Authors: Rhys Ford
Min had dropped Kismet as soon as they arrived, her thoughts only on the youngest of the Four. Min’s teeth stopped chattering, her cheeks flushed red with the blood rushing back under her skin, relief washing over her tight face.
Now awake, Mal nodded reassuringly when she lifted his head to check on him. He swallowed hard, trying to get air into his tortured lungs. His vision blurred from the pain, but he searched for Kismet, trying to peer around Min.
Kismet stood, although his body seemed ill equipped to do so. He gave his bruised hands a quick inspection, confirming other fears. Bits of gravel and dirt filled the raw scrapes on his palms, watery blood oozing from a deep gash along the inside of his arm. His legs hadn’t fared any better, his beat-up jeans torn anew around his knees, the edges matted with dried blood. His skin tore beneath the denim as he moved, and Kismet hissed at the slight burn.
A bit of conversation jerked Kismet around, his knee giving out under him. Catching his already damaged hand on a nearby wall, he grunted with the pain, trying to determine where he was. The air around him felt heavier than San Diego’s, a ripeness to it that he couldn’t place. It held the promise of a hard rain, none of the parched brown scent of the high desert. Tight buildings around the dead-end side street echoed, a foreign bounce of fluid tones and round vowels, very different from the Latino dialects he’d grown up with. Kismet shook off the last bit of fog hanging on his brain, his thoughts fuzzy and distant.
The other end of the alley was closed off by a meshed puzzle of structures, wooden lean-tos cobbled together in a dizzying architectural array. The woman glared at him from her vigil over Mal, her face hard with distaste. He recognized the blond, barely. The man talking to the Asian man stared at him from a short distance away, their conversation too low for Kismet to hear.
“Have you spoken to Auntie Kay yet?” Death asked, his watchful gaze following Kismet’s slow, painful movements. So far the boy didn’t look like he was going to bolt, but the human had run before. Neither he nor Ari had the time to chase Kismet up and down Stockton Street.
“I told her Mal was hurt. She’s willing to heal him if she can.” Ari jerked his head toward a ramble of walls, planks of wood set at odd angles and decorated with gold-painted wood medallions. “She’s older than I remembered. I don’t think she’s going to be alive much longer. I didn’t realize it had been that long since we’d seen her last.”
The back-alley shop Ari pointed at was bright, despite the darkness. Tattered red tassels hung from green plastic beads, carved to simulate precious jade figurines, mold seams bled white from San Francisco’s harsh weather. Faded navy fabric hung halfway down beside the main doorway’s frame, split into four panels and loosely hemmed. Drops of white paint dribbled through Chinese calligraphy, marring the already indistinct pale yellow characters. A curtain of bamboo beads rattled, a wrinkled liver-spotted hand sliding them aside.
A stooped-over Chinese woman hobbled out from the dark interior of the ramshackle cramped storefront, folds of loose skin flapping under her pointed chin. Splotches of bright pink scalp shone from under her thinning white hair, tufts standing straight up from her fingers pulling nervously at the sparse strands. Peering out from under a drooping brow, she narrowed her already thinned eyes nearly shut, spotting the tall, slender Horseman standing midway down the alley.
“Death is not welcome here,” the woman shrieked at the Four, her high-pitched voice carrying over onto the main street.
Pointing a bony finger shakily at the eldest of the Horseman, her lips cracked in the cold of the shadow-drenched alley. A black dribble of long-steeped hallucinogenic herbal tea slipped from the corner of her mouth, her tongue darting out quickly to lap up the trickle. The drugs in the costly leaves kept the shadows from her mind, her consciousness bolstered by the chemical walls she’d erected around it. The tea stained the furrows of her flesh, the chapped patches of her lips nearly ebon from years of sipping at the brew.
Hobbling a few steps forward, Kay glared up at Death, her chin trembling at the sight of the dreaded Horseman. “You are not welcome in my home or my shop. I will not have Death walking near me. Not now. Not ever.”
“We are here for Pestilence’s sake,” Death replied smoothly, falling into a formal Wu, his words rounded with an archaic tone. “I will not cross your threshold.”
“I want to bargain for healing him,” she responded, her eyes shifting to the youngest Horseman.
Mal stood with Min’s assistance, his legs shaky beneath him.
“I want more time here, a longer life.”
“I can’t give you that, Auntie,” Death said. Shades often bargained with him, hoping he could somehow return them to their expired flesh shells and they could continue their living. It had been a long time since a living human attempted to deal with their truncated mortality. “I can’t do anything to fix your soul into a dying body.”
“There has to be a way.” The ancient woman stared around Death’s slender form at the young artist Min kept herded in front of them. “Who is he, then? You’ve given him more life. He’s one of you. There should only be four, but there’s five. I can see that. Death is not known for his lies.”
“I don’t know what happened to make him how he is,” Death said, his hands spread wide, palms raised. “Who he is isn’t as important as Pestilence’s life. War asked you to help, and you agreed. Can it be said that Shen On-Sang doesn’t keep her word when given?”
“No! You do not speak my name!” Her hiss rattled the cough lodged in her chest. “Never my true name. Not from your lips. I always keep my word when given. And I’ve given it.”
Muscles contracting with stress, the old woman fell into a fit, trying to dislodge the irritation in her lungs. Sienna-flecked spittle hit the cement surround of her door stoop, the wraithlings clinging to the porch finials craning to reach the moisture while avoiding Death’s advance. The eldest Horseman nearly touched the woman before she jerked clear of his outstretched hand, her crinkled eyes wide with terror.
“No! You will not touch me before it is my time to go!” Her voice rose with her fear, a siren call that lured the shadows even closer. Hands shaking, the woman pressed at her chest, trying to calm the rattle lodged deep in her lungs. “War, bring the boy in with you. I’ll look at him away from Death’s prying eyes.”
“I can walk, Auntie,” Mal grunted when Min’s arm came up around his waist, the small Horseman carrying his weight on her shoulder. Her stubborn face was set firm, daring Mal to refuse her help.
Smiling at the gesture, Mal bent over and whispered into her ear, “Thanks, Min.”
“I’ll stay out here with the boy,” Death whispered to Ari when the blond Horseman came up behind him, a wide palm on the small of Death’s back. The elderly woman hobbled into her shop, turning her back on the Four. “He doesn’t look like he’s in any shape to run. I know I’m certainly in no shape to chase him.”
“If he does run, just shout. I’ll chase him down for you,” Ari said. “Maybe even stab him to keep him in one place.”
Ari’s fingers curved over Death’s jaw, the ball of Ari’s thumb smoothing over the silvered line running down the other’s nose and cheek. Leaning in, he dared a tiny sip of Death’s mouth, laving at the corner where their lips met. The elder Horseman leaned into the affectionate touch, allowing himself the barest of comforts from Ari’s kiss. Pulling away before he lost himself in Death’s taste, Ari allowed himself a small smile, touching foreheads with the other as he turned.
“I’ll definitely yell for you,” Death agreed easily. “Go on. She will want to take care of Mal quickly and get us off of her doorstep. We’re bad for her business. Even the most obtuse of humans will avoid this alley while we’re here.”
“We’re always bad for anyone’s business,” Ari teased, stepping clear of the other Horseman. Glancing at the young man they’d fought to secure, Ari pointed at Kismet’s chest, stabbing at the air with a firm menace. “Stay put, little boy. If I have to find you, I swear on Death’s head that I will take a very long time tearing you apart.”
Crossing through the open threshold, Ari wrinkled his nose at the acrid scents inside the woman’s cramped shop. The old woman’s apothecary had too much of the Veil lying in its clusters of muddied potions and sawed-off animal paws dangling from low ceiling beams. The plump black pads of a monkey’s fingers brushed against Ari’s cheek, the feel too close to a corpse’s emaciated touch for the Horseman’s liking.
“Don’t start without me. I’ve waited a long time to carve Mal up like a goose,” Ari called out, finding no one in the main room. A heavy powdery odor worked into his nostrils, and he fought not to sneeze, wondering if anyone would notice if he blew his nose and left a trail of snot on the counter. Min yelled for him, a thin sound filtering through the debris that cluttered near a doorframe at the back of the shop. Stepping over boxes, clearing a wider path with his feet, Ari entered the woman’s living space behind the counter.
Mal lay back on a futon, its thick padding covered with a plastic tarp and towels. Bare to the waist, the young Horseman’s chest bore evidence of the reality caught beneath his skin. Long streaks of purpled red angrily pulsed along the ridges of his rib cage, the edge of one pectoral muscle blackened from poisoned blood running through his veins. A cicatrix scarred over the bullet hole, the rounded smooth scar nearly watery in appearance.
Kay pressed at the edges of the wound, watching the skin slowly bounce back. Clucking at the Horseman, she leaned over to grab at her teacup, sloshing the pitch-oil brew over her fingers. Gulping the cup nearly dry, the woman swallowed hard, focusing on the Veiled gathered in her presence. Ari crossed over to the woman’s side, taking the cup from her shaking hands.
“Don’t drink too much of that, Auntie,” Ari warned her. “We need you at least able to see for this.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped back, her blackened teeth peeking up from her moistened lips. “I have to be able to see him clearly. The tea helps with that. Keeps all of the other things away. And don’t you tell me how to do this, pox on humanity that you are. I’ve been doing this sort of thing since….”
“If you were going to say since before I was born”—Ari cocked one eyebrow, a smug smile over his wide mouth—“then I’d have to argue that point. Just do what you have to do, old woman, and we’ll leave you be.”
“I get to keep anything I take out of him, right?”
Auntie Kay’s cunning eyes roamed over the injured Horseman’s body, Mal’s startled look toward Ari getting him nothing more than a reassuring grimace from Ari.
“Blood and the bullet,” Min replied. “And whatever reality you can find inside of him.”
“That will dissipate as soon as it finds a path outside of his body.” Auntie Kay spat in disgust, a wet splotch on the dirty floor. “It’s only solid inside of him. Won’t do me any good unless I carve it out with chunks of his meat and blood around it.”
“How about if we just stick to the blood and bullet?” Ari said. “I’m not going to let you go around digging for spare kidneys. The kid needs them to pee.”
“The kid happens to like peeing,” Mal remarked, still slightly unnerved at the woman’s eagerness to cut him open. A wave of pain rocketed through his lungs, leaving him gasping for air. Min’s hands clenched down on his bare shoulders, her fingers biting into his tanned skin. “Min, you’re hurting me as much as the bullet is. Let go a bit.”
“Did you take a long time killing the son of a bitch that shot Mal?” Ari asked Min.
“I didn’t do it.” She shook her head, chewing on her lower lip. To her eyes, it looked as if Mal was bleeding out, his life soaking through his clothes. “The boy did it. With a piece of cement or something.”
“No shit? The kid?” Ari whistled under his breath. “Well damn, sounds like the kid’s got some balls. So if Mal dies, we can just use him as our new Pestilence.”
“Go to hell, Ari.” Mal winced as the pain traveled through his abdomen.
“We should get started.” The old woman cleared her throat, swallowing a mouthful of drug-laden spit.
Ari made a face at the selection of knives and probing instruments Kay arranged on a low table near the futon, the edges shimmering dully in the scant glow tossed off by the exposed light bulbs dangling from the ceiling. “I have a small whetstone on me. I can sharpen those for you, Auntie.”
“Pain is good for him. It will cleanse the wound better.” Kay shrank beneath Ari’s piercing stare. “Fine, if his cut festers because the pain didn’t wash it clean, then it will be on your head.”
“Thanks, Ari,” Mal muttered, riding out another gut-wrenching wave of pain. “It’ll be ironic if I die of infection, right?”
“No, still pathetic,” Min snorted, brushing the hair from the younger man’s forehead.
The elder Horseman made short work of the dull-edged scalpels, the gritty stone wet with his spit to lubricate the sharpening. As the old woman finished her preparations, Ari set the knives back down on the cloth, then wiped the blades clean on Min’s shirt.
“There. Now all you need is for Death to kiss the boo-boo when this crazy old woman is done with you, and all of us will have helped you get out of the mess you got yourself into.” Ari crouched down next to Mal’s head, the youngest Horseman’s face paling beneath the growing anguish working into his limbs. Reaching over, Ari grabbed Mal’s hand, crushing the younger Horseman’s fingers with his own. “Feel me here, Cooties. Death would be here too if she would let him.”
“He has to take care of Kismet.” Mal gritted his teeth, trying to shove aside the prickling needles creeping into his brain. Sweat darkened the hair at his temples, his glasses steaming from the heat of his skin. Panting between tight lips, Mal let a small, painful breath escape, hoping he could keep his wits about him.
“Yeah, when this is all over, you’re going to be responsible for that little ferret. If you think I’m going to take care of his feeding and walking him when he needs to go, you’re as nuts as the old woman here.” Ari grinned at the short laugh he pulled from Mal’s grimace. “There, see? All better. We don’t even need this crazy woman to cut into you.”