Power Mage 3 Page 11

  By the time the man finished his painstaking geometry, Larry had passed through half a dozen emotional states. He’d begged and shouted, raged and cajoled, reasoned and bargained.

  The man ignored him, pulled a thick cylinder of pink sidewalk chalk from the pack, and traced the perimeter of the sugarcoated area with painstaking precision.

  Then he returned the pink chalk to its container and selected a stick of pure white. Holding this, he circumnavigated the mess, crouching down decisively in what to Larry seemed arbitrary positions to draw symbols upon the floor. When he finished, ten or fifteen of these bizarre scribbles orbited the complicated shitshow spread across the center of Larry’s store.

  This was so, so bad. Voodoo shit. Had to be. But Larry wouldn’t allow his mind to fully consider this or he knew that he would spiral into madness.

  The man moved within the mess, positioning the stubby, black cylinders, which Larry now recognized as candles, amidst the sugar and bones and whatever the hell he’d been spreading around.

  Then he pulled a Zippo from his pocket, sparked it to life, and retraced his steps, chanting a garbled stream of nightmare gibberish as he lit the wicks. Thick, foul-smelling smoke rose into the air.

  “Listen,” Larry said, his throat raw from raving and threatening and begging. “I’ll give you anything. I’ll do anything. Just let me go. You don’t have to do this.”

  At long last, the man seemed to hear him. He turned in Larry’s direction, his face still as impassive as a stone mask, and said, “I must know the truth. They hid it within your mind. Hid it from you. Hid it from the Seekers. But with help from the Deposed Lord, I can find it.”

  Then the man did something that surprised Larry as much as anything he had done so far. He smiled.

  “Dutchman thinks he owns me. Valdez thinks he owns me. But I have never served anyone except the Deposed Lord.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Larry whined. “I just want to go home.”

  “You will show me the way,” the man said. “You will render unto me the services of the tracker. You will feed the Deposed Lord and hasten his return.”

  The man came around the counter and stood in front of Larry, whispering nonsense as he unbuttoned his voluminous shirt. When he had finished, he spread the two halves of the unbuttoned shirt, moving with a glacial slowness that was unspeakably terrifying.

  As the fabric spread, Larry’s eyes swelled, taking in the intricate and otherworldly images etched upon the man’s flabby body. Alien script, jagged and cosmic and wholly unknowable; strings of numbers that shifted like living things upon the bronzed flesh; spiked and slanting symbols bent at impossible angles lost to the minds of men; and above all else, the crouching, cavorting, and cantering images of unearthly creatures too terrible to behold and impossible to name, demons and gods and demon-gods from a place outside time and beyond sanity.

  Larry screamed and screamed and screamed.

  The man brandished his wicked blade, muttering nonsense. Then the man dragged the knife across his own belly, bearing down hard, carving himself like a Thanksgiving turkey.

  And Larry did give thanks. Because instead of murdering Larry, the crazy son of a bitch had just killed himself.

  The long slit gaped across the tattooed belly like the mouth of a catfish. But instead of spilling a tangle of coiled intestines, the long slit opened a window onto another world, where an emaciated figure in dark robes sat upon the black throne, his haggard face locked in a severe frown, the eyes above burning red like twin stars on the verge of supernova.

  “Lord!” Larry’s stubby tormentor cried. “Your faithful servant has a gift for you. Please, Lord, send your faithful servant a tracking demon so that he might do your bidding and hasten your return!”

  “Yes,” the wasted shape upon the otherworldly throne hissed.

  Larry opened his mouth to scream, but maniacal laughter spilled involuntarily from his mouth, laughter that continued even when it felt like his insides were crumbling into a swirling miasma of dust and light.

  Larry’s laughter cut off sharply. His body went rigid. And that was that for Larry Donovan.

  All the color drained from his face, which was locked in a mask of unknowable terror. A second later, his hair was pure white, and his eyes were completely black.

  The glittering particles that had been Larry Donovan emerged from his frozen chest and condensed into a wavering ribbon. This shimmering borealis of sparkling essence slithered through the air and plunged into the gruesome hole gaping across the unholy gut of the stubby man.

  “Yes,” the man upon the throne hissed, inhaling the glittering river of disintegrated matter and releasing a dark bundle that rose up and up toward the gaping slit. “Yesssssss…”

  11

  Brawley stood and pulled the curtain aside.

  A chrome-spangled river of steel and leather-clad flesh was flooding the campground.

  The Scars.

  The girls emerged from the back room, buttoning shirts and tying shoes and checking firearms.

  Remi wore engineer boots, a new pair of black leather pants, and a tight black tank top. Her tats were back, and a cautious smile lit her face. “They’re either going to kiss me or kill me,” she said, reaching for the doorknob.

  Brawley laid his hand atop hers. “Either way, darlin, we’re in this together.

  They stepped outside. The other girls followed.

  Motorcycles rolled past the cabin in a circular current, revving and roaring as their riders strafed Brawley and the girls with hardass stares.

  On and on the river flowed, a never-ending stream of bikers looping round and round, all sneers and sunglasses. With each pass the torrent thickened. A hundred bikes, two hundred, three hundred. Their passing beat the tall weeds flat. The collective roar of their engines was deafening.

  Finally, the bikers lurched to a stop, revving their engines and forming a circular steel wall around Brawley and his women.

  The Scars looked like pirates of the road kicked back on their big, stripped down hogs with their motorcycle boots jacked against the pegs and their muscular, tattooed arms spread wide to grip ape hanger handlebars.

  The women were half-naked savages with killer bodies and dangerous, glittering eyes. Some rode pillion, clutching their men possessively like the “old ladies” of fuggle outlaw clubs.

  Other women drove themselves. These were fearsome, feral beauties armed to the teeth, a challenge burning in their eyes. Many had women of their own riding pillion behind them.

  The men sported long hair and drooping mustaches and a variety of beards from spiky goatees to full-blown Gandalf beards shot through with gray.

  Those gray hairs were a statement, Brawley knew, a symbol of what separated the Scars from flesh mages like those he’d met in Miami.

  Some body mods were obvious: thick muscles for the men, perfect tits for the women. But they didn’t look like a bunch of bodybuilders and runway models doing a shoot in Sturgis. They looked like what they were, an outlaw motorcycle club of wild Carnals covered in dust and grease and sweat.

  True to their name, the Scars never erased damaged flesh where they had been stabbed or shot or burned. Furrows of scar tissue notched their muscular bodies like kill marks carved into a gunfighter’s pistol grip.

  They displayed these disfigurements with the same menacing pride with which they wore their colors, a bright red heart crisscrossed with zippers of blue scar tissue.

  Remi had told Brawley about The Unstoppable Heart. Now, he saw it everywhere, sewn onto vests and sleeveless denim jacks; tattooed onto python biceps and hairy, sunbaked backs; stitched into boots and saddle bags and flags fluttering behind panheads and softails and dyna glides.

  The Scars revved their engines filling the air with a deafening racket and exhaust fumes.

  Brawley waited.

  Motorcycle clubs pretend not to care what people think of them, but they care, all right. A lot, in fact. They need everybody to
know that they rejected polite society.

  Now they were trying to intimidate Brawley. Well, he’d just wait for them to finish their show.

  Finally, one of the bikes separated from the pack and rolled out into the open space before Brawley and the others. The driver was a broad-shouldered, stone-faced man with close cropped black hair and a squared-off goatee streaked in gray. Beneath a bright red bandana, sunglasses sat atop a crooked nose.

  The man’s muscular body was clad in boots, jeans, a leather vest, countless tattoos, and even more numerous scars, some of which were so massive and gnarled they looked like they’d been made by chainsaws. A huge bowie knife was shoved into his wide leather belt, and his boxy hands were knuckled with heavy rings that would ravage the flesh of anyone unlucky enough to be punched by his terrible fists.

  For a few seconds, the man just sat and stared, his expression made more severe by the long vertical scar that ran down one cheek like a permanent frown line.

  Then he lifted an arm overhead and slashed it downward.

  Instantly the engines cut as one, and the deafening roar of the horde snapped off into silence.

  None of the bikers spoke or fidgeted. They sat in their steel mounts, staring in silence. Behind them a breeze wrinkled the surface of the lake, carrying to Brawley the smell of the horde: a blend of motor oil and sweat, dried blood and semen, cigarette smoke and booze and weed.

  Remi stepped forward. “Still a fucking showoff, huh, Daddy?”

  A beaming smile split the rugged face of Braxton Dupree. “Still a disrespectful pain in the ass, huh, Remington?”

  Braxton dismounted, joined by a striking woman who could have been Remi’s sister but who was, Brawley realized, her mother, Talia Dupree, Queen of the Scars.

  The three embraced savagely, their fierce affection on full display as if their reunion wasn’t being watched by hundreds.

  Brawley liked that and liked the way Braxton and Talia held Remi tight. He had grown up surrounded by love that was equally fierce if not so physical, never doubting his family’s dedication to him, even when they were tanning his hide.

  Brawley felt bad for his other wives. Sage’s parents were distant and distracted Seekers.

  Nina’s father was a sweet-talking, telepathic deadbeat. Her mother had abandoned her. And her young half-brother, who knew nothing about psionics, was imprisoned beneath the wing of his bitchy fuggle mother.

  Brawley also felt bad for Callie. The anxious cat girl had been raised on the road by her uncle, whom the psi mob had murdered only two days earlier.

  So it did Brawley’s heart good to see one of his women, the fierce and fearless Remi, wrapped up in the unapologetically loving embrace of her parents.

  However, danger still lurked here. Brawley’s Seeker senses clanged. Malice hung like a heavy smog over the massed bikers surrounding them.

  Before Brawley could pinpoint the source, Braxton Dupree released his daughter and gave a surly nod in the direction of Brawley and the girls. “Who the fuck are they?”

  Remi said, “Mom, Daddy, meet my husband and sister-wives and… um… Callie.”

  “Husband?” Braxton said, his expression darkening rapidly.

  “Sister-wives?” Talia said, and her eyes grew hard and suspicious.

  Hundreds of rough-ass bikers straddled their iron horses, waiting.

  Brawley hooked his arms around Nina and Sage and walked forward. He gestured for Callie, whose skinny body was still clad only in stilettos and red lace, to follow. The cat girl’s amber eyes were huge with fear, but she tottered over and slipped in beside Nina, who pulled her close.

  Brawley drew even with Remi and nodded without smiling. “Sir,” he said. “Ma’am. I’m Brawley.” And he held out his hand to Remi’s father.

  Braxton Dupree just stared for half a second.

  Brawley battened down the hatches.

  The first time you meet a girl’s dad, he’s going to puff out his chest and talk some shit. His protective instincts are aroused, awakening the inner caveman that lurks even within the skulls of even the most soft-spoken, civilized fathers. In that moment, a father doesn’t want to shake your hand; he wants to bash your brains out and dump your corpse on the front step to ward off would-be suitors.

  It’s the way of the world.

  His mouth is going to write checks his ass can’t cash. So be it. Let it slide. Don’t grin like a puppy and play into his bullshit. Stand tall. But give the guy a pass if he acts like an asshole the first time you meet.

  As long as he doesn’t mistreat your girl, that is. In that case, all bets are off, all passes are revoked, and you must step up or live forever beneath a yellow pall of cowardice in the eyes of father and daughter alike.

  So Brawley waited, prepared to let the guy strut a little.

  But then Talia, who had been looking back and forth between her daughter and Brawley, changed everything.

  “No shit,” Talia said incredulously, a very Remi-ish grin coming onto her face as she put everything together. “My gorgeous, pain-in-the-ass daughter. Go figure. One power mage in the whole world, and you throw in with him.”

  Abruptly, the beautiful woman pulled Brawley into an embrace. “Welcome to the family, Brawley.”

  And the circle of onlooking barbarians roared with approval.

  The Scars attacked the campground with a vengeance, brush hogging the tall grass and weeds, hacking vines, and repairing damaged buildings. Brawley pitched in, working alongside Braxton and Weasel, who’d been downright friendly since the club had shown up.

  Most of the Scars welcomed Brawley with open arms. A few stared and whispered. Only one, Braxton’s sergeant-at-arms, actually sneered.

  That’s where the trouble would come from, Brawley knew without so much as a trickle of Seeker juice. All day, the hulking asshole had been glaring at him.

  So be it.

  The girls hung with Talia. Remi was in her glory. Sage was happy, too, studying the biker gang and grinning like a marine biology student in a pool full of dolphins. Nina had everyone in stitches.

  Only Callie seemed tense. She stuck close to the girls and kept glancing in Brawley’s direction, probably checking to make sure he was okay.

  Word that Callie was not Brawley’s wife must have passed through the ranks, because Scars kept cruising past her, trying to chat her up. But Callie rejected one and all and continued to stare in Brawley’s direction.

  She might be young, Brawley thought, hacking through another vine, but she ain’t fickle.

  His feelings for her quickened. There is no quality in a woman so attractive as loyalty.

  As the work neared completion, Braxton clapped Brawley on the arm. “Want to do some shooting?”

  They grabbed ammo and a twelve pack and strolled alongside the lake, drinking and talking. Mostly drinking, truth be told, neither man being much of a talker.

  They had covered the basics while working. Where Brawley was from, where he was going, what he thought of Remi.

  The silence suited Brawley. After all, a rare few mastered small talk.

  Back in Texas, these masters of empty talk haunted bars and gas stations and porch rockers. There was a rhythm to their idle chatter, a lyrical draftiness that relied on repetition and a lurking, subtle humor.

  Their small talk was inextricable from their personalities, just as it was inextricable from the region itself, peppered as it was with equal parts gossip, weather, and local expressions. Having lived among them, one could not think of August heat without picturing these folks mopping their brow and offering up something like, “Phew-ee, it’s hotter than a stolen tamale, ain’t it?”

  Small talk with most people, however, was painful. Better than a poke to the eye with a sharp stick, Brawley reckoned, but he avoided it as much as he could.

  Apparently, Braxton was of a similar mindset.

  They reached the rear of the campground. A rusting dumpster stood in front of an old split rail fence. The dumpster was half full of e
mpty bottles.

  They set a row of bottles on the top rail and took turns popping them cowboy style.

  Brawley had his XDS. Braxton used a pair of long-barreled .44 Magnums.

  “You ought to start packing another piece,” Braxton said. “You’re a Carnal now. We can fire two pistols just as easy as one.”

  “Thanks for the tip, sir,” Brawley said, figuring he’d follow his father-in-law’s advice. “And I have to say, you ought to consider carrying something with higher capacity.”

  Braxton grinned. “Good point. Haven’t seen any real action in a long time. Not a firefight, anyway. Maybe I’m getting soft.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Braxton drew both pistols and went down the line, obliterating the bottles with impressive speed and accuracy.

  “I heard about Miami. All those FPI agents you killed.”

  “I killed two who ambushed me down in Marathon,” Brawley said, “but not the ones in Miami.”

  As they shot and drank, he broke it down for Braxton, explaining what had happened the previous night, starting in the nightclub and wrapping up with the albino tiger.

  For a few seconds, Braxton just looked at him. “The Tiger Mage, back after all these years. He was supposed to be dead.”

  Brawley shook his head. “Well, sir, he ain’t. He killed those people like it was nothing. Two, three hundred people just like that. Four, five seconds, tops. Who is he?”

  “A madman and a murderer,” Braxton said. “The worst kind of power mage. Twenty-some years ago, he was hell in stripes, fucking up fuggles and psi mages alike. For a while there, seemed like he might overturn the whole apple cart. That’s what the Culling was all about. Killing off the power mages but mostly the Tiger Mage. He’s hunting you?”

  “Hunting me,” Brawley said, “but he’s not on my trail.”

  “Yet.”

  “Yet.”

  They were silent for a time as they reloaded and set up another rank of bottles.

  Then Braxton said, “You and your women can stay with us.”