by T R Kohler
There she waited, not wanting to take a chance on pulling out the sheet of paper she’d just procured, instead letting the midday sun beat down on her. Combined with the leather of the seat and the adrenaline she still felt from sneaking around upstairs, she could feel the back of her shirt sticking to her, damp with sweat.
Seven minutes after Ember climbed in, the sound of Kaia’s voice pulled her from her thoughts, dragging her attention over to the side.
“I hope it was worth it. Creepy bastard.”
Walking fast, the young woman stomped straight from the front doors, her outfit from upstairs gone, replaced by the same clothing she’d been wearing all morning.
Again, Ember found herself wondering when and how, two more questions for a list that was growing much faster than any answers seemed to be arriving.
Pausing just long enough to snatch the parking ticket away from the window, Kaia rubbed it twice between thumb and fingers before flicking it back over a shoulder. Fluttering twice, the bottom edge of it looked to be smoldering, the paper disintegrating before ever reaching the ground.
Feeling her mouth drop open, Ember stared incredulously at the show, yet another question added to the pile.
A few feet away, Kaia seemed oblivious both to what she’d just done and Ember’s reaction, sliding down behind the wheel and slamming the door shut.
“Damn pervert,” she muttered. Extending her right arm before her, she rubbed her left hand the length of it. “Feel like I need a shower right now.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what you get for making me a redhead,” Ember replied, pushing the parking ticket from her mind as she moved her focus over to Kaia.
For an instant, there was no reaction at all, the girl continuing to wipe away whatever funk she felt the manager had left on her, before flashing the bright smile Ember was fast coming to loathe. “Finally caught a look at yourself, huh? Hot stuff.”
“Go to Hell.”
“You and me both,” Kaia replied. “And speaking of which, did my little diversion help at all?”
No part of what Kaia had just pulled off – from her voice to her choice in wardrobe – would Ember call a little diversion, though she let it slide. Considering the number of things she already wanted to say to the girl, it seemed like one to let pass without raising too much stink.
“Don’t know yet,” Ember said. “The computer was worthless, but I got some names and numbers for us to check out.”
Pursing her lips slightly, Kaia shook her head. “Us. That’s cute, like we’re some sort of crime-fighting duo or something.”
Never once had Ember even considered such a thing. “I just used the term because there are two of us sitting here, and you seem intent on driving me everywhere I go. Where I come from, that’s considered an us.”
It was apparent from the scowl on Kaia’s face that she too wanted to fire back, though this time she somehow seemed to summon the restraint to hold it in. Reaching out, she turned over the engine, the resulting rumble much louder than Ember recalled from the ride in.
“Where to?” Kaia asked.
Opening her mouth to respond, Ember paused. She glanced down, a subconscious look to her stomach, before asking, “I’m hungry. Is that normal?”
“Considering the extra weight your redheaded ass is dragging around?” Kaia asked. “Yeah, I’d say it was pretty normal.”
Turning her head slowly, Ember felt her features pinch together, a sour taste rising along the back of her throat, burning the raw flesh lining it. “I mean, do I actually need food? Or is this just some sort of Hell byproduct?”
Sliding the sunglasses down from the top of her head and onto her nose, Kaia turned to match the pose. With the mirrored frames back in place, Ember could see her reflection, this time focusing long enough to notice the same visual she’d first spotted upstairs staring back at her.
Of everything, that was probably going to take the most getting used to.
“Both,” Kaia said. “You remember what happened with the alcohol? Same thing. You can drink water, but anything more and you’re going to pay the price.”
Irritation, angst, disdain, all crawled up higher within Ember. The fingers of her right hand curled inward, ready to form a fist and send it hurtling straight at Kaia’s face.
Not an unhappy thought, for sure.
“And for food?” Ember asked.
An eyebrow arched above the sunglasses, a smirk forming on Kaia’s face. “Just going to have to trial-and-error your way through that one too, aren’t you?”
This time, Ember’s left fist formed into a ball. Squeezing it tight, she wished in silence for a gym, for someplace with a punching bag and some gloves. Or even a stack of pillows and some athletic tape.
Anything to release some of the rage she felt growing inside her.
Years of working cases had told her that having it would only hold her back. It would cloud her judgement, causing her to do something foolish.
An eventuality that now would hold consequences much more severe than anything she’d done before.
“Do we have anybody on the payroll with the telephone companies? I need to do some research.”
Chapter Nineteen
“You must be the FNG.”
The voice on the other end of the line was rough and cantankerous, the embodiment of sandpaper. Just hearing it, Ember imagined a man weighing north of three hundred pounds, thinning hair and a walrus mustache of fiery red above a short-sleeve shirt and terrible tie.
Probably having a name like Ralph or George, she could almost see the empty paper cups of coffee and doughnut wrappers covering his desk.
Just as fast, she remembered that he too was in Hell, meaning that the cups were clear plastic from the office water dispenser and the food was probably plain rice cakes or slices of white bread.
At least, those were the two items in the sack wedged between her feet, both as bland and tasteless as anything she could find in the market. If either one of them managed to destroy her throat, she wasn’t quite sure what her next move would be.
“FNG?” she asked, her face contorting as she cast a glance over to Kaia. “Where did you drum this guy up from? ‘Nam?”
Raising one shoulder in a half-shrug, Kaia spread her fingers wide. “What do you expect? War is great for recruiting.”
Her question rhetorical, Ember hadn’t expected an answer. Definitely not one in the affirmative. Her jaw sagging slightly, she simply stared at Kaia a moment, her mind spinning.
The Vietnam War had ended before she was even born. And this man was still sitting at a desk somewhere, working for a damn telephone company.
An outlook that did not exactly fill Ember with optimism.
“Yo! Lady!” the man barked on the other end. “Did you call for a reason or what? Cause the sound of your voice ain’t as melodic as you might think.”
For the second time in as many minutes, Ember felt surprise pass through her. Melodic didn’t sound like something she would expect from a Vietnam vet now in the employ of Hell.
But then again, she probably wasn’t what most expected either.
At least, she’d like to believe so.
“I need a half-dozen numbers run down,” Ember said. “Names, addresses, whatever you’ve got.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the man replied. “I know how to do my job. Hit me.”
Starting at the top, Ember rattled them off one at a time, going just slow enough to be heard without having to repeat herself. When she was done, the man coughed twice, hacked a bit of phlegm from his throat, and said, “Give me twenty minutes or so. Believe it or not, I actually have other things to do besides be available when you people call.”
Without another sound, he was gone.
Keeping the phone in place a moment, letting it linger long enough to ensure the conversation was off, Ember cut the line and dropped it back into her lap. Questions of who you people were and how often they were leaning on him filled her mind as she reached for the foo
d between her feet.
When she’d woken that morning, she’d only been focused on her own plight. Not once had she paused to consider there might be many more like her out there, a force rivaling or even exceeding the one she used to work for in Seattle, all walking the streets in semi-plain sight.
“What did he say?” Kaia asked.
Removing the twist tie from the bread, Ember reached inside. She bypassed the heel for a slice of plain white and pulled it out. Examining it, she could feel the scratchy agony of the alcohol along the back of her throat, hoping she wasn’t about to be subjected to another round.
“Twenty minutes.”
Chapter Twenty
Centuries before, John Lee Tam’s descendants had gone by the surname of Tan. Residing in the countryside of the Guizhou province, they had raised rice and children, leading a simple existence. To his knowledge, some of them were still there, unable to be contacted by telephone, still existing the way they had for ages.
The divergence for John Lee had occurred a generation prior to his arrival. A harsh family squabble arose over his father’s choice in bride, and without a second thought, the tempestuous young man had taken his new wife and moved to Hong Kong.
There, it was Romanized into Tam, setting the fledgling couple apart from any family they might have.
And making John Lee the first Tam officially born into the world.
Growing up in the big city – even in the late 1800’s – was a far cry from what his parents had experienced. Skills such as milking animals or tending the fields were useless, instead replaced by whatever could be commoditized. Living conditions bordered on squalor.
It was a period of education for them all, none remaining with young John Lee more than what he discovered roaming the street markets and bazaars of town. Much different than the traditional fare of rice and vegetables that his mother prepared at home, he soon took a fast liking to the unknown delicacies referred to simply as street meat.
And found a love for all things spicy, the hotter the better.
But even to a man with as wide and varied a palate as Tam, there was nothing as repulsive as the taste of his own blood.
Thick and viscous, it came up from the back of his throat, passing over his taste buds, causing his entire body to spasm with gagging. Expelling it from his mouth, it passed over his teeth and down his chin, hanging from the scraggly collection of hairs clumped there.
The source of his pain, of the extreme bitterness now coursing through his body, stood just a few feet away. In his hand was a jug of clear fluid. Tasteless and without scent, Tam knew it to be nothing more than water, this one different in one key way from the basic stuff he’d been forced to survive on for so long.
Somewhere around fifty, the man had hair buzzed short, grey dominating the sides, the top still dark. Standing several inches taller than Tam, he was well tanned and proportionally muscled, his bare arms gleaming beneath the overhead lights.
“Now that I have your attention, let me ask you again,” the man said, “who are you?”
Sitting with his arms and ankles both secured to a metal chair, Tam rolled his gaze up at the man before sweeping his gaze to either side.
The room he was sitting in was small, no more than eight feet square. Every surface was covered with black foam padding, more likely meant for soundproofing than any sort of comfort for him. The sole form of light was the twin pair of tube bulbs above, a metal grate keeping them well beyond reach.
Otherwise, the place was a completely timeless environment, constructed for the sole purpose of housing a prisoner.
“Where am I?” Tam asked.
The man simply stared back at him, his eyes and nostrils both flaring slightly, as if incredulous that Tam had dared say anything beyond a direct answer.
Taking a step forward, the man unscrewed the top from the jug. He raised the bottle in his hand and flicked it toward Tam, sending a ragged stream of clear liquid his direction.
Splashing across his exposed shins and feet, a searing pain shot through Tam’s body, his skin bubbling on contact. The scent of scorched flesh soon found his nose, so sharp it caused his eyes to water. Clamping his teeth shut, he threw his face toward the ceiling, forcing back a moan.
Holy water.
To someone in the devil’s keep, it was as potent as battery acid. And the ultimate truth serum, proving who Tam worked for even without him saying a word.
“Let’s try this again,” the man said, “or the next one goes into your eyes. Or maybe some of your more delicate areas. Who are you?”
Sweat streamed down Tam’s face, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Bit by bit the agony in his legs receded, taking with it the tension that gripped the rest of him.
In the wake of it, he felt nothing more than exhaustion, his body fighting to maintain consciousness.
There was no point in lying. While he was an employee of the underworld and had been for the better part of a century, that alone wasn’t a crime. Scads of people on both sides of the line littered the middle realm at any given time.
It wasn’t until they dabbled into something that they shouldn’t that things got ugly.
“What do you want?” Tam asked. “I have done nothing.”
The man ignored the back half of his statement entirely. “Right now, I want to have a conversation. I already know who you are and what you do, but I want to see if you have the good sense to be truthful. I know that isn’t real high on your kind’s list of priorities.”
The words sounded so similar to the racism Tam had spent decades listening to on Earth that for a moment he almost thought the comment was aimed at his skin tone.
Just as fast, he realized what the man was really referring to, the opposite side so sanctimonious they always assumed the worst.
“My name is John Lee Tam,” he managed. Pausing, he spit out another tiny chunk of flesh, the piece landing just inches from the man’s feet.
“And what do you do?”
“I am an antiquities dealer.” Usually, when explaining this to most anybody else, he would go into a rehearsed speech about what this meant and often entailed.
In this case, he didn’t bother saying another word. Like the man said, he already knew who he was and what he did.
Nodding slightly, the man began to pace before him. He kept the cap off the bottle as he went, tapping the bottom of it against his thigh, his steps measured.
“Do you know why we brought you here?” the man asked.
Allowing himself to glance down to his exposed legs, the sight pulled the breath from Tam’s lungs. Thick stripes of skin bubbled, white foam spreading over his pale limbs like peroxide in an open wound.
“To torture me?”
To that, the man flickered a hint of a smile. “The torture is just a byproduct, a means to an end. If you tell me what I need to know from here on out, I promise, it will stop.”
This wasn’t Tam’s first dealing with the opposition. While they liked to use condescension and act as if his side was the only one with any moral scruples, more than once he had seen what they were capable of.
Believing one of their promises was a mistake he would not be making any time soon.
“Who is Ember?” the man asked.
Tam’s initial reaction was that the man was already messing with him. He had made up a name just to get his reaction, was again trying to bait him into being untruthful.
A moment later, it passed, his features scrunching slightly. “I don’t know any Ember.”
To his knowledge, he’d never even heard the name before.
Though, to be fair, it did sound like something someone in Hell had come up with. That alone gave him the tiniest flicker of hope. Maybe his side had realized he was gone. Maybe right now they were out looking for him, had gone to his home in hopes of tracking him down.
Maybe.
Raising the jug before him, the man wagged it toward Tam, letting him see the clear liquid jostling inside it. “I won’t ask
you again.”
“You don’t need to,” Tam answered. “I’ve never known an Ember in my life.”
Without warning of any kind, the man thrust the top of the jug out, a splash of water hitting Tam square in the chest. Saturating the thin T-shirt he’d worn to bed two nights before, it sat flush against his skin, a slow burn eating at his chest.
Icy tendrils seemed to clutch his entire core as he sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth, his fingers wrapping around the bottom of the chair he sat on.
Over the years, he had done a great many things that probably crossed some lines, but nothing that would cause this. The last he could remember had been years before, when he was a part of something that was now over and done.
This made no sense. This was pain simply for the sake of it, something that was strictly forbidden in the middle realm.
Standing before him, the man remained stone faced, watching as the holy water did what it was designed to. Appearing as detached as if he was standing before a printer, waiting for a document to be spit out, the man watched Tam writhe against his bindings, willing the pain to subside.
“Last chance,” the man said, “before things really get interesting.”
A curious choice of words, Tam didn’t bother to reply. Using the extra seconds to draw in as much air as possible, he waited in silence.
“Where is the artifact?”
On any given day, Tam looked at, examined, considered, or was approached about more than one hundred different pieces. The vast majority of them were completely legit.
Only on rare occasions did one trend over into their particular realm.
“What artifact?” Tam managed to push out. “I haven’t seen anything you’d be interested in in months.”
Standing over him, the man appeared as if he might again fling water at Tam. Tapping the jug against his leg, he looked as if he wanted nothing more than to hurl the remaining liquid straight into Tam’s face, watching as the skin slowly peeled away.
