Number of the Beast (Paladin Cycle, Book One) (10 page)

“
If by sick, you mean hung
over, then yes, I’m very, very sick.”

Charlie chuckled, deep and from the
belly. He slipped a cooking apron over his gray-haired head. “I
remember those days. Chug-a-lugging all night and yuking all day
long. Thank the good Lord above he straightened me out real
good.”

“
Got any Ibuprofen?” Amy
asked.

Carmen popped through the doors and
tossed Amy a packet of Alka-Seltzer. “Take two now and keep away
from children.” She tossed a dirty coffee mug into the soapy sink.
“Amateur.”

Amy dropped the tabs into the glass
and drank the rancid fizzy concoction. She put on her happy face
and went back out to the dinner room. Approaching her mother, full
of resolve not to be bullied by yet another deranged creature. The
one in her head was more than enough.

Her mother said, “So, you could be
available if I tell Thad to give you a ring, right?”

“
I’m seeing and living
with Shane and you know it.”

Her mom sipped her coffee and slid a
lock of her golden hair behind her ears. “He’s a bit of a
troublemaker and he won’t ever add up to much. You deserve a
promising young man like Thad. Don’t you want to get out of Buckeye
and see the world like your sister?”

“
Vanessa isn’t seeing the
world, Mom. She’s in Houston working as a hair stylist.”

“
Well, she’s more cultured
than you, dear. She’s currently seeing a pre-med student. You would
know that if you ever gave her a call.”

“
Cultured? How do you
figure? She’s a hair stylist, a vegan, and constantly gripes about
how everyone in Texas are cow-loving morons.”

“
Better than being a
waitress in this dive for the rest of your life. You are just like
your father was, content with living a boring life in
Hicksville.”

Amy
clenched her teeth. Her hand wrapped around her Diet Coke. She
could feel the heat surging into her cheeks.
Damn her mother!

“
Mami
?” Carmen
ushered Amy toward the drink station. “Could you stock
ice?”

“
Sure.” Amy pressed
through the swinging doors and back into the kitchen.

I’d love
to smack the snob with ice!
She leaned her
ear against the closed door and listened.

“
Mrs. Wintry,” Carmen
said.

“
Hello dear,” her mother
said. “How are you?”

“
I mean this in the nicest
possible way,” Carmen sneered. “But shut the fuck up or I kick your
ass out.”

Amy imagined her mother’s face
contorting in annoyance. She stifled a laugh.

“
Always a pleasure,” her
mother said.

“
How goes it, spending
your dead husband’s money?”

“
I hear your mother has
fallen ill. Fortunately, you were able to get her across the
border. Mexican medicine is not nearly as advanced as the
States.”

“
I’m Portuguese, you
stupid bitch. And my mother was born here and so was I.”

Amy sucked in a breath.

“
I’ve never met a Hispanic
who says otherwise,” Amy’s mother said. “But that’s neither here
nor there.”

“
My family’s owned chicken
farms here since 1935. My family’s richer than you’re sorry white
ass. Put a million dollar perfume on a turd and it’s still just a
piece of shit.”

“
It’s really too bad they
never caught that awful maniac who dismembered all those people on
your family’s farm back in ‘82 Were you even born then?”

Amy pushed through the double doors.
“Please leave.”

Amy’s mother slipped her purse over
her shoulder. “They serve better breakfast and coffee at Denny’s.
And they don’t have sassy foreigners working there,
either.”

Amy held the door open. “Today’s not a
good day. I’ll call you later.”

“
No you won’t, but it’s
sweet of you to say so.”

As her mother left the diner, Amy
darted an apologetic look at Carmen.

“
One of these days you’re
going to tell that woman to fuck off and I hope I have a front row
seat.” Carmen shook her head. “I’ll stock glasses.” She disappeared
behind the double doors.

Amy’s phone dinged twice: a text from
Shane.

On my way home. I’ll text
when I get closer. No reception in BFE.

Amy smiled and forced herself to
ignore the churning in her stomach and the banging in her brain.
She grabbed a rag and spray bottle and began wiping
tables.

Maybe Carmen was right and it was just
all in her head. Think positive, she told herself.

“
We’re open,” Roxy yelled
from behind the line. She straightened the netting over her tightly
permed white hair. “Get this place in order. We need ice tea
brewed, ketchup bottles refilled and on the tables, and dinner
salads brought forward from the walk-in. This ain’t a family
reunion, girls, so stop looking like this is your first rodeo and
get the lead out.”

“
Yes, ma’am.” Amy walked
to the bathroom to pee and freshen up. When she finished her
business, she lathered her hands and rinsed them under warm
water.

Female.

Amy glanced up. Instead of seeing her
reflection, she saw the blurred face of the young boy, the
trespasser of her mind and her mirrors. “I asked you not to call me
that.”

Do not doubt your sanity
or my existence.

Amy hung her head, clutching her
stomach, as hysterical laughter overwhelmed her body.

She regained her composure and looked
into the mirror. “Bathroom time is off limits. We discussed
this.”

I was uncertain you would
recall our communication last eve.

“
I’m not drunk now and I’m
telling you that bathroom time is not permitted.”

I wish to validate my
existence. What must I do?

“
You’re telling me you’re
real? Start by telling me who are you, where you’re from and why
me? And bypass the cryptic ‘dark trinity’ stuff.”

I come from a time not of
yours, nor of your world or of your universe.

“
Oh, that’s so much more
helpful.”

I do not understand your
tone, but neither do I care. The Beast has chosen you because
something most special is within you.

“
So this Beast wishes to
eat me? Is it a tiger? A bear?” She covered her mouth. “Oh
my.”

He is Geminus, king of all
beasts, neither tiger nor bear, for they are his servants as are
the hounds and serpents. It is life within you that he was sent to
claim.

Amy hesitated.

You will know him when he
comes, for he will wear the Narkush stone, a powerful gem that only
the Geminus possess. It is the vessel of their souls.

A nervous laughter escaped her. “I’ll
play along. What does this gem look like? What does this Beast or
Geminus, as you say, look like?”

I cannot say what the
Geminus will look like as I have not beheld his face in over a
decade. The stone will gleam a thousand shades of ruby and the
Beast will hold it near his flesh.

“
How do you know so much
about this Beast?”

That is a long story and I
must depart soon.

“
Wait. Could you at least
tell me your real name?”

My given name is
Tobias.

Amy brought her face closer to the
mirror. “Will you be there when the Beast comes,
Tobias?”

The voice never replied.

“
Have mercy.” She swatted
the counter with an open palm. Ice tea needed to be brewed. Roxy
wasn’t paying her to carry on absurd conversations with the people
in her head.

# # #

Abe stood from the old army cot
positioned in the corner of Fort Chimera, his home and man cave
residence. He'd built the structure from scrap metal, junkyard
parts, and wood right before bulldozing his house down.

Course, when he’d sobered up he felt
like the biggest jackass for knocking down his own goddamn house.
Thankfully, he didn’t too much mind living entirely inside Fort
Chimera and the wood from his house had made an amazing bonfire
last Fourth of July.

He needed to wake and open the tackle
shop, but an ominous presence lured him outside. Trapped in a
self-aware subconscious state, Abe made his way to the camo-painted
door, which had originally belonged on a Caterpillar dump
truck.

A sepia tone colored his front yard
and his truck parked on the dirt driveway. The heap of ashy debris
that was his former house was miraculously smoking
again.

Abe descended the metal stairs toward
an obvious path cut through the new woodlands that were not part of
Sacred Oaks, and he knew every inch of Sacred Oaks better than he
knew his own whiskers.

He heard none of the typical sounds
most common to woods–crickets and birds and locusts–yet he went
deeper into the forest of his dream world.

He was having another vision;
something that had invaded his dreams since he was a small child.
Papa Chief Red Crow told him once, “You beware them dream gods.
They don’t come fuckin’ wit you for no damn reason.”

Formed from towering trees, a corridor
stretched before him like a mystical black and white tunnel. A
young man stepped from the gray trees at the far end of the
forested hallway. He wore a leather vest with crisscrossed bones.
He had a face that reminded Abe of a predatory animal. Dark,
dangerous and cunning.

Between him and the neanderthalic
visitor, a tree stump grew. The boy pulled back his hood and their
eyes met. His hair was as long as Abe’s but darker than blackened
fish.

Abe saw nothing within the youngster's
expression. Abe spoke, but no words sounded from his moving
lips.

From his waist, the boy unsheathed a
dagger and stabbed it silently into the stump. Giving Abe a nod, he
turned and disappeared into the woods.

Abe waited until the ghostly
projection was out of sight before approaching the stump. His hand
reached out to grab the dagger but it swiped through the handle. He
tried again, but again his hand passed through the handle with a
ghostly wisp.

He panned the eerie woods and called
out to Vicki, Shane’s dead sister. She’d first appeared to him in
his dream world shortly after Amy had been admitted to the psych
hospital. Ever since, she’d been appearing to Abe in his
dreams.

She wanted him to help watch over Amy
and Shane. Abe assured her that he would and that she could pass
onto the next dimension without worry for them. But she’d never
left him.

Vicki, appearing dressed in the same
shorts and shirt she’d died in at ten yearsold, appeared on the
other side of the stump. Before he could utter a syllable, she
easily slid the dagger from the wood and offered it to
him.

Abe’s eyes opened. He found himself no
longer in the eerie woods. He was now in his own bed, lying on his
back. Three lawnmower blades slowly rotated above him. His ceiling
fan. Abe rolled off his cot and examined the dagger in his
hand.

A name
was etched into the ivory handle:
TOBIAS.

Carmen pushed toward the
bar as Amy disappeared into the lady’s room. After plunking her
purse on the burnished copper bar top, Carmen slid out a mahogany
beech wood stool. At the other end of the counter Mike poured two
tall drafts.

Instead of his usual overalls, he wore
a bright red corduroy shirt and crisp jeans, of which his
ever-expanding beer gut crept over.

Mike set the drafts in
front of two frat guys a few stools away, then strolled to Carmen,
drying his hands on a rag. “What’s it tonight? Calamity Jane in
Vegas?”

With a quirked brow,
Carmen shot him a pistol-signal with her hand. “Nope, but that’s a
brilliant idea. Give me a rum and Coke on the rocks, but hold the
Coke. And the ice.”

Mike reached for a bottle
of Morgan. “The usual then.”

“
Hey, Carmen!” a voice
called from behind.

Carmen
grinned.
And so the game begins.

# # #

Amy dropped the cosmetic bag on the
rim of the sink. The reflection in the mirror gawked at her and she
promptly shook her head. Maybe Carmen was right. All she needed was
to get pretty and loosen herself up.

But Carmen hadn’t been
through the day she had. Even ignoring the deep, rude voice in her
head and the defiled rat grave, there was still that weird light in
the woods, and Abe creeping around Sacred Oaks like a guerilla in
his own personal mission. He knew dang well what was going on out
there. Classic Abe. That old coot would take more secrets to the
grave than Jimmy Hoffa.

Amy fished through the
makeup bag and pulled out mascara, eyeliner and four different hues
of lipstick, shades ranging from hot red to freaky purple and
ghoulish black. A sense of envy for Carmen fumed inside her. That
girl could shape shift herself into anyone with nothing more than a
bag of makeup and a closet full of thrift store
specials.