Shit!
46
Åpsät hated Gærüt and Nänå. Thoroughly and swirling around his head in white hot clarity. He hated all his overbearing brothers, except Sphelix, for whom he reserved a lesser more inanimate hate. Hated them all void of reserve or condition. He hated being the youngest brother. Hated being the last to receive the end tip of mågÿcks from Aeyitria and Łöståghår. Hated being the “runt” göd of the Øgdöåd. He hated that he was the first broken and the last chaste or chosen. He hated that, to his own thinking, he was so small and feeble that he was left armed with nothing but hate. Their Star Trek damsel in a short skirt. And yet, without omission, he knew, as he sat around the council table staring at his brothers empty chairs, that it was his hate that would save them all.
Two inky black figures like stenciled smoke hung in the air above the table. Someone had reached in and gone stomping around the Fields of Fæ summoning The Łöå, awakening that dark ravenous appetite. The Łöå loved nothing more than to dine on all the good and thick evil things of the world. Hate was their liquor of choice and to Åpsät they had arrived hungry and begging. He had called them to that chamber. His hates were separate beacons lighting a path for them to come through and enter his patch of reality. They had followed him all day, staying visible only at the corners of his peripheral perception. Now in the visible realm, they would do what Bôkörs of The Łöå do. Torment in riddle and song.
-The boy has come who thinks himself The Nazarene of old,
Your battle fought, His battle won, handed asses, now you hold.
-Quiet fell beasts! Enough of your toiling rhyming prattle! Tell me how to defeat him or be banished back to the mists!
-He thinks HIMSELF and his thinking is your weapon. He believes he is the Jesus that fought back and turned all text from black to red. Find him in his delusion oh Peryton göd and attack! Imagine for him, what if that christed child had awakened all alone in his göd powers and unleashed mågÿck and fire and lightning, cracking the cross, and burning all Romans to ash where they stood. Imagine him bent low, eyes ablaze, tasting the menstrual flow of that learned woman and her issue of blood to become the first vampire lover of sacrilege and demon cryptid perfection. What if that woman was his sister? How would her blood taste? Don’t wonder! Find out oh winged göd of the golden antlers! Kneeling and peering through Göd’s keyhole, imagine what he’d find. The smell of a thousand juvenile rapes and low creaking things is what he’d find. The trauma of aborted tenderness and rivers bathing the air in anemic filth and pity. The bass and the horn suffocating and dripping in praise and reek. To wake and be blessed and kissed in fire and nails is he. That is who you are fighting. That is who awaits your war Õsòòsi.
-You speak in cursed riddle and the nonsense of the damned! Make clear your augury and return with you in quick and dire step to the foul deep of Ëvèr!
-Your wish then make it so for you sit and churn, your woe is me, while others have already begun to see. You’ll grit your teeth and gnash your gum, now knowing that hate is your kingdom come. For in the end of things as beginnings do, to make new truth last, first lie is you. Remove the horn, the wing, the claw, and see with eyes that heard and saw. For youngling gröötslâng prince to fall, his bond of blood, princess install. For the Bôkör take and give in kind, our words are more than song and rhyme. Our message true, in hateful creed, goodbye deer lord, good luck indeed.
Åpsät gritted his teeth, as the two Bôkör of The Łöå petered out and dissipated, leaving him alone in deeper solemnity. He wondered if the Bôkörs’ rhyme made him feel slightly better or slightly worse. Alliteration to salve the fear and hateful creed their message delivered. Now he would need to decipher and interpret and decode and uncover before he could even begin to understood an inch of their message.
Göds, I hate The Łöå. I hate them so much.
Åpsät hated and he knew his hates. He knew what they ate and what size shoes they wore. That, for now, would have to be enough, he reasoned, getting up and turning off the lights.
What more could a runt göd ask for.
47
Vickie’s best friend, Kenji Ferrer Gamad, rummaged through his text messages and Instagram posts and wondered where his testie bestie had been for the last few days. His phone rang and a sultry, mannish, devastatingly authoritative voice greeted him as he answered.
-Heyyyyy handsome detective man! How you be, boo?
-Hey Ken. What’s shaking man?
-Nethin’ Pinky! Doing what I do everyday. Tryin’ to take over the world. Haha.
-Cool. Cool. Are you at work right now?
-Boy don’t you know I’m not when I’m not! I’m at home in my kimono putting ointment on my new red rooster and lotus tattoo, relaxing and snacking on life! Just finished eating some okonomiyaki and I’m so full I feel like a tick in a tampon! Haven’t even combed my hair yet. Why? What’s up?
-I’m looking for Vickie and she’s not answering her phone. Is she with you by any chance?
-No booberry she is not with me. I haven’t seen her mussy in days.
-I don’t know where she is. After all that shit with Grynn Xanthopoulos and that Pörø Group, I’m becoming a little worried.
-Oooooh Chile lies! Wait! Back up! Put this bitch in reverse! What “shit”? What “Grin Xanafanna Bobanna”? What “Group”??? The T total shade of it all! Chile tell the truth and let it be told! We must do what thus saith!
-Thus saith...who?
-The Lordt Chile! The Lordt!
-Umm...sure. Anyway, I’m gonna go by her new house over in Tuxedo Park to see if she’s home. If she calls you tell her to call me please.
-10-4. I will. But have u seen where this bitch is living now? Did she start selling crack and didn’t tell a bitch? Gi
iiiiiiiirl, that house is ovah!
-First...don’t ever call me “girl” again. Second, what do you mean it’s “over”?
-No hunti. Not “over”. O-V-A-H...Ovah! Exceptional, incredible, great, outstanding, one of a kind! Keep up Geraldine!
-Look Ken, I’m gonna need you to come down to the precinct to see me. We need to talk about Vickie.
-No ma’am no,sir no ma’am! I got shit to do and butt babies to lose.
-Let me paint a picture for you, Ken. Either meet me here or some of my boys in blue will come get you there.
-Boys in blue. Fun times! Handcuff me Mr. Officer Charlie sir!
-Can you stop being a fucking clown for 2 seconds? There’s some serious shit going down!
-Wait! Wait! Did this nigga’ just bump his gums and call me a “fucking clown” out of his teeth? Moses, you heard him! Mathew, Mark, Luke, did you hear him? I’m finished! Done! Miss me with your funky ass attitude Tony! Do whatever flicks your chicken boo-boo! Bye Felicia!
Click.
Detective Mozee put his phone back in his pocket and picked up his keys, shaking his head. He knew calling Kenji was a long shot but that graciously Grynn-gifted rune had started to glow and throb again and a dark foreboding had begun to set in. He needed to find Vickie. She was in trouble and he could somehow feel her distress.
