“Embrace?” I scoffed. “It hurts.”
The energy for charmcasting exists on another plane, so if I wasn’t a demigod drawing my own power, I’d be fine. But tapping into godessence resident in my own skin and bones? Now that is painful shit.
The next car rides up and I take money and give change without getting touched. Since I started work as a ticketing officer a few months ago, only once in every five cars do I manage to avoid being zapped.
“It’ll be a good test for you,” Taiwo said, when Onipede offered me the job. “You must learn to control it, to turn it on and off at will.”
I’m reminded that I don’t like Taiwo very much. He sounds like a professor and a father mixed together. I don’t want either in my life. Thinking of it, maybe I should’ve just left the guy stuck in the Yasal bottle.
“You say turn it on and off at will as if it’s that easy,” I said.
“Well, if you’re going to charmcast, ever, you will have to learn to do that,” he said, so matter-of-factly that I would’ve reached out and punched him if he wasn’t using Fati as a vessel. “That’s how charmcasting works: you must shape your godessence into form, and send it across space and time to do your bidding.”
Yah. Right. And all the practice we’ve been doing led to what? The only progress I’ve made in six months is turning my sensitivity dial right up to a hundred percent, and obviously breaking it after that, because since then, I haven’t been able to turn it back down.
I see off the next driver without getting my esper/godessence excited. No further cars line up behind the barrier. I glance at the LED clock on the sign at the far side of the road—7:45pm, below the words Chevron Toll Plaza. What this place used to be, before it became what it is now: a screen for any undesirables trying into get into Upper Island.
Six months since the biggest menace to Lagos was incinerated and most of Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó shut off, people have finally awoken to what’s up. The LASPAC Force has finally been beefed up enough—Papa Udi spends half his time in the Cardoso House divinery these days, trying to meet their recipe and ritual quotas—and they literally police the city now, including this tollgate, where a good number of navy-blue combats are scattered around, bullets drowned in ebo, protective Nsibidi amulets on their biceps. Some are in plain sight, lugging heavy rifles and patrolling the entrance and exit barriers. Some stay within the shadows, plants watching out for any sign of trouble.
I’m one of those plants. Femi Onipede doesn’t think I’d do very well as a LASPAC officer, but she still wants me helping the force out rather than scouting the city for godlings, even though the majority are now sealed off alongside the Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó zone. She wants me to consider this job a form of payback for helping deal with Ajala, as well as a new source of daily bread, but I think she really just wants me where she can see me. An idle mind, et cetera. That’s her favourite quote.
We haven’t had trouble this side of Lagos for a while, that’s for sure. Femi ensures that by planting navy-blue combats at every nook and cranny around the perimeter of Upper Island. She herself is stationed full-time at the Upper Island State House, protecting Citizen Number One and his ilk. Can’t say if the mainland is doing quite as well, but since when did anyone care for the mainland?
The clock clicks for eight, and I pack up my stuff, my shift ended. My replacement for the night is a thin young man who has so many bags under his eyes he’s going to do much more sleeping than ticketing. I want to pat his back, reassure him, but then I don’t touch people much these days. Plus, I don’t know his name, and it’ll be awkward. Mostly, I just call everyone Chairman or Boss or Sisteh. I guess I don’t want to build more relationships only to get them caught up in my shit. If chaos will follow everywhere I go, I think I want to take less people with me.
I sign out my shift at the admin office at the tail end of the toll and nod officer whatever-her-name-is goodnight. I pick up my Bajaj, strap on the helmet Onipede gave me as a birthday gift—“So you start learning good citizenship now,” she said, and Papa Udi grunted in agreement—and I’m on my way back to Cardoso House via the Lekki-Epe Expressway, the night breeze whooshing through the crannies in my helmet.
It’s dead quiet and pitch black by the time I hit Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue. You would think six months since the biggest menace to Lagos was incinerated—the longest period without a godling showing up somewhere since The Falling—people would’ve become more inclined to revive the nightlife Lagos was once famous for. But old habits die hard, I guess. Eight sharp, and everyone still barricades themselves in, breath held, as if waiting for something to happen.
Heck, who isn’t? The LASPAC Force is setting up barricades everywhere too. Even we at Cardoso House, aren’t we preparing for something we think is coming?
Nothing is over. Not by a long shot.
I climb the bridge into Osborne and fire down. Massive unlit buildings, empty, brooding, line the road on both sides. I’ve always wondered what the owners of these multi-billion-naira structures are thinking right now, caught between staying put in Upper Island and returning their businesses here. Is it safe now? they’ll keep asking themselves. Is it safe?
The sky, though already dark at eight, grows blacker as I zoom up the second bridge, into the turn that takes me to Simpson. Lightning flashes veins across the sky, and thunder grumbles in low registers. I speed up, wondering if I can make it before it starts raining. It’s peak rainy season, and no one wants to be caught on a bike in the rain on these slippery Lagos roads. If I’m not home in minutes, I’ll soon be battling a flash flood chock-full of refuse and sewage.
I turn into Ojo Close just when the sky turns angrier. Lightning lashes ferociously now, thunder bellowing death threats. Cardoso House looms in the dark at the end of the close, unlit. Ah, dang, I sigh. Papa Udi didn’t turn on the gen agai—
The sharp smell of smoke smacks my nose right then. I sniff, sniff again. Yes—it is smoke, but more like burning; like electricity, when a power line sparks. But there’s no power on Ojo Close, right?
Crack! A clap of thunder, and lightning slams the earth. A light comes on in Cardoso House.
Not a light. Cardoso House is on fire.
Chapter Fourteen
PAYU. FATI.
My first thought.
I jump off my okada and let it skitter away from me, into the bush, as Cardoso House lights up the end of the close. The stench of kindling wood and plastic jabbs at my nostrils as I run, the sharp sting of new smoke in my eyes. I’m praying, praying, please, please, please don’t spread. But the night wind is merciless, fanning the flames, so that the little light that was only a warm glow in the dark is suddenly pouring out of a window, licking the blinds and dripping down its sill, and whoosh, there is fire everywhere upstairs: the roof, the doors, windows, coming out of every nook, every opening. Cardoso House is a dragon, puffing death and destruction from the depths of its belly.
No no no no no—
I’m at the door. The smoke coming from inside the house is washcloth thick, almost grabbable. I wave through it into the living room, coughing. My skin is hot in an instant, a boiling sweat breaking over my forehead. My throat is dry. I swallow hard.
“Payu! Fati!”
Heat presses down on me from above. The back of my neck is a hot plate, my eyebrows feel like they will peel any moment. Smoke swirls in my ears, my mouth, my nose, my eyes. I’m coughing, tearing my lungs as I clamber up the stairs, careful not to touch anything metallic. Flames billow on the balcony, smoke and tears blinding me so I must blink, blink, and still not see my hand in front of me, feeling my way up the corridor. I struggle to extend my esper, see if I can reach with my consciousness and touch the rooms around me, locate Payu and Fati. But I am still half-human: my senses are dulled, useless, overpowered by the stench of burning wire and foam. Something under the stairs explodes. The gen.
Is this the roof I almost killed myself for? This should be my last thought, but is the one I actually have. All that
suffering, for what? For a mistake that reduces all our lives and investments to black rubble.
Shit. The roof. If I don’t get them out now, the roof will come crashing down.
Another boom, thunder rolling with menace. The hallway upstairs illuminates for a second as lightning zags about outside.
And in that brief flash of light, I see them: Payu, huddled over Fati at the end of the corridor, the window behind them framing their stricken, frightened poses. The flames keep them in that spot, bursting out of the doors in front of them, filling the stretch between them and I. The floorboards are burnt through, and there is a black, smoking chasm opening up before me. I can see the wall dividing the kitchen and dining below, smouldering pieces of board falling onto our not-dining-table and igniting its edges; Papa Udi’s bowl of onions that he never uses melting from a corner, the onions tumbling to the floor and across the linoleum.
“Payu!”
Their eyes register my presence, but there’s something else there—Payu’s, wide and filled with horror; Fati’s bearing the glazed look of Ibeji coming to the fore. They’re looking in my direction alright, but not fixed on me; past me, behind me…
There is a sparkle, a snap, the pop of something materialising behind me. I get a jolt, an impression of brilliant godessence that puts the sum total of all my impressions today to shame: a thrumming white vibrance in this hell of yellow, a blast of ice-heat in this inferno. I turn, and in front of me, standing at closed to seven feet, is the biggest, meanest orisha I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
His robes: thick, mousled, rippling here and there into fire, silver and blue lightning running crackling fingers around it, never burning. Translucent materialised godskin shimmers, the brown of amala, muscles sculpted by divine hands. A superimposed dwarf statue with a hammerhead and a thick cross-hatched beard flutters about the god in an afterimage. An overpowering nut odour of bitter kola rises off him despite the smoke.
In his hand: a double-headed axe, its surface gleaming in the light of fire; thunderstone, sparkles of lightning caressing it, running fingers around it, pleasing it.
His eyes: swirling pools of àshẹ, fire of the gods, essence of divinity.
He lifts the axe, points it at me, and a voice like many cannons blasting in sync, says:
“You.”
The air between the orisha and I first stiffens, gathers. There is the overpowering smell of electricity, like a steel cable heating up and getting ready to spark; as if the air particles are rubbing against themselves and charging up for something. My tongue tastes like a naira coin.
Physics, I think, right before a bolt of electricity leaves his axe and comes for me.
I’ve ducked from a lot of things in my life: bullets, hurled weapons, punches and all kinds of blows, even a couple of charmcasts, yeah? But mahn, is lightning fucking fast.
The bolt strikes me clean in the left shoulder before I can shift a foot. Something bursts in my shoulder, and pain scatters through me, shooting fire into every blood vessel. The left side of my body goes numb, my eyelid drooping almost so I can’t see through that eye. My knee buckles. I go down, breaking my fall with a palm on the floor. My arm responds with a chorus of pain, and my heart’s rhythm changes, fibrillates, panicked. I can’t seem to remember anything that happened after the axe, except thinking, Damn, I wish I had my knives.
The big orisha sails—dude rides lightning like a staircase—and then he is before me, his axe right in front of my eyes, an icy feather touch on the bridge of my nose. I push out a weak esper, reaching out to read his signature, nausea threatening to drown me.
“You know who I am?” that voice like cannons says.
Yes, I say to myself, the signature coming back with a response. Yes.
You are Sango.
“Yes,” he says, as if reading my thoughts. “Remember me when you cross to the afterlife.”
Then the air in front of my face burns, gathers electricity.
A gunshot goes off. Something rattles into Sango’s chest, giving off a splash of liquid that burns into my forehead—ebo—and seeps into my skin like pinpricks of melted plastic. Steam erupts from Sango’s chest. It looks like it should hurt, but Sango doesn’t flinch. He just regards the wound the way one would an offending water spill, then lifts his axe and points it in the direction of his offender.
I look back. Papa Udi is holding the double-barrelled shotgun Femi Onipede gave us to defend ourselves. He cocks it, preparing to fire a second round.
Fati steps in front of him, opens her mouth and bellows a war rhythm. Kehinde’s charmcast is stark in the night, puncturing the heat, the smoke, the crackle of wood, the sound of burning.
“Run!” I scream at them, the pain of her charm starting to seep into my head and cloud my thoughts. “Go, go!”
Sango keeps his axe aimed, affected by neither bullet nor charm. He narrows an eye, as if aiming for a bullseye.
I don’t see the lightning leave his axe. I hear the crack of impact, their silhouettes frozen for a second, then Papa Udi and Fati are falling backward, slipping, tumbling out of the window to the ground below.
No no no no no no—
I rise on my good leg to face Sango. I will my godessence, shaping and loading it into the fist of my good right hand, something Ibeji have been trying to get me to do for a while. My fist feels heavy, charged, and I lean back as far as I can and slam it into Sango’s face.
My knuckles meet a brick wall. My wrist shifts; my finger joints dislocate, shooting pain down to my elbow, and I’m reminded once again, just like the last time I fought a god: you do not punch an orisha, goddammit.
Sango shakes his head, as if dealing with a child, then puts his axe on my chest and mutters a word in a language I swear is not of Earth.
Everything freezes for a split second, and the air pauses, collecting electricity from every nook and cranny of Cardoso House. Even the fire seems to burn slower for beat, and I swear it’s not my eyes when I see every single flame lean towards Sango.
Then, wham.
Something pierces me, sends heat coursing through my body. I’m flying backward, crashing into the wall of Cardoso House, breaking through, riding the force of the strike out of the house, into the cold wind of night and under a still raging dark sky, flying, flying, flying.
My momentum drops, and for a beat I’m caught, gravity pausing right before it starts to drag me the whole thirty feet plus into the lagoon below me.
Then a long finger of lightning reaches down from above and pounds my chest, sending excruciating pain into every nerve ending in my body. I am falling, falling, falling; and right before my back hits the hard cement of the water surface, the final image I have is of the embers of Cardoso House, the last of everything I have and know and love, disappearing into the night sky.
Chapter Fifteen
MY MOTHER IS not a beautiful woman. Her eyes are grey like iron, her arms strong and firm. She wears an Indian sari and her hair cascades to her shoulders like velvet window drapery in an Upper Island home.
“Get up,” she says to me, her lips barely moving. “Don’t be stupid, lying down there, in the bottom of the ocean. That’s not your place, is it?”
“Wh...?” I try to speak, but there’s water in my nose, in my mouth, in the back of my throat. Bubbles rise and I sound like a fish.
What?
“Get up,” she says. “Or everything is going to turn to ash.”
What? “I…”
“Shhh.” She puts a finger to her lips. “Embrace it. You must learn to embrace it. It’s like the phoenix; you know what a phoenix is?”
What!?
“They rise in fire. Chaos, my son. Chaos.”
Then she is in the water with me, floating, reaching out to touch my cheek. Her hand is warm, even underwater.
“Rise, my son. Rise and be renewed.”
Then Aganju is kicking the back of my head, telling me to shutup, shutup, shutup, just die, just die, just die, you little bastard.
And in the dust (dust underwater, what?), a few ways away from me is Fati with a bloodied nose, her skull bashed in and seeping red fluid. Next to her is Papa Udi, smoke rising from his àdìrẹ̀ buba and sokoto, his face singed and unrecognisable, his arm burnt and twisted, the multicolour of fat cooking under grilled meat.
Then Aganju is laughing, he and his brother Sango, who is speaking with a British accent, saying: So I killed them all, yeah? I laid waste to that fucking entire lot of them, ha!
And their laughter is a charmcast because suddenly it’s giving me a splitting headache, and my head is pounding, pounding and I can hear them no more, see no more, think no more, and the lagoon is pulling me under, under, into the blackness where I can find no purchase, so I close my eyes and go to sleep.
SINK. COLD. FLOAT. Pain. Fear.
Cold. Float. Pain. Fear.
Float. Pain. Fear.
Fear.
Fear.
THERE IS A splash of colour before me when I painfully open my eyes. Mustard yellow, dappled with shapes in purple and green. At first I think it’s my bad vision, until I recognise it for what it is: ankara. I wonder how long since I last saw someone wearing something so alarmingly cheerful, select fabric so dedicated to celebration, against Lagos’s grey pastels. Is this a happy place? Am I in Heaven, then?
David Mogo Godhunter Page 11
