The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes)

by Richard Raley

  Again, it came very slow. I read each letter as it formed. I CARE ABOUT YOUR FUTURE VERY MUCH, KING HENRY PRICE.

  “That’s freaky, man. You weren’t a priest in another life, were you?”

  Slowest yet. Took a few minutes. Letters and words were missing. SAD I MUST END MY ASSSTNCE, THE WATR AND WIND WAR ME TOO GREAT.

  “The storm?”

  WID, WATER, LIGHTNIG, NOT FRIEND, LITTE MANCE.

  “Kind of liking wind at the moment. She’s warm.”

  MOMENT SHE NO LONER NEED YOU SHE WLL URN ON YU, THAT IS THE WAY O WIND.

  Thank the Mancy my generation grew up reading text messages. “Probably, but for now? She ain’t so bad when she’s sleeping and her mouth is shut.”

  IF YO EVR TIR OF YOUR PRISN, COM TO ME, I WILL TEACH YOU MOR TAN THEY EVE CULD.

  “Oh look, a Dark Side offer, wasn’t expecting that . . .”

  1 DAY, LITLE MACER, EARTH ALWAYS OUTLASTS.

  [CLICK]

  My doubts and fears were gone. Yeah, yeah, I have fears. Not like big ones, but some. I’d been kind of worried for Pocket. He’s my friend, what if the wolves used him as a chew-toy? Plus, Valentine was the first to disappear and I liked her too. She laughed at my jokes.

  Now . . . the images of Pocket and Valentine being stabbed with knives or shot in the back of the head or tied with rope or trapped in cages were all gone. I heard Smith’s voice over and over. Go back to the buses. Suddenly . . . Pocket sipped hot cocoa and Valentine sat by herself, those sharp cheeks hollow as she worried about Miranda out in the rain.

  Miranda . . . Isabel . . .

  If I told them, they’d give up. They might even start walking toward the teachers instead of away from them.

  But if I didn’t tell them . . . that was pretty messed, even for fourteen-year-old-me.

  Why do I need them? I thought.

  I could run off on my own, wouldn’t matter. Make the teachers chase me. I would probably be faster without Miranda around. Isabel . . . she could keep up, but if I didn’t have to look at that face it would be a plus.

  Back off me . . . I was being nice enough by letting her touch me and cuddle against my side without throwing up on her.

  Outside, the storm had stopped, or moved on I suppose. The rain and humidity still hung in the air. It smelled like wet tree and wet dirt. I liked half that formula. Still cold. Forties? Thirties? Just a step above snow I guess. Back then I didn’t know a thing about snow. Visalia had been about hot summers and nasty ugly winters, not four seasons.

  The cave felt warmer. There was actually a breeze of heat, weird as that seems, boiling up from the depths of the cave, however deep it went. Deep enough for Meteyos to reach out a finger and piddle us. It was a disturbing thought.

  The storm was gone, but there were still noises. The hush of breeze against rock. The drip of water from leaves. Isabel sifting in her sleep. Miranda’s soft snoring at my ear. All that talk of how much I disgusted her and there she was pressed right against me.

  With her body type, she kept reminding me of Sally, of the home I’d thrown away. Sally used to feel the same after our grunting and humping sessions. Chin on my shoulder near my neck, breasts pressed against my elbow, hip scrunched against my scrawny ass.

  When we knew her mom had the late shift she’d ask me to just lie on the bed with her, naked as can be. I wasn’t into it, but seeing as how I liked the grunting and humping I did it. Other times, when her mom was home and we couldn’t do the fun stuff, we’d lie on the bed but clothed, Sally would talk away about books and celebrities and girls she didn’t like at school and I’d listen, occasionally getting up to smoke out her window.

  Hadn’t been any grunting and humping or even talking and listening at the Asylum. But I did have a friend . . . Pocket’s in the bed next to mine and some nights we’d confiscate a board-game from the common room, shut our curtains, and play checkers or Monopoly for hours, goofing off and joking as loud as we dared to whisper.

  No one to joke with or whisper with tonight.

  Not that there’s much night left. Along with the storm, the moon faded away as well. The stars weakened. What do you do, Little Mancer? I asked myself. Even my thoughts sounded like Meteyos now. I could just sit in the cave and wait for the teachers to find us. Flip them off when I saw their faces.

  Just like I should have that first day after Samson’s fake death.

  Only that was two nights gone. Shit had happened since then. The teachers sent me running through the woods. Payback . . . it had to be payback.

  “Do you see anyone?” It was faint, a female voice.

  My head snapped up, ears perked.

  No answer.

  But . . . I know I heard it. Had the teachers already found us? Trackers, I remembered from the last dream. Three of them going missing. Meteyos helping again. Only he was gone now. Trackers, where would they be? Idiot! Worry about that after you figure out what’s going on outside the cave!

  I didn’t so much as power my way from Miranda and Isabel as I went out the back door. Sliding down the rock wall my coat got scratched up, but my body slithered away from the weight, pushing with elbows and crab-shuffling to get away. Miranda and Isabel didn’t wake a bit, leaning on each other.

  No voice but I heard movement. Coming up on the cave from the right.

  Shit.

  Just like that I’m getting screwed again? Don’t even get to fuck with the teachers and return the favor?

  It wasn’t fair. I had to do something. My feet paced back and forth, my hands making fists. Pool, damn it! I could iron fist the cocksucker in the gut. That would be some payback. Smith, Samson; hell, even Dingle, I didn’t care.

  But I couldn’t pool.

  Cuz they still haven’t taught us anything!

  My fists went white. I’m pissed! Pool! Pool, you fucker! Do it!

  Nothing . . . always nothing . . .

  “Is that a cave?” the woman again, still a ways off.

  There was a grunt in answer, barely any noise at all.

  Feet coming closer.

  Behind me, Miranda stirred in her sleep. Isabel was lost to the world.

  It never works when I try. I would have screamed if I didn’t need to be silent. Fuck, iron fist, I’ll just gut shot them, I thought savagely. Pushing against the lip of the cave’s entrance I waited for whoever was coming.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Meteyos’ last words: EARTH ALWAYS OUTLASTS.

  My fists uncurled. Those words clicked in my head. Outlast. Not burning the world down. Not little papercuts. Not the course of least resistance. Not current, not hiding, not beaming, not stasis . . .

  Defiance.

  Throw everything at me and I’ll still be standing, asshole.

  I don’t kneel, shithead.

  Beat me now but I’ll beat you in the end, fucktard.

  Earth . . . the ultimate defiant.

  I found the defiance in me and for the first time in my life . . . I pooled on purpose.

  My hand curled up yet again into a fist.

  Down on the dirt floor, Miranda’s green eyes opened up, staring at me in shock. She could feel the pool forming. I grinned at her, finger up to my lips, nodding outside. I didn’t think she could look more scared than the night before, but she did. So scared she couldn’t move, her whole body shaking.

  “Are you pooling?” the woman asked, voice close. I thought I recognized it but wasn’t sure. The problem with the last month was there were so many new voices I got them confused. It wasn’t Dingle. Maybe Mrs. Ambrose or Miss Slaton.

  The feet got closer, right on the edge of the cave, maybe a yard away. The pool inside me was just the right size for iron fist. You’ve done this before, I told myself. Probably a hundred times over the last few years. You know exactly what it feels like.

  The feet came even with me. The gray of morning still an hour in coming, I could see two shapes. “Hey, asshole!” I shouted to get them turning towards me, already throwing my punch.
>
  Iron fist went off perfect. Anima flowing down my arm, ended up in my fingers and knuckles. The punch went off perfect too. It slammed into the bigger shape’s gut, pushing him over my fist and back almost two whole feet from the impact.

  I pulled back for another punch with the same hand, turning towards the woman shape. Only she screamed . . . a just plain scared scream, straight out of a horror movie. The shit? I thought.

  Words followed the scream, “Please, don’t hurt me! Please, I’ll do anything!”

  I pushed forward, grabbed the . . . girl . . . by the shoulder and carried her into what light there was. Long hair, cute face. Floromancer colors of green and brown. Skinny but a lot going on. Taller than me, of course, but not by a lot. “Naomi?” I asked.

  I don’t know which of us was more shocked. “King Henry?”

  My eyes drifted down to the man, finding the same floromancer colors. Nice one, you just gut punched your best friend.

  Session 120

  Suit’s mansion burned like a roaring inferno. Burned bright enough that you might think Hell itself was on holiday. Glass popping, carpets curling, plastic melting. Least . . . that’s what I hoped it looked like.

  From where I leaned inside T-Bone’s car, heading away from my third crime scene in as many days, all I could see was black smoke rising up into the sky, March wind dispersing it all over town.

  Wind spreading the shit . . . that’s what Ceinwyn would be doing alright. Spreading the slap-downs and you idiot looks to anyone in sight.

  Had a feeling I’d be in her sight for a while after this fuck-up.

  Something beautiful about that much smoke showing off updrafts and currents. Start small, get big. Horde of gray vandals ransacking all over the place . . . fueled by still overpriced real estate, decade long deflated market or not.

  “You didn’t have to do it,” T-Bone decided.

  I tapped my SDR against his window, eyes facing upward. “You talked me out of killing the guy, think you’d be happy.”

  “Congratulations, you proved you aren’t a murderer.”

  “Harder than you’d think for me . . .”

  “But you’re a pyromaniac.”

  “Double special meaning there, given my love life.”

  “Burned down a whole mansion . . . on Van Ness . . . in broad daylight.”

  “No one was in it.”

  “Thanks for giving me the task of moving a naked guy into the guesthouse, by the way.”

  A fire-engine went past us going the other way, lights blazing, horn honking. T-Bone didn’t even pull over. And he calls me uncivilized. “I had to get you out of there while I fiddled with the timer on the artifact . . . Hector needed reunited with his pack . . . ‘two birds and one stone’ says the geomancer.”

  “Because I would have stopped you.”

  “Maybe . . . I mean . . . if you ever start throwing bolts of lightning instead of bull-rushing guys as a first instinct, you might actually be dangerous.”

  T-Bone stayed silent for a good sixty seconds before the mancer in him won out. “What was it?”

  “Pyro-anima.”

  “Duh.”

  “Same as our rings. Pyro-anima container for its natural expression. Put it in a fireplace then have a timer go off . . . boom. Well, not boom . . . more whoosh. I assume, since we ran away without being able to see it.”

  “Why did you never tell me about it?”

  “Very experimental, never tested . . . so I suppose it could have went boom, but not on purpose. You’d be surprised how many of my experiments blow up. Lot like my assumptions . . .”

  More silence.

  T-Bone broke it again. “We firebombed Horatio Vega’s nephew’s house.”

  “And beat him and his goons up and chained them in a guesthouse, where they will be found and hopefully arrested,” I added. “Given how much we screwed up on this whole thing . . . could have ended worse.”

  T-Bone shook his head. “It’s not over with yet. Not if I know Vega.”

  I chuckled to myself. “Not if I know Ceinwyn Dale too.”

  [CLICK]

  Ceinwyn sat on a bench outside of my shop, sipping at a red slushie through a straw.

  She sat with her legs crossed, stretched out to their full length, denim-covered inch by denim-covered inch onto infinity. The hand not holding the slushie extended as well, fingers tapping against the wood. She could have been at the park. Was at the park for all the attention she gave to T-Bone or me.

  Her blue eyes were on the clouds and the gray stain of smoke spreading through the sky. Her blond hair framed a curious expression, held back by a pair of sunglasses. Her lips . . . were not smiling.

  Oh shit.

  Still ignoring the pair of us, Ceinwyn asked, “Did you kill anyone?”

  “No,” I sulked. “No one. Fucking unfair, I tell you.”

  Ceinwyn let out of breath of air she’d been holding in. Her eyes finally dropped, finally met mine. She caught clues I probably didn’t even know were there. Glass at an elbow, stone dust on a knee. Surely she saw I favored my shoulder and that my knuckles were scraped up from beating face.

  I’d unloaded all the extra artifacts I’d carried back into their cardboard box, sitting in T-Bone’s backseat. Only a single SDR now. KHP. Didn’t get to test the second on Suit . . . might have killed him, would never know . . . stopped . . . saved maybe.

  Ceinwyn’s eyes made note of the ring but moved on. A brief glance at my partner in crime. “Are either of you hurt, Tyson?”

  “No, Miss Dale.”

  Back to me. Still no smile. “Explain.”

  The March wind ripped around me, pulling at my coat, freezing my neck and face. If I didn’t know better I’d have thought Ceinwyn entered into some type of Pissed Off God Mode, ready to tornado my ass across town. “Did you call Vega yet?”

  “Yes.”

  I winced.

  So did T-Bone. “Yeah . . . turd-balls.”

  “Double crap sundae with rainbow sprinkles,” I added.

  Ceinwyn talked over the cursing, same as she had when I was fourteen. “King Vega was as mystified as I am, but was quick to take umbrage that something might be happening in his city with his people. Explain, King Henry, now.”

  “Can I sit down?”

  “No.”

  Still no smile.

  I’m really in trouble. This thought came from King Henry Price.

  I’d done plenty of trouble worthy shit before. Done plenty of trouble worthy shit since Ceinwyn knew me too. I’d never seen Ceinwyn this mad. Even when the whole Isabel-Welf thing blew up at the Asylum. I’d thought that was the lowest I could go . . . apparently she did have depths of feeling I’d never expected hiding behind her smile.

  I’ve done ashamed as well. If I do something, no matter how fucked up a normal person would say it is, I’ve got a logical reason for it in my own head. Sure, emotions . . . I have them, pretty big ones too. Love me some pathos. But . . . even if my mind was a little different . . . equation still had to add up.

  I wasn’t ashamed of what I’d done. Every move made perfect sense at the point in time when it was made. I was just pissed off my information got so screwed up, that assumptions led my logic astray. Not ashamed at all. But humbled a bit for once.

  Lesson learned.

  Probably a lesson I should have learned a few months back with Annie B. But there had been so many lessons in those few days the one about assumptions had gotten lost. Big pooling, vampire politics, splitting pools, the Shaky Stick . . . somehow assumptions, like the one I made about the Shaky Stick theft being about the Shaky Stick and San Francisco instead of about Annie B . . . gone like smoke on the wind.

  Wasn’t a whole lot else to learn here. Coyotes are slightly tougher than normal humans . . . big deal. Already knew it. Kicked their asses. Checkmark. You up next, fairies? Want to finally show yourself again, Meteyos? But . . . assumptions leading me down the wrong path . . . hard not to place that one at the top.


  I would have killed Vega, made my sister a widow, started the war to end all wars . . . on a lie. There’s a moment you have as a fighter when you really hurt someone for the first time. Not break a nose or something, I mean really hurt someone.

  This moment came sixth grade for me. I knocked a kid out so hard he didn’t wake up for four minutes. The other kids watching the show called an ambulance while I ran away thinking I might be going to prison for murdering the guy . . . Carter Rogers, that was the name. I remember now. High school freshman, bully enough to work me up really good.

  He didn’t die. Didn’t rat me out either. Probably because he didn’t want to admit a sixth-grader kicked his ass . . . but still, give the boy props for keeping his tongue. Didn’t die . . . did end up with a concussion and stay hospitalized for a few days. Did have brain swelling.

  That’s when I realized fighting just isn’t fun, it’s serious too. Got to control myself. From Carter Rogers on I won plenty of fights but I was always careful. Always remembered my hands could kill.

  Standing in front of Ceinwyn was the moment I realized I could do the same with the Mancy, with my artificing, to levels I’d never even bothered to consider. As always with me, it took hitting the wall face first to actually do something creative thinking. “Call Vega back, tell him we need to have peace talks.”

  “Assuredly,” Ceinwyn agreed, “after you tell me what happened since our last rushed conversation.”

  “T-Bone can tell you,” I said, eyes going to my boarded up shop-front, “I need to make this place presentable.”

  I popped the backdoor of T-Bone’s Leaf, pulled out my two boxes, and walked right on past Ceinwyn. Just barely, the very corner of a single lip twitched.

  That counts.

  [CLICK]

  “I expected better of you, Tyson.”

  “Did what I could, Miss Dale.”

  “I suppose if you hadn’t been here to be a breakwater then the whole city would be rubble by now?”

  “This is where the road ended when I nagged him the whole time and eventually threatened him with electrocution so . . . probably something worthy of the biblical plagues at least.”