Saved and SAINTified (65 page)

“I know. Everything you said is true.”

“What? No argument? No blowing smoke up my ass just to be right?”

Saint
laughed and shook his head. “No, no argument from me this time.” Trying to hold his nerves together, he rubbed the top of his thighs. “There’s been some shit goin’ on, Raphael.”

“I know. Tell me.” Raphael
gave him his full attention.

The two friends sat in their chairs, lean
ing back as if they were waiting for a movie to start.

“Remember when my father went to
Egypt some months ago?” Saint folded his hands, prepared to tell Raphael the entire sordid story.

“Yeah.”

“Well, he wasn’t going to visit family again. He was going ... because of
me
.”

Raphael’s eyebrows bunched,
.“Okay, and?”

“You know, Raphael,”
Saint gave a dismal smile as he leaned forward in his seat, holding his knees. “I really thought that when you basically made me go to the library with you all of those years ago, all that stuff I read was some far out shit. At the time I believed it was one of the worst days of my life. But, it was also one of the best days because I finally understood what I was,
who
I was. So many mysteries were solved. ... Well, now I’ve got some shit that makes all of that look like small potatoes.”

“If you don’t spill this shit
…!”

“Alright!
I’m getting to it. Let me make this as simple as possible.”

“Please do. You’re stalling.”

Saint shrugged. “There is a guy in Egypt who is
exactly
like me—I mean, identical power-wise—and to make a very convoluted, long story short, when a guy like me,” he pointed to himself and peered at Raphael, “has a little girl, there is this tiny, remote chance, that she will be so fucking awesome and significant, that she actually rules an entire damn country of Angel Children—that being Egypt. To make this situation even more monumental and fucked up, whatever your perspective is, Egypt is like our fucking White House. For people like me, it is the Congress, the Democrats, the Republicans, the place where bills for our kind are made and possibly passed into law. It is the crème de la crème, the highest of the high. ... Isis,
is
that person.”

Silence
.

“Uh, okay, let me get this straight
.” Raphael cleared his throat. “Isis is runnin’ shit, and she’s only four weeks old?!”

Saint
nodded. “Kinda. Right now, she is more like a figurehead. As her paternal figure and an Angel Child myself, I make the decisions but I can’t sign any new laws or agreements without her approval and consensus. She is the damn President and whoever her father is runs the show; she only is to tell me ‘yes’ or ‘no’ ... because she is mine. She is basically like a key to power. She isn’t expected to do anything special or out of the ordinary; her birth alone takes care of that.  Regardless, the power stays within my family until the next one is born and if history repeats itself, that won’t be for another two or three hundred years.”

Raphael let out a deep sigh, fell back in his chair and rubbed his head
. “Saint, what in the hell...” He shook his head in utter confusion. “But you won’t live for three hundred years and neither will she. How does that work?”

“It’s passed down, Raphael. Her children, their children, pass the torch until the next one is born.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been dealin’ with all this shit and didn’t even tell me.”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to. If you knew though, it would have made you susceptible to
Nizsm. He can read people, regardless of where they are in the world and people who aren’t Angel Children are very easy to read; not to mention, we had to put a spell on the baby while Xenia was pregnant with her, to keep him away so that—”

“What?!”

Saint waved his hand. “Never mind that. Just understand that I’m in some serious shit right now. I can’t believe this shit, either. Anyway, let me finish what I was saying before all of that.”

Raphael nodded.

“Historically, there has never been one born outside of Egypt so this has thrown everyone for a loop. Also, they tend to stay in the same family for a while. Well, not this time. The guy I was talking about at the beginning of this chat, his name is Nizsm, and he is my cousin by marriage. He is an evil, greedy son of a bitch who has lost control because of the birth of my daughter.”

The uncomfortable silen
t pauses returned, choking both of them.

“He wants her dead,”
Saint continued. “He wants revenge. Because I’m not there in Egypt, no one knows he has lost control yet, but he knows that as soon as they find out, there could be a problem. In all honesty, some of them probably already know but are still too afraid to say anything. He creates
that
much fear. He is supposed to have a transitional year with me, where he still is basically in office, but trains me. Then I, in turn, would train my daughter. None of that is going to happen and honestly, I don’t even want that! He could keep it—but I can’t let him.” Saint sighed. “Because he’s been hurting people and my Isis being here changes everything. Right now, I know he is devising a plan. I think he finally understands that I’m not the pushover weasel he’d hoped for. Not only did he get misled, he feels I made a fool of him and he is not fuckin’ around.”

“Man, fuck him!”

“It’s not that easy. We’re talking family dynamics here, grave ones.”

“But wait, I’m still confused. Go back for a second. He didn’t have a Princess of Life, so how can he have the power to rule over people, to make these sort
s of decisions?”

“It was his
great-great-grandmother and the paternal side can pass it down to the eldest son at any time they wish, regardless of having the daughter or not. Having the daughter would have just underwritten it in their family. There would have been no chance of loss and also, upon her birth, if she was his biological daughter, it would’ve ensured he could have changed the laws to his liking—with her permission of course, but I’m sure he would’ve found a way around that, despite the karmic implications.”

“Oh, I see.”

“He knows that I will fight him to the death to protect my family. This has nothing to do with power to me—but power and now anger is what is fueling him right now. He will stop at nothing until he kills me and my daughter, Raphael.” Saint sighed. “Actually, at this point, he wants my entire family dead.”

“Saint, this is fucked up
. We’ve got to do something.”

“No,
I’ve
got to do something. And by the way, Beset isn’t actually our housekeeper, Raphael. She was here to help us, to help protect my family. She’s a medicine woman.”

“You’ve been keeping all sorts of secrets.
”

“
Nizsm had her daughter killed because her daughter spoke out against him. He walked right up to that woman’s child and killed her, then walked away like shit didn’t happen. Beset watched her daughter die, and had to bury her all on her own. She is a widow now; she didn’t have anyone else. This shit is personal to her.”

“It’s personal to me, too.” Raphael’s eyes narrowed. “When is this
mothafucka comin’, do you know? Ain’t nobody doin’ shit to my goddaughter.”

“Raphael, don’t go getting any
grandiose ideas. First of all, you have a family of your own. Second of all, you’re not an Angel Child, so you’d be easily overpowered by him. This isn’t like when you and I were runnin’ around as kids tag teamin’ as we beat the shit out of cats that thought we were soft; or even our run in with your friends at the bar. We are dealing with some supernatural shit ... some
wild
shit!”

Raphael’s eyes narrowed and his lips trembled. “
Saint, if I told you someone was going to kill one of my children, would you come and try to help me?”

Saint
looked away.

“That’s right
, mothafucka!” Raphael pointed at him angrily. “You
would
, and now you won’t answer because you know what this means,” he fumed. “You’re not getting rid of me.”

“Raphael,
no. I won’t have it. Don’t make me regret telling you.”

“Fuck that,
Saint!” he spat between clenched teeth. “I’m not dying and you know my damn background, you know what I’ve been through and where I come from! I know you remember my father gettin’ shot, dyin’ right on street ... slangin’ dope, someone cut him down right in front of our goddamn building. I was a little guy, but old enough to remember that shit and I remember it caused me to tune the damn world out. Violence didn’t even phase me anymore. You’re the brother I never had. We’ve been through some crazy shit together! Even though I’m a year older than you, I looked up to you, man! You were growing up, and I wasn’t ...
you
are the reason I—”

“But Raphael
—”

“Nah! Let me finish. You’re the reason I turned my life around
, stopped doing that penny ante crime shit, and got straight. I got straight. I would be dead or in prison if it wasn’t for our friendship, our brotherhood. I saw that if you could stop and change, I could, too. At first, we were doing all the rotten shit together; we didn’t care about anyone but ourselves. But that all changed. Instead of all those hoes I was fuckin’, you brought a
real
woman into my life—a good woman who put up with my shit and gave me three beautiful kids, man. We’re even, now! Now you see what it feels like to have a daughter, to understand how protective you can be over the girls. It’s different, man, than with Hassani and Dakarai. I have two of ’em, and junior. I know how that shit feels! I tried to warn you. I can see it all over your face. You’ve got a little baby girl and she pulls your heartstrings in a different way because you see her as more helpless, regardless if that shit is even true or not. It’s something ... about ... the little girls!”

Saint
buried his head in his hands as he listened to Raphael speak with passion.

“Now, you tell me that some Egyptian psycho wants to come by here and kill an innocent fuckin’ baby over some bullshit, over what? Some damn control over Egyptian psychics! Kill my damn
goddaughter,
my niece
?! You smokin’ crack if you think I’m just going to walk away and let you deal wit’ this shit on your own.” Raphael grimaced and briefly turned away. “If you and I could survive bullets whizzing past our head, beat-downs, a neighborhood like the South Bronx back in ’81 and ’82, we can live through any damn thing! The Bronx is burnin’, baby!”

M
emories, as clear as day, resurfaced. New, fresh recollections of Bomb waltzed through, joining the crowded imagery in Saint’s mind.

“I bet ya boy
Nizsm couldn’t have survived the South Bronx in the ’70s and ’80s like we did. We were little kids, but we
still
made it. A lot of people didn’t, young and old. We ran the streets like we were grown. I look back at that shit, and can’t believe we made it out alive. It was a damn war zone. Nizsm ain’t shit; after all we’ve been through, man, you can fall back if you think I’m staying out of this.”

Saint
saw the fierceness in his best friend’s eyes—and he was right. Raphael and he spoke about their upbringing, the old neighborhood and their ordeals at least a couple times a year, but it still seemed surreal. Saint didn’t have enough time on planet Earth to fully explain to Xenia everything he’d seen and endured. Seeing Bomb there, a walking relic of that era, made him all the more certain that his basic training, baptism by fire, would serve him well for this battle with Nizsm. In reality, Saint now understood that he and Raphael, and everyone else who’d made it out during that time period were POWs and had post-traumatic stress disorder, to the fullest.

He saw it clearly, understanding that a part of him enjoyed the beating he’d given the men that scaled his house and shot him
; that he relished witnessing Stanley expire after the brutal punishments he’d inflicted upon others. Righting wrongs
tasted
soooo
damn good
... and he could no longer deny that he was hooked on the flavor. He accepted that this was part of who he was, his calling. He could not be effective, unless he was driven to do what he was destined and designed to do—and when protecting Queens, his wife and his offspring, this was his lot in life. He was made and built for it.

“You’re fuckin’ crazier than he is then, if you believe that, man. I
ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Raphael snapped Saint back out of his sideliner thoughts, pushing forward on his convictions.

“I’m nuttier than squirrel shit, but I’m fuckin’ right, man.”
Saint grinned. “This could be a month or two, or longer, Raphael. Be realistic. He doesn’t want me to know what he’s up to. Right now, he is strategizing. You can’t sit around here waiting!”

“That’s true,
Saint, but let me tell you this: as soon as I find out something or you start hiding from me again, I’m on a plane. I know you man, don’t play with me. You call me as soon as the shit jumps off and if you don’t, I’m coming anyway.”