The Revenant Road (26 page)

34

Hidden Agenda

Vulpe sat cross-legged in mid-air above my head. He was now nearly identical to the picture I’d seen in Kowalski’s kitchen; black hair slicked down and parted down the center, olive-skinned, with features sharp enough to slice bone.

He wore a close-fitting, high-collared black tunic, trousers, and boots, the outfit he’d worn in numerous episodes of
The Time Rangers.
But in the shimmering green illumination that filled the sanctuary, the black suit appeared to absorb light, exhaling darkness in return: Vulpe’s head seemed to float atop a man-shaped cluster of shadows.

“Let the woman go,” I said. “This is between you and me.”

“She isn’t aware of this conversation, O-dog” Vulpe crooned. “I’ve arranged for a little hiccup in her conscious awareness during our visit.”

“You can do that?” I said.

“When I’m done with her she’ll wake up with nothing more interesting than a bitch of a headache.”

Vulpe spread his arms like a Vegas stage magician and descended toward the floor of the church. Back in Kowalski’s kitchen I’d imagined that Vulpe would move with the febrile grace of a dancer. I was wrong.

As he drifted toward the floor of the church, he seemed to
unfold
himself, stretching his legs downward like a great black spider reaching for its prey. When he’d settled to the floor, he stood smoothly and folded his arms across his chest.

Vulpe was a head taller than me, inhumanly thin. If he had been made of flesh and bone he might have weighed ninety pounds. His arms were nearly as long as his legs, each joint thick and distended, like knots in the trunk of a young sapling. Nevertheless, Vulpe communicated an aura of hideous strength. He exuded power like nothing else I’d encountered, including the Yeren.

“Welcome, friends,” he said. “To the
Moment Between.
”

I grunted, forced myself to stand. I’d lost a lot of blood and my vision doubled at the effort. But I got to my feet, faced my foe and said, “I’m not impressed.”

Vulpe chuckled. “New Yorkers,” he said. “So jaded.” 

“What do you want?”

Vulpe laughed this time, “Come now, my brotha. What does any evil nether entity want? Power? Prestige? A lap dance with full release from Condoleeza Rice?”

I winced at the pain in my head. Something about Vulpe made my brain hurt. I squinted against the pain, and I saw it: a black aura, similar to the dark energy which had surrounded Trocious. In Vulpe’s case, however, the aura was much denser. He seemed to hover within a maelstrom of malice: Black-bellied thunderclouds roiled around him, heavy with harm.

Vulpe’s cloud contained swirling motes of greenish light that flared and flashed like carnivorous emerald fireflies. The flashes hurt the worst.

“Alas, ol’ chum,” he continued. “While I’d love to see Condy spread-eagled up a flagpole squirtin’ ping-pong balls as much as the next guy, my business is with you. I’m here to offer
you
a deal.”

“You’re a two-bit kid’s hobby item,” I snarled. “What could you possibly have to offer? If I hadn’t dreamed life into you you’d be the handle of somebody’s toilet brush.”

“Tut tut, m’man,” Vulpe chuckled. “The Power I represent was ancient
millennia
before you were anything more than a glint in yo pappy’s eye.

“That Power is prepared to make you an offer: An offer that also concerns one Neville Hephaestus Kowalski, AKA ‘Deader Than Three-day-old Camel Shit.’”

“I’m not interested,” I said.

“Oh, but I say you
are
interested,” Vulpe hissed. “See, I
know
you. You love nice neat endings: every loose end tied, every literary hole stitched up tighter than a ladybug’s crap flap. That’s just the kind of detail-oriented, anal-retentive he-bitch you are.”

Vulpe drifted closer. The heat from his eyes branded emerald circles across the skin of my irises.

“But you know as well as I do that even if I kill you, here and now, this isn’t over,” he crowed. “Far from it. Everything that’s happened up to this point has been an appetizer. The main course is gonna knock ‘em dead.”

Vulpe stopped. For a moment he seemed to tremble with suppressed vehemence, as if the very air of the sanctuary had grown rife with violence.

“And you? You’re already dead,” he spat. “You just don’t know it yet. However, I’m willing to throw you a bone before the end.”

“Why?” I said. “Why should I believe you?”

Vulpe shuddered again, his face contorting in a spasm of hate.  “Because I can’t lie,” he said. “And because you have friends in places you know nothing about.”

Despite Vulpe’s tone a dark glimmer of hope fluttered in my gut.

Was it possible?

“Tell me about the deal.”

“Alright,” Vulpe said. “Your friend isn’t gone...
yet
.”

“Liar,” I said. “Kowalski’s dead.”

“Oh, he’s dead alright,” Vulpe countered. “Dead as Dick’s hatband, as I believe he was fond of saying.”

My side was throbbing. My movements had widened the wounds in my abdomen. I shook my head to clear the red cobwebs gathering inside it, and a warm gout of fresh blood trickled down my thighs.

“Get to the point,” I grated.

“There’s dead and then there’s
gone,”
Vulpe continued
.
“Kowalski’s dead but he ain’t
gone
. Oh, he’ll
be
gone any second now, but I’ve held him up while we have our little chat.”

Vulpe gestured toward Kowalski.

Kowalski opened his eyes and sat up. He scowled, and glared around as if he’d awoken in a strange country where he couldn’t speak the language.

Then his eyes found mine.

“Grudge,” he said. “Don’t do it. Don’t listen to him.”

Then, as if the severity of his situation had only just occurred to him, Kowalski screamed.

“Goddamn! It hurts!”

As Kowalski’s shrieks filled the sanctuary, I whirled and faced Vulpe.

“Stop it!” I howled. “You’re torturing him!”

“Yeah,” Vulpe said. “It’s what I do.”

“Grudge!” Kowalski screamed. “Don’t do it!”

“What did you do to him?”

Vulpe shrugged. Kowalski’s screams grew louder.

“I ‘opened him up,’” he said. “He’s not dead, but he ain’t exactly alive either.”

Necropolis grinned. “He can feel himself rotting. Trust me, ol’ Nevvie’s psyche is a very ugly place right now.”

“It hurts!”

“You bastard,” I rasped.

Kowalski thrashed on the floor, his wounds gaping wetly in the emerald gloom: He was suffering the torments of the damned, barred from the surcease of Death.

“I’ve set up a sweet little bargain,” Vulpe said. “Pursuant to your agreement, of course. I’ve arranged to keep your friend on spiritual ice while you and me conversate.”

“‘Conversate’ about what?” I said.

“Goddamit, Grudge,” Kowalski gasped. “Listen to me.  I’ve had my run. This is my Day and I’m not afraid. Understand? It doesn’t
matter
what happens to me. Don’t let that shithead make you do something stupid.”

“That’s enough out of you, soggy-britches,” Vulpe said.

Kowalski stopped, frozen.

My vision doubled, then trebled. My focus began to waver. Vulpe split into two, then three carbon copies of himself.

Stay awake, asshole.

I drove my fist into my gut where the Yeren had stabbed me, and gasped. The world surged into clarity buoyed on a wave of nausea.

“That’s the spirit,” Vulpe said. “You and I both know that if Kowalski is allowed to die you gon’ be one sorry sumbitch. But it don’t gotta be ‘dat way, my brother.”

“You mentioned a deal,” I said.

“Yes,” Vulpe said. “I give you the power to make good: to do right by all those dead monster hunters swingin’ from your family tree. I’ll even throw in old ‘knobby-knuckles’ over there. In return you promise me one simple favor.”

In the red haze that clouded my senses, I imagined Kowalski shouting at the top of his lungs. Or maybe he really
was
shouting. I couldn’t tell anymore.

“What kind of favor?”

Vulpe chuckled again.

“Now that would be way too much expository dialogue, Mr. Chekhov; me standing here gloating as I reveal my devious plans while you figure out how to thwart them. How corny is that?”

Vulpe seemed to grow taller. The corpse-light in his eyes flared star-bright as he drew near.

“Let’s call it an act of good will; one to be redeemed at a later date. See, you’ve got potential that you haven’t even dreamed of, O-dog. I just want to see that potential realized before the Feasting Time.”

Juno had mentioned the Feasting Time as well. Something about those words stirred a pulsating terror in my gut. Black wings beat the shadows around me.

“What is that?” I said. “Feasting Time?”

Vulpe made a noise like a gameshow buzzer.

“Thanks for playing, but that subject is a ‘No Fly zone,’ comprende?”

Everyone I’d met along the strange journey to that moment rose up in my mind, shouting from the shadows of my confusion.

“Obadiah,” Marcus’s shade intoned. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Let him go.”

He’s dying, Marcus
.

“Everybody dies, son,” Marcus said. “It’s Kowalski’s Day. Let him go. You’re playing with forces you don’t understand.”

But Kowalski lay dying at my feet.

And I had the chance to make things right.

“Well, what say you, O-dog?”

I shoved the shouts of horror and condemnation away, consigned them to whatever destiny lay over the emerald horizon. I would decide my course, and no one else.

“I accept.”

Vulpe’s eyes ignited. Curling streamers of emerald force rolled heavenward like the smoke from a conflagration.

“That’s my boy.”

There was a viridescent burst of light that faded swiftly, leaving me momentarily dazzled. The light was physical, possessing both weight and density. It clung to the insides of my eyelids. It hurt, like dozens of invisible millipedes crawling over my skin, creeping beneath my flesh.

When the pain faded, I opened my eyes.

Vulpe was gone.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“What?”

We were back among the pews. Sandra Woo was staring at me. Kowalski lay unmoving where she’d left him on the floor.