Last of the Mighty (11 page)

My reactions took over and I prepared for war. Hands tight, senses keen.

An audience of apes squatted along the upper branches, yowling, barking, eager for gore.

The world went slow just as Kong leapt. His arms were out wide, like telephone poles. His lips peeled back, jaws cranking open. Pink gums, yellow fangs.

I shifted left and readied to deflect Kong's lead arm then crack him in the ear as he flew by.

A muffled pop sounded from behind me, like a snapping twig. It was followed by an ominous buzz that was winging toward the back of my head. No time to look at whatever it was. Hissing louder, the thing whisked past my ear, barely missing it. As it sped toward Kong, it came into focus.

A tranquilizer dart.

Thin strips of pink plastic, like feathers on an arrow, trailed behind the small missile with a needle-sharp tip.

I ducked under Kong's black, grabbing hand and watched the tranq plunge deep into the ape's chest. Resisted the urge to strike at Kong's ear. I let him sail by without even touching him. Would've been cruel to attack him now. He'd be snoozing in minutes.

I did my best to defend myself without inflicting too much damage on Kong. After all, he was just a father protecting his son. Before the dart's magic slowed the ape, though, I was forced to strike my opponent. Twice. Neck and ribs.

Soon enough, Kong went down.

Seconds later, The Committee roused and The Poet wailed.

“Gut her,

gut him!

Cut her,

cut him!”

Her?

My eyes whirled to Merryn in the Jeep. Kermit was barreling toward her smashed-out window in a frenzy, frothing at the mouth, eyes wild, arms lashing.

“Merryn!” I cast a finger at the blitzing ape.

I was too far away, would never make it in time.

Kermit jumped, fangs bared.

Merryn caught sight of him just in time. She kicked open her door, instantly halving the distance between Kermit and the window he was intending to come through.

The meat of the door slammed into Kermit's forehead. He caromed off the metal like a ping-pong ball and cartwheeled through the air until crash-landing, skull first, into a thick tree root.

Merryn didn't stop there. Snarling, she stalked to Kermit, a small can of something in her hand. As the baby gorilla sat in the dirt, dizzy and wobbling, Merryn thrust the can in her fist an inch from Kermit's face and blasted him with the entire contents of her can of pepper spray.

Kermit yipped and squealed, clawing at his neck, eyes, ears, and nose, corkscrewing his flexible little body every which way.

I felt sorry for him, but took consolation in the hope that The Poet was feeling even a tenth of Kermit's present agony.

****

Mandinka's took full responsibility for the incident, offering right away to pay for a rental car, as well as the damage to Uncle Will's Cherokee. They refunded our entry fee, gave us free one-year passes, and in exchange for signing a contract assuring we wouldn't sue, Mandinka's agreed to trick out Uncle Will's Jeep with new leather interior, wheels, tires, and a custom paint job.

As an added bonus, the game warden reset Uncle Will's broken nose. The guy had busted his own nose three times and had set it back straight all by himself every time. That was interesting, to say the least.

I drove the rental SUV out of Mandinka's, relieved that my second test was over. With no fatalities. I was one step closer to completing Phaeus's training and meeting my father.

Or was I?

I fell into bed with hopes of hanging with Lavender again. I had so many questions. Was the run-foo strategy what I was meant to learn from Mandinka's? Did I do everything right? Should I have killed Kong?

I felt like I'd blown it. My uncle got his nose split open and Merryn nearly had her face shredded by a devil-monkey. I hadn't protected them. I could have done better. And The Poet was still at large.

The thought of failing Phaeus's tests and never meeting my dad twisted in my stomach. I'd been building up our father/son reunion ever since Phaeus had put it out there. I pictured a warm, fuzzy event, though I knew the real thing could never live up to my expectations. Even if it turned out badly, I needed to meet my dad. At the very least, I'd gain some insight into who I was. Illegitimate son of an ex-communicated priest? Virgin-born miracle? Result of a rape? Anything was better than not knowing.

If Lavender couldn't make it tonight, maybe Phaeus would. I mean what happened to the extra protection he'd promised Merryn and Uncle Will?

If access to their extra guard was cut off, like mine, during training exercises, then that sucked. Could even be a deal breaker. Merryn just might happen to be wandering by when one of my future tests was due to break out. Without Phaeus's protection, she'd be killed. It would be my fault.

So why hadn't Phaeus informed me? Had he forgotten? Could angels forget? What other details about our arrangement had he left out? Something was sketch.

Sadly, neither Phaeus nor my dream trainer showed, and the weight of my concerns only grew heavier.

****

The next morning, I went to Mass for the first time in months. I tried not to like it, but I did. The incense and candles. The hymns and readings. The peace. God is good. To most people anyway. He was still picking on me. A little. I mean, c'mon, making me fight gorillas? But at least He was clearing a path that would lead to my dad.

I did an Oyama workout in the p.m. then picked some wildflowers to lay on my mom's grave. I apologized again for her headstone. It was so undignified. She had been such a giving and honorable woman. What would people think when they saw that broken mess above her, that her life was as shabby and ugly as her headstone? I punished myself with a five-mile run.

I was still in a funk on Monday, so I ditched school and slept in. I woke with a start when I sensed something strange in my room.

“Geez, Amos!” His big face stared down at me. “Could ya not…” I rubbed my eyes, scrubbing away the sleep.

You know how it is. First thing you see when you wake up are two eyes and a head hovering over you. Just gazing. Patiently. Like a vulture waiting for you to die so he can eat your liver. It was unnerving.

With my heart still sprinting, I sat up and gave him the explain-yourself-and-it-better-be-good face.

“Had me a peculiar dream last night. I's talkin' with a dark-haired fella. In a white toga. Tall too.” He did the frowning nod. “An' big. With violet eyes.”

It should've floored me. The odds of Amos and me sharing the same character in our dreams were a zillion to one. Yet, after all I'd gone through, Amos would have to do better than that to shock me.

“Fella tol' me somethin'.” Amos took the toothpick from his mouth. His eyes inspected it up and down. “Said I should be lookin' after ya.”

It was a nice thought. Yet, I wasn't about to let Amos put himself at risk for me. “No thanks, Amos. Really.” My path was my path. If it ended poorly for me, fine. I'd deal with the fallout. “I appreciate it, but I can handle it.”

“Shame the decision ain't yours.”

“Come on, Amos.” I thought about what had almost happened to Merryn and Uncle Will. “It's not your war.” No way I could deal with it if Amos died while defending me or fighting at my side. “Please. I don't need your help.”

His grin said it all. He'd gotten a message from an angel. A holy mission. He couldn't care less about the danger. Nothing I could say was going to talk him out of it.

I tried anyway. “What are you, like seventy?”

“Seen him too, ain'tcha, son?”

“Who?”

“Angel with them violet eyes.”

“No,” I lied, for his sake.

His lips were curved with that irritating I-know-better smile.

I took a deep breath and crossed my arms. We stared each other down.

“Fine!” I gave in.

Like it or not, Amos was along for the ride.

I eased up and said, “I call him Mr. Lavender.”

“Lavender…huh…” His eyebrows were low and pushed toward each other. He staggered back, like he was drunk, and weaved to the window. He whispered it again, “Lavender.” He grabbed the windowsill for balance.

“Y-you okay?” I put a foot on the floor, ready to jump in and catch him if his legs gave way.

He was silent as he peered out over the church cemetery. A faraway look. Sadness. Far too much sadness. “Daughter's name was Lavender.”

Amos had a daughter?

“Mos' precious thing I ever saw, she was.”

His eyes misted. A hard swallow bumped his Adam's apple up then down. His face sagged. His body slumped and his head drooped forward, heavy, dangling between his shoulders.

He stood there for a long while before mumbling, “Used t' be married, y'know.” He turned to me with his lips taut and his eyes shiny with tears.

I'd never seen him so sincere. Unguarded. Hurting.

My heart filled with compassion. “I'd love to hear about it.”

Amos was as surprised at my admission as I was. His face whispered, “Really?” but didn't quite believe me. Slowly, he smiled. “Great,” he said. “I'll tell ya on the way then.”

“The way? The way where?”

“T' see the ducks, o' course. C'mon. Ge' dressed.”

So last month, he tried to kill me, and today we were going on an afternoon drive to see some ducks?

Funny old world.

“Started my career as a vicar with the Anglican Church.” Amos was behind the wheel of his Falcon station wagon.

We were winding up a mountain road on our way to the ducks. He spoke freely, happy to have an audience.

“Unlike Catholics, ya see, Anglican priests can marry. An' I always knew I would.”

As Amos reminisced about his days “a-courtin'” his future bride, the joys of his past washed away years from his face and eyes. He beamed and sat taller, chuckled like a teenager.

“Happy times, they were. Happy times. An' when sweet li'l Lavender come along, well, she made the livin' even better.”

Things at work, however, weren't going as well. Amos thought the Anglicans had come off the rails, getting too liberal in their beliefs. Eventually, he asked if he could join the Catholic Church. They said yes and ordained him a Catholic priest. A married Catholic priest. Yep, they were out there.

The next few years were the best of his life. Right up until “sweet li'l Lavender” was thrown from a horse.

“She was nine years old.” His voice broke. “Still jus' a baby when she died a week later.” He dragged his forearm over his eyes. “From complications.” He sniffed. “But I know fer a fact she was murdered.” Anger flexed in his eyes. “By a demon-possessed teenager. Fourteen and tha' boy was already bigger ‘n me. Ugly too. Face all lumpy. Birth defects, I guess. Even got me two witnesses who saw him spook m' li'l girl's pony. On purpose. I'll never ferget tha' boy's name either. Called hisself Chool.”

My breath caught in my throat, and I covered it with a cough. Chool. I couldn't believe I'd never mentioned him to Amos. Should I have? Would it have done any good? Maybe. I didn't know. What I did know was I wasn't about to bring it up in the middle of his story.

“After we laid Lavender t' rest, did me some diggin' on that Chool boy. Turned up some good evidence agains' him too. But nobody'd take me serious. They all said m' li'l girl's death was an accident.”

Outside, dense trees lined the road. A few cabins in the distance.

“But I knew the truth.” He rooted through the chest pocket of his overalls. “An' I'd jus' found this.” He removed the Fourth Nail. “Now it all made sense why I'd spent all them years tryin' to find it. Knew tha' God wanted me to use it to exorcise the demon from m' daughter's killer.”

At the time, Amos had only been training to be an exorcist. He'd assisted on a couple of exorcisms, but had yet to perform one by himself.

“As y' know”—he rolled up his window, the air getting colder as we climbed higher—“I had m' theory about the Nail. Figgered it was time to test it. So I did. Church didn't know a thing about it neither. I found Chool… We beat each other up a bit… An' righ' before I's about to stab him, I hear this, ‘Drop yer weapon!' Coupla young police officers had come outta nowhere, aimin' guns at m' head.”

I thought about Nightstick and Doughnut, Smiler and Knock's cop buddies. Guess they weren't the only demons on the force.

Amos got arrested, like Merryn had said. The Church helped with his defense, convincing the prosecution to reduce their charge from attempted murder to child abuse. Amos went to prison for sixteen years. While there, his wife divorced him.

“M' conscience is clear, Og.” He turned off the mountain road and onto a gravel driveway. “Been out five years an' I'd do it all over the same, I would.”

Loose pebbles crunched beneath the Falcon as we first-geared it toward a solitary and seemingly out-of-place building. Where every house and shop in twenty miles was a timber cabin, this was an unimaginative stucco and glass number that looked like a dentist's office. Amos pulled up to it and parked.

Confused, I took in the surroundings—trees, boulders, dirt, steep mountainside... Not an ounce of water. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that ducks preferred lakes and rivers. I asked, “Why're we stoppin'?”

Amos motioned to the stucco job and said, “T'see the ducks. What else?”

Amos opened the building's double-wide, glass front door as I read the two nameplates identifying the businesses inside. CIA was etched into the plate on the left. The right one said NAACP.

I suppose Amos was black. Perhaps he was a card-carrying member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Then again, he could've just as well been working for the CIA. All that was fine and dandy, but what did the NAACP or the Central Intelligence Agency have to do with ducks?

Venturing inside, things didn't get any clearer. Below the ceiling's rows of halogens, a glass partition split the one large interior space into two equally sized offices. Each office was neatly fitted with museum-style Plexi display cases housing a variety of ancient artifacts from archaeological digs. There were bronze coins, wooden shepherd's staffs, crude knives and swords, early carpentry tools, bones of animals, pieces of moth-eaten clothing…stuff like that. No ducks, though. Not even a skeleton of one. No people either. Just Amos and me.

Two things were made clearer, however. The office to the left had a brass plaque on its wall that read CIA. Engraved beneath those letters, it did not say Central Intelligence Agency, but Christian Intelligence and Artifacts. The plaque for the office on the right said NAACP, standing for National Apocalyptic Armory of the Christian Persuasion.

As I was still processing all the wackness, Amos yelled, “Hey, ducks!”

From a door at the back of each office, at the exact same time, emerged two Asian men in their thirties.

“Father Amos!” they said together, smiling at him. Then they sneered at each other and race-walked toward us, each one trying to outpace the other without looking too obvious about their competition to reach us first. The guy from the CIA had an advantage because, at five-foot-six, his legs were longer than the four-foot-ten, eighty-five pound representative from the NAACP.

“Pleasure to see big Father Amos,” said the taller one in a heavy Asian accent while ten feet away. With a burst of speed, he shoved in front of the shorter one and extended his longer arm to take hold of Amos's hand first.

The short one smirked and muttered curses in his native tongue, stabbed his brother with the daggers of an evil sidelong glance.

Clasping hands with the taller, CIA man, Amos said, “Good to see ya too, Duck-Sun.”

Duck-Sun's curious eyes shifted to me.

Amos unclipped his hand from Duck-Sun's and held it out to the shorter guy. “Duck-Shin,” he said, and pumped the little man's hand.

Meet the Ducks.

Duck-Shin bowed a little as he shook. Said, “Amos,” but like his taller brother, he seemed more interested in me—the freaky seven-foot teenager.

“This's Og,” Amos introduced me.

I lifted my hand into the parade-waving position. “Hi.”

Duck-Tall stepped back, examining me as if I were an item on the auction block. He folded his arms and slowly pulled on his longish, nine-hair beard while looking me up and down. Even jabbed me lightly in the chest and stomach. To make sure the merchandise was authentic, I guess.

Duck-Short took a more direct approach. He clambered up me like I was the Statue of Liberty and he was on the tour. Found a foothold in my knee pit, grabbed a fistful of my shirt, and shot up the circular staircase of my body like a spider monkey. Before I knew it, he'd looped around me three times and was sitting on my shoulders.

“I not have giant in long time,” said Duck-Tall, still stroking the thin strands of his wispy beard. “You want sell him, trade or pawn?”

“Sorry,” said Amos, grinning. “Og ain't fer sale.”

Meanwhile, Duck-Short had thrust his fingers in my mouth and was trying to jimmy open my jaws. Once he got the mouth open, he gaped inside, lion tamer style, and began assessing my dental health.

Apparently satisfied with my oral hygiene, Duck-Short removed his head from my mouth and said, “One set teeth only. Not Nephilim. Worth much less.”

I recalled Chool's double set of chompers—the sure sign of Nephilimity.

Amos smiled. “Ducks. The Mighty One ain't for sale. He's a friend.”

“Mighty One?” the Ducks said together. “You have papers?”

Duck-Tall began, “No papers…”

Duck-Short finished, “No deal.”

“I ain't here ‘bout Og,” said Amos. “I'm here”—he went through his pocket—“t' trade this.” He raised up the Fourth Nail.

Duck-Tall was mesmerized, gawping at the rusty thing. Automatically, he reached for it. Slowly. “May…I?” he asked.

As Amos was offering the Nail to Duck-Tall, Duck-Short leapt off my shoulders and snatched it away from Amos. He landed softly, turned his back to his brother, and scurried away, Fourth Nail in hand.

Duck-Tall, furious, barked out some harsh syllables in what I later learned was Korean and set out after his little brother.

Duck-Short weaved through the Plexi cases, easily evading his slower sib. All the while, the two Ducks were stuffing their cheeks with the bizarre clacks and pops of their language and spewing them all over each other.

Amos eventually got the Ducks to settle down and work together. While the brothers put the Nail under a microscope and did all the tedious authenticating, Amos and I poked around the place. About half the things in the Plexi cases were titled. Note cards said stuff like—Abraham's Knife: Genesis 22:10, St. Joseph's Carpentry Saw: Mark 6:3, and Grave Clothes of Lazarus: John 11:44.

Coming across one of the many unmarked items, I whispered to Amos, “Why would the National Apocalyptic Armory of the Christian Persuasion have a dreidel?”

Amos shrugged.

“Belong to baby Jesus,” yelled Duck-Short from across the room while looking through the microscope,

Duck-Tall rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and I Elvis Presley.”

An eruption of Korean clicks and snorts flared between them.

I didn't ask any more questions.

Next to the dreidel was an old whip, kind of like a cat o' nine tails. I was reading the card—Roman Flagellum used to flog Jesus: Matthew 27:26—when the front door opened.

A man with fair skin, blue eyes, long red-orange hair, and a scraggly beard walked in. He brought to mind one of those Viking berserkers from yesteryear, the type who struck terror into the globe's every village. The type accustomed to killing all in his path with club, axe, hammer, and fist. This beefy specimen was over eight feet tall.

Yet, it wasn't his height, girth, or his warlike appearance that alarmed me most.

It was the thick, gold wrist guard that covered his left forearm.