by James Hunter
I lay unmoving, not wanting to open my eyes, not wanting to remember where I was or how I’d gotten there.
I just wanted to be still, to let my weary body take its ease, to imagine I was safe and everything was okay. Maybe I was with a beautiful woman.
Maybe Rosie—the long-legged, funny-as-hell brunette from Kansas I’d hooked up with a couple months back. Yeah, maybe Rosie had once again welcomed me into her apartment and in between her bedsheets. It hadn’t been serious. I don’t do serious and she’d known it, but it had been good. I’d been safe there, warm in her queen-sized bed, cotton sheets entwined around my body. She bought me donuts and coffee from the Krispy-Kreme the next morning.
God, how I wanted that to be my reality.
It wasn’t and I knew it.
I couldn’t remember what’d happened, but I wasn’t with Rosie. I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, literally, and to hell with the cliché. Though I wanted to indulge my fiction, I was sure there were more pressing concerns to deal with. I blinked my eyes open. The lighting in the room was harsh—felt like staring into the sun on a cloudless day.
“I think he’s coming t …” said the soothing female voice, “it looks … starting to open … eyes.” I only caught snatches of her words, the syllables blurry and indistinct. So was her form, though it definitely wasn’t Rosie. Rosie was brunette and this lady was blond, almost platinum.
“Good,” said a gruff, recognizable voice followed by footsteps. A man came into view: Morse. That asshole.
Oh right. I was in LA. The Saints of Chaos. Yraeta and the Kings. The Daitya …
I must’ve passed out after my fight with the demon. Drawing too deeply from the Vis can do some funky stuff to the mind and body. I had, in the way of the Vis, just finished running an Ironman Triathlon—you know, those insane things where people swim for a couple of miles, bike for like a hundred more, and then run a friggin’ marathon, all without a break? Athletes who participate in such events routinely suffer from serious physical injuries and what I’d done while fighting the Daitya had been of a similar magnitude, even though our royal rumble had taken no more than ten minutes.
Morse stood over me smiling. I was on the same banquet table from earlier. This was an all too familiar tableau … at least I wasn’t Saran-wrapped down this time around.
“I’ve got to stop waking up like this.” I propped myself into a sitting position, legs dangling down—the motion sent a wave of dizziness coursing through my head, threatening to lay me back out.
“My gamble paid off. Fuck, you’re better than a room full of machine guns,” Morse said, a large toothy grin cut his face in half. It was a genuinely happy smile, one that reached all the way to his eyes. He lifted a half-full glass of something amber and delicious looking, and offered a toast. “You smoked the shit out of that thing. Six shots right to the fuckin’ head—fuckin’ A, dead as dead. To Yancy Lazarus.” In that moment any bitterness or animosity I harbored against Morse melted away, a snow bank too long exposed to the glow of the sun. He cared about his people, cared about their well-being, their families, their livelihood and lives.
Morse was a predator, a jackal who’d gladly rip your throat out, but he was also more. The people in this home were jackals of a similar nature, but they were his pack and his fierce love for them was obvious.
He thought I’d killed the Daitya—understandable from his perspective, like he said, I’d shot the thing six times in the head—and I hated to disappoint him. Nothing to be done about that though.
“Not dead,” I said. The cheerful buzz of celebration, filling the room with its optimism, died into an uneasy whisper.
“What?” Morse asked, his smile gone as quickly as it had come.
“Not dead. Temporarily out of commission.”
“Bullshit. I saw what happened, you blasted that fucker back into the Stone Age with that hand cannon.” His shoulders were unconsciously raised, tension knotting his muscles.
He wanted to believe the Daitya was gone and this nightmare was over. It was obvious he couldn’t bear the thought of facing this tribulation again. His eyes held the same wild look I’d seen a hundred times before. In Vietnam, lots of guys would get that same look after a firefight, especially if it was the first, and especially if they had to go back outside the wire: fear mingling with anxiety, resolve waltzing with cowardice, self-preservation arm wrestling with duty. It was the look of a gambler counting odds, how long would the dice come up 7s?
“No bullshit, Morse. All I did was buy us some time—a week, to get this situation straightened out, or we’ll be facing round two. And next time, the demon is going to be expecting an ambush. We won’t get so lucky again.”
The glass, raised to me in salutation a moment ago, flew from Morse’s hand. The tinkle of broken glass resounded in the room.
“Fuck!” He bellowed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He stomped over to the living room wall and sunk his fist deep into the drywall with a thunk.
“Listen Morse, it’s not too late to fix things. We can prevent this asshole demon from manifesting again.” The room was utterly still. The fuming Morse withdrew his hand from the wall and stood stock still, a feisty wolverine waiting for something to maul—an animal backed into a corner. A few chunks of drywall crumbled to the carpet.
“Alright. Alright,” he finally said, reigning in his temper. “You said it’s temporarily out of commission. What the fuck does that mean?”
“Creatures like that are conjured here from a different plane, but they don’t actually belong to our reality—they’re just visiting. Think about it like this: you can’t waltz out onto the highway without getting smashed into little pieces, you need a car. Well, a creature like that demon can’t just walk around in our reality. It needs a particular construct, a vehicle, to operate. The Conjurer pumps a ton of energy into a construct—what you might think of as a magic spell—in order to provide the being with a body to move around in. All I did tonight was rob the demon of enough energy that it was no longer able to maintain its physical presence in our reality. Basically, I busted its car to shit.”
“So what … next week the Conjurer dickhead that called this thing just repairs the car?” Morse asked.
“Yahtzee.”
“Everybody out of the room … Now.” Morse commanded, swiveling about to make sure all of his underlings got an equal piece of his glare. His voice was not loud, but it demanded obedience, and the fistful of men and women in the room were more than happy to oblige. Each, in turn, slinked away like a dog caught picking through the trash, until only Morse and I remained. Morse pulled out an I-phone, thumbed through its contents for a moment, and then showed me the screen.
A little boy, maybe nine, with red hair and a dusting of freckles, clung to a thirty-something-woman with striking red hair and a low cut blouse of burgundy. The mother had her arms entwined around the little boy. Both were smiling—maybe laughing—while they peered into the camera. It wasn’t a professionally done photo, just a phone picture. The quality of the photo was poor, yet its authenticity made it more powerful. It reminded me of my youngest son when he had been that age.
With a flick of his thumb, Morse brought another picture onto the screen: a selfie of a gruff man in his fifties with a spattering of scars and small tattoos across his face and around his neck. The woman next to him was maybe forty, with too tan skin and too blond hair. They were at a bar, the fuzzy shape of a pool table and the glare of neon lights told the story. The pair would have blended in at the Sturgis rally without remark; both bikers and both, obviously, happy. The way their faces pressed together, the way her eyes looked up toward his—they were in love.
Morse showed me another three pictures: two couples—one old, one young—and a father cuddling a small girl.
“Why are you showing me these?” I asked.
“These are the people the demon’s already killed—these are my brothers and sisters, and children. You met Uncle Frank right?”
I nodded.
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“The older guy with the platinum blonde. That’s was our Sergeant at Arms, foundering member of the Charter. Uncle Frank’s older brother with his wife. Dead two weeks now, flayed alive …”
“You’ve got to help me.” His voice broke a little. “I can’t see any more of my people hurt. And the kids … I don’t want to see another kid fuckin’ die.”
His words hit a nerve somewhere deep inside of me, something hot burned in my guts and blood. I wanted to eviscerate the guy who’d conjured the fucking Daitya. Wanted to smash his face in with a rock, to bludgeon him until his head caved and his eyes didn’t work anymore. I wanted to set him ablaze and watch his skin slough off for hurting those kids. The sensation was a nauseating visceral thing and it made me sick. I’m no stranger to violence but I’ve never wanted to hurt someone—not like this. Maybe in Nam, but Nam had been a long time ago.
“Please help me,” Morse said again, his eyes downcast at the carpet.
“Okay.”
He seemed to relax with my answer. “I’m gonna need to track down the Conjurer, and I’ll need some help from you and your guys to kill this dickhead.”
“Anything,” he said, and I knew he meant it.
SIXTEEN:
Frank's
I was at a blues joint down in the city—a hole-in-the-wall called Frank’s, featuring a rip-roarin’ house band and a mean set of southern-style ribs. The house band was a bunch of gray-hairs like me—well, I would be a gray hair if I aged properly—and they were belting out a hard bop tune called ‘Sack O’ Woe,’ by Cannonball Adderley. And they were making it sound good. The piano bobbed in the background, while the lead sax player—working a beautiful, brassy, vintage Martin Handcrafted alto—slipped and garbled his notes, in typical Cannonball fashion. All sassy-ass 1950s slurred pitches. Nice.
The music was exactly the pick me up I needed. Some blues men are real tormented types, their music is harsh and tawny. Not Cannonball Adderley. The set before could have been the meanest, dirtiest, down-and-out blues you ever heard—dead dog, tornados, and a rabid lion mauling—but Cannonball’s stuff was always a ray of sunshine. Its energy was so upbeat it was contagious: you could’ve lost your job, your wife, and your home all in the same day, and a tune like Sack O’ Woe would still leave you tapping your foot halfway through. Such was the power of the blues—it said, so you’ve have a bad day, well that’s life fella. Now pick up your damn feet and get back to walkin’, shit, get back to dancin’.
Considering the past few days I’d had, that was exactly the message I needed to hear. Just needed to pick myself up and get back to dancing.
If that wasn’t enough to put a little bounce in my step, I also had a frosty Pilsner on the table, half a rack of ribs left on my plate, and a full side of cinnamon apples. Nothing in the world is better than a plate of ribs—it’s my single greatest weakness. Well, I guess there’s also, alcohol, gambling, women, and bullets, all weaknesses in their own right … on second thought, maybe ribs aren’t my greatest weakness so much as my greatest guilty pleasure.
I was born in Plentywood, Montana, but I grew up poor on the outskirts of Raleigh, North Carolina. My Dad had been a gambler like me—like his Pa before him—though not a successful one, a big part of the reason we were so poor.
When my Dad wasn’t betting the ponies or playing poker over at the VFW hall, he and Mom—along with the family—ran a little barbeque joint, Pops. My Dad made ribs, the best in the county. We called them Last Meal Ribs, ‘cause if you were about to hang or fry those were the last thing you’d want to taste. The night before, Dad would skin ‘n’ trim those puppies and throw on an overnight dry-rub marinade. Then, come five AM, he’d pull his ass out of bed so those bad-boys could shimmer on low heat for six hours.
Best ribs in the county—maybe the state (I’m a little biased though)—the pork equivalent of an angelic choir singing in your mouth. But ribs were for the customers, folks who had the money to pay. They were a luxury. As a kid, I’d ferry those platter out, breathing in the meaty aroma of pork and sweet barbeque, but never getting a chance to indulge.
Except on my birthday. On my birthday, I got ribs too.
Now, every day could be my birthday if I wanted.
I had a big ol’ mouthful of tangy baby-backs when Greg pulled out the barstool across from me.
“See you’re still alive,” he said.
“Ditto,” I mumbled, mashing the sweetmeat into pulp.
“Wanna’ tell me what happened?”
“In a minute Greg,” I said, before washing down my food with a swig of Pilsner.
“You’re a piece of work Yancy—get me out of bed at eleven thirty, make me drive across town on a Saturday night, then expect me to sit here and wait on you. A real piece of work.”
“Am I inconveniencing you Greg? Let me tell you about inconvenience. Inconvenient is getting a call from an old friend which results in driving halfway across the country. Inconvenient is getting sucker-punched by a supernatural assassin, being pumped full of horse tranquilizers, Saran-wrapped to a table by an insane gang of bikers, and then fighting a friggin’ demon. Oh, and inconvenient is getting shot in the ass. I got shot in the ass, Greg. Bullet. Ass. So I am so sorry if I’m ‘inconveniencing’ you.”
“Apology accepted.” His voice as dry and dusty as the Mojave. “Make sure it doesn’t happen again—this isn’t R and R y’know. We’ve got work to do and I don’t have time for your drama-queen-cry-fest. So,” he made a curt get moving gesture with his hand, “fill me in already.” I knew he was joking. I still wanted to give him a thousand paper cuts and throw him into a piranha tank.
But I would be the bigger man—I refused to let his childish taunting get under my skin. With a grunt and a sigh I clued him in to my highly eventful night. The Full House, Morse, the Daitya. I gave him the full skinny and never even pointed out what a colossal jerk he was. A colossal and petty jerk.
“Well, while you’ve been lollygagging around, drinking beer and eating ribs,” he said, “I’ve done some real footwork and found out some good stuff from my end.”
Scratch that, I didn’t want to throw him in any ol’ piranha tank, I wanted to throw him into a tank filled with genetically modified super-piranhas carrying tasers and bullwhips. Asshole.
“First off, I got some traction with Yraeta and the Kings. Talked with a little bald guy with glasses—looks like he should be working as a CPA, really dislikes you. No surprise there.”
“Huh,” I grunted noncommittally, thinking back to the bureaucratic little man with the Benz. “Yeah, Mr. H & R Block. We’ve meet.”
“So I guessed. Despite Mr. CPA’s extreme dislike for you, we were able to deal. Tight-lipped little fella, didn’t want to give me much. From what I gathered though, Yraeta isn’t behind the Conjurer—doesn’t even make sense, from a business perspective.”
“I don’t understand—business perspective?”
“Course you don’t understand yet, I haven’t told you. I’m gettin’ there if you’d stop bummin’ you gums for a minute or two.”
Genetically modified super-piranhas carrying tasers and bullwhips, galloping on man-eating tigers.
“Mr. CPA says that the Kings have a loose business arrangement with Morse and the Saints—the bikers have muled coke a couple of times, done a little gun-runnin’ too. It’s not a firm contract or anything—nothing on paper—but they’re friendly. Certainly no outright animosity.”
“Okay, so why does that prevent the Kings from targeting the Saints? Gangs do dirty shit all the time—most gangs aren’t exactly beacons of ethical integrity.”
“This is different, this is business. Morse and his crew act as a buffer between the Kings and some goose-stepping, skin-head group—The Aryan Legion, I think they’re called—who won’t deal with Yraeta because he’s color. The Kings could squish the Legion in a month, but it’d take some effort, maybe mean some losses. Easier to let the Saints stay in place.”
“Huh.” I glanced awa
y, taking another bite of ribs. I chewed in relative contentment. I wasn’t in immediate danger, there was good music thumping in the background, and I had southern-style ribs. Life wasn’t all bad. Okay, so Yraeta wasn’t our guy—even if we didn’t know who the culprit was, at least we’d eliminated a suspect. Not all bad, though not all good either.
“So we know it’s not Yraeta.” I washed down the meat with another swish of Pilsner. “Other than eliminating a single suspect, did you manage to turn up anything useful—so far you’ve got no good leads. Only dead ends.” It made me feel a little better to drag Greg down a notch or two, even if I was feeling good already.
“Wipe that smug look off your face. I’ve got another lead. The PI called me a few hours ago—”
“Whoa there braggadouche, hold your horses. You mean my PI called?” I asked. “‘Cause if it’s my PI than it’s not your lead, its mine.”
“Now you’re just being petty, Yancy. We’ve got serious business to be about. Don’t have time for your quibbling.”
That’s it. I was going to swing by Thurak-Tir and sell him to the wicked Fae—maybe some particularly malicious Sprite would curse him into a giant toadstool or something.
“Apparently,” he continued without even a smirk, “my detective pal isn’t as clean as I thought. Remember I told you that IA had taken a look at him?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it turns out that IA suspected he was an informant for, guess who—”
“I already know he gave me up to Morse,” I said.
“Yeah,” he replied, “but not only Morse. He’s also informed for Yraeta and the Kings.”
The dots were a little clearer.
“Okay,” I said, “so Al gives me up as a scape goat to Morse and also drops my name into Yraeta’s lap after you told him I was getting involved?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He shrugged, “but that’s my guess too. He’s the only one with connection to both Yraeta and me, and he had access to the info. I don’t know what he stands to gain by letting this horror show play out, but I’d say it’s worth payin’ him a little visit.”
