jack_babalon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jack_babalon) wrote2012-01-24 12:40 am
jack_babalon) wrote2012-01-24 12:40 am
Entry tags:
9/10ths of the Law: Conclusion
Continued from Part 2
The brick walls gray in the last trickle of moonlight. Weeds sprout wild through the cracks. Glassless windows pried open with iron bars. A hollow doorframe grows at his approach, waiting with the impenetrable patience of a coffin. Inside the cold glitter of shattered bottles. A train wails mournful in the distance. The wind shifts and hits in a sustained burst. Through the doorway a tumbling cascade of dead leaves sweep across the parking lot, crash against the shores of an invisible circle surrounding his steps and spark golden out of existence. When the train's dirge fades along with the passing gust, it drags from the building's depths the roar of some vast impossible beast. A bone rattling rumble that sounded somewhere between a whale's call and a jungle cat's growl; louder than thunder yet falling on his ears alone.
This would be his Adversary, anchored in another reality and telepathically screaming through a wound torn open in our own. A wound that just happened to also be the mind of the woman he was here to rescue.
Adam pushes on through the cacophony, until he reaches the doorway where he pauses. He closes his eyes. Relaxes his muscles. Narrows his focus into a single arrow sharp breath. Dives along its current and recedes from the extra-dimensional bellow of his opponent. He feels the pulse of the city throb beneath his veins and the steel purr of her traffic hum resounds from his belly. He stills the panic, allows himself to submerge into an immense web of random chances, vicious synchronicities and invisible absurdities that graft to his nervous system as gently as an old blanket on fresh sheets. The city drains his fear into her streets, disperses it across the dark canyons laying narrow between sleeping towers and leaves in its place the cool, gun fighter's confidence of every unforeseen hook-up still lingering from the long closed bars within her perimeter.
When he opens his eyes again it is with the Sight.
Before him his magick circle ignites red radiant and mutes the roar into cold silence. Along the walls of the circle's invisible shell four flaming sigils revolve around his center. Four secret names of his city with their letters compressed into a single symbol. He raises his hand and one of the sigils halts before him. Staring through its center his vision shifts spectrums.
Six Kirlian violet silhouettes light up and hover through a milky gray fog. Behind them a bright silver shadow paces around restlessly. He touches the sigil by its corner with the tips of his fingers and expands its width with a drag. The sigil burns fiercer now, hyper-luminescent shades of charged aerosol crackle through the air. When he does this the silver shadow magnifies into view. The glare is too much for him. He shifts spectrums. Dials it to the frequency he calls 'Chakra Vision'. The silver shadow is replaced with what appears to be one of those old 'Visible Woman' anatomy dolls you used to see sitting in the corner of a high school science class. Raw muscles interlaced with neural webbing, the bones of the skull prominent with two eyeballs floating in their sockets, arterial rivers flowing beneath the translucent flesh. The body emanates a steady infrared aura . Lined perfectly down the center of the body, lit up in Vajrayana hues and rotating with the psychedelic 'trails' of seven blistering suns. But connected behind these incandescent spheres are seven oil slick purple tentacles, dangling from the sky before vanishing into the mist. Adam shifts spectrums, and with a slow crane of his neck beholds the full width of his Adversary.
About two stories up, a jellyfish the size of a small cloud hovers above him. Its lucid shell has a milky orange sheen, containing within a radon green gas that flashes with occasional bursts of lightning. He drags the sigil a little wider and narrows his vision into the lower frequencies. The creature dissolves into a fractal spiral of grinding ebony fangs spinning perpetually into the depths of a bottomless black hole. From the arms of the spirals onyx bright tendrils weave and flutter in the gasp of incinerated universes yawning from the heart of its void.
Adam whistles appreciatively and defaults his vision back to 'reality'. Eyeball fuck the abyss... and apparently the abyss will eyeball fuck you right back.
Real sight adjusts clumsy, he can barely register the six murky figures waiting in the expanse of the dark. He doesn't have to see them however to know they're staring at him. Inside he can begin to hear a wounded animal shrieking hysterical, muffled significantly but still grinding to the ear. It takes Adam a moment to realize that it wasn't an animal he was hearing, no matter how much he might wish it to be otherwise, but rather a human throat being torn open with the chant of an impossible language.
He fires up his Bic and holds the flame high over his head.
Reluctantly, the memory of a light flickers into life from the ceiling, a pale ghost bulb burning from the center of the ceiling and casting a sick yellow gloom over what might have once been a lobby of some sort.
He lowers the flame and lights up a cigarette that has literally just appeared in his mouth. Inside his magick circle he is free to take small short-cuts with time. Like all young magicians, he thinks the seconds squandered for show will never add up and they never quite do the math until it's too late. This sadly is a lesson no sage has yet to be able to successfully impart to even the most earnest of adepts.
Before him the glare of six hard face. Some bruised, some cut, but all with that cruel acuity of someone who's about to kick your ass. Ronnie's Hate Patrol standing watch after a rough scrap. Adam notes the patrol seems a bit short on manpower. He matches up cars he recognized in the parking lot with missing faces and realizes that half of Ronnie's preferred muscle were most likely on their way to either the hospital or the morgue. Still, the survivors were clearly jacked-up, fucked-up and ready for more.
Meanwhile the Hate Patrol continue to size him up, take his number and are clearly not impressed. Not with the sudden phantom light crackling above, not with the hideous mockery of a voice that has been wailing incessantly behind them, and certainly not with the scrawny, ghetto punk wannabe posing all dramatic in the doorway allowing the wind to ruffle scraggly peroxide blond hair.
"You the 'specialist'?" The biggest one croaks while stepping forward menacingly. Adam couldn't help but note the baseball bat that seemed impatient in his massive fist, the sharp bouncer squint narrowing in on him nor the demented snarl dangling off a meat slab of chin.
"If you mean whether or not I'm the asshole dumb enough to walk into a room I should be clearly running away from? Then yeah, that'd be me." Adam shrugs and strolls on in.
What he sees is pretty much what he expected. Standard issue shit hole, top-to-bottom. Moss coated and jagged mounds of shattered dry wall, eviscerated office desks scattered about, amputee chairs hobbled in a pile, a heap of coverless paperback novels, water damaged magazines, brittle newspaper pages and fast food wrappers. Behind the Hate Patrol were two iron doors, painted a drab green and recently chained shut with a padlock. Behind it the basement he presumed, and down there was the job - ready whether he was or not.
But there was also something else in the gutted out office. Something of immense value to Adam. Sprayed across the brick wall bones - the gold. A series of bright vibrant graffiti tags in Anime style letters as big as a man. "ARSN", "FaDE", "DROP", "kNOw". There are others, but these four have been bombed across Terminus and resonate with the psychic charge of every set of eyes that has fallen upon them. The city has revealed to him another page from her grimorie. He grins at the graffiti and feels their power soaking into his will.
"So what'cha gonna do there, Mister Specialist?" One of the smaller mooks asks impatiently, standing at a mere 6 feet in his stomp boots and resting a crowbar over a broad shoulder.
Adam pries excited eyes off the wall and sneers towards Lil' Mook. "Alright, Rule #1 and that's the help don't talk to the talent while the talent's working."
"Th' fuck did he just say to us? " Lil' Mook grumbles and as one the Hate Patrol move in towards Adam. Specialist or not, it's been a long day followed by a longer night and there wasn't a man in their ranks ready to abide having some bitch-ass scarecrow run his mouth to them like they were a bunch of cunts.
Adam raises a single admonishing finger. "Rule #2... fuck with the talent and the talent will fuck with you."
The Hate Patrol trade dismissively baffled looks that say "this guy over here" and stare back at Adam with menacing grins. Before any of them can utter a word though... he beats them to the draw.
"DROP!" Adam barks and a split-second later the concrete floor chimes with discarded weapons.
The Hate Patrol stare dumbfounded at their crowbars and baseball bats, their brass knuckles and 'smileys' (an improvised flail made of thick chain and a bouquet of padlocks) laying at their boots. The biggest of the mooks bends down to pick his bat back up but finds he can't. Two hands and a lot of elbow grease prove to be of no help. He stands back up.
"How'd you...?" Big Mook mutters looking up perplexed from his weapon to Adam's smirk.
"See Rule #1" Adam winks smug. "Now if you boys'll excuse me. FaDE!"
At the utterance of that last word, he begins to dematerialize. Vanishing quickly, until only the faint wisp of a neon blue smoke outline remains before wafting gently away.
The mooks can't help but visibly shudder and more than one betrays a gasp. None of them notice that on the wall to their left the tags 'FaDE' and 'Drop' are gone, leaving behind only the dust of spent possibility. Above them the ghost light flickers out of being and plunges them back into the shadows to wait.
***
Adam rematerializes down in the basement.
A pale jade light, emanating from everywhere and nowhere at once, illuminates the space while casting no shadows.
The first thing he notices is that the bestial chanting has stopped and has been replaced with a charged silence.
The second, that he is alone down there. His Adversary and mission missing.
The third would have to be all the blood. Splattered across the cinder block walls with the fury of a Pollock in crimson, sprayed wantonly across the low hanging plaster ceiling, gathered in black puddles seeping out of mutilated torsos, each with the ribs ripped wide open and some with the heads sitting backwards on twisted stumps of neck.
He's seen worse in his time, not enough to get used to it really... but enough so to keep his shit together when he has to.
"Becky?" Adam whispers and winces at having done so.
A childish giggle snakes up on him from behind, curls around his body and slithers into his ear.
The giggle pivots Adam a slow 180 and there's Becky... along with her 'guest' standing in front of the stairs.
Becky is tall and junk lanky. Feral red dreads dangle over starved cheeks and bright hungry eyes float in habit dark rings. Yellow teeth bared through cracked lips. Under the grime her arms bare old tattoos and fresh cuts. In her hand she holds the neck of a broken bottle.
Before Adam can react she lunges for him, the jagged shards of the bottle glittering off the mysterious green glow... only to shatter against the invisible wall of his magick circle. One of his sigils shimmers and the invisible shell of the circle glows blue under the impact.
Becky, or at least that power piloting her body, screams in pain as the glass explodes in her fist.
'Becky' cradles her wounded hand; hisses wildly and gurgles out a series of short barks and high-pitched growls towards Adam.
"Lo siento," Adam smirks with rolled eyes, "pero yo no habla demoniaca."
'Becky' starts gesticulating towards him with her good hand, repeating the barks and growls but louder.
"Yeahhhhh... this isn't working." Adam mutters to himself, scratches the stubble on his chin thoughtfully before knowingly snapping his fingers.
"kNOw!" He says softly...
... and instantly 'Becky' is speaking English, not the Queen's either but Adam's mutant East Coast argot.
"... drag you out of there and feed you your balls, ghetto mage."
"Tch... now is that any way for a 'lady' to talk?"
'Becky' stops her rant dead in its tracks. She regards Adam with a curious tilt of the head, the way a cat might if a bird mockingly meowed at it.
"Heh." She snorts brushing a dread strand out of not her eyes and begins pacing around the protective perimeter. "Not bad. Few get this far, but I'll warn you. You're not the first magician whose circle I've peeled open."
"No doubt." Adam shrugs, "When they were stupid enough to just stand there and let you do it."
"Well you're going to have to step out of that circle some time."
"Actually...," He steps towards her and the circle follows to leave each step in its center, "....no I don't."
The rim of the circle catches her elbow and seers against her flesh with a flash of pure white light. She inches back reluctantly. With a whirling gesture of a single finger the perimeter of his magick circle expands outward, seeps steadily in a creep across the floor that drives 'Becky' to scurry away until her back presses against the wall.
With a dismissive wave of the same hand the circle stops just inches from her and recedes back until it forms a tight enclosure around him.
"So here's how this is going to go down. You got no way in here..., " Adam jabs a finger off his chest then swivels it on 'Becky', "... but you do have two ways out of there. You either leave her body willingly or I'll burn you out. Your choice."
'Becky' huffs and brushes a strand of dread out of her eyes that immediately falls back over it: "I don't think you know who you're dealing with, ghetto mage. Literally. You know the rules, names are power and without mine you hold none over me."
Adam shrugs nonchalant. "What makes you think I don't already have it?"
"You're bluffing."
"Oh, man..." Adam giggles sincerely with a slow, sad shake of his head, "you don't even know. Seriously, I am like, the worst bullshit artist you'll ever meet. So believe me, I wouldn't waste either of our time with a bluff. But here's the thing, while I am a terrible bullshit artist, I am a very good metromancer. My city's already told me your name, in fact she's written it all over the cracks off this room when I said the magic word. Look around you if you don't believe me."
'Becky' does and her eyes dance around seeing the glyphs of its name illuminate all around them. She looks back at Adam who smirks at her victoriously. It lowers her head, layers trembling palms across the face it wears and begins... laughing: "And what of this vessel I ride, ghetto mage? You may indeed drive me out, but I promise you this... I won't go alone."
"Not my problem."
"You're right. You are a terrible bullshit artist. Okay... 'here's the thing'. Your circle hides your thoughts well, but not the others up there. Not..., " Becky stares searchingly up and out past the ceiling while rolling the borrowed hand thoughtfully, ".... Ronnie, is it? Yes. Ronnie. What will you tell Ronnie when you return with a shell of flesh and ashes where a soul once burned. What happens to you when he realizes how deep the damage you've inflicted on the mother of his child goes? Of course, that is, if you manage to do it right. He's already worried as it is, it would seem you didn't exactly fill your employer with confidence when you confessed to having never done something like 'this' before."
Adam keeps his poker face steady but his silence gives his hand away.
"That's what I thought." Becky imitates Adam's smirk, "Or at least, that's what they thought. So while your precious circle is off limits to me, for now, we both know full well I'm not going anywhere. Your move."
Adam breathes deep and blows out a conceding sigh: "Okay, a new deal then."
"Hnh... and what would you propose?"
"Well, it would seem I'm fucked if you stay and fucked if you go. But while that might be a fact, it ain't no lie either that if I have to pick between the two my ass is definitely going with the option that fucks us both. So the real question is, what do you want?"
"I already have what I want... a vessel."
"No that's what you need. Some skin to walk around in. Speaking of which, why her and why here?"
"Does it really matter?"
"Call it 'Professional curiosity'."
'Becky' smiles and tick-tocks bulged eyes across the basement before stopping them directly on Adam: "She was weak. And unlike the rest who have passed here capable of receiving my... signal. That her will had been sufficiently broken by love's betrayal and since what little of it that remained had been long ravaged with drink and drugs, it was an opportunity too good to pass up. The truth is she saw exactly what I was before I took her and she never so much as thought a single 'no' in protest. As for 'why here'? Well I must confess I'm a little surprised that you don't already know, 'metromancer'. You really can't see the gates scattered throughout your beloved city, the ones growing slowly until the things that live beyond them can fit through? Pfff, really now. What could I hope to gain by bargaining with one so ignorant even of his own dominion?"
"How 'bout a better 'vessel' for starters? How 'bout I trade you that one for mine?"
'Becky' nods appreciatively and motions towards Adam: "I'm listening."
"Look, we both know the situation. Even if I just walk away and leave you in there, how long do you think that body'll last you? Another day maybe? Two tops? And this little ritual you've got going on here is going to need a helluva lot more mana than your vessel's currently got left in her. Nowhere near enough to try what I think you're trying to do."
"Oh, and what would that be?"
"Well, I'm no expert in the black arts, but as they say - 'once you go black you never go back' - so unless I'm mistaken you're trying to pry that gate you crawled out of a bit wider so you don't have to be alone out here. I mean c'mon, the bodies are kind of a dead giveaway."
"Maybe..."
"C'mon already. It's like being on the set of a Lovecraftian snuff film down here and you're what, just taking in the sights? We both know what you're planning and an operation on that scale is gonna require a lot of energy. Raw energy. The kind you get out of a host that's jacked into the very soul of the city itself. Juice like that and you'll be able to march a whole platoon on through here. Plus you'll save a lot of time in the process... which is not something either of us have a lot of. Sooner or later, Ronnie's going to have to take the situation into his own hand and this time the kid's gloves'll be off. Ronnie or the law or the folks who run East Point. That's a sooner than a later either way this plays."
"All good points, except for one thing. I don't see how you would benefit from such a deal, 'metromancer'? I gain your body, along with the power to call upon more of my kind into your city and in return you get what? The woman with whose liberty you seek to purchase from me solely because you fear the reprecussions if you do not. In other words, you're telling me to keep your life... you'd give it to me? Somehow I don't think so."
"That's because you didn't let me finish. See, as you just told me a few minutes ago, your last vessel was weak." Adam pauses to light a fresh cigarette off the butt of his last before continuing. "But I'm not. I'm not some strung out junkie with a broken heart and no fight left in them. In fact I'm like nothing you've ever seen before and since you want me to be honest with you, I'm only making this deal because frankly I don't think you got the strength to take me. In fact, once I have you under my control, I'll have more than enough firepower to deal with Ronnie and his collection of walking abortions in any manner I see fit.."
"So you're proposing we duel for your soul?"
"Only if you got the balls."
"Somehow you don't strike me as the dueling sort."
"What? You mean slugging it out like one of those Neanderthals up there? Nah, not my style. When it comes to the flesh I'm a lover not a fighter. But in here...," Adam taps his skull and winks. "I'm a fuckin' ninja baby, I'm Bruce Lee on steroids and more than a match for a second rate 'demon' from some sewer dimension."
'Becky' brushes the strand out of her eye only to have it fall back again, with the other eye she peers at Adam with smoldering rage. Adam's always had one talent above all others - the ability to piss off any sentient creature on or off the face of the Earth.
"Unless you got a better idea...?" Adam smiles and opens his hands inquisitively.
"Very well, I accept your challenge. Why don't you just step outside that circle and we'll..."
"Naw, fuck that. Here's how'll we'll do this. I'm going to count us off. On three my circle is going to slip from under my feet and reappear around yours..., hers, whatever. At that moment there'll be nothing between us. However, just in case you decide to, oh I dunno, stay inside her body and go all psycho killer on me, well then you, along with Becky unfortunately, will be incinerated in what will be a no doubt very loud and excruciating manner. Which will leave us both screwed incidentally, so let's agree to not go down that particular avenue of possibility, shall we? What do you say, fair enough?"
"Heh." Becky grins with naked glee, "Not fair at all. Not for you. But go ahead and count, gutter mage. Your tin bravado is adorable. Just know that once I'm inside, I'm going to find everyone you ever loved and make sure you don't miss a single blink of the terrible, terrible things I'll have you do to them."
"Then it's a good thing everyone I've ever loved is already dead, asshole." Adam puffs a long drag off his smoke and flicks it off Becky's chest. "One...
two...
.... three."
And as good as his word the circle vanishes from around him.
Adam is jolted out of the city's grid. A neural power surge sends him convulsing lightly and staggering back. The sudden energy drain sends him plummeting back up into real space. Gone the crystallized resolve, the limpid mind and the harmony of a thousand possible worlds singing through his ears.
Across the room, through the vertigo tilt-a-whirl grinding at his eyes, he snatches a glance of Becky collapsed within his circle, which looks faint to his eyes, almost an optical illusion. But before he can register much else he can feel It move in on him.
The Adversary strikes quick and first. An electromagnetic tsunami of pure dread smashes into Adam. It doubles him over and drops him to his knees. Consciousness shatters upon impact and drowns the fragments under a thousand luminescent purple worms with bulbous heads of eye-balls. The swarm slither around his mind, smothering each screaming thought in Adam's skull and obliterating every strand of awareness in their path. They begin to pierce through his astral body, mummifying it in their squirm as they burrow deeper, weaving themselves around his Chakras, blacking them out one by one, from the root, to the balls, to the navel, to the chest, to the neck...
... where the collar Mistress Drown earlier wrapped around his throat ignites into a crisp blaze of cerulean radiance. From the center of his larynx, a white luminous flower sprouts. Sixteen dusk purple petals shimmer into a vibrant corona around the lock that binds him. It's light magnifies and spreads down along the helix pathways binding his Chakras. The eye-ball worms begin to shriek telepathically, creating a static sizzle as they burst into flames and disintegrate into foul plumes of burnt rubber smoke.
The Adversary has no choice but to pull out of Adam, withdrawing in a receding wave from his consciousness and circling around him slowly. When the last essence of the opponent disengages from Adam's mind the collar shifts to a faint violet glow before fading back into his throat.
Adam coughs up a wad of ectoplasmic residue while staggering back up off his knees. He wipes his chin. Glances over at Becky. Out, but breathing. Good enough. Adam looks around the basement and though he's unable to see his Adversary he knows Its floating around here somewhere. He can feel the disembodied terror on the dank air and the sudden drop in the temperature has him shivering. He figures he's got a minute or two before the thing dissipates completely back to wherever it came from.
Adam touches his throat and closes his eyes. Mistress Drown's voice returns to him: “Just a little something to remind you, and any skanks you might run into, that you’re mine tonight. Bound in servitude to my pleasure and my pleasure alone. A binding lock to ensure you’re coming back here and finishing what you started. Remember that.”
He nods thankfully to himself. Slavery was never happiness for Adam, but more of a hobby. A rare indulgence when the mood struck and but one amongst the harem of his distractions. Yet tonight he gambled on the binding power of his mistresses' collar and it had served him as faithfully as a crown serves an empress.
Adam makes his way over to his circle, enters it and seals it behind him. He bends down and checks Becky's pulse with two fingers pressed to the neck. A faint pulse but steady. He pats her cheek with the back of his hand and whispers her name. Nothing. Repeats process and gets a barely coherent mumble. He then points a finger and uses it to draw a mark on her head. Invisible to all eyes but his own and any who might try entering again. The ward sinks into her forehead and vanishes... along with all memory of the last twenty-four hours. It won't keep her off the streets he figures, but it should be enough to keep her out of the mad house.
His intuition tingles at the dwindling frequencies of the Adversary, the disembodied intelligence fluttering around Adam. Garbled whispers softer that the flutter of a moth's wings round the flame tickle at his ears. From the periphery of his eye an ominous shape lurks but vanishes when glanced directly.
"Yeah, I know you're still out there. So just a quick FYI before you fade away. If you ever decide to go joy riding on my side of reality again you'd best stay the fuck out of Terminus when you do. This is my city and she's under my watch. Just remember I got your name, asshole and next time I won't care what hostage you got yourself strapped into. Y'hear me?"
The final grains of the Adversary's being rattle around the closing sink hole in our dimension, before draining completely. The jade glow illuminating the basement fading with it.
***
Nothing left now but clean up duty.
Ronnie's Hate Patrol at the all clear carry Becky out of the building while Adam seals the basement from any further intrusions with a series of spray painted sigils. When he finally shuffles back out of the building and out into the parking lot all the cars are gone but Ronnie's. First ashen light of an overcast dawn seeps over East Point and drives back her shadows across the post industrial slum.
Ronnie and his two pet goons stand by the car waiting for him.
"She gonna be okay?" Adam ambles on over and asks rubbing the fatigue his eyes.
"Okay enough." Ronnie shrugs. "I've seen her much more fucked up truth be told. I got someone dropping her off at Grady."
"Right on," He brushes a heavy hand through his scalp and lights up the last cigarette in his pack. "So Just so you're in the know, I wiped her memory out from the last 24 hours. Figured that way she's not carrying that shit in her head for the rest of her life. Not sure what you'll tell her though."
"I'll think of something."
"Just one last thing. The building. You got three corpses in there and sooner or later somebody's gonna find them. Thing is we all got a lot of DNA material down there and I'm sure none of us are too keen to explain to the cops how it got there. I need to take care of this place, as in permanently... with your permission of course."
Ronnie puffs out his cheeks and streams out a long sigh through pursed lips. "It'll mean calling in another favor and I got precious few left in this neck of the woods as it is, but yeah, take care of that shit."
"Then we cool?"
Ronnie nods thoughtfully for a moment: "About this? Yeah, you held up your end of the bargain and I'll hold up mine."
Adam nods and lights up a cigarette. The last in the pack. A thought crosses his mind: "Hold up. What do you mean 'about this'?"
And Ronnie answers with a solid punch delivered straight to the gut.
Adam doubles over for the second time in an hour. All the air has been driven out of him and he stumbles forward and backwards before catching his balance.
"Those people down there aren't the fucking 'help', Adam." Ronnie growls while gesturing with restless hands manically. They're my crew. My people. My friends. They stand by me when the shit goes down and I do them the same. You ever insult them again and they got my permission to boot check some manners into your sorry ass. You understand me?"
Adam tries to say something but he's having trouble finding the breath to do so wit. Instead he nods weakly and drags a burning drag of air into his deflated lungs.
Ronnie makes a gun with his hand and bounces the barrel off Adam's temple: "And if you ever pull some hoodoo shit on them again...or even think of doing so to me, I swear, I fuckin' swear there won't be enough pieces of your body left to bury you with."
Ronnie turns around and storms off to the car. The goons linger long enough for Adam to catch their satisfied smirks before sauntering over to the backseat. Doors slam, the car rumbles to life and peels out of the lot.
Adam, cradling his belly, fumbles along the ground looking for the cigarette he spit out when Ronnie punched him. He finds it and lights it back up. Then he turns around to the building and mutters - "ARSN."
A minute passes with no effect. Another and yet another before smoke begins to waft out of the brick building's windows while a soft orange haze begins to spread out of the door.
Adam turns his back on the building and staggers out of the parking lot. He begins singing to himself a fragment of an old song his mother used to hum while getting ready for work.
"Here are we.... one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth," Adam croons in his best Bowie imitation.
When he steps outside the chain link fence, he makes his way over to the curb. There's a dreary puddle around a leaf congested gutter. The gray water is still and across its surface his reflection.
"There are you.... drive like a demon from station to station."
And he looks down into his reflection there in the gutters and vanishes softly into it.
The brick walls gray in the last trickle of moonlight. Weeds sprout wild through the cracks. Glassless windows pried open with iron bars. A hollow doorframe grows at his approach, waiting with the impenetrable patience of a coffin. Inside the cold glitter of shattered bottles. A train wails mournful in the distance. The wind shifts and hits in a sustained burst. Through the doorway a tumbling cascade of dead leaves sweep across the parking lot, crash against the shores of an invisible circle surrounding his steps and spark golden out of existence. When the train's dirge fades along with the passing gust, it drags from the building's depths the roar of some vast impossible beast. A bone rattling rumble that sounded somewhere between a whale's call and a jungle cat's growl; louder than thunder yet falling on his ears alone.
This would be his Adversary, anchored in another reality and telepathically screaming through a wound torn open in our own. A wound that just happened to also be the mind of the woman he was here to rescue.
Adam pushes on through the cacophony, until he reaches the doorway where he pauses. He closes his eyes. Relaxes his muscles. Narrows his focus into a single arrow sharp breath. Dives along its current and recedes from the extra-dimensional bellow of his opponent. He feels the pulse of the city throb beneath his veins and the steel purr of her traffic hum resounds from his belly. He stills the panic, allows himself to submerge into an immense web of random chances, vicious synchronicities and invisible absurdities that graft to his nervous system as gently as an old blanket on fresh sheets. The city drains his fear into her streets, disperses it across the dark canyons laying narrow between sleeping towers and leaves in its place the cool, gun fighter's confidence of every unforeseen hook-up still lingering from the long closed bars within her perimeter.
When he opens his eyes again it is with the Sight.
Before him his magick circle ignites red radiant and mutes the roar into cold silence. Along the walls of the circle's invisible shell four flaming sigils revolve around his center. Four secret names of his city with their letters compressed into a single symbol. He raises his hand and one of the sigils halts before him. Staring through its center his vision shifts spectrums.
Six Kirlian violet silhouettes light up and hover through a milky gray fog. Behind them a bright silver shadow paces around restlessly. He touches the sigil by its corner with the tips of his fingers and expands its width with a drag. The sigil burns fiercer now, hyper-luminescent shades of charged aerosol crackle through the air. When he does this the silver shadow magnifies into view. The glare is too much for him. He shifts spectrums. Dials it to the frequency he calls 'Chakra Vision'. The silver shadow is replaced with what appears to be one of those old 'Visible Woman' anatomy dolls you used to see sitting in the corner of a high school science class. Raw muscles interlaced with neural webbing, the bones of the skull prominent with two eyeballs floating in their sockets, arterial rivers flowing beneath the translucent flesh. The body emanates a steady infrared aura . Lined perfectly down the center of the body, lit up in Vajrayana hues and rotating with the psychedelic 'trails' of seven blistering suns. But connected behind these incandescent spheres are seven oil slick purple tentacles, dangling from the sky before vanishing into the mist. Adam shifts spectrums, and with a slow crane of his neck beholds the full width of his Adversary.
About two stories up, a jellyfish the size of a small cloud hovers above him. Its lucid shell has a milky orange sheen, containing within a radon green gas that flashes with occasional bursts of lightning. He drags the sigil a little wider and narrows his vision into the lower frequencies. The creature dissolves into a fractal spiral of grinding ebony fangs spinning perpetually into the depths of a bottomless black hole. From the arms of the spirals onyx bright tendrils weave and flutter in the gasp of incinerated universes yawning from the heart of its void.
Adam whistles appreciatively and defaults his vision back to 'reality'. Eyeball fuck the abyss... and apparently the abyss will eyeball fuck you right back.
Real sight adjusts clumsy, he can barely register the six murky figures waiting in the expanse of the dark. He doesn't have to see them however to know they're staring at him. Inside he can begin to hear a wounded animal shrieking hysterical, muffled significantly but still grinding to the ear. It takes Adam a moment to realize that it wasn't an animal he was hearing, no matter how much he might wish it to be otherwise, but rather a human throat being torn open with the chant of an impossible language.
He fires up his Bic and holds the flame high over his head.
Reluctantly, the memory of a light flickers into life from the ceiling, a pale ghost bulb burning from the center of the ceiling and casting a sick yellow gloom over what might have once been a lobby of some sort.
He lowers the flame and lights up a cigarette that has literally just appeared in his mouth. Inside his magick circle he is free to take small short-cuts with time. Like all young magicians, he thinks the seconds squandered for show will never add up and they never quite do the math until it's too late. This sadly is a lesson no sage has yet to be able to successfully impart to even the most earnest of adepts.
Before him the glare of six hard face. Some bruised, some cut, but all with that cruel acuity of someone who's about to kick your ass. Ronnie's Hate Patrol standing watch after a rough scrap. Adam notes the patrol seems a bit short on manpower. He matches up cars he recognized in the parking lot with missing faces and realizes that half of Ronnie's preferred muscle were most likely on their way to either the hospital or the morgue. Still, the survivors were clearly jacked-up, fucked-up and ready for more.
Meanwhile the Hate Patrol continue to size him up, take his number and are clearly not impressed. Not with the sudden phantom light crackling above, not with the hideous mockery of a voice that has been wailing incessantly behind them, and certainly not with the scrawny, ghetto punk wannabe posing all dramatic in the doorway allowing the wind to ruffle scraggly peroxide blond hair.
"You the 'specialist'?" The biggest one croaks while stepping forward menacingly. Adam couldn't help but note the baseball bat that seemed impatient in his massive fist, the sharp bouncer squint narrowing in on him nor the demented snarl dangling off a meat slab of chin.
"If you mean whether or not I'm the asshole dumb enough to walk into a room I should be clearly running away from? Then yeah, that'd be me." Adam shrugs and strolls on in.
What he sees is pretty much what he expected. Standard issue shit hole, top-to-bottom. Moss coated and jagged mounds of shattered dry wall, eviscerated office desks scattered about, amputee chairs hobbled in a pile, a heap of coverless paperback novels, water damaged magazines, brittle newspaper pages and fast food wrappers. Behind the Hate Patrol were two iron doors, painted a drab green and recently chained shut with a padlock. Behind it the basement he presumed, and down there was the job - ready whether he was or not.
But there was also something else in the gutted out office. Something of immense value to Adam. Sprayed across the brick wall bones - the gold. A series of bright vibrant graffiti tags in Anime style letters as big as a man. "ARSN", "FaDE", "DROP", "kNOw". There are others, but these four have been bombed across Terminus and resonate with the psychic charge of every set of eyes that has fallen upon them. The city has revealed to him another page from her grimorie. He grins at the graffiti and feels their power soaking into his will.
"So what'cha gonna do there, Mister Specialist?" One of the smaller mooks asks impatiently, standing at a mere 6 feet in his stomp boots and resting a crowbar over a broad shoulder.
Adam pries excited eyes off the wall and sneers towards Lil' Mook. "Alright, Rule #1 and that's the help don't talk to the talent while the talent's working."
"Th' fuck did he just say to us? " Lil' Mook grumbles and as one the Hate Patrol move in towards Adam. Specialist or not, it's been a long day followed by a longer night and there wasn't a man in their ranks ready to abide having some bitch-ass scarecrow run his mouth to them like they were a bunch of cunts.
Adam raises a single admonishing finger. "Rule #2... fuck with the talent and the talent will fuck with you."
The Hate Patrol trade dismissively baffled looks that say "this guy over here" and stare back at Adam with menacing grins. Before any of them can utter a word though... he beats them to the draw.
"DROP!" Adam barks and a split-second later the concrete floor chimes with discarded weapons.
The Hate Patrol stare dumbfounded at their crowbars and baseball bats, their brass knuckles and 'smileys' (an improvised flail made of thick chain and a bouquet of padlocks) laying at their boots. The biggest of the mooks bends down to pick his bat back up but finds he can't. Two hands and a lot of elbow grease prove to be of no help. He stands back up.
"How'd you...?" Big Mook mutters looking up perplexed from his weapon to Adam's smirk.
"See Rule #1" Adam winks smug. "Now if you boys'll excuse me. FaDE!"
At the utterance of that last word, he begins to dematerialize. Vanishing quickly, until only the faint wisp of a neon blue smoke outline remains before wafting gently away.
The mooks can't help but visibly shudder and more than one betrays a gasp. None of them notice that on the wall to their left the tags 'FaDE' and 'Drop' are gone, leaving behind only the dust of spent possibility. Above them the ghost light flickers out of being and plunges them back into the shadows to wait.
***
Adam rematerializes down in the basement.
A pale jade light, emanating from everywhere and nowhere at once, illuminates the space while casting no shadows.
The first thing he notices is that the bestial chanting has stopped and has been replaced with a charged silence.
The second, that he is alone down there. His Adversary and mission missing.
The third would have to be all the blood. Splattered across the cinder block walls with the fury of a Pollock in crimson, sprayed wantonly across the low hanging plaster ceiling, gathered in black puddles seeping out of mutilated torsos, each with the ribs ripped wide open and some with the heads sitting backwards on twisted stumps of neck.
He's seen worse in his time, not enough to get used to it really... but enough so to keep his shit together when he has to.
"Becky?" Adam whispers and winces at having done so.
A childish giggle snakes up on him from behind, curls around his body and slithers into his ear.
The giggle pivots Adam a slow 180 and there's Becky... along with her 'guest' standing in front of the stairs.
Becky is tall and junk lanky. Feral red dreads dangle over starved cheeks and bright hungry eyes float in habit dark rings. Yellow teeth bared through cracked lips. Under the grime her arms bare old tattoos and fresh cuts. In her hand she holds the neck of a broken bottle.
Before Adam can react she lunges for him, the jagged shards of the bottle glittering off the mysterious green glow... only to shatter against the invisible wall of his magick circle. One of his sigils shimmers and the invisible shell of the circle glows blue under the impact.
Becky, or at least that power piloting her body, screams in pain as the glass explodes in her fist.
'Becky' cradles her wounded hand; hisses wildly and gurgles out a series of short barks and high-pitched growls towards Adam.
"Lo siento," Adam smirks with rolled eyes, "pero yo no habla demoniaca."
'Becky' starts gesticulating towards him with her good hand, repeating the barks and growls but louder.
"Yeahhhhh... this isn't working." Adam mutters to himself, scratches the stubble on his chin thoughtfully before knowingly snapping his fingers.
"kNOw!" He says softly...
... and instantly 'Becky' is speaking English, not the Queen's either but Adam's mutant East Coast argot.
"... drag you out of there and feed you your balls, ghetto mage."
"Tch... now is that any way for a 'lady' to talk?"
'Becky' stops her rant dead in its tracks. She regards Adam with a curious tilt of the head, the way a cat might if a bird mockingly meowed at it.
"Heh." She snorts brushing a dread strand out of not her eyes and begins pacing around the protective perimeter. "Not bad. Few get this far, but I'll warn you. You're not the first magician whose circle I've peeled open."
"No doubt." Adam shrugs, "When they were stupid enough to just stand there and let you do it."
"Well you're going to have to step out of that circle some time."
"Actually...," He steps towards her and the circle follows to leave each step in its center, "....no I don't."
The rim of the circle catches her elbow and seers against her flesh with a flash of pure white light. She inches back reluctantly. With a whirling gesture of a single finger the perimeter of his magick circle expands outward, seeps steadily in a creep across the floor that drives 'Becky' to scurry away until her back presses against the wall.
With a dismissive wave of the same hand the circle stops just inches from her and recedes back until it forms a tight enclosure around him.
"So here's how this is going to go down. You got no way in here..., " Adam jabs a finger off his chest then swivels it on 'Becky', "... but you do have two ways out of there. You either leave her body willingly or I'll burn you out. Your choice."
'Becky' huffs and brushes a strand of dread out of her eyes that immediately falls back over it: "I don't think you know who you're dealing with, ghetto mage. Literally. You know the rules, names are power and without mine you hold none over me."
Adam shrugs nonchalant. "What makes you think I don't already have it?"
"You're bluffing."
"Oh, man..." Adam giggles sincerely with a slow, sad shake of his head, "you don't even know. Seriously, I am like, the worst bullshit artist you'll ever meet. So believe me, I wouldn't waste either of our time with a bluff. But here's the thing, while I am a terrible bullshit artist, I am a very good metromancer. My city's already told me your name, in fact she's written it all over the cracks off this room when I said the magic word. Look around you if you don't believe me."
'Becky' does and her eyes dance around seeing the glyphs of its name illuminate all around them. She looks back at Adam who smirks at her victoriously. It lowers her head, layers trembling palms across the face it wears and begins... laughing: "And what of this vessel I ride, ghetto mage? You may indeed drive me out, but I promise you this... I won't go alone."
"Not my problem."
"You're right. You are a terrible bullshit artist. Okay... 'here's the thing'. Your circle hides your thoughts well, but not the others up there. Not..., " Becky stares searchingly up and out past the ceiling while rolling the borrowed hand thoughtfully, ".... Ronnie, is it? Yes. Ronnie. What will you tell Ronnie when you return with a shell of flesh and ashes where a soul once burned. What happens to you when he realizes how deep the damage you've inflicted on the mother of his child goes? Of course, that is, if you manage to do it right. He's already worried as it is, it would seem you didn't exactly fill your employer with confidence when you confessed to having never done something like 'this' before."
Adam keeps his poker face steady but his silence gives his hand away.
"That's what I thought." Becky imitates Adam's smirk, "Or at least, that's what they thought. So while your precious circle is off limits to me, for now, we both know full well I'm not going anywhere. Your move."
Adam breathes deep and blows out a conceding sigh: "Okay, a new deal then."
"Hnh... and what would you propose?"
"Well, it would seem I'm fucked if you stay and fucked if you go. But while that might be a fact, it ain't no lie either that if I have to pick between the two my ass is definitely going with the option that fucks us both. So the real question is, what do you want?"
"I already have what I want... a vessel."
"No that's what you need. Some skin to walk around in. Speaking of which, why her and why here?"
"Does it really matter?"
"Call it 'Professional curiosity'."
'Becky' smiles and tick-tocks bulged eyes across the basement before stopping them directly on Adam: "She was weak. And unlike the rest who have passed here capable of receiving my... signal. That her will had been sufficiently broken by love's betrayal and since what little of it that remained had been long ravaged with drink and drugs, it was an opportunity too good to pass up. The truth is she saw exactly what I was before I took her and she never so much as thought a single 'no' in protest. As for 'why here'? Well I must confess I'm a little surprised that you don't already know, 'metromancer'. You really can't see the gates scattered throughout your beloved city, the ones growing slowly until the things that live beyond them can fit through? Pfff, really now. What could I hope to gain by bargaining with one so ignorant even of his own dominion?"
"How 'bout a better 'vessel' for starters? How 'bout I trade you that one for mine?"
'Becky' nods appreciatively and motions towards Adam: "I'm listening."
"Look, we both know the situation. Even if I just walk away and leave you in there, how long do you think that body'll last you? Another day maybe? Two tops? And this little ritual you've got going on here is going to need a helluva lot more mana than your vessel's currently got left in her. Nowhere near enough to try what I think you're trying to do."
"Oh, and what would that be?"
"Well, I'm no expert in the black arts, but as they say - 'once you go black you never go back' - so unless I'm mistaken you're trying to pry that gate you crawled out of a bit wider so you don't have to be alone out here. I mean c'mon, the bodies are kind of a dead giveaway."
"Maybe..."
"C'mon already. It's like being on the set of a Lovecraftian snuff film down here and you're what, just taking in the sights? We both know what you're planning and an operation on that scale is gonna require a lot of energy. Raw energy. The kind you get out of a host that's jacked into the very soul of the city itself. Juice like that and you'll be able to march a whole platoon on through here. Plus you'll save a lot of time in the process... which is not something either of us have a lot of. Sooner or later, Ronnie's going to have to take the situation into his own hand and this time the kid's gloves'll be off. Ronnie or the law or the folks who run East Point. That's a sooner than a later either way this plays."
"All good points, except for one thing. I don't see how you would benefit from such a deal, 'metromancer'? I gain your body, along with the power to call upon more of my kind into your city and in return you get what? The woman with whose liberty you seek to purchase from me solely because you fear the reprecussions if you do not. In other words, you're telling me to keep your life... you'd give it to me? Somehow I don't think so."
"That's because you didn't let me finish. See, as you just told me a few minutes ago, your last vessel was weak." Adam pauses to light a fresh cigarette off the butt of his last before continuing. "But I'm not. I'm not some strung out junkie with a broken heart and no fight left in them. In fact I'm like nothing you've ever seen before and since you want me to be honest with you, I'm only making this deal because frankly I don't think you got the strength to take me. In fact, once I have you under my control, I'll have more than enough firepower to deal with Ronnie and his collection of walking abortions in any manner I see fit.."
"So you're proposing we duel for your soul?"
"Only if you got the balls."
"Somehow you don't strike me as the dueling sort."
"What? You mean slugging it out like one of those Neanderthals up there? Nah, not my style. When it comes to the flesh I'm a lover not a fighter. But in here...," Adam taps his skull and winks. "I'm a fuckin' ninja baby, I'm Bruce Lee on steroids and more than a match for a second rate 'demon' from some sewer dimension."
'Becky' brushes the strand out of her eye only to have it fall back again, with the other eye she peers at Adam with smoldering rage. Adam's always had one talent above all others - the ability to piss off any sentient creature on or off the face of the Earth.
"Unless you got a better idea...?" Adam smiles and opens his hands inquisitively.
"Very well, I accept your challenge. Why don't you just step outside that circle and we'll..."
"Naw, fuck that. Here's how'll we'll do this. I'm going to count us off. On three my circle is going to slip from under my feet and reappear around yours..., hers, whatever. At that moment there'll be nothing between us. However, just in case you decide to, oh I dunno, stay inside her body and go all psycho killer on me, well then you, along with Becky unfortunately, will be incinerated in what will be a no doubt very loud and excruciating manner. Which will leave us both screwed incidentally, so let's agree to not go down that particular avenue of possibility, shall we? What do you say, fair enough?"
"Heh." Becky grins with naked glee, "Not fair at all. Not for you. But go ahead and count, gutter mage. Your tin bravado is adorable. Just know that once I'm inside, I'm going to find everyone you ever loved and make sure you don't miss a single blink of the terrible, terrible things I'll have you do to them."
"Then it's a good thing everyone I've ever loved is already dead, asshole." Adam puffs a long drag off his smoke and flicks it off Becky's chest. "One...
two...
.... three."
And as good as his word the circle vanishes from around him.
Adam is jolted out of the city's grid. A neural power surge sends him convulsing lightly and staggering back. The sudden energy drain sends him plummeting back up into real space. Gone the crystallized resolve, the limpid mind and the harmony of a thousand possible worlds singing through his ears.
Across the room, through the vertigo tilt-a-whirl grinding at his eyes, he snatches a glance of Becky collapsed within his circle, which looks faint to his eyes, almost an optical illusion. But before he can register much else he can feel It move in on him.
The Adversary strikes quick and first. An electromagnetic tsunami of pure dread smashes into Adam. It doubles him over and drops him to his knees. Consciousness shatters upon impact and drowns the fragments under a thousand luminescent purple worms with bulbous heads of eye-balls. The swarm slither around his mind, smothering each screaming thought in Adam's skull and obliterating every strand of awareness in their path. They begin to pierce through his astral body, mummifying it in their squirm as they burrow deeper, weaving themselves around his Chakras, blacking them out one by one, from the root, to the balls, to the navel, to the chest, to the neck...
... where the collar Mistress Drown earlier wrapped around his throat ignites into a crisp blaze of cerulean radiance. From the center of his larynx, a white luminous flower sprouts. Sixteen dusk purple petals shimmer into a vibrant corona around the lock that binds him. It's light magnifies and spreads down along the helix pathways binding his Chakras. The eye-ball worms begin to shriek telepathically, creating a static sizzle as they burst into flames and disintegrate into foul plumes of burnt rubber smoke.
The Adversary has no choice but to pull out of Adam, withdrawing in a receding wave from his consciousness and circling around him slowly. When the last essence of the opponent disengages from Adam's mind the collar shifts to a faint violet glow before fading back into his throat.
Adam coughs up a wad of ectoplasmic residue while staggering back up off his knees. He wipes his chin. Glances over at Becky. Out, but breathing. Good enough. Adam looks around the basement and though he's unable to see his Adversary he knows Its floating around here somewhere. He can feel the disembodied terror on the dank air and the sudden drop in the temperature has him shivering. He figures he's got a minute or two before the thing dissipates completely back to wherever it came from.
Adam touches his throat and closes his eyes. Mistress Drown's voice returns to him: “Just a little something to remind you, and any skanks you might run into, that you’re mine tonight. Bound in servitude to my pleasure and my pleasure alone. A binding lock to ensure you’re coming back here and finishing what you started. Remember that.”
He nods thankfully to himself. Slavery was never happiness for Adam, but more of a hobby. A rare indulgence when the mood struck and but one amongst the harem of his distractions. Yet tonight he gambled on the binding power of his mistresses' collar and it had served him as faithfully as a crown serves an empress.
Adam makes his way over to his circle, enters it and seals it behind him. He bends down and checks Becky's pulse with two fingers pressed to the neck. A faint pulse but steady. He pats her cheek with the back of his hand and whispers her name. Nothing. Repeats process and gets a barely coherent mumble. He then points a finger and uses it to draw a mark on her head. Invisible to all eyes but his own and any who might try entering again. The ward sinks into her forehead and vanishes... along with all memory of the last twenty-four hours. It won't keep her off the streets he figures, but it should be enough to keep her out of the mad house.
His intuition tingles at the dwindling frequencies of the Adversary, the disembodied intelligence fluttering around Adam. Garbled whispers softer that the flutter of a moth's wings round the flame tickle at his ears. From the periphery of his eye an ominous shape lurks but vanishes when glanced directly.
"Yeah, I know you're still out there. So just a quick FYI before you fade away. If you ever decide to go joy riding on my side of reality again you'd best stay the fuck out of Terminus when you do. This is my city and she's under my watch. Just remember I got your name, asshole and next time I won't care what hostage you got yourself strapped into. Y'hear me?"
The final grains of the Adversary's being rattle around the closing sink hole in our dimension, before draining completely. The jade glow illuminating the basement fading with it.
Nothing left now but clean up duty.
Ronnie's Hate Patrol at the all clear carry Becky out of the building while Adam seals the basement from any further intrusions with a series of spray painted sigils. When he finally shuffles back out of the building and out into the parking lot all the cars are gone but Ronnie's. First ashen light of an overcast dawn seeps over East Point and drives back her shadows across the post industrial slum.
Ronnie and his two pet goons stand by the car waiting for him.
"She gonna be okay?" Adam ambles on over and asks rubbing the fatigue his eyes.
"Okay enough." Ronnie shrugs. "I've seen her much more fucked up truth be told. I got someone dropping her off at Grady."
"Right on," He brushes a heavy hand through his scalp and lights up the last cigarette in his pack. "So Just so you're in the know, I wiped her memory out from the last 24 hours. Figured that way she's not carrying that shit in her head for the rest of her life. Not sure what you'll tell her though."
"I'll think of something."
"Just one last thing. The building. You got three corpses in there and sooner or later somebody's gonna find them. Thing is we all got a lot of DNA material down there and I'm sure none of us are too keen to explain to the cops how it got there. I need to take care of this place, as in permanently... with your permission of course."
Ronnie puffs out his cheeks and streams out a long sigh through pursed lips. "It'll mean calling in another favor and I got precious few left in this neck of the woods as it is, but yeah, take care of that shit."
"Then we cool?"
Ronnie nods thoughtfully for a moment: "About this? Yeah, you held up your end of the bargain and I'll hold up mine."
Adam nods and lights up a cigarette. The last in the pack. A thought crosses his mind: "Hold up. What do you mean 'about this'?"
And Ronnie answers with a solid punch delivered straight to the gut.
Adam doubles over for the second time in an hour. All the air has been driven out of him and he stumbles forward and backwards before catching his balance.
"Those people down there aren't the fucking 'help', Adam." Ronnie growls while gesturing with restless hands manically. They're my crew. My people. My friends. They stand by me when the shit goes down and I do them the same. You ever insult them again and they got my permission to boot check some manners into your sorry ass. You understand me?"
Adam tries to say something but he's having trouble finding the breath to do so wit. Instead he nods weakly and drags a burning drag of air into his deflated lungs.
Ronnie makes a gun with his hand and bounces the barrel off Adam's temple: "And if you ever pull some hoodoo shit on them again...or even think of doing so to me, I swear, I fuckin' swear there won't be enough pieces of your body left to bury you with."
Ronnie turns around and storms off to the car. The goons linger long enough for Adam to catch their satisfied smirks before sauntering over to the backseat. Doors slam, the car rumbles to life and peels out of the lot.
Adam, cradling his belly, fumbles along the ground looking for the cigarette he spit out when Ronnie punched him. He finds it and lights it back up. Then he turns around to the building and mutters - "ARSN."
A minute passes with no effect. Another and yet another before smoke begins to waft out of the brick building's windows while a soft orange haze begins to spread out of the door.
Adam turns his back on the building and staggers out of the parking lot. He begins singing to himself a fragment of an old song his mother used to hum while getting ready for work.
"Here are we.... one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth," Adam croons in his best Bowie imitation.
When he steps outside the chain link fence, he makes his way over to the curb. There's a dreary puddle around a leaf congested gutter. The gray water is still and across its surface his reflection.
"There are you.... drive like a demon from station to station."
And he looks down into his reflection there in the gutters and vanishes softly into it.
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