Hound of Eden Omnibus

by James Osiris Baldwin

As time dragged by, the days got shorter and the weather was got wetter and colder. Every day, I set up at Times Square and read the secondhand newspapers to keep track of the date. I lost weight and put on sinew, keeping up my fitness routine as best I could while I scraped and saved for the two things I needed most: a first aid surgery kit, to get whatever Sergei had implanted in me out from under the skin of my stomach, and a gun. Dogg had fixed me up a filed Browning for two hundred and fifty and I was at one ninety-five. Another week, and it would be mine. With a gun, I stood a better chance of mounting an assault on my apartment.

  Before I knew it, it was the 20th of September, a Friday. I set up as usual in the blustery afternoon, and it wasn’t long before the first client of the day passed by on her way back from work: a chubby office woman with big hair and too much makeup. She put my fee down in change.

  “Okay, look. My boyfriend and I broke up last night. He broke up with me because… well, he says he just found someone else and he doesn’t love me anymore. I just can’t believe it. Is it true?”

  She had a voice like a nasal buzzsaw. Dutifully, I shuffled the cards and laid three of them out on the cloth in front of me. “Unfortunately, ma’am, it seems to be the case. He’s not coming back.”

  “What do you mean he’s not coming back?” Her eyes widened.

  I tapped the Ten of Pentacles. “He’s made his decision. This is the card of happy families. I’m sorry.”

  The first hint that something was off was when her eyes darkened and her features pinched. I was already moving when she kicked out with her foot at my bowl, upending coins, bills and salt across my altar cloth. "Here's what I think of your fucking gypsy bullshit, asshole!"

  Rage burned a thin tunnel of fire straight to the pit of my stomach. Slowly, I rose. I wanted the knife. I wanted to draw it through the soft flesh under her chin. It had been weeks since I'd killed, weeks since I'd touched anyone in that solemn, thrilling way. I looked through her, to her bones. Maybe she saw it in my eyes, because her whole manner turned rabbity, quick and frightened. She fled with a scream of impotent rage, handbag flying out from her arm.

  The ruckus turned heads, the crowd murmuring and milling. Snorting angrily, I chased my money and crammed it back into the bowl, then set about scraping up the salt from the baseboard I used as my office. I was dusting my hands off when the next person came forwards, a small, old man with a trembling lower lip and a face like a walnut shell.

  “In all my days, I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “Look at you.”

  “What’s your problem?” My eyes narrowed.

  “You and your filth, just down the road from a house of the Lord!” He pointed at me, stepping closer.

  “Hey, back off.” I left off cleaning to stand again. Old as he was, I was cut from weeks of street living and hard exercise. He was taller, but I had twice his bulk and half his age.

  “The Voice tells us to bring flaming fire and everlasting destruction to the ungodly and those who obey not the gospel of Christ,” he proclaimed. “The righteous will wash their feet with the blood of sinners like you!”

  I regarded him in stony silence while he ranted. “I care more about ear wax than I do about your ‘voices’. Go away.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know you! I know because I believe and God’s secret is with those who loved Him. God is true and all men are liars!” He was getting up in my face now. “So repent before God’s judgment be upon you!”

  This was definitely going to draw a crowd, and if the law came in, it wasn’t going to be on my side. “What? You lose your handler? Go to your church or the old folks home or whatever you need to do, but get out of my face.”

  "The Lord have mercy on you," he said, in a surprisingly loud and effective voice. "Why do you defile this street with the sign of the Illuminati? Do you think you can stand against me, the Anointed?!”

  What Illuminati? I glanced aside at the prominent pentacle on my sign. After finishing the deck of cards, I’d drawn on the sign itself out of boredom. I did my best to loom over him, taut with the dark knowledge that my tolerance for human bullshit was at an all-time low. "One last time. Back it up."

  People began to stop and stare, gathering for the fight.

  “Ever since I was born again into the Holy Spirit, I keep running into things like you. Even though I send out love to everyone in my presence, you, YOU don’t like it. You don’t want it! Satan’s tool! Reptile!”

  The blood beat in my temples. I was hungry, I was cold, and after nearly a month of living like a junkyard dog, bereft of magic, alone and numb from the driving need to survive, I was going to lose my temper. "Let me tell you what. Go pick up a big fucking rock and throw it at me with everything you got. Cast the first stone. Then I’ll have something other than my fist to cram down your gaping cockhole.”

  “Evil!” He spat at me venomously, a big yellowish glob of slime that struck my still-reasonably clean sweater with a wet 'splat'.

  I punched him hard enough to knock him off his feet and pitch him into a squealing pack of people, who screamed and moved out of the way as he tumbled to the pavement. A younger man advanced on me uncertainly, expression puzzled. He wasn’t sure who he was meant to be helping.

  “I received the love of God! I received the love of God!” Bleeding from the nose, red in the face and glowing with self-righteousness, the old man picked himself up off the ground. He spat at me again, but he was further away and he missed. Onlookers were restraining him, catching arms and pulling him away. “How dare a sorcerer touch someone chosen by God! The Voice will show me the way!”

  “You want another one, govno?” I cocked a fist and stepped forwards again, even as the younger man put his hands up and warded me back.

  “Pervert! Thug! I’m an old man!” He spat, frothing at the lips, and clutched his arm as if I’d broken it. “This is assault! Someone call the police!”

  Several people gave me dirty looks. I stared at them until they couldn't meet my eyes anymore, and they left.

  I was shaking with rage. If I hadn’t been cut off from my magic, I’d show them sorcery for real… but my rage and my Will were as useful as a cut brake cord. There was nothing to do but pack up and move on. Disgusted, I crouched in front of my bag to find something to wipe the mucus off my shirt.

  "Excuse me?"

  The voice was feminine, melodic and girlish. Hunched over my bag, I turned my head and looked up at her. The girl was only a little taller than me, small, neat, and nervous in a brown skirt-suit. Her hair was a shoulder-length tumble of dark gray waves pressed down under the rim of her fur hat. Her eyes were narrow, almost Asiatic, her cheeks ruddy and round, her lips full and cushiony. I would have picked her as Far-North Native American, save for her eyes. They were a vivid gold-gray color, like big cat’s eyes. The details filtered in one at a time, marching mechanically through the filter of cold fury and adrenaline shock.

  "What?" I couldn't muster anything more verbose.

  "I... uh..." she started, stopped, bit her lip. She clutched a large leather clutch in front of her, larger than a purse. "I was just listening to what you said to that man back there, about God... I was wondering if you'd read the cards for me."

  "Not here." I returned to gathering my things, packing them away into the bag which contained my life. "Too many whackjobs."

  "I was going to suggest we go somewhere more private." As she kept speaking, I was finally able to make out the accent under her English. The inflection of the 'r', the difficulty with 'w' and '-ng'. My hackles rose.

  "U menya net chastnogo doma." I said in Russian. “I don't have anywhere more private.”

  Her expression flickered, and I knew I had bitten her in just the right place. But then, she smiled, and when she spoke, it was with the enthusiastic relief of someone who hadn't heard their mother tongue in some time. Her accent was provincial. "You speak Russian?"

  “Russian is my mother tongue. One of them.”

  She pressed her
lips together for a moment, smiled, and shrugged her shoulders in what I supposed was an expression of pleasure. “It’s strange how things work out sometimes. Come on, we can just go to a McDonald’s or something... no one else will be able to hear us. It's got booths."

  "There are better diners around here." McDonald’s didn't count as 'food' by any definition of the word. "Kapinsky's, on the corner of 8th and 53rd."

  "Sounds good." Her face suffused with color: cheeks flushing, eyes flashing before they hardened. "I'll be blunt, though. Are you for real? Like, are you any good at this?"

  I glanced up at her. "I used to be better."

  "Sounds like there's a story in that." She frowned slightly, and I realized I’d just undersold myself. Oh well.

  I heaved my bag up with a tired sigh I didn’t have to fake. "There is. A long, difficult tale of a man facing insurmountable odds against a faceless organization. Shall we go?" I was eager to get away, before the cops arrived. Manhattan was a pig-sty.

  The girl smiled again. If I’d been of a mind, I would have described her as ‘cute’. Not beautiful – she was cute in the short-limbed, fluffy way that long-haired kittens and small dogs were cute. "Okay. Lead the way."

  That was an unusual thing for a young lady to say to a bum, but perhaps I looked more noble than I really was. Some kind of Dickensian charisma? We headed off together, me with my bag over one shoulder, her with her enormous clutch bumping into everyone on her right hand side as she passed them.

  This girl could have been one of Nic’s spies. The accent in her Russian marked her as being from the far West of the country: Vladivostok, or maybe even the Aleutian Islands. She was at least part Indigenous and too old to be a student, though her bag was clearly full of books. The silver-wrought eagle feather badge and the silver pen with a piece of turquoise sticking out of her pocket were bohemian enough to help place her. The natural hair, flat Mary Janes, and brown suit look was common to only a few workplace cultures in this part of town. Businesswomen tended to wear darker colors, bigger shoulders, and higher heels. This girl expected to spend a lot of time on her feet. Her shoes were old, but not worn, the soles scuffed, corners rounded. She did stand a lot – indoors – and she smelled like paper and ink, which narrowed her places of work to libraries, archives, schools… that sort of thing.

  "So, what's your name?" She asked me when we were nearly at the deli.

  That was a good question. It still wasn't prudent to give my real name to anyone, especially mysterious Russian-speaking young women with enigmatic problems, so I decided to stick with the nickname I’d been using in the Bronx. "Rex."

  "Rex? That's not a Russian name."

  “I’m Ukrainian. And it’s a good name for a dog.” I looked aside at her, tiredly taking in details. "You work at a museum? A library or something?"

  "There's... how did you know that?" Her eyes widened. Whatever she was, she wasn't ever going to be winning at poker. If she was a honey pot sent by the Organizatsiya to find me, she was terrible… or especially good. It was sometimes hard to tell the worst from the best. The month before, a certain petite blond lawyer had successfully penetrated my cynicism, only to reveal herself as a serial-killing warlock on the hunt for a Gift Horse. MY Gift Horse.

  "A month ago, that wouldn't have been phrased as a question. Like I said, I am not as good as I was, but I still seem to possess some small gift."

  "I'll say." She made a face, popping her lips. "Well, I'm Talya. Talya Karzan. So, where do you think I work?"

  "I'd hesitate to say the Museum of the American Indian," I replied. "But I could be wrong."

  Judging by her expression, I was clearly correct. She giggled nervously. "Okay... You're really good. Oh my goodness, I'm all nervous now. How is it... well, I don't mean to be rude, but how come you're out here? You could be a detective or something, instead of…” she struggled briefly to find a polite way of saying it. “Without a home."

  Perish the thought. "I prefer to think of myself as 'between homes', rather than 'homeless'."

  "Are you a Veteran?"

  I shook my head. Though now that I thought about it, it would be a good cover story, if I had to make one up in the future. When we reached the door of Kapinsky's, I held it for her, and she smiled prettily as we went inside.

  Kapinsky's was an old Jewish corner deli, painfully reminiscent of Mariya’s tea shop in appearance, but far less friendly. There was still a certain comfort to be found in Kosher food. My mother's cooking was the only reliably good memory I had of her. The counter sheltered a cornucopia of preserved meats and fish. After weeks of skulking on the burnt out fringes of the Bronx, it smelled intense, a real savory salt burn that made my mouth water.

  "What do you want?" Talya looked at me enquiringly.

  'Everything in the case' was not an appropriate response. Neither was 'anything'. I thought, glancing over the menu in agitation. "Two toasted everything bagels with lox and cheese. Salad and coffee, black. As strong as they can make it."

  We took a table, and I set my deck of cards down by my hand while we waited. Conversation was too much to deal with after having been spat on, but Talya seemed comfortable with silence. I tried to be serene for her sake, but I wasn’t used to suppressing my rage this way. A guy had spat on me, and I hadn’t been able to stab him. In times past, I had an outlet for anger in the course of my job. Without the option to kill, rage boiled and curled, pushed against my mouth and hands, and when it found no exit, it simply roiled and grew deep within the pit of my belly. It bothered me. Maybe I’d go out and find Reptile Guy’s car and wait until he got in. I could pour gasoline in the cabin, set it alight. He wanted his God that bad… I’d send him off as a burnt offering.

  “Hey, Rex? Are you okay?”

  I broke out of the spiral of brooding to glance at her. Talya’s eyes were wide, her head cocked to one side.

  “Just tired,” I said. “The crazy guy took the wind out of my sails.”

  “He was a Voicer, I think. They hold their services in the Hammerstein Room. That guy was probably on his way to their big service.”

  “He was quoting a party line?” I frowned, disconcerted. “What is this, some kind of cult?”

  Talya smiled. “Do you consider Evangelical megachurches to be a cult?”

  “All religion is essentially legalized schizophrenia.”

  She laughed. “Then I guess, yeah. I know a bit about them… we had some members in my… my friends. The Voicers are pretty huge in Chicago and the Midwest now. You’ve never heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “The Pastor has a show on TV. You’ve never heard of Zachariah Goswin? ‘Father Zach’?”

  “That explains why I never heard of him” I said. “I never owned a TV.”

  “But you know Jimmy Swaggart?”

  “My friend liked to watch shows,” I replied, with a small pang. “When we lived on campus together. He used to do Swaggart impressions and pretend to hit people with his ‘magic coat’.”

  When the bagels came out, they were warm and crisp on the outside, buttery on the inside, and blessedly fresh. Talya watched on indulgently, a look I hadn't seen on a woman's face since leaving Mariya's home for boarding school.

  "You must have been starving." She spoke like the way you would to a hungry kitten crouched over a can of tuna.

  There was no way to respond with dignity, except to let it pass as one patronizing piece of bullshit in a sea of social errors. I wiped crumbs from my gloves, and cupped my hands around the coffee. Real china, the first I'd used since escaping the warehouse. "So. You want a reading. What’s the question?"

  "Okay. But before I tell you… I want you to do it cold," she said. "No hints."

  I looked up at her past the end of my cap. "You've done this before."

  She nodded. "Many times. But not this question."

  I gave the cup a habitual little twist, relishing the old ritual, then took the first sip. It was bittersweet, strong, a little frothy. Wistfull
y, I set it aside, took out the cards and mixed them. To my surprise, Talya glanced around the shop, and then quickly and discreetly drew a pentacle figure from breast to brow, brow to breast, then shoulder to shoulder, the way one might do a rosary.

  "Here." I held the deck to her, face down. "Ask your question aloud as you shuffle."

  Talya licked her bottom lip, the pink tip of her tongue flicking out. She paused after taking the deck in hand, and when she spoke, it was in Russian. "Two of the four fires have been extinguished. Can we find those who were in their keeping?"

  The wording seemed unnecessarily arcane, and fluent as I was, I mulled over the question to try to find a better translation while she shuffled, intent on her hands.

  "I know it probably doesn't make much sense..."

  As she spoke, I held up a finger. Regardless of what I knew, the deck would respond with the correct answer. I might not be able to access my Neshamah, but she could talk to hers through the cards, and it was that which mattered. "Focus."

  Lips pressed together, she nodded. I silently drew the Kabbalic cross over my chest. From Mercy to Severity, the Kingdom to the Crown. The energy didn't build up the way it used to; there was no intoxicating rush, no flare of energy, but there was still something. My will, my discipline, my intuition. The outside reality of magic was real.

  Talya shivered and abruptly stopped shuffling. Without being asked, she cut the deck nearly three quarters towards the bottom, switched it over, and handed it back with squared shoulders. "Here."

  Unconventional questions called for unconventional spreads. There are a few tried and trues – the Celtic Cross spread being the most famous – but this was a ten-card question. I lay three cards out at the top, four below, and three to the side. The background of the question, the circumstances, and the result.

  The first three gave an unmistakable background. The King of Swords, the Tower, the Empress reversed. "This is about a large group of people. The King and Queen of that group are gone. A large, stoic, intelligent but possibly violent man, dark in coloring, and an emotional, motherly type of woman who may have been somewhat emotionally unstable. She was the dearer of the pair to you, personally. Are they… deceased?"