Times of Peace: Volume 1 of the side adventures to The Mercenary's Salvation

by Anthony M. Johnson

  Chapter 6: El Grito de Santo Santiago

  May 24, 2001

  12:01 P.m.

  RPg 8 Industrial Warehouse, Los Angeles, California

  “Rise and shine, dipshit. Scum aren’t supposed to get their beauty sleep.”

  Harry Crews woke with a start at the bucket of freezing ice water that splashed into his bare chest, the middle aged hoodlum shaking and cursing as he shook his heavy beard about. Restrained and tied to a chair, the hard man would have woken like a bear poked awake were it not for the chains, his mind coming back to him in an instant as he tried to catch his breath.

  Why was it so hard to breathe? Because of the bag the one eyed man had put over his head when he nabbed him off the street corner, forcefully choking him out until he lost consciousness. How long had past Harry could not say; only that he couldn’t see and could barely breathe, though his beard and neck were purposefully left exposed.

  Well, no one could mess with Harry like this. Growling as he spoke, the bulky man complained

  “Do you know who the hell I am? I’m Harry f-”

  The man choked on his own words as he felt a fist crash into his belly, the exposed flesh bruised hard as the man began to cough. Whoever the interrogator was wasn’t putting up with his backtalk; the man, who sounded different than the soldier that picked him off, told

  “Harry Crews. Thirty eight, lives with and beats his girlfriend when he’s not too busy participating in underground dog fights or pitching dope to high schoolers. I didn’t think I’d find a scum bag as distasteful as you; back in my day, we gangs had standards we didn’t even cross.

  “Well, times change. I have no problem hurting you, Harry. You going to shut up and obey, or am I going to have to crush your balls until you learn to speak only when you’re spoken to.”

  That Harry didn’t fire off any sort of crude retort was good enough for the interrogator. Clutching the bag with his one good hand, Trevor Daines tore it off and threw it to the ground as the heavy man found himself face to face with a ghost of the past, a legend that was meant to die in a boat explosion if the rumors were true.

  “Trevor Daines? You’re- you died in New York! The Mafia killed you.”

  “They did. They set off the bomb that blew me to Hell… too bad the Devil lost his touch. I made a deal with god, Harry, and now I’m back for revenge. My 34th street saints, La Mara, the Mafia, every criminal scumbag who dares to screw with me is going to feel my wrath… to the uttermost drop of blood.”

  Flexing his hand, a knife materialized from nowhere as the dirty blond dressed in an old, sweaty tank top and shorts bought from a nearby thrift store soiled himself with blood, a splash of red painting him as the blade protruded from Harry’s uncovered shoulder. With a cry the man shook his chair, looking about for help and a way out to no avail. The room was dark yet stank of the docks; the sound of fog horns and bustling cargo carriers drowned out any noise that did escape the thick walls of the warehouse. The former crime lord had taken him to the exact spot that Harry had tortured many a debtor; an empty storage facility on a bustling wharf, inconspicuous and unlikely to be checked by the busy police or gangs of LA.

  In other words, the ghostly vampire would have all the pleasure he wanted. Pulling the blade free, eliciting even more cries, Trevor excitedly licked the steel clean of blood as he indulged in the afternoon snack, all in preparation in what very well could have been a meal. Building upon that terror, the man paced in front of his naked captive as he explained

  “Death is simply a gateway to greater powers, Harry. Powers that I now have; the best part about this encounter is that I don’t have to torture you. I could just drain you of your blood, absorb your being into my own. I can get all of the information I want from simply sucking your blood; I have become Dracula, a vampire and ruler of darkness.

  “But there’s no fun in that, nor is their punishment; you’re a piece of garbage, Harry. Filth that doesn’t even deserve the comfort of a cell; you are of that same class of criminal that they tortured back in the Medieval ages, the kind we humiliated and reduced to a sobbing pile of meat before we finally put you out of your misery.

  “So here’s how this is going to work. You don’t leave here alive; you’ve committed far too many crimes for that. At the same time, I don’t want you inside of me; as tasty as your blood is, I don’t want to know the crimes you’ve committed in your obnoxious and blatant misuse of power that you call your life. So we’re going to make a trade.

  “I’m going to ask questions. You have ten seconds to answer truthfully. Don’t try to lie; I can hear the very pulse of your heart, smell the odors of every chemical reaction, and sense even the neurons themselves firing off in your brain. Take too long or try to rip me off, you lose a finger. Run out of fingers, I move to the toes. No toes left, and I start cutting you an inch at a time until I filet your entire body. You hear me, Harry?”

  “Yes, yes sir! I won’t lie. Just, just let me call my girlfriend and tell her I l-”

  Trevor’s purple eyes flashed brightly as his latent FTM powers activated, his special ability put into use as he flicked his knife through the air. It was nowhere near the restrained body of the captured drug dealer, but the effect was as if the vampire had directly cut him; the pinkie of the captive fell to the ground with a squishy crunch, completely separated from its hand in one smooth, sharp cut. All the man could do, besides watch the liquid pore from the open wound, was howl like the injured prey he was as Trevor shook his head, his frown hard as if the comment had insulted him to the core.

  It had. “Didn’t you hear what I said, Harry? You abused your girlfriend. The only reason she moved in with you in the first place is because you raped her at a party. You don’t deserve to talk to her; you don’t deserve to ever see her face again. To hell with your so called love, and to hell with you; if it was true love, you would have blown your brains out years ago.”

  So the bearded captive continued to whine, his cries piercing the air and echoing about the empty warehouse as Trevor waited with impatience, flipping his sharp carving knife in his hand as he waited for the man to regain some sense of composure. It took several minutes, but Harry finally found a way to breathe a little lighter; his hand throbbed, but the pain was already beginning to subside as the shock set in.

  Trevor had to work fast then. Harry needed to be coherent, just for a few minutes more.

  “Good. Now, answer the question; where’s Rodrigo Morales?”

  “I don’t know… I swear I don’t know.”

  “I believe you. Who does? Who’s someone you know that can tell us where he is?”

  “Pichette Falcone… he runs a club called The Long Halloween. Weird sort of sex club where party goers dress up in costumes and get it on. It’s a way we get our clients hooked… besides dealing to those who already have a relationship with us.”

  “Who does Falcone work for then? Isn’t Pichette Canadian?”

  “La Mara 18 doesn’t care about race… if you have money or a gun. You just gotta swear loyalty and pay your dues… nothing more.”

  Trevor was content with that. Sheathing the knife for the moment, the blond took his aviators from his pocket and put them on, his shining eye glinting from behind the glass as the wounded warrior approached his captive. Flicking his hand again, a lighter appeared in it that bore the mark of a fox, an exact copy of one that Sylvia Christel owned back before her transformation into a cyborg. How Daines had come into possession of it is a mystery for another day.

  “Don’t bite your tongue.”

  Turning on the bright orange flame, Trevor shoved it into the hole that was the missing finger as the captive began to scream again, his lungs wearing out from the simple pain and overuse of vocal cords. Making it worst, he could smell the stench of his own flesh cooking as Trevor cauterized the wound, keeping the lighter in place perhaps a few extra seconds than he really needed. Not to say he was ensuring the safety of his subject; simply
making another point as he pulled away from the blackened flesh, no longer concerned about an early death from blood lost.

  The one armed man would have spoken then, but the shouting of his victim continued. Looking back, it would have been far more efficient to simply suck the blood of this deranged criminal… yet that would have meant dealing with nightmares for months at worst, weeks at best as Trevor would have been forced to undergo therapy to delete the unwanted accursed memories from his mind of a life poorly lived.

  So in his opinion, it was worth wasting a few more minutes. Once Harry had regained his composure again, Trevor withdrew his knife and held it plain and ready. “Now, unless you feel like repeating that, we’re going to keep on going with no more delays. Ten or so questions, and you can go face whatever judgement God has in store for you. Understand, Harry?”

  “Yes…”

  “I want to know the name of every ring you’ve gone to for dog fighting. I don’t care if it was a tournament or a onetime deal. I’ll know if you’re keeping back or forget as well, so think hard; you have ten seconds for every name.”

  Harry complied by giving all twenty of them. Not a single finger was lost.

  “Good. Now I want to know of every breeder you’ve met that raises dogs for fighting. Same rules apply; don’t slip up, you don’t lost another digit. Clock starts now.”

  No need to warn him anymore. The list of names were given, six people for Trevor to find and kill before he skipped town. Satisfied with the notion of a blood fest and his contribution to ending the inhumane practice of dog fighting, Trevor scratched his head and nearly cut it open as he went over his objectives in his mind, moving on to the next list as he remembered the other reason he was so disgusted.

  “Now, give me the names of the schools you pitched dope to.”

  Easy enough.

  “Every dealer you know who has ever sold drugs to kids.”

  The first hiccup as Harry’s eyes went wide. Stuttering, his nerves going into overdrive as he knew what he was risking, he fought his cowardly instinct and the drive to live as he tried to mumble an excuse, failing to say anything comprehensible save “But… but they’re… friends… my friends…”

  Trevor lost it at the word friends. Slashing three times through the air, the clean and composed cut that separated the finger was nothing like the damage that Trevor inflicted now. The man’s hand, which was immoveable before from the numbness that had consumed it, came alive the instant before it broke into three sections, rendered into sliced meat as it broke apart and caused a new stream of crimson to burst forth from the captive’s wrist as he screamed louder than ever before, losing sense and sanity as he nearly knocked over his chair from shaking.

  Somehow, over the noise, the torturer found a way to be louder. Dropping the knife, Trevor kicked out with his foot and knocked the reflective cripple to the floor as Harry fell with a thud, leaving a stream of liquid behind him as he fell. Stomping through it, ignoring as it splashed over sandals and painted his feet red, Trevor kicked out at the man’s side as he yelled

  “Kids! Freaking kids! Never did I dare pitching hard drugs to kids! A man has the ability to choose for himself; a kid doesn’t! A man can choose to go to Hell; a kid can’t even understand what Hell is!

  “So don’t you dare get self-righteous to me! That God has any mercy at all for your kind is a million times more compassion than your worthless sacks of air deserve! Do you hear me Harry? DO! YOU! HEAR ME?”

  Trevor kicked out one final time, the crying man rolling his eyes about as he began to lose consciousness. Knowing he had gone too far, especially as he had broken a few ribs with that last strike, the vampire knelt down upon the naked captive as he removed his glasses, his strained human eye joined by a dark, unnatural substitute that filled in the missing socket of the one blown out in the explosion that crippled him. Staring at the man, the man’s dark eye that appeared only as he used his powers grew even more tangible as the vampire’s voice began to change, taking an otherworldly tone as he invoked a long forgotten spell that Jack himself had never dared to use.

  “By the sealing power of Elijah and Peter, by the victories granted to Joan and Cromwell, by the authority granted to Noah and Moses, and by the urgency granted to deal with evil in these latter days that rival that of Sodom and Babylon… I invoke the chains of Gethsemane and bind your soul to this Earth and corpse, to suffer the pains that Christ himself suffered until you tell me what I want to know!”

  The body began to flinch and turn, Harry’s bleeding arm no longer draining of blood but ash, the corpse dissolving on itself as all but the mouth turned to dust. Only the lips, glowing a ghastly brown as if taken form the corpse of a mummy, remained solid and organic as a cry of a banshee began to emanate from them, the pains of a tortured and wounded soul being the source of their cry. Still, Trevor refused to release his hold as he challenged the evil spirit, saying unto it

  “Who are the dealers that vend their goods to children? Who are those that deserve to die?”

  The floating lips shuddered, threatening to break apart as the dark spirit tried to disintegrate its last layer of flesh, the remaining tie to this weary world. Yet, no matter how hard it pushed and fought, the spell kept it’s hold; the lips, and Harry in extension, were bound as if by chains to the floor as the ashes continued to hold their form in that of a man, a mummy doomed to eternal slumber and imprisonment as long as Trevor willed it. Would he be able to live with this curse? Could the dealer have the courage and the strength to grant his friends a few more years of life, to spare them of the cruel fate that had besought him?

  Harry could not; if he was a strong and righteous man, he would have never been in this conundrum in the first place. Finally opening those decayed lips, name after name began to pore out as every vowel caused the floating meat to join its dusty body. When all was said, so too was the spell; the final portion of the dealer’s mortal form evaporated into a wisp of dust, fading into the ghostly figure that had once been the shape of a man. Instead of maintaining the silhouette, the opposite occurred; now that it was complete, it was ready to move on.

  The spell and the pressure of the room evaporated along with the spirit, all disappearing at once as the mummified figure evaporated into shapelessness. The ash of the cursed human spilt apart, falling to the ground in a pile as gravity took it’s hold once more and scattered it along the floor. No word had to be said, no other spell uttered to end the strange event; the spirit had performed its final task, now free to move on to whatever judgement god had in store.

  As for Trevor, the morning had simply begun. Now that they had their lead, it was time to do some damage. Putting on his aviator sunglasses, the blond kicked out and scattered what remained of his captive’s corpse as he began to walk away, heading for the exit with a smile on his face.

  Yes, it was finally time to go to war.