by James Hunter
Tiny lights, the flicker of a thousand fireflies, appeared in the jungle, spanning out from the great tree. The flames drew closer, revealing tiny men and women, holding torches and carrying crude axes. “Man, in his rush to claim dominion over all things, foolishly attacked the Leshy. Xuong Cuong was a creature of peace who had never known war. When they came for him, there was naught he could do, and so he fell.”
In the floating picture I watched as the people swarmed the base of the tree, watched as the poor Leshy looked on aghast, his emerald eyes wide with terror, as the diminutive people hacked through his bark and scorched his leaves with flame. After a time, the tree crashed to the earth like a meteor, ablaze with fire. Dead. Broken. Destroyed. The people celebrated, their voices raised in one accord as they waved their axes in the air and danced around the smoldering ruins of the once great tree.
“Normally,” the withered old man continued, “when a Leshy’s tree is destroyed, they die. Their spirits blink out and go wherever such spirits go. But no one had ever killed a Tree King. Why, no one had ever even heard of such a thing.”
The vision melted and flowed, a jumble of chaos, before coalescing once more into a new image: a hulking creature made of roots, vines, and dark flowers, filled with sharp, biting teeth. A demon if ever there was such a thing. “Xuong Cuong’s spirit did not move on. It … it was reborn, you see. Reborn of death and fire and hate. These things shaped it and gave it form. The creature that emerged was hungry for retribution against all manflesh.”
The beastly thing in the vision moved through the jungle like a ghost, stealing into crude human villages, hunting men and women indiscriminately, its vines choking the life from human throats, while thick thorns opened wrists and spilled too-bright red upon the earthen floor.
“The blood sustained Xuong Cuong’s spirit, nourished him, and bound him to this Earth. And, after a time, the humans built the temple to appease the dark godling. In exchange for peace in their villages, they brought him offerings: human sacrifices as an act of worship and contrition for the mistakes of their forefathers.”
The great tree spirit now sat upon a stone throne in some dark chamber, watching with scornful emerald eyes and a snarling mouth as humans slaughtered bound captives, dribbling their blood over thick tree roots covering the temple floor.
“Many men tried to slay the jungle demon, of course”—images of armor-clad warriors rose and fell like waves—“but it was I who finally managed to subdue the creature … oh, this would be near five hundred years ago.”
A young, fresh-faced man arrayed in flowing robes of blue silk stole into the temple under the cover of night, accompanied by a stunning woman in red.
“That is me there,” he said, looking at the blue-robed figure with a fond sadness, “along with my dearest love, the heart of my heart.” He glanced at the woman in red. “In those days, I went by Du Van Mau. Such a cocky young man.” He sighed, long and wheezing. “A shaman with the Vis flowing powerfully in my veins. I had communicated with the ancient fae beings of the Endless Wood and learned of a way that the creature might be defeated, subdued. The price … well, the price was high, terribly steep. I managed to wound Xuong Cuong, to cast him into a dreamless hibernation, but, in the end, I could not pay the price to end him. An act of betrayal which cost me my love and bound me to this place.”
The light dimmed and faded, bleeding away until the cell showed no sign of the spectacular light show.
“Wait,” I said. “That’s it? Well, what the hell happened? If this demon thing was asleep for five hundred years, why is he awake now?”
The old man offered a wary smile, which never reached his eyes. “Your war happened,” he said softly, then sighed. “Even in his prime, Xuong Cuong was never so efficient a murderer as modern man has become. So much violence, so much killing. The blood, dripping into the soil, soaking into the trees, awoke him from his slumber.” He fell quiet again, letting his accusation linger in the air like a putrid smell.
“I don’t know about this,” Greg said, looking around the room. “About demons or magic, tree gods and human sacrifice. I don’t like it, and I don’t truck with no daggon hoodoo, but I want to put a stop to whatever the hell is going on here. So here’s what you’re gonna do, old-timer. You’re gonna tell us where that music is coming from, and you’re gonna tell us how to shut down whatever operation they’re running here. I don’t want no lights and I don’t want no tricks—you spell it out in plain English for me.”
“A warrior’s warrior,” the man said. “That I can respect. The music is siren song. Upon awaking, Xuong Cuong contacted the sirens, mercenary creatures of the Endless Wood, home of the fae. The music is for a celebration, of course, a party to christen Xuong’s new reign. But the song serves another purpose: Xuong Cuong seeks new disciples. For now, he is bound to this temple, unable to go forth, and so the siren song calls new disciples to him, calls those with a murderous spirit, draws them here to worship at the feet of their new master. When the party is over”—he shrugged his shoulders and lifted both hands into the air—“the sirens will move on, having served their role, and Xuong Cuong will send his pupils forth to sow death in his name.”
“And how do we stop this Xuong and all his nutball followers, huh?” Greg asked.
“Time draws near for me,” the man said in answer, his misty eyes flashing back and forth in their sockets. “I will tell him”—he pointed a finger right at me—“and him alone.” I felt a sinking sensation in my belly—I knew this was coming. Just like when you get on a roller-coaster ride. The car pulls you up that big-ass hill and you know eventually you’re gonna go back down again, but damned if that foreknowledge makes it any easier when the bottom actually drops out.
“Yeah, alright,” I said. “Greg, post up at the end of the room. I’ll be quick.”
He shifted his gaze between me and the dying man on the floor, as though we might be some coconspirators in some dubious scheme, but then finally sighed in resignation and turned away, moving back over to the prison entryway to give us space.
“Alright, bub, spill it,” I said. “I’ve got a missing friend, so say your piece.”
“You are like me,” he whispered, just loud enough for the noise to reach my ear. “You have the spark, the gift. I can see it in you. A latent, inborn talent.” He paused, smacking his mouth to work moisture into his lips. “Marvelous,” he said, “just marvelous. My lord must be merciful indeed, to send me such a boon in my greatest hour of need.”
“The hell you talking about, old man?” I scowled, folding my arms across my chest.
“Don’t play coy, boy. You see the music, as do I. That is but a single manifestation of the Vis. This music, meant to drive men to madness, has instead provoked your own talent into action. Awoken it within you.” He paused for a moment, searching my face with his milky eyes as if he could see right through my skin, all the way down into my heart and soul. “You’ve tapped the power,” he finally concluded. “You will not be able to turn back now. No putting this gift back in the box, I should think.”
“Look,” I nearly spat. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t want to know. I want to finish this mission, I want to get the hell out of this shithole, I want to go home to my family, and I want to forget any of this ever happened.”
“We don’t got all day here, ladies,” Greg called from the doorway. “Let’s move this show along.”
I pivoted, looking at Greg. “Almost done, shithead. Just cool your heels for another thirty seconds, kay?” I turned back to the old man. “You heard him,” I said, “tell me what I need to know to put this all behind me.”
“My betrayal … that is the key,” he said with a grimace. Then, moving faster than I could blink, the old man’s hand was in motion—rising up and then plunging into his guts with a sickening squish. I sat there, both petrified and mortified. For a moment my vision seemed to narrow and darken at the edges—pretty sure I was gonna pass out—but then the feeling faded
.
He pulled his hand back out, a loop of gray intestine, spotted with black blood, wrapped around his closed fist. His fingers worked over the bulge of gray meat, digging into the soft flesh, before finally pulling free a chunk of brilliant emerald, about the size of a chicken’s egg and beautifully flawless, save for the jagged edge running up one side.
“When I came here to defeat Xuong Cuong, it was to be the end of me—my life was to be forfeit. The ancient fae taught me a way I might bind the Leshy to myself, making both of us neither mortal nor immortal, yet tied together as one creature, straddling the world of life and death.” He held up the stone, looking at it in the low light.
“I ripped this from his face, one of his eyes and a piece of his soul. I bound the creature unto myself, but was supposed to take my own life once the deed was done. In doing so, the Leshy would be made vulnerable, mortal, so long as he remained incomplete. So long as he doesn’t have this stone. I have hidden it within me, these many long years, but now is the time, I think.”
He quietly examined the stone, before carefully holding it out and pressing it into my hand. “Once Xuong was mortal, my love was to use the stone to strike the final blow, ending his existence and freeing him from his suffering, but when the time came …” He paused, a far-off look entering into his milky eyes. “I couldn’t do it, couldn’t take my own life. Xuong murdered her because of my weakness. He couldn’t kill me, nor I him—death may only come to me by my own hand—but in my wrath I bound us both to this place and cast him into his slumber.”
“So what do I do with this?” I asked, holding the stone tight, feeling the force, the power that buzzed within it, like a hive of pissed off bees.
“You finish the job. I will soon die, just as I should have five hundred years ago, and you, you must use the Stone to kill Xuong.”
“Listen,” I whispered, urgency filling my words. “Let’s say I believe you about all the magic mumbo jumbo—I don’t know how to use it. I mean, yeah, I think maybe I touched it before, but I can’t remember jack shit.”
“When the time comes, it will use you. The only question is whether or not you’ll survive the experience.” He coughed, dark blood spraying from his lips. That was it—I bent over and dry-heaved onto the floor, spitting out a mouthful of yellow stomach bile. I righted myself after a moment and scooted back a step, then slipped the stone into my pocket, eager to have it away from my skin.
“You alright?” Greg called.
“Fine, just another second here,” I replied. “So what do I do with the stone?” I said, turning back to the man. “How do I use it?”
“You must channel your power through it. Just as I can only be killed by my own hand, so it is with Xuong. But the stone, it is him, a part of him. Any power channeled through the stone will be, in part, a manifestation of his own power. A clever loophole, you see.”
“So it’ll be like he killed himself,” I said, nodding my head in understanding.
“Aye, aye,” he said. “But be warned. You …” he gasped and shuddered, dropping flat, his breathing slow and shallow, his chest rising and falling less frequently with every heartbeat. “You are weak, untrained,” he continued after a moment. “The stone may turn on you, it will fight you for control, and it may well kill you as surely as it may kill him. But, you must succeed. With my death …” He paused again, his eyes dropping shut, and I thought that might be all she wrote.
“Shit, old-timer,” I said, “with your death, what?!”
He was quiet for a long beat. “With my death,” he finally muttered, his voice wet and slick with blood, “the demon will be unbound. Free to leave the temple once more.”
“You’re crazy, old-timer,” I whispered, standing and turning away, not wanting to watch someone else die. He didn’t respond, though, didn’t acknowledge me with a flick of his eyes or a twitch of his lips. I headed toward Greg, not sparing the old man another look.
“You got what we need?” he asked, carefully surveying my face, as though he might be able to discern just what had passed between the old guy and me.
“Guy’s bat-shit crazy. Let’s just find Rat and get this done.”
He nodded. “Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.” He moved into the hallway, heading back toward the main passageway.
EIGHT:
Party On
We moved through the murky tunnel for another ten minutes, following the wide stone floor as it sloped down, twisting and turning deeper and deeper into the earth. The music jabbered on, getting louder, more intense as we drew closer to its source. At last a flicker of light intruded on the gloom surrounding us. As Greg and I crept closer, the light grew—a lurid green illumination playing against the rough stone wall, occasionally interrupted by the flash of black silhouettes. The hallway dead-ended and hooked to the left, presumably leading to the temple’s main chamber, since this seemed to be the source of both the light and the strange music.
Greg pressed up against the wall before carefully peeking around the corner, just a glimpse. He pulled his head back almost immediately, and though much of his face was obscured in shadow, I could tell he was pretty damn shaken up by whatever he’d seen. He slipped back a step, then motioned me over with a quick jerk of his arm. I pushed in close, careful not to disturb any of the rubble or dirt underfoot.
You gotta see this, he mouthed at me, without actually saying the words, then backed up a step further so I could get into position. I silently crept around him and hugged the wall, just as he had done, preparing myself to take a peek. My breathing sounded thunderous in my ears and my heart labored away in my chest, pounding away like Big John Henry driving steel. This was it, the end of the line. Whatever was in the connecting room was all that stood between us and safety, between us and freedom. I took one more deep breath, then popped my head around the corner, ready to get a sense of just what we were up against.
The sight was so disorienting I almost couldn’t figure out what the hell I was looking at. My mind didn’t even have a frame of reference for this kinda screwiness. The chamber beyond was a large rectangular room, maybe 1,500 square feet, just about the size of the VFW hall my pop used to drink at. The floor was rough stone like the rest of the temple, but everything else looked like something right out of a nightclub. A very, very twisted nightclub. Maybe the old guy in the clink hadn’t been as full of horseshit as I’d originally thought—there certainly was one helluva party going on down here, with decorations to match.
Strings of intestine hung from the ceiling and walls, for all the world like rolls of crepe paper draped about. Stacked against the right wall were the party favors: metal drums that reeked of Napalm, crates filled with mortar rounds, boxes of weapons, and ammo. Enough arms and munitions to equip a small army. Wooden, oriental-style lanterns dangled from the ceiling and sat on round banquet tables surrounding the chamber, shedding sickly and unnatural green light, casting the partygoers in deathly illumination. And the partygoers themselves …
Men and women—both Americans and Vietnamese—all of them dirty, disheveled, and bloodstained, sat around the tables, eating from platters of food while they jawed away, talking loud enough to be heard over the music. Occasionally bursts of manic laughter broke out, the eerie sound of people no longer a part of the rational, normal world. Everyone also, uniformly, had an odd tri-leafed flower sprouting from their necks—a thick green vine, sunk right into the carotid artery like an IV drip.
A clump of men and women dotted an open patch, which apparently served as a dance floor, moving and swinging, grinding and groping, as they boogied like the end of the world had come and gone, and there was nothing left to live for.
Against the left wall, someone had erected an elaborate stage covered in purple satin, which housed the main attraction. The raised platform held maybe twenty men—all with blue-tinged skin and dressed to the nines in fancy-pants tuxedos a couple of decades out of date—each playing a different instrument, and playing the shit out of ’em
. Trumpets and saxophones, clarinets, and a quartet of strings. A piano man working away at a beautiful dark wood Bosendorfer Imperial Grand. Unless those cats had a crazy-good special effects department tucked away somewhere in the back, they weren’t human.
It was the three women dancing center stage, however, who stole the show and held the audience in hypnotic rapture and adoration. They just had to be the sirens the old coot had mentioned. I knew they weren’t card-carrying members of the human race, just like I knew the sun didn’t rise in the south. One look was enough to tell me that. Those women were about as human as classic Greek sculptures. Sure, they had the same general shape as real women, but everything was too right, too perfect by a mile.
They each wore 1920s flapper dresses—each dress a different hue, one red, one gold, one black—encrusted with sequins and cut away to reveal too much in some ways, while not revealing enough in others. Their skin was pale and smooth as alabaster, their breasts too damn big, their waists too damn small, not to mention they had hips like a pair of battleships and legs that went on from here to eternity. The trio should’ve been any guy’s wet dream, but they looked about as real as life-sized Barbie dolls and made me want to go to a confessional booth on general principle.
The truth was, they were unwholesome—and not in the good, fun, lets-drink-and-boogie-the-night-away unwholesome. More like we-will-steal-your-soul-and-dance-on-your-friggin’-grave unwholesome. Yeah, pass.
A massive noise reverberated from the back of the chamber, the sound rich and deep like the sound of an earthquake or a tree crashing to the ground. A moment later, a voice called out. It was Wrangle.
“Our guests have finally decided to join us,” he said in monotone. “Please, stop the music, let us receive them.”
