Warrior in the Shadows (14 page)

2.17

Maureen DiMeola had been the second shift desk manager at the Days Inn–Airport for ten years. She'd developed a keen sense for all the different types of customers she saw, and this one felt like trouble. He was a light-skinned black man dressed all in black, with his ears and his nose pierced. The nose bothered her, he had a small piece of bone or wood completely through his septum.

Just disgusting.

It wasn't a good sign that he was carrying a guitar case. So many of these so-called musicians felt they had to trash a room to prove they were real rock and rollers. Maureen liked music but disliked musicians as a consequence of dealing with too many obnoxious ones over the years.

And this one wanted a particular room as well.

"Room 314, mate," the black man said. "The back corner room there on the third floor. I stayed there once before, it's me lucky room. How about it?"

His driver's license said Albert Williams, but he didn't look like an Albert Williams. That didn't sound like an Australian name and he had the same accent as the guy in the car commercials. But she couldn't very well refuse him; it was the middle of the week and most of the rooms were empty. Like any good desk manager, she kept the let rooms together so the maids could get them cleaned up more efficiently in the morning.

But she didn't feel like arguing with this man; something about him put her off.

"All right," she said. "Here you go. If you intend to play that, please remember that other guests have a right to quiet."

"I'm the quiet sort myself," the man said. "I'll keep it down."

Alfie took the key and hefted his guitar case in the other hand and went up in the elevator to the third floor. He'd picked out room 314 during an early reconnaissance. The room was on the outside of the building, directly beside a stairwell that led to the parking lot. A roof access stairway was blocked with a single hanging chain. The room was in the back of the building, away from the reservations desk and the heavily trafficked area around the weight room, indoor pool, and breakfast dining area. Since it was the middle of the week, the rooms on either side, as well as above and below, were vacant. He'd checked for himself before he went to the front desk.

He wanted to ensure his privacy.

He went into the room and drew the curtains tight. He set his guitar case down on the nearest bed and opened the case and took out several small safety pins he used to secure the gap between the curtains. He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside knob, then closed and locked the door. He took a rubber door stop wedge out of the case and kicked it firmly into place at the base of the door, then turned to take stock of the room: two twin beds, a single big mirror over the simple dresser, a television set on top of the dresser, an open closet, and a bathroom with a small tub and shower.

Everything he needed for the night.

He took a CD player with two small detached speakers out of the case and arranged them on top of the dresser. Then he took out his nulla-nulla, the club's blunt head still matted with hair and tissue visible through the plastic bag he'd wrapped neatly around the end of the stick. When he removed the plastic bag, an awful reek of rot puffed out. His nostrils flared at the scent.

Then Alfie stripped naked, rolling his clothes into a neat bundle and placing them inside a small rucksack he took from the guitar case. He set out his Emerson fighting knife and a H&K USP Compact .45 automatic pistol where he could get at them easily. If he was interrupted or attacked, he had everything set for a quick getaway.

The last thing he took from the guitar case was a bag of paints and a candle.

Alfie turned on the CD player and the low rhythmic drone of the didgeridoo began to fill the room. He eased the volume down: he didn't need it loud, he needed it clear. He undid the tie that held his mane of kinky hair back in a ponytail and shook out his hair, combing his fingers through it, forcing it up and out, framing his face in a halo of black curls. Then he pushed the beds far apart, up against each wall, making a larger space in the middle of the room. He set the candle, unlit, in the middle of the space he made.

Time now for the paints.

He laid out the pouch that held small tubes of paint and sat cross-legged in front of it. Dissatisfied with the light, he got up and turned off the room lights and was pleased to see how the pinned curtains held out the fading daylight from outside. He lit the candle, and it seemed then that the room filled with shadows, dark shadows hovering at the perimeter of light the candle threw into the dark room. He sat cross-legged once again, taking a deep even breath to calm and center himself, his nostrils flaring wide to take in the scent of rotten blood and flesh from the nulla-nulla laid alongside his other weapons.

White paint on his face first, a base pattern across the broad forehead and nose and cheekbones down to his jaw. Then a series of small yellow dots across his brow and down the bridge of his nose, trailing off the nose into squared dots on each cheekbone. He highlighted his ears in white with a yellow daub on each earlobe. He stood, then, and admired his face in the mirror. In the flickering candlelight, it seemed as though his face floated in the darkness on the smooth surface of the mirror, his naked body a sexless shadow.

He ran white up and down the limbs of his body to meet in the center, white as a base and red ochre, the special paint that had the reek of his club in it, in squares on his chest. Carefully, he drew the small stick figures that represented those he carried within himself. His nostrils flared again and deep in the back of his throat he tasted old blood.

He stood naked before the mirror with the old symbols across his flesh.

He took a leather loincloth from his bag. The skin was smooth from age and long wear. He'd made it from the hide of the first man he'd killed on the puri-puri apprentice's path. He thought of that day, so many years ago, and his shaman mentor Ralph, who had taken another name he was not allowed to say. That name had passed to Alfie when he killed Ralph. Alfie still thought of his mentor and almost regretted killing him, though both of them knew it was coming and that it was necessary for the transference of what they both carried, the dark spirit presence of the Imjin Quinkin. Alfie remembered Ralph's head bowing in submission to the blow of the nulla-nulla, and afterward, the ceremonial meal. Alfie had sung the song that celebrated the passing of his mentor and the taking of Ralph into himself. And then he went alone into the foothills around Jowalbinna to the initiation cave in the dark of night. He'd twisted through the narrow passageways and left bloody scrapings of himself on the sharp-edged stones, and when he'd finally worked his way into the inner chamber, he vomited, leaving both bits of himself and of Ralph there in the dust of the final cave.

That was the first step on the dark path he took alone as a vehicle for Anurra.

Or was he a gateway?

He didn't know. All he knew was that something dark moved through him and that dark thing demanded certain things and in return he felt the presence expanding him, like a dark cloud expands before it bursts into thunder and lightning.

The drone of the didgeridoo seemed louder and the candle began to smoke, leaving faint tendrils of gray in the deep shadows of the darkened room. Alfie looked up at the smoke detector, stood on a chair and removed the battery, setting it on the dresser. Then he stood and swayed, slowly at first, letting the sound of the didgeridoo fill his head and vibrate his very bones with the steady drone that rose and fell in time to his small twitchings, and the first small steps, then the regular stepping in and stepping out, circling the candle, a microcosm of the flames he'd danced around before, shuffling his feet, raising his knees for every other step, slapping his side, knocking his knees at the appropriate place in the ancient rhythms…

… he was a gateway, and he began to drone under his breath, a tune that had no tune, a melody with no melody, a song with no words, just an attunement of the vehicle his body was with the sound of the didgeridoo and the rhythmic claps on the CD matched the rhythmic stomp of his own feet, and the images in his mind seemed material in the gathering smoke in the room, there the twisting of the Rainbow Serpent as it strained to give birth to man and all the other animals, there an emu, then the death adder and the dingo, there the spirit ancestors, the hated Timara and the sacred Imjin, the clan of the Imjin to which he was sworn, man hunters, man eaters, bearers of the blood club that he now raised in his hand and swung through all the angles of attack, the heavy club flickering in his hand from all the angles it could sweep across, down, up, forward, the nulla-nulla live in his hand as he smote his clan's enemies and the enemies of the others he had taken money for to strike…

His vision blurred even more, or else perhaps the smoke from the flickering candle clouded his eyes, and it was as though he was in the cave again, the ancient initiation cave, having crawled through in the dark of night, man brain in his belly and his shaman-mentor's blood on his hand and his club, seeking the vision of his ancestor and Anurra had come to him, Anurra who rode him when he needed expression in the world of man and must cross the line between the man's world and the Dreamtime.

A story unfolded in front of his eyes like the reel of a movie: Anurra hunting, hunting, killing and eating and killing and eating; behind him came a Timara and there was a man and a woman with the Timara and they tracked Anurra to the cave. They stood outside in the daylight, because Anurra couldn't bear the light of day, and threw rocks into his cave to drive him out. So Anurra began to sing a love magic song to the woman, and the woman came to him and he held her before him as a shield against the angry man and the Timara who stood behind him, long-limbed like the shadow of a kouri tree.

And when the angry man came…

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.

The heavy knocking at the door jarred Alfie from his vision. He cursed softly, his vision blurred, disoriented by his abrupt departure from his dream state.

"What is it?" he said.

A harsh male voice replied, "Police. Open the door."

Alfie took a deep breath to quell the sudden knot in his belly, and took a moment to remove himself completely from his vision. He looked around the room. There would be no explaining this.

"Just a minute, mate!" he called. "I'm on the toilet, be there in just a jiff."

"Open up!" the police officer said again.

Alfie heard the click of a key being inserted into the lock and then the door opened up a few inches, only to be brought up short by the rubber door stop and the door chain. Alfie allowed himself a brief flash of regret and thought that there was nothing else to be done now. He snatched up the rucksack with his clothing in it and threw it on his back, clipped the fighting knife to the string holding his loincloth in place, took the nulla-nulla in one hand and the H&K USP .45 in the other, then slammed his body against the door, forcing back the police officer trying to enter. Then he kicked the door stop free and threw back the chain. When the policeman threw himself against the door again, Alfie flung the door wide open so the officer's rush carried him into the room. Alfie stepped nimbly to one side and brought the nulla-nulla down in a flashing arc to impact on the greater peroneal nerve complex on the outside of the policeman's thigh.

"Ah, Christ!" the policeman shouted, clutching at his leg as he fell.

Alfie kept the stick in motion and gave Maureen the desk clerk, who stood there, eyes wide at the vision that confronted her, a sharp poke in the belly that doubled her over. He shoved past her and ran down the stairwell into the parking lot where his motorcycle was parked beside a lamp that illuminated the lot. At the bottom of the stairs he bumped into a man beside the soft drink machine and knocked him down. The man pushed himself up on his arms, gaping at the apparition of an Aborigine in full paint and loincloth brandishing a club in one hand and a pistol in the other.

"Stop!" the policeman shouted from upstairs.

Alfie snatched a glance over his shoulder and saw the policeman limping down the stairwell with his pistol in hand. Damn. Alfie began to mount his bike, but paused as the policeman came clear of the ground-floor stairwell and limped around the corner of the building.

It was time for something more modern with a little more reach. Alfie stuck the nulla-nulla under the rucksack straps across his chest. The H&K pistol fit his hand like a glove and he threw the pistol up and when the sights were roughly aligned he pressed the trigger twice.

Crack, crack!

Two fast shots at the policeman, one went wide and whanged off the concrete wall of the stairwell, the other clipping the officer low on the torso and spinning him so that he stumbled over his own feet and fell. The officer caught himself on his hands, the Beretta he held going off as he involuntarily squeezed the trigger. Alfie slowed himself down and put two fast rounds in the officer's torso, then threw his leg over his bike, the seat hard against his naked bottom, and inserted the ignition keys.

A bullet hit the front headlight, splintering it in a shower of glass and metal. Alfie jumped and saw the wounded officer rolling over and over, his pistol in both hands outstretched and shooting. Alfie levered the H&K into a strong Weaver stance and emptied the remaining rounds in the weapon at, around, and into the police officer who rolled behind a car, huddling behind a wheel well as the heavy .45 slugs dug divots out of the parking lot and exploded sparks off the sheet metal of the cars around him. Alfie stuck the blisteringly hot pistol beneath a shoulder strap and kicked his bike into life, pushing it off with both bare feet. The cop was still alive and trying to get a shot angle on him as Alfie tore out of the parking lot on his motorcycle, and accelerated away into the night.