Vessel, Book I: The Advent

by Tominda Adkins

  * * * * *

  No one said or did anything because no one knew where to start.

  Not that there was any confusion as to what needed to be said or done. A great deal needed to be said and done. Broken glass and black Hollow juice needed to be cleaned up. Corin's arm needed attention. Jesse, whether he liked it or not, needed to make some phone calls pretty damn soon. Khan needed pants.

  And polite introductions. We still hadn't gotten around to those.

  Jackson accelerated, settling the battered bus as best he could into the evening traffic while we waded out the stunned silence. Someone―I don't know who, as Jesse hadn't removed his hand from my eyes―offered Khan a towel, and he wrapped it around his waist, having not yet uttered a syllable to any of us. Sufficiently decent, he stalked over to the table booth and sat down, staring blankly ahead as if expecting to be left alone and ignored.

  Leave him alone, we did.

  Ignore him, we did not.

  We couldn't ignore Khan any more than one could ignore a Great White Shark in a kiddie pool. At that innocent point in our lives, he was right on par with the Hollows as the most frightening thing we'd ever seen. Imagine, if you will, the scariest escaped convict that you can, the baddest guy you can come up with. Someone you don't ever want busting out of jail in your neighborhood. Someone you don't ever want at large anywhere in your country. Big, mean, bad-ass, probably hairy, missing teeth, bulging muscles, am I right?

  Okay, that guy? That guy would've been Khan's bitch.

  He was monstrously tall, for starters―just shy of seven feet, enough to dwarf even Jesse, and much too tall to stand upright in the bus. His limbs were lanky but hard, chiseled of sinewy muscle and elevated veins and wrapped in a rough casing of tawny, calloused skin, stubble, scar tissue, and colorful ink. Flames, waves, dice, busty women, tigers, koi fish, lotus petals, kanji, and ornate cloud patterns―tattoos of every kind wound up his arms, covered his chest and back, circled the base of his neck, and streamed down to his calves, all of them interlocking into a permanent, seamless body suit.

  His hair was nearly as colorful. A stringy mess of it fell over his face and neck, sporting lengths of natural black, peroxide yellow, and dyed lilac. He’d obviously not had the opportunity to fix his roots in awhile. The face beneath all that hair was long, stout, and solemn, if not positively emotionless, and it was decorated with an array of scars from previous piercings and who knows what else. Probably knife fights. And I’m guessing a good head-slamming or two, judging by the nose, which looked to have been broken more than once.

  What made Khan truly chilling, though, the icing on the cake if you will, were his eyes. They were tapered and steady, placid; I imagine they were quite handsome once. Their color, however, was indeterminable. In fact, nothing about Khan's eyes were determinable, not even the direction in which they were looking. A dingy film of scar tissue coated them both, a translucent layer of milky pink murk. You could just make out the shape of the iris in each eye, and nothing more.

  Khan was as blind as your Dear Aunt Sally.

  Right.

  So there we all were, the whole damn circus. We needed a facilitator. We needed Jerry Springer. We had Jesse Cannon instead.

  Jesse had almost no threshold for silence. When confronted with silence, his immediate reaction was simply to make sound of any kind. By singing. By doing unimaginably wonderful things to the closest piano. By turning up some Aretha Franklin. Or of course, by employing the least favorable alternative―talking.

  Jesse stood up. My insides sank.

  "Well!" He clapped his hands together once. His smile and stance would have been just as suitable for attempting party tricks at a funeral. "Welcome, everyone, to the Jesse Cannon Tour."

  Jesse placed a hand eloquently over his heart. "I’m Jesse Cannon, of course. And most of you have already met Jordan, my darling assistant, yes?"

  He gestured at me as if presenting a game show prize.

  "Former assistant," I clarified.

  Jesse moved on without pause, leaning languidly against the passenger seat and inclining his head toward Jackson. "And our handsome driver this evening is―?"

  "Whitney Leroy Jackson." Jackson shot out a fearless hand. "But you can call me Jackson."

  "Oooh, I will." Jesse shook his hand, almost civilly. He winked at me and I quickly looked away, rolling my eyes.

  "I can't believe this, I really can't," Jackson rambled, really hanging on to that handshake. "Jesse Cannon. My sisters love you ..."

  "Do they?" Jesse purred. I am certain that the rest of the bus had dissolved from his mind at that point. So much for the remaining introductions.

  Jackson continued, oblivious to the monster he was feeding. "Are you kidding me? They play that one song of yours over and over. The one with the ...," he trailed off, attempting a vigorous weaving motion of the shoulders. The bus did not deter from its course.

  "Sexodus," I supplied flatly.

  "Yes!" Jackson smacked the wheel. "That video ... wow. All that latex and lipstick, that really confuses a man." He shook his head, turning to Jesse with his winning grin. "Seriously, though, what are you?"

  Silence.

  A vengeful laugh barked out of me before I could stop it. Ghi and Corin looked away from anyone and anything as fast as they could. I guess they had their own confused feelings about the video in question.

  Jesse's smile stagnated on the spot. Normally, he reveled in the worship and controversies surrounding his gender-juggling image. He thrived on it, really. Under these delicate and trying circumstances, however, he took Jackson's statement as a direct insult.

  The results were spectacular. You could almost reach out and touch the wall of contention that rose up between the two of them. Jesse countered carefully, joining in with my laughter and waving a hand in showy indifference.

  "Oh, I'm all man, honey," he said, leering closer to the driver's seat for good measure. "And it sounds to me like you saw something you liked."

  Jackson slapped himself across the thigh. "Damn right I did!" he said. "I love women with thick, bony necks."

  Jesse’s jaw dropped indignantly. He looked to me. I laughed again. And it felt very, very good.

  "Just kidding, man." Jackson winked and shoved Jesse on the shoulder just a little too enthusiastically. "And thanks for clearing that up for me."

  Game over.

  "Anytime," Jesse seethed, snapping his teeth back together. He set his face straight, flipping the switch that restored his fabulous facade, and then shifted his attention to Ghi. A murderous flash was still left in his eyes.

  "How about you?" he demanded. "What's your name?"

  Ghi appeared to be simultaneously too frightened and too starstruck to speak.

  "His name's Ghi," I said. Ghi waved cautiously with one hand. Satisfied, Jesse whirled to face Corin, who was preoccupied with coaxing bits of glass from the mauled parts of his forearm.

  "Corin," he offered off-handedly, which was still remarkably polite considering the fact that he was prodding through his own broken skin. He paused to look up then, but not at Jesse. It was Khan who held his attention. Khan, who was biting serenely at a hangnail, ignoring all these niceties. It seemed unwise to speak to him, to attract his attention in any way. But that is exactly what Corin did.

  "How did you do it?" he asked, frowning in his dreadfully serious way. "You set those things on fire. You set a prison on fire. How?"

  Khan did not look up, but the corners of his mouth lifted slightly in response. He made a soft, single-syllabled laughing sound, but he didn't say a word.

  This made everyone slightly more uncomfortable.

  Corin slid down off the bar and took one step―and one step only―toward Khan.

  "How?" he asked again, then pivoted to look at Ghi and myself. "When I did that, er, thing, with the ice, the water was already there. But that fire ...." He turned to Khan again. "Where did it come from?"

  Khan stared ahead, unheeding. He slid o
ne hand into a snarl of multi-colored hair.

  "Bigger question!" Jackson spoke up. "Did you toast those things all the way or what? Cause if they're still following us, I need to know right now."

  "Yes," Ghi prompted, already shying away from the nearest broken window, just in case. "Are there any Hollows left back there?"

  Khan laughed again and shook his head, still digging through his hair.

  "No," he said, very softly, in a tone suggesting that the very question amused him. It was the first thing he'd said at all. His voice was deep and reedy, like an oboe.

  Jesse turned to me and dramatically mouthed the word 'creepy'.

  I barely noticed. I was still looking past him, staring at Khan, who had pulled a cigarette from the tangle of hair behind his ear, placed it between his lips, and was proceeding to light it.

  With his finger.

  A droplet of flame balanced upon his flexed fingertip, igniting the slightly rumpled cigarette within a nanosecond of contact. Khan tilted back and took a leisurely puff, and the flame itself dissipated, leaving no trace whatsoever on the surface of his skin.

  Corin considered this small miracle for a moment, incredulous. "So you―you make it?"

  Ghi shook his head. His golden eyes were wide with amazement and admiration, and they never left Khan.

  "He is it."

  "Excuse me." Jesse pushed between them both and placed himself in front of the alleged murderer with pleasant authority. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you not to smoke in here."

  Oh dear.

  The round shapes floating in Khan's eyes shifted beneath their swampy surfaces. He took a drag of the cigarette and stared at Jesse like he was about to eat him. I must point out that, much like your Dear Aunt Sally, Khan is only legally blind. Which means that in good lighting, he can see well enough to get around. Or to pummel someone into a bloody heap.

  We all watched in helpless terror, waiting for Jesse to burst into flames. But Khan simply snuffed the cigarette out against the upholstered seat and let it drop to the floor.

  Remarkably, Jesse seemed just as eager to verbally disapprove of that as well. He opened his mouth to do so. I lunged. I realized that I was no longer contractually obligated to protect him from his own stupidity, but when you've been paid for so long to do something, it just becomes second nature. I power-pinched the back of Jesse's arm as hard as I could and knocked him sideways.

  "God, I'm not even thinking!" I declared madly, gesturing at Corin's bloodied arm, at my own scratched up hands, at the cut on Ghi's forehead, which he evidently hadn't noticed yet. He crossed his eyes and poked at it with alarm.

  I tightened my talon grip on Jesse's arm, speaking loudly so as to cover up the sound he made. "There's a first aid kit in here somewhere," I said, marching him toward the rear of the bus. "Just give us a second to find it."