The Left-Hand Path: Prodigy

by T. S. Barnett

  Three people, two men and a woman, lay at the far end of the empty room. All three of them were blindfolded, gagged, and bound wrist to ankle, wearing only their underwear. They huddled together shoulder to shoulder with their arms wrapped around their knees, each covered in a film of dirt and sweat. Even the soft sound of Cora’s step forward made them flinch.

  “Jesus Christ,” she whispered, and she moved to kneel in front of the woman. “Don’t bite me, okay?” she said softly. “I’m gonna get you out of here.” She reached up to tug the cloth gag from the prisoner’s mouth and slid the blindfold from her eyes.

  “Please help,” the woman said the second the gag was loose. Her voice was weak and rasping, her lips so dry they were cracked. “Please help us.”

  “Easy,” Cora answered gently. She loosened the gags and blindfolds of the two men beside her, then began to work on their bonds. Thin ropes dug painfully into their skin, leaving lines of raw flesh around their wrists and ankles so angry that Cora winced as she snapped them free with a quick spell.

  “Those fucking assholes,” the young woman spat, half croaking. She was clearly holding back tears—she couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and a ring the sickly green of a healing bruise surrounded one of her eyes. “They said this was a good job.”

  “They said they’d be back in the morning to ‘process’ us,” one of the boys said. “But we’ve been in here for...I don’t know how long. Days.”

  Cora sat back on her heels and looked at each of their faces—gaunt, filthy, and exhausted. Subdued and broken before any spell ever touched them. Maduro was a monster, and so were all the men who helped him run this horror show. “I’m glad I found you,” she said. “That processing they’re talking about is the ingnas. All the workers here have had it done to them.”

  “No way,” the other boy breathed, instinctively scooting away from even the mention of the word.

  “You need to get out of here,” Cora went on. “Can you all walk?”

  She helped the girl to her feet while the boys lifted each other. One of them winced and stumbled on a swollen ankle, but the other lifted his companion’s arm over his shoulder to support him.

  “All the way to the end of the hall, then down the stairs and back. I saw a phone on the wall by the door—call the cops. Then hide somewhere outside until help comes. There shouldn’t be any guards.”

  “Who are you?” the girl asked. “Are you a Chaser?”

  “The Magistrate pays the salary of the man who was keeping you here,” Cora answered gravely. “I’m here with Nathaniel Moore.”

  The limping boy’s eyes rounded. “That dude they sent out the fis sciel about? I saw it right before I came here. He’s a crazy person, right? A murderer.”

  “He’s here to help you,” Cora insisted. “And so am I. Get going. I’m going to let the rest of these people out. Try and stay together, okay?”

  She gave them a bit of a head start down the hallway, then approached the first apartment door. With the barrier broken, the knob turned easily. There were beds in these rooms, at least, though it would have been more accurate to call them cots. The bathroom near the door smelled of mildew, and the four occupants sat blankly on the grimy-looking sheets of the beds lined up along the far wall. There was nothing else in the room that made it a home rather than a cell. There were no books, no television, no radio—nothing. Only dirty cots and plastic trays with bits of old food stuck to them piled up beside the door.

  Cora couldn’t even find it in her to be horrified. She was just angry.

  “You guys want to get out of here?” she asked, and each pale, gaunt face seemed to brighten, just a little bit. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Come on then. Everyone’s leaving here tonight.”

  “The b—the bosses,” a woman said as she crept toward the doorway, but Cora put a hand on her shoulder to urge her out.

  “They can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Cora made her way down the hallway, breaking barriers and pushing open doors. The people who followed her gathered their fellow workers and ushered them along until a crowd filled the corridor behind her. Some of them had filthy, browned bandages wrapped around their hands; some had missing fingers where she guessed dirty bandages used to be. Many were pale or coughing, and a few were so thin that their bones formed points at the shoulders of their ill-fitting clothes. Not a single person was in good health, and none of them seemed to have any spark of life left in them. These people were beaten and broken, and Maduro was using them up and throwing them away when they stopped being docile or useful. It had to end.

  By the time she made it back down the stairs and to the front of the building, her hands were sore from the effort of casting so many counterspells. The workers spilled out of the front door behind her and into the parking lot, forming an anxious group alongside the three prisoners she’d released before. She pulled a leather-wrapped token from her jeans pocket as she exited and fired off a series of bright, whistling flares, red smoke hissing a tall arc across and over the roof. They burst before they could fall, causing a shriek so loud that many of the workers around her covered their ears. She’d decided on the spell to draw the attention of the reg police as well as the Chasers in the hope that the Magister would keep his end of their deal. But as she looked back at the disgusting prison masquerading as a dormitory, furious heat churned in her belly, and she lifted her hands toward the building. Her fingers trembled, and she struggled to keep her breath steady. She wanted to burn it down. She wanted to destroy it—to get rid of any trace of the misery these people had suffered for the sake of the Magistrate’s greed. But as she heard a van door roll open behind her and spotted the WPLG logo splashed across the side of the car, she stopped herself and bit back the spell that threatened to leap from her lips. She couldn’t destroy this place. People needed to see. Everyone needed to see what had happened here.

  A small group was already piling out of the van and rushing toward the gathered crowd, recording equipment in hand. Cora moved through the murmuring workers until she found the three teenagers shivering even in the warm evening. She touched the girl’s arm and turned her gently toward the approaching camera.

  “Tell them what happened to you,” she said. “Tell them everything.”

  One of the van’s crew placed a blanket around the girl’s shoulders, which she clutched to her chest with a soft, strained sob. Cora tried to slip away, but a woman in a tailored pantsuit intercepted her.

  “Miss, a few questions? Can you tell us what’s happening here?”

  Cora hesitated just long enough for the camera to swing toward her, and she flinched in the center of the small spotlight. Her mouth was suddenly dry. She shouldn’t be on the news—that would not be good for their incognito status among the regs. But she still had too much fire in her blood, too much anger prickling her skin, to keep inside the words that she heard in her own voice as her eyes locked onto the camera lens.

  “Something that we’re not going to let happen anywhere else. Hoona sattaande.” She caught a glimpse of the confusion on the reporter’s face as Cora vanished in front of her, but she didn’t stay long. She rushed for the adjoining factory and hopped over the broken entry doors, finally letting out her breath as she released the spell.

  The inside of the building was a wreck. Scorch marks were everywhere on the floor, blood spattered the machines and spread into a few shallow puddles on the concrete, and a couple of the support beams above had been bent. Steam was hissing out of a pipe nearby. Cora grimaced as she stepped over the broken corpse of a man she recognized as one of the guards who had rushed from the dormitory earlier, but when she looked forward again, she gasped in alarm and put a hand to her heart. The dog creature’s face was just a foot in front of her, its jaws spread unnaturally wide and its single red eye missing its former glow. The floor around it had been burned with a symbol—the mark of the loa on the back of Nathan’s neck. She’d definitely missed the party. But where were Nathan and Elton?<
br />
  Cora squinted to scan the room, and her heart stopped when her gaze landed on the glass windows of the office overlooking the factory floor. Maduro was pressed against the glass, hanging from his spread arms bound at the wrist. Blood poured from wounds all over his body—deep slices that left broad strips of muscle on his arms and chest open to the air. On the glass beside him, in letters that still dripped red rivers onto the window panes, was a simple message.

  NO EXCEPTIONS.

  She saw Elton near the office door, wiping blood from his fingers with a handkerchief, and behind him, Nathan stood eerily still, watching with burning red eyes and cheeks stained with black ichor. She spoke his name, she thought, but the sound didn’t seem to make it past her lips. His eyes focused on her even so, and a moment later, his head fell back, and he crumpled to the floor and out of sight.

  Cora tried to make her legs move, but she couldn’t force herself to take one more step toward the gruesome scene above her. Elton appeared in the office doorway after a pause, Nathan’s unconscious body slung heavily over his shoulders. He stopped at the top of the stairs, and for the first time, she noticed Chris hunched outside the door with his head in his hands. She couldn’t hear what Elton said to him, but she saw the empty stare in his eyes as he watched the blond carry Nathan slowly down the metal steps.

  “What did you do?” she finally whispered when Elton stood beside her. The front of his grey suit jacket was saturated with blood.

  “I made an example,” he answered flatly. “Did you get things done on your end?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was uncertain. “Everyone’s outside, and there’s a news van.”

  “Then we should be gone.”

  She followed him back toward the factory entrance, reaching out a tentative hand to touch Nathan’s drooping head. Why did he always end up pushing himself too hard? She couldn’t even begin to guess what had happened to him.

  Outside, red and blue lights flashed from the top of a police cruiser, and another distant siren was fast approaching. Cora paused as she spotted a pair of men exiting a nondescript black car and recognized the two Chasers who had been at Joel and Hannah’s house to witness their “deaths.” They walked briskly toward the camera crew, and Cora felt the tingle of the protective barrier one of them threw up around the huddled crowd. Despite everything, she had a good feeling. The Chasers had seemed sympathetic when they’d found Joel and Hannah. She didn’t think it was an accident that it was this pair who’d been sent to investigate tonight. It had to be Calero’s hand. She was confident that these men, at least, were really there to help.

  21

  Their hidden rental car seemed farther away with Nathan slumped over Elton’s shoulders, and the blond winced occasionally when he had to shift the other man’s weight away from his weaker side. Finally, he laid Nathan down across the back seat with Cora’s help. She climbed into the back with him while Elton hastily stripped his ruined jacket, shirt, and tie, abandoning them in the alley in favor of a fresh shirt from his suitcase. He settled into the driver’s seat and headed North. It didn’t matter where to just now—so long as they were far away from Miami by the time the news broke in the morning.

  In the rearview mirror, Elton could see Cora gently cradling Nathan’s head in her lap, cleaning the black, oily substance from his face with some tissues. He didn’t even know how to begin to explain to her what had happened. Nathan had been—possessed, he assumed. All of the wounds that the dog spirit and Korshunov’s sprites had given him were closed and healed now. Korshunov himself was another matter. Had Nathan let him go on purpose? Or rather, had Kalfu? Elton refused to believe that whatever spirit had been controlling Nathan hadn’t noticed him leaving. But why let him?

  The boy had left his partner behind, as well. Nathan could say all he wanted that he hadn’t done Hao any permanent damage, but the trauma had been written on his face from the moment Nathan appeared. In the presence of the spirit, Hao had lost all composure completely—he’d just sat hunched and trembling outside the office, even while Maduro was dying.

  “You’re done,” Elton had told him on the way out. “It’s time for you to go home, Hao.”

  And he hadn’t argued.

  Elton drove, one elbow leaned against the car door and the other at the bottom of the steering wheel, well into the night. When he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore, he pulled off in the nearest city—St. Augustine, he thought—and parked outside the first motel he saw. Cora went into the lobby to register and came back to gather their bags, leaving Elton the job of hefting Nathan up onto his shoulders again and carrying him across the parking lot to the room.

  He was completely unresponsive as Elton laid him down, and his limbs were limp even while Cora stripped his shirt from him and wiped the dried blood from his chest. She tugged off his boots and socks and only hesitated a moment before unbuckling his belt and removing the bloody jeans as well. She covered him in the blanket and sat heavily on the bed beside him. Elton could feel her questioning eyes on him, but he was too exhausted and too sore to answer her now. He still felt nauseated from Hao’s spell, and his muscles were weak from exertion.

  Cora changed into a pair of pajama shorts and laid down beside Nathan, her arms curled up between them so that her knuckles could lightly rest against his arm as she closed her eyes. Elton settled into the opposite bed and shut off the light on the nightstand.

  He didn’t feel anything at all about what he’d done to Maduro. The man had screamed, cried, and begged in the quiet brought on by the spirit’s presence—even as his face contorted and his breath came in heaving gasps, his voice had been silent while Elton flayed chunks of skin from him, Nathan’s burning eyes watching him from across the room. Elton had done his share of violence in his life, but he’d never felt the heat in his blood that he had with Nathan’s gaze on him. It wasn’t rage, or vengeance, or even the rush of fighting for your life. It was purpose. And he liked it.

  He slept soundly that night.

  Cora was up before either of them, but the smell of the coffee she brought back from the hotel lobby was enough to rouse Elton from sleep. She handed him a paper cup with the tag of a tea bag hanging out of it and settled cross-legged on the mattress beside Nathan again. Neither of them spoke. There wasn’t anything to say—not yet.

  They had both long ago emptied their cups by the time Nathan stirred. Cora perked up as he shifted on the bed, his face scrunching for a moment before he opened his eyes. He turned his head to look at her with a small smile forming on his lips.

  “My attentive nightingale,” he murmured in a hoarse voice. He let out a soft chuckle as she dropped forward to lay her forehead on his chest in relief.

  “I was so scared,” she whispered, and he lifted one hand to touch the hair at the back of her head.

  “I don’t deserve such care.” He smiled at her as she raised her head and shifted up onto his elbows to look over at Elton. “Where are we?”

  “Northern Florida. And I have several questions for you.”

  “I imagine you do,” Nathan sighed. Cora scooted back to let him sit up properly, watching him with a furrowed brow as though she expected him to collapse again at any moment. “I’ll answer what I can.”

  Elton turned to swing his legs over the edge of the mattress and face the other man. “You know what I’m going to ask. That was your loa, wasn’t it? You were possessed—really possessed.”

  “He’s not my loa; let’s be clear. But yes. It’s only happened a handful of times before.”

  “That’s what that was?” Cora cut in. “Jesus Christ, Nathan.”

  “He didn’t have anything to do with it, I’m afraid,” he laughed.

  “So was that you doing those things, or him?” Elton pressed.

  Nathan hesitated before answering. “In Haiti, they call it being ridden by the loa. I’m there—I’m aware—but I’m not in control, no. Luckily, Kalfu’s intentions and mine frequently align, so I don’t mind it so much.”
/>   “Is letting this spirit take over your body whenever it wants part of your agreement with it?”

  “That I won’t answer.”

  “Come on,” Elton groaned in frustration. “You’re still going to be secretive and mysterious now?”

  “My accord with Kalfu and the details thereof are off limits,” Nathan insisted.

  “Fine. Then tell me why it let Korshunov escape, and why it didn’t kill Hao.”

  “Korshunov got away?” Cora asked, and Nathan gave another light sigh.

  “I said I was present,” he clarified, “not that I understood. When it happens, I can talk to him, but that doesn’t mean he tells me everything. And it’s not like I can make demands of him.”

  Elton narrowed his eyes at the other man. He was beginning to notice the change in Nathan’s tone when he was lying, or at the very least avoiding a full answer—but he didn’t think pushing would get him any further. Not with this.

  “Is it likely to happen again?”

  Nathan shook his head. “I think not. I did mean a small handful of times in almost three hundred years.”

  Elton watched him for a moment. “Did the loa do it on its own, or did you ask it to?”

  Nathan’s black eyes were sharp as they locked onto the blond’s gaze. “Kalfu isn’t at my beck and call,” he said evenly. “But when he chooses, he answers me.”

  “So you did call him.”

  “I did.”

  “Knowing that you wouldn’t be able to control him. What if something had gone wrong? What if he’d turned on me, or on Cora? What if he hadn’t let you go?”

  “What if, what if,” Nathan scoffed. He pushed the blanket away from him and rose to his feet, stretching his arms over his head on the way to the bathroom. “I said I’d answer your questions, darling, not soothe your neuroses.”