Wotan turned and grinned at Timon, Gaspar, and me. “Human!” he said. “Come try some of this. I caught her myself not two hours ago, and she’s very tender.”
“Go to hell,” I said.
He laughed, stuck his fork into a big chunk of something purplish, and jammed it in his mouth.
In addition to my sick disgust, I felt guilty. I’d known—sort of—what Wotan was and what he did away from the poker table. But I hadn’t tried to stop him.
I told myself not to be stupid. Stopping him wasn’t my responsibility, and I probably couldn’t have pulled it off anyway. Hell, people got killed all the time, and it was nobody I knew chopped up and spread out on a tray.
None of that helped very much. But my opponents were watching me, and I had a table image to maintain. So I took a breath, walked to the buffet, and loaded up a plate with green beans, carrots, and a roll. I even ate a little, and managed to keep it down.
Then it was midnight. Time to shuffle up and deal.
At first everything went pretty well. I was the chip leader, so I started pushing the others around. It’s funny. You always resent the bullying when somebody else is doing it to you. But when you’re the one with the big stack, you know it’s just good strategy, and feel like only a wuss would take it personally.
Really, my biggest problem was keeping my cool. Remembering I was playing against five opponents, and not just the two I didn’t like.
In other words, Gimble and Wotan. I probably should have hated the Pharaoh too and maybe even more, considering that he was the one who’d actually tried to hurt me. But it was the others who made me tense up every time I looked at them. Go figure.
The clock struck one. I threw away eight-four off-suit. And my dad said, “I want you to do whatever will make you happy. But are you sure you will be if you never contribute to society? If all you ever do is take from people who don’t play games as well as you do?”
Startled, I looked around. Dad wasn’t there. My heart thumping, I assumed—it was hard to be sure of any damn thing anymore—he was still in his grave.
Wotan gave me a leer. His supper had stained his white teeth pink. “Getting jumpy?” he asked. “I know it must be hard on your nerves spending time with monsters.”
I made myself smile back at him. “I’m starting to think you rode the short bus to creature school. I’m one of you, Shaggy. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
“We’ll see,” he replied.
We kept playing, and I wondered what had happened to me. Whatever it was, it didn’t happen again for several minutes. Long enough for me to hope that maybe it had just been my nerves. Then the shadowy room got darker.
Because it wasn’t a candlelit ballroom anymore. A cold wind blew, and in front of me, a black slab of mountainside blocked out the different black of the night sky. Something snapped and popped: Taliban shooting from the rocks. I couldn’t see them, only the muzzle flashes winking like fireflies. The sergeant had said they couldn’t see us, either, and wouldn’t hit us. Still, my mouth was dry. I pictured the silver bird with its long, straight wings, charged it with a shiver of mojo even though it made my insides ache, and threw it at the mountainside. I willed the illusion to shatter.
It didn’t. The wind kept whistling, the rocks kept, I don’t know, rocking, and the snipers kept plinking away. The Thunderbird hadn’t done shit.
Fortunately, the flashback let go of me on its own a couple seconds later. But I had a nasty feeling more were on the way.
I realized the other players were all looking at me and waiting for me to act. I checked my cards, found ace-queen, and reraised Gimble. He thought for a moment, then mucked.
I made it through a couple more hands. Then Dad was back, skinny as a pencil, the forked rubber hose in his nose chaining him to the oxygen tank. “I didn’t want to worry you,” he said. “I didn’t want you to feel like you needed to take care of me, or ask for special treatment.”
“Jesus Christ!” I said. “Did you think I liked it over there?” I spun around toward Victoria, and she flinched from whatever she saw in my face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Except that I didn’t really say any of it out loud. But I had the urge to, just like when I lived through this shit the first time. That’s how real the hallucination felt.
I threw the Thunderbird again, giving it everything I had without caring about the spike of pain inside my chest.
The illusion didn’t even flicker. It was like throwing a punch that didn’t connect.
When I came back from Dad’s house, Leticia was looking at me with a worried expression on her perfect face. I felt her concern for me—real or fake—as strongly as I felt her sex appeal, like she was Mother Teresa and Jenna Jameson in one package. It made me want to trust her, and I clamped down on the impulse.
“Don’t you feel well?” she asked. “You’re white as snow.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Maybe we could take our break early,” she said.
That was actually a good idea. It would give me a chance to talk to Timon. Maybe he could fix whatever was wrong with me.
But Wotan boomed, “Hell, no! He plays by the rules or he loses.” He looked at the Pharaoh. “Right?”
The mummy sighed, and blue smoke swirled from his cracked, flaking lips. “I hate to be… harsh with a novice player. But yes, you are within your rights to insist on that.”
“I’m not a beginner,” I said, “and I already said I’m all right. Whose deal is it?”
Wotan sneered. “Yours.”
Hoping my hands wouldn’t shake, I gathered up the cards.
I figured the one thing I had going for me was that, so far at least, the flashbacks only lasted a few seconds. If I could tough them out and focus on the game in between, maybe I’d be all right. But I couldn’t keep playing aggressively. I’d be doing well if I just avoided serious mistakes.
The flashbacks kept coming. These were some of the highlights:
Vic and I returned the rented jet skis at the end of the afternoon, with the sun sinking toward the blue waters of the gulf. I liked the way she looked in her wet bikini. She caught me looking, laughed, and then, right there on the dock in front of dozens of tourists, and even though she usually wasn’t much for PDA’s, she grabbed me and kissed me again and again, for no reason except that she felt as great as I did and loved me as much as I did her.
I walked across the stage, and the principal handed me my diploma. As I flipped the tassel on my mortarboard from one side to the other, I looked out at the crowd and saw Dad grinning. I grinned back, proud that I’d made him proud.
When I came back from patrol and got online, I had a bunch of video messages from Vic waiting for me, just like always. I saw her smile, and Afghanistan let go of me for a while.
I was on my way back from the bathroom when I heard somebody crying. I sneaked to where I could peek out into the living room. Even though we were the only two people left in the house, I was somehow surprised to see it was Dad crying. It was the first time I realized he was as broken up about my mom dying as I was. But he was trying to keep it together for my sake.
Anger twisted Vic’s pretty face into ugliness, and her wide blue eyes looked crazy. She yelled at me because both Visas were maxed out.
Dad tossed me the keys to the T-bird, then laughed at the surprised expression on my face. “I can tell you really like this girl,” he said. “So you should pick her up in something that will make an impression.”
The prisoners were supposed to be al-Qaeda. But I still had a bad feeling about handing them over to the interrogators. Maybe it was because the spooks wouldn’t even come right out and say they were CIA, even though we all knew it. I argued until the lieutenant ordered me to shut up. He looked ashamed as he did it.
I was all ready to get shot down as I walked across the food court toward Victoria and her friends. I wasn’t one of the hardcore kids. I wasn’t in a gang or anything like that. But I did get into tr
ouble. I definitely didn’t make the honor roll, or take SAT prep classes I didn’t even need. So why would a girl like her want to talk to me?
When one of the other girls noticed me, their faces were no friendlier than I expected. But, her blond hair shining even under the dull fluorescent lights, Victoria gave me a smile that was warm and shy at the same time.
Not long after that little return trip to the mall ended, my head started pounding, and my guts cramped. My instincts told me it was a new attack, not a part of the hallucinations. My opponents could see that something was wrong with me—that I was vulnerable—and somebody was trying to hex me in a different way. Ignoring the jab of pain it brought, I visualized the Thunderbird, and the aches in my head and stomach faded. It was nice that my magic was still good for something.
But no protection when a flashback swallowed me again.
I could tell you a hundred shitty things about Afghanistan. But the hash was amazing. Maybe they mixed it with opium. Lying on my cot, I felt like I was floating, and so relaxed I was numb in a happy way.
Visions came and went. Corvettes from the fifties and sixties rolling slowly through the tent one at a time. Red roses growing up out of the dirt. Zebras with green stripes instead of black. Fantasy Fest in Key West, with all the topless girls in their beads and body paint.
I knew none of it was real. And it occurred to me that the craziest thing of all, my poker game with a bunch of monsters—like a painting of dogs playing poker, only even goofier—probably wasn’t, either.
I know: Just that afternoon, I’d told Gimble I didn’t have any trouble telling what was real and what wasn’t. But that was when my mind wasn’t under attack.
And despite the sad, scary things I’d seen there, maybe it was tempting to think Afghanistan was what was real. Because if it was, Dad was still alive and healthy, at least as far as I knew. Vic still loved me and was waiting for me to come home. I was still going to go to college and make everybody proud.
Evidently my attacker, whoever it was, could tell this was the hallucination that might actually crack me. He or she apparently wasn’t able to make it last any longer. But it started repeating over and over again.
The blissful what-me-worry high—the feeling that the poker game couldn’t be real—started to hang on even when I was seeing the ballroom. I had to stifle the urge to break out laughing. I wanted to go all in with garbage, get up, grab Leticia, and kiss her, or punch Wotan in his hairy, tattooed face, just to see what would happen.
Somehow, I kept it together. Until Queen’s mouth fell open in surprise. “My eggs,” she rasped.
Head bobbing, Gimble turned to her. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes, there’s a problem!” she said. “I adjusted my cycle. I shouldn’t be laying. Which of you did this to me?”
Nobody spoke up. I jerked in my seat and made a hiccupping noise as I struggled not to laugh.
“Do you forfeit?” Gimble asked. “It won’t reflect poorly on you. Not under these circumstances.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said. “No, I don’t forfeit. I just need my maids to attend me.”
Two females of Queen’s race came running. Although they weren’t very female. They were even skinnier than she was, with hardly any swell to their breasts and hips. They also looked very much alike.
Queen lifted herself up in her chair, and they slipped her long skirt and bloomers off. Then they hunkered down on the floor. One crawled underneath the table.
I thought again that all of this just had to be the hash running wild inside my brain.
“Where were we?” said Queen. “Oh, yes. Wotan, are you going to call, or what?”
It took him a second to answer. Maybe even he was having trouble wrapping his head around what was happening. But then he raised, and the game continued. And I kept popping back and forth between the ballroom and the tent.
Until Queen grunted, and her whole body tensed. A sliding, gurgling sound came from under the table, and then a gasp.
“What?” said Queen. “Let me see.”
The maid under the table must have passed the egg to the one who wasn’t, because the latter was the one who held it up for Queen to see. It was no bigger than a ping-pong ball, and a dirty-looking gray. Jelly seeped through several hairline cracks.
“Oh, my dear friend,” said Leticia. She was full of sympathy for everybody tonight. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s nothing,” said Queen. “One or two are always bad.” She grunted and stiffened again.
The second egg looked just as spoiled and nasty as the first.
Like I mentioned before, the others respected the Pharaoh. They played as hard against him as they did against each another, but they mostly didn’t taunt or insult him. But now Queen jerked around and gave him a glare that managed to burn with hatred despite her blank inhuman eyes. “You did this!” she said.
“Why would you think so?” the mummy answered. Candlelight gleamed on the edges of the plastic splints.
“You know death magic and nec—” she began, and then I was in Afghanistan.
When I made it back to Tampa, he was talking. “—could resort to violence, I suppose. If you’re certain everyone else is convinced I actually did… tamper with you. And that a scuffle is advisable even in light of your delicate condition. I’m no authority on the biology of your species, but isn’t there a risk of losing an entire generation?”
Trembling, Queen kept glaring at him. He blew smoke in her direction.
Meanwhile, her little round shoes clicking on the floor, A’marie hurried over to us all. The tray in her hands held fluffy towels, washcloths, a basin, a pitcher, and a glass.
As she reached the table, she lurched off balance, and the tray tilted. Everything on it tumbled down on top of Leticia. The water drenched her perfect hairdo, makeup, and red silk gown. Startled, she cried out.
“I’m so sorry!” said A’marie. “I’m so sorry!” She snatched up one of the fallen towels and started wiping and dabbing at Leticia.
Until Leticia shoved her away hard enough to make her stagger three steps and fall on her butt. “You brainless freak!” the redhead snarled.
“I just wanted to help the lady Queen,” A’marie stammered. She shot me a glance and opened her hand just long enough to give me a peek at a waterlogged white handkerchief with a brown dot on it.
“Did anyone tell you to do that?” Leticia asked. “No? Then your punishment will be even more severe.” She stood up, and then I realized what was really going on.
Maybe I put the pieces together because I noticed the flashbacks had stopped, and the ballroom and the creatures in it felt real again. Or maybe it was magic intuition kicking in. Whatever it was, I was suddenly sure the spot on the hankie was my blood.
Gimble had jabbed me on purpose, and the point on his hand had drawn and held my blood like a syringe. Then he’d passed it to Leticia, who used it to voodoo me. The blood amped her power to where the Thunderbird couldn’t block it.
A’marie had figured out what was happening, then created a distraction and an excuse to climb all over Leticia and grab the handkerchief out of her lap. And now Leticia was threatening to hurt her if she didn’t give it back, although she couldn’t say it in so many words with everybody else listening.
I still felt shaky, but I jumped up anyway. “Hold it,” I said.
Leticia looked around at me. “I’m sorry if this distresses you. I can see how it might, especially if you’re not feeling well. And I’ll be happy to discipline the thrall elsewhere, so you won’t have to watch. But she does need correction.”
“It doesn’t matter what she needs,” I said. “She doesn’t belong to you. She’s Timon’s, and at this table, I’m him. So it’s my job to punish her.”
I had no idea whether the Old People’s traditions really backed up what I was saying. But I had picked up on the fact that to a certain extent, the rules meant what you wanted them to mean. You just needed to say so
with style and attitude. And come across like enough of a badass that it wasn’t worth it for anyone else to disagree.
Right then, I didn’t feel like much of a badass. But at least I was in control of my own head again, and the head was Leticia’s specialty. So maybe it would make her think twice.
She gave me a pleading look, and those bright green eyes sucked me in. “Please. You don’t understand. I need to be the one to do it. To regain my dignity, and the status I’ve lost in my eyes of my peers.”
Damn, but I wanted to say yes! I didn’t forget what she’d done to me, but it was almost like it didn’t matter. But not quite. I pictured the Thunderbird hanging between us, blocking out her beauty, and then I was okay.
“No,” I said. “I gave you my answer. You can either accept it, or we can show everyone some blood.”
“What an odd way of putting it,” the Pharaoh murmured.
But it wasn’t really, because I was actually letting Leticia know that if she kept pushing, I’d tell everyone she’d been cheating. I was tempted to do it anyway, except that I didn’t really know how things would go if I gave the others an excuse to turn the game into a brawl. Leticia and Gimble had partnered up, at least for the purpose of eliminating me. Wotan didn’t like me, and the Pharaoh had already messed with me once. Queen didn’t owe me any favors, and was busy with her eggs. I could see myself getting ripped apart by three or four monsters at once, while the others just sat and watched.
So I hoped Leticia would back down.
And, after looking into my eyes for another moment, she did. She gave me a sultry no-hard-feelings smile and purred, “We could always punish her together. It could be all sorts of fun, even for her. Think it over, and let me know.”
“No doubt he will,” the Pharaoh said. “But for now, if your little dispute is resolved, Queen and I still need to settle ours.” Taking a fresh cheroot from the gold case in front of him, he turned back to her. “I believe you were proposing to spill some of my blood—figuratively speaking, of course—and I was trying to convince you it would be unwise.”
Queen glared. Then she said, “I withdraw. And I hope you rot away to nothing, as you should have a thousand years ago.”
Blind God's Bluff: A Billy Fox Novel Page 8
