Secondhand Souls (26 page)

“What are you talking about?”

So she told them about the attack on the Buddhist Center, about how the Morrigan had grown, taken form as they slaughtered the Squirrel People. She told them about Yama releasing her, saving her from the Morrigan, and what he had said about trying to establish the new order.

“He just let you go?” Charlie said.

“Who the fuck Yama?” said Minty.

“The man in yellow,” said Audrey. “He’s a Buddhist personification of Death. The legend was that he was a monk who was told if he meditated for fifty years, he would achieve enlightenment, so he went into a cave in the mountains, and he meditated for forty-nine years, three hundred and sixty-four days, and on the last day, some thieves came into the cave, leading a bull they had stolen, and they decapitated it, and when he asked to be spared, they decapitated him, too. He was reincarnated as Yama, a powerful demon-god, and he put the head of the bull on his own body and then killed the thieves and became the prime ruler over Death, the protector of Buddhism. He’s one of the demons we’re told to ignore when we are training to lead people through
bardo,
from life to death.”

“Yama, huh?” Minty Fresh said.

“Yes, I’m so sorry, I should have told you all.”

“That’s okay. How ’bout you let go my leg.”

Audrey had been hugging his calf and foot through the entire Yama story, now she was embarrassed as well as sorry.

“But you didn’t ignore him, right?” said Charlie.

“Honestly, I didn’t really remember him until now. Does that make sense?”

“It’s all right, Audrey,” Minty said. “He has some kind of gris-gris he put on people. Kid that works for me was all woo-woo with it, too, asking me about where my soul vessels went. I knew something was up with him. Motherfucker been sneaky since we was little.”

“Pardon?” said Charlie.

“Yama my cousin.”

“Wait,” said Audrey. “What?”

“He might be Yama now, but when I knew him, his name was Lemon, and he was my cousin.”

“Lemon Fresh?” asked Charlie. “So that isn’t a nickname you made up?”

Rivera turned aside and tried to hide his smile.

“Don’t you laugh,” said Minty. “Lemon was not an uncommon name in Louisiana in those days. And I’m dying here.”

“He said he’s just trying to establish a new order,” Audrey said, even more distressed now. “And that’s what
we
thought was happening. That’s part of the cycle, part of the wheel of life and death . . . Right?”

“Audrey,” Minty Fresh said, his eyelids fluttering a bit now. “I don’t want to rush y’all, but I probably got a limited time to live, so if you could just tell us—”

“I think I told him the lost souls are on the bridge,” Audrey said.

Minty Fresh looked from Charlie to Rivera back to Audrey. “Was anyone going to tell me?”

“I was going to,” said Charlie, “but I only found out yesterday afternoon and things have moved kind of fast since then. Were you going to tell us that the new menace to reality as we know it is your cousin?”

“Don’t sass me, Charlie, I’m dying.”

“You can’t keep playing the death card.”

“I don’t want to keep playing the death card. But the death card been played. Just let me go with a little dignity.” He closed his eyes, took a gasping breath.

“You mean instead of lying like a rug,” said Charlie.

One of Minty Fresh’s eyes popped open, his dignified death having been postponed by being called on his shit. “You know, Asher, just because you have biceps now doesn’t mean you can talk to me like that.”

“Your cousin?”

“He sent me the book, all right? He made me into a Death Merchant twenty some years ago, then he disappeared. Only reason I knew he was in town is he still driving that raggedy old Buick Roadmaster. I would spit but my mouth is dry.”

There was a squeeze bottle of water on the nightstand, Audrey held it for Minty Fresh to have a drink.

“Where my shades? Let me die with a touch of cool.”

Rivera took Minty Fresh’s sunglasses from his jacket pocket, helped fit them on the big man, then they all stood there for a minute, waiting.

“Anybody got any ’Trane on they phone?” asked Minty. “Some Miles?”

Sad shaking of heads.

“Figures,” said Minty Fresh. He lay back as if he was hearing the notes. They all listened to his breathing and watched the cardiac monitor’s jagged line.

The nurse came through the glass door and everyone stood a little straighter and tried to look a little more official, as if she couldn’t have seen them through the glass before she came in.

“Mr. Fresh?”

“What? What? What?” Minty Fresh said, lifting his head up. “It so dark. Why it so dark? Here I go. Here I come, Lemon, you bitch-ass motherfucker—”

“You have your sunglasses on,” said the nurse.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

“Mr. Fresh, there’s a young woman out here who says she’s your priest.”

“Big titties? Dress like a vampire?”

“Well, I guess,” said the nurse, giving Rivera a nervous look. “She’s kind of dressed more like a Catholic schoolgirl.”

“Yeah, that my priest. Send her in.”

“So, some good pain meds?” Rivera said.

“Fine as frog fur,” said the Mint One. He offered Rivera a pound with his non-IV hand and Rivera returned it.

Charlie Asher frowned. Having never gotten a pound from the big man, he felt slighted.

“Let’s give them some privacy,” said Audrey. They passed Lily on the way out of the room, each giving her a pat on the shoulder.

In the lobby, among the other distressed and waiting, stood a slim woman in her forties with dark hair, wearing a sharp knit suit with military-style gold trim. Charlie recognized her as Lily’s mother, but unless you saw them both side by side without eye makeup (which was a condition in which Charlie had never seen Lily) and saw that they had the same wide, blue eyes, you’d have never guessed they were related. Charlie elbowed Rivera and whispered, “Lily’s mom, Mrs. Severo.”

Rivera showed one second of an “are you kidding me” look then gathered his composure and introduced himself to her.

“Inspector Rivera?” she said, shaking his hand. “I’m afraid to ask how you know my daughter.”

“I met her at Charlie Asher’s shop when she worked there.”

“Charlie Asher was a good man.”

“He was,” said Rivera.

“He was good for Lily. She was a wild child, but I think her job at Charlie’s store kept her grounded, at least some of the time. I work so much, it’s just been Lily and me—I’m not even sure she’s over Charlie’s passing; now this.”

Rivera could tell she was feeling responsible for her daughter’s pain and he wanted to tell her just how much this was not her fault. He wanted to put his arm around her and be a decent human being, but he wasn’t finding it easy, because this—the attack on Minty—was murder, and he had a protocol for dealing with the loved ones of the victim. It didn’t seem right.

“Mr. Fresh is a good guy.”

“I don’t know him. Never met him, of course. I worried he was older than her, but she really seems to care for him. I don’t want her to be alone. It sucks to be alone.”

“I know,” he said. “I was going to offer to be here for Lily if you needed to get to work, but I’m guessing you’ll be staying. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“That would be nice, Inspector.”

“Alphonse,” he said.

She nodded. “I’m Elizabeth. Liz.”

“Liz,” he repeated, smiled. “Liz, I’ve know Lily since she was sixteen,” Rivera said. “You had your work cut you for you. She was a spooky kid.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” she said.

“Maybe I do. What do you take in your coffee?”

He was about to head back out the glass doors into the hallway when he saw a familiar doctor walk up to the nurses’ desk, confer with the attending nurse, then look around until he caught Rivera’s eye. Rivera intercepted him at the desk. Dr.
Hathaway
, Rivera reminded himself.

“How are you doing Inspector?” asked the doctor.

“That depends,” said Rivera.

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do for him. We were going to move him to a quiet room where everyone could be with him, but honestly, I don’t think there’s time. His organs are shutting down and I’m surprised he’s even conscious, so if you need to ask him anything, I’d do it right now.”

“Actually, he’s a friend.”

“I’m sorry. Before—”

“It’s okay, Doctor.”

“Code blue, Doctor,” called the nurse. She ran around the desk and into the room where Minty lay.

Without a word the doctor turned and followed her in. Lily came stumbling out of the glass doors, makeup-blackened tears running down her face.

26

The Underworld

U
nder the San Francisco Bay, in a maintenance storage room just off a BART service tunnel, the Morrigan pooled among the heavy track-repair and debris-clearing tools. Every few minutes a train would go through the tunnel and they would dig what was left of their claws into the concrete to keep from being sucked out into the greater train tunnel.

“Close the door,” said Babd, “and that won’t keep happening.” It was almost completely dark in the room and their eyes looked like silver disks floating in ink.

“I can’t close the door,” said Nemain. “It’s big and rusty and I can’t pull it loose. I only have one hand.”

“We should go back through the sewers to that house with all the little soul puppets,” said Macha. “Get our strength back.”

“We could get the ones that escaped under the house where we couldn’t fit.”

“Well, we could fit now,” said Babd. She, like her sisters, had barely any dimension now; even her shadow form showed holes and tears from buckshot.

Nemain, who was the most solid of the three, had lost a hand, and as much as she stared at it and cursed at it, it wouldn’t grow back, even in a shadow form. “We should go someplace where there are no guns.”

“Or cars,” said Babd.

“Or Yama.”

“Why is it,” said Macha, “that every time we become strong enough to do something about Yama, someone shoots us up?”

“I feel used,” said Babd. “Do you feel used? I don’t know why we need him.”

“I say we go eat the soul puppets, then flay Yama right away,” said Nemain.

“Take his head,” said Macha, who was always keen on taking heads, it being her specialty.

“I’m in,” said Babd. “Let’s go.”

“Ladies,” came a deep voice out of the dark, which was strange, because they could all see in the dark, and they couldn’t see where the voice was coming from.

“Ladies,” said Lemon. Now he stood there, a palm out, an open flame burning on his palm, illuminating the room. “What are you doing in this shit hole?”

“They came into the other place with guns. Blowed us up,” said Macha.

“Look at us,” said Nemain.

“Don’t look at us,” said Babd.

“We need to go get the rest of the soul puppets, the ones that taste like ham.”

“No, we not going back there, ladies. But I know a place where you can scoop souls out the air like eatin’ cotton candy. Thousands of them. Y’all ain’t seen nothin’ like it. Why, I bet once you done there, you be able to rip souls right out of a human like the old days. Ain’t no gun or car can hurt you, then.”

“Where?” asked Macha.

“Why, when y’all are done, you’ll probably be able to bring the Underworld up anywhere y’all want. Maybe everywhere.”

“Where? Where? Where?” asked Nemain.

“What’s cotton candy?” asked Babd, who was the dimmest in a triad of very dark creatures.

“Well, I’ll show y’all,” said Lemon. “But we going to have wait until it’s dark out. They’s a lot of open ground to cover to get there.”

“Open a door into that place,” said Macha.

“I’ll get y’all close, but you can’t just wade in and scoop them all up. You nibble round the edges, maybe, and before anyone know what happen, they’s one soul in particular you gotta shred. You don’t get that one, you lose the rest.”

“Take us there,” said Nemain.

I
n the days when the Underworld was in flux with the light, and gods rose and fell like mushrooms in a damp forest, there came into being two brothers, Osiris and Set. Osiris, with his queen, Isis,
rose to reign over the kingdom of light, and Set ruled over the dark, the Underworld, with his queen Nephthys, who was fine. Set was jealous of his brother’s land and worshippers, and plotted against him, while Osiris, radiant and self-assured, yearned for a taste of the dark world in Neph
thys, and so he did tap that ass. From that union came a son, the dark, dog-headed god, Anubis.
(As well as his jackal-headed brother
Upuaut, who would be put in a basket and set adrift in the sea, to make his way unguided in a new land, but his is another story.
*
)

When Set learned of his wife’s affair, he murdered Osiris, and to assure that Osiris would never be reincarnated, Set cut the body into pieces and hid the pieces among the darkest, most distant corners of the Underworld. Isis was overcome with grief and searched in vain
for her beloved. But the dutiful dog-headed god, Anubis, Osiris’s son in the Underworld,
found the pieces of his father’s body and returned them to Isis. Anubis mummified his father’s body and Isis raised his spirit to rule over the people of the sun. For his service, Anubis was given the realm of the dead in the Underworld, and it was his lot to see that order was kept
and justice done to the passing souls of man.

Set was left to seethe with jealousy and wait for chaos to come about, and with it, his opportunity to rise again to power over the kingdoms of light and darkness.

I
n the waiting area, Lily sobbed in her mother’s arms while Rivera, Charlie, and Audrey stood by feeling helpless. Audrey squeezed Charlie’s hand until it hurt, but he was actually grateful for the pain, because it took his mind off of everything else. Rivera stood aside, observing, until Lily’s mom looked over her daughter’s shoulder at him. He recognized that same helplessness in her eyes that he’d seen in the families of so many murder victims—and he touched her back, lightly, and for only a second, to let her know he was there, another human being: backup.

The medical crash team had pulled curtains across the glass in Minty Fresh’s room, but after twenty-two minutes the curtain whooshed aside and the doctor came through, paused a second at the desk, then turned to come through the double doors into the waiting room, the look on his face broadcasting what he was going to say: “There was nothing we could do.”

Before the doctor reached them, Charlie felt himself go light-headed; his vision tunneled down, went black, and he collapsed. The doctor helped Audrey catch him and lower him into a chair.

A
sher, what the fuck you doing here?” said Minty Fresh.

Charlie looked around, saw literally nothing but the big man, standing perhaps ten feet away from him, wearing only a bedsheet.

“Where’s here?” asked Charlie.

The Mint One adjusted his sheet, which was too small for a man his size to wear as a toga, opting instead for a sarong/towel wraparound effect. He looked around. They might have been standing on a sheet of black glass under a starless night sky, except he could see Charlie and Charlie could see him, so technically, it wasn’t dark. When he rubbed his eyes and looked again he could see that they were inside a large stone chamber, lit with bronze oil lamps that jutted from the wall and threw long shadows up to a high, pointed ceiling. Across one wall and plane of the ceiling stretched the elongated shadow of a dog’s head with long pointed ears. Minty searched but couldn’t see the dog that was casting the shadow, yet there it was, a shadow thirty feet tall, and still reaching only halfway to the apex of the ceiling.

“I’m going to guess the Underworld,” said Minty Fresh.

“You’ve been here before?”

“I had it described to me once,” said Minty Fresh. “And you look like your old self.”

Charlie was his non-Mike Sullivan self, dressed in one of his Savile Row houndstooth suits.

“Oakland?” asked Charlie.

“Not Oakland,” came a voice that echoed through the chamber.

A circle of torches appeared; in its center, a tall, dog-headed man in an Egyptian kilt stood by a stone table on which stood a gold balance scale. In front of the table was a stone pit, perhaps five meters across; something down there was growling and snarling.

“You know who I am?” said the dog man.

“I do,” said Minty Fresh. “Anubis. A man I knew came here once, met you, told me about you.”

“He was my brother’s avatar on earth, you are mine.”

Anubis crouched, leaned forward, opened his eyes wide; the irises glowed deep gold.

“The eyes,” said Charlie. “Of course.”

Minty Fresh looked at Charlie. “Of course? This all makes sense to you?”

“Sure,” Charlie said. He inched forward until he could see into the pit. Thirty feet below, a creature the size of a hippo circled the floor, with the body of a lion and the jaws of a crocodile. The floor of the pit was littered with bleached human bones; Charlie could make out skulls here and there in the orange light of the oil lamps. He backed away from the edge until he stood next to Minty again. “Maybe not.”

“You will go back,” said Anubis. “You will be my avatar on earth and you will put things in order again. Do you understand?”

“I’m not good at taking orders,” said Minty Fresh.

The dog-headed god seemed disturbed at the answer. “You’re not afraid, then?”

“Of what? I’m dead already, aren’t I?”

“You are,” said Anubis.

“Then no, I’m not afraid.”

“Good. And you?” Anubis nodded to Charlie.

“I’m fine,” said Charlie. “Dogs love me.”

Minty Fresh’s gaze fell on Charlie like it had fallen off a table. “Really?”

“Sorry.” Charlie looked at his shoes.

“The weapons of men will not help you. Your enemies are of the realm of the dead. You cannot kill them. You shall have my gifts to meet your adversary,” said Anubis. “Defeat him, restore balance, order. You are mine and I am you. Now return.”

“That is totally not helpful,” said Charlie.

“Why are you even here?” said Minty Fresh.

“He must keep them from desecrating your body until you return to it. Away with you,” said the dog-headed god.

The torches faded, the blackness returned, and once again they were standing as if they were in empty space at the end of the universe, nothing but the two of them and the faint barking of hounds.

And then Charlie was in the waiting room, Audrey standing over him.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said. “I’m fine. Fainted or something. How long was I out?”

Audrey looked at Rivera, then shrugged. “About eight seconds, I’d guess.”

“Hmmm. Seemed longer.” Charlie looked at the doctor. “No autopsy.”

The doctor seemed surprised. This was not the reaction he was accustomed to getting from people who had just received the news of the passing of a loved one.

“In cases of a crime,” said the doctor, “it’s the law . . .”

“No autopsy,” Charlie said to Rivera. “No embalming, no autopsy. It’s important.”

Rivera said, “Doctor, if we could hold off on the autopsy, I’d appreciate it.”

The doctor nodded. “It will be up to the coroner after I sign off,” said the doctor.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Rivera.

“I’m very sorry,” said the doctor. He turned and went back through the doors.

Once the doctor was gone, Charlie went to Lily. “Hey,” he whispered in her ear. Lily’s mother looked up. Lily nodded to her that it was okay to let this stranger close.

“Kid, come here,” Charlie said. He put his arm around Lily’s shoulder and walked her away from her mother, away from the others.

“He told me to go to work,” Lily said. “Those were his last words, ‘Go to work, Darque.’ ”

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” Charlie whispered. “You probably need to go to work.”

“Fuck you, Asher. I’m grief-stricken. And I’m not even being overly dramatic.”

He didn’t want to tell her that with the black eye makeup smeared down her cheeks like a sad clown, she was overly dramatic without saying a word, but in her hour of grief, he let it go. “Yeah, I know, and I know that’s a first, but you need to have your mom take you to work, because you need to stay busy, and keep your mind off of this. And when I tell you this next thing, you can’t overreact. Promise me.”

Lily looked at him with the familiar “could you be any more annoying?” look that she reserved for him, and he knew he could plunge on.

“Promise?”

“Okay, fine, I promise. What?”

“He’s not dead.”

She stared. Just stared. Stunned.

“He’s coming back,” Charlie said. “Don’t scream.”

She didn’t move. She stopped breathing, then started again, in short, halting gasps.

“I don’t know when, but soon. I just saw him in the Underworld. There’s a god called Anubis—”

“Asher, if you are fucking with me—”

“I’m not! Really, I’m not.”

Now she was catching her breath. She leaned in. “He told me once that an Indian guy in Montana told him he was, like, the chosen of Anubis. That’s why he had—has golden eyes.”

“Yeah, apparently that’s true.”

She put her fingers to her lips as if she were holding in a laugh and bounced on her toes in a circle like an overjoyed little girl.

“You’re going to need to stop that.”

“Right,” she said, stopping that. “Sorry.”

“Now you’re going to have to figure out what to tell your mom that I just told you that made you do that.”

“No problem. I’ll tell her that you said the last thing he said to you was that he only regretted never telling me that I was right about everything.”

“He would never say that.”

“She never met him.”

“Fine. Now look sadder and get your mom to take you to work. You’re our only contact with the ghosts on the bridge. You need to be on the crisis line. And we need her out of here so I can tell the others. I’ll call your cell when I know more.”

“Okay, I’m going to hug you now, Asher.”

“Okay.”

“It’s not a real hug, it’s theater. I’m faking it.”

“Right. Me, too,” said Charlie.

L
ily and her mother had only been gone seconds when Charlie’s phone buzzed:
Jane
. He answered.

“He took Sophie,” Cassie said. “He just came in the door and took her. We couldn’t do anything. We tried.”

An electric chill surged through his body. “Who?”

“The black guy in yellow—the one she talked about hurting Mrs. Korjev.”

“Where’s Jane?”

“She’s right here. He did something to her. She ran at him and he just put out his hand and she dropped. She’s coming to, woozy, but she seems okay.”