Spirit Wars (15 page)

“Nate,
there’s so much I need to tell you.”

This
time I choose not to respond. Tears are flowing down my cheeks in the dark. She
gets up from the bench with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. To my
alarm, she takes a step closer.  

“Stay
right where you are, Miss!” I adopt the first plan I come up with, trying as
hard as I can to alter my voice. I pull it off with my morphing abilities;
perhaps too well. The words stop her in her tracks.

“Who
are you?”

I
cry in silence.

“Who
are you and what are you doing here?” she demands, suddenly fearful for her
safety.

“I’m
the night watchman… miss. It’s dangerous for you to be here. You best go
home.” 

She’s
still squinting at the shadows trying to make out my shape, fresh out of a very
realistic and suspiciously-generated dream she has just had about me. Now
surfaced but for the tip of her foot still dipped in the flawed logic of the
dream, where it’s possible for comatose patients to rise back up like Lazarus.
And I’m a fool to think for a minute that I can disguise myself from the woman
who has loved me for more than three years. Her sunken, sleep-starved eyes
bulge.

“Nate,”
she says breathlessly. “It IS you.” A single long tear stabs down her cheek
like a tiny spear. So effortlessly. “Nate, I’ve missed you so much. I…”

That
single tear is the scout of a whole torrent. It’s like a dam burst open and all
the emotions she’s been holding in pour forth as huge, chest-heaving, and
heart-wrenching sobs. All this is also too much for me. My shoulders start
shaking at the intensity of the feelings I’m trying to hold back and my scales
multiply in response to my agitated state. It’s only a matter of time before
Sam notices something amiss in my form. I wipe the tears hard off my cheeks.

“Listen,
Sam. Samantha. Listen to me very carefully please… I - I’M SORRY. This is what
I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye to you… I’m
really, really sorry, Sam.”

Her
tears are now streaming uncontrollably. 

“I’m
sorry I was cruel to you the last of my days. I was deliberately mean to you. I
ignored you and drove you away. I wasn’t the Nate you knew as your partner and
best friend. I…”

Both
of us are crying separately at a distance of only two yards.

“I
did all those things because I wanted you to forget me. To move on and make a
new life. I should’ve told you this before, Sam. But the real reason I couldn’t
say the words ‘forever’ or ‘love’ to you, why I never could commit… it’s
because they sounded trite and fake to an orphan like me. I had to see them for
myself first. So I went low. I bottomed out. I went away to a place devoid of
time or hope, where no man would dare go. There had been something broken
inside me for a long time. And I - I couldn’t be around you anymore.

“You
know I wouldn’t hurt you for the world if it weren’t… absolutely necessary. But
what you’re doing now to yourself. Turning your back on life the way I did.
This is not what I wanted for you, Sam. This – it makes me sad.”

WHERE
ARE YOU, CYHYRAETH?

The
telepathic message invades my consciousness like a rifle shot. A slug
travelling with two thousand foot-pounds of energy. The communication has made
me jerk my head like a deer that still hasn’t realized it’s been shot.

“I-
I have to go.”

Up
to this point Sam has been attentive and meek, but my last words jolt her out
of her trance and she’s suddenly back in her recurring nightmare, reaching for
my fading presence.

“No.
Stay. Please! Don’t lea—”

Her
careless
lunge catches me by surprise. For a second that feels like eternity as it plays
over and over in my head, I shift back to my full fershee form with its
slime-covered scales. I can picture myself through Sam’s eyes:
body poised to move like a coil spring but fish eyes
wide and expressing fear.

Sam’s
frozen on the spot. And I just can’t bear to witness the transformation of that
treasured face into one that’s horror-struck. As soon as I get myself together,
my camouflage ability kicks in and I vanish like a filefish in the face of
danger. My scales have turned silver and glittery in the moonlight.

I
turn,
push off with my leg, and run like hell.

Everything
becomes so surreal and hypnotic it’s hard to tell if they’re actually taking
place. Chester rises in a fluid and graceful movement, but in reality, his
body’s cutting through time like knife sliding through butter. The whole place,
the small universe of the diner – from every unsuspecting customer to each tiny
corner of tissue cowed by the ceiling fan, from the twitchy second hand of a
wall clock to the rollerbladed foot of a waitress raised in a push – all these
freeze in mid-action. Or not so much freeze as slow down into a clotted
tempo. 

Lessa
and the rest of the customers sit like wax sculptures except for their eyes, most
especially hers, which glimmer with awareness and concentration. It’s like an
isolated object (Chester) is moving at hyper-speed while leaving the rest of
the world behind. Like a character in dreamland doing away with the line
between point A and B while the sleeper’s mind fills in the gap. The effect is
both spell-binding and nauseating. One moment Chester’s sitting across from
Lessa; the next he’s standing below the diner’s overhead TV, which has been
droning on for most of the evening unnoticed.

“I
was a fool to think that I could be loved,” Chester speaks in Sephtimus’
I-am-Legion voice, his eyes as glossy black as eight balls. “This time you have
to listen to what I have to say, Celestina Conti. You have no choice in the
matter. Try to remember everything I will tell you. Your life shall depend on
it.”

A
few forlorn, long-drawn sighs from the wax museum collection.

“The
truth is, I am evil. Like an apple, my soul at first had only one small spot;
now it has been overrun with black rot. Outside the fruit might still appear
firm with that crisp, crunchy bite but inside it is nothing but dust and spores
– spores that infest everything around it, all the other apples in a bushel. I
am the exact opposite of a light.

“But…
I fell in love with you the first time I laid eyes on you, Celestina. This was
in another life and another time, when I was still a mortal like you. And from
a memory that has been extinguished from every ridge and fissure of your mind.

“We
were too young then. We held on to each other the best way we knew, as drowning
people would to a lifeline. But love is so long and life so short. The tides of
fate pushed you farther and farther away from me. When I found you again, a
millennia and a half later, you had a whole new life as another person. But it
was you most certainly. I suppose it was your vitality, your thirst for life
that spoke out to me from the great sea of souls.

“Because
of this – pay close attention to what I am about to tell you – because of this,
I killed all the people dear to you, one by one, for the singularly evil
purpose of making you feel alone.

“Ms.
Conti, I… am… a monster.”

Based
on Lessa’s reaction, there’s little assurance that the truth is sinking in. But
the whole thing’s like a dream working deep down on a subliminal level. She
might not fully understand when she surfaces out of the experience but the
idea’s already implanted in her consciousness. A proof of this is the single
drop of tear that rolls smoothly, flawlessly down her marble cheek. Someone
cries in their sleep in a similar way.

“It’s
true there are rules that prevent me from directly interfering with human fate.
But there are other ways to make it happen. The Book of Life and Death is full
of general conditions that I find my way around. For instance, as a prank I can
cut the brakes of a car that I calculate will be at a certain place at a
certain point in time. It’s not an exact thing, mind you. More like trial and
error. But it is one way to effect the claiming of a life.

“Another
ingenious method is to place mysterious cigarette-sticks around a human
dwelling to tempt a mortal of weaker resolve. It matters not if the bait is
thought to be a gift of Providence and thus accepted. The prank’s as innocent
and ordinary as when a slipper or an earring mysteriously disappears. On the
day the doctor reveals the X-ray of your tar-coated lungs, Death will be there
smiling over your shoulder.

“These
little deeds may be what you’d call ‘
sneaking
,’ but they get the job
done. I get to ridicule the rules that have kept my powers in check over the
centuries. There are many roundabout ways for one who thinks long and hard. And
in case you haven’t noticed, time is all I have.”

Death
gazes over all his petrified audience. Then he reaches back to the top of his
spine and tugs at something like the zipper of a costume. As everyone lets out
a silent scream, the whole of Chester’s head cleaves like a latex mask.

Because
Sephtimus appears to be peeling the skin off of Chester, everyone expects to
see a gory, anatomical apparition underneath. This scene is more realistic than
any FX in a horror flick so some eyelids flutter as though their owners are
trying desperately to wake up, but all souls are presently banished from the
real world and their bodies are nothing more than empty husks.

When
Sephtimus has shed his Chester costume like python skin, he nudges aside the
shapeless man on the floor with his coat’s billowing, feetless bottom. Now
Atropos is revealed in his full goth splendor, from the sweeping skirt of his trench
coat to the colorful flowers of his Dia de los Muertos mask.   

“Ahhh…
that’s better!” he exclaims like your average white-collar loosening his tie
after a rough day at the office. A faint, smothered cry escapes Lessa’s frozen
lips. These lips are set like they’re taking forever to decide whether they
should smile or frown.

“Now,
if Nate had been listening closely…”

I
have. Because everything Sephtimus said has been transmitted to me
telepathically. At this precise moment, I’m running back to the diner as fast
as my heavy, webbed fershee feet can carry me.

You
know that dream where the faster you try to run, the slower you get? Just when
I need it most my invisible tsunami has abandoned me. But I receive an
explanation for this soon enough.

Leave
it alone, Nataniel Cuervo. This is not your fight.

Out
of nowhere, a different voice enters the psychic channel like crosstalk on a
landline.

Who
are you?
I ask. 

Do
you not know the answer to this question?

It’s
true. I feel like I’ve known all along. This rumbly yet feminine voice with its
many layers overlapping. Its owner is a shadow that has constantly loomed over
us, moving the pieces across the board with her three pairs of hands. She has
been the one responsible from the start, who orchestrated all the events with
cold calculation. She created the Lachesis computers in Death’s office and sent
the crow man for me at the orphanage. She gave me my second form as a fershee
and influenced Sephtimus to adopt me as his tutor. She was there on the banks
of River Acheron the moment I arrived in the underworld. She probably
manipulated Sam, too, to be at the park on this exact night.

Spinstra.
The Fate Weaver. The last piece of the puzzle, the third of the Wyrd Ones.

…
he would understand the implications.
Sephtimus continues
orating at the other end, still unaware of Spinstra’s masterful touch.
There
was no October 31st appointment made. Because right from the start I have had
the scalpel, no matter how imprecise, to take the life of fair Celestina here…

Sephtimus’
voice
grows soft and sentimental as he turns back to Lessa in the diner.

“There
is no appointment. It was true love I felt, Celestina. And I took the lives of
your grandmother, uncle, and mother
for it. Yet
when I was about to deliver the coup de grace to your father, the merciful snip
at his shriveled umballicus; at that moment when you were about to be left
completely alone and orphaned into the streets, something stopped me. A
completely alien emotion had taken hold of me and stayed my hand. I suppose
that was when love had overtaken my reason.

“There
was no deal made. No appointment waiting to be kept. I extended your father’s
life out of my own feeling of clemency, the first ever from the Grim Reaper.
And I regret none of it. To see you recover the roses of life in your cheeks
and cast away the first creases of old age from your brow.

“I
had moved through eternal existence with no eyes, Giulia. The world held no
hidden surprises for me. And then there you were. As dazzling as the first
light. You chased away the nothingness and gave me what no one else could, the
vulnerability of a mortal. As cliché and paradoxical as this may sound, you
brought me to life.

“Thereafter
I watched you grow from a distance. I was glad that you lived the life of a
normal human being, not jaded, cold, or despairing.

“I
was there, too, at every landmark in your life, at every tumble. I shared all
your dreams and fears. I watched you laugh and sigh, fall in love plenty of
times and break your heart even more. Before I knew it, I had begun to cherish
life. Precisely what I had before detested and indifferently brought to an end.

“W
hen I
sensed your deathdate finally come up on the Interweave: Celestina Conti–
October 31
^st
, 4: 28 a.m. – there was no end to my sorrow.”

Now
the flapping of gargantuan wings can be heard outside. The wall clock in the
diner reads: Ten minutes to four.

“It’s
begun,” Sephtimus whispers to the lifeless room. “They’ve revolted.”

****

I
can’t believe it. This is in fact the story of a Death Angel who has fallen for
a mortal. The part about Sephtimus coldly picking off members of Lessa’s family
is unspeakably heartless, but I for one can attest to the complete
transformation he has undergone.

I’m
still in shock from my face-to-face encounter with Sam but there are far more
pressing matters at hand. I wish my surfing abilities would come to my aid now
but, as it turns out, the waxing and waning of my powers is dictated by the
Fate Weaver.

You
owe him no allegiance, Nataniel Cuervo. You are henceforth free from your
contract. I grant you the freedom to roam the human world and mingle with the
living once more. Run back home to the side of the one you covet, Samantha
Angeles. If you so desire, I shall arrange that you both belong in the same
realm once again.

I
slow down at the mention of Sam’s name. Panting heavily, I prick my webbed ears
up. 

****

Lessa’s
back to normal on her seat in the diner, looking at Chester. At this point she
seriously considers either one of two things, to sleep with him or to say that
she has also fallen for him. But the words she finally chooses to say are
these: “Thank you for this. This is really… special, what you’ve given me. But
I need time. You’ve given me plenty to think about. I’m not ready for them. I’m
not ready for you.”

Because
she knows that if she looks back she won’t be able to leave, she walks off and
out the diner without so much as a glance over her shoulder. There’s nothing
wrong with it though. It’s perfectly all right. She’d be lying if she said
something she wasn’t sure she really felt, and if she slept with him on their
first date, she’d ruin a perfectly good chance at a sincere and quality
relationship. All in good time, she happily thinks to herself.

It’s
only a couple of steps into the parking lot when she remembers they have left
her car at Brew Bear and the fastest way back to it is through a back street.
Lessa’s instincts for self-preservation, normally in good working order, are
down at the moment. It’s memorable after all; this night full of pleasant
surprises. She promises herself she’ll be at Brew Bear again later in the
evening.

In
her elated state, she doesn’t notice three men peel themselves off a wall where
they’ve been smoking, to then casually walk after her.

Even
more imperceptible are the humongous black shapes in the night sky above.
Together they make up the shape of a titanic, stern countenance covering half
the heavens but, once broken apart, they reveal themselves to be restless,
spiky-shaped crows. The sole thought that fills Lessa’s mind is the time on her
Cartier: Ten to four.

Amid
deafening wing beats, the crow-like creatures give off a ravenous insectile
hum.