I was beyond a lost cause, red was fading to black as my vision began to tunnel. I thought about stabbing the fucker who had reached under my arms and was dragging me away. Pain on the periphery was the only thing keeping me conscious. I wanted to move my feet and help but my body was done taking commands from a mind that cared little for its welfare. It sounded like the fighting was tapering off, then I realized my eyes had closed. Black lightened to the washed out gray of a rainy November day. I was standing near to, but not exactly at the edge of, what looked like a large chasm.
“Yeah, not too much imagery here!” I yelled sarcastically. “Real fucking subtle. Well, you know what? I’m not going.” Whomever I was talking to was not a fan of my petulant words. At first, there was a gentle nudging to my back which quickly turned into a forceful shove. I turned to face my attacker to only be buffeted by hurricane force winds. I was standing at nearly a forty-five-degree angle trying to hold my own against the unseen force. A scream of desperation was ripped from my lungs and sent hurtling over the abyss. I contemplated dropping to my knees and clawing at the dirt but I’d be damned if I was going to go out that way. “Stop! Just stop! I’ll do it my damn self!” The wind didn’t taper off; it just stopped. The air around me was still. I turned and straightened out my clothes; maybe the undertaker would appreciate my kempt presentation. The gray had lifted to the point where I could see across the large black schism in the foreign landscape.
Wasn’t surprised at all to see a line of figures standing on the other side. Didn’t need to see any detail to know who waited over there. If I got a running start there was more than a fair chance I could make it ten percent of the way across before falling in. Even though failure was an unmitigated conclusion, the thought still crossed my mind. Figured I’d throw up two solid “birds” for whoever was managing this midway place.
“Whatcha doing Mr.T?” It was Tommy; he held the familiar foil wrapper of a pop-tart in his hand and he was preparing to open it.
“Was wondering when you were going to show,” I said as I took a step closer to my end.
“Want a bite?” He waved something under my nose that smelled suspiciously like fried road kill.
“I’d rather fall.”
“It’s liver pâté with turkey giblet glaze.”
“Oh fuck, Tommy. Do you do this shit just to mess with me?” If I wasn’t in the netherworld I think my gag reflex would have kicked in. I pushed his hand away.
“Your loss.” He took a big bite.
“Yeah, my loss. Are you real?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that’s just the type of smart ass answer one of my hallucinations would say,” I told him truthfully.
“Want to hear something funny?”
I looked around, trying to figure out what kind of cosmic joke this was. “Sure. I’ve got nothing else going on right now.”
“Back in the late 1600s you had a relative—a Millard Talbot.”
“Millard? Poor bastard. Did the other kids make fun of him? Steal his hog scrotum lunch sack? That kind of thing?”
“He was a well-respected thatcher, actually. You going to interrupt again?”
I shook my head no.
“He married a distant relation to Durgan’s, Fredrette Cowstein.”
“So, Durgan, as in the asshole from the hardware store and Little Turtle?”
“One and the same.”
“She sounds beautiful.”
“She wasn’t, but her father offered a goat, four chickens, and ten pounds of grain. That was a substantial dowry at the time.”
“Amazing the things hunger will make you do.”
“There may be a reason as to why Durgan hated you so much from the onset.”
“Do tell. This is very detailed for a mind illusion.”
Tommy smiled. “They got married. He took the dowry. And before they could, umm...consummate the marriage...” Tommy slid his index finger in and out of a circle he’d made with his other thumb and finger.
“I get what consummate means, jackass.”
“Sorry. Some people begin to lose cognitive abilities within this realm.”
“If I forget what fucking means this is not a place I want to exist in.” I gave a small shoulder jitter.
“Anyway, he took the dowry and moved to the mountains without his bride.”
“Didn’t Fredrette stop him? My guess was she outweighed him by a good hundred pounds and could have made him do whatever she wanted.”
“Have I told you this story before?” He looked at me, confused. “She’d drunk nearly a quarter keg of German Stout at the wedding. He could have unbricked his house and moved it out from under her while she snored away, if he’d had a mind to.”
“Hate is passed down genetically, then?”
Tommy’s shoulders shrugged as if to say: “Who knows?”
“Nice story and all but it doesn’t really prove anything about your existence. I could just as easily have made that up as you could.”
“Tracy had some real doubts about marrying you.”
I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. “I would have been surprised if she hadn’t. I knew I was marrying up! You’re a hoot, Subconscious!”
He shoved half that fucking disgusting pop-tart in my mouth. “That taste fake?” He held my jaw tight as he forced me to chew and swallow.
I gagged more times than I care to remember. From his pocket he produced a grape flavored Jelly Belly juice drink. “Here.”
Normally just the thought of the disgustingly sweet sugar water nauseated me, but this time I drank the whole thing down.
“You’re an asshole,” I said when I was done. “Fine, fine. You’re real. So what’s that supposed to mean? You come to usher me off at the end?”
“Usher you off? No. I’m just here to stall.”
“Stall?” And just when I thought the aftertaste in my mouth couldn’t get any worse, it did. Gray began to darken again; I could no longer see the far side. Tommy blurred and wavered, then I could see nothing, save the blackness of my closed eyelids.
“Hold his head up. I need to get more into him.”
The “more” in this case was blood and I wanted to drink that even less than that craptastic kid drink that had the audacity to call itself juice-like. I gagged and spit, even attempted to push away the offender.
“You have not received appropriate authorization to die today, Talbot,” the firm yet tender voice said. I felt a fat, rough tongue streak up the side of my face. I reached out and touched...Henry’s? Oggie’s head.
Tracy flitted across my mind. Wisely I asked, “Azile?”
“How are you feeling?” I opened my eyes, she was looking down at me.
“I feel like I got caught in a blender and the person kept pushing the reverse button to try and get me unstuck. Then once I was kind of loose they wanted to see if they could completely liquefy me, so they hit the pulverize button but I...”
“I get it,” she said.
She had a leather flask in her hand. The nozzle was tinged in red, it hung heavy as if it were still half full of what we all knew was in there.
“Whose?” I asked meekly, pointing to the container.
“There has been no lack of volunteers.”
I assumed she meant she’d been collecting it off of cadavers on the field of battle. The thought of drinking blood from dead people sounded beyond repulsive and I told her as much.
“I’d thought about it,” she told me honestly. “This however has been donated from the living. Had to turn people away I’d got so much of it.”
I sat up, sort of. I don’t even know where I could start listing the myriad things that did not feel right on my body. Laying back down seemed the prudent thing to do.
“I’m fine, by the way,” she smiled. “Nary a scratch.”
“Shit. I’m an asshole.”
“Bailey?”
“She fared better than you but she suffered a few wounds. They’ve been dres
sed and she’s resting. She was the first to offer up blood. I told her she needed all she could keep in. She threatened me bodily harm when I had her escorted off.”
“Lana?”
“There’s something about that girl...I’m not sure her cloak even had a drop of the blood of the enemy, yet she was neck deep in their clutches.” She had a faraway look which vanished as she wiped a cool cloth across my forehead.
“I saw Tommy.”
She didn’t seem the least bit surprised by this, nor did she try to explain it away as a fever-induced hallucination.
“That was the plan,” she said as if we were talking about taking Oggie for a walk.
“So you basically called him up on the Spirit Hotline and told him to meet me?”
“Not quite like that, but for your feeble mind to understand that’s as good an analogy as any.”
“I’d threaten bodily harm as well but I don’t think I can get my head up. Where exactly were we?”
“Seems you’ve been there enough times you should have a roadmap by now.”
“I have bloodied my knuckles knocking on death’s door; you’d think he’d just get it over with and answer the damn thing.”
Her mood changed in an instant. “Don’t! Don’t you ever say that again!”
“Kidding! I was kidding!” I was feeling marginally better as I raised my hands in a placating manner. I changed the subject abruptly. I had no desire to sport horns or grow a third eye. “Is it day? Is that why we’re still alive? Last thing I remember we were getting our asses handed to us.”
She wasn’t quite ready to let the anger escape her frontal lobe, but there were more pressing things to consider than my lack of tact. If she got fixated on that particular deficiency this could be a fairly long encounter.
“We’ve lost nearly a third of our forces. The Lycan suffered far more, but they have more soldiers to sacrifice.”
“So we tuck our tails between our legs and get the hell out of here. We have a month to get back.”
“If we make it to the dawn that is exactly the plan.”
“Are we under siege?” I could hear no sounds of battle and could not imagine where we could have holed up that they could not get in.
“They pulled back.” Her sudden look of confusion mirrored my own.
“Why? Certainly not over concern for their losses.”
“I would not think so. It did give us time to recover our wounded and regroup, though, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s good enough.”
This time I did sit up. Okay, Azile had to help me, then steady me as I attempted to get up off the ground and out of the tent. Made it a couple of feet before a conveniently placed fallen tree became my new favorite seat.
“Not like Xavier to take his foot off the throttle, especially when he knows he’s under a severe time constraint.” My rib throbbed in protest at my movement. I had to stretch my side to keep the pressure off. Mattered little; it was a broken rib. It hurt no matter which position I was in.
“Three. You broke three of them.”
“To be fair, I had a little help with that. Who was the man that saved me? All I remember is a bright blonde beard.”
“Bailey’s cousin. They call him Muncher.”
“Muncher? Does he have a real name?”
“If he does no one has told me.”
“I owe my life to a man named Muncher? BT must be loving this shit. Do you think he counts the number of times I’m saved by a relation of his as a win in his column?”
“I would imagine so.”
“Can’t you call him up and ask?”
“Much like you, I cannot cross that chasm at will.”
“Ever?” She didn’t reply, and that didn’t sit well with me. What had she given up for her longevity? And why? Oh God, I truly hope it wasn’t for me. Of all the things that could possibly cause her to strike a deal I should have been on the bottom of the list. I filed this under “something we will talk about at a later time or maybe never”. Some answers aren’t worth the price.
“Movement!”
“It’s always darkest before the dawn, or how about ‘no rest for the wicked,’ or my personal favorite, ‘Trix are for kids’.” I tried to stand. Azile came over and I used her as a crutch. “Two, three more minutes tops and I could have done it on my own.”
“I know,” she lied.
“Michael Talbot!” It was Xavier. Got to admit, his gruff voice was downright menacing, especially at dawn. “Do you yet live?”
“I don’t know if I can shout to respond, and then I don’t know if it would be better if I do or don’t.” Azile gave a little shrug.
“I had so hoped I would get to cut out your black heart and eat it for breakfast!” he laughed. “No matter. I will find your body and desecrate it soon enough.”
“Can you do some sort of megaphone wizardry?” I asked Azile.
“Witchcraft you mean?”
“You’re correcting me right now?”
“I’m there to correct you whenever you need it.”
“And I really appreciate that. Can you help or not?”
She mumbled a few words under her breath and looked to the heavens, which I found to be much more pleasing than if she’d sought some power from below.
“This thing on?” The words blasted forth from my mouth. Azile winced from the volume. I turned to face the approximate direction of Xavier. “What the hell do you want, cur?”
There was a throaty rumble. If I didn’t know better I would have assumed a distant thunderstorm was approaching.
“I come to present an offer.”
I didn’t answer. My ribs were aching, even as they stitched themselves back together. Besides, I knew he liked to hear himself talk. He’d get to what he wanted to say without any prompting from me. I didn’t have to wait long.
“If you turn yourself over to me, I will release Mathieu and allow the rest of your people to leave this place unharmed.”
I would only allow myself to be relieved about Mathieu, if he could prove he was safe. “You sound about as sincere as a used car salesman attempting to sell me an extended warranty. How do I know Mathieu is alive?”
“Lycan do not lie!” he roared.
“Forgive me for not being the trusting type. You let me hear Mathieu’s voice and I’ll think about your proposal.” I gently shook my head from side to side to alleviate Azile’s concerns.
“Hello Michael.” I felt my ears perk just like Oggie’s. I wasn’t aware they could do that. It was Mathieu. He sounded tired but okay.
“Are you alright, my friend?”
“Run, Mi....” His call was suddenly stifled by a heavy paw but the message was clear enough. Whatever Xavier had up his sleeve was not in our best interests. Wasn’t overly shocked at the revelation.
“Your precious friend is alive. Will you give yourself up?”
I motioned with my hand to have Azile lower the volume knob. “How much time until sunrise?” I whispered.
“A little less than an hour. You can’t seriously be thinking about going over there. He’ll kill you, Mathieu, and then us.”
“I could stall long enough to give you the time needed for you to get out of here.”
“That is unacceptable.”
“The moon is moving!” Xavier bellowed. He was letting me know that time was ‘a-wasting in the lingo of his species. “I will kill him right here and right now. You will be able to hear his lungs fill with blood. His fate is in your hands.”
I spun the imaginary dial for Azile to turn up the volume. “I’m coming, mutt, don’t do anything rash!” I turned to get some weapons. I planted my face smack into the chest of Muncher. The bottom of his beard scraped across the top of my head.
“How in the fuck do you have a platinum beard? You Nordic on your mother’s side?”
He didn’t answer.
“Strong silent type. I like that.”
“He can’t speak,” Azile filled me in.
“List
en. I appreciate you saving my life and all and I’m sorry about my slight to your parentage. If you hang around me long enough you’ll realize that’s just my engaging wit.”
“That’s the truth,” Azile added.
Muncher held out his hands. He was holding a rifle and an axe plus a wicked looking knife, more like a short sword.
“Thank you.” I grabbed them, strapping the axe and the sword on. I checked the magazine, put a round in the chamber, and thumbed the safety off. I took three steps in the direction of Xavier—two things were happening that I was having a hard time with besides walking. The first was that Azile wasn’t stopping me and the second was Muncher matching my strides. “What’s going on?”
“Could I really talk you out of your present course of action?” she asked
“Probably not.”
“Then I’m doing what I can to keep you safe, even though that seems to be directly against everything you yourself try to accomplish.”
“Fair enough. What are you doing big man?” I smacked his chest with the back of my hand.
“I think he’s taken a shine to you.”
“This isn’t one of those antiquated customs where you saved my life once so now you are responsible for my safety for the rest of my life is it?”
“That is not the Talboton way,” Azile said.
“Good thing.”
“No, they believe that if you have saved someone’s life you must then give them the opportunity to save yours to even things up,” she stated.
“Only BT could have come up with that shit,” I sighed. “Muncher, is there a time limit on this? I mean, I’m sure there will be plenty of times when I can save your ass; no need to get us square quite this quickly. The way I’m feeling right now, I’m not sure I could hold up my end of the bargain and then I’d feel really bad.”