by James Hunter
“Okay, okay—that’s good. Another lead to run down. I also had some thoughts on the Conjurer. Drum roll please …” I picked the last chunk of meat from the bone, letting him stew in silence.
“Well get on with it already—can’t stop flappin’ your damn lips, until you actually have something to say, then you clam up like a Puritan on a first date.”
“Fine. You’ve suffered long enough.” I took another deep gulp of Pilsner, finishing my drink, before waving down the waitress and pointing to my empty bottle. Greg could stand to suffer a little more. Arrogant, good-for-nothing, ass-face—stealing my thunder and my leads.
“You done with your tantrum?” he asked.
I didn’t justify his dig with a response. “I’m thinking it’s gotta be someone from a serious Hindu background—Indian subcontinent for sure.”
“That’s a stretch, Yancy—lots of big hitters contract out Rakshasa.”
“Yeah, but a Rakshasa and a Daitya? Both are from the subcontinent, and it strikes me as a little strange that they should both be batting for the same team. Whole thing stinks like a hot porta-john after an all-day chili convention. Plus, Daitya are big time—you’re not gonna hook one of those on the end of your line with any run of the mill conjuration. I’m thinking the ritual has to be old as hell, probably before the Daitya war and the exile. Means the ritual would have to be done in Sanskrit, or maybe Pali or Magadhi. Not a lot of world class mage-folk running around speaking those languages these days.”
A long-legged waitress of maybe twenty-one, deep red hair, obviously dyed, brought me my third Pilsner of the evening.
“Excuse me ma’am,” Greg said, as respectful as a ten-year-old boy to a catholic nun—the guy is chivalrous, if nothing else. “Can you please bring me and my friend here a pitcher of Coors, and two glasses, frosted.” She smiled and nodded, blushing slightly, before wandering off toward the bar. Greg might be old and crusty as the bottom of a battleship, but women love him. Beats the absolute hell out of me. Not that Greg would ever do anything about it; maybe once upon a time and way, way back when. Not now. Cancer had taken his wife ten years ago, and he’d never moved on.
“Maybe,” he continued, “let’s say you’re right. Sai Hari could have done it, but last I heard, he was a senior member with The Guild, hobnobbing with the Arch-Mage even, so he seems like an unlikely candidate.”
“Yeah,” I said, “Maybe, Vihaan Vohra? Doesn’t he have a reputation for freaky juju like this?”
“Yeah, he did Yancy—but did is the operative word. Past tense. Guild hunted him down four years ago. Dead. Maybe if you kept up to date with The Guild you’d know that too.”
I looked away. I didn’t want to have this conversation again—I was done with The Guild. Bunch of tightwad, hypocritical, self-righteous, self-serving, bathrobe-wearing geezers. There were a few members I still kept in contact with, but by and large, if their super-secret headquarters were on fire, I wouldn’t take the trouble to call the fire department. Shit-parrots, the whole lot. Okay, mostly the whole lot.
Let’s just say we had a catastrophic falling out and leave it there, buried like all good skeletons ought to be.
“We’re not talking about that.” Now it was his turn to avert his gaze. He knew it was a sore subject, one I wouldn’t appreciate him pushing at—he’s never been good with personal boundaries, so it was tough to be mad at him.
“Alright, alright. Sorry for prying … hey, Arjun Dhaliwal could be our guy. He’s been on the lam from The Guild for years and he’s got the supernatural muscle for it.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and he’s bat-shit crazy, too … I remember him. He’s got deep connections to India—was always jawing about a unified India. Hindutva. Bat-shit crazy and fits the bill.”
The waitress showed up with our pitcher: deep amber in the low light, with the perfect amount of head on top. Greg slid her a twenty and told her to keep the change, which earned him a big smile and another blush.
“So what’s our game plan, Yancy?” He picked up my mug and poured, nice and slow, before filling his own glass.
“Well, I say we kill this pitcher—and maybe another one, since you’re paying—I’ll play a set with the house band. Then we’ll catch a few winks at your place and track down detective Al in the A.M. See if we can’t get him to talk.”
“And if it is Arjun? Guy like that is dangerous. Will you get in touch with Ailia? She could tell us for sure, maybe even give us a location.” Ailia. Jeez. Talk about uncomfortable discussion points. She, like The Guild, was a conversational no-man’s-land, chock-full of razor wire and anti-personal mines. We’d been together for a while, one of my few serious relationships, and it had ended … well, badly is maybe a bit too mild. It would be more accurate to say it ended like a thermo-nuclear blast: complete devastation and long-term health risks. She was still around, but we weren’t exactly on speaking terms. On pain-of-death, actually.
“Let’s see what Detective Al gives us before we decide to go swim with the sharks,” I said.
Greg smiled, but it was the grimace-grin of a man about to go into a combat-zone. “But before that, let’s drink—maybe more than we should.”
He smiled again and this time it was sincere, crow’s feet spread from the corner of his eyes.
You’ve got to enjoy life as it comes. The reality is that no man is promised tomorrow and God knows two days is a helluva stretch to expect. You never know when some demonic baddy is going to pulverize your face, or when a city bus will plaster you all over the road.
Tomorrow would be a tough day, maybe my last tough day, and it would have plenty of worries all its own. So Greg and I would leave tomorrow’s worries for tomorrow; those were problems for Future Me. Tonight we would enjoy life. We would eat, drink, flirt with good-looking women, play a little music, and smoke a few cigarettes—while we still could. Gotta enjoy the little things, because they’re what make life worth living.
SEVENTEEN:
Detective Al
Greg and I idled out front of a little ranch style in Burbank. The home was cute: yellow siding, red brick edge work, neatly trimmed green lawn sporting a few manicured hedges, and a smattering of miniature pink hollyhocks. A realtor would have called it a “starter home,” though in this part of Burbank, this house probably ran for a small fortune. The cute home, which showed all the obvious signs of loving attention and a meticulous hand, belonged to Detective Al and his wife Judy. My PI from out east had given Greg the scoop on Al, who wasn’t as squeaky clean as his neat and picturesque house.
I rubbed at the bridge of my nose and took another slug of my, now, cold coffee. Tired, so friggin’ tired. We’d been sitting on this house since 6:30—it was already a quarter of ten and we hadn’t seen notta from inside. No Al. No Judy. No walking horrors. Nothing. The only thing I’d seen so far was the bottom of a couple of cups of coffee. We’d gotten up early for no good reason, which made me want to blow something up on general principle.
Greg had insisted on an early start—to cover our bases, he insisted—but I think he was just being a sadist. He knew I wasn’t a morning person. It took fifteen minutes to brush my teeth and toss on some cloth, another ten to grab a cup of gas-station-joe, and forty-five more on the 101 to get here, which put wake up time at twenty-after-five. Let me tell you something, twenty-after-five is a time that shouldn’t appear on an alarm clock. Its criminal and a blatant violation of the sixth amendment: freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Anything that has me up before eight comes with a one-way ticket to Grumpsville.
It was even worse this morning, though, because Greg and I had stayed up well past one at Frank’s, enjoying the music and the beer, drinking in the atmosphere and patently ignoring all the catastrophic problems looming over the horizon. Past Me had really screwed Present Me over and I was regretting his poor decision-making—lousy, no good, drink-too-much bum. Partying it up and then footing me with the bill.
It also didn’t help that Greg loo
ked as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever. The man was sixty-six for crying out loud, yet somehow he was as spry as a college kid, up early for class after a long night out. He had always been a morning person though, probably why he managed so well in the Marine Corps: an organization that runs off little sleep and lots and lots of early mornings.
I’m not a morning person, never have been and never will be. I like staying up late and sleeping in late.
Apparently, Detective Al and his wife also subscribed to my sleeping philosophy. Most folks would’ve been up and off to church, or at least poking around the living room a little—watching some pregame football show or maybe a bad Sunday movie.
Not Detective Al. This house was dead: no flicker from the television, no lights on, no telephone rings. Dead. There was even a week’s worth of newspapers congregating on the front walkway, a sickly looking bunch, expecting welcome, but left out to fend for themselves. Sure, there was a car in the driveway—one of those new Chargers, that looked just a little too slick for my taste—but that didn’t mean anything.
The whole scene had an uneasy feel about it. I’ve never been good when it comes to numbers, but simple arithmetic isn’t beyond my grasp, and this scene wasn’t adding up. Game is afoot, Watson! My guess was that Detective Al and his missus had checked out—either they’d skipped town when things got too hot, or someone had taken them out permanently. Either way, I’d have to take a closer look to know one way or the other.
“That’s it Greg, I’m going in.” I set my coffee in the cup holder and grabbed the door handle of his Ford Focus, not waiting for a response. There was too much going on to kill another hour or two waiting at this obviously vacant house.
“Give it another fifteen.” He took a sip from his foam cup, no further explanation offered.
“You kidding me right now? We’ve been here for more than three hours. Another fifteen minutes isn’t going to change anything. Shit, fifteen minutes of snooping around and I’ll know everything I need to know … we can blow this popsicle stand and stop wasting our time on this stupid-ass, waste-of-time, stake out.”
“So why the rush? It’s just another fifteen minutes, right? You said so yourself. Listen, I have a hunch here, let’s play it out. Make an old man feel better.”
Smarmy, know-it-all jerk, turning my words against me. I wasn’t going to sit here all morning, hunch or no hunch. I popped the handle and pushed the door open, sliding out of the seat and into the empty Sunday morning street.
“You’re only a year older than me, Greg,” I called over my shoulder as I closed the door with a thunk. I could practically feel his eyes boring into my back and though I didn’t possess ESP, I could almost hear his thoughts. You sure look like a young man to me—and I think your damn brain has the same malady, too much youth, too much impatience.
I pulled open the screen door and found the front door locked up nice and neat. Now, you might be thinking, a little ol’ locked door, well that shouldn’t be a problem for a world-class mage, right? Wrongo. Remember, this house, like all real houses, was protected by the presence of a domicilium seal. Using any type of construct to force my way in would be rough going. Could I hypothetically blow the door off the hinges with a mega blast of fiery force? Well, yeah, I probably could. But it wouldn’t be easy, it would take an elephant-sized amount of force and willpower, and it wouldn’t be inconspicuous.
There is, hands down, no better way to get the cops to show up then to explode the door off a house at 10 AM on a Sunday morning—especially in a nice part of Burbank like this.
And, what if Al and Judy were home and just late sleepers? It would be inconsiderate to bust up their stuff for no good reason.
Instead, I fished out a black leather case containing my lock picking gear. Why yes, I am a fan of the age-old art of lock picking. It’s a little old-fashioned and more of a hassle than blowing the door off its frame, but it’s a sure fire way of gaining unlawful and unwelcome entry into any home. That whole pesky supernatural barrier thing has no effect whatsoever on the efficient, yet utterly vanilla, ability to pick a lock. Plus, no unnecessary property damage. A win, win all around.
Lock picking isn’t necessarily difficult, but it’s also not as easy as they make it look on television—you can stick a bobby pin in the lock and wiggle it around for a bit, but if the lock opens it will be more luck than skill. Realistically, you need to have a decent set of picks and torques and some serious practice if you hope to confidently gain entry past those bothersome locks designed specifically to keep you out. Admittedly, having a bit of supernatural luck on your side also helps. With my luck, I might be able to stick a bobby pin into the dead bolt and see that puppy pop right open.
But hey, it’s always better to have the skill and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
I slipped my torque into the lock and applied a little pressure, all the while working my pick until all the stacked-pins were in place—the dead bolt released with a satisfying clunk. The whole thing took maybe fifteen seconds, but bear in mind I’ve had years to practice this unsavory art.
I turned the brass-plated door handle and pushed the door inward on silent hinges.
The lights were out and the air felt stale, the way things get in a too hot room that’s been vacant for a while. Inland California can heat up year-round and today already felt like it had the makings of a scorcher, but no AC pumped into the house and the overhead ceiling fan sat still. A motley assortment of dust bunnies—in the Marine Corps we called them ghost-turds, charming I know—decorated the fan blades. Unfortunately, in the circles I run in, ghost-turd means something entirely different, something involving actual ghosts and residual ectoplasmic residue. I’ll spare you the details. You’re welcome.
Everything looked nice and neat: clean brown carpet, big flat screen on the far wall, brown leather sofa sitting opposite the TV, a dark wood coffee table, and a plush recliner. Above the TV hung a family portrait—Detective Al and the missus. In my mind, I could practically see the guy leaning back in his Lazy Boy sipping a frosty beer while watching a Pirates game, all while the overhead fan whirled lazily away. There was no sign of a struggle or home invasion—no broken down doors, busted locks or shattered windows—the home was just empty. Like maybe Al and Judy had packed up and left town for a while. Maybe they were off in Malibu sunbathing and sipping strawberry margaritas.
But the car was parked out front. Maybe they had another one?
I moved through the living room and into an adjoining dining room: a cheap white-topped table and a set of matching chairs, but nothing of a more sinister nature. The kitchen, main bathroom, and master bedroom had obviously colluded because they all told the same tale: yes, the occupants were currently away, but no need to worry, everything was fine and dandy in this neck of the woods. Everything was clean—though not too clean, which would have been suspicious in its own right. All of the furniture appeared to be in its proper place and there were no giant, man-sized bloodstains or dead bodies in evidence.
Still, this felt all wrong. This whole situation was the equivalent of a Rube glamour—a coat of paint to hide the grime laying beneath. There was no basement, normal for this part of California, but I spied an unattached multi-car garage through the dining room window. The only place left to check. By process of elimination, if there was anything fishy going on that was where said fishy thing would be swimming.
I exited out through the kitchen, via a sliding glass patio door, which let out into a tiny backyard. The grass, though a little long, was thick and green—except near the garage door … there the grass had wilted and yellowed. A cockroach, chitinous and brown, scuttled across the lawn and disappeared beneath the garage door. Believe it or not, that little roach was a clear sign that I was on the right trail and not running down some dead end lead.
Rakshasa are nasty creatures—even other nasty creatures think Rakshasa are grimy. They literally live in filth. The grimier the better for a nest of Rakshasa. They like
dark, rotten, places, full of death and decay, old garbage and insects: cockroaches and bedbugs mostly. Like I said, Nasty, with a capital N. Like humans, Rakshasa usually adjust their new living accommodations to suit their particular tastes. And it starts to show quick. If a Rakshasa is around, the paint will start pealing, the plants will start to wither, the floor boards will begin to creak, and every cockroach and bedbug for about five miles will come over for the party.
It’ll also stink—the sour sweet smell of compost and rot. The closer I got to the garage the more obvious the odor became. Looked like pay dirt.
I tested the garage door and found it locked. Unlike the house proper, however, the unattached garage was far enough away from the main property structure that I wouldn’t have trouble popping the door with a Vis construct—no seal in place to stop me. I didn’t want to blow the door off the hinges though, because if anything was home, that would surely cost me the element of surprise—all I had going for me, at this point. I drew my revolver in preparation and inhaled a trickle of Vis, only enough to perform the simple working I had in mind.
I forced a thin stream of air into the keyhole, which then expanded throughout the length of the plug, naturally pushing up the individual stacked pins until they all rested in their proper positions.
The lock twisted open with a faint, nearly inaudible click, the knob turned in a loose weave of air, and the door swung inward with a rusty creak—so much for the element of surprise. I drew in a little more Vis, pumping out raw energy into a small orb of light that floated an inch above my outstretched left palm.
Oh man, I didn’t want to go in there.
From the stink wafting out of the opening I already knew I was going to find something—or even lots of somethings—dead. I took a deep breath and went in, despite my common sense screaming STOP in the back of my head.
First thing I noticed: there were no Rakshasa home—I could tell immediately by the fact that there weren’t any flabby, gray-skinned, hyena-faced, monsters trying to rip my head from my torso. So far so good. The second thing I noticed was the incredible stench emanating from the hot little room, a nauseating mixture of raw sewage, burnt hair, and the putrid scent of decaying flesh. Not nearly so good. I doubled over, woozy from the stink and heat. That’s when I noticed the cockroaches scuttling across the floor a few inches from my feet.
