Strife

by M. T. Miller

  The Nameless turned to face him, placing an arm on the table they sat around. “There is no damage. This is fascinating to me.”

  “We take care of our territory as well as our people,” Hillaire said.

  “I believe you do,” the Nameless said, “but this is becoming comical. Are you going to talk business or not?”

  “Indeed I am,” Hillaire said, turning to Tarantula. “Mind doing the honors, my lady?”

  Tarantula leaned in, purposely doing so in a way that accentuated her chest. Whom this display was for, the Nameless could not tell. “You are angry. I understand. What I did to get away from Babylon cost you dearly. That is unfortunate. But I needed to push the Church into action; steer them into moving before their time. If they were allowed to keep growing their army, they would eventually have crushed us all.”

  “And you did not see it fitting to come to me with this plan?” the Nameless growled. “You did not take from me. You have taken from hundreds of people. Lives extinguished, bodies rotting where they might not be found for weeks. I have done my share of atrocities, but this one is on you.”

  “Not exactly,” Tarantula said. “In the war I saw happening months from now, all those people would have died anyway, along with most of Babylon’s population. You think the Skulls will stop after they’ve eradicated your cult and this one? We are talking about people who’ve gone through mutilation for a chance to set the world on fire. Mix two kinds of insanity, and you wind up with the worst of both.”

  “You lied to the Cleanup Crew in order to get them to do what you needed,” the Nameless said. “As far as I know, you are doing the same to me.”

  “I needed a splash big enough to reach the White City,” Tarantula said. “You should remember that I was the one who helped you when you first came to Babylon. I was also the only member of the Management not to act against you in any way, for a long, long time. My goals are in no way opposed to your own. I know this because I have seen the future. Your reasoning, although quite blunt, is more than sound.

  “But back when you killed the Sun God, I didn’t know that,” she continued. “As far as I knew, Coyote had pushed you over the edge. You might well have turned into a killing machine, hell-bent on murdering anything that could put up a fight, and subjugating everything else. Prior to your revival, you were not a saint. You could become like that again.

  “Then, as my Sight returned over the course of weeks, I caught a glimpse of the now-rewoven pattern of fate, and cried out in despair. I saw you fixing Babylon, only to have it ground to dust by a tide of rage and hatred. And it would not stop. Bit by bit, picking up more and more speed, the monstrosity they call the Holy Army would lay waste to the entirety of the continent. In the end, this place would fall as well.”

  “And then?” the Nameless asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tarantula said. “I can’t see past my own death.”

  The Nameless went silent. Despite him wanting to hate her, what she said did make sense. But still…

  “You have injured a good friend of mine,” he said. “As far as I know, she may have expired by now.”

  “Rush lives,” Tarantula said. “Her thread was tugged at quite severely, but still stands strong. Does this please you?”

  “Even if that is true and you are not lying to me—” the Nameless leaned in closer “—you cannot claim that you had it planned. Her survival, if it is true, is an accident at best.”

  “Reasons don’t change facts,” Tarantula smiled just a little bit. “She is alive, though I find it cute that you care so much.”

  “Insinuate all you want,” the Nameless said. “I am well aware of my hypocrisy. To get shaken by the loss of one particular life when hundreds have died is madness, yet I find myself suffering from it nonetheless.”

  “It is perfectly normal behavior,” Tarantula cooed, “for men and gods like. It’s called bonding.”

  I cannot afford to be normal. Normal will not win this war, the Nameless thought, but said nothing. Regardless of that train of thought, though, it was as if he found himself several pounds lighter. Whether or not Rush was actually alive, Tarantula’s words gave him some small measure of hope.

  “I know you understand,” Tarantula said. “If you were me, you’d have done the same.”

  “Possibly,” the Nameless said, staring at the center of the table. “So, what now?”

  “Now we hunt for weaknesses,” Tarantula said. “Something is off in the White City, and majorly. The consequences of the Church’s actions remain clearly visible in the weave, but the details are always blurred. In all likelihood, this means that something is going on behind the scenes. Something unnatural.”

  “Like us?” the Nameless asked.

  “Maybe. Or perhaps a sorcerer. Whatever it is, it’s unusual by even our standards. There is but one being I ever met who could outright hide from fate, and that was Coyote.”

  The sight of Lydia’s ruined face flashed before the Nameless’ eyes. He dragged his fingers over them, as if to wipe away the blood. “Contrast took care of him,” he said. His only positive contribution to the world, and it ended badly.

  “And he has been appropriately punished,” Tarantula said, any hint of her smile gone. “I’d like to be able to thank Divine for gifting me that revenge, but she can’t be let out. Any contribution she will make from this point on can only be negative.”

  “Agreed,” said the Nameless.

  “Back on topic,” Tarantula said. “Whatever it is that’s steering this One True Church of America, we must learn more before we can fight it. It is for that that we need a spy.”

  The Nameless laughed. “You are not suggesting that it be me? I can barely act human, let alone a religious one.”

  “No one’s asking you to join the faithful,” Tarantula said. “What we want you to do is join these pardoned Skulls. The role of a homicidal maniac shouldn’t be too demanding on you.”

  The Nameless leaned back. “I might be mistaken, but last time I checked, I still had a face.”

  “That can be fixed,” Tarantula said.

  “No, it can’t. I heal from all injuries, or have you forgotten?”

  “That can also be fixed,” Tarantula said. “But more on that later, should you choose to agree. Jules?”

  Hillaire slipped his hand inside an inner pocket of his suit, pulled out three photographs, and put them on the table. The Nameless leaned in. On them were three different people, all men. Two were in the prime of their lives, while one was approaching middle age. “These are our successful infiltrators, all sent over the course of the last half year. The one in the middle underwent mutilation and joined the Skulls, while the other two went on to become parts of the Church’s apparatus. All three stopped reporting at some point.”

  “Captured and executed?”

  “Defected,” Hillaire said with distaste in his voice. “All our infiltrators inevitably switch sides.”

  “And how are you certain of this without having any effective spies?”

  “The Church uses them as spokesmen,” Hillaire said. “The Skull-convert is the most recent one. He agreed to do it for a mountain of cash, went in, and just like that, decided he wanted to stay. Blurted out what little he knew about us, but that is irrelevant. Bottom line is, some sort of compulsion seems to draw people over to the side of the Church, even when it is against their interests.

  “Being a divine being,” Hillaire continued, “you should possess at least some resistance to whatever this is. After all, gods don’t worship other gods. This is why, Lord Nameless, it has to be you.”

  “You have Tarantula,” the Nameless said.

  “Who needs to stay as far away from everything as possible, or else her predictions will not work.”

  “And you’ve killed Snake,” Tarantula added.

  “That I did,” the Nameless admitted. Whatever I do, it goes wrong. No exceptions. He turned to Tarantula. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I
t is where you would have wound up anyway,” she said. “After that, they’d have taken you to the White City, wherein your thread vanishes. There was a small chance of error, but this was a detail I was confident about. We have been planning your extraction for a long time. ”

  A lot of work to put me up against a wall. “There is a man within this Holy Army,” the Nameless said. “They call him Malachi. As far as I have seen, he is completely indestructible. What can you tell me of him?”

  “Not much,” Hillaire said. “The Church has been employing people like that for a while now. They are called Saints, sometimes Brothers, Sisters, or Fathers. Each one is different, but all seem to possess some unique gift, such as this Malachi’s invulnerability. Do you need further proof that something is horribly wrong out there?”

  Sisters, he says? For a moment, the Nameless thought of Chastity. The Sister despised the Skulls with a passion. Imagining her working beside the gang was impossible.

  “No,” he said. “But how do we deal with them? I have broken a sword on this man’s neck.”

  Hillaire smiled as he dug inside another one of his pockets. He pulled out a cigarette pack-sized, unlabeled box, put it on the table and opened it for the Nameless to see. A sickly green light shone from within, emanating from six polished bullets. “With more black magic, of course.”

  “And what are these for, besides looking ominous?”

  “What is magic, Lord Nameless?” Hillaire asked, letting go of the box. “I’ll tell you. Magic is life. Through belief, man feeds Bondye. After eating his fill, Bondye leaves the rest to his servants. Angels, the Loa, whatever else exists. And these subordinates in turn make man’s life easier, so he keeps believing. And so the wheel keeps turning.”

  “Hold on,” the Nameless said. “How do you explain my existence, then? Or hers?” He pointed to Tarantula.

  “I can’t,” Hillaire said. “This is why we have holy wars, after all.” He smiled.

  “Go on,” the Nameless said, disappointed.

  “But life is not the only thing there is, Lord Nameless. Even among the Loa, there are those whose domain is death. One of these is the esteemed Baron Samedi, whom the New Voodoo Movement is centered around pleasing.”

  Every single muscle in the Nameless’ stomach tensed at the mention of the name, though he had no idea why.

  “The magic of death exists to stifle the magic of life.” Hillaire took a bullet between his fingers, and held it up above the table. “And we’ve infused these bullets with more than a little death. In contact with anything even moderately unnatural, they will render it as mundane as the ground we tread on.”

  “Forever?” asked the Nameless.

  “Nothing lasts forever,” Hillaire said. “But it will be long enough for one to, say, end the life of this Malachi. Or whoever else they send our way.”

  The Nameless kept looking at the bullet. “And if I am not mistaken, you intend to use it on me.”

  “Precisely,” Hillaire nodded. “Operating on the same principle, we will make a gris-gris, and implant it discreetly into your stomach. This will prevent you from healing through the Skull-like mutilations we will give you, at least while the gris-gris remains in your person. As far as anyone will know, you will be just another madman.”

  “I assume that you will use surgery for that,” the Nameless said. “Will the scars not appear fresh?”

  “We will make it so they don’t,” said Hillaire. “You are talking to a priest. We know a thing or two about directing the flow of faith.”

  “One more thing,” the Nameless remembered. “My worship is dying. Within days I may be forced to start killing again. This would not help the infiltration.”

  “Not an issue,” Hillaire said. “The gris-gris is imbued with death magic. While it will not help you heal your body, it will prevent your essence from starving. The disguise will be perfect.”

  Human sacrifice, worship, magical bullets… for as long as it will keep me alive, the Nameless considered. I will take it.

  “To summarize,” Hillaire said. “We tone down your healing juju and make you look like one of the Skulls. You’ll get a couple of days to get used to talking with no lips, and then we will ship you to the proximity of the Underbelly. There, you will ask for absolution, and see where everything goes. Whatever you see, you remember. Saints, their particular gifts, command structure, future plans, anything. If you can advance in rank, you do it. It will make everything else a whole lot easier.” By now his eyes were adding to the green glow.

  Magic? “How do we stay in touch?”

  “We probably won’t. You are to remain there for three months. If we don’t send you anything new by then, you leave in any way you can and make your way back here. Then, we will work out a new plan, one that will take into account what we’re actually up against.”

  “This deal seems rigged. What do I get out of it?” the Nameless said in consideration.

  Hillaire smiled. “I’m getting to it. In return, the New Voodoo Movement will respect your claim on Babylon. If we win this war, it will be yours.”

  The Nameless remained silent.

  “And if that’s not enough,” Hillaire continued, “I will share what I have on your own history. The Baron is ancient. He knows a thing or two.”

  The Nameless took a moment. “Babylon will fall apart without me.”

  “The way things are right now,” Tarantula intruded, “it will fall apart with you. You’ve done your part… Lord Nameless. You’ve cut out the disease, now let the patient recover properly. Otherwise, they will never get off the medication.”

  The Nameless went silent. A whole minute passed before he spoke again. “Fine. I agree.”

  Hillaire and Tarantula both grinned. The priest extended his hand, his eyes now positively bathing them in green.

  The Nameless scoffed as he shook on it.

  The lights danced around them, forming the shape of a spiral. Going faster and faster, the display kept accelerating until it became painful to watch. Then, without warning, it dispersed into nothing, and the scenery went back to normal.

  “You won’t regret your decision,” Hillaire said.

  “It is not a decision if I have no choice,” said the Nameless.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rush sat in a comfortable, leather-bound chair and stared at the ceiling. Resting at the back of her head, her fingers kept moving rhythmically, one after another.

  The bottled water on the table rippled in tandem with her every move. Azarian had been smart enough to cut the third floor’s water supply. Luckily, the reserves they had would last for months if properly rationed. On an infinitely worse note, no one got to shower anymore, and the floor was beginning to smell.

  This is taking forever, she thought as her gaze turned to Torres. The governor was now better, his complexion almost healthy. However, he was still reliant on his crutch, and never went anywhere without the two goons that stood at his shoulders.

  “He’ll try to twist our nips,” she stated.

  “Mind clarifying?” Torres asked, both eyebrows raised. He didn’t even look at her. His eyes, as well as those of his security detail, were pointed directly at the once-secret passage that led to the way down.

  “He’ll try and pull a fast one,” Rush said. “These guys’ve been waiting for something like this for months. No way they’re going to just lie there and take it, whether we got ‘em by the sack or not.”

  “Probably,” Torres nodded. “But you must remember that this isn’t all about us. There are people down there whose lives have just been one hell after another. Right now, they’re worse than ever, and their misery is on us. Furthermore, if this negotiation fails, everything will keep going downhill.”

  “Puttin’ others before you means goin’ down with the ship,” she said.

  “You don’t believe that yourself,” Torres said.

  “What?”

  “You know I’m right.” Torres gave her the briefest of glares before r
e-focusing on the passage. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have joined the peacekeeping force, now would you?”

  Rush was just about to talk back, when her attention was caught by her right elbow. Just like the rest of her, it had healed without any trouble, but the wrinkles were still getting ironed out. Instead of hard to-touch scabs, the scars now more than ever resembled actual tattoos. They kept getting thinner every day, but she probably wouldn’t be free of them for weeks. Maybe months.

  You’ll never understand. She followed the patterns with her eyes. Consequences of a thoroughly reckless action, not her first by far, and hopefully far from the last. She still remembered the revelation she had before the explosion engulfed her. Others may strive for greatness, peace, a paycheck. Rush was interested in something else entirely. For her, a challenge had become its own reward. If she didn’t accept that, she’d have nothing left but the needle. And there was a whole lot of downtime between doses.

  To hell with others! she concluded. As far as she knew, someday she might spontaneously explode in a cloud of toxic chemicals. She would waste the time she had the way she wanted to, no matter if it was one year or a hundred.

  “If you say so,” she said without interest.

  Minutes passed, and as they did, the rhythm of Rush’s finger-tapping increased. Bored out of her wits, she was in the middle of an extended yawn when the sound of footsteps from down below caught her attention.

  “Well,” she said, still staring at the floor. “Someone’s finally coming. Good for us, I guess.”

  Torres kept up his finest impression of a statue.

  Little by little, the footsteps kept getting closer. No one but Rush could hear them yet, of course, and she found their pace annoying. The negotiator didn’t seem to be in any hurry at all. Furthermore, his steps were sluggish. Irregular.

  Rush straightened up in her chair. He’s not mad enough to come here packing, right? There were armed civilians at the top of the staircase, ready to open fire at anything suspicious. And if he were to try and smuggle a piece into the meeting room, he would get frisked on the way in. No, something like that wouldn’t work. Why’s he walking like that, then?