“Beer,” I say. “Uh…cerveza.”
She walks away, unimpressed.
Turns out, I’m sitting at a really bad angle. I can see the employees’ exit door, and part of the bar, but not what’s going on near the band or who’s coming in the door. As I sit there, nervously rubbing at my nail polish, I start wondering if I shouldn’t call it a wash and get the hell out of here.
The waitress reappears so suddenly I nearly jump out of my seat. She sets a tumbler of amber mescal down in front of me instead of the beer I ordered. Frowning, I see something swirling around the glass. I lean forward, and the biggest fucking worm I have ever seen suddenly breeches the liquid like it’s the damn sandworm in Dune, splashing my face.
This time, I do jump up in surprise, knocking the glass over.
The waitress howls in laughter.
“Stupid bitch,” I growl, not expecting her to understand.
She surprises me by switching to English. “Stupid gringo bitch.” And she points to me.
“What is your problem?”
She laughs again, then glances down at my hands. Her eyes widen and she chokes on her laugh.
I follow her look and see a wisp of smoke wafting off my hands where they rest on the tabletop. Looking back up, I see her cross herself and back away, her face pale and her mouth set in a thin, troubled line.
Great going, chick. I lift my hands up, noticing the burn spots my fingers have left on the chipped Formica. It occurs to me that I probably left my fingerprints burned right into the table as—if I could any stupider. I realize I’m making a major mistake being here, but before I can decide on a new course of action, I hear a door slam hard.
Looking up at the employee’s door, I see a man standing there. He’s not tall. My height or even less. But he is terrifying. He is shirtless, and, like the waitress, almost every inch of his body is covered in colorful (and frightening) tattoos. Some of them are of the glyph variety. Wards. He’s wearing wards on his body. But his facial piercings really throw me. I used to have an eyebrow piercing and two lip rings in high school, but this dude has practically his entire face covered in rings and studs, some intricately placed to create yet more ward glyphs across his cleanly-shaven skull. He also has doorknockers, earlobe-stretchers, and subcutaneous implants under the skin of his skull to give the impression of horns. He even has a split tongue—noticeable when he looks my way and licks his lips lasciviously. Feathers hang from rings attached to his earlobe stretchers, and across his bare clavicle, he wears an intricate gold collar similar to the one the goddess wore in my visions. Honestly, he’s just missing the feathered headdress in order to look like some badass brujo in a movie about evil Aztecs.
He’s frightening, for sure. But it’s the way he’s looking at me—a combination of displeasure and dangerous lust—that sets my teeth on edge. I’ve finally decided this is a very bad idea and start to get up, but someone grabs me from behind.
Heart thudding too loudly in my ears, I whip around to face one of the big bikers. “Let go!” I demand and try to jerk my arm loose, but his grip is like a vice. And when a second man grabs my other arm, I know it’s too late.
Despite my protests, they easily drag me toward the brujo.
He smiles as I approach, and I see he’s filed his teeth to points. It adds nothing but another layer of scary to his image as the two large, burly men hold me kicking between them. I’m about as scary as an angry Raggedy Ann doll.
Cast a spell. Set them on fire. Do something, you idiot!
I try to whip up my power, but the brujo raises his hand and passes it across my face. I expect to pass out or something, but it’s much worse than that. It’s like someone has doused my entire body in freezing cold water. Immediately, my teeth start to chatter, my body shivers, and I feel all my joints stiffen up. My power—my fire—feels frozen inside of me.
“No more of that, bruja roja,” says the brujo. “I put that fire out, si?”
“W-who are you?” I moan between shivers, shocked when I see the cold mist coming out of my mouth. You would think I was standing in a sub-zero snowstorm instead of a sweaty biker bar.
“They call me Tupoc. What do they call you, my red witch?”
I don’t want to give the brujo my real name. Names have power. Anyway, I need something that sounds more badass than Vivian. So I improvise—badly.
“Lady Lucifer.”
Tupoc laughs at that. “That! Is that your superhero name?”
The other men laugh with him.
That makes me angrier than ever, but I can’t do a thing except hang between the two dumb beefcakes holding me up. Nothing but shiver like some fool.
Tupoc says something to the men in Spanish and pantomimes over his bare chest like he’s holding a woman’s breasts. What he says doesn’t sound good, but the men laugh and start shouting things back and forth that I can only assume you would never say in front of your mother or polite company.
“Si, si,” Tupoc laughs. He licks his lips again and reaches out to run a hand over my breasts. The moment he touches me, it sparks the rage deep inside of me. I totally freak out. I can’t use my power, but, with a cry, I kick out at him, driving my boot into his solar plexus.
The impact knocks him back a few steps, but it doesn’t drive him to the floor the way it should. Instead of angry, he looks impressed, his eyes facetiously large. Then he grins again as if this is a game. He looks at me as if he wants to rip my clothes off right then and there.
I start to panic. Bad. I twist and turn in the men’s grip, but they won’t let go and I just wind up hurting myself as I fight them.
Tupoc, still grinning, steps up to me and grabs me by the throat. The moment he does, my entire body automatically seizes up. The men let go of my arms so he can raise his arm up. My feet leave the floor. His strength is enormous and ridiculous. I start to choke. I wrap both hands around his wrist in response, squeezing to try and get him to release me, but it’s like grabbing a stone statue. I dig my nails into his flesh, but I don’t even make a dent.
My entire world shrinks down to just a need to breathe. I can’t. I can’t do anything but panic and claw at his hand as he holds me up above his grinning, monstrous face. I can’t even scream because I can’t suck in enough oxygen to make even a whimper.
“Stupid bruja roja. You will die so easily!”
Tupoc throws me half the length of the bar. I’m grateful for it because it means his hand is off my throat and I can breathe. But when I hit the floor, the impact just knocks the much-needed air out of me and I continue to coast across the hardwood until I hit the bar. The impact makes me gasp in pain and surprise. My head clunks back against the bar and the whole place spins around me.
The patrons of the bar—the bikers, their women, even the barkeep above me—start roaring with laughter. They shout things back and forth in Spanish, all at my expense. I’m in pain and too scared to move. But also too scared not to. And I’m mortified. Maybe that’s the worst thing of all.
I cower back against the bar as if their voices are a physical force pinning me there. There was an incident in gym class once. I ripped my volleyball shorts in a very revealing place and didn’t know it, and not one girl told me, though I heard them whispering the whole time. It wasn’t until afterward that the PE teacher stepped into the locker room to tell me. I asked her why she hadn’t said anything earlier. I mean, she was among the girls laughing, and she shrugged and said she thought I’d done that on purpose.
Because, you know, I was the class whore.
I’ve never cried so hard as I did on that day.
Now, I think about that as I sit there, hurting and confused. I was such a fucking fool to think I could investigate this case. To come here, alone and unarmed, and take these people on. I’m a candymaker, not a private investigator. But, as the Whore of Babylon, I suppose I deserve this…
No, you do not.
The voice is crystal clear in my head, but I don’t recognize the tone or cadence
at all. Curious, I sit up straighter, listening hard and waiting for it to return. But the voice is gone.
Tupoc notices and stops laughing. He looked me straight in the eye. “Bruja roja, are you ready to play some more?” He takes a step toward me, making a show of grabbing his crotch. He sticks his forked tongue out to lick his lips.
I watch in absolute horror. I’m so very stupid and weak. I actually freeze up—not that I could get to my feet even if I wanted to. I’m in too much pain, and I think I’ve turned my ankle badly in the fall.
Tupoc’s snakelike tongue swipes across his lips. I feel my terror go up another notch.
He starts to reach for me…and then everything stops. Everything.
Freeze frame.
I sit up and look around the bar, but the faces of the men and women laughing at me are frozen like a collection of ugly masks. The barkeep, laughing and pouring a beer, is also frozen, and so is the tap, with frozen beer pouring out of it and into a mug.
I don’t understand. It’s like someone stopped a movie on a DVD player. This is pretty big magic, whatever it is. But, whatever is going on, it means I have an opportunity to get the hell out of here, so I try to claw my way to my feet. My ankle buckles, though, and I fall back down with a cry.
“Don’t get up,” says that same disembodied voice from before—except it’s coming from the open door and not from inside my head. “You’ll only aggravate your injury.”
I slide back down as a man enters the roadhouse.
He’s tall and blond and ridiculously handsome. He’s wearing a pricey Italian suit in cream and a straw Panama hat with a red band. As he approaches me, he lifts his head and I spot his face...and gape.
“Nick!”
That’s my first assumption. He looks like Nick…but, somehow, not. There are subtle little differences. His eyes are a bright, Caribbean blue-green, unlike Nick’s winter-storm grey eyes, and he’s wearing little silver-framed glasses. Nick doesn’t wear glasses. His features are older and more engraved—or just wiser and more learned. And he doesn’t have Nick’s shit-eating grin. I see he’s carrying a walking stick like someone out of a British period drama. The stick is dark mahogany, almost black, and the head made of silver in the form of a snake.
My realization of who I’m facing strikes more fear in me than Tupoc ever could—than anyone ever could, even Mr. McCarty, the man who spent a year raping me when I was nine years old.
“Holy Christ,” I whisper.
And he laughs. “I’m afraid not, daughter.”
25
SO THAT'S how I wound up sitting on a filthy floor in a roadhouse in the middle of a breach in time and space with a turned ankle and the Devil standing over me.
I was all right until then. Then I found myself trying desperately to scramble to my feet.
“Stop. Be still,” he says. His voice is deep and stern and vaguely menacing as he sets the walking stick down on the top of the bar. I expect an accent—British or Australian or maybe a sinister German—but to my surprise, he doesn’t have one.
When I don’t stop trying to get to my feet, he gives me a direct look and says, “Stop struggling, girl.”
His voice is so commanding, I freeze up on the spot. I’m completely helpless as he crouches down in front of me so we are looking into each other’s eyes. I must look horrified because he is scowling, his lips pressed firmly together as he undoes the cravat at his throat. That makes my heart beat double-time in my chest. But once he gets the cravat loose, he bends over my ankle and slides my boot off. My ankle is already swelling and ugly. When he takes it in his hand, I jump a little. He’s gentle, but it really hurts.
“Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you,” he tells me, sounding somewhat exasperated. He spends the next few moments binding my ankle with his cravat before setting my foot on the floor. Then he stands up. “Can you stand?”
“I…don’t know.” All my old Catholic training has come back to haunt me and I’m terrified to speak to him.
He offers me his hand.
I look at it.
“Do you think I want to hurt you?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly, looking up at his tall, kingly frame. “You’re…”
I can’t finish the statement.
“Your father,” he finishes for me. “Give me your hand.”
I half-expect his hand to feel burning hot, but it’s just a man’s hand. A very strong hand as he pulls me to my feet. “Lean on me,” he says, offering me his shoulder.
I can’t walk. I have no choice but to put my arm around his waist. He reciprocates and walks me back to the two-seater in the corner. I can’t believe this is happening as he helps me sit down and then returns to the floor to retrieve another chair, which he sets down next to mine. “Elevate your ankle. It will help with the swelling.”
I put my ankle up while he sits down across from me. He watches me expectantly, but I just keep staring at him stupidly. After a few swallows, I managed some words. “He…told me about you…naturally…but I didn’t think…” My voice trails off uselessly.
“Do you mean Nick?” His smirk becomes a bit of a lopsided sneer. “I’m sure it was nothing good. You mustn’t listen to him. He’s rather overdramatic, our Nick, isn’t he?”
Strangely, I feel at ease now that we’re both sitting down. But I can’t help but glance around the bar at all the frozen people.
“It’s a time-lock,” he explains. “They’re not frozen. You and I are occupying a single picoseconds between one second and the next. ‘Time-lock’ is a very misleading description of what we are experiencing. No one is actually ‘locked’ in time. Everything is just moving extremely slow. Slower than you or I can see.” When he sees I have no idea what he’s talking about, he indicates the room. “A picosecond is to one second as one second is to approximately 31,689 years.”
I suddenly bark a small laugh. “Oh. So…as long as we don’t sit here more than 31,689 years, we’ll be fine.”
He nods as he removes his hat and sets it on the table. His blond hair is slicked straight back. It makes him look like David Bowie playing a Prohibition-era gangster. “Exactly.”
“Do you think we’ll finish in time?” I say, suddenly arch because I’m freaking out and sarcasm is my go-to mechanism. “I mean…I have some questions.”
He grins then. Not sinister. He looks genuinely amused, though his teeth look sharper in his mouth than anything a human should have. “How about a deal, daughter? You may ask me anything you want. But then you must answer my question honestly.”
“A deal with the Devil,” I laugh.
He puts a hand to his chest.”Retired.”
“Still…” I look down a moment, then back up. “All right.”
“Ladies first.” He makes a flourish with his hand.
I try to think of something. But now that I have the man I have always wanted to talk to right in front of me, ready to answer all my questions about my birth, I can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound stupid. Was Atlantis real? Who really killed JFK?
Shaking my head, I finally think of one. “Nick said you stole his mother away and left him behind. Did you?”
He leans forward slightly. “Yes. My turn.”
“Wait…that’s it?” I hold a hand up. “Just…yes?”
“It’s the truth. Now, my question.” His smile slips just a little. “Why haven’t you learned to fight, my little witch?”
I stare at him mutely for several seconds. “Fight?”
“Answer the question.”
I think. The only logical answer is: “I never thought I would need to fight.”
He nods, accepting that. He’s annoying laconic, I decide. “Your turn.”
Again, I don’t know what to say to him. How to talk to him. “Are you…I mean, is it true. Are you really retired?”
“Yes. Why haven’t you learned to use your powers? Nick did teach you, after all.”
It’s hard to keep up with him—the way h
e jumps back to me as a subject of conversation. “I…don’t know. I did learn…some.” I take a deep breath before continuing. “But then we broke up and I decided I never wanted to see him again. Not after what he did to me. The way he betrayed me. I guess I just figured I was done. Though, today…” I look around the bar. “I guess this proves I could use more training, huh?”
He seems satisfied with my answer and does not take me to task the way I expect him to.
I suddenly think of a question. “What name do you use when you’re here…on Earth, I mean?”
He doesn’t hesitate to answer. “Dr. John Englebrecht when I teach ethics at the University of Philadelphia. Next question.”
“Wait…so what name do I use?”
“John.”
I’m a little disappointed he hasn’t asked me to call him Dad or Daddy or even Father. John. He is so standoffish!
“Next question…and this isn’t one I wanted to ask. But why do you keep asking questions about me or Nick but not yourself? Surely, you are curious about…her.”
I lick my lips nervously. I know who he’s talking about, but it still surprises me that he should ask. “Why would I want to know anything about her? She’s nothing. She didn’t want me in her life—obviously. So what difference does it make who she is?”
“You’re not the least bit curious?”
His persistence spikes the outrage in me and I clench my hands on the tabletop. “I know where she lives. I could see her anytime I want. But why should I? I have nothing to say to her. I’d rather know more about you.”
He smirks and steeples his long, thin fingers together—but I can’t tell if he is pleased or just humoring me. Rings with large, dark gemstones crackle on his fingers. “What would you like to know about me?”
To the Devil a Daughter (A Vivian Summers Investigation Book 1) Page 11
