Hex-Rated

by Jason Ridler

  “Tyger Tyger!”

  I snapped back so hard my mind had whiplash and the Nazi in front of me started to become Technicolor triplets.

  I never saw the three haymakers coming.

  CHAPTER 19

  ICE HIT MY FACE. IT TURNED TO MERCURY. GASPING, I WAS PULLED away from a deeper darkness. A single star swung in the sky, a pendulum of yellow that cast large shadows against my face.

  “Wake him up.”

  “Yes, Christian.”

  Another splash of ice water, and mist preceded my sputtered breaths. Everything was taut, sore, and bleakly lit within my mind and throughout my body. Pain stretched across every inch of my midsection, as if they’d worked me over like a palooka training on a Porterhouse slab, right before being sent to the slaughter against the new champ. I blinked away burning tears and realized they’d largely left my face intact.

  Then someone slapped me so hard my molars groaned.

  “Rise and shine, Mr. Brimstone.”

  I lifted my chin. They stood in formation like a platoon of idiots. They were all heaving, holding bandages to their heads, or nursing gauzed hands that immobilized their trigger fingers. In front was the lead Nazi. “Christian,” I said wetly, “I presume?”

  He wiped his wet hand on his desert combat khakis. “Who are you, Brimstone?”

  “Where’s my friend?”

  “The savage? Tied up. Just like you. But he’s pulling the Silent Injun routine. Might have him sell cigars when I’m done. Or just drop his subhuman carcass into the Pacific. That depends on you.”

  Gently, I flexed my hands. They were both tied behind my back in a handcuff knot, a nasty variant of the clove hitch. This might take a second. And I had to play it smart. There were now three lives in danger besides my own, and all on my dime. That wasn’t fair or right. Time to change the math. “Depends on me . . . what?”

  “When you wanted Hitler’s Iron Cross,” Christian said as he kneeled into a sliver of yellow light, “I thought you might be some eccentric Jew collector. Those people are pretty self-hating. And rich. But you’re no kike.”

  There was nothing I wanted more in that moment than to kick his grill of little Chiclet-white-teeth down his throat. But I smiled. “No. I don’t have that honor.”

  Christian snorted. “And that bullshit with the cards?”

  “Actually learned that from a Jewish magician. Used them for circumcisions. Anyone in need of a bris?”

  The slap dunked me into the darkness, then more water crashed, soaking me to shivers. Couldn’t joke my way out, but, damn, they make it so easy. “What did you want with a Thule Anhänger?” He leaned in close enough for me to bite his nose. “Bullshit me, Brimstone, and I’ll bury you on top of that half-breed and set you on fire.”

  Staring into the visage of this asshole, with his righteous and vile smirk, his absolute confidence in his command over life and death, every fiber of my soul wanted to beat him until he was toothless and broke. Yet, as my hands made the rope burn on my wrist and silently and mindlessly worked the knot like I was cracking a safe, I realized what I needed was to make friends with this monster. For me, and for Cactus. Because something told me he might not talk unless I became as vile as him. The words sprayed from my mouth in pink mist. “We have a common enemy.”

  “Do we?”

  “We both know the Thule Society is alive. And well.”

  “Rumors.”

  “But . . . someone is perverting their magic.”

  The laughter from six or so henchmen hammered my thin skull.

  “And who might that be?”

  “Someone . . . versed in Shinto magic.” The cackles continued. But they were diluted. Christian wasn’t smiling. He stood and glared down, arms of knotted muscle at his side. I gulped air, the bonds loosening from my safe-cracking fingers pulling here, and there, untangling the knot’s clench. “Someone is using Axis magic to create a bastard demon. And it ain’t you, and it ain’t me.”

  Christian raised his fist to his head, like he was a robot, and everyone silenced. “What you speak of is an abomination.”

  “On that, we are agreed.”

  “Who is doing this?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. I’m a private detective.”

  “You don’t carry a license.”

  “I just got it. It’s in my office, which is locked, which is a long story. The point, Christian, is something about this rubs you raw beyond the affront to Uncle Adolf. Something I said clicked in a way you don’t like. Help me, and I promise I’ll put a stop to it.” There was a particular strand of anger in his face that was a loud tell . . . Something had happened here that links this to Nico’s case. He just needed to tell me.

  “No,” Christian said. “You will tell us everything you know, Brimstone. And then we will take care of it.”

  I shook my head. “Can’t work that way. And Rome is burning. Tell me what happened here that has your sack in a twist.”

  His face hardened to cover up some level of embarrassment . . . Whatever happened, it happened on his watch. “You have no leverage to threaten me,” Christian said.

  I sighed, leaned back in my chair, the bonds loose and wrists sore. “You really want to play hardball? You really want to give me no choice?”

  “You have no choice.”

  “I knew you’d say that. Cactus?”

  “Yes,” came a voice from the dark, that startled everyone.

  “Semper Fi.”

  Cactus was a thousand times faster than me in a fight unless I was Joyriding. In the real dark, not the fog of my brain, I watched him cut down eight men like a freight train, punctuated by the crippling sounds of slaughter: wrists snapped, knees dislocated, and the guy who probably tied his hands likely needed a new collar bone. Christian spun, and above his waistband was the tell-tale handle of a Luger. His right hand slide behind him just as my ropes dropped.

  I gripped his wrist with my right hand while my left arm snaked around his neck. Fuji called it the Manchurian Chicken Wing: I yanked his right hand up in a hammerlock, twisting his forearm and elbow out of joint. My left arm curled under his neck. Off balance, Christian struggled into my choke until he realized it was too late and his body sagged with blood being squeezed out of him. I pulled back, placed my knee against his twisted forearm to allow me my right hand back, then grabbed the Luger.

  Another mighty squirm from Christian, but he was weak as a one-armed baby. I dropped him in my chair, kept the pistol at Christian’s temple. One full water bucket sat next to two empty ones, dropped on their sides. “Cactus, are you—”

  Cactus strutted toward me, fixing his cufflink and walking over the pile of thugs. “Did you get what you needed? My break is almost over.”

  “Not yet.” I gave him the gun. “Keep an eye on the Nazi sleepover party you just created.” Christian gasped, eyes fluttering, when I grabbed a third bucked of water and doused him like a carnival game of dunk the clown. “Morning, sunshine!”

  Christian shook the water like a dog, tried to get up, and I shoved him back in the seat. “Unless you want my associate to turn this into a Nazi graveyard, sit tight and let us have a conversation.”

  “You won’t make me talk!” Christian growled.

  “I’m not interrogating you,” I said, calm as June winds. “And I wasn’t lying when I said we had a common enemy. Now, you know something about Shinto magic and Thule sorcery being mingled. Whoever’s doing it, I want it to stop. You do, too. Help me stop them, and we’ll all enjoy schadenfreude this Fall.” Christian puckered, a prelude to spitting in my face.

  My right hand cut the air like a knife and smacked him hard enough to shake his molars, rocking him back in his seat. He smiled, but didn’t spit.

  “Cute,” I said. “But I won’t tolerate disrespect. Do that again, I’ll beat up someone who doesn’t like it. Now tell me whose been harassing you for other Thule items.”

  “I’ll never betray—”

  “Oh lord, I�
��m not asking you to betray the Fuhrer. I’m not looking for a list of your customers across the city, state, country or world. Has anyone come in here looking for anything from the Thule society that set off your own radar? Something that did not feel right, even by your standards?”

  His nostrils flared and contempt oozed out. I’d touched a sore spot.

  “Help me get him, Christian,” I said. Edgar always said you built connection with rubes by making a three decker sandwich of common goal, lots of eye contact, and repeating people’s names. My hand stung and hung at my side, waiting for the next injury to preempt his insult. “Christian, what happened?”

  His eyes were thin as dimes. “I fired someone.”

  “Who?”

  “A no-account pretender.” He looked at my hand. “Kurt Snow. Claimed he’d done work for the cause in Vietnam.” I didn’t want to know what kind of horror that meant. “Was a junior member here. But one day, we found part of our merch was stolen. Something rare.”

  “Something nautical,” I ventured.

  Christian’s pale face dropped a sicker shade of white. “Yes.”

  “What?”

  His breath was shorter. “Our supplier said it was the eye of a Kraken.”

  Beast of the North Sea. Scourge of Vikings. Symbol of the nightmare below the waves . . . Edgar had taken me to northern Norway once. Aboard our vessel, a Lapp deer hunter and guide named Cnutt, told us the tales of his great grandfather, who’d been a whaler in the arctic and saw a creature the size of an island, a tentacled abomination that tore his ship to scrap and filled the water with screaming men that lashed about in a sea of blood as the serrated arms of the beast cut them to ribbons like an Imperial blender. Legend said that its root went into the dark heart of the earth, and it retracted itself to the core for slumber. During the war, the Thule Society had scoured occupied Scandinavia for anyone who had come close. The man’s great grandfather was tortured, interrogated, and his survivor story had furnished him a later grave. “The Nazis never found the eye,” I said. “If they had—”

  “We would have won.” Christian smiled.

  I could hear Cactus’ breath harden behind me. “But you didn’t. Which means you don’t have the eye.” I leaned forward. “Not all of it. Since it would have gone to a higher bidder. You got something else.” Which was as polite a way as I could say “You got conned, you Nazi shithook.”

  Christian grunted.

  “And Kurt stole whatever it was. Where is Kurt Snow?”

  Christian glared into the dark.

  “Ah. You went to collect. And he was gone.”

  Christian swung his face at me. “He wasn’t even German! He was an actor! One of those Jew method fucks who pretends to be like their character! We tore his apartment to shreds and found nothing!”

  “What did it look like? The eye?”

  Christian clamped his mouth until Cactus’ breath was over my right shoulder. In his hand was a Hitler Youth’s hunting knife. “I’ll skin his balls.”

  “A black pearl,” Christian said, quick. “On a chain. Our seller said it was a fragment. That it was part of the Kraken’s eye, which was made up of a million tiny eyes. It casts no reflection. And if you stare too long into it . . .” He shook his head. “That’s all I know.”

  Now he was lying. But I didn’t care. “Thank you,” I said to the Nazi shithook. “Cactus, let’s go.” We walked away from the pile of little Supermen.

  Cactus’ fury was so loud his aura was punching my backside. As we descended the stairs into the main room, a pall came over me. At first, I thought it was the post-adrenaline gut-check. But as we approached the main floor, ghost murmurs become whispers.

  You’re walking between two worlds, Brimstone. And soon you’ll fall through the crack.

  I landed on the main floor and Cactus said, “I forgot something.”

  His words were a distant echo as I strode through the tables covered in mounds of material touched by the dead.

  See you soon, Brimstone.

  “Not if I see you fuckers first,” I said.

  Cactus strode by me. “You move too slow.” I followed him out into the now-dark street.

  Neon and screaming guitars embraced me through the night air as we got back to Cactus’ car. And, as if on a timer, I slammed the door of his car as screams filled the building. Smoke coughed out of the cracks. Flames followed. We sat and watched as Nazis’ ran out of Iron Surplus like rats from a sinking steamer.

  “Well,” I said. “That was subtle.”

  Cactus glared at me in the rear view mirror. “You didn’t say anything about destruction of property.”

  I smiled, looking at the roasting hoard of Third Reich bullshit. “No. I didn’t.”

  Cactus smiled back.

  I enjoyed the moment, because it wouldn’t last. Someone had an aspect of a Kraken, some Shinto mojo, and that spelled a nightmare waiting for me on the set of a dirty movie.

  CACTUS SPED THROUGH THE STRIP UNTIL THE BRIGHT LIGHTS OF Wild Card covered us, then slowed down to a professionally cool 10 mph before dropping me off by double-parked Lilith, complete with a ticket.

  “Thanks for the help, Cactus,” I said, opening the door. “Sorry we couldn’t go in guns blazing.”

  “We left guns blazing.”

  I caressed the anting-anting in my pocket. “You don’t fear the fire marshal will retrace our steps?”

  “Their world was illegal. Those shits won’t tell anyone anything.” He turned, one arm over the seat. “Now beat it, Brimstone.”

  I stepped out. “You mad? I gave you what you wanted. A chance to trash more Hitler Youth.”

  “You made nice with shadows.”

  Rubbing my ribs, I sighed. “There was no way Christian was giving up anything unless we broke his world a little, Cactus. He had to see us as losers. He had to think he was winning for me to tear down his confidence. It’s psychological warfare. And we won.”

  Cactus snorted. “It’s not just winning that matters, Brimstone. How you win defines what you win. Now go.” As I walked away, he rolled down the window. “Be careful how you win, Private. You can only cheat death so many times.” He tossed something as he peeled away, mighty engine roaring.

  A fresh pack of Bicycle cards landed at my feet.

  “Thanks, Cactus,” I said to his exhaust.

  My skin itched. My clothes stuck like tattoos. If I could smell myself I’m sure it wouldn’t be springtime fresh. Now I was to go make good with the beautiful people of Nero Studios. Where there was likely some demon of the Axis living in the body of a porn actress, maybe protected by a feral Vietnam vet who destroyed Izzy’s store like Godzilla in a China shop.

  All I wanted was a Dubonnet on the rocks and to peel these pants and shirt off, hit the YMCA for a shower, and avoid the unspeakable truth that swirled around me in the neon night.

  I was a terrible PI.

  Leaning against Lilith, I counted up my injuries. My face was raw and sore. Thankfully, nothing was swollen too bad. That wasn’t magic, but my family’s DNA. Years of suffering toiling under grey skies of Ireland, stretching back to the Gaelic invasion of the emerald Isle, had helped forge a people built to suffer. Lots of Brimstones were boxers, thugs, wrestlers, as well as soldiers and laborers for other people’s wishes and wars. And that gift was no small change when I looked at the utter mess I was in.

  I tore the parking ticket and tossed it to the wind, then walked to the payphone outside the casino. It worked and didn’t smell like an outhouse. I fished for change until I realized I wouldn’t need it.

  I tapped “0” and brought the receiver to my ear. A dull click was followed by a muddy voice.

  “Operator, how may I direct your call?”

  “Police, non emergency line.”

  “Are you in any danger now, sir?”

  The pieces of the day flew through me like saucers from an Ed Wood movie, messy and shaky. “No, well, maybe.” Maybe I should hand this off before anyone else gets hur
t.

  “Sir, are you still there? Do you need assistance?

  Don’t waste your time with the Marks, James. Their lives and deaths are playthings for the Awakened. Think of all the rubes who handed over money to see a “Man Eating Chicken,” or try to outfight Hercules, or pick on Fuji, or, indeed, try to outfox our tricks. They are a resource to be strip mined, cast aside, so that we may do great things, things they will never do. They’re like the wild Irish garbage you emerged from by chance. They are the evolutionary background noise for our greatness. Don’t mourn them. Don’t pity them. Feel no obligation to those that are inferior. If they vanish, no one will notice their absence.

  “I would.”

  “Sir? I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.”

  “It’s all right. I think I got this one under control.”

  “Sir, I’m sending a car to your location.”

  I hung up, walked back to Lilith, rolled down the window, and revved her up.

  Edgar was wrong. We mattered. The great unwashed. We weren’t just history’s sad statistics without shape, form, of flavor. I was one of them. So was Maxine. So was Nico.

  And I was going to find them, or die trying.

  CHAPTER 20

  RIDING THE 101 WITH MY HEAD OUT THE WINDOW TO “THE OTHER Hollywood,” the sun a murky stain on the lip of the dark horizon, I considered the facts. Someone screwed around with a Kraken’s eye and old Shinto water demons on the set of Nero Studio’s latest porn picture, which had a Greek overtone. Maxine was targeted for possession, but Nico was the target for abuse.

  But why?

  Leverage? Looks were currency in the Valley and everywhere else. People will do anything for fame. For beauty. Power. LA is built on humanity’s desperate need for illusions. A dime-store sorcerer, not anyone of consequence, might be dipping into the valley for an even more desperate kind of victim, or tool.

  Yet serpents in the mouths of women involved in carnal sex spoke to passion as much as power, the need for the sensual and sexual. Most Nazi magic was about domination, violence control. In short, Fulton: a berserker rage. If I’d cut off his arm and beat him with it, he’d probably yank off his leg for a proper duel. But his rage and Nico’s scars seemed separate.