The Sword of Michael - eARC (4 page)

Chapter 6

Dillon Tracy is a half-Iranian, half-Irish madman cursed with Persian fire and Irish moodiness, given to drink and violence, and more than mildly obsessed with weapons. He ran a completely illegal firearms business out of his home and covered the proceeds with a part-time job as a spray-painter in an auto body shop. He’s my go-to guy for weapons and accessories, and he’s the best man—in this world—to watch my back when things got iffy.

He’s a boon companion and my go-to guy for long meandering conversations over drinks and cigars as well.

Dillon is long-faced, with furrowed wrinkles running from his eyes down to the corners of his mouth; tall and lanky with jet black hair worn long, an olive complexion that made his racial background a mystery to the uninformed, surprisingly mild eyes for a man with his history of violence and a deep voice all out of proportion to his lanky frame.

We’d met when he came to me as a client, looking to rid himself of a Viet Nam Special Forces veteran who’d passed on and attached to Dillon when he was a Special Forces operator in Iraq, drawn by the fear and anger that had been the dead man’s last emotional resonance when he passed over. After that clearing, which had been a long one, Dillon and I became friends.

He’s a great sounding board, and beloved by Coyote and Badger in the Spirit Realms—powerful and cunning warrior allies. He was grounded in the Middle World, and Creator knows that sometime I needed that just as badly as an armed friend at my back, and more to the point, he was completely comfortable believing in and working with the other realities that intersect with ours.

So when I needed a gunfighter—or a good laugh—his was the door I turned up on.

He tipped his second bottle of Harp’s lager at me. “Shooting zombies? You don’t need special bullets for that?”

“Just plain old Remington Golden Sabers,” I said.

“Good round. I thought you’d need a silver bullet and a blessing.”

“That’s vampires and werewolves.”

He twisted his mouth in eloquent distaste. “Don’t like fucking with them.”

“Me, neither. I try not to if I don’t have to.”

“Word.”

He chugged down his beer. “Want another?”

“I’m good,” I said.

“What you got going, Marius?” Dillon said. “You going to need me?”

I laughed at the barely concealed eagerness in his voice. “What makes you think I need you, bro?”

“I know you. I’m down. What’s up?”

This love of the fight was a trait that I loved and endeared him to his spirit guides, warrior spirits all.

“If you’re not busy, I’d like you to watch my back while I do some work.”

“Is this the kind of back-watching I need holy water for, or will a Glock do?”

“Both.”

His grin widened as though a winch pulled on his mouth. He tossed the bottle up, spinning, caught it on the descent.

“That’s the kind of Work I live for,” he said.

“You’re quite insane,” I observed.

“Takes one to know one.”

“To know me is to love me.”

“Yeah, whatever. Tell it to Jolene, you lucky bastard. So. When do we start?”

“Tonight. After dark.”

He laughed. “Isn’t it always dark when we start?”

* * *

I retraced my chase from the night of the zombie. Dillon trailed behind me, his head swiveling in the practiced scan of an infantry man, leaving me free to concentrate on the subtle feelings that came to me as I followed the energetic track of my encounter. Every place has a vibration and a certain energy to it. Events and living beings leave an energetic imprint on top of that vibration. Magic—more accurately, in this instance, sorcery—leaves a distinctive imprint. It’s like a foul odor, but more than anything else it’s a feeling as though the air itself had become oily and roiled with darkness that cloyed and clung.

I wanted to backtrack to the grave where the dead man had been animated by dark will. That would be the jumping off place for a journey back along the time-line to the origin of the sorcery, to see who—or what—I was dealing with. Clearly it was something that knew me and had a connection with me. That left me with many questions: This life…or another? Human or not? Souled or unsoiled? Being or thought-form?

And what was the connection with the human-looking thing that had driven past Jolene and I at the Ginger Hop?

The answers were here, somewhere. In Middle World Work, the world of magic and curses and sorcery, there’s no substitute for walking the ground and sensing the energy directly, watching the movie unfold in real time with shamanic vision.

We started where I’d ended it, in the graveyard. The energy was clear here. The presence of Michael and the Mighty Warriors of Light on Earth will clear even the worst place. But the lingering essence was enough for me to track…

…random images and thoughts, becoming clearer…

…past life? No, this life…but knew you before, knows the work that you’ve done and the Dark Work you’ve undone on other’s behalf…Son of the Light, Warrior of the Light…who?…

My White Tiger appeared and whispered, “Follow me, Marius…”

…and I follows, the journey unfolding before me, as though I were walking like an apparition through an empty movie theater up onto the screen of a sepia-tinted film, and I was following the trace of the undead, like a ragged strip of black cloth frayed and fading into a light gray, still dissipating from the brilliant white light of the Warriors of Light…back to the grave it rose from and my White Tiger stood before me and bloomed with shielding Light…I watched a Dark Portal open, not into the Void, but the Dark Void beyond that…another dimension entirely…something there, something reaching through, orchestrating, a puppet master working the way the Dark Forces worked best…find a portal in the Middle World, a human with a resonance for and with the Dark…utilize them…obsess, possess, influence—the lean, we called it, the ability to lean on someone energetically—something I’d undone…coming back, returning for vengeance…

“Wait,” Tigre whispered. “It’s coming forward…”

The black beyond the Darkness altered, shifted shape…like a face pressed up against a sheer sheet of black rubber, rising up out of the fabric of Darkness itself, a face carved in long obsidian plates…

“Shaman…” it whispered.

My White Tiger stood in front of me. A huge Black Crow settled beside her, Black and White illuminated from within with the Divine White Light of the Creator, protecting me from the chill that roiled from that face.

“Don’t speak,” Tigre said. “Only listen…”

There was an unspoken dialogue, telepathic…an array of images passing before my shamanic vision: beautiful tall green crystal towers toppling and shattering beneath a wall of water, a huge tidal wave; tiny figures garbed in white and green and silver tumbling in the water, a temple collapsing around a huge red crystal shaped like a prism; a wave of Dark energy riding the wave, overcoming the heroic few holding space for the Light, holding the Darkness back…

The War.

The Sons of Light against The Sons of Darkness. The followers of the Law of One against the followers of Belial.

…and now I returned…

“Marius?” Dillon said. “Marius?”

I stood at the lip of an open grave.

“Did I just walk over that?” I said.

“Nice,” Dillon said. “You okay? What you got?”

I looked up at the night sky. Clear. A thousand stars gleaming above the city lights. An endless eternity of night. Somewhere out there, beyond space as we mere mortals called it, something pressed against the fabric of our reality and slouched towards us, ready to rend its way out of its dark womb.

“Long story, bro,” I said.

“Have a smoke long, or get the hell out of here and go have coffee long?”

“Coffee long.”

“Then let’s do like the cowboys and Indians and get the hell out of Dodge.”

“Something I need to do.…”

I pulled a half-full Advil bottle out of my pocket and rattled it. Dillon opened his mouth, then closed it. I chanted the opening words of a Lakota power song gifted to me by First In Front as I closed my eyes and called in the Light to illuminate and clear this space of the lingering essence of evil that had been perpetrated here. I continued to rattle and felt the Light bring its brilliance into me, and felt the Darkness lifting from the roots of the grass and from the disturbed earth of the grave. When it was gone, I pulled out my tobacco pouch and offered a pinch to the spirits here, and closed with a simple prayer of, “Thank you, Creator God.”

I took a deep breath. “Now we can go.”

Dillon looked around, scanned the graveyard.

“Dude,” he said. “Can’t you afford a real rattle?”

* * *

Gigi’s Coffee Shop on 36th is one of my fave coffee hangs in a town full of excellent coffee hangs. It’s open and airy with Ikea tables that are the right height to work at or lean on, the food is extraordinary and cheap, the coffee excellent, and the service is committed to creating an open, welcoming atmosphere. It feels like Home.

Dillon and I sat at a back table, hunched over big mugs of the house French Roast. Outside people walked their dogs, bought newspapers, enjoyed the night air; cars flowed by.

“The story?” Dillon prompted.

“How’s your belief system tonight?”

He actually considered that. “That changed forever the day you worked on me. I don’t waste time arguing with my own experience. You know, you told me something that day. You remember? You said, ‘Dillon, you might not believe in Spirit, but Spirit believes in you.’”

He grinned and tilted his coffee mug at me. “So what I believe is kind of irrelevant.”

“Your belief is never irrelevant, Dillon.”

“There you go getting all shamanic on me, dude. What I’m trying to say in a fancy way is that whether I know it or believe it, if
you’ve
seen it, it’s good enough for me. Does that work?”

Dillon’s trust is not given lightly. A man with his background didn’t live as long as he had by being naive or overly trusting.

“Thank you, Dillon.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “This humble shaman guy thing wastes time, you know? I get it. Cut to the chase and tell me the story.”

Dillon is grounded and solid and the man I trust to watch my back. But after all these years, I’m still cautious about opening up the door to the other realities to those who didn’t work with them everyday. A shaman’s job is to cross over into those realms and bring back information, rescue souls and soul fragments, carry the dead into the Light, do battle with Dark Forces when necessary, undo sorcery, deposes and extract. I did all those things. And a big part of the job was to journey and return with information and share it.

So I needed to tell the story.

“You know about Atlantis?” I said.

“I read the comic book.”

“There’s an Atlantis comic book?”

“Lots of ’em. Get on with the story.”

“Here’s the comic book version, then,” I said. “Before Atlantis fell, there was a war. A revolution. It was led by the Followers of the Law of One, the Sons and Daughters of Light, against the Followers of Belial. It was a war between the Power of Light and the Power of Darkness. It was a war like any war: battles, heroic stands, bitter betrayal, horrifying defeats……and magic. Atlantis’s spiritual leadership communed directly with the Creator’s Light. There was a giant crystal in the central Temple of Light that channeled the Light of the Creator directly to those who spoke with the Creator, the Priests and Priestesses, and the Light powered everything—airships, homes, moved stones and parted the water—at the direction of the Light Keepers. The Sons of Belial tried to turn the power of the Great Crystal against the Sons of Light, and that conflict shattered the island’s foundation and changed the energetic grid of the Earth itself. The survivors of the Sons of Light escaped from the harbors; behind them, in the Temple of Light, the Priestesses of Light who had the closest connection with Mother Earth drew on all their power to hold back the tide—but their power couldn’t hold it. The wave fell, and shattered the land, and scattered the escaping boats of the Few far and wide.”

I saw that great wave shattering the towers, the brave few who’d returned to rescue the Priestesses crushed in the wave, the boats propelled away by the power of magic and the wind, just ahead of the huge wave of destruction.

“What happened, as a result of the Fall, was that certain Powers were released and set loose in the world,” I said. “Key players from the Other Realms, here in the Middle World, some of them energetic, some of them in the flesh. And the Battle continues. There was never any resolution. It’s the Dark against the Light. If you’re a Warrior of the Light, a Light Worker, if you go that way, you’re a magnet for your counterparts, the Dark Workers…”

“So that’s you. I get that. But how does the zombie thing play?” Dillon said.

“Someone who knew me before, someone with a grudge, has come through. Or is coming through. They’re working through proxies. They may be ready to cross into the flesh…or they might be here already.”

“Can you journey on it? Find out who they are? Give us a target?”

I grinned at my friend, leaning forward in his chair, the fire and love of battle in his eyes.

“I intend to,” I said.

Dillon drained the last of his coffee. “Sucks to be you, dude. Just saying.”

“There’s always an upside, Dillon.”

Sometimes it’s best not to burden your friends with unpleasant truths.

Chapter 7

Hawks don’t flock. Neither do shaman.

In the indigenous shamanic tradition, there may be more than one shaman in a community. Each one would be known for a specialty. Often there was competition, but shamanism is measured by actual results, not advertising, despite the best attempt of the new generation shamanic practitioners, often products of expensive training programs, to run their Spiritual practices like modern day businesses complete with ads like “Shamanic healing done here! Soul retrievals done! One-Month Shaman Course, with Certificate!”

Native American medicine culture, especially the outspoken Lakota with whom I felt affinity, condemned the modern practices and coined the term “plastic shaman” or “plastic medicine man.”

The old rules still apply. You shall know a shaman by his work, not by his words. It’s up to the community to evaluate his work and measure the results; shamanic practice is as pragmatic and practical as a plumber’s—and should be evaluated the same way.

There is a very loose flung network of practitioners, both in Spirit and through the modern mediums of phone, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, that attempts to organize and consolidate contact information and referrals. Most of us have our own private network, a shamanic list of friends and practitioners we call on when we need work done on ourselves, back up, or questions answered.

I called one of my favorites.

Sabrina Murphy is a badass biker chick. She’s drop dead gorgeous: killer violet eyes, a body bursting out of ragged jeans and wife-beater tops like a teenage boy’s midnight fantasy, pale skin covered with tattoos and more than a few scars from bar room brawls. She’s Cherokee and one of the most powerful shamanic healers, with a particular gift for divination journeys into the Other Realms. I called her my Shamanic CIA. Nothing was hidden from her for long. She’d come to the attention of the government’s military psychics, like most of us do. What they called remote viewing we called Middle World journeying. When they came round offering her big bucks, she told them to fuck off and went back to her work. They tried to teach her a lesson with their technologically enhanced remote influencing; she kicked their asses in the Other Realms and, rumor had it, left several of them injured when their machines backfired on them.

My kind of woman, all the way around.

Her voice, still sleepy at this time of day, was colored with a whiskey and cigarette rasp. “What did you get, dude?”

“It’s mixed, sister.”

“Cabal?”

“Could be. There’s that whole Atlantean connection.”

“Piss off some sorcerers lately?”

“Daily.”

She laughed a deep and throaty and hot-as-hell laugh. If it wasn’t for Jolene—who loved this Wild Woman—I might take my life in my hands and dally with her.

Truth is, I probably wouldn’t survive it.

“You got that right, Marius,” she said. “You got that whole ‘fuck you and the world’ thing going on. I thought you were kinder and gentler now that you’ve reached the age of wisdom.”

“I’m not getting any wiser, darling.”

“Born dumb, huh? That’s all right, baby. I love you anyway.”

“Thank the Creator for that.”

“I think him every day,” she said.

A long thoughtful draw on her cigarette, audible through the phone.

“So,” she said. I’ll look at this today. Get back to you. I’ll tell you my first hit right now…old curse, Marius. Past life, not ancestral, but someone…or some thing…from before. I get Cabal, too. You got to watch out for the psychotronics and those convenient accidents they’re fond of.”

“No lie, GI.”

“Yeah. Watch yourself. I’ll get back to you later…cell phone?”

“Yeah.”

“You should get you a prepay, baby. Cabal likes to…”

“I know.”

“’Kay, baby. Watch yourself.”

She hung up.

I powered down my cell phone and took the battery out. Cabal. That really complicates things. The Cabal is where top secret technology, hard-core sorcery, and the amoral direction of nonhuman entities and willing humans intersect. It’s cloaked in government secrecy, funded with black budget dollars and put to the service of the hidden bureaucrats who ruled from behind the puppets they slipped into place every election.

Not a pretty picture.

The Dark Forces manifest here in Middle World in all sorts of ways—the thoughtless cruelty of one human towards another, the efficient predation of a serial killer, the ruthless exploitation of Mother Earth—to hold humans in thrall through the machinery of governance, all to quash the greatest gift of the Creator: Free Will.

Freedom.

Made me want to go watch a Mel Gibson movie.

* * *

I had no clients today. That happens. My practice isn’t one that lent itself to a lot of return customers. Depossession is like surgery. You go in and get the work done, help them through their recovery, and move onto the next. That’s why I keep a list of practitioners to refer clients out to; I’m problem oriented and once I’ve done the work I’m supposed to do, I’m glad to hand the client onto those better able to further facilitate their recovery.

Right now I was working for myself, which meant I was working pro bono.

For the public good.

Lovely.

I checked my bank balances, which were bottomed out. I had to make a withdrawal from my back up stash in a lockbox I kept in the closet of my bedroom. There were a few hundreds in there which left me good for right now. I took a handful of twenties and tucked them into my empty wallet, then set off for a longish walk down to Lake Harriet and then back over to Gigi’s for some coffee and head-clearing. It’s a nice long walk, though circuitous: from my place off Nicollet down the greenway along Minnehaha Creek, around Harriet, then over to Bryant.

And I like to walk.

I was only just down the greenway when I heard my guides whisper
Good time to be aware, Marius
and then I saw First In Front just off to my right and felt a nudge against my lower leg. My White Tiger was with me.

I touched my elbow to my side and hissed when it pressed against meat instead of the comforting plastic of my Glock 19. I’d left it at home, under the bed, an oversight I was guilty of more than once when preoccupied with Other Realm work, and an oversight Dillon had chastised me about more than once.

I took a quick look around.

Nothing.…

Maybe.

One of the things a hunter knows is how to think like the hunted. When your practice involves the hunting of dark things, you learn that sometimes, maybe all the time, you get looked at.
The more you see, the more you are seen.
The Dark Forces work through humans as well as directly. I bore scars from some of the encounters with them I’d had. Protection and caution is all part of my game.

I pay attention to “maybe.”

Like the man slouched down in an idling car studiously not looking at me. Waiting for somebody?

Maybe.

Maybe for me.

I don’t like giving the initiative away, though sometimes the counterpunch is best. I crossed the street and headed straight for the car. The driver pulled away, not meeting my eyes. Newish Ford sedan, dealer’s temporary plates.

Hmmm.

I felt the gentle nudge of my invisible—to anyone else’s eyes—White Tiger.

…Yes…

First In Front appeared in full war-fighter regalia: leather overshirt and breeches, a simple headband with coup feathers, a tomahawk and long knife in his hands.

“It’s like that, huh?” I said.

He nodded, a sharp bob of the head.

Lovely.

I kept walking and cut across the parking lot behind the Soi Capitale Bank. A Jeep Cherokee slammed to a stop and the doors opened. The driver was familiar—square head, pale skin, close cropped black hair, deep sunk dark eyes that darted away when I looked at him. Three others got out. Big old farm boys by the look of them, moving with the jerky lock step of the possessed or influenced, in battered Carhart jackets with feed caps pulled low over their eyes.

My cell phone rang.

No time for that. I hurried across the parking lot. The three meat-puppets turned to follow me. Dillon taught me the first rule of street fighting a long time ago: You won’t be in one if you’re not there. But if you have to be there, make them come to you on ground you choose, not them.

In laymen’s terms, run like hell. Or in this instance, like Hell was after you.

Running and looking back is never a good idea; either run, or look back. If you do both, then you’re likely to run full tilt into a parked Ford F-150 and knock yourself on your ass—like I did. That gave the shambling meat-puppets a chance to gain on me.

It also gave me a moment to gather my energy, shift my consciousness and call my spirit allies. In my mind’s eye, I saw a whirling shape, like a conch shell in motion, twisting and then opening like a tunnel and through it came some help…

The first meat puppet flailed his arms and clawed at his eyes as a Crow that only he (and I) could see flew into his face, turning him; a White Tiger bounded into the second, batting him down with her massive paws; the last closed on me as I scrambled to my feet. I ducked between his wild swing (and I saw the look of terror and violation on his face, the look of the remotely controlled or possessed) and that sheer human terror held me back, for just an instant, till my self-preservation instincts drove me to stomp the outside of his leg and put him down.

Remotely controlled.

Demonic Dark Forces or the Cabal? Or both? Either way, the controller would be near by. I looked at the black-haired blockhead sitting in his Jeep.

First In Front appeared in front of me and grinned back over his shoulder.
Follow me…

“Okay, Infantry…” I said.

And I did. When in doubt, attack head-on. Hoka hey!

I ran right at the Jeep. The controller, if that’s what he was, widened his eyes and slammed the Jeep into gear. He hit the gas, peeling backwards away from me. First In Front
flew
at him, then stopped as though he’d hit a pane of glass. The Jeep backed into traffic and then roared away. First In Front looked at me.

“No,” I said. A vehicle in the hands of a panicked pawn was as dangerous as a firearm in a crowd. The three farm hands were sitting up, looking around with the confused look of accident victims.

“It’s lifted,” First In Front said. “They went with the controlling one.”

“That’s no sorcerer,” I said.

“No,” Tigre said. She sat and licked one paw. Burt circled and landed in a flurry of black feathers.

“We should go,” the Crow said. “You hurt that one, and he’s going to get his head clear quick.”

“Who’s controlling?” I said.

“Hidden,” the Three said.

I nodded. “Let’s go find him.”

I jogged away, First In Front and Tigre bounding along with me, Burt flying overwatch, leaving the dazed meat-puppets behind.

My cell phone beeped from an unanswered call. It was from Sabrina.