Spirit Wars (16 page)

“Come
on. Give us what we want, doll, and we’ll be outta your hair,” one of the
muggers coos, so close to Lessa’s face her senses are invaded by the sight of
rotten teeth and the smell of sour milk mixed with cigarette. 

“Yeah,
we’ll be outta here before you know it. You won’t even notice we were here,”
chortles another with pupils dilated by drugs and sexual excitement.

“You
have my bag, my watch, my mobile. Take all of them. Just please let me go,”
Lessa begs through tears. She hates herself for being this afraid. She’s just
so damn afraid.

“You
know what else we want,” the nearest one coos again and a third leers. The one
who has her, apparently the leader, starts groping her.

“No
please don’t…”

They’re
all perfectly oblivious to the swarm of weird, shape-shifting Crows overhead.
So thick now that they blot out the night sky and the top of two buildings
sandwiching that half-lit and desolate street. The birds of hell are making so
much noise people shouldn’t be able to hear themselves above the roar; it’s
like being under the belly of a plane taking off. But the gangsters can all
hear themselves just fine.

“Come
on. Just a BJ, ok, miss? How about that, huh?” The leader unzips his dirty
jeans.

The
second man’s suddenly yanked away. The one threatening Lessa whirls around to
see Chester standing in the middle of the street.

CYHYRAETH,
I NEED YOU NOW…

“What
do you think you’re doing, kid? Stay away if you don’t want me to cut you a new
one.” The leader warns, now brandishing a butterfly knife he has whipped out
with a deft movement of his wrist.

“Oh
now you’re in trouble.” The second says from where he has fallen slumped on the
asphalt; his high spirits intact and his expression fiendishly lit.

“Lessa,
come with me if you want to live,” Sephtimus says in a voice that he hopes is
his calmest, which means for him Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Austrian accent
despite Chester’s stickman figure and the fact that he knows nothing of
self-defense, except for what he has practiced on one mobile game app that
simulated kung fu.

“Shut
up, retard! We’re not finished with the miss yet!” The leader spits out. “You
really wanna be gutted like fish, don’t ya?”

“Please
don’t. Just take everything. We swear we won’t tell the police. Please! Just
let us go!” Lessa tries to reason with them. But the three are already much too
high and gone. The Crows above are making sure of that.

“Heee
heee heeee!” With a cackle, the third pounces and grabs Chester from behind. He
places the
barista
in a full nelson.  Chester barely puts up a
fight and his calm expression mirrors Sephtimus’ resignation to his fate.

CYHYRAETH,
IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS…

“I’ll
teach you to get in the way,” the leader threatens. He flicks the blade away
with another practiced movement but Sephtimus’ relief is fleeting. The man
delivers a swift,
incapacitating blow to
Chester’s stomach.

“Ugh!”
Sephtimus groans. Pain. The first he has ever experienced.

So
this is what it feels like
, a remote, overanalyzing segment of his
brain thinks. His curiosity about the new sensation is quickly replaced by the
discomfort. Thoroughly unpleasant. 

“On the
left corner, weighing one million thousand pounds, Miiiiiiiiiike
Typhoooooooon!!!!!!!!!!!” the second gangster announces playfully. Another
uninhibited blow lands this time on Chester’s brow, splitting it open. The
glasses he’s wearing instantly get mangled.

“STOP
IIIIIIIIT! Don’t hurt him!” Lessa screams and attempts to separate the attacker
from Chester. Number Two wraps his arms around her waist and drags her back,
not wasting time to feel her up.

“No,
my dear. The hurt train ain’t left the station yet. I’m just gettin warmed up,”
the leader says. “You just wait your turn like a good girl.”

A
barrage
of punches hit Chester’s bowed head, chest, and stomach. Violence has reared
its ugly head, has revealed itself in all its animal ferocity. In the eyes of
the Crow-manipulated dopehead, the man he’s pummeling is indeed a demon
masquerading as a man.

All
the while, Sephtimus is calmly evaluating his position from a mostly detached
space because he’s close to blacking out. He’s familiar with the human instinct
for self-preservation and has seen many ruthless homicides and gruesome ways to
go but, truth be told, he has never directly attacked any human being except to
cut umballicus off a dying body. He never needed to. The fact that he has had
no experience of real pain till that moment says it all.

When
the addict finally pauses the beating, he’s out of breath and his knuckles are
bleeding. What’s left of Chester’s face is barely recognizable. Gangster Three
has trouble holding him up and Lessa keeps making these high-pitched, almost
soundless cries.

“I
think you’ve done kilt him, Bert,” Number Two wrapped around Lessa whispers in
amazement.

“No,
he ain’t dead yet.”

Indeed
Chester still has enough strength to lift his head. He does so slowly. His
normally unruly hair now stuck to his forehead. Miraculously, he smiles with
his bloody, twisted braces and incomplete teeth.

“That
is?” Sephtimus asks weakly. To his one true love he says, “Sorry, Lessa, today…
very bad hair day.”

Then
back to the gangsters in a perfectly good imitation of Dirty Harry: “Go ahead.
Make my—”

“The
fuck you’re saying!” Another merciless blow connects to Chester’s face and his
nose breaks with a crisp sound. Lessa starts sobbing hysterically.

At
this point, I finally get either close enough to the scene or far enough
outside Spinstra’s control. I manage to reestablish two-way psychic contact
with Sephtimus.

Fight
back
,
I tell him.
Use your powers and defend yourself. You’re dying out there!

Cyhyraeth,
you came back for me...
Sephtimus’ voice is pure, genuine relief as
though loyalty and friendship are such luxuries to him. And I’m ashamed to
think his suspicions haven’t been entirely misplaced. The thought of abandoning
him
has
entered my mind.

There
is nothing we can do,
Sephtimus sends back. Even mentally he sounds
fainter as though he’s already gone over an edge
. The moment we crossed over
to the mortal realm, we passed a point of no return. In a slaughterhouse,
everyone is bound to get eaten, even wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Fight
them! You’re Atropos the Inflexible for heaven’s sake. Show them who you are!

It
is over. I have already lingered too long on this side
, he
whispers.
Listen, Cyhyraeth, there is something I need to tell you before it
is too late.

The
leader’s on Chester again and the
barista
’s ducking the blows with the
reflexes of a punching bag.

I’m
almost there!
I scream to him, gritting my teeth and running full
pelt. 

Do
not concern yourself with this, Cyhyraeth. Listen. Are you listening?

Thump,
goes the dull and meaty blow. Whump.

Let
me tell you a secret: all umballici can camouflage themselves from human eyes.
Yours is special. Yours can hide even from Reaper eyes.

Whump.
Thump. Whump.

I
discovered another loophole in the Book that applies especially to your case.
Your death isn’t valid because we harvested you by mistake.

Do
you understand what I am telling you, Cyhyraeth? You can go back to living your
life. You can have a second chance. Go back to your body. Open your eyes and
get up from the hospital bed.

I
hereby pass you the Death-ring that binds Cyhyraeth to me. You are free now,
Nathaniel. Go and live a long and fulfilled life with Samantha.

As
soon as he says the words, I feel the corresponding item bulge in the pocket of
my jeans.
I
ca
n’t
describe all the emotions that rush through me. Foremost is heavenly relief at
the now real possibility of coming back to life, back to Sam. For the first
time in my life, I know what it means to cry tears of joy.

But
there’s still the matter of the imbalanced Fates. There’s a good chance my
reawakening by Spinstra didn’t go the way she had planned it.

It
is not your place to act, sleeper
, she had screeched inside my head.
Your
part here is done. Atropos is wounded and will be brought down. 

Why
are you doing this?

Why?
You dare question the motives of the Fate Weaver? Typical of you, Lachesis the
First Betrayer. You dared choose their kind over ours.

Lachesis!
I thought
to myself. It was my true identity after all. What the computers in Death’s
office had replaced. I was once one of the Triumvirate of Fates, tasked with
the cold calculation of human lives so Spinstra could spin out and interweave
all the possibilities, then Atropos would make the fatal cut. I was part of the
Wyrd Ones!  

Ah
yes. Yours is not the most reliable of memories after drinking from the River
Lethe. Let me help you remember then: how you stared down into the Pool of
Mirrors human day after human day, sighing and pining for a transitory and
meaningless existence. You were still in your Amazonian shape then. Do you not
recall what you told me? ‘I’d give up all this power and immortality to spend
an eye’s blink with them.’

You
were the first of us to succumb to the disease, regardless of your divine
origin. You asked for my help and I obliged. It became our little secret. I
assisted you in your death and gave you a new form, a new life, with all the
filthy mortals you’ve taken under your wing.

They
reek of insolence. They have it all. They have it easy. They are given all the
chances in the world to prove themselves and yet how do they repay Destiny?

Door-burners!
They destroy everything they touch. How many chances have they wasted in their
ignorance and incompetence? How much blood of my precious umballici flows from
their hands? And how many more will die and wash back down to my womb, for this
deathless mother to grieve? 

No
more. The time of this half-hearted peace is at its end. From the ashes, a new
dawn shall rise. A perfectly logical new world; infinitely smaller, more
primal, and more desperate. Abaddon shall be released from bondage and lay
waste to human cities. The cleansing fire of pestilence shall ravage the
mortals to near extinction. Soon, possibilities will at last only be granted to
those who truly deserve them.

If
the Fate Weaver has her way there’ll be no world left to go back to, so
everything else takes a back seat.

At
this precise moment, I’m sprinting by the diner towards the back street. Just a
little bit more…

Get
up, Nathaniel,
Sephtimus tells me.
Continue your life and reclaim
your destiny. 

Still
oblivious to Spinstra’s master plot, Sephtimus is prepared to leave all his
crowherding duties to the Infernal Affairs Division. But even now the
hell-birds are launching a two-pronged act of insubordination. Half of the
great swarm has swooped low and is streaking parallel to the street like a
passenger plane headed straight for Lessa and the other mortals; the second
half wheels ominously overhead. 

“Bert?
That’s enough! Bert!”

Thump.
Thump. Thump. Heavy breathing from the addict.

I
reach the street with one last burst of speed.

It’s
Spinstra!
I scream to Sephtimus.
She’s behind all this! She’s unleashing the Crows!

I
let out an inhuman scream of frustration that becomes the deafening shriek of
the fershee. It has a quick effect on the crows closest to Lessa, pushing them
back. What’s more, I’ve started a chain reaction that travels all the way to
Necro City and within earshot of the reaper squad. What I’ve unconsciously sent
out was a call to arms so Kera, Ankou and Yama Ranger rush to Hell’s Helm to
then materialize around our wounded leader.