King's Justice: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 2 (30 page)

  A hiss echoed from the opening and a small figure leapt out onto the nearest gunman. Its spiked boots landed square on his face, the momentum of its jump toppled them both, while it remained perched on top of him. Their fall drove his metal spikes deepest into his face. The bone of his jaw snapped with a loud crack. His eye socket fractured. The spikes pulled his eye free, attached to one of the nails, the connecting muscle drawn out like a forkful of spaghetti. The boys' screams erupted. Still looming over the body like a predatory gargoyle, the creature turned its attention to the next gunman.

  Suddenly the entire court lit up with gunfire and screams.

  More creatures poured from the openings. Short hairy bodies, stalking keloids of fibrous muscle with grizzled beards. With the wizened faces of old men contemplating a meal of oatmeal. The gleam of their red eyes. A taloned hand raked though the meat of an arm, stripping ribbons of flesh. Filed teeth coming together like a living bear trap snapped on a man's neck. Blood throbbed from the wound in time to the pulse. The creature paused over him. Removing its pink cap, it daubed the spurting wound until it turned a foul crimson.

  A half-dozen more tumbled out of the hole, taking positions behind bushes. They whirred their slings, releasing a volley of shots. Men tumbled from the shadows. Rellik's men kept firing.

  Colvin stood among the ensuing chaos. The screams, the rent flesh, and gunfire combined into a symphony of violence. A shot grazed him. It would take him hours to notice. The battle, however, was over in minutes.

  "Don't make me come up there," Colvin cried up to the windows.

  A bag tumbled from the window.

  "And the product?"

  Another bag followed.

  Colvin carried one in each hand and walked down the sidewalk without a backwards glance. The Red Caps jumped back into their home between spaces before the wound in the air sealed itself.

 

Esther Baron loved volunteering for night drop at Outreach Inc. She always had the feeling that she wasn't doing enough. Standing behind the dining room table, she'd join hands like everyone else to pray for the food and evening. She doled out the food to the kids, not to keep them from being hogs – because there was plenty of food to go around – but to let the kids be served. It was a subtle message, to let them know they were home, could relax, and allow someone to do for them. Accompanying salad and broccoli – she encouraged them to eat their vegetables and oddly enough, despite them being teens, they usually requested seconds on the veggie of the day – was a spaghetti casserole repast.

  Rok squirted some hand sanitizer on his hands then passed her an empty plate. This was when she appreciated Wayne the most. He warned her that folks typically came in with the idea of making a huge impact and turning kids' lives around… on one meeting. It didn't work that way. The only "doing" was the ability to open oneself up and love another. For one evening, she arrived with the spirit to serve, to be a blank tableau for the kids without judgment, to show them grace. Provide a space of stability that could help them take the next step toward their goals.

  "How you doing, Rok?" she asked.

  "Doing good, Miss Esther. You looking good with your fine-ass self."

  "Rok," Esther chided, but in a mild tone, enough to let him know she wasn't playing. "You think that's an appropriate way to talk to a woman? I know I'd appreciate a compliment without the disrespect."

  "You look good tonight, Miss Esther," he said without his usual bluster, awkward and sheepish. The way he glanced about to make sure no one noticed was almost cute. Wayne didn't hold the kids to some preconceived model of how they should be or act. He did believe in boundaries and letting them know what was appropriate between men and women.

  Already at the table in the common room, Wayne chatted amiably with the kids as they came in. He asked about their day, teased them about their fashion choices, listened to them, and helped them through some of the decisions they made. The way he explained it, the time was about connecting. With them, finding out about one another and letting the impact of being in their lives speak to them. Success, even progress, had to be measured differently. But there was a look that would light up their eyes. Sometimes faint, sometimes bright, moments when they realized someone cared about them; cared without expectation or demand. He wanted everything for the kids, imagined them, saw potential in them in ways they couldn't for themselves. The job required a kind of fearlessness. A willingness to go deep with people, people who would likely disappoint. People who would likely make bad decisions. People who often couldn't get out of their own way. Not only was Wayne passionate for them, his passion was contagious.

  "How're things going out there, Rok?" Wayne asked.

  "Steady."

  "No recession worries?" Wayne joked with him, conscious of not sounding approving of him, but not wanting to be yet another lecturing voice in his life to be tuned out.

  "What?"

  Wayne also didn't want to make Rok feel stupid or condescended to. He got enough of that at home. And school, when he bothered to attend. "You thinking about what we talked about before?"

  "That GED thing? Man, you trippin' with that noise."

  "I'm trippin', huh. Pass me a roll."

  "They got more rolls up there," Rok said.

  "Yeah, but then I'd have to get up. And you got three on your plate."

  "You stupid." Rok handed him a roll.

  "Why I gotta be all that?" Wayne bit into the roll. Not especially hungry, he simply liked to eat with the kids. Eat what they ate, not wanting any sense of "we're just here to feed the poor darkies." And he kept the conversation light, harassed them like family would at the dinner table, but still pushed in on their lives. "You got a head on you. You good with numbers. A little training, you could set up your own business."

  "You think?"

  There it was. That light. Rok entertained a new possibility for himself. That was all Wayne could ask for. But he'd stay on him, fanning that tiny spark until it grew into something. Wayne clung to the little hopes of progress.

  The doorbell rang. The door was kept locked during drop, no one coming in without a staff member letting them in. Tonight was a closed drop which meant regular clients only. Frantic fists pounded on the door frame. Wayne bolted to the door, preferring to open it because he never knew what might jump off on the other side, and he wanted to be the first line of defense for the volunteers. Especially Esther.

  Tristan held Iz up.

  "Help us," Tristan said.

  "What happened?" Wayne asked. Esther ran over to help catch Iz and ushered her to the couch. Esther soaked a wash cloth and gave it to Tristan, who daubed her forehead. She balanced on the edge of the couch, giving Iz as much room as possible.

  Wayne preached boundaries but didn't always practice them. Unless he was on call, he discouraged clients from calling him off hours (except for emergencies) and rarely answered his cellphone (preferring to check his voicemail). He maintained regular office hours and when drop night was done, he led the charge to hustle everyone out. But he didn't follow his own guidelines with strict rigidity. In the language of the best trained seminarians, "Shit happened."

  Iz sprawled out on the couch, under the tender ministrations of Tristan. Wayne thought about calling 911 and still debated it, but Iz seemed to be just coming down from a high. Iz and Tristan took turns crying. Somehow the act seemed more tender, more anguished, coming from Tristan, the way anything tender broke from those who were used to being strong.

  Rok lingered around after drop, under the guise of wanting to talk with Wayne later. He recognized Tristan from the summit meeting. Thought she was fine then, but seeing her with Iz, he knew she was not playing the same game he was.

  "What it look like? She got fucked up."

  "What do you want us to do?" Wayne asked.

  Tristan wanted to say "make it better" or "fix her" but the words sounded too needy. Too unachievable. "Look after her. She's been clean for over a year."

  "And she got back on tonight?"

  "Someone did this to her," Tristan said.

  "We all make choices we have to live with," Wayne began, sympathetic but with honesty.

  "I wasn't speaking metaphorically, nigga. Someone sabotaged her recovery."

  "A… friend of yours?" Esther asked.

  "Mulysa doesn't know what a friend is."

  Rok perked up at Mulysa's name. And noted the hate with which Tristan spat his name.

  "Mulysa?" Wayne remembered him from King's summit meeting. As he recalled, he and Tristan didn't seem cozy, more like work colleagues who tried to remain civil to one another. "He did this?"

  "Yeah, but I'm gonna straighten his shit out."

  "What does that…?"

  Tristan hefted her backpack. "I'm trusting her with you. Do right by her."

  "You can't…"

  With that, Tristan slipped out the front door with two fingers raised. "Deuces."

  Wayne punched a number into his cellphone. His call went directly to voicemail. He cussed to himself before deciding to send Rok to find him and/or Rellik. He left a message anyway on the off-chance he would check it.

  "King, we have a problem…"

 
The eastside of Indianapolis suffered a slow, debilitating death. An early casualty, some say a reason, was the Camlann Housing Project. The project hadn't changed much: poverty reservations in practice. The police called it three-story run-ups, since no one was fool enough to walk if they could help it. Project was the right word for it: it was always a project in progress. There was always talk about the city giving it a face lift, much like they did the now-trendier art district of the downtown streets. Talk, anyway. Everyone also knew that the talk would never amount to much. At best, the complex would get a new coat of paint, something far short of a true refurbishing, but enough for people to forget and move along, abandoning its residents.

  Mulysa rolled a tight one and sparked it up, a party of one. Breaking Iz off capped his night. Her over-muscled dyke friend would need handling, but if he were any judge of people, for the right price, she'd come around. Enough Benjamins brought the light of reason. Not that it mattered. When he got his head up like this, his thoughts drifted to dark places. Maybe it was time to put that bitch in her place. Use one bitch to check another. He brushed the hilt of his dagger. The image of him stabbing her in her breast and drinking blood from her nipple hardened him. Some real gangsta shit that would have people whispering his name in sheer terror. Yeah, he liked how that played.

  He could smash a box of cookies about then.

  Break-ins were the equivalent of nightly sport, robberies an experiment in ghetto math – taking nothing from nothing. Fights broke out regularly over the most trivial matters, mostly just to remind each other that they were still alive, usually an affront to one's pride since reputation was all that one truly owned here. Rowdy teens tried to be heard over the familiar hip hop drone of beats and attitude that passed for music; their cars and motorcycles peeling through the parking lots as they showed out for their friends. Many a night Mulysa fantasized about running piano wire across the street… about neck high. It wasn't the cracked dry wall or the fallen-off fixtures that he remembered most. It was having to shake out his sheets before he went to bed to clear them of cockroaches. He hated their midnight scurrying.

  They scurried like over-muscled dykes sneaking up on him in the night. Tristan slipped in soundlessly, a wraith fully intent to flense Mulysa where he reclined. But to attack from behind without him knowing or prepared, that wasn't enough. That wasn't honorable. It was something he would do.

  "I know you there." Mulysa didn't turn around. "It took you long enough to get here."

  "We got some business to discuss."

  Tristan's blades curved around each fist. Her grip tightened and loosened in steady rhythm, almost matching her heartbeat. She slackened her grip as if resolved to a new course of action, twirled them about her fingers in a gunslinger's flourish, and sheathed them.

  Mulysa, for his part, didn't lower his bottom bitch. The time to discuss business was passed. Maybe it was time to test this overly muscled bitch after all. Put her in her place to make her see reason. Save him the Benjamins.

  "This about your girlfriend?"

  Goaded by the memory of Iz curled up on the floor, eyes slung back, with barely a trace of recognition in her eyes, the woman she loved buried underneath skeins of her high, her fallenness, her desires, and her crushed hope, Tristan charged after him. Mulysa leapt from the couch and lunged at her. She deflected the blow and snuck him in the kidneys. The two of them toppled over the couch.

  Mulysa couldn't get leverage, kept off-balance by Tristan's shifting attack. He attempted a broad slash which she easily dodged and pinned his blade hand, smashing it against the floorboards, fingers dug into his wrist, until he released it. He raised his knee into her side, a glancing blow, but it knocked her enough to allow him to scrabble from under her. She fell heavily onto her back.

  Scrambling to his feet, they circled each other in the dim light. The room was cramped and its shadows pressed in close from the odd outcroppings of the layout. Mulysa feinted with his knife, now ready, hoping to draw her into another impulsive mistake. Tristan smirked, thinking him a man hiding behind his penis, one which was smaller than he realized. The crunch of trash underfoot broke the tense silence. Mulysa might have had the superior muscle, but his was built by lifting weights and punching bags which couldn't hit back. Tristan's muscle had been formed strictly by hard living, a life of constant battle for each breath she took. If Mulysa had realized that, he was certain that with his bitch in hand, he was more than her superior. They continued to revolve around each other in their delicate dance when Tristan slipped on a plastic bag. She flailed her arms to recover her balance, but Mulysa seized the opportunity to pounce on her with a killing stroke. She parried the blow as best she could, twisting her body out of the blade's trajectory, but the tip of the blade still pierced her side. Mulysa moved faster than she expected. He turned around with a high elbow to her jaw. They tussled through the room, with only the sounds of the grunts of absorbed punches heard. Bodies still entwined, neither getting an upper hand on the other, they slammed into the wall.