Forsaken (3 page)

“Aren’t you a little short for a storm trooper?” I mumbled dryly. He laughed and held on to my hand longer than was professional. I turned to Cyrus. The situation wasn’t as juicy as I’d originally hoped. “I’ve got to run.”

“Be safe, please. And that thing you’ve got hidden under your shirt isn’t going to help you.”

“Is it a tiny alien? That shit’s serious,” Luke joked. I laughed in my belly but didn’t let it come out in a sound.

“I like this one.” I wagged my thumb in his direction and walked out into the sun. An hour ago, I’d have felt safer standing in the light. After learning there are awful little beasties hiding in every nook and cranny, I felt safe nowhere. “Try not to die, eh.” I patted the new security guy on his thick shoulder.

I made my way past them and out into the light. The doors shut behind me and I wondered how long it would be until I would have to kill the poor kid for some unspeakable treachery. There was a chance he was one of the good guys, like me. Those days of good and bad, black and white, were gone. The lines between had been smudged with blood and mud. Luke may have been one of the good guys, but I sure as fuck wasn’t.

I left Embrace hours before its dramatic ‘New Management’ reopening, but the show had already begun. Out front, two workers in black polo shirts and nametags hefted a large vinyl banner from their utility van toward the entrance. Even if I would’ve stayed behind and grilled Cyrus for hours about every last detail, it wouldn’t have mattered; he had his hands full with Primus bullshit. He said he’d be there, but that outlook appeared bleaker with each passing day. 

“I need to find better friends,” I said as I pulled the creaky door of my Geo shut.

“Living friends would be a wonderful addition to your cast of characters.”

I’m not Sylvia
fucking
Brown. Be useful or move the fuck on.

Chapter 3

Lupe’s shop looked a little sad with the jumbles of ticker paper balled up in the cracks and crevasses of the foundation, like a party long lost. Not unlike my life. There was a distinct possibility I was a little sad-looking, too.

The cheap sign, which hung on the door, read ‘Closed’, but I knew better. I knew there was a one-eyed bitch hiding out in the back just waiting for some jackass like me to hand over their money or their soul for her remedies. The street was fairly vacant that time of the morning on a weekday, a contrasting difference to the last time I’d stood in front of the shitty old building. I knocked a few times on the glass door before a familiar set of brown eyes met mine in the shadows of the magic shop. Or whatever it was.

“Closed,” Lupe’s grandson—the one who still had a head—said, muffled by the door.

“Let me see her,” I demanded. He laughed and shook his head. I felt my heart flip and my breath caught. My hand twitched with the urge to pull the gun from my waistband. “Open the door.” He shook his head again and I kicked the fucking thing. My soft Converse didn’t do much, but it rattled loudly and jarred the man on the other side of it. He didn’t seem the type to scare easily, but it seemed to me he really thought I was just some dumb valley girl in over her head.

He shook his head back and forth while he unlocked the door. It was only open an inch and I shoved at it. He held fast, but I squeezed my fat ass through any way. “Fuck, man,” he whispered.

“I don’t give a shit about your manhood.” He appeared to be genuinely upset I’d overpowered him and made it through his human blockade. “I want to see her,” I growled.

“She’s busy.” He slammed the door shut and locked it with vigor. “Sign says closed.”

“I don’t give a shit. I need her,” I said and stepped closer to the curtain, which separated the real shit from the public face.

He grabbed me by the shoulder and stopped me. Jerking away from him, I turned to shoot him a sneer. He cautiously looked around him, checking for peepers, I assumed. “Fifty bucks,” he whispered, his tone smug.

Fuck
. “I don’t have any money.” He eyed the gold class ring I wore, and I stuffed my hand behind my back. It was my dad’s. He was wearing it when he died. I thought I’d lost it forever my senior year, but I’d found it only the day before tucked back behind my dresser.

“Then I can’t help you,” he said with a shrug.

I clenched my hand into a fist, squeezed until my nails dug into the skin of my palm and considered the importance of anything Lupe could give me. The stupid thing around my neck didn’t seem to be warding off all things scary and fucked; I needed something more. I couldn’t risk walking away empty-handed. My trembling fist shook against the cold stock of my gun. My ring hand twitched and opened. The dark guy stood there in his
cholo
uniform – khaki shorts and a wifebeater – glaring at me. Waiting for me to offer up my only form of payment, he let a crooked grin pull one side of his mouth up.

My ring hand lifted the back of my cotton t-shirt. The steel was nearly hot to the touch. My body had left its mark in slippery sweat along the grip. I heard Lupe talking loudly to someone behind her secret curtain, and I grasped the butt of my pistol. My heart pounded. The man folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter. He knew I was ready to give it up, as evident by his arrogance. I tugged at the metal, which stuck to my damp skin. Pulling in a long breath, I pulled the gun from its makeshift holster.

The man’s eyes looked like dinner plates. My barrel aimed at the center of his chest, there was a sporting chance he may have shit himself. My hand shook from an overload of adrenaline. I was sure I looked like a fucking raving lunatic, aiming a gun as payment instead of falling prey to his attempted extortion. The guy lifted his hands and shook his head softly. Mine was obviously the first gun ever pointed at him.

I just popped his gunpoint cherry. At this rate, I should start notching my gun case.

I took two long steps toward the counter. The man backed away from me slowly, slamming into a rack of pretty postcards. There was a growing part of me that wanted to use his fear for my gain. Until that point I’d been too cynical for my own good, but I was inherently a good person. My head had filled with sins explained away by circumstance. At any moment, that good-versus-evil switch could flip and quite the villain I could become.

“Will this work?” I clenched my jaw and pursed my lips when the gun clanked against the glass counter.

The man looked confused. My eyes slid from his to the gun and back again. He put his hands down and took a miniature step closer to me. I slid the gun in his direction. If he wanted to shoot me, he’d have a hard time without any bullets. I had Barney Fife’d myself that morning; one bullet in the pocket, none in the clip. Theoretically, safest for everyone, the current situation notwithstanding.

He eyed me cautiously while he looked over the piece. In his hands, it could be called a
piece
and not be silly. “This legal?” he asked, and I nodded. “Has it killed anybody?”

Not technically.
“No.”
It did blast a few holes in my walls. It does nothing against the shambling dead, by the way.

He nodded, “Yeah.” Eyeing the grip, he nodded again. “Yeah, okay.” He eyed the curtain a second before he stepped behind the counter and stuffed the gun into a brown paper bag. “You gotta wait, though.” He pointed to a rusting metal folding chair tucked in the corner nearest the infamous curtain. 

My face a grimace, I didn’t dare stick my big ass in that chair, but I nodded to let him know I could handle a wait time. As if there were a
FastPass
for the trip behind the curtain. If only Lupe’s botanica were as awesome as Disneyland. The only comparison would’ve been the arm-and-a-leg prices. He disappeared behind the curtain and instantly my shoulder-angels began an epic battle over taking back my firearm.

I heard Lupe rambling on in her weathered, husky tone from the back room. The grandson guy was quiet, but I assumed he was waiting for his turn to talk. My fingers twitched, like a tick against my jeans. I bit my cheek and eyed the curtain as Lupe rambled on. As far as she knew, Dylan Hart had never walked through her fingerprinted glass door. I tapped my fingertips against my thigh. Mike had confiscated the smaller gun I liked to carry in my purse, the one I’d used to shoot Cyrus, leaving me with only one thing I knew could at least blow a hole in something. Whether or not it killed that something was entirely irrelevant.

My sneaker squeaked when I leaned forward on my toes to hear the muffled sounds from behind the curtain better. I cringed and my heart dropped into my ass, but it didn’t seem to affect the Spanglish ramblings of the old witch woman. I didn’t have time to stand around and contemplate the possible outcomes. If I was going to get my gun back, I had to move.
Now
.

As quietly and quickly as my fat little legs would carry me, I made my way to the counter. Holding the edge of it, I swiftly squeaked around the corner. There, on a small, cluttered shelf under the Formica counter, was my salvation shoved into a brown fucking bag, as if it was some kind of trash, or a can of Ripple bought at the corner store, and not a weapon by which to take life. I huffed and snagged the bag from its shelf. The crinkling was unavoidable, and I cringed with each sharp sound. I pulled the gun from the bag and shoved it back home in my waistband. The bag was obviously empty and wasn’t going to fool anyone for long. A box filled with register tape sat covered in dust on the bottom shelf, so I grabbed two and shoved them to the bottom of the bag. I rolled the top over like I’d found it and pushed it back under the counter.

Lupe’s voice broke my concentration. I stood and faster than I’d moved in far too long, I practically flew back to the rusty old chair. A pair of black Nike Cortez tennies peeked from the bottom of the curtain. I heard the man grumble something in Spanish and slang I wasn’t about to try and figure out. Without a second to waste on more steps, I let my ass lead the way and slid onto the weak metal. The legs scraped the linoleum floor when I hit and it slid a few inches. The metal held, but my composure was dangling by a thread.

My heart thudding against my chest. I held my breath when the grandson guy pushed his way through the curtains, shaking his head. “Man, this is bullshit.” He swung his arm and kicked his foot at nothing in particular. “I gotta get outta here, man.” He sucked his teeth. He wasn’t talking to me. I didn’t know or care who he was talking to, or what he was pissed off about. I just didn’t want him to look at me or behind the counter.

An older woman, who could have used a better bra, waddled from behind the curtain. She held a ratty old tissue to her nose and sniffled. She carried a few pouches of Lord knows what in one hand and an orthopedic cane in the other. I couldn’t tell if she was sick or sad. Either way, it seemed Lupe was the remedy.

Lupe called to her grandson in Spanish. I could hear something jingling from behind the curtain. The big-tittied lady handed the grandson, whose name I still couldn’t remember, a wad of money and pushed her way out the door. He shoved it into a jar, which sat on the edge of a shelf on the wall behind the counter. My heart stopped. My butt perched on the edge of the seat, one leg still kicked out from my slide home, making my gun dig into the skin on my lower back. Karma for being a shit-sucking welcher.

Pretending like everything was cool, I raised both my eyebrows at him when he looked in my direction, pointing at the curtain. Likely looking more murdery than innocent, my attempt at normalcy brought a questioning snarl to his face. I left my chair with a squeak and high-tailed it to the curtain.

The grandson stood in the doorway and held the heavy fabric for me. I eyed him as I passed and he did the same. He and I had an understanding, it seemed: I understood he was a dunce, and I hoped he understood when he realized I had no intention of ever handing over my weapon to a guy wearing knee-high socks with shorts.

With candles everywhere, the back room smelled like spicy herbs. It seemed new candles had just been stuck to the melted tops of old ones. Trinkets and charms hung from every corner and perch imaginable. Every surface was home to a jar or bowl filled with some kind of mystical substance or chicken part. I hoped it was just chicken, but wouldn’t doubt for a second it wasn’t. I couldn’t remember exactly where everything was placed the last time I’d paid a visit to that withered old woman, but the room seemed to be different, like it was a living thing, ever changing.

Lupe took up her motorized chair with a set of girthy grandma hips. Her leather apron was gone, but taking its place was a stack of dozens of strings of beads. The colors were mostly muted, natural tones, and the pattern in the beads made them seem organic, as if she’d plucked it right from the limbs of a tree. Those things were few and far between on that side of town, so it would’ve been a special tree indeed. The patch covering her mystery eye hadn’t changed. In fact, it seemed to be part of her face, the old, leathery skin a near match. 

A cigar smoldered between her thin lips. “What do you want, girl?” She held a deck of cards in her hand. Without looking at me, she laid them one by one on her lap.

“It’s not what I want.” My heart still thumped angrily against my ribs. “It’s what I
need
.” She nodded her wrinkly old head but otherwise didn’t acknowledge my comment. “I’ve lost so much I can’t lose anymore. I’m not strong enough to do this on my own. I don’t know enough about the world to survive it. I need you to help me survive. I need your help to keep the last of what I have left alive. Please,” I begged, so pathetically I even disgusted myself.

She seemed to ignore me completely. One at a time, she placed a card precariously on her legs, their width creating a perfect table. I waited a few full minutes for her to respond, but got nothing. Still wearing her last
favor
she’d given to me, I didn’t think it was a good idea to push and shove my way into her graces.

“Look, I know I can’t offer much, but–" I started to plead but she cut me off.

“Aye, shut up, girl. I know why you’re here,” she grumbled and watched the cards unfold a story of some kind on her lap. “I can help you.” She nodded.

“Real help? Not some big hunk of metal to tie around my neck?” I asked warily with slitted eyes.

“That hunk of metal is the only reason you are standing here. It was your last defense against that little devil who mingled with your soul.” She fiddled with the lid of a jar, ignoring her cards for the first time. “I’ll help. I like you alive,” she said nonchalantly. “You are stronger than you think, but not strong enough to survive on your own.”

I looked down at my toes. She was right; I was going to die in this Hell. The tips of my Converse were scuffed and there was a little tear starting were the canvas met the rubber. I’d run for my life in those shoes. I had run and they had carried me. I’d wiped Tatum’s blood off those scuffed toes. Looking at my war-torn shoes, it became more obvious how fucked my life truly was. It would never go back. I would never be Dylan Hart, journalist, cynic-extraordinaire again. I didn’t know if I’d ever be anything again.

A dark spot on the concrete where I stood caught my eye; it was almost black in the candlelight. I tapped my toe over it, but it didn’t stick. The spot was a stain. I let my eyes scope the area. The spot around my toes spread from me to a foot in front of Lupe’s chair and just about as wide. I realized I was standing in the bloodstain of Zephyrinus, the grandson I’d kidnapped and unwittingly brought to his own beheading.