The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes) (6 page)

The truth is
. . . there’s no limit on Were-type.  No limit on the number of Weres either.  No limit on the number of Were Nations either more.

It all comes down
to the animals available in the environment closest to the nation.  This is only because for each Were, an animal must be sacrificed to the nation’s Totem in a Matching.  Outside of this, there’s nothing but a nation’s preference.

There are a great many n
ations all over the world.  There are the Jaguars in Mexico and Central America, the Hyenas in Africa, the Grizzlies in Canada and Alaska, the Raccoons in coal country, Horses along the east coast, Boars in Texas, Tigers in India, Anacondas through the Amazon, Dolphins in the Caribbean, and a very secret one I’m not going to tell you about yet but you will be meeting one day.

In California you have the Coyote Nation in the Sierra Nevad
as, through the Central Valley and even down into Southern California, Las Vegas, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico.  Its total membership is in the thousands if not the tens of thousands.  At its most simple definition, it is the world’s biggest and baddest gang, dealing in all manner of narcotics, theft, murder, human trafficking, prostitution, gambling, and all the other human needs that
need
scratched but are outlawed by our government.

Think the
Mob, with enforcers who can turn into coyotes.  Alone they’re not vamp level problems, but they are slightly more than human—together they are a
problem
, so much of a problem that the Coyote Nation had itself peace treaties with both the Elemental Learning Council and the Vampire Embassies when this story took place.  Messing with them is a very bad idea . . . which is why stupid ass is doing just that . . .

[CLICK]

“I’m not your
little
sister.”

“Susan’s talle
r than me, you’re smaller, thus . . . little sister.”

“I’m older than you by three years, makes me
bigger
, little brother.”

“I already know you are,
so why don’t you just come out and say you are?” I wasn’t talking about sibling rivalry.

“It’s none of your business, you shithead.”

“Hey now . . . I’m supposed to be the only one with a foul mouth.”

“Shut up, King Henry.  You have no idea what you’re talking about, do you understand me?  It’s none of your business.  I’m handling just fine.  You stay out of it,” she ordered.

Like that ever worked.

“King Vega
,” I muttered.  “Knew the Coyotes in the Sierra Nevadas had themselves a guy calling himself a
king
, but I never knew the name of the guy.  Fits though, don’t it?  King Vega’s Coyotes.  That’s what one of your little guards said.”

Her face started looking a whole lot like P
ajamas’ outside, fearful for a person.  “Don’t . . .”

“C
ourse . . . I know how normal people take a punch, how long it takes them to get up from it, all those kinds of things.  Longer than you expect.  One little punch can do a whole lot of damage, but one little punch with my
something extra
, that will knock a person out for minutes, not seconds.  Your little guards are too tough for humans, aren’t they?”

“Don’t
. . .” she repeated in a whisper.

“Are you a prisoner?”

“No . . .”

“He always have you watched?”

No answer was answer enough.

“He beat you?”

“He’s too civilized for that,” again at a whisper, like one of those guards might hear through the sound of the burger joint, bypassing the thickness of the glass, and the distance out into the parking lot.

“Punishes you then, threatens, takes things away, glances at one of your friends with a look in his eye,” I said, nodding, “I know the type.”

“No, you don’t.  He’s a great man.”

“But do you want to be with the great man, JoJo?
  You finally find a situation you can’t run your way out of?”

She was silent, face mute, eyes on the table.

“Did he make you perform a Matching?” I asked, voice hard.

She met my eyes.  Dirt meeting dirt.

“Are you a werecoyote, little sister?

[CLICK]

Vampiris
m is a problem of the Old World; Wereism is a problem of the New World.  The creation of a Were Nation begins with the creation of a Totem, for without that Totem the nation has no power.  A Totem can be made from stone, from wood, from steel, even from aluminum coke cans.  Material is not what matters . . . what matters is the material being placed in such a way as to be able to trap anima essences.

I will not be going into how this pattern is accom
plished, it’s not something anyone should spread, and it would be a crime of humanity for me to tell you.  Let us just admit that there is such a pattern and think of this as the portion of the educational TV show where I don’t tell you how I’m making rocket fuel.

You now have an unsanctified Totem.  To sanctify it you must find thirteen special animals of your chosen type and sacrifice them, especially their blood, upon the Totem’s pattern.  The animals may not be w
ounded, they may not be drugged; you must wrestle them at their full strength and slit their throats in the correct place.  If you do this, you now have a sanctified Totem.

How does
it work?  It works through the Ratio of Anima Dispersion.  Anima is in every part of our world.  Mancers are able to actively harness its power but humans have an amount of it as well, just at such base levels to do nothing with it.  You probably already know it’s in nature, in mountains and rivers and thunderstorms and volcanoes and more beside.  It is also in animals.  Furthermore it is completely equal among all animals.  Their ratio is a simple 3:3:3.  This means it’s just as likely to find an animal with a necro-anima type as an animal with a floro-anima type.

Please don’t overcomplicate this.  It’s no more special than a human’s blood type or your astrological sign.  It has no effect if you aren’t a mancer and no animals are
. . . you will not find butterflies starting hurricanes—animals are completely neutral.  This neutrality, however, leads to them being perfect for the Totem process.  Of course, you need the thirteen types . . . and sacrificing two cryo-anima types gets you nothing.  How many sanctifications do you think actually manage the hole-in-one and only need thirteen animals?

It’s a messy business
. . .

Once the thirteen anima types have been sacrificed to the Totem, you’re ready to rock and roll and begin your Nation.  We’ll get into that later
. . . but for now my little sister has an important question to answer.

[CLICK]

“Yes
. . .” she whispered.

“That son-of-a-
bitch.”

She shrugged, coat dropped to reveal
the tattoos on her back once more.  “It wasn’t so bad.  Didn’t like killing the coyote, but it doesn’t hurt or nothing.”

“It’s screwed up stuff,
Sis.”

“
Don’t talk about me that way!”

The scream
came so sudden it shocked not only me but the other diners.  A few of the guys faces looked too much like mine had in the parking lot for comfort.  Me getting white-knighted . . . that would be a fitting end to the experience.

JoJo waved them all off.  “Family reunion,” she murmured, then sat back down.  “It doesn’t feel bad at all.  It’s like having an invisible set of teeth to lick on, only with your whole body.  You only have to Switch once a month
and only for a few hours.  We’re very careful.  Especially with me . . .”

Pajamas
and Suit came inside the burger joint.  Maybe they do have good hearing or maybe JoJo’s scream was just that loud.  Pajamas sat down on JoJo’s side of the stall without asking.  “You okay, Josephine?”

JoJo shrugged but then
shook her head, contradicting herself.  “My mom’s dead, Zoey.”

“Oh, honey
. . .” Zoey wrapped an arm around JoJo.

Suit sat down
at a table across from us. His face was all pissed off in my direction.  “I’ve decided to let your attack on me slide on account of your relationship with Mrs. Vega.”

“Hoo-fucking-rah,” I told him.

“But it’s getting late and we have to return . . . home,” Suit added.  “This reunion will have to continue later . . . if Mrs. Vega decides she wants it too, that is.”

R
eaching into my coat made Suit flinch.  Guess he hadn’t gotten over the electrocution yet, werecoyote or no werecoyote.  “Call me, Sis.” I handed her my card with all my numbers on it.  Doubt they would let her keep it, but it’s all I could do.  “Or just stop by my shop next time you’re in town, I can tell you about my time at school.”

JoJo put on one of the fakest smiles I’ve ever seen.  “That sounds nice, King Henry.”

We all stood up, little Hooker Barbie Zoey still hanging on to JoJo like she might melt without the support.  You got the feeling she held her pretty often. 
He’s a great man, my ass,
I thought in pure fury,
I bet you play a mean mind-game, don’t you, Horatio Vega?  Bet you have her so turned around she don’t know what she really thinks about you down deep.

“But you,” I told Suit
, taking my anger out on the nearest target, “you don’t fuck with me again, got it?”

Suit went full animal snarl.  Guess he Switched more often than once a month.  “You don’t scare me, geomancer.”

“
Artificer
,” I corrected.

The snarl turned into a coughing fit.

Look at me, making new friends.

You know, there’s a real problem with this backward-narration-after-it’s-been-lived shit.  That problem is pretty simple:  I lived to tell about it, didn’t I?

You take heart
, don’t you, kiddies?  King Henry lives!  Hoorah!

One tape and you’re a little smart ass, aren’t you?  Think you know a thing or two about how these stories are all going to end up.  Yeah, I guess I gave you the end in the first tape
, didn’t I?  Me graduated and making my shop . . . that’s something.  Jumped the gun did King Henry.

Let’s think what else you know
. . .

You know I loved me some Valentine Ward somewhere in those seven years.  Know who my friends will be.  Know who my biggest rival is.  You know all this.  Know what else you
know
?  You know only twenty-eight of Ultra Class ‘09 make it through.

Forgot that, did you?  I mentioned it last time.  Twenty-eight
Ultras graduating.  Only . . . there’re thirty at the start.  So when you’re screaming about King Henry living . . . maybe you should think about how not all us will.  As for what you
don’t
know . . . you don’t know how I got my scars.  Don’t know how I did all the crap I did.

Some
. . . you know some.  A little bit.  It’s always the ones that know a little bit that cause you problems.  First-year Psych students, first-year doctors . . . Singles at the Asylum.  You don’t know
all
.  Even
I
don’t know
all
to this fucking day.  Don’t forget that.  Think on a number.  Twenty-eight.  Think on scars.  They don’t call it the Asylum for nothing.  Plenty don’t leave it standing up.

[CLICK]

October, 2009

The bus stopped with a clench of brake fluid.

The Asylum being big on new technologies and the tax breaks they bring
for even
magical
schools, it had no gassy fart of black exhaust, the bus being brand-new modified electric.  Just a soft hum.  Not metal, plastic.  Not fire pushing pistons, but current.  Got to give it to the Asylum, even their buses offend me.

“Ooooh-kay
!” a voice called from the front as Fines Samson stood from his seat opposite the driver.  “Listen up!  Ears forward, mouths closed, minds open!  I’m only saying this one time—
there will be no questions
.  If there is a question, the person who asked the question will win the enjoyable experience of hauling not only their own backpack but mine as well; do you all understand this punishment dangling over your heads like the proverbial Sword of Damocles?”

There were some nods and a few ‘
yes, sirs
’ from the thirty kids of Ultra Class ’09.

They’d given
us free choice on where to sit. Pocket and I found a spot near the back.  Not at the exact back, being as Jason Jackson had barred the way for just Welf and his gang of Old-Mancy kids.  How a guy raised by a single mom on the wrong side of the tracks in Memphis ended up with Welf’s crew I’ll never know.  I could have put it down to money changing hands, but it actually seemed like Jason and Welf got along really well . . .

“This trip is tradition,” Samson continued, his voice sure and just a little threatening, “it goes back over fifty years.  As always with the Institu
tion of Elements there is a purpose behind tradition and that tradition is to see how you prosper or fail during a weekend away from the structured class setting of the school itself.”

The bus wasn’t like any bus I’d ever seen beyond the
motor too.  Pocket told me it’s the same kind you were transported into the Asylum from Tahoe with.  Having been brought in and stabbed with a giant needle by Ceinwyn, I never experienced it.  It wasn’t a school bus, wasn’t a city bus, wasn’t even a charter bus.  It had no windows at all.  I’m pretty sure that even prison buses have windows . . . at least they do in the movies . . .

“You’ve had four weeks of classes and you’ve survived.  Be proud of this accomplishment.  Consider this trip a vacation.  Enjoy it.  Play in the lake.  Poke wild animals with sticks.  Eat smores.  Undertake activities common to camping trips.  You have three days to relax, enjoy every minute of it.”

No televisions to entertain us, no iPads, no cell-phones, no books even.  The backpacks Samson mentioned were pre-packed by Asylum servants.  We had no clue what was inside them.  Miranda Daniels tried to bring a sketchpad and some pencils to draw the wildlife but both had been confiscated by our student-advisor before she stepped on the bus.

Curt Chambers did get to keep his inhaler though
. . . good thing too, I didn’t want his wheezy ass keeping me up at night.

“But remember
. . . you are not normal children.  Every one of you is a mancer.  Don’t forget it.  Keep the magnetism of your Elementalism under control.  There are no nurses or doctors or fire extinguishers here to save the day.  Only trees and leaves to burn away.” Samson stared at Valentine Ward for this bit.

Largely over accidental discharges, she winked and six-shootered back at him.

Nothing to entertain kids brought up especially for ADHD, video games and DVDs for every minute of the day.  We almost went insane with boredom.  Some slept.  Others tried to talk.  The Asylum didn’t have news services outside of a weekly sheet for world events the teachers passed out on Sundays.  We didn’t have new reality TV shows to discuss or sports to argue about, so instead gossip was king.

More a king than even me.

“There will be rules.”

A month and we’d been stuffing ourselves silly on
rumors and gossip.  The other years were only interested in who dated who and stuff like you’d expect in a girly magazine.  For us Singles we had the Mancy piled on top.

What could you do?  What couldn’t you do?

“Do not go anywhere alone.”

Who had themselves an accidental discharge?  What had Teacher
A
meant when they said this particular hint about the Mancy?

“Do not litter.”

Then you had the structure, questions about the teachers.  How old was the Lady really?  Did Mordecai Root really keep Bonegrinder constructs in his house?  Did Ceinwyn Dale really get her own boyfriend killed on assignment once?  Are Russell Quilt and Audrey Foster really dating?

“Do not cause me problems.”

The rumors and gossip irked me.  A month . . . a fucking month and still we didn’t know anything.  Didn’t know a damned thing about the Mancy or how it worked.  Nothing but guesses.  The worst of it was that since Welf and his groupies grew up around the Mancy they loved lording their knowledge over the rest of us, dispensing it like scraps to dogs.

I ain’t no man’s dog, neither bull nor bitch
.

“Do as I command.”

A whole month and I’d learned a lot about geography and history and read a few books and done a few math problems, but the Mancy?

History of Elementalism
?  We’d spent a month on ancient uses of the Mancy and how it evolved itself from mysticism under Neolithic societies into religion under the Egyptians.  Greeks were up next; apparently they finally started figuring things out and doled out some real names to what was going on.

Basic Elementalism
?  A month of breathing exercises, relaxation Buddha shit, and mind problems.  Mr. Gullick liked to put us into groups and let us play with these 3D puzzles.  Where’s the Mancy in that?

Survival and Defense
?  Not a bit of Mancy in sight, but at least we’re being taught how to protect ourselves.  Knots, herb-lore, even CPR.  My favorite class by far.

The teacher?

Fines Samson.

“Here is a step by step plan of action for you to follow:  you are going to orderly exit the bus, you are going to wait near the luggage catch down below, I will read out nametags and hand
them on over, then—as one group—we will trek to our camp site.  There and
only there
you will be given further instructions.  Any questions?”

“
It’s a trap
,” Pocket mumbled under his breath and before we could stop it we were laughing so hard we covered our mouths to keep the sound down.

Samson nodded into silence.  “Good
. . . now get the hell out of my bus.”

[CLICK]

What does Fine
s Samson look like?

No, this ain’t
more of the rhetorical crap I just fed you about the Mancy.  In the famous words of the crazy Irish guy from
Braveheart
, ‘
answer the fuckin’ question
.’

What does Fine
s Samson look like?

Think about it
for a bit instead of moving on.

Here’s some silence
. . .

.

.

.

Got a mental image?

.

.

.

Wrong mental image, little asshole.

Fin
es Samson is ninety years old.  The hair he’s got is white, he has glasses thick as hell, and he don’t even got any teeth left.  He wears dentures.  But he stands straight.  He could outrun any kid in my class.  He could also kill any kid in my class and almost anyone else on this Earth.

He’s a Bad Ass Mother Fucker
, Grade-Triple-A BAMF certified.  A sciomancer, Ultra, a Shadeshifter.  He fought in WW2, Korea, AND Vietnam, doing awesome that’s
still
classified.  In the 70s he started teaching at the Asylum, a living legend, only retiring at the age of seventy-five.  Class ’09 was the only other class he taught after that retirement, a special service for the Lady.  Guess she knew what a handful we were going to be.

[CLICK]

“How can you like this?” I asked Pocket.

“What’s not to like?” He gave me his best I-can’t-believe-you expression.  “Fresh air, birds singing, trees rattling, and a nice bit of exercise.  The only thing better than a hike is catching waves on a board.”

“That, Pocket, is the wisdom of a man who has never even kissed a girl.”

He blushed.  “I never should have admitted it to you.”

“Nope.”

“You’ll never let it go . . .”

“Well
. . . eventually you’ll kiss a girl, right?”

“Yeah
. . . eventually . . .”

“Just ask Isabel.”

He hit me on the shoulder and almost knocked me over.  The trail wasn’t so bad but the backpack had to weigh as much as I did.

Class ’09 strung out in a line, following Fines Samson at the same pace that we had for three hours.  Apparently, the man had never heard of the word ‘
break
’ in his ninety years . . . unless it was to
break
the bones of students who dared to ask him questions.

“That’s not funny, dude.”  Pocket shook his head.  He
was already working towards six-foot and didn’t have a single problem with the backpack.  If anything, he played with the straps, pulling it up and letting it slide back down, like the pace bored him.  “I’m going to have nightmares about kissing Isabel now . . . about missing her mouth and tonguing her wart.”

I would have laughed if I had the breath for it.  Fourteen-year-old-me
realized for the first time that there are different kinds of exercise than getting into fist fights.  Whatever you needed for hikes through the woods, Visalia hadn’t supplied me with.

If only I didn’t have the stupid backpack
, I thought.

“What do you think is in these things?” I asked
aloud.

“The backpacks?”

“Yeah.”

“Clothes.”

“Makes sense.”

“Extra pair of shoes.”

“Probably some socks too.”

“Right
. . . then they probably divvied up camping supplies through the class.”

“Like
. . . what?”

“You’re hopeless in the outdoors, King Henry.”

The trail was definitely outdoors.  I had a feeling deer and bears got more use out of it than humans did.  Trees, bushes, all kinds of crap in the way.  You couldn’t see a damned thing.  You smelt
everything.

My nose itched. 
I didn’t like it.

I
grew up in a valley, I liked my world flat.  Sure, the Asylum was in the mountains, but it was clear cut mountains.  All the trees around you?  I hated it.  Getting down into you with their roots, covering up, working to turn stone into dirt . . . the geomancer in me was offended.

“This is why I didn’t join the Camping Club.”

“You didn’t join
any
club.”

I was the only kid in the class who hadn’t.  Cuz I’m not stupid.  “So, what kind of camping supplies?”