The smile widened on this kid’s face. I wasn’t sure why, but it looked strange, like it wasn’t something he was used to doing, like it didn’t particularly fit with his features.
“You are safe, my friend,” he answered. “Not only have I seen the inner workings of your soul, but I have been in communion with the ancestors. While they cannot see where the rain queen was taken, they assure me my path is fated to be intertwined with your own. I was meant to come here, and now I have. It’s a blessing, friend.”
“Is that why you’re grinning like an idiot?” I asked, looking him up and down. The whole idea seemed more than a little out there, but what the hell did I know about South African rain queens or the people who worshipped them?
“To commune with the ancestors is a great honor, an honor not everyone gets to experience. Not allowing myself to feel the glee that comes with being close to them would be sacrilege of the highest order.”
“Fine,” I answered, shrugging. “Whatever blows your skirt up.” Reasonably certain I could trust this kid-at least for the moment- I decided it was time to get some information out of him. Falling back on the couch alongside Renee, I looked up at him. “You’ve done what you needed to. The ancestors gave me their stamp of approval or whatever.” I took a swig of beer and swallowed the frosty liquid down. It felt good traveling down my throat and settling in my gut. “It’s time for you to tell me what you know.”
11
I walked along the streets of Atlanta, just south of Perimeter, alongside a guy who-up to this point- had never consciously been outside of his small South African village. To say he stuck out as his eyes darted up from one skyscraper to the next was like saying I only look kinda good in a leather jacket.
We headed toward the pizza place where Bandhal had worked for at least a day during his blacked out time in the city. It didn’t seem like a dangerous mission at the outset, I had no idea what we were going to find. All I knew was that my girlfriend seemed to be the target of some pretty gnarly supernatural activity, and I didn’t want her around when I went bouncing around the city with a complete stranger trying to hunt it up. To that end, she and Gary were sitting this one out.
“You stink of tourist, dude,” I said, looking over at Bhandal as we made our way toward the city’s south side. He didn’t answer, his mouth spread into an awestruck grin.
It struck me right then. I had been to so many cities throughout the world, I couldn’t remember the last time I felt the sense of wonder this kid must be feeling right now. Something about that realization stung me. Just how jaded had I become? I pushed those thoughts aside, realizing I had no time for them now. There was work to do. There were questions to answer.
With Renee and Gary tucked safely away in my newly spelled apartment with explicit instructions not to answer the door for anyone or anything, I was free to dig into exactly what happened to Bhandal and his elusive rain queen. Unfortunately, the further we walked and the more we talked, the more I began to realize just how little he help he would actually be.
“So, you don’t remember anything?” I asked, shaking my head in disbelief. He had promised to tell me everything now that the spirits of his ancestors gave him the go ahead. Turned out ‘everything’ wasn’t much though.
“I will go through the series of events again, if you wish,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the splendor of the city surrounding us. “Our former rain queen died under mysterious circumstances ten years ago. Magdhool is who now majestically sits upon the throne.”
“And she couldn’t take the throne until she came of age,” I finished, trying to speed this along. “I get all that, Bhandal. What I don’t get is what that has to do with Atlanta.”
“The former queen took her last breaths in this city,” he answered, his smile fading as he looked around the city again. His tone had grown somber and his brows had furrowed tightly over his bright eyes.
“She died here?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat as I processed that particular detail. That was brand new piece of information, and a connection I couldn’t ignore. Whatever happened to the old rain queen very likely had something to do with what was happening to the new one, and while I had no case for making it, something told me it was tied to what was going on with Renee. This was all too coincidental for the Benefactor not to be involved. Now, I had to connect the dots before it was too late.
“Yes,” Bhandal replied, fixing me with his probing eyes. “Is that information of particular merit?”
“Could be. What happened to her exactly?” I asked, trying to ignore the bad feeling settling in the pit of my stomach. “What were the mysterious circumstances you talked about?”
He shook his head bitterly like he was living it all over again. Cleary the death of this woman still shook him to his core. It was a touch crazy because he couldn’t have been more than a child when she’d died.
“Rain queens are treated as more than royalty because they are. They are gifts from the gods. As such, they are treated as gods, themselves. They are never put in danger, nor made to endure harsh living conditions. None of the poisons that infiltrate processed, modern foods are ever ingested by them. Their bodies are temples of the power of the gods, and they are treated as such. They are models of health.” His eyes cast downward, toward the streets. “So, when she came here on a diplomatic mission and fell sick, it struck us all as curious. She died so quickly, none of her subjects were able to reach her, leading many to believe she was snatched back by the gods.” He cleared his throat, blinking back tears. “Her daughter though…”
“She thought there was foul play,” I said, piecing it together. Of course she did. Your mother goes to a strange land full of strange people and is dead practically before her feet touch the ground. It would only make sense that the girl would grow up thinking the situation was a bit off. “That’s why she came here, isn’t it? She wanted to investigate what happened to her mother.”
“Magdhool was never the traditional sort. She never adhered to the old ways, much to the elders’ chagrin. She has a will of steel, and after the coronation, no one had the power to stop her from finally doing what she wanted.” He looked over at me, the smile returning to his face in a much more subdued manner, as though he was almost proud. “They did see fit to give me to her though.”
“You knew her?” I asked, somewhat surprised. “Before this trip, I mean.”
“The same way a moth knows a flame,” he said, as reverently as a preacher recounting the nativity story. “I grew up basking in her light. I was just close enough for her to recognize my face but not my heart.” He shook his head again. “Since she is my queen, that is how it should be.”
I caught a hint of something in his voice, a sort of longing I didn’t have the time or desire to dive into. Instead, I did what I could to push the story along.
“So, the elders popped you full of magical ancestor energy and sent you to protect the hard-headed rain queen in a foreign land. What happened next?”
“I must have failed,” he answered mournfully. He shook his head and literally beat his chest with a balled-up fist. Tears, large and seemingly out of place on the sidewalk, welled up in his eyes and streamed down his face. “I must have shamed my family and my name, though I have no memory of it. If I could bleed the memory out of myself, I would take a blade to my own neck. If my heart would bring her back to me, I would remove the foul organ in the name of the rain queen and kiss her feet as I fell dead at them.”
Well, that was a little much.
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of the jeans he had lifted from my closet. They fit him too loosely and the ends drug against the pavement as he walked. “We were on the plane and about to land. I was about to survey the perimeter of the airport when she screamed to me. I rushed back there to find her on the floor. Her eyes were strange. They were glowing red. I rushed to help her, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in your doorway.”
Her eyes were red, just like mine are wh
en the demon comes out to play.
Well, now, isn’t that a bitch.
“And that’s all you know?” I asked as we made the last turn toward our destination. “Judging by the date you gave me earlier, you left your village nearly two weeks ago. That leaves a huge chunk of time unaccounted for.”
As we reached our destination, I looked up at the glowing red sign and the cartoon Italian guy with the Mario Brothers style mustache and the large pepperoni pie lifted over his head.
Rocco’s Pizza had been a staple of Atlanta’s quick cuisine landscape for decades now. It was such a stalwart to the city, nearly everyone in my precinct had raved about it when I moved to town.
According to the uniform and pizza box, it was also where Bhandal had worked. Given the kid had no idea what had happened to him, this was the only needle I could find in a city full of hay. I had no delusions that the answers to everything would be here, but the answer to something might be. And that was a hundred times more than what I had right now.
“You don’t remember ever being in here before?” I asked, looking over at him. “The sight of it isn’t sparking memories or something?”
“No,” he answered, leering at the pizza parlor in a way that made me wonder if he was so taken by it because it might have played a part in his lost fortnight or if it was because he had simply never seen a place like this before. “I have no memory or ever being in this place.”
“You might not have,” I answered quickly. “For all either of us know, you might have mugged the actual pizza guy and taken his stuff. Or you might have gotten it from the Benefactor himself.”
“The Benefactor,” Bandhal groaned. His eyes narrowed, and I knew he was accessing the pieces of my memory I’d opened to him when I was proving to him I meant no harm. “Do you believe the Benefactor has our rain queen?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, both hesitantly and honestly. This woman, this queen, was Bhandal’s reason for coming along. She was the engine pushing him forward. I didn’t want to say anything that might lead him to believe I thought she was probably dead.
Even if that was what I was beginning to think. She had been gone for a few weeks now, it seemed. Any good police procedural would tell you the chances of finding a mission person alive went down dramatically after 72 hours. Not that I needed the procedurals to tell me that. I was a cop, and I knew 72 hours was a bit generous.
Still, this guy was all in in terms of his queen, and he had just promised to burn the flesh from my bones and all that. No need in disheartening him to the point of making that seem like a good idea again.
“What I do know is that all of this is connected. What happened to the former rain queen, what happened to Renee’s brother; it’s all part of a bigger puzzle that we need to solve.” I moved toward the door. “And there’s a good chance the next piece of that puzzle is through these doors.”
“Then by all means, Detective Morgan, let us enter,” Bandhal said, brushing past me and pushing through the doors before me. The kid had spunk, had direction. No wonder the elders chose him to accompany the rain queen.
As I made my way through the doorway behind him, I got the feeling something was off even before I finished looking around the room. The dark sort of energy that prickled at my demon side wafted through the air here, and as I crossed the threshold, I felt it stir from its slumber.
I grabbed Bhandal’s shoulder, jerking him to a stop.
“Hold on,” I whispered. I had no idea who or what was in here, but the sensation was enough to stay my hand and quiet my voice.
The place looked pretty normal. Kids ran around the brick parlor, circling the empty salad bar in the center of the room. A lonely looking guy with dark shades on even though we were inside stood beside the jukebox, likely looking for alt rock folk bands that really understood his pain.
There was large table in the center, a birthday party in full effect for some kid who was turning eight, judging by the oversized candle on his cake. Their pizza was half eaten and their drink cups were empty, signaling they had already been here for a while.
So, what the hell was going on? All of this seemed legit, but I was feeling was anything but that.
“What is it?” Bhandal asked, looking back at me. “Is this not standard for the American pizza parlor?”
“No, it is,” I said, taking a deep breath and trying to make sense of what I felt. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. The drinks in the glasses on the birthday table had been half-empty when we’d come in, but now they were full again. Only no one had been around to refill them. In fact, the pizza was half full now. When we walked in, it was two pieces away from being empty. It was as though we were moving backward in time, or as though what I was seeing wasn’t time at all.
“A loop,” I said in a hushed gasp. I hated loops. Temporal illusions meant to conceal the truth of what was going on underneath were some of my least favorite things, and this one seemed like a doozy. “This isn’t real. Someone’s trying to hide something.”
“What?” Bhandal asked. Pulling away from me. “How is that even possible? Magic doesn’t work like that.”
“There are lots of different kinds of magic, dude.” I threw my hands forward, letting bright red energy fill at my palms. Feeling my way around, I gathered enough energy to puncture the loop, to pull it away like the veil it was. “Let’s see what these bastards are trying to—”
The veil pulled away, revealing a giant gaping pit in the center of the room. It spun like a tiny black hole, tearing through the fabric of reality and glowing with bright blue, green, and yellow energy sparks. Everything else in the room had been torn away. Nothing existed outside this contained, spinning mouth.
Bhandal swallowed hard, his eyes wide with shock. “Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe this is the standard for an American pizza parlor.”
“You’re right, dude,” I answered, so stunned I couldn’t really catch my breath. I had never seen anything like this, and I had absolutely no idea what it meant. “It’s definitely not.”
12
Growing up the way I had was a hell of a learning experience. During my childhood with my mother’s coven, I was raised in the way of the warlock. That meant being familiar with things like shadow creatures, clairvoyants, and even the odd human mutation.
Once I was shown the proverbial door for letting my dad’s side get a little too frisky on one too many occasions, I took to the outside world, moving around as I hunted for the worst the supernatural world had to offer to sate my hunger with the lint from life’s spin cycle.
That was an entirely different sort of learning experience. I found witches who fed from the flesh of virgins, demons with wingspans the size of horses, and a particularly nasty mystic trickster who had managed to work his way up pretty high in politics.
That’s America for you.
Given all I had seen or heard of in my extremely varied experiences, it was rare for me to run across something that completely stumped me. As I stared out at the snapping and glowing pocket of darkness in the center of what used to be one of Atlanta’s legendary pizza joints, I realized rare was about to stretch itself out in front of me.
“What is it?” Bhandal asked, his body tensing and shifting into a warrior’s stance that-upon first look- had at least three things wrong with it. He might have been imbued with the magical abilities of his ancestors, but his hand to hand looked like it could have taken a few pointers from a Sunday night self-defense class.
“I have no idea,” I admitted, staring at the gaping aberration and trying to make sense of it.
“How did it tear out this entire room and replace it with a loop?” Bhandal asked, but before I could respond, he continued, letting me know the question was more of a rhetorical nature. “No, the more important question is why? This place is open for business. We just walked in. I doubt we’re the only ones to have done so. What’s to stop someone from coming in off the street and taking a seat? The fact that the
re are no actual chairs?” Bhandal answered, his tone lifting upward expectantly, as though he wanted me to tell him he was right.
“That wouldn’t matter,” I said. “A temporal loop, which is what was going on in here before I tore it away, would screw with anyone’s mind who entered. If I wouldn’t have sensed the disturbance, we could have walked in, sat down, ordered, ate, and left. Meanwhile, our bodies would have just been standing here in limbo the entire time.”
“Or would they?” Bhandal asked, shaking his head. I could tell from the way his brows crinkled deeply over his eyes that whatever he was thinking had him concerned. “This is a popular establishment. That is the information you relayed to me. Is it not?”
“It is,” I answered, still watching the temporal rift snap, crackle and pop with scarlet energy. It was like the most unsettling version of the Rice Krispies catchphrase I could ever imagine.
“And this is a popular time for Americans to eat, correct?” Bhandal said, glancing at me.
A sick feeling leveled itself on my chest. How could I have been so blind? This place was usually packed during lunch hour. Even during non-peak hours, people had trouble finding seats. Yet here it was, empty of any actual people, which begged a pretty heavy question.
“Where are the people?” I asked, swallowing hard.
“I think we both know the answer to that query,” Bhandal said, moving slowly toward the rift.
“It’s consuming them,” I said, the horror of it making my blood run cold. I thought about that, about innocent people finding themselves on the business end of that giant, snapping black hole. “It’s just sucking them right in.”
“Or they are throwing themselves into it,” Bhandal suggested. “You said our bodies would have been in stasis had you not sensed the danger here, and my entire being was taken over for much longer than I’d like to consider at the moment. Whatever has caused this thing to appear may also be taking over the customers of this establishment and forcing them to sacrifice themselves to this thing.”
Flesh and Blood: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Half-Demon Warlock Book 2) Page 7
