Shadows Gather - Chapter 1, Part 4

Shadows Gather

Chapter 1, Part 4

Copywrite 2009, Carolynne Ciceri

“Michael. Tell me who has been talking to you about me? Answer me true!” there, I invoked the key obedience phrase, it’ll scare him, but I really need to know who’s been messing with his head. That’s entirely my prerogative thanks. “St-tst-tst” he’s choking trying to tell me the name but someone, it appears, has put a mind block on him. If I don’t do something fast he’ll choke to death trying to speak my enemy’s name. “Ereshkigal!” I shout out the name of the ancient Sumerian goddess of the underworld and he collapses into a dead faint. “Fuck!” Now I am mad. I had to burn a perfectly good safe word there. The good news is that he’s stopped choking. The rest of the news is bad, bad and bad. Not least of which is the fact that he’s slumped half on me, half off, and in trying to lower him to the floor without banging his head on my workbench the shattered bone and ground meat that currently makes up my left leg starts screaming agony like all the smoke alarms in hell.

Scrabbling through the cut herbs and metaphysical apparatus on the workbench I come up with a cell phone and bottle of Percoset. Tough-bitch multi-tasker that I am, I manage to dry swallow two pills and hit the speed dial during the time it takes for three hot tears of pain to splash onto the spill from a tiny vial of dried Dragon’s Blood. I deeply inhale the puffs of resulting smoke. Now man, that is some good shit. I can see my reflection in the mirror over the bench and my eyes flash that gorgeous red that promises a world of pain to Stanislav, whenever I catch up to him that piece of Gorgon vomit. I’m pretty sure the St-tsts-stts that Mica was trying to choke out before I pulled the plug on his consciousness was Stanislav’s name – only one of my current enemies with that particular consonant configuration.

The interminable ringing in my ear finally ends with Tequila’s rasp, “Shadows Gather, watering hole to the Unholy and the Undead. Whatchawant?” “Get up here. Now.” Hmm, sounds like my rasp is finally a match for hers. I try and put the phone down but no. Her tirade pulls it back to my ear. “Irene? That you? You got a lotta damn nerve commanding me to your presence. I may run this den of depravity for you but that don’t mean I’m your damn slave! Your Royal nothingness! Get up yourself!” she pauses for breath and I know from experience that she’s working herself up to a full on hissy fit so its dive in now or forget it. Tequila is one long tall tranny that can out-howl any of the local were-pack leaders. Not kidding. Won 2 large on her last Halloween. “Tequila! I need your help putting Mica to bed.” There. That shut her up. All I can hear now are the sounds of the bar, techno music blaring. I hate techno night. “I need help undressing him.” I add, somewhat unnecessarily. “I’ll be right there.” She answers. Hah, I bet she will. I’m not sure it’s the 22 year-old underwear model side of him or the sometime construction worker from the bad part of town that she likes best, but I guess I shouldn’t talk. Hard to know if I’d a taken him in if he were ugly. I’m kinda shallow that way.

And now the phone does go down and a half full bottle of Jack Daniels takes its place. I take a long pull and watch as the rainbows from the chandeliers reflect in the bottle glass. Pretty. Like baby boy here. Pretty. I can hear my heavy breath and the swish of the bourbon. Not much else, even though the bar that Tequila runs for me - “Shadows Gather” - takes up the first floor of this warehouse, given the nature of my work and my proclivity for solitude you can bet your ass that a lot of profits have gone into soundproofing over the years. So, I wait in the silence, looking at my pretty things and wondering if there will still be any bourbon in the bottle when Tequila arrives. Cause things aren’t so quiet inside my head now as that Techno Music starts up in my shattered leg and the throb of pain also known as the beat tries to pull me down into its madness. Nope. Another swig of bourbon and a dab of that dried Dragon Blood on my gums and I’m good thanks, go ask someone else to dance. Besides at the very least, I got me a pretty boy to rescue and a bad guy to punish, gotta stay frosty, there’s work to be done.