by Ben Zackheim
Chapter 22
Harry was behind the bar by the time we got out of the rain. He waved his hand in front of his face a few times. “What’s that stench? You forget to wipe again, Kane?”
“Good to see you too, Harry,” I said.
“Who’s the jackass that death passed by?” He eyed Fox.
“Fox,” he said, reaching out his hand.
“I don’t touch undead. Bad luck. What about you, tart?”
Rebel shut her eyes and managed to say, “Call me that again and I’ll forget that you can’t control your ugly mouth.”
“Oooooo, she’s still feisty,” Harry said. He wasn’t an old man but his crackly voice made him sound like one. His black hair had one streak of white in it that I think he secretly coveted. I once found him slapping a pound of styling cream on it on one mission in Amsterdam.
“We need to…” I started.
“Shut up,” he interrupted. He walked to his galley and pulled out a tea cup. We watched him as he poured some water in it and slid it into a microwave. He set it for thirty seconds and then sat down at his mini-bar and looked at us.
We stared at him as he nuked his tea, waiting for him to say something. This was the part I hated about Harry. The cussing and too-personal insults were Rebel’s hot buttons. My button, and he pushed it too well, was when people with the upper hand kept rubbing it in that they had the upper hand.
The microwave beeped twice and he popped it open, slid the cup back out, shook some loose tea leaves into a steeper and set it in the boiling water. It was a green tea. I could smell it from across the boat. He liked it green and stanky.
After two minutes of silent hell (where I had to grab Rebel by the wrist twice to keep her from slashing that smirk off his face) he took a sip of the tea. He made a face, dumped the tea and started all over again with a fresh pot of cold water.
This happened four times.
On the fifth cup he smiled, showing us that wicked grin he had, the one with a missing tooth. He’d lost it when he tried some similar bullshit on the wrong person.
“What’s in the sack?” he pointed his chin at the canvas bag with the shield inside. It sat at Fox’s feet.
“A shield,” I said, trying to make sure my voice didn’t betray my irritation. I didn’t need him to whip it out again and show us who’s boss. “We’d like you to read it.”
“We?”
“I.”
“Not doing dick-all for her. Or it,” he flicked his thumb in Rebel’s and Fox’s general direction.
“It’s a Viking shield,” I said.
“Easy. Let me see it.”
Fox reached for the sack but I grabbed it first and shook my head at him. Harry enjoyed this. A lot. He even chuckled. At that moment I wondered why I liked him. Maybe it was the loner in him. I was a loner too. But, unlike him, I wouldn’t let myself be alone. I always wondered what it would be like to just cut myself off and engage people only when I wanted to, though. I think Harry knew this about me. I guess some people just get each other.
I pulled out the shield and laid it gently on the round dining table.
“Nice one. I know it. From the Met. You guys have been busy.”
He studied the leather and wood surface of the shield with his eyes first and then with his fingers.
“Why do you need this read?”
“We think it’s a clue,” I said.
“But it’s been in a museum for years,” Harry said. He took a sip of tea and blew his breath at me. “People have probably taken hundreds of pictures of it. Interpreted it. If it said something special, wouldn’t we have heard about it by now?”
“Maybe it needs the right context,” Fox said.
“Or maybe these words have no meaning,” Harry said. He started tearing at the shield with his fingernails.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
He stepped back before I could grab his hands. He smiled and gestured to the shield.
There were hidden symbols under the leather layer.
“Changes the meaning entirely. Before I just blew you away with my excavation that totally freaked you out — pure joy, by the way — it said, ‘Cattle and crew man members to the sky.’”
“That makes no sense,” Rebel said.
“To an idiot maybe,” Harry said. “To some of us it has a number of meanings and the tough part would be deciding which one applied here. But it now says, ‘Hold the hammer and the shield as one - Free man’s member to the sky there.’”
We had to think about that for a second. The clue hit me right in the gut.
To free man’s member?
“That doesn’t mean what I think it means,” I said, knowing full well that it meant exactly that.
“You are fucking kidding me,” Rebel said.
Fox almost smiled.
“It means you need to get the hammer and the shield together to free your member there,” Harry managed to say before he snorted out a laugh.
“It also sounds like the hammer and shield need to be together to work,” Fox said.
“Good read, corpse,” Harry said, nodding.
“But you said it reads, ‘There free man’s member.’ Where’s ‘there?’”
“Release the dick and maybe you’ll find out,” Harry said, triumphantly.
“Focus, guys,” Rebel broke in. “Okay, so we’re saying that the shield is telling us it needs to be paired with Mjölnir to be at full power. We know that there’s a location we need to find. But what happens when they get together?”
“Find the penis and you’ll find out,” Harry said, swaying his hips left and right.
Rebel stuck out her tongue like she’d just swallowed gristle. “This is going to be a tough mission,” she said.
“A lot of cultures treat the phallus as a symbol of power, life, war,” Fox said. “Americans have infantalized the concept out of fear of that truth. Vikings embraced it.”
“Embrace the penis, Kane,” Rebel said. She immediately regretted it. “Sorry, it’s just… I couldn’t resist.”
“Do the vampires know they need the shield to make the hammer work?” I asked.
“The little fight with their man in the Met would say yeah,” Rebel said. “If they don’t, they’ll find out soon.”
“Either way, they’ll be looking for us,” Fox said. “That’s a tactical advantage for us. We can determine where we want this fight.”
“Not New York,” Rebel said.
“Iceland,” I said. “We head back there and we make them take it from us.”
“We can swap with Skyler and the twins,” Rebel said, getting out her phone to make the call.
“Not yet,” I said. “We need to find Tabitha first.”
Rebel put the phone up to her ear. “It’s not a good time to be chasing your new girlfriend around, partner,” she said.
“It’s not about that. She said something in the museum. Something about the hammer and the shield.”
“What did she say?” Rebel asked, waiting for an answer on the cell.
“I… don’t remember.”
“That’s about as helpful as his breath,” Rebel said, nodding toward Harry.
“Good one, good one,” Harry said.
“The whole thing is like a dream in my head,” I said. “Fox, you have any idea where we can find her?”
“Like I told you, I’ve heard of her. And she is familiar, but I don’t know from where. I could ask around.”
“That would be good. In the meantime, we’ll head upstate and do some research. Maybe the library can help on this one. I just don’t want to go back without knowing a little bit more about what we’re dealing with. I think we’re a step ahead of them with the shield in our hands. We need to educate ourselves while we have the time. Speaking of which…”
It was time to open the portal. The shield had to be safe.
I lifted the shield and immediately felt a surge of power. It wasn’t a bad feeling. It wasn’t good. But it was enough for me
to know that we needed to be very careful about how we reacquainted it with its hammer friend.
I closed my eyes and concentrated.
“Boo!” Harry said, shoving me to the ground.
“What the fuck, Harry?” Rebel said. I should have expected it. I carried the shield to the couch. Rebel stood in front of me to protect me from Harry. He’d keep messing with me the whole night otherwise.
I heard the portal opening in front of me. I opened my eyes and it was there, waiting for its latest deposit.
“I love that thing. So cool,” Harry said. “Ever wonder where it goes to?”
“I don’t have to wonder,” Rebel said. She hung up her cell. “Rose is ignoring me.”
“Get the fuck out. You’ve been in the portal?” Harry asked her.
I slid the shield into the thin crack in the air and ran my hand over it to close it. For some reason, that step was always sad to me.
My cell phone rang. Skyler. That couldn’t be good. He never called me.
“Yeah.”
“Bad news. The twins are gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’? Did someone take them?”
“Not from the looks of it. They ran away.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“The note they left.”
“Are you planning on telling me what’s in it?”
“You won’t like it,” Skyler said.
“It’s you I don’t like.”
“Fine. Looks like Cassidy’s handwriting. It says ‘We know where the hammer is. We’re going to get it without you. See how it feels! Love, Cassidy and Rose.’”
“Stop fucking with me, Skyler.”
He laughed. “Okay, okay, it doesn’t say ‘Love Cassidy and Rose’ but it does say they’re going to get the hammer.” He hung up. He was telling the truth.
“What did he say?” Rebel asked, seeing the expression on my face.
“The twins have gone rogue.”
Chapter 23
“They can’t be serious,” Rebel said.
We were in a rental car office which is like being in a porn shop without the porn. We’d left the boat without discussing it further because Harry was laughing too hard at our predicament and wondering if he should track the twins down to join them.
“Whatever the alcohol did to them may have messed up their heads,” I said.
“Or they’ve been possessed,” Fox said.
But I’d felt their anger in Iceland. They’d always been rebellious teens. Maybe they’d grown into stupid adults.
“We’ll deal with them later. Let’s get home and regroup. Rebel, call the librarian.”
“I think we should do the research without him,” she said, predictably. Lucas, my librarian, was another ally that Rebel wished would accidentally fall on her fingers. He’s not really a he, though. Or a she. More an it, I guess. The demon dresses like a man, talks like a woman and eats like a lion. I call him a he to save time and he doesn’t seem to mind.
“You really want to look through dick books for the next two days?” I asked.
“What’s his number again?” I gave her a look and she dialed. She knew the number.
“What is his number?” Fox asked, curious.
“Same number every demon has,” I said. “*666 or 666-6666.”
“The last 6 is for savings,” Rebel mumbled, phone to her ear.
She sighed and Fox and I got to listen to her try to be polite.
“Luke! Hey, it’s Rebel. How are you? Oh, sorry to hear that. That’s a lot of phlegm, wow. Listen, we’ll be home in about an hour and… I don’t think we have time to pick up any medicine, sorry. So Kane is hoping you’ll help us do some research on shields and penises. Penises. Penises! Yeah? Great. No, it is great, really. That’s not true, you’re very handsome. We’llseeyousoonbye.”
She hung up and slapped her head against the headrest. Five times.
“Why the hell do you keep him around? He’s so fucking insecure.”
“If you had a dad like his, you’d be insecure too,” I joked. “I keep him because he’s like having an ugly, walking Google for the Dark Web.”
I lived in Westchester, New York in a mansion on a mile square plot of land. The house was smack dab in the middle of the mile, which led to its nickname Halfway House. A play on words by the twins who were orphans like me. I liked my privacy. I also liked to see the enemy coming from far away.
My parents bought the land and built the first house on it back in 1976. It burned down on my first mission as a Spirit agent. I built the second house smaller, sticking with the rooms I loved or needed. Bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, ten car garage and, most importantly, the library. Then that house got messed up on the Excalibur mission. So I rebuilt again with some slight modifications, including a pool that wove through every room of the house. Hey, I liked to swim.
We arrived home just in time to see Lucas the librarian demon emerge on my garage roof. He was decked out in his standard garb, a black suit and black bowtie, round, golden spectacles and a walking stick. His long pointy nose drooped near the tip, a sure sign of his age according to Rebel’s research. She guessed he predated humanity by several thousand years.
“Hi, Luke!” I said in my most chipper voice.
“Oh, hello, Mr. Arkwright. How are you?”
“Great!” I knew better than to ask how he was. I’d never hear the end of it. “We need to find out about…”
The demon waddled down the garage steps. “Yes, Ms. Rebel told me. Shields and penises. We have a lot of volumes on both topics but none that cross-match as far as I recall.”
“I’m sure we’ll…”
“I think I have arthritis,” he said out of nowhere.
I sighed on the inside. Listening to Lucas complain was practically a required form of payment. “Oh. I didn’t know demons get arthritis.”
“We don’t. I’m the first.”
“Maybe you’re just a little under the weather, is all.”
“That could be. Who is your new friend?” Luke asked, pointing at Fox.
“Lucas, this is Fox. Fox, our librarian, Lucas.”
“I heard about you from Ms. Rebel. You’re Lancelot? I expected you to be bigger.”
“Apologies,” Fox said with a slight bow.
“No, no. What I just said was very rude. I knew a man a few hundred years ago who claimed to be Lancelot. Looks like he was a liar. Would you like me to kill him for you?”
“He’s, uh, still alive?” Fox asked.
“No.”
“So then… you can travel through time?”
Lucas just stared up at Fox, hands crossed in front of him.
“No, no thanks,” Fox said.
Lucas shrugged and walked ahead of us.
Fox looked at us with a pleading expression. I just put my finger up to my lips. Better to say nothing. The demon waddled ahead of us, sighing deeply every dozen steps. At one point he teetered on the edge of a step as if he was going to fall. We all made to catch him but he straightened out, grumbled something about useless gravity, and kept walking. Whenever one of us started to walk ahead of him he glared at us. He was the librarian and he was going to lead us there. Anything less and he was a failure. So we walked, slowly, to the library on the heels of a demon.
He shoved open the tall, wide double doors of my favorite room and the tomes beckoned like old friends with stories to tell. It was a pretty sure bet I’d smile upon walking into the library. It was at the center of my house, which is where it belonged, ready to help me learn, escape and even save the world.
It had its work cut out for it this time.
Luckily, we had the best librarian in the world. Lucas was a keeper of the ancient Alexandria library so my little corner of knowledge was easy for him to manage. He worked for other people, demons, and vampires. But I think he enjoyed my collection. At least I liked to think so. A man’s library isn’t measured in size, but in the value of its content.
“Penis, pe
nis, penis, penis,” Lucas muttered a few dozen times as he ran his long, bony fingers over a lineup of blue-bound books.
The rest of us browsed the stacks a bit more randomly, though we focused on Viking myth and magic.
Lucas yanked a book off its perch. “PENIS!” he yelled out with too much enthusiasm. “Why are you smiling? Ah, yes. Modern sensibilities and the penis do not go well together. Prudes, all,” Lucas mumbled as he waddled down the stairs.
After an hour of stacking materials on the main table, we decided to take a break. I started up a fire in the fireplace and the room’s heavy-duty humidifier kicked in. Climate control is extra important when you have someone like me who needs a fireplace to read by once in awhile. Rebel went out to get a 3am walk in while Fox and I stood and looked at the flames like a couple of pyros.
“This is a beautiful home you have,” Fox said. He was trying to not talk about my father again. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it, but he distracted me with…
“Do you and Rebel share a bedroom?”
“What? No. Rebel doesn't live with me."
“Right."
“She doesn't live anywhere. She sleeps where she is."
“Which is at your house."
"Maybe two weeks out of the year, yeah. In the guest bedroom."
He seemed surprised. But he also seemed pleased. As pleased as a vampire can seem, at least. "Where does she go? She doesn't even have a place to..."
I waited. I had no idea what the vampire was talking about.
"...sharpen her nails?" he finished.
"Don't know."
"I thought you were lovers."
"What the hell gave you that idea?"
"You… " He stopped himself from saying what was on his mind. Again.
"Is there a vampire holiday for pregnant pauses today? You're having a hard time with words recently, man."
That annoyed him. "You two argue all the time," he said, curtly.
"We're partners. Partners yell at each other."
"But you argue. All the time."
"All right, all right, you've made your point. Partners, okay? Partners.”
