Broken Souls, page 11
“Nothing,” I say. She looks hard at me, clearly not the answer she was looking for. “You just said it. You tell them this stuff you put them in danger. Hide it behind New Age horseshit if you really need to talk it out with them. Avoid coming out and saying magic. Say you’re Pagan, whatever. But keep the truth away from them. It’ll get them killed. Hell, the people on the train, today. They didn’t know about this stuff and it killed them just as dead.”
“I don’t want this, Eric. I really don’t want this. It scares the living shit out of me.”
“Then walk away from it. You can still do that. It’s not easy, but it’s doable.”
“Is that what you did? Tried to walk away?”
“To get away from my life here, sure, but not that. If anything it got me in deeper. I’m stuck with it. I can’t get away from magic any more than you can get away from being a woman. But you’re not me. You’ve got a little talent and you know this shit’s real, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay in the life. It’ll stick with you. Know that. This life will try to pull you back. You won’t be able to get away from it completely, but you can get some distance from it.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Embrace it. You’re already in a great place for that. Vivian knows this life. She’s got to have introduced you to some of the more savory people in it. Not everyone’s an asshole like I am, you know.”
That earns me a smile. “You’re not that bad,” she says, and then seems to remember she’s talking to the guy with the blacked-out eyes. The smile fades. “Except you really are that bad, aren’t you?”
“I try not to be, but I don’t think I do a very good job.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long time. Distant, closed off. A minute later she says, “So, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. At first I figured I’d just find the Russian, and, I dunno, kick his ass or something. Figured that’d be the end of it. But now? He’s got Kettleman’s power, he’s got the knife. Who knows who else he’s killed? Fucker’s got a small army, though I think we put a dent in that at the hotel. I think my plan’s still the same, but I need to find him before he can find me.”
“How do you think he found you this last time?”
That’s been bugging me since it happened, but I hadn’t had time to really dig into it. “I’m not sure he was looking for me,” I say. “Gabriela seemed to think he was coming back to finish her off. Who’s to say that wasn’t his plan and I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“But what about the Bentley?” she says.
“Yeah, that one I can’t explain. Tracking me shouldn’t be that easy. I need to figure out where that goddamn Russian is. It’s that simple. But I don’t even know his name.”
“Can Alex help you? I mean, you’ve talked to him, right? He seems to know some things.”
“So far he’s shown up on his schedule. And I’m still not convinced it’s actually him. He seems, I dunno, off somehow.”
“He is dead.”
“Yeah, but he’s not like any ghost I’ve ever met. It’s a moot point, anyway. I don’t know how to contact him.” She starts to say something, and stops herself. “What?”
“What about Santa Muerte?”
“Okay, I’m gonna ignore that you even said that.”
“No, hear me out. I know she’s all scary and shit. I mean, she scares you. Which means I’d probably pee my pants if I saw her. But she doesn’t want you dead, right? She’s got something in mind, but presumably you have to be alive for it. Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe you should just accept that she’s there.”
“We’re talking about an Aztec death goddess, here. That’s a big assumption. But yes, chances are she doesn’t want me dead any time soon. Maybe.”
“Aren’t you being a little harsh? You said her husband was dead, suicide or something? Maybe she’s lonely.”
“You’re serious?”
“You talked to her before, right? Maybe you can talk to her again? You’re her—Okay, I have to confess, this weirds me out.”
“What, that I’m married to her? Try being on this side of the fence. And it’s not ‘married.’ It’s … linked, I guess. Not quite family. Not quite employer.”
“Are you sure? Because that ring’s telling me something pretty different.”
“No,” conceding her point. “I don’t know that for sure. This is kind of new territory for me. Okay, let’s assume I talk to her. What then? Get even deeper in with her when she helps me out? That’s a bad idea.”
“I don’t understand why. Maybe you need to accept it. Make it work for you. Give in. What’s so hard about it?”
I stare at her a second, speechless, not believing I’m having this conversation. “Because I’m pissed off. Because she murdered my sister to get to me. I left to keep Lucy safe, to keep Vivian safe, to keep Alex safe. And she took all that time, all that effort, everything I did, and fucking burned it. She is not my friend, she’s not my savior. She’s a fucking monster. And this ring doesn’t mean a goddamn thing other than that she’s branded me.”
“Okay,” Tabitha says. “Okay. Just exploring possibilities is all. I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do. I got to watch what she did to Lucy. I got to sit there and watch my sister’s ghost reenact her murder and then be used as a fucking paintbrush to write me a message in her own blood. She doesn’t get a pass. I don’t know what it’s going to take, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I am going to fucking destroy her.”
“Okay, I—”
“I don’t know why you’re trying to defend her,” I say. “So stop.”
“But—”
“Drop it.”
“Fine. Okay. Forget I said anything. I’m sorry.” She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “So who else is there? There has to be someone who can help you. If this Russian guy tracked you down can’t you do the same to him?”
“Tracking spells aren’t my knack. I mean, yeah, I could try, but I suck at them. It’s like driving stick when you don’t know how. Sure, I know the theory, but the practice? I’d just as likely set something on fire.”
“So find someone who can. Jesus, Eric, work with me here. You’re not the only mage in town. Somebody’s got to be able to give you a hand.”
“Tabitha, my name is mud here. I’ve tried other mages, they want nothing to do with me. The only one who agreed to help me turned out to be a fake who wants to skin me alive. The last one I talked to just had her hotel burned down, probably because of me. I’ve tried talking to the Loa, nature spirits, the dead. Santa Muerte scares the hell out of all of them. The only things I haven’t talked to around here are—” Hang on.
“What? Something just happened. I see it on your face.”
“There might be something I can ask.”
“That’s good.”
“Not necessarily. The thing I’m thinking of is … volatile. But it would know. That helps. Thank you.” I’ve been dealing with figuring things out on my own for so long I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have someone’s help.
“No problem. Any other problems I can solve for you? World hunger? Climate change? Traffic on the 405?”
“Maybe. Speaking of traffic, I have to figure out how to get back to my motel. Got a neighbor you don’t like whose car I can steal?”
“Guy across the street’s kind of a dick.”
“Perfect.”
“Eric, you’re not going anywhere. A few hours ago you could barely walk. Come on, sexy, you need sleep.” She stands and takes my hand, tugging at it until I get up. I’m not sure where this is going, and I’m not sure I want it.
“Tabitha, I don’t think I’m—”
“Me either,” she says. “Sleep. That’s all. But after this last night, after all we’ve talked about, I kind of don’t want to be alone right now. Okay? Sleep.”
“Sleep. Sleep is good.”
We don’t actually get to sleep for a good, long time.
___
Tabitha lifts her head from my chest when I startle awake, her arms and legs wrapped around me. Takes me a second to get my bearings. I’ve spent so much time alone that it’s weird to wake up with someone else.
“Hey,” she says, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Hey back at ya. So what happened to just sleeping?”
“You complaining?” she says.
“Not in the slightest. Just, you know, this is getting to be a habit.”
She laughs. “Twice in six months is a habit?”
“Hey, cut me some slack. I don’t spend a lot of time around people.”
“Maybe you should,” she says.
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything. The silence stretches, neither of us willing to break it. I glance at the clock on her nightstand. Already late in the afternoon. “I should probably get going,” I say.
“Struck a nerve?” She unwraps herself from me and rolls off the bed.
“A little, yeah.” I watch her as she pads to the bathroom and flicks on the light. I’m not sure but I think she’s added to the elaborate tattoo of cherry blossom branches that climb up from her hip and over her shoulder. More branches, more color.
“You get more ink?” I say, trying to change the subject.
“Couple months ago. Guy in Santa Barbara did it.” She turns on the shower, pokes her head out of the bathroom. “Look, I’m not trying to make this more than it is.”
“We’re not talking about the tattoo, anymore, are we?” So much for changing the subject.
“We’re both adults. A roll in the hay is just a roll in the hay.”
“Never said it wasn’t.”
“We’re a ‘habit’?”
“Yeah, okay, not my finest moment. Sorry.”
She waves it off. “As habits go I can think of worse ones. I like you. Obviously. Scary eyes and all.”
“There’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”
“Would you date you?”
“Point.” I could tell that’s where she was going with it, but it still stings. “Hey, you said you had a neighbor whose car I could steal?”
“Across the street. Yellow Hummer. Guy’s an asshole. Take it with my blessing.” She steps into the shower. I get up from the bed and join her.
“I’ll probably dump it in the desert.”
“That where you’re going?”
“Yeah. The thing I need to talk to hangs out in the desert out past Cajon or Soledad Pass. Sometimes.”
“You need help?”
“Thanks, but no. If things go to shit they’ll go to shit fast and I’d really rather you not be in the middle of it. I like you, too, you know.”
“Thanks. What exactly is it, anyway?”
“Old. Very, very old.”
Every year L.A. burns. Brush fires from too much heat and too little moisture sweep through the canyons, rampage down the hills. Flames chew through the landscape, an inexorable force that eats everything in its path. Thousands of people displaced, millions in property damage. All because of the wind.
Raymond Chandler called it the Red Wind. To some of the locals they’re the Devil Winds. Good name for them. You know how to tell when L.A.’s about to burn? The air moves. They’re the Santa Anas. Sometimes hot, sometimes cold. Always dry. They blow through the Cajon Pass, Banning, Santa Clarita. Funnel in from the desert. Set everything ablaze.
The winds blow through the streets, in through windows, cracks in doors. They go everywhere and they see everything. So if you absolutely, positively need to track something down there’s really only one thing to do.
Ask the winds.
I stop at my motel to pick up a few things, get a change of clothes. When I told Tabitha what I was planning she got that same look on her face she had when I told her about Santa Muerte. One more chip out of that wall of Normal she’s looking for.
I’m not entirely sure where I’m going. When I get onto the road the sun has already set. I take the stolen Hummer up the 5 Freeway and cut across the 14 toward Palmdale, tasting the magic as I crawl through traffic. The flavor shifts from the heavily Latino magic of North Hills and Sylmar to a sort of suburban kitchen-witch magic from the new subdivisions in Santa Clarita. Nothing big, nothing old.
When I get up by Vasquez Rocks it changes completely. You’ve seen the place in old western serials and Star Trek episodes. Massive jutting rocks angled toward the sky. Before Hollywood came knocking it was a hideout for a bandit name of Tiburcio Vasquez. And before that it was a home to local Indian tribes like the Tataviam, Chemehuevi, Serrano, Kitanemuk.
It’s a tourist spot now, but you can taste all that history in the place’s magic even as far out as the freeway. I get off at Agua Dulce. The park’s closed, a chain running across the entrance road. I park across the street, grab a knapsack and a flashlight and draw SUPPOSED TO BE HERE in big letters across the side of the Hummer. Don’t need some County Sheriff towing it when I don’t have a ride back.
I haven’t been to Vasquez Rocks in almost twenty years. Place is still a pit. Dry desert air, dirt and scrub brush. Nearby houses look down from the distant hills. Further out in Mojave at least you get the sense you’re in the middle of nowhere. Here it feels like you’re in somebody’s shitty backyard.
There’s a trail that loops around the park, hits that big Star Trek rock everybody’s seen. Plenty other rocks like it here. High ground is good for what I need to do. There’s no moon and it takes me about an hour to pick my way along the trail with a flashlight until I find a nice rise with a flat top. I climb up and start my preparations.
The evening air is cool and the wind is starting to pick up. I pull a box of salt from the knapsack and a hammer that I use to chip some stone flakes off the rock. I gather up dust from the ground, mix it and the stone flakes in with the salt. I pour the whole thing into a circle.
Now the tough part. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing. I’ve spoken with wind spirits, Kabun, the Algonquin west wind, a handful of things that all call themselves the North Wind, but never the Santa Anas. I’m not even sure it has a proper name, or even if there’s only one.
But I do know that they all talk to each other. Nature spirits are very much a part of the thing they represent and vice versa. Because of that, wind spirits tend to be a little blurry around the edges. Identities get mixed up. Boundaries don’t really exist. The one I talk to tonight might just as easily have been a dust storm in China a week ago, a tornado in Ohio last month.
Fortunately, like most magic, summoning is based on will. The chants and rituals are a way to hone in on your intent. I don’t necessarily need to know the thing’s name. The words don’t matter. Might as well be singing Queen songs as much as chanting Vedas into the open air. It’s what you’ve got in your head that matters most and whether or not you can channel that energy into something useful.
I sit cross-legged outside the circle. It’s not a protection so much as it’s a landing place. Protection against this thing is pretty useless, anyway. And if it thought I was trying to actually bind it, it’d just get pissed off.
Intent and will. Focus and power. Images in my mind of windswept deserts, blast furnace air. Fires rampaging out of control. The air scouring every living thing down to bleached bone. An hour later the wind picks up, dry and hot. Plays at my hair. Blows up little dust devils that dance around me. Another hour goes by, and another. My legs are starting to cramp up. I forgot to stretch first.
About four hours in and I feel it. A sudden presence of solid air that surrounds me, rushing past and coalescing into the circle. A dust devil six feet high flows into being with a noise of rushing wind. It pulls the dirt and mix of salt and rock that I drew for it, sucks in the dust dancing in the air.
The voice hits me from all sides. Echoes off the rocks. Talks to me, talks to itself. Sounds overlap each other, hissing like wind through trees, stripped-off bark, blowing sand.
“We are called,” says one voice to my left. “We come,” says another behind me. The dust devil shifts slightly, but stays rooted to its original spot. “What does it want?”
“I’m looking for someone,” I say. “The wind is everywhere. The wind sees everything.”
“The king asks us for help?” says a voice. “Honored,” says another. “The king is dead,” says a third.
“I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”
“It jokes.” “It jests.” “It makes a funny.”
“Okay,” I say, not liking the tone of that one bit. What king do they think I am? “I need a man tracked. Russian guy. He’s killing people. Stealing their skins. Last I saw him he was in Downtown L.A. last night.”
No sound but the rushing air in front of me. Silence for a long minute. Have I offended it? I sure as hell hope not. Pissed off nature spirits can be seriously bad news. I once saw a forest spirit in Canada pull an 18-wheeler down into the earth with nothing but pine tree roots.
Then, “Sergei.” “He wants Sergei Gusarov.” “And sister Katya.”
“That’s helpful,” I say. I have a name. I have no idea if it’s the right name, but it’s a place to start. If it can help me track him even better. “Can you help me find him?”
“The king wants help.” “The king needs us.” “We can help the new king.” The enormous dust devil pulls in on itself, particles spinning faster and faster with a sound like grinding sand, shrinking until it’s the size of a dinner plate, then a softball. With a loud pop the mass solidifies into a red, glowing orb the size of my fist.
“This will find him?”
“It will glow in his direction.” “It will glow brighter when he is near.” “It will lead you to him.”
“Excellent,” I say. I don’t make a move to touch it. We’re not even close to done here.
“What does the king offer?” say all three voices simultaneously.
