If this was one of those "dreams of madness," it didn't start out so bad.
I was eight years old again along with Scotty Steadman. Cecil Rosewood was barely seven but acted nine.
As the school system didn't offer "accelerated alternatives," they had declared Rosewood an honorary eight-year-old and bumped him up to Mrs. Standhart's third-grade classroom.
It wasn't an immediate fit. Rosey was smaller than the rest of us. Worse, he was smarter than the rest of us. Since Steadman and I were less intimidated by either factor, he ended up under our social tutelage, running with the two of us even when school was out: evenings, weekends, summers yet to come . . .
We had just spent another Friday night in Scotty's tree house, and then slipped next door, down into the family room in my parent's basement: the Saturday morning ritual of cartoons and breakfast.
It was already warm out and Steadman was totally at home in his Underoos—both fashion statement and practical choice as the sleeping bags had turned us all sweaty and disheveled. The Steadmeister held the opinion that pajamas were too babyish for such mature eight-year-olds as ourselves. Easy enough to say when your underwear approximates Batman's crime-fighting costume. It lent an air of daring to the skinny, freckled kid—something that would otherwise elude him into his all-too-brief adulthood.
Scott Steadman would die in an automobile accident at the age of twenty-three.
Cecil Rosewood, whom the rest of our classmates called "Poindexter," went the sartorial opposite. He wore jammies with feet. Perhaps his mother made them: Sears & Roebuck had phased out pj's with enclosed footwear back when I was graduating toilet training. If it hadn't been for the mashed potatoes, we would have ragged him unmercifully. Rosey had made the groundbreaking discovery that—properly stuffed with mashed potatoes—pajama booties approximated the low-g effects of a moonwalk for a third-grader playing astronaut.
Poindexter was a pioneer.
As for me? Since my mother was of the opinion that underwear—even the sort designed for the Bat-cave—was inadequate for warding off the effects of pneumonia, the best compromise I could affect was shorts and a T-shirt. Neither super-heroish nor outfitted for out-of-this-world EVAs.
Neither one thing nor the other.
It was a condition I would come to know much more intensely many years after Scotty Steadman's bones were moldering in Hattonville Cemetery and Faith Rosewood miscarried Cecil's only son after three healthy daughters.
That's the problem with dreams: you know too much and understand too little.
Like the debate the three of us were presently engaged in.
"He's a fairy," Scotty insisted, watching Winky Dink cavort across the TV screen with his cartoon dog, Woofer.
A local independent station had unearthed the ancient, black-and-white cartoon series as an alternative to the networks' Technicolor toon franchises. It had to be cheap: my parents talked about watching it when they were kids. As far as I knew, no one watched it now. Winky Dink and Me was just time filler and background ambience until Transformers came on. Only occasional bursts of noise and action penetrated our sugar-driven, breakfast-cereal buzz as we argued and debated the greater mysteries of life. This morning it had started with the philosophical question of whether Superman was really Clark Kent or whether Clark Kent was really Superman.
"I don't get it," Rosey had kept protesting. "They're the same guy. It depends on which clothes he's wearing."
In search of a more debatable topic we stumbled onto religion.
"Hey, Poindexter," Scotty had challenged, "can God do anything?"
"Yeah, sure." Rosewood's family, name notwithstanding, were devout Catholics. Then, sensing a trap: "Anything He wants, that is."
"Can He create a rock that's so big that even He can't lift it?" Scotty beamed, inordinately pleased to have poised such an airtight conundrum.
I expected Rosey to laugh it off after a moment—Catholics, in my eight-year-old estimations always had that theological Get Out of Jail Free card. Nuns and priests on TV and in the movies were always invoking it.
But Rosewood wasn't defaulting to the old "It's a mystery" line. The emotions flickering across his puffy features were moving from confusion to consternation. He was taking Scotty's challenge seriously.
And therein lay a path to madness.
"Not to worry, Poindexter," I said, poking him with my elbow, "I got this one." I turned to Scotty. "The answer is yes."
Steadman's eyebrows fairly danced. "So, you're saying that God could create a rock that's so big, even He, Himself, couldn't lift it?"
I nodded. "That's right."
Steadman let out a laugh like the bray of a jackass. "So, if this rock is too big for God to lift, then I guess it's not true. If you said that God could do anything—that's one thing He couldn't do! He couldn't lift the rock!"
I'd actually asked my father this one a while back. Grownups are supposed to know all about stuff like this. Unfortunately my dad must have missed the handout on this one. His answer was basically "why would God want to do something like that?" Obviously, He wouldn't. End of story.
My father would never understand the rules of debate with the Scotty Steadmans of the world.
I, however, got a crash course every week. I shook my head and smiled. "Not true. He could lift it because He's God. God can do anything."
Scotty's smile slipped a little. "Wait a minute. You don't understand," he said. And laid it all out again like I was some sort of feeb.
I nodded again. "God can do anything," I repeated. "He is so powerful that He can create a rock too big for Him to pick up."
Scotty's smile was back. "So, if He can't pick it up—"
"Oh no," I interrupted. "He can pick it up. He's God: He can do anything." My smile, on the way up, passed his, on the way down.
"But—but—wait—"
I waved my hand dismissively. "Don't worry, I got it. God can create this rock that's soooo big that even He can't pick it up."
"He can't . . ."
"But since God can do anything, He can pick it up because He's God." I grinned at Rosewood who seemed to be warming up to my philosophical take on kindergarten cosmology.
The Scottster, however, was starting to look a little pissed. He knew I could keep this up all day and the only way to beat me at this game was to—well—beat on me. Friendship is, at times, a veritable balancing act and the scars of failure can be more than metaphors.
"I got a question," Rosey piped up, defusing the moment. "What's Winky Dink supposed to be?"
That was a very good question.
We turned and paid a little more attention to the star-headed cartoon currently trekking across Marshall McLuhan's post-cultural apocalyptic wasteland.
Whereas most animated characters have heads too large for their bodies, Winky Dink had a balloonlike cranium that made the other toons look like pinheads by comparison. Crowning his hydrocephalic head was a five-pointed hairstyle that looked like he was wearing someone's Christmas tree star for a beanie. Add in lousy art direction, crude animation, and facial features that resembled those of a rabid squirrel on crack (not that we had a clue regarding any of the pharmacopoeia of recreational substances as of yet) and you had the makings of a forgettable cartoon.
Except for a rather unique premise . . .
Each week The Dink (as Scotty liked to call him) embarked on a new adventure and encountered a series of obstacles in his two-dimensional world. At several points in each story, the program host—a real, live human being—would interrupt and ask the audience for help. None of that "make a wish" or "think really hard" or "clap your hands" baby crap to keep-Tinkerbelle-from-dying nonsense. The Dink needed his audience to use "magic crayons" to draw a bridge or a ladder or something of practical value to help him get out of a jam. Long before interactive television or home video games, the Dinkster required active audience participation.
"I think he's a star," Cecil argued. "Like a star person. Or a star that's alive."
"That's his hair, Dorkbrain. It just looks like a star because it has five points and it's yellow." That last statement was more of a guess on Scotty's part as the black-and-white spectrum had translated its true color to a faint suggestion of gray.
The concept of artistic intervention sounded simple but wasn't. For one thing you were supposed to use the "magic" crayons that came with a kit you had to send away for. And there was a piece of clear plastic you were supposed to put over the TV screen before you started drawing. This came with a "magic" erasing cloth.
Not only did The Dink think it was important to use the magic "Winky Window" on our TV screens but our parents did too. Apparently Georgie Peterson had ruined his parent's brand new, six-hundred-dollar color television when he tried to assist ole star-head without using a Winky Window, first. There were differing versions of the story—one involving magic markers—but they all ended up pretty much the same. My guess was Winky Dink and You would be replaced by something less interactive before the summer was up.
Just as well; we were Transformer fans, instead.
"Stars aren't alive, Poindexter," Steadman was still rolling his eyes at Rosewood as Winky Dink disappeared and some equally ancient, black-and-white commercial came on.
"Sez who?" Rosewood retorted.
"Odd Og, Odd Og," the commercial jingle singsonged, "half turtle and half frog . . ."
"There's nothing alive in outer space! There's no air to breathe!"
"Maybe he don't need air."
"Dork! Anything that's alive needs air."
" . . . don't you laugh at him at all!" some kid in the commercial was declaiming. "Odd Og plays ball!"
"Maybe there's aliens that don't breathe air," Cecil argued.
"Course they breathe air. They wear spacesuits, don't they?"
"Not space monsters. Space monsters don't wear spacesuits."
"That's because they don't fly on spaceships. They stay on their planets and kill earth people who come there."
The plastic monstrosity in the TV commercial was sucking up a succession of toy balls and spitting them back out of its oversized mouth like one of those machines in the batting practice cages over at Henderson Park.
"Maybe the Dink's half fairy and half star," I suggested, taking my cue from the mildly disturbing commercial.
Scotty shot me a look of half amusement and half disgust.
"Well, we don't even know if it's a he or a she or an it," I added lamely.
"I'm all three," Winky Dink announced from the TV screen. "I'm what you would call an asexual being."
The commercial was apparently over but I wasn't so sure the show was back on. The Dink looked different—like somebody else was drawing him now. His voice was different, too. Less human—which was really saying something in contrast to its typical, chipmunk-on-helium quality.
Steadman's mouth dropped open. "Did the Dink just say a dirty word?" he asked me.
"Poindexter," the not-so-Dink said, turning as if he could see Cecil hanging across the hassock in my living room, "I need a submarine. Or, rather, your buddy Chris is going to need one. Think you can draw us up one?"
Cecil stared back at the screen, open-mouthed. "Asexual" had shot past him without even ruffling his hair. He was still playing catch-up. "Huh?" is all that he could finally manage.
"Hurry, my little bipedal tadpole!" the Dink insisted in a lower, older voice. Older in an ancient sense. "Make haste before the next commercial! The Dragon is coming and we must catch him while he still dreams!"
Cecil continued to stare, his eyes taking on a glazed and confused aspect. "Dragon?"
Scotty whirled on me, his own eyes alive with excitement and perhaps more than a little fear. "Quick! Where's your crayons?"
"Don't have any," I mumbled around suddenly numb lips.
Actually, I did have crayons. Just not the "magic" variety. Nor did I have the special, protective Winky Window to put on the TV screen. Scotty knew this: he had pronounced drawing along with Winky Dink to be as babyish as wearing pajamas to a sleepover.
"Plastic wrap," he said, turning and running for stairs leading up toward the kitchen. "Where does your mom keep it?"
How would I know? Aside from the refrigerator and the cookie jar, kitchens are unmapped territories to eight-year-old boys.
There was a sound of drawers being rifled and then Scotty Steadman was thumping back down, taking two steps at a time, and running back toward me, trailing a cellophane tail of Saran Wrap.
"Are you a star person?" Cecil finally managed to ask the cartoon character on the screen.
"We come from beyond the stars," the thing pretending to be Winky Dink said. "Hurry, child of Earth! The constellations are nearly aligned and the Old Ones grow restless. Even before he appears, there will be others. . . ."
Another advertisement started as Scotty tried to get the cellophane to adhere to the front of the television. There was something even more wrong with this commercial than there was with the not-so-Dink. I couldn't tell, at first, because Steadman was in the way and the picture had gone bad.
Winky Dink Land was nothing but a series of striated bands of differing grays in the background most times but now the screen was filled with swirling grays and patches of leprous white. There were some colors, too, but they weren't colors I could name. They weren't colors I had ever seen before. They gave me a headache and the half-digested cereal began to curdle in my stomach.
"Do not attempt to adjust your television set," Rosewood intoned, trying to lower his voice to sound like the Control Voice on The Outer Limits. "We control the horizontal. We control the vertical . . ."
Steadman chuckled as he wrestled with the clinging plastic. "You may be a dork, Ceec, but you're our kind of dork."
Whatever was wrong with the video portion of the signal, the audio was unaffected. The commercial singers had started in again but now the words were slightly different: "Yog-Sothoth, Yog-Sothoth; half demon and half god . . ."
The thing that oozed onto the flickering television screen bore no resemblance to the plastic, half turtle and half frog of a few moments before. Both could be described as unnatural juxtapositions of disparate taxonomies—but that was where all similarities ended. This thing was larger—but its true size was impossible to map against the amorphous grays at the back of the small picture tube. There was simply nothing to lend it perspective but itself. And what there was to see did not appear to be all of it . . .
Plus, it did not appear to be a battery-operated piece of plastic. It was alive.
The . . . thing . . . appeared to be a seething mass of tentacles—but little like an octopus and less like a squid. The writhing, squirming mass seemed both gelatinous and chitinous in its various parts—like a festering knot of centipedes, feasting on a large and agitated spider. And the appendages were covered with additional appurtenances—eyes, mouths, cilia, claws. All of them alive with their own, separate intelligences!
Cecil was standing now, his mouth slack and open, his eyes wide and almost frantic but for their stillness. He had the better angle: Scott continued to block my view of the writhing horror as he struggled to fit the plastic wrap in place. Even as I was largely spared the full impact of the monstrous apparition, Scotty was too close and too distracted to focus on the hideousness just inches away in a seething sea of phosphors.
And then I smelled it: the sharp, acrid, ammonia stench. By now I could count my nightmares in the hundreds but this was the first time one had come in Smellovision.
Steadman smelled it, too. "Aw, jeezely cripes!" He glanced back at me and then looked at Cecil. Looked again. Turned back to me. "Poindexter's pissing himself!" he said in a horrified whisper.
I had already seen the dark stain expanding outward from the crotch of Cecil's pj's like a mindless amoeba. All I could do was nod. And raise a leaden arm to try and point.
I couldn't even find my voice to say "look out" or "run"—even as Cecil began to shriek like a tugboat whistle, emitting short, sharp blasts of ear-numbing sound. My arm was still on its way up as the tentacles came out of the swampy gray radiance of the TV tube and grasped Scotty by the neck and one arm.
He was too surprised to scream, at first. Or offer much resistance. By the time a half dozen fleshy ropes had emerged to secure him and drag him into the foggy maelstrom inside the set, the screaming was pretty much over and I was waking up.
It was only a dream.
So . . .
Any minute now . . .
Some sense of relief would rush in to replace this overwhelming dread that had followed me into the world of the waking.
Any time now . . .
But the closest I could come to a happy thought was the sense of relief that Scott Steadman was still dead in the real world. The twisted, burning, metal pyre that eviscerated him years later on Interstate 44, just outside of Oklahoma City, seemed a far kinder fate than the horror waiting just outside this fragile reality.
Dreams of madness . . .
No wonder I felt little relief in waking up. A trio of third-graders shrieking in terror over something that never really happened didn't hold a candle to the more gruesome memory of Jamal's screams from earlier this morning. Horrific ululations of terror that went on and on.
And, more appalling: ended abruptly.
Olive's nephew hadn't calmed down or tired out. He had just . . . stopped. As if he was a piece of equipment—an organic relay for data from some hellish dimension—and a switch was thrown, a circuit breaker was finally tripped.
Then Jamal's eyes had turned black. Even the whites. His eyes sat in his sockets like ebony marbles, staring like the emptiness of the cold void between the stars. He simply stopped screaming, his eyes went dark, and he had stood there like an ancient pillar, the sole remains of a ruined ebony temple, a remnant from long eons past.
I shook my head as I sat on the edge of the bed. The event was bad enough: no need to embellish the creepiness with my own macabre mood. Mama Samm or Olive would report back to me once they knew more. In the meantime I had more pressing issues.
Like the safety of my unborn son. CNN was turning into a clone of CBN and the 700 Club, reporting hourly that the world was going to hell—capitalization optional. It wasn't just the seismological and climatological phenomena. It was the parade of atrocities on the hourly newscasts that suggested we were well past the "two-minute warning" and humanity was running the clock out in "sudden death overtime."
School shootings were a weekly occurrence now. More often than not, teacher and principals were shooting back. Parents were murdering their children at unprecedented rates. Adolescents increasingly divided into two parallel tribes—those who saw suicide as preferable to pointless years of meaningless existence and those who felt that, if each of us was "owed a death" then two, three, half a dozen or more, were even better.
Birds fell from the skies like viral bombs, their carcasses incubating new generations of plagues. Four-legged animals went berserk and savaged anything that came within reach before spinning in endless circles, mad farandoles that ceased only when their frantically beating hearts burst.
Churches preached intolerance. Mosques sermonized jihad. Philosophies mentored nihilism. Politicians abandoned statesmanship to practice mindless partisanship, making war against each other while real enemies made lists in the shadows of their national monuments. The culture of cynicism that had grown up over generations had taught us to mock heroes and scorn sacrifice.
In the end it was greed and selfishness and vanity that out-Zenned the Buddhists on mankind's path to ultimate Nirvana. Somewhere along the line we had decided it was safer to believe in nothing. Nothing can betray you; nothing will disappoint. And, seemingly close to the end, nothing was what we were left with.
Ultimate Nirvana.
Sunyata.
Emptiness.
Oblivion.
Extinction.
As for me? My personal path to the Nirvanic state was more of a Kurt Cobain thing—minus the mumbling and really bad fashion sense. I was feeling, more and more, like a clockwork puppet, rapidly winding down to entropic oblivion. It was only those little surges of horror, here and there, acting like momentary jump starts to keep me going.
As usual, my metabolism was messing with my meds. The antidepressants made me too numb to think, the dread I felt for my unborn family clouded any residual judgment. More than ever, I needed to see Lupé, to know that she was all right. Up until now I had taken the advice that she just needed "time" and that we just needed "distance" and that, eventually, she'd "come around."
Well, screw that.
If the world was going to Hell in a FedEx handbasket, we needed to talk. Soonest. How would I ever have a chance of fixing things between us if she never took my phone calls and all of my letters continued to go unanswered? Absence rarely makes the heart grow fonder. More often it makes the commitment go wander.
Perhaps it wasn't her.
Other individuals, groups, species had a vested interest in keeping us apart, in maintaining the status quo. I knew most of the weres wouldn't be happy but the idea of a baby sharing wampyri and lycan/were heritages was enough to make the real power brokers, the vampires stain their undies crimson.
So why was Marie Laveau taking Lupé under her wing?
Pagelovitch lending natal support through Dr. Mooncloud was his way of keeping his finger on the pulse of change. When I had first turned up as an anomaly in the scheme of things his first reaction had been to find a way to exploit me as a resource. Other Domans would have exterminated me and maintained the status quo. He still had hopes of convincing me to return to Seattle. My son was probably just his latest bargaining chip.
Or a better addition to his preternatural petting zoo.
But Marie Laveau was half-mad and her unpredictability made her all the more dangerous. I really needed to get down to the Big Easy before unseen and unfathomable machinations closed any more doors between Lupé and myself. And I didn't have time for any distractions like Twilight Zone podcasts from the zombie help.
But I did have to pee.
The blackout curtains on my cabin windows admitted no light but I instinctively knew it was late afternoon even before rolling over to check the bedside clock.
I groaned out of bed and attended to business without turning on the light in the head. Some things take time getting used to: pissing red instead of yellow was one I hadn't managed, yet.
Finishing up I realized that I was thirsty, as well.
Bad enough dealing with fey foes who abduct you, menace your family, and threaten violence. But when they screw up your sleep cycle a definite line has been crossed. . . .
Since I had crawled between the sheets without undressing there was no need to fumble for my robe. I did, however, fumble into my shoulder rig. I checked the freshly cleaned and oiled Glock before sliding it into the holster. (Thanks, Olive.) If you think wearing a gun to raid the refrigerator is silly then you haven't been paying attention. If anything, I still wasn't taking my own "Wanted" status seriously enough.
I padded into the galley and pulled another blood pack from the refrigerator. Cold or warm? There's very little difference between refrigerated and reheated hemoglobin once it's been stored for any length of time—in terms of sustenance, that is. Taste is an entirely different matter. Too bad microwaving breaks down the cellular elements and renders blood both unappetizing and non-nutritional.
I wandered through the salon while tiny blue fingers of propane flame caressed the saucepan on stovetop.
There had been a precipitous drop in The Hunger after my little sojourn in Colorado. Was it the result of the out-of-body experience I had when I "died"? (A second time?) Or, more likely, a side effect of the nanites Dr. Mengele's clones had injected into my body? Before Jamal had gone all Edgar Cayce on us this morning, Olive had suggested that the microscopic machines in my bloodstream had finally "activated." There was sufficient evidence that they had been performing rudimentary activities all along—replicating, performing cellular repairs, even some tissue augmentation. My lowered dependence on blood made sense as a byproduct of my microbiological makeover.
So what did Olive mean by "finally" activated? And why was I suddenly looking to scarf the same amount of hemoglobin that usually sustained me over the course of an entire week in less than twelve hours? Stress? Yeah, that always amped up the Bloodthirst. Being subjected to a little faerie B & D, doped up and probably starved in the process, running from the sun, and learning that my unborn son had attracted the attention of "people" who were not known for their humanitarian virtues . . .
Or maybe the time differential had had a hand in reprogramming my body's electromagnetic fields—a little jet lag from the time-zone difference between the realm of the faerie and my own personal reality show.
And then there was that presumed blast of elven mojo . . .
I shook my head. This was just plain nuts. The more I thought about it, the more Dr. Fand's version of reality made sense.
I peeked through the forward curtains. One of the New Orleans enforcers was just outside, on the prow.
If Volpea was "standing watch," this was a novel approach.
She was stretched out on a lounge chair wearing a great deal of cocoa butter and very little swimsuit. From this angle I couldn't tell if she was alert or dozing. She wore sunglasses and her face was turned toward the water. I had no desire to be caught staring so the wise thing to do was to back away.
Right now.
Just take a step back.
Any minute now . . .
What's the harm in looking? asked that lately all-too-familiar voice inside my head.
I closed my eyes: I was not going to have this conversation again. At least not so soon after the last one. And the topic seemed to arise with increasing frequency these days.
It's just looking . . . the silent voice repeated.
The loyal heart knows no distractions, I rebutted. Yeah, like I'm having a conversation with a completely different person.
Loyalty? To whom? Your ex-fiancée who can't stand for you to touch her? Who refuses to see you or speak to you? Or Deirdre, who's got her own medical problems? And is totally out of the picture unless Marie Laveau can figure out what to do with that malignant growth on her shoulder?
That's just the problem with relationships these days, I volleyed back. Too many people ready to abandon ship on the first patch of rough water.
Whereas you're so ready to go down with the ship that you won't even "man the pumps." No wonder you're in a funk: you haven't gotten any for the better part of a year!
I'm not depressed because I'm celibate.
Celibate! Celibate! Dance to the music! the other voice singsonged to an old Three Dog Night tune.
Clearly channeling one's sex drive into any kind of serious conversation was problematical when one's neurotransmitters were out of whack.
Yeah, so contemplate the bikini-clad babe that's practically in your lap, dog!
Lapdog? She's one of Laveau's enforcers. She's practically the enemy.
So? First rule of strategy: know your enemy.
It was obvious that "the enemy" was in shape. All sorts of delightful shapes laid out and on display. The muscles in her arms and legs had better size and definition in repose than a reasonably fit female athlete would display while flexing. Her abdomen was knurled with knobs and striations of muscle. A topaz-colored gem in a silver setting dangled from a ring piercing the deep whorl of her navel. She retained just enough body fat to soften the angles and edges toward a more feminine ideal. In fact, the twin triangles of her swimsuit top bulged sufficiently to suggest artificial enhancement but I knew that lycanthropes and implants don't mix.
If I have to explain that to you, you might as well look elsewhere for stories less challenging to your—ahem—intellect.
Too bad you can't go out there and offer to rub some more lotion on her b—
She started to stir and I finally found the will power to back away from the sliding glass door.
The water on the stove was starting to hiss and steam so I dropped in the blood pack to begin the warming process. Perhaps I should have skipped the culinary hassles and tried it cold: I was feeling a bit overheated, myself, at the moment.
It's not lust; it's the predatory programming of the necrophagic virus . . .
Keep telling yourself that.
Shut up.
I turned the burner down to the barest flicker of flame and opted to let the bag steep for a while. If Volpea was sunning herself on out on the bow, then Zotz had to be around somewhere. He'd never leave me alone on the boat while I was sleeping and certainly not with Crescent City muscle on board.
I found him at the other end of the boat, also outside, which meant he was in a more trusting mood than usual. I joined him on the aft deck, under an awning that provided enough shade for the both of us. As long as I kept my visit short, that is. Even with direct cover, peripheral sunlight is a bitch over time and cumulative. But this little tableau was too choice to take in at a distance.
The human-looking Zotz had ensconced himself in a deck chair next to a plastic cooler. He had fired up a stogie, popped the tab on a can of beer, and was flicking a fishing line over the side as I arrived. I sat on the plastic cooler and took in this bucolic scene. "When did this start?"
He took a drag on his cigar, a pull on his can of beer, and let out a little line on his reel. It was awkward, almost suspenseful, and oddly fascinating to watch: inhuman reflexes multitasked processes that were clearly unfamiliar to him and yet carefully studied and practiced at the same time.
Plus he only had two hands to manage three objects.
"The juju woman believes that I should not hunt," he answered, juggling the fishing pole, aluminum can, and cigar. "That it is counterintuitive to my quest for redemption."
"Really?" I asked. "She said hunting was counterintuitive?"
"In so many words," he said. "So. Many. Words. Punctuated with bouts of punching and slapping." Another puff, another pull. "But she didn't say anything about fishing."
"Fishing," I said.
"Your Bible has Jesus saying: 'Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.'"
"You told her that?"
"Of course not. I have no wish to be pummeled further, even if it doesn't really hurt. Physically, anyway." He pulled the line in a bit. "But fishing is enough like hunting to . . ." he considered, ". . . satisfy certain urges. And it teaches me a little more about being human."
"Really?" I gee-whizzed. "Tell me more!"
"I am still learning. It is touted as a sport but it is really a religion, no? I have observed other congregants on the river and upon the so-called television sports shows. There are some variations but the similarities are greater than the differences." He waved his cigar. "The burning of incense." Sloshed the beer in his can. "The sacramental wine." He reeled his line back in. "And, of course, the meditative trance. One might achieve the Zen-like state of samadhi were it not for the occasional interruptions of the fish." He checked his hook. Impaled upon the barbed, j-shaped metal was a disintegrating squiggle still identifiable as a Gummi worm.
"Catch much?" I asked, keeping my voice even.
He shook his head. "The problem may be my bait. Or, as the sportsmen refer to it, the 'lure.'"
"Ya think?"
He waggled the tab key off of his beer can and knotted it onto the line just above the hook. "Maybe I can find a feather or two tomorrow along the shore. It will be about time to change worms by then." He flicked the rod with a surprising amount of grace, sending the line back out into the river's flow.
We sat in silence awhile.
"Any word on Jamal?" I asked.
He gave me a look that said: you know I would have told you if there was any news at all. "Nope," he said.
"Any new thoughts on what the message means?"
He repeated The Look.
"Me neither," I said.
"Why are you up?"
"I got thirsty."
Zotz gestured with the rod. "Blood in the fridge."
"Heating some up. But I'm not so sure it's a good idea to be upping my intake right now."
"Why not? It's what vampires do."
"I'm not a vampire! At least, not yet. And increasing my intake may be messing with my head right now."
He smiled, white teeth gleaming sharply in the shade. "Fishing is good for thinking. But it can be good not to think overmuch. Perhaps you should try a six-pack of mood enhancement."
"I've got enough crap in my body," I growled, "without adding to my biochemical imbalances."
"And, of course, you wouldn't want to relinquish any personal control."
"Oh yeah," I said bitterly. "Because staying in control is so important. Look how well it's working for me, so far."
"You're alive," he countered mildly, taking a puff on his cigar. "You've outwitted and survived enemies that have been the scourge of cities, of nations, for generations." Another puff. "Vampires fear you, the dead revere you." Puff. "And, personally, I think you're a helluva guy." Puff. "Not that you don't irritate like a pernicious rash sometimes." Puff.
I blinked. Ran through a number of responses in my head. In the end I just grunted. Depression and exhaustion: the two great levelers of social conversation.
Zotz took a long meditative draw on his stogie. "Did she really say 'churl'?"
I nodded, staring off into the deadly glare twixt sky and water. "Yep. Just goes to show, you can take the girl out of the fifteenth century but you can't take the fifteenth century out of the girl."
"Was that the moment you knew she was a ringer?"
"No. Just before that. I brought Shakespeare into the conversation—"
"Don't tell me, let me guess," he said, flicking the line back out into the river. "You did some fishing of your own with the old 'Madness in Hamlet' conundrum."
I nodded slowly. "How did you know?"
"Are you kidding? It's a classic! Depressed, tormented Dane runs around a dark, drafty castle ranting like a madman and committing murders in the first and third person. But the big myst is whether Hams is really bonkers or just holding onto the horizon effect of his sanity by acting out."
I rolled my head trying to loosen the kink that a month's worth of straightjacket-wear had strapped across my neck. "Yeah, I figured if she was a legitimate shrink, she'd recognize a simple, first-year-psych-student talking point." I held up a finger. "First, ghost or no ghost, he comes to the conclusion that dear old dad was murdered." I held up a second finger. "Then he figures out that Uncle Claudius did the dirty deed." Third finger. "And that mommy dearest helped 'off' dad so she could 'boff' Claude . . ."
"Talk about putting the 'fun' in 'dysfunctional,'" Zotz interjected, "vice is nice but incest is best."
I thought about pointing out that Gertrude hadn't actually committed incest by strict definition but I had a final point to make: I held up my fourth finger. "And, as the prince can add two plus two, it's becoming increasingly clear that the new king can subtract one from three and Hamlet's likely to inherit his late father's medical condition."
"You mean deadical condition."
"Precisely."
Zotz took a pull on his beer and set the can aside to play with his line a little more. "So, back to the famous madness in Hamlet problem: which side of the debate do you fall on? Genuine psychosis? Or faking it?"
I shrugged. Without the straightjacket it was nice, almost pleasurable. I resolved to do it more often. "I always favored the 'crazy like a fox' viewpoint."
Zotz nodded. "Good cover. Kept the King from ordering Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to go all Pulp Fiction prematurely."
I shook my head. "Yeah, but it was more than that. It's the concept that Hamlet had to act crazy to keep from going crazy. The crazier he acted, the saner he became."
The demon eyed me. "That would explain a great deal."
"You think?"
"In terms of your coping mechanisms, that is."
"Thanks a lot, Bats."
"Don't mention it, Half'n'half. You're a prince, too—but you're reading the wrong play."
"What do you recommend? Macbeth?"
He flicked the line out over the river again. He was getting pretty good at it. Of course he was getting a lot of practice since he couldn't really be catching anything with Gummi worms and aluminum can pull-tabs. "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
I made a noise down deep in my throat. A little deeper and it would have been an actual growl. "Elves. Faeries. Sprites. Pixies." I sighed. "Pink elephants on parade . . ."
"Don't worry, Dumbo," he said, "now that we have a couple of names and an idea of the general nomenclature, I can narrow the focus of my research."
I stood back up. "Good to know you'll be doing more than checking out online porn at the library."
"We also serve who sit and surf."
The tip of Zotz's fishing pole suddenly made like a dowsing rod: it dipped once, twice, three times. "Looks like I've finally caught something."
"I don't believe it." I stared at the line gone taut, angling off into the grey green waters of the river. "It's got to be a snag."
"It's pulling on the line."
I shook my head. "Maybe it's a tire . . . an old boot. A snapping turtle?"
He got up and walked to the edge of the deck as he reeled in the line. "Grab that net, would you?"
I picked up the landing net next to the cooler and joined him at the deck's edge. There was just enough peripheral shade to keep me safe if I didn't lean way out. "What are you going to do? Cook it or eat it raw?"
He shook his head as the line decreased its angle and approached the side of the boat. "Catch and release. The thrill of the hunt is enough."
Given the mercury and PCB levels hereabouts that was probably not such a bad idea. I knelt down to assist in the final stage of capture.
The fishing pole bowed down as if Zotz had hooked a serious game fish. A channel cat? Suddenly the pressure slacked off for a second and he leaned over to see if he had lost his fish. The pressure returned with a vengeance just a moment later and a sharp tug caught him by surprise. He was overbalanced and tumbled into the turgid waters.
"Zotz?" I gingerly knelt down and gauged my closeness to the deck's edge. While his batlike form might seem inimical to an early morning plunge, he had lived at the bottom of a sunless pool for more than a thousand years. Maybe that's why he'd made little splash and less sound going in. A few minutes in a freshwater river wasn't going to inconvenience him any.
Vampires, on the other hand, don't fare well in watery environments—hence the old "don't cross running water" proscription. Which was why living on a houseboat made a certain kind of twisted sense when undead assassins made occasional house calls.
Of course, I wasn't too keen on falling in as my own buoyancy issues were seriously impaired these days. So, living on top of a floaty moat: a mixed blessing, at best.
I reversed the net and extended the handle as an improvised handhold, expecting Zotz to break the surface any moment.
I had to wait.
The eyes that came up and peered at me from just below the surface looked like his. At first.
Inhuman. Large. Glowy, even.
But where Camazotz's demon eyes were fiery lanterns lit with red flames from a hell of coals and brimstone, these orbs were lit from a colder realm, a cool luminescence that knew neither warmth nor passion.
A head broke the surface of the Ouachita River. And then another: fish-heads.
Fish-heads?
Roly-poly fish-heads!
Bigger than bowling balls and disturbingly humanoid in appearance!
An arm came out of the water. It was gray-green and mottled in the manner of something amphibian. The hand that grasped the edge of the deck was clawed and webbed, looking more like a mitten fabricated out of neoprene and fishhooks than a human appendage.
I duck-walked backwards as the Creature from the Black Lagoon's second cousin, twice-removed, started to haul itself up out of the water and onto the deck of my boat. No "request permission to come aboard" or "may I have a moment of your time to share the good news of Neptune's gospel?" Just up and over and slither on board as I stood back up and unsnapped the safety strap on my shoulder holster. The second fish-man followed right behind the first.
They hunched over like a pair of aquatic Quasimodos, seemingly unsure as to whether to stand erect or scuttle about on all fours. Rows of gill-like openings pulsed along the sides of their scaly necks and their gaping, lipless mouths revealed rows of tiny sharp teeth.
I pulled out the Glock and backed up a little more, wondering what was keeping my giant Mesoamerican, water-spawned bat-demon down so long.
I wasn't too keen on the most likely explanation.
Fish-face number one looked from me to the tackle box and back again. Fish-face number two looked past my shoulder, trying for the old fake-out, there's-something-behind-you look.
I wasn't falling for any of that. "So," I said, pointing the automatic at one and then the other, "can I offer you fellows anything? Gummi worms? Silver wad-cutters?"
Something hit me from behind and I stumbled, dropping the gun. Instinctively, I ducked and, as I felt something scrape the back of my head, I threw an elbow back. I heard something snap—it felt more like cartilage than bone.
One fish, two fish; black and blue fish!
Did I mention my preternatural strength and reflexes?
"Sorry, Charlie," I smirked.
Did I mention my underdeveloped prioritization skills?
That gave the two in front of me time to wade in. One on one, I might have gone all Captain Ahab on someone's finny ass. Two on one changed the dynamics and I found myself forced back across the deck. And number three wasn't down for the count. In short order they swarmed me and we all went over the side.
A half second of free fall through direct sunlight and then I smashed into the water with a trio of amphibian airbags to help cushion the impact.
I remembered to grab a lungful of oxygen on the way in.
Unfortunately a clawed hand tore five bloody furrows in my side and made me gasp as we hit: I expelled air and swallowed river water. Not good! A little preparatory hyperventilation and I might be able to hold my breath for three minutes. This was assuming I wasn't engaged in some strenuous activity like fighting for my life against the sushi squad, here. Sucking water on my way down had seriously cut into my onboard reserves.
And while ten . . . now fifteen . . . now twenty feet of water helped filter the killing rays of the sun, it also obscured reference points beyond a couple of yards in any direction. My only chance of getting out of here without drowning was to walk out. Quickly. Swimming was out of the question: vampires can't.
And there's no such thing as the undead man's float.
As soon as my feet touched bottom, I began to move. Even if I didn't know which direction I was going, standing still was going to get me nowhere.
And then the fight recommenced.
Well, not so much a fight now as a clumsy dance routine in slow motion. Arm thrusts and jabs were the rule—not swinging fisticuffs—and the best I could do was keep two of them off me at a time. They had claws, I didn't. They had sharp, pointy teeth; mine were blunt, dull, and I would only drown that much quicker if I opened my mouth.
A giant vise started screwing shut against my chest and I knew that I was already down to my last minute or so of cognitive functionalism: the remainder of my life would be metered out with a stopwatch, not a calendar. Escape options were fading off the table.
Face it, Cséjthe: the best you can hope for is to make someone sorry they've picked this particular fight.
Unfortunately, these things were in their element, now, and I wasn't. They had all the time in the world. All they had to do was keep me under, stop me from moving toward shore, and let the water do its work. But they continued to nip and scratch and lunge as if mere drowning wasn't enough. My blood hazed the already murky water and I realized something with a shock: there was a part of me that seemed almost glad of it!
Well, why not? As Shakespeare once penned: "All that lives must die, / Passing through nature to eternity."
Of course, that line belonged to Hamlet's "mommy dearest" so maybe she wasn't the best refuge for moral gravitas.
Everyone around me had been yammering about clinical depression for the past six months. Was I really so far down in the emotional depths that I was ready for the ultimate analgesic? Tennyson understood that grief was not necessarily a bad thing. He wrote: "Let love clasp grief lest both be drowned . . ." Drowned . . . right, now there's a fitting analogy . . . "Let darkness keep her raven gloss. / Oh, better to be drunk with loss, / To dance with death, to beat the ground . . ."
Well, one last dance and let's be honest: I was more invested in payback than survival, now. Too bad either motivation was going to go unfulfilled.
My chest was on fire and my limbs were gone all leaden now. And then one of the fish folk flickered in and clamped razored teeth deep into my upper thigh. I grimaced and choked involuntarily on a lungful of water. It was like taking a sledgehammer to the chest and my skull burst like a bubble under deep, dark waters.