“Something seems to be happening.”
“So I gather.” It’s not just the urgency of the ghosts around me: a foulness beyond the normal Council gloom has seeped into the air. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s not good. The bustling ministers and ’catchers seem to feel it too—I catch short, snappy snippets of their strained conversations. Dissonance permeates the room, the whole building probably.
“The rebels are gathering, but our eyes don’t know where yet,” Flores says.
“Terrorists,” I mutter. And then, “But how do you know—”
“Because they’re gone,” he snaps. Then he lets out a heavy sigh. Whatever it is is getting to him too. “None of them are in their usual spots. Entire Remote Districts have emptied out. They’re massing for an attack, somewhere.”
“Plus our communication’s still fucocked,” Botus adds. “As you may have noticed.”
“So the usual incompetence of the Council is exacerbating a potentially catastrophic situation. Behold my face of shock.”
Botus levels an icy glare my way, and for a half second I wonder if I finally treaded too far. Then Flores leans in. “The . . . uprising, Chairman. We have to find them. Now.”
Botus rounds on Flores. Flores is the most solidly built phantom I’ve seen—his broad shoulders push out the edge of that cloak like Darth Vader in his years as a linebacker. Botus is a whole other kind of huge and imposing, though—he’s almost as tall, with huge hands and thick arms. You wouldn’t call him fat; he’s just got that ungainly dadbod with random blobs of bulk bulging out in different places. If it wasn’t for that broadsword Flores rolls with, it’d be a close fight. “You’ve been whining about making a move for two weeks, Flores. Ease up on the Bustelo and think for a second, you faceless fop!”
Silence snaps across the room as two dozen ghostly faces turn toward the chairman. I know I, for one, am riveted.
“Every new day we huddle behind these walls,” Flores seethes, “like cowards, the rebels ha—”
“The terrorists,” Botus cuts in, winking at me with a morbid grimace.
Flores looks about to snap. “The terrorists have more time to plot, plan, and prepare for our destruction. And what is our plan, Chairman Botus? What is your plan to defeat the rebellion, besides rotting in this warehouse while our enemy grows stronger?” He’s barely whispering, but the room is so quiet we feel each word in our guts, and I know I’m not the only one whose truth he’s speaking.
“Stronger?” Botus chuckles. That faux confidence is transparent as hell though; no one is fooled. “Have you not listened to report after report of their stagnation? Their infighting? Their broken spirit? No . . . you got us into this position with your overaggressive rushing into that hit on Mama Esther, Speedy Gonzalez. Now you’re going to fall back and watch me clean up your mess. With tactics. Their little movement can’t hold without any victories, without any movement! They’ll splinter and disintegrate within the week. Soon, an emissary will show up at our door, meekly begging to treat on peace terms.” He turns to the room. “Do you hear me? Mark my words.”
No one speaks.
“Meanwhile, Flores here would have us campaign out into the ether, with no target, no clear strategy, no escape. We don’t even have a full grasp of their numbers, but you want—”
“With our reinforcements from the Jersey outpost, we are sure to outnumber them,” Flores growls over the chairman. “Even a high estimation puts them at twelve hundred, tops. We’re close to two thousand. We can sweep them off any field of battle—”
“To walk into the maw of the insurgency, never to be seen again. Is that what you want?” Botus looks up as a commotion erupts from the far side of the room.
“Make way,” a gruff soulcatcher hollers, barging through at the head of a tattered, sorry-looking squad. “Chairman, we captured an intruder. It’s ah . . . one you’ll want to speak with, I think.”
An open aisle clears through the center of the room as the ’catchers bustle through, cluttered tightly around their prisoner.
“You see?” Botus crows. “Even as I was speaking, the rebels sent their emissary for peace. Watch.”
The whole room gasps when the ’catchers step away and flesh-and-blood-ass Carlos Delafuckingcruz stands there with the slightest of grins on his face.
“Well, well, well,” Botus drawls as his elite protective detail of ’Catcher Primes moves into position around him. “Look what the proverbial cat dragged in, so to speak.”
Unlike the chairman’s forced bravado, nothing about Delacruz suggests he’s anything but utterly at ease, happy even. Despite the dozen ’catcher blades hovering inches from his face, the half-dead traitor’s body is relaxed, his head cocked just so and that one lock of black hair covering half his face. But it’s his smile that gets me: it’s only barely there, and I think that’s what’s so wrong about it. He’s not cheesing for the camera; there’s no false bravado. He just seems mildly, genuinely amused. Like Mona Lisa, if Mona Lisa was a half-dead Puerto Rican dickhead.
“It’s fantastic to see you, Carlos,” Botus says. “What’s it been? A month since we last met? Three weeks? So much has happened since then. The world keeps turning, I suppose. And to think I offered you a position on the Council. And look at us now. Ooh, baby, it’s a wild world, am I right?”
All at once, I remember the moment just a few months back when Delacruz made a move to take me out in my brother’s underground roach temple. Murder didn’t just flash in his eyes; it was all over him—the man was made of it. And I won’t lie: I almost shat myself. I had prepared myself for death. Had been preparing myself for death for years leading up to that moment. I was ready. I told myself I was ready. It was my role in this world, this cycle of life and death, and I had accepted that and stepped into my role, my destiny, amidst the Blattodeon pantheon, and still, still the sight of that man swinging toward me with the full fury of a protective father nearly broke my resolve.
Instead, that bitch Kia showed up screaming and fucked up everything by saving my life, and I buried the relief I felt beneath a mountain of shame as I dove into the murky waters beneath Bushwick and saved myself while the Blattodeon legacy crumbled.
“It’s good to see you too.” Delacruz’s calm voice sends a chill through me, and I realize I’m fucking terrified of that man. He killed my parents, my brother, decimated our legacy. By all rights, I should be burning for the righteous comeuppance he’s about to get. Surely he’ll be tortured for information. And surely I’ll be given a chance to exact my pound of flesh.
But that small smile. It does not lie.
Botus leans forward in his chair, his ghostly form stretching a few extra feet toward Delacruz. “To what do we owe the extreme pleasure of this visit?”
“I came here to kill you.” He looks around serenely. “All of you.” For a split second, our eyes meet and I have to stop myself from running full speed the hell out of this room. It’s like staring down a python. But I’m the hunter, not the hunted—this is absurd! I try to rally myself, but that growing, hissing sense of desolation that’d been sliding through me since I walked in here only heightens.
“We found these on him,” one of the ’catchers says, gingerly laying an assortment of daggers on the dusty ground in front of Botus. “And, of course, this.” He holds up the halfie’s infamous blade, sheathed in its elegant wooden cane.
“Surely you wouldn’t deprive an old man of his walking stick,” Delacruz says.
“Cut the Gandalf shit,” Botus snaps, his fake cool suddenly spent. “You’re not the only one that knows how to read, jackass. Now, whatever you think you’ve come for, here’s what’ll happen instead. You’ll be tortured, first for fun, then for information. Then you’ll be tortured some more. Then the information you give up will be used to capture, torture, and kill all your little friends. Any questions?”
There’s a play
here. I can’t see it. Can’t map it. But it’s there. There’s no way Delacruz rolls up in here fully armed, gets himself captured with no play.
Carlos says, “I do have a question, actually.”
“Sir,” the head ’catcher interrupts. “We believe a few other squads are pursuing another halfie through the building.”
“Oh?” Botus perks up. So does Flores, I notice. “A female, by any chance?”
For the first time since he arrived, Delacruz’s smile falters. It’s only for a moment—he paints it back on quickly, but it dimmed slightly now. I wonder if Botus caught it.
“We think so. Communication’s still somewhat—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Botus cuts in. “Anything else?”
“We believe they may have deposited some . . . items in the corridors when they entered, but we’re not sure yet. They led us on a hell of a runaround.”
“I said I had a question,” Delacruz snarls, still smiling.
What did they drop off? Death suddenly feels quite certain.
“The items,” Juan Flores growls, his voice silencing the rising commotion in the room. “What were the items?”
I’m glad somewhat else recognizes the urgency of this situation, even if that someone is DeadMouse Milk.
“We don’t know,” the ’catcher admits.
“You’re saying you have reason to believe two enemy entities infiltrated our headquarters and dropped something off and you don’t know what it is?” Flores steps forward, towering over the soulcatcher. “Did you not check?” His voice a cannon shot on a quiet night.
“Flores.” Botus’s voice is sober, a warning.
“We couldn’t, sir. We tried. There was something wrong in the area where they placed them. It was like . . . I can’t explain it. It was wrong.”
I can relate. That’s how everything’s been feeling for the past twenty minutes: unexplainable and wrong. Flores looks like he’s about to backhand the ’catcher into the Deeper Death. Botus must see it too, because he stands and moves quickly out of the protective circle around him and between the two ghosts. “Deploy a team, Deputy Chamberlain. Get the packages, find out what they are, and handle them. If you can’t get any of your men to go, you go. Otherwise I’ll feed you to this guy. Understood?”
Chamberlain bows and scurries off. Flores returns to his seat, unsatisfied. Botus grins at Delacruz, who stares him down. “Now, Mr. Delacruz, you had a question.”
“Was it you, or was it Sarco?”
Botus’s forced grin fades fast. “Excuse me?”
“My family. Sasha’s family. Before . . . everything. They were wiped out.”
“I . . .”
“You know,” Delacruz says thoughtfully, “it’s not really a fair question. I know the answer; I just want to hear you say it. I want to see your face when those words leave your translucent-ass lips, so I can remember that image when I put my blade through your heart.”
“Bawdy words from an unarmed man on the wrong end of so many blades.”
Delacruz shrugs. “I’m a bawdy motherfucker. Answer. Answer and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Don’t answer and I swear on the memories of all my loved ones you can torture me until I’m just a trembling pile of fleshless limbs and my lips will stay shut.”
Botus smirks, doesn’t have a reply. The halfie has danced circles around him already. None of this is going to go well for us. Flores shifts back and forth on his feet, looking, I think, at me, and then back at the prisoner. I’m guessing he wants to just kill him as much as I do and end this nightmare, but we both know that would only be the beginning.
“What’s in the package?” Botus snarls.
“A gift,” Delacruz says simply. “That’s all you get to know until I get my answer.”
“Let me—” Flores starts.
Botus holds him back with a raised hand. “What makes you so sure you know the answer?”
“Sarco was a performer. He was a killer too, sure, but he loved the theater of it all. The act of it, with all eyes on him. That time he felled a soulcatcher and Moishe, the real estate agent in the Prospect Heights basement, made sure a whole squad of us was around him before he began the slaughter. He relished it.”
“Fascinating,” Botus says. Far away, there’s a tiny buzzing noise. It’s barely audible beneath the endless loop of Mama Esther’s cackle, but once I notice it, it won’t go away. “Do go on.”
“Even when he orchestrated deaths and had us do the dirty work for him, it was right there in public: Grand Army Plaza on a rainy night in March. My parents, Leandro Reynaldo Salazar and Dulce Maria Aviles, were killed in a home invasion. James and Sarah Raymond, Sasha’s parents, were killed in a car accident. Their parents, an electrical fire. That’s not how Sarco rolls. That’s Council style. That’s you, Botus. You created a monster, thinking, I’m sure, the Council would get some fancy new foot soldiers from Sarco’s halfie project, but Sarco played you—got Council backing and used it to do whatever he needed to do, leaving you to clean up his messes. His messes were our families. And then after massacring my family, you brought me in as the cleanup man and sent me to kill my best friend, who I didn’t remember.”
Carlos’s subtle smile has blossomed into a full-grown, shiny grin. It bursts off his face, unstoppable. It’s terrifying.
“Isn’t that right?” he says slowly, like he and Botus are in on some huge joke.
The buzz gets louder, shriller, like it’s bursting out of Carlos’s suddenly wide smile, but maybe I’m the only one who hears it. Residual trauma from the attack on Mama Esther’s? I shake my head, but it stays, droning on amidst the old house ghost’s endless laughter.
“That’s exactly right,” Botus says.
Delacruz laughs, shaking his head, and pushes the lock of hair out of his face. “Oh man . . . you guys.”
“What I think you, and others, fail to understand, Carlos, is—”
“No!” His voice is like a gunshot, his smile gone. I want to run I want to run I want to run. “I didn’t ask for an explanation. I simply wanted to hear you say you did it.”
“But—” Botus is clearly not used to being interrupted.
“I have no interest in how you rationalize your massacres. That’s your business. What you’ve done—that’s my business.”
Botus, finally fed up, looms over Delacruz, leering. “What makes you think you, my prisoner, have the right to tell me what I get to explain and what I don’t get to explain?”
It was rhetorical—I’m sure it was rhetorical—but Delacruz chooses to answer it anyway: “Because this is a moment I’ve been waiting a very long time for.” His smile is back. It’s still not forced; it’s incandescent, unstoppable. I want to run I want to run I want to run. “This is my moment. And I want it to be just right. Do you understand?”
“Do I—” Botus begins, indignant.
The buzz surges into a scream, blasting from everywhere at once like a thousand trains careening toward us. The ’catchers and ministers around me cover their ears and stumble, their faces contorted with pain. The whole room seems to fall to its knees at once. Delacruz and I are the only ones left standing. I don’t know how long I’ll last—everything’s gone shaky, and I feel like several organs have ruptured and are leaking various poisons into my bloodstream. I backstep toward the wall, keeping a wary eye on Delacruz.
He pulls something out of his pocket, a stick of gum, I think. Unwraps it and shoves it in his mouth. Then he moves quickly, snatching up his weapons as the soulcatchers writhe on the floor around him.
“They dropped an ngk on us!” Botus screams, clawing his way back to the leather chair.
“Evacuate the base!” Flores yells. He’s doubled over, clutching his stomach and stumbling toward the back of the room.
Delacruz is methodical: with a half dozen slashes, he’s cleared the area arou
nd him, cutting down soulcatchers one by one. Slash with the long blade, stab with the short one. The elite guard has formed a desperate, sloppy ring around Botus, but they keep collapsing over themselves. A few simply flicker out as the earsplitting devastation barges on.
Slash, stab, slash, stab. Delacruz works his way toward Botus, smiling that cemetery smile of his. There’s an exit somewhere in the shadows back there. The chairman is crawling toward it, screaming at his bodyguards to hold their positions as they’re enveloped in the oncoming tidal wave of those blades. Around me, ghosts are trying to stand up and bolt out of the room, tripping over themselves, clobbering and stampeding each other into a mushy ethereal goo.
Me? I’m frozen. My entire body abjectly refuses to respond as my mind cries out in terror. My eyes stay glued to Delacruz as he cleaves his blade through one elite ’catcher, then another; then he turns, panting, and stares at me.
I can’t breathe. Can’t move.
He raises one of his daggers, his fingers poised around the point, and is about to release when a huge shape rumbles between us: Juan Flores. I exhale, and the world seems to return to me. Flores swings that broadsword in a reckless arc. He doesn’t have much in him—by all rights, I should be the one saving him. I’m sure whatever this ngk thing is is poisoning the air; it’s worse for spirits than the living. Delacruz steps easily out of the way and swings his own blade down, but Flores is quicker than he looks. He deflects the blow, almost collapsing with the effort, and shoves Delacruz back a step.
“With me!” Botus yells to his guards.
Delacruz steals a glance back, sees the chairman ducking into that shadowy doorway, growls. He hurls a few fast blows at Flores, nicking him twice, and then spartan kicks him in the chest, sending him hurling back toward me. Then his eyes meet mine. “Today, you die, Fern.”
I almost shit myself again, but I don’t—somehow I don’t.
Then he turns and barrels after the chairman and his shattered entourage.
“Come on,” Flores groans, heaving his flickering mass off the floor. “We have to rally the ’catchers.”
Battle Hill Bolero Page 20
