My eyes widened as the shape of a great wolf took form, and then I crashed into a demon I had not seen in my distraction and recoiled away as I regained my balance. The demon felt my presence, but the contact was too brief for it to do anything other than look around trying to find me as I was already sprinting off.
Learning my lesson, I concentrated on navigating my way through the village, the end of which I could see just a few miles in the distance in what looked like a sharp cutoff of the shacks. But my curiosity got the better of me, and I turned around just in time to see the giant wolf pass through the portal and onto the snow, bounding towards me with terrible speed.
Throwing caution to the wind, I put my head down and ran as fast as I could, barreling through any of the demons I couldn’t avoid. Only once did I need to veer off course to avoid one of the shacks directly in my path. As I passed the last of the huts, making it outside of the village proper, I chanced a glance behind me, and nearly tripped over my feet as I saw the massive wolf less than a dozen yards behind and closing fast.
I skidded to a stop and turned around just in time to see the wolf pounce, and then barrel into me, bringing the world back to vibrant color and knocking the wind out of me as it sent me flying onto my back. It landed on top of me, pinning my shoulders to the ground with paws nearly the size of my head, and it bared its massive teeth as it lowered its head towards my face, snarling, and growling.
Reflexively, I reached out and grabbed two hand fulls of fur on either side of its gaping maw, and pushed it away as hard as I could. As with the increased speed I seemed to have in this strange realm, I found that my strength was also far greater than normal. I managed to push the massive beast away from me despite the muscles around its neck and shoulders rippling from the effort.
The cold began to set in again despite my adrenaline, numbing my legs and back. I leaned into the effort and managed to slide the beast backward, its paws scrambling to find purchase on the wet snow. I slipped one foot under myself and went to stand, then my body jolted, and I fell back onto the ground.
The fabric of the realm thinned, the way a dream transitions back to waking, but only for a moment, and then the nether realm solidified again, and I was back struggling with the beast on top of me. Over my shoulder, I could hear the dozens of footfalls rapidly crunching through the snow, closing the distance.
I was certain I was about to die, either through the jaws of the wolf or the talons of demons closing in on me, and then a blow jolted my head to the side, and I found myself staring into a pool of cold blood. I thrashed around, panting, until I saw the blood flicker red and then black and the red again, and smelled a foul odor. I looked to the side and caught sight of the dumpster, and I exhaled. I’d finally woken up, and the pool of what I thought was blood turned out to be a puddle of flickering water, red from the neon exit sign above me. I was back in the alley.
Another blow struck the side of my face, and I recognized it as a slap this time. I turned my head around and flinched as I was just inches from the pale man’s face. All I could do was watch him watch me. I glanced down, to the hilt of one of his ornate knives in his hand, and then back up to his face.
I nodded. “Kill m—.” My voice was so hoarse the sound even surprised me. I coughed. “Kill me. Finish the job. I deserve to die.”
"She has already passed judgment on you." The pale man reached down, grabbed me by the collar, then pulled me up to a sitting position. I offered no resistance as I teetered on the edge of consciousness while he patted me down, searching for something. Finally, he reached down beside me and picked up the bone dagger I had discarded, turning it over in his hands as he inspected it.
He released me, and I fell back to the ground with a splash. I saw the confusion on his face through my swirling vision as I watched him stand.
“Though I am but a meek, lowly vessel; a conduit of my Mistress’ will, I seek understanding, should She deem thy worthy.”
I groaned. "For fuck's sake. Just kill me and shut the fuck up already.”
"You walk the edge of darkness and light. It seems the Mistress has interest in tipping that balance." He hesitated as if the words he would say was too great a struggle. "Come, join our order. Learn of Her ways, Her grace, Her guidance."
“I…I…” My mind was a blank.
“You must answer this now.”
I looked at the fetish in his hand again, and he tossed it onto my chest. There was no way I would agree to join the pale man’s crazy religion, but the old shaman’s words came to mind in a rush of clarity, and I remained silent.
The pale man waited for a long moment in silence, then nodded. “Stray too far into the darkness, and She may well call for your reckoning once again.”
He turned and walked away, leaving me staring up at the flickering red light until I slipped from consciousness, clutching the dagger to my chest. Then the nightmares started again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SHORT, RAPID VIBRATIONS jolted my body, finally freeing me from a nightmare worse than any of the others. I opened my eyes and squinted from the glare of the light shining down into the narrow street. The buzzing started again, in my pocket, and this time I heard the piercing sound of the ringer on my phone.
I sat up, a little too fast, and had to reach out and place a hand on the dumpster beside me and wait for the world to stop spinning. I took a moment, then reached into my pocket and pulled the phone out, and sighed when I saw Rhonda Eastman’s name flashing on the screen. The firm’s investigation was the least of my worries right now.
I ended the call and cleared the low battery notification that popped up on the screen. Before I put the phone back into my pocket, Fati flashed into my mind. On a whim, I scrolled to Fati’s name and dialed. It rang once, and then the line connected. A surge of energy shot through my body like a direct injection of adrenaline into my veins.
I heard Fati's muffled voice, but I could tell she was shouting.
“Fatima, baby. Can you hear me?” There was no response. “Fati! Can you hear me?! I can’t hear anything you’re saying. If you can hear me, please know I’m so sorry. I am. For everything. Just give me a chance to make it right. I can change. Hell, I’ve already changed. Just give me a chance to show you, however you need me to, however long it takes.”
Again, no response. But then I heard another voice in the background, and I realized Fati must have picked up the call by accident. I screamed into the phone, hoping she would hear me. “Fati! You are my world, baby. I can make things right. I can…no, I will. Just give me a chance. We can start over again, move away. Move anywhere. We…we can move to Zambia and reconnect with your family, just like you always wanted. We’ll retire early, don’t worry about the money; I can make more for us.”
When I ran out of breath, barely finishing the last sentence before gulping air, I finally heard her speak in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “Darien?” She sighed. “I have nothing to say to you, and I really don’t have time right now.”
“Fati, come on, baby. Please.”
“Oh god,” She said, sounding distant again. “What are you doing? Stop that!”
“Fatima, is everything okay?”
She spoke into the receiver this time. “Darien? How did—I don’t have time for this, and I have nothing to say to you regardless. Stop calling me—dammit, DJ, what are you…? Darien, I have to go. I have to go. Don’t call me again.”
“You’re on the phone, mommy?” It was DJ’s voice.
“DJ!” I shouted into the phone. “DJ, you’ve got to be a big boy for daddy. Take care of mommy. Don’t let anything happen to her okay, lil man?”
“DJ, stop that!” Fatima shouted.
“Baby, what’s happening?”
There was a bang and then a thud, and Fati cried out.
“Hey! What’s happening?!”
“Oh, is that daddy?” DJ said on the other end of the line. “I wanna speak to him.”
All I could hear was Fati’s
cries.
“Hello?” DJ’s voice came into the receiver.
“Buddy, help mommy okay. You have to behave and be the man until I get back. Be brave, you hear me?”
"Relax, D," DJ said. “You know shit is always under control.”
My eyes widened, and the whole world stopped. I hesitated, even though I knew the truth in my gut, I had to confirm. “Red?”
“How you holdin’ up on your own in the big wide world?” He laughed. “Ah, I’m sure you’ll be just fine. Besides, it’s about time you left the nest anyway.”
My mind reeled, and I felt myself trembling, sick to my stomach. “Re…” I cleared my throat. “Red, what are you doing?”
“Oh don’t worry, D. You know I won’t let nothin’ happen to your lil boy.” Red laughed. “Maybe I should call him our lil boy. I mean, I took over half the times anyway…but she screamed a lil more whenever I stroked her down.”
Fati's scream drowned out Red's voice for a few seconds, and I had a moment of panic as I held the phone in front of my face and strained my voice as I shouted as loud as I could, spit dribbling down my chin and splattering on the screen. “Don’t you fucking hurt her! Red, dammit. Red!”
“Yo, D, chill my man. I swear I didn't touch the bitch. Unlike you, I'm not a disloyal motherfucka'. She's just a lil scared, that's all. She thinks the kid has whatever that shrink bitch convinced you-you had." Red laughed again.
I clenched my fist. “Red. You said we were friends. Come on, just leave my family alone, man.”
“Ah come on now, D. Don’t try to g’ me up like that. Not like that.”
"Red, I just want to see my family safe. You can understand that. You know me, you know I'm just being real here."
DJ laughed again. "Don't sound like such a bitch, D. Damn! You're makin' this all dramatic and shit. I'm sorry your girl called and got you all upset. It would have been easy to start a new life together, but your boy is making shit harder than it needs to be. Kid won't listen. Kinda like his ol' man."
“So you wrote the letter, trashed my place…”
“Oh nah, nah, D. That was all Fatima. I just took advantage of the situation as it presented itself. That’s all.”
“Red, just leave my family alone. There’s billions of people in the world. Please, just leave me and mine alone.”
“I guess I could have, but it’s too late for that now. I’ve found my new link, and I don’t plan on making the same mistake with this one that I did with you. But…hey, this conversation was cool and all,”
"Hey, hey, wait, wa--"
“…but I have a lot of work to do. You understand.”
“Red, dammit. Don’t hang up that fucking phone.”
“For the record, D…”
“Red!”
“I wish shit had ended differently. But I won’t forgive your disloyalty.”
“…motherfuck—Red…Fati, Fati can you hear me? Tell me where you are.”
The line went dead. “Fati…Red!…Red!”
The low battery warning came on the screen again, and I cleared it and dialed the number back, but it went straight to voicemail this time. “Fuck!”
I took off at a full sprint, down the narrow street that somehow looked more visible in the daylight than the darkened alley it appeared to be when I first stumbled inside. I pushed through the dozen or so onlookers that had crowded around the mouth of the street to watch the spectacle, knocking two women clean off their feet because they couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.
I made it two full blocks back uptown before I thought to call Karl, then pulled out my phone and dialed him.
“What’s up, young blood?”
“Karl, hey.” I sucked in two heaving breaths of air, and he waited patiently until I was ready to continue. “I need you to bring the car asap.”
“For sho’. Where are you?”
“Chinatown. I’ll be standing near the subway entrance on the corner of…” I glanced up at the street signs. “Canal and Lafay—” The line went dead. I frowned and looked at the phone screen and saw it blank. The phone died. I tried to power it back, but the screen remained blank. "Fuck!"
There I was, standing on a packed Chinatown corner, filthy, disheveled, waiting for God only knows how long it would take for the old man to show up, assuming I managed to give him enough of the address in time. To make matters worse, there was no way to know just how long I would have to wait, considering my phone was dead and my watch was sitting in the corner of some shit-hole bar.
The time waiting got me wondering: just where I should go anyway; I had no idea where they were. Several thoughts flashed through my mind: filing a police report? I laughed—no, Red already proved he could circumvent the system with almost no effort, and even if he couldn’t, what crime had he committed?
Calling out to Red and trying to reason with him crossed my mind, but that wasn’t likely an option that would not prove fruitful anyway. I'd been around him for years; once he was set on something I've never been able to change his mind. So if I were going to save my family, I'd have to go through Red. (Linked Comment)
My eyes widened as Ms. Bezi's offer came to mind. I tapped my front pocket, where the dagger had been, and froze—it was missing. Panic washed through me until I remembered the pale man tossing it back to me when he came to me.
A rush of adrenaline flooded my body, and I turned and sprinted back towards the street, making it back in what felt like a blink of an eye. Dropping to my hands and knees in front of the leaking dumpster I had slept under, which smelled much worse than I remembered, so bad I swallowed through a wave of nausea. Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to find it, though it required me to flatten out and shimmy under the dumpster, face pressed to the sticky muck on the ground.
Despite the stench and filth, there was a smile on my face as I climbed back to my feet. If old Bezi could hide me from him, she was the best option I had on trying to find him. All I needed to do was summon her.
I made it back to the corner and hoped Karl would have pulled another one of his timely arrivals and would have been waiting for me there at the corner, standing beside open the door, so I could step right in without breaking stride. That wasn't the case this time. It turned out to be a long, long, wait. But I should have known as much; Karl was good, but he would have had to work a miracle to beat the bumper to bumper traffic in front of me.
By the time he blared the horn, getting my attention after turning into the block, I was dripping sweat under the heat of the late morning sun, and reeking so bad the people passing me by gave me a wide birth, some even going as far as openly fanning their noses. But the look on the faces of every single person standing around as the luxury car pulled up in front of me, and Karl stepped around to open the door, was a small consolation.
Unlike the pedestrians on the street, Karl made no show of noticing anything wrong with me, and even went as far as rolling up the windows to keep the air in so I could cool off sooner. I appreciated the man, and went to tell him as much, but paused when I saw an uncharacteristic look of concern on his face. “Hey old man. Everything good with you?”
“I’m good, young blood.” He turned fully around and looked me dead in the eye. “Are you good?”
I sighed. "I'll be good. Got no choice about that right now." Not with my son possessed and my wife in danger, both because of me. Ain't have time to feel anything except motivation.
Karl grunted, turned back around, and pulled off. “Heading home, sir?”
“I need to make a quick stop at the store before heading upstairs—have to grab a few things.” I opened the compartment under the front side of my seat and pulled the charging cord free, then plugged the dead phone in and tossed it on the seat across from me. “And Karl?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t call me sir anymore. You’re twice my age.”
“Better watch it now…”
I forced the best laugh I could manage, hoping it didn’t sound as hollow as
it felt. “No disrespect, old man. I’m just done acting like I’m somebody I’m not.”
Karl laughed. “You alright, young blood. You alright.”
I grunted. “You mind raising that partition?”
“Ain’t no thang, young blood.”
I waited as Karl raised and frosted the partition, then picked back up the phone. That was about as long as I could maintain the front. My body trembled as I wracked my brain trying to think of where Red could have possibly taken them, all the way until I made it home, and then for hours still.
~ * * * ~
Somehow, my crushing guilt felt heavier after throwing out my filthy clothes and taking a long, hot shower. The reeking, disgusting thing that walked off of my elevator was precisely what I felt like inside. This clean man I stared into the mirror at as I toweled off was a lie. There was nothing clean or pure about me.
I traced a finger along the length of the scar on my torso and considered, maybe for the first time in my whole life, the concepts of good and evil in the world, of justice and fairness; I found myself growing more frustrated the more I thought. Then I turned and walked out before my emotions consumed me, heading straight for the bedroom.
I prepared the room according to Bezi’s instruction, first setting the candles I’d bought, and then pulling up a nightstand and resting the dagger as close to the pillow my head would rest on as possible. Once perfect…or, as perfect as I was going to get, I started pacing the bedroom, waiting to get tired.
I tossed around the idea of trying to find something to take, but in the end, decided it was safer to stay in the apartment and wait things out. Bad shit seemed to happen every time I stepped out these days.
After a couple of hours, I glanced down at the clock on my phone screen and stopped in my tracks. It was forty passed one in the afternoon. "Fuck me! How early did I wake up out there?"
The rest of the day was an exercise of patience. I still dared not head back outside; I had no more work to do anymore, and nothing to entertain myself. Watching television was just as useless; I couldn't focus on anything and ended up clicking through the full range of channels three times before giving up. With no other options, I started pacing again.
Red Lineage Page 18
