Bad II the Bone (22 page)

“Didn’t know we could do shit like that, ain’t that right mot
herfucker.” Patra gave a weak smile and snapped into a Thai form, fists up, poise loose. “He trying to fuck with our minds girls don’t let him.”

Suzy stepped forward composing herself with effort rubbing shoulders for reassurance and said.

“Jus fuck off and leave us alone. Wi nuh frighten that easy.”

“No fun in that,” the hobo thing said.

“Let me hear you scream. Now or later. Your choice. Always your choice.”

His grin was broad, impossibly so, almost splitting his face in two and that inhuman tongue flickered behind the prison bars of black and rotting teeth that held as much menace as the slavering canines of a vampire.

“Tangling with us will not be fun peckerwood, I don’t care which satanic hood you’re from. You maybe gangsta down their but up here, so are we.” Patra spat the words a dark resolve eclipsing her features.

“This will be fun, fun, fun. The legion know of you, you are c
elebrity meat in the pit. So I want to be first to gut you, to taste you. I want to be the first, first, first.” He raved like child in a tantrum.

“Not today,” Y said calmly. “Today you go back to where you came from.”

Y stood with the glowing katana pointing towards it. She slid smoothly into a kata, locking each move, each breath, the anger maybe or the horror intensifying the umbra of power emanating from the sword. Patra and Suzy stepped back.

“Walk away or get carried away.”

The hobo thing flinched noticeable at the sword, its focus reverted inwards for a moment, the infernal brimstone glow in its eyes dimming, as if it was consulting with someone or something not of this world. Then as if its fears were confirmed it snapped back to lucidity with a feral grunt. Its smile was impish, eyes calculating as he absorbed them as if the image would become a mental keepsake for him. This time he stepped back tentatively.

“Next time you won’t see me coming. Next time will be fun.”

He took a longing look at them and scurried away, his manic laughter trailing behind him.

“Neeeext time will be fun
,” he screeched. “Next tiiimeee!”

1
4
.

Docklands Cargo Bay Ltd

South East London

Friday, July 19th

11.40

T
he tinted smoke from the Monte Cristo cigar rose lazily from the searing tip. Enoch Lacombe savored the taste by turning it around in his mouth and then pulled almost lovingly on the Cuban, sighed, tilted his head back and let out a stream of the aromatic smoke to the zinc alloy ceiling.

“
Do dare dedi datum vita.”
The words spoken gently had the power to alter the laws of matter and bending it to the wielder’s will. He blew out another small twirling maelstrom from his mouth that suddenly decided to disobey the laws of thermodynamics and form into a flying vulture looking as if it was preparing for landing. His mind drifted over the blood that had been shed these past weeks and with a mental shrug he was as focused as a laser beam again. His eyes settled on the space on top of the antique bureau and he recalled the importance of what was missing from it. Invariably a deluge of pain and urgency overwhelmed him. Darkman stretched in the Celtic throne chair thought to have been charmed by Merlin himself and now housed in his makeshift home, a sixty foot trailer modified for habitation and containing some of the curiosities, charms, amulets and talismans that he had collected in his travels. Every item in his menagerie of arcane culture spoke of where he had been on the globe and the people and organizations that had willingly or not, shared hidden knowledge with him.

Home away from home, until such time.

But amongst everything around Darkman that was of obvious value and significance, two designer paper bags stood dust free, pristine and totally out of place beside the Celtic throne chair. With the cigar in his right hand, he leaned over with his left and rummaged inside. He plucked up a trouser and shirt set suited for a three to four year old, dangling it on his fingers as he observed it.

A scowl darkened his face.

His father died cursing his name for the stone that was bound to the Lacombe family had not returned in time to save his land. But of equal importance was his son, his sole bloodline and heir to the family traditions who was suffering with his baby mother under the heel of his enemies. He promised himself he would take him home, restore self worth to his woman and keep spilling the blood required for retribution by the dark god’s until the balance was restored.

He dug his nose into the fabric of the baby clothes and i
nhaled a lungful of newness and innocence. Enoch had never seen his child in the flesh but he had projected himself to his bedside many nights and he sensed much more than a flicker of the Lacombe talent in him. He would be strong and significant in a world that did not realize his kind existed. And although his offspring and his mother where under the yoke, a situation he took full responsibility for, he felt no guilt, no shame, just a ice cold conviction that they were pawns in a celestial domino game, characters created from a genetic lottery, given free will when it suited the players or they lost interest. His duty was to maintain the integrity of his character and be who he was meant to be - a vicious, vindictive, vain, vengeful son-of-a-bitch who believed in family first. If the act of manifesting the duppies and demons that were his storm-troopers in this war sucked him dry as a bone, he did not care because he had been the cause of all this. He did not care that for every higher order demon, every creature from the pit he dragged fourth it drained him significantly. He needed to take respites like this to recuperate drawing on the almost endless supply of negative energy that the city of London emanated, continuing to unravel his scheme in his head but he was still only human. What he had lost he would never regain but what he was short changed in longevity he would gain in pride.

A sharp astringent smell broke his reverie and he leaned forward to exit the chair, carefully placing
the baby clothes in their place. He walked past a stuffed dodo bird into the area he used as a kitchen and watched the simmering demon weed in the distillation glass bubbling heartily. Enoch added a solvent to the mix and returned to his throne.

He never thought it possible but his time in prison had taught him patience, soaking up his brashness and his compu
lsive need for adventure and tempering it with calculation and cunning.

Deh bwoy
Spokes, who he knew held the remainder of his treasures and more importantly, the John Crow stone, had himself prepared by accident or device a powerful artifact even he could not penetrate. Then, as if this country man was taunting him, he had acquired the services of a group of the Watunza Mwanga – the carers of the light, reincarnated warriors his forefathers had run into on numerous travels in Africa. They were wild cards thrown in amongst all the conflicting forces that made up human existence to maintain the balance and fairness of the domino game. His side had been chosen by his family many centuries ago and so by their very nature he was physically unable to be within a hundred Talmudic paces of them.

How Spokes knew his way around the mystical landscape was a mystery.

But he was no Voudon that he knew.

He dusted the ashes of his cigar into a copper dish balanced on the arms of the Merlin chair and smiled fleetingly.

What was his once, would be his again.

The precious drops of distilled demon weed fell into the c
eramic beaker and as he procured the required quantity, he too condensed an idea to spill blood, a lot more blood.

“Every knee shall bow ………….”

Red Ground Estates

Surrey

02.30

The girls sat on the large bed in one of Spokes’ many spare rooms, but this one, large enough to hold two double beds comfortably, acted as a command centre. Y was applying nail polish to Suzy’s toes and Patra had her chin propped up in her hands watching the flat screen television. Surrounding them were ten monitors with CCTV camera feeds that were situated at the many vantage points around the mansion, sitting on tables that they checked regularly an
d backed up with a five man unit who were also securing the grounds. They were in constant communication with the roving security teams via VHS radio that they carried everywhere. That fact alone made the radios candidate to be accessorized. When Patra had finished with them they were bedecked in diamantes, lanyards representing Jamaica, UK and the USA and blinking LED’s on the tips of the antennae. Sufficiently pimped they were slung around necks or hips. On the girl’s recommendation – Y had Googled perimeter security - Spokes had wired the estate with state of the art motion and pressure detectors on her inexperienced recommendation but in his eyes it had been given by a security professional with an unblemished track record of countless years. Now getting into the estate without being detected required a full tactical assault team and resources that Deacon could not marshal in a million years. So the flesh and blood intruders were dealt with.

Check.

The other types would not be so easily deterred and that concerned Suzy.

How could you grow up in Jamaica and not have an affinity for the supernatural? Rich or poor, sufferah or risto, out of many one people as the country’s motto proclaimed and you at least appreciated the unseen powers that condemned many an unsuspecting Yardie. Christianity had tried it damndest to convince its mainly African descendents since
the fifteenth century that power resided in heaven and with one God. Forced indoctrination could not wipe what had been written on the collective consciousness of generations of Africans and the Holy Spirit had to coexist with the spirits of the mother-land. Not all the ancient traditions where of a benevolent nature though and where there were Pocomania meetings celebrating life, there was black magic seeking to destroy it.

Suzy knew there were few children who had not been scared by the twilight stories of the Darkman in the same breath as the Three Foot Horse, Rolling Calf and Coolie Duppy. He was an urban legend back-a-yard. The bogeyman she was referring to was known even by her grandmother who used the stories as a threat to wayward children scaring them onto the straight and narrow.

Believing he was real was straining on the elastic of her convictions. But Suzy had witnessed his power and his demonic connections. She had seen the effect of Darkman, on her waking world and she couldn’t help thinking that they were completely and utterly out of their depth.

If they were normal people they’d be buckling under the enormity of the revelations but being
who they were, the world they thought they understood lay shattered at their feet, and Bad II the Bone simply nudged it under the proverbial bed, to be cogitated on at a more convenient time.

But in the here and now
, Y was pissed. Spokes had misled them. And she would be damned if their services would be prostituted because they were in need. If they were to be fucked, they had to be willing participants in the act. That was the reason why Spokes was walking a worried groove into the floorboards in the study next door preparing for an estrogen fuelled inquisition.

A meeting he
knew would not be pretty.

The MTV expose of Fifty Cents provided the background sounds of a girl’s night in with a paranormal twist. This scene could have been a Friday night pampering session if not for the threat of death from a sorcerer and demonic entities. But Bad II the Bone had a knack for making the uncanny seem ordinary and watching Y in her crossed legged position on the bed bouncing with the hilarity of it all was not unusual. Suzy looked over to Patra who shrugged her shoulders at the corner of the bed, engrossed in the program on the television and rolled her eyes. The laughter was contagious and in seconds all three were chortling, uncontrollably.

Between splutters Suzy asked.

“Will sumbody please tell mi what is suh funny?”

With aching cheeks Y tried to compose herself. She screwed on the top of the red nail polish and placed it in her utility tray with the cotton balls and the acetone.

“Life is funny,” she said finally.

“I wouldn’t go as far as saying that this son-of-a-bitch we call life was funny. Challenging and sometimes a pain in the ass but funny no,” Patra dried her eyes.

“Not funny ha-ha but funny strange.” Y explained.

“Strange just doesn’t explain what we’re going through right now. This is some outright bizarre shit.”
Patra said.

“And my
is telling me, this is just the beginning.

“I was afraid of that,” Y said. “Remember how I used to moan about how life was passing us by. I could only look fo
rward to the infrequent scrapes we got ourselves into, our training sessions and partying. It was driving me crazy.”

“How could I forget your bitchin’? Then the motherfucker Tyrone came into your life.”

“Our life,” Suzy corrected.

“Smoothed you the fuck out,” Patra observed.

“So smooth, all my defenses were down and he ripped us off of everything we had. But look at us now. Excitement, mystery, danger and some money. And I’m beginning to think we’ve bitten off more than we can chew.”

“No shit.” Patra laughed.

“Getty, getty nuh want it, wanty, wanty cah get it.” Suzy recited the Jamaican saying stoically.

“Be careful what you wish for.” Y murmured as if she r
egretted that dreams did come true after all.

“Amen.” Patra
focused on the television for a moment.

“You know what I wish for?” She looked at her freshly ped
icured feet and wriggled her toes. “I want to live to see next week. But as that is uncertain I’m going to squeeze the good shit out of every moment.”

The girls went silent with that shared and succinct asses
sment of their situation; the horror and mystery trickled back into the moment as they stood on the edge of darkness. A cold chill descended.

Were they trying to protect a man who did not deserve protection?

The room door pushed open and in swaggered the man with the answers. He slowly closed the door behind him, grabbed a chair, swinging it around and down so he could straddle it like a cowboy.

“Mek wi reason.” Spokes said

Spokes stretched out the five fingers of his right hand as if he was testing the strength of his nerves and let the ceiling lights catch the blue jewel being devoured by a dragon that encircled his index finger. The scaly gold skin etched on the
rings surface by a master artisan glinted reptilian like and was very old or was made to look so.

“Is this for real?” Patra asked.

“I researched it thoroughly. Had it corroborated by an Iraqi professor of antiquity,” Spokes said. “It cost me an arm, an a leg too, the back door business don’t come cheap, mark my words.”

“Mesopotamian, you said,” Suzy repeated. “Four thousand BC?”

“Roughly, used by Babylonian priests also to protect the ancient order from back bitters, thieves and murderers who wanted to do them harm. The spell was cast in Sumerian by my pardy. Yuh believe dat, a country bwoy from Mobay, speaking a long dead language and casting spells? The ring is linked to my soul or life force.”