Blood Goblet

by J. P. Rice

  What the hell was I doing?

  She rolled her eyes and said, “I suppose I can try to break your spells. I thought you were very talented in that area.”

  “So did I. But you can never be too careful.” My body moved into the kitchen. I opened the closet door and pulled out a pair of bungee cords.

  An evil smile was pasted onto my face as I re-entered the living room. Alayna turned around and held her wrists together at the small of her back. No. Don’t let me do this.

  I wrapped the bungee cord around her tiny wrists and hooked it securely. Staring at the black cords, I set a complex spell. I followed the same procedure and secured her ankles together, finishing the job with a defense ward.

  My body went back into the kitchen and grabbed a long rag out of the cabinet. What the fuck was I doing? I walked back into the living room, and said, “I need to gag you too. Don’t worry, I’ll take it out soon. It’s just for this test.”

  “For the sake of magic, I suppose.” She smiled, and I wanted to scream, “Get the fuck out of here. Or break out of those bonds so you can stab me and kill me right now before I do something despicable.”

  But I stood there in silence, tying the gag against the back of Alayna’s neck. I set a defense ward on the gag and involuntarily went to the basement. As I searched around, I had no idea what the demons in control of me were hunting for. What was I going to do?

  I found a long, green duffle bag and brought it upstairs. As I walked into the living room, Alayna was struggling with the bonds. I said, “Sorry, but I have to do this.”

  I opened the duffle bag wide and laid it on the ground near Alayna. Against my own will, I scooped up Alayna, who was as light as a feather, and stuffed her into the bag. I was officially a monster.

  I watched my hand run the zipper all the way to the end, sealing Alayna in. My right arm hooked the shoulder strap and I picked up the light bag. I went out the front door, leaving Dante to fend for himself.

  My body didn’t stop and close the front door, but instead left it open and walked right up to my car. I opened the back door and tossed the sack inside as if it was a bag of dirty laundry. Prying the keys out of my pocket, I hopped in the driver’s seat and started the car.

  Chapter 26

  Where was I going? Why couldn’t I stop this? Perhaps I should have killed myself when I had the chance. I was totally responsible for my monstrous actions now. I could have stopped all the madness.

  We drove for a long time, leaving Pittsburgh and heading out to the Appalachian countryside. My subconscious seemed to know exactly where we were going, even stopping for gas when necessary. I traveled to the base of a mountain and parked the car in a random field.

  Oh shit. I realized where we were. No. No. Not this. Not her.

  I pulled the moving duffle bag out of the back seat and threw it over my shoulder. The light parcel didn’t slow me down as I traveled into a valley between two big mountains. The verdant landscape triggered a reminder I didn’t want to encounter.

  As we walked through the valley, a blurry green object appeared in front of me. The portal to Sleepy Willow. No. Please. No. Why her? Just take me. Just fucking take me.

  My thoughts couldn’t slow me down as I power walked toward the portal. How could the demons be doing this from a remote location? It didn’t make any sense.

  I stopped in front of the portal and held the bag with Alayna’s body in front of me. Everything told me to turn around and get the fuck out of there. But the implant had other ideas. I plunged into the portal and felt the tight squeeze as we traveled through.

  I was a monster.

  My eyes watered immediately, and I shut them to deal with the pressure of the portal. It constricted even more. Tightening. Pressing down on me. Just as I felt my body was about to explode, the pressure relented. My eyelids flickered open.

  We were in Primero’s entrance shack near the city in Sleepy Willow. The werebear’s eyes widened as he focused on me. “You know you’re not allowed back here.”

  I retorted, “I brought a gift for the king. He will be more than happy to accept it. You should contact him right now.”

  “What gift?” he asked, narrowing his eyes and leering at me.

  I reached for the zipper on the moving duffle bag.

  Primero pulled the gun out of his hip holster. “Slowly. Don’t try anything stupid.” He probably thought that I had some feral animal in the bag.

  I unzipped the bag, and Alayna rolled out onto the wooden floor speckled with blood. Primero’s eyes bulged like they were going to jump out of his head. He put his gun away and pulled out a rectangular device that looked like a cell phone. Holding down a button on the device, he said, “Get the king to checkpoint one. Right now. He’s going to want to see this.” He put the device to his ear and waited a few moments. “It’s fucking Queen Al. I’m looking at her with my own eyes. Get him over here.”

  Alayna glared at me with the intensity of a thousand daggers being plunged into my heart. I tried to turn away to avoid the shame, but the demons wouldn’t acquiesce. Standing in silence, I waited for what seemed like hours. Waiting for the king to take out his vengeance on his erstwhile wife.

  The door swung open and slammed into the wall with authority. The king entered in his signature purple robes embellished with golden thread. He focused on Alayna like she was a magnet. The three remaining wardens entered the room with a smaller figure between them.

  As two of the warden’s lined up to flank the king, the figure was exposed. That fiery red hair had taken on a drab appearance. Her desperate eyes were glossy and bloodshot. Lips trembling. It was a shell of Burn’s former self. The fire was gone.

  A spark lit up her eyes momentarily, and then quickly disappeared as she seemed to understand what I had done. I wanted to run over and give her a hug, until I realized she was staring at a monster. A monster delivering his mentor to death’s doorstep. She was a mother figure to me. She’d saved my life.

  Who would be happy to see that monster? Burn didn’t know about the implant. She probably thought I was doing this on my own volition.

  The king spoke in his screechy voice, “My, my, my. I thought this day would never come. I can hardly believe Montidore was telling the truth. He said he could deliver her to my doorstep, and hot damn, he was correct. I’ll gladly pay the price he set for this prize.”

  Alayna’s staring burned holes in my soul. Her eyes were screaming, do something, don’t just stand there like a fucking doofus. She was blinking, sending the signal for me to meet her in our dream-like state. Unfortunately, her complaints only fell on deaf ears.

  The Warden of the West asked, “What are we going to do with this one?” he gestured with his dagger at Burn.

  The king’s eyes didn’t leave Alayna. “Kill her. Let her go back to earth with this guy. I don’t care. We have our prize.”

  The Warden of the South cut the ropes around Burn’s hands and she ran over to me. I wanted to hug her, touch her, anything, but my body stood like a stone. Unmoving. She wrapped her arms around me and I pushed her away like a stranger.

  “Leave the gag in, but take these bonds from her wrists and ankles and be gone,” the king announced.

  Like a robot, I moved mechanically over to Alayna. I took the bungee cords off her and the king shoved me away.

  “Primero. Scan this man with our disintegrator. If he tries to enter again, just hit him with the scepter to activate disintegration.” The king tapped his hairy chin. “Unless. Unless that is, he comes back with a tooth from Cerberus. He can die trying for that.” He laughed evilly.

  Primero took a long golden scepter with a glass globe at the top. The colors of the rainbow swirled around inside the glass as Primero traced it over my entire body. He set the scepter down, opened the door to the entrance shack and the fuzzy portal appeared. The bouncer for Sleepy Willow pushed Burn, then me into the return portal.

  As the pressure increased, I prayed that it would kill me. Put an end t
o this monster. Unfortunately, thirty seconds later, I stood in the green valley outside Pittsburgh.

  Burn said, “What the hell is going on? Why did you deliver Alayna to the enemy?”

  I didn’t answer her. Instead, I walked in silence toward my car. Burn followed me, bombarding me with sensible questions. Unaffected and still silent, I got in the car and turned it on. Wisely, Burn jumped in the passenger seat before I could take off.

  We drove for about an hour and finally, the robotic, alien feeling of my body subsided. I was back in control. I explained everything to Burn. The implant, the vampire fiasco, Cyclone Woman and the sorcerers. I kept a few things secret.

  Burn talked briefly about the conditions of her treatment. I didn’t want to pry too much, assuming most of it would be painful to recount.

  I pulled up in front of my house. Checking my phone, it was 1:23 a.m. “There is one thing I haven’t told you about. I want you to have a nice surprise after all you’ve been through.”

  The front door was still open and I wondered if Dante had taken off. I walked inside and started turning on the downstairs lights. Dante was nowhere to be seen. I’d left him alone for more than twelve hours. The vampires could have snagged him to leverage me into admission.

  I ran up the steps and pushed open the door to my room. Sitting at the end of my bed reading an Iron Man comic was my little boy. “Hey Dante, there’s someone here you might want to say hi to.”

  “Not interested,” he said casually, and didn’t look up from the book.

  “Get up off your ass, right now,” I deepened my voice to let him know I meant business.

  He set the comic down on the pillow and hopped off the bed. Reluctantly he followed me down the steps. As we entered the living room, Burn exclaimed, “Dante. What are you doing here?”

  The little goblin smiled, ran across the room and hugged Burn. It was the most emotion I’d ever seen him show. She picked him up and he buried his face into her shoulder. “What is he doing here?” Burn asked me.

  I told her the rest of the story about the implant and how they had been willing to kill Dante. The three of us had a bittersweet reunion as I tried to keep from thinking about Alayna.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket and I snatched it out. Text message from Felix.

  Felix to Mike-Somthings up. Need 2 go 2 fukutama house asap.

  I looked at Burn, and said, “I need to go with Felix to finish this mission.”

  Chapter 27

  Felix pried open the door to Fukutama’s tree house. “It opened much easier than every other time. Be on alert.” He gestured for me to go first.

  I paused and suggested, “You sure you don’t want to take the lead?”

  “Nah, you go ahead.”

  Little bitch. I entered the dark interior of the tree trunk and started up the ladder. My arms went numb quickly because I hadn’t had time to rest up after the exhausting trip to Japan.

  I kept climbing in the dark and saw the tiny pinprick of light shining against the ladder. It was coming from the door to Fukutama’s house. I took a backwards step onto the platform in front of his door.

  Felix had said he was worried because he couldn’t connect mentally with Fukutama. I leaned into the door with my right shoulder, turned the knob and pushed gently. Entering the room, I scanned left and right and couldn’t spy Fukutama or anyone else.

  A shaft of golden sun poured in through one of the windows, lighting up most of the room. A hazy shadow darkened the area near the hammock and I moved across the small room to check it out. Nothing. Fukutama’s little mattress was unrolled and a sheet was tossed off to the side of it.

  That mattress had never been unrolled on any of my previous visits. It had all the hallmarks of somebody snatching him in his sleep. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

  “Me neither. What the fuck. I wanted to brag to him about filling the Goblet,” Felix complained.

  That struck me as a strange thought to have when you’d just found out your mentor was missing. It caused me to think about my mentor, until I flushed those thoughts aside. I was a terrible person. No need to rehash it now.

  As I looked around the room, I said, “I don’t see anything indicating a great struggle. Can you mind mesh with him to find out where he is?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do. It’s not working like it normally does.”

  As I searched around the room for a clue, I found the long bamboo pipe sitting on a shelf on the wall. A red opaque antique snuff jar filled with Fukutama’s special herb sat next to the pipe. “Maybe you need to get into the zone,” I suggested, picking up the pipe.

  Felix shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t hurt to try.”

  I popped the cork on the snuff jar and poured some of the herb into the bowl piece. Calling on fire, I watched a tiny flame grow out of my index finger. I held it near the herb and gave Felix a thumbs up. He inhaled, drawing in the flame from my finger and lighting the herb.

  Felix choked on the smoke, expelling a huge cloud and blanketing the small room. I tucked my nose into the collar of my shirt, although the smoke smelled nice and minty. Felix stopped his coughing fit and hit the cherried bowl a few more times.

  “All right. I think I’m ready,” he announced in a deep voice as he exhaled a tiny wisp of smoke.

  Felix sat down in the center of the room, cross-legged. He wedged his right ankle on top of his left knee and looked satisfied. He stared straight ahead, and suddenly, his irises and pupils disappeared.

  I waited with bated breath. His lips moved around but no words came from his mouth. The mage said, “I see him.”

  “Where is he at?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell. I haven’t meshed with him yet, but I see this image. He’s tied up. Someone is next to him. It’s a woman. Long dark hair. Oh shit. It’s Cyclone Woman.”

  I suggested, “Ask him where they are. Does it look like the last house they were at?”

  Felix waited a few moments, and said, “No. I’m trying to connect with him, but something is preventing us from talking. I assume the sorcerers got to him. I don’t see any of them, but he’s with Cyclone Woman.”

  “I agree.”

  Felix started to shake and twitch, and in a blink, his eyes returned to normal. “Holy shit. That was crazy. I’ve never done anything like that. He couldn’t see me. I was like hovering near the ceiling of the room. I couldn’t figure out where it was though.”

  “What was the room like?” I needed to know.

  Felix closed his eyes, and said, “It was a small room. Walls were painted white. No windows. There was a poster on the wall. A green demon with a bottle of alcohol. Nothing else but the multi-grain hardwood floor.”

  “I think I might know who to ask about this. I have to warn you though, it might be the last time you see me. But I’ll set you up,” I promised him.

  Felix cocked his head to the side and squinted. “What the hell are you talking about? You’ve been acting weird since I picked you up earlier. What’s going on?”

  Maybe the Alayna thing was bothering me more than I’d realized. It was hard to act normal right after you had sold out one of the people you cared most about. “Nothing. It’s just in this business, you never know when your time might be up. Guess I’ve just been thinking about that a lot lately.”

  “Well, stop.” Felix spoke as he turned and went for the door, “You sound crazy and you’re scaring me, bro. So when can I get that money for taking out Shuten dōji?”

  Of course. Glenda hadn’t called me about her bonus yet. I liked Felix for the most part, but he could be frustrating sometimes. It made me wonder if he was really my friend or just a business associate, which was a scary proposition.

  I had many business associates that wanted to kill me and vice versa. This crazy game made for some strange bedfellows. Devils, demons, vampires, shifters. Creatures I’d never expected to talk to, let alone carry on a business relationship with had become an integral part of my life and staying
alive.

  Many on that list wouldn’t think twice about stabbing me in the back if I turned around. I didn’t even delude myself into that line of thinking. But sometimes you didn’t have a choice. Felix was at the top of the list of people I could trust, but you never knew what could happen in this game.

  “We can stop at the bank on the way back to my house and I’ll take care of you. Then I’ll talk to Blodeuwedd to find out where those sons a bitches are hiding out,” I told him.

  Now we just needed to find out where the sorcerers were staying so that we could launch our attack.

  Chapter 28

  I rolled the golden whistle between my fingers and thumb as I waited nervously for Blodeuwedd to show up. Sitting on my low windowsill, I looked at the duffle bag full of cash sticking out of the skirt of my bed. I got up, took two steps and kicked it under the bed.

  It was time to pay the piper. I had to turn myself in to the Gods and face punishment for what I’d done to Alayna. While I was at the bank with Felix, I had taken out a huge withdrawal to leave for Burn and Dante. Inside the bag, I’d also left a note for what could have been my new family.

  I prepared for the worst, which seemed commonplace in my life right now.

  The sound of beating wings caused my neck to jerk to the left. A beautiful owl flew in the window and landed on the edge of the sill. A little scroll wrapped with a red bow hung out of her mouth. She dropped the scroll on the ground and said, “I found an address for the sorcerers. You need to act quickly because they have been moving around every couple of days.”

  I lowered my head. “About that. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Lifting my head, I saw that Blodeuwedd had started shifting into human form. An overwhelming, sweet flowery smell filled the room. The owl’s feathers disappeared, and the bird grew drastically in size. The shape formed into a female figure with her signature pavonine cloak covering her milky skin.