by Jason Ridler
“What kind of help?”
“During the occupation, was there anything like these creatures that . . . touched on both cultures? Axis magic? Shinto sex demons? Twisted love children of Reich and Emperor? Can you help me?”
She turned her back to me. Not as a sign of disrespect, but as a note that her mind needed privacy. My guts sank, asking her to go back in time to a world of brutality only the hardest of soldiers knew, and in many ways worse. A girl in a man’s war, fighting across Luzon for scraps of good, terrified that every step the collaborators would turn you into the Kempeitai, and you would end up in the hell of Bilibid. But I knew Izzy. There was a girl in trouble, hounded by demons.
Arms crossed, she faced me. “Yes.”
CHAPTER 14
IZZY FLEXED HER ARMS, SQUEEZED HER BICEPS, AND LOOKED directly at me: not my eyes, me, the essence hovering before the windows to the soul, the core of who I was, the unvarnished version of my ego that hid in my mind. She talked to that and I held still and tried not to blink.
“A brothel near Manila, outside the old walled city, was run by a Japanese major.” She wetted her tongue. “He was known to us as Major Kasamaan. He was part of the secret police, working with the collaborators. He had a jeep they said never ran out of fuel. He could drive forever across the island, hunting for guerrillas, hurting those in the barrios who helped the guerrillas in every way. And he targeted women for his brothel. Anyone who helped the guerrillas would have their daughters, or mothers, or even grandmothers dragged to the Hotel Kasamaan, as his brothel was known. No one ever left it.”
As bad as this was, I knew it would get worse. Even the animals were quiet.
“They came for my friend, Makisig. She was a runner with the bamboo telegraph between my guerrilla unit and her barrio. She was seven.” Izzy exhaled hard. “Someone snitched. We went to break her out, until the guerrillas heard she was at the Hotel Kasamaan. Then our leader, an American engineer, said no. Ten guerrillas were more important than one girl.”
She leaned forward. “I slipped in myself. James, this was no hotel. It was no brothel. It was a church, for dark gods. The basement was littered with trinkets and sigils and signs. Some were Shinto, yes, others were German. Others . . . were not made by human hands.”
I nodded.
“Maki was tied to a pole, along with four dead woman in a row. Flies were wild and ravenous and ate at my eye as I crept in the shadows of the fire pit at the center of the room. Major Kasamaan had his fingers in her . . . privates. Abusing her. I wanted to throw my little bolo into his eye when I saw her back arc, and—”
“I demand to see the vet!”
The woman from the front desk was screaming.
“I don’t care if her hair is on fire. I will speak with her.”
Rage twisted in Izzy’s eyes. She stood in her heels, walked with the precision of a dagger, then left the room. The next sound I heard was the righteous old lady screaming as a door opened and was slammed. Izzy came back, captured by that moment of rage. She sat, then focused.
“A serpent burst between her lips. No toothless Japanese mollusk. No octopus. It was fanged, vicious, and its colors bled black and red and—”
“White,” I said.
She nodded. “Maki was dead by the time the creature emerged and ate the corpses in the room, fallen Filipinos who he had used in experiments. Major Kasamaan died,” she said, and I must admit I wondered how painful she made that day on earth. “But the creature . . . it grew as it ate the dead people. Including . . .” Her fingers interlocked as if in prayer. “I dropped a grenade and ran. Never saw it again.”
“You did the right thing.”
She dismissed my comment with a glare. “Save your consolations, James. I’m not a weak American girl crying for her mother’s breast. The power you are dealing with is vile. If what attacked that girl was of the same beast . . .”
“You said it ate? Did it have teeth?”
She shook her head.
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t doubt my memory.”
“Just confirming how different my case is from yours. Confirms someone is messing with this magic. This serpent had teeth like daggers. It wasn’t meant to kiss, or swallow. It was meant to tear and destroy . . . Which sounds more like a wolf to me.”
“Japanese wolves are extinct.”
“I know. But there was another member of the Axis that had a love affair with wolves. And the Thule society—”
She gasped, covering her mouth. “Yes, yes, yes. The major . . . he had a German liaison in Manila. His hands were covered—”
“In runes. A Thule society clown. Did you see him that night?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea what happened to him.”
“Whatever happened, someone is messing with Axis magic.” Fears spread behind my eyelids as I pressed my palms into my eye sockets, a flood of thoughts sprung from my brain: I just wanted rent, I didn’t want to face dark magic, I didn’t ask for it, in fact, I made sure I’d be clear of the Big Guys of Dark Stuff, I wanted small potatoes cases, cheating husbands and crazy old ladies, that was manna from heaven, and now I’m throat deep in the darkness again and it’s reaching for my lip on my first goddamn day.
I pulled the palms from my eyes, and the mashed sandy orange gave way to the reality of Izzy’s beauty. “Got any Dubonnet?”
“Something better.” She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and with one hand pulled out a heavy cash box that was locked. “James, there has been . . . lots of interest in Shinto magic these days. Many of these hippie peoples are looking East of India for the next fix of enlightenment. Tourists, more like it.” Izzy’s spat the word tourist with enough force to remove a tooth. Her brown eyes blared 100 watts. “But not just Japanese spiritualism. German, too.”
Teeth locked. “You mean Nazi.”
She nodded.
“Damn it.”
Edgar and I agreed on one thing: there was nothing worse than the scum-sucking turds of the Third Reich’s occult mystics. Degenerate pretenders, was what Edgar called the Thule Society. Monstrous shithooks was more accurate. Edgar never told me what he did during the war, but his hints and clues and a couple of nights with a little too much gin with his tonic made it clear he’d been overseas, part of the shield and sword that destroyed Hitler’s fortress Europe. And the monsters he saw . . . like most of his generation he kept them to himself. Only difference with other people’s fathers and uncles who kept their mouths shut about Normandy, Ortona, or Midway? Edgar fought actual monsters. “Who are these customers?”
“New. Down the strip. Called Iron Surplus. Sell mostly war junk to idiots. Some of my customers who enjoy my . . . cocktails,” which was Izzy speak for mildly enchanted potions, lotions, and more that she learned from her Grandmother before the Japanese cut her head off in front of her, which makes her continuation of the family tradition of Kulam, or folk magic, sweet, even if most of what everyone wants is a thousand variations of Spanish Fly. “They are big, James. Tough boys.”
“Good thing I’m only want to talk to them.”
She tsk-tsk-tsked me again, removed a key from her lab coat pocket, and opened the cash box. “You’re a trouble magnet, and you know it. If you’re going into the mouth of needles, you will need some armor.” She lifted what appeared to be a necklace, but with an iron pendant swinging from the bottom. The pendant’s face held a large eye. On one side was a sword. The other a shield. At the bottom it said Roma.
“An anting-anting,” I said. “I thought these charms were for criminals and outlaws.”
She nodded. “I wore it during the war.”
“Izzy, I can’t take that—”
“Take? You’ll return it as soon as you are done! Hold out your hand.” I hesitated, and she snarled. “You walked with Edgar through the shadows of the unknown, and you can’t trust me with my own people’s magic? How typically American. I’m trying to help you and you think the little Filipina’s magic char
m is bunk.”
“I am unworthy of it.”
Her glare softened.
“Izzy, the last time I saw you was the night before . . .” I choked on emotions so warm and gooey they melted my insides like napalm. “When we were to be wed. And I always figured you didn’t show up because . . . I wasn’t worthy. And I get it. You wanted out of Electric Magic. You hated Edgar. And I chose you but—”
“Enough.” She wiped away the word with her hand and took a long, deep breath. “You were a child, James. Even now. Part of you is a child. And I missed that because my childhood was slain by war. Your proposal was sweet. And I was too cowardly to break your heart when you asked. So I say yes, and then I know it’s a no. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Or find you worthy. Now take it.”
I did.
“Put it on. Under your shirt.”
I did.
“How do you feel?”
For a very warm second, there was only Izzy, strong, determined and beautiful, the Tomgirl from Manila who hid on a US warship and came to the US with red hands . . . the girl who knew a thousand animal languages and could turn a wild dog into her best friend with a stern glance, who had lazy tomcats jumping through fire hoops, and could ride a bear with a hug until she stood on his shoulders like Mowgli . . . who tired of the circuit and left me there, a chump in a borrowed tux from Sir Reginald Barker (our tattooed geek who claimed to be British royalty), me sitting outside her tent with cubic zirconia ring in my trembling fingers . . . the girl who ran away from our three-ring circus and became a vet, a healer of animals, and quiet practitioner of her people’s magic.
“James?”
“I feel,” I took the damn thing off, “like a man wearing a bullet proof vest in a church.”
“That amulet is no joke.”
“I know, Izzy.” I sighed. “That’s why I took it off.” Because the damn thing made me feel safe in the sadness of the past, an after burn of wearing something that was designed to bend bad magic, ill fortune, and shit luck should it come your way. “It has a hell of a kick. And I’d rather not feel invulnerable unless I have to.” I delicately wrapped the hemp rope and placed the anting-anting in my pocket. “I better go before those Nazis close up shop to go burn a synagogue. Mind if I use your phone real quick?”
She nodded, stood, and walked past me to go pick up business at the front. “Don’t die, Brimstone,” she said, hard and secure. “If you do, I’ll have to bring you back to life and kill you myself.” She laughed. I did, too. Then I dialed Happy Knight.
“Happy Knight, where the rest is our guarantee.” The owner of the childish voice snorted, then giggled. It wasn’t Morris. Some kid. High, stupid, or both.
“I need room 1A.”
“Yeah, man, okay for Juan A!”
“I’m glad you crack yourself up, kid.”
“Oh man, are you really talking to me right now?”
I smiled. “I am. What’s your name, son?”
“Marco.”
“Ah, Marco. You’re a employee of Mr. Morris, correct?”
“Yeah, he’s cleaning the pool. I didn’t want to get the raccoon that was in the pump. Death is too heavy, man.”
“Tragic. Marco, my name is Frank Stanley. I am the owner of the motel.”
Silence.
“If you don’t do as I instruct, I will have you arrested for being drugged on the job.”
“No, I’m no head! I’m responsible! I timed it perfectly to end when I got to work.”
Ah, the future. What wonders we will see with Marco, the world’s greatest unintentional comedian. “Then prove it. Patch me into Room 1A.”
“Okay, yeah, I got this one.”
CLICK.
It rang. And rang. And rang.
I called back. “Marko—”
“I’m so sorry! I did what you said!”
“That’s fine. The phone appears to be off the hook. I need you to knock on that door. I need you to see if my wife is still sleeping. She’s very ill.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back, just hold on okay, boss?”
Tijuana brass crackled through my ear with so much treble it was like a trumpet giving birth and screaming all the way to the drop. Apparently this annoying music was one of Morris’s splurges for customer service. I missed the silent darkness of the last call.
CLICK.
“Okay, I checked!”
“And? Where is she?”
“How should I know?”
“You just checked the room!”
“Oh, yeah. She’s not there, man . . . whoever she is, she’s gone.”
Shattered glass thundered from my exposed ear. Women and animals screamed from the front. The receiver hit the floor as something at Pet Palace roared.
CHAPTER 15
WITH THE SPEED OF CHUCK YEAGER LATE FOR A DATE, ALL THE world silent behind me, I chased the screams down the hall. Broken glass stained the ground of the office foyer. A large shadow filled the mouth of the hall. It turned and screamed at me with frothy intent and my Night Eyes took the details.
Six foot two, two hundred thick pounds. Jeans, white undershirt, and red flannel shaking off his frame. Rock jaw, hair down to his shoulders and a five o’clock shadow that had been up all night and turned into a beard from nose to neck. Fists at his side like a gunslinger and around his neck hung his own amulet: a director’s viewfinder, bouncing off his heaving chest. Worst, though, were his eyes: dilated, beady, and flashing red.
Fulton—the director of Nico’s film.
I ran, he charged, but momentum was on my side. Shoulder hit chest. Hoisting his legs up, I drove them down to the ground. We slid into the foyer, and I hoped the shift to daylight would aid me in blinding him, if only for a second.
The slippery son-of-a-gun was faster than a greased pig on Easter morning. My right cheek ate an elbow in the fray, making Alicia’s caning of my chin wake with fresh agony, thoughts going fuzzy for a cold second. He shook and shimmied and I tried to grab one of his arms to break. He’d had enough training to counter my grip, and enough strength to toss me a ways away.
And the taste of magic around this shithook was like burning sand.
I scrambled, and he was up, staring fire. Broken glass churned under my wingtips and his engineer boots. Fists flew, blocks and parries followed, and I dodged another elbow-kiss while Izzy grabbed the two patrons in the foyer and hustled them and their pets down the hall and, hopefully, out the back. All the while Fulton’s fists charged while he frothed out grunts and groans from his mush. Broken glass crackled as I landed a couple of rib shots that bought me some distance, but didn’t stop him from coming. Thank God I had Sausage King jerky in my blood instead of just exhaustion and floor biscuits.
I suckered him into shoving me back, and he kept coming as if cruising at his regular speed: breakneck for breaking necks, while the side of my face flared up like a balloon full of raw meat. Fulton ran through the patterns the Army had taught him, far more than most soldiers got, and as I breathed hard I realized he was probably a Ranger or Green Beret far from the sky . . . which meant I couldn’t just get him to submit. Sleep or death was my only option. A left cross came and wiped the thinking from my brain, so I sidestepped, dove for a clothesline, and slipped in for my second “sleeper” of the day—
—until Fulton tossed me around like a drunk riding a bronco. The office bounced around me, desk to coffee pot to chair to wall, while I gripped tighter around Fulton’s bull neck, but the fury that bled into his eyes was deeper than a bad stare and the taste of burning sand meant he wasn’t going down, even without oxygen.
Fulton roared with the bellows of a minotaur.
“Ah, crap,” I spat, and braced for impact.
BAM! I hit the desk at such an angle that my kidneys were almost evicted.
BAM-BAM! Twice his head rocked back into my swollen cheek. Rivets of agony pocked up my skull.
BAM-BAM-BAM! Three elbows in my ribs and I had to break the strangle hold or my lungs wo
uld be punctured.
I fell back into a waiting room chair, huffing.
“So, Fulton,” I said, huffing while he massaged his neck. “Ready to give up and tell me where Maxine is?”
The woman’s name triggered a scream and veins of rage emerged from his skin thicker than tent rope. With meaty hands, Fulton tore the top of the front desk off like Frankenstein’s monster going ape on his own slab.
He swung for the bleachers as I dove across glass and dodged decapitation. Turning, he stood by my feet and raised the slab of desk to crush me. Thus, a gift presented itself. I drilled his balls with my wingtips and gave him the world’s most atomic “gas pedal.”
The embers of his red eyes smoldered, then shook, then dimmed. The slab of desk in his hands shook before dropping with the grace of a guillotine. I rolled to the right and the slab crashed to the ground, edge first. Fulton was on bended knees, a statue of power that had started to crumble. His flannel shirt was torn and, upon his bare skin of his shoulder blade, there was a mark that I thought was a tattoo until it flared black and red . . . a sigil.
He’d been magicked in some goddamn way.
Which meant he might be a victim. Not a perp. Not a predator.
I sat on my butt, ass cheeks a little tender from the pokes of broken glass. “Fulton, listen. Someone did this to you.” His eyes clenched. Sweat dripped down his fat nose as if from an open wound and tapped the floor every second. The viewfinder swung like a pendulum from his thick, vein-pulsing neck. “I can help you. I can. But you need to listen closely.”
He dropped to his knees, wheezing, eyes as shut as the dead.
“There’s a Ancient Sumerian mantra that might help you.”
His hands lay on the floor atop broken glass.
“But you have to say it just right.”
He gripped shards with both hands.
“And you’re clearly not listening to me.”
His eyes opened.
