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Post by arcalian on Apr 7, 2013 21:38:48 GMT -5
“How ‘bout this one?” [Fear].“Didn’t like it? Okay, whut about...naw, thet one was lousy.” [Hope].“The fella sounds like he’s got marbles in his mouth. Yuh ain’t never gonna learn tuh talk proper if’n yuh listen tuh stuff like thet all day. Wait...where’d...yeah, this one’s good.” [Hope].“Damn right. Now this fella is worth listenin’ tuh.” Jonah popped the CD of American IV into the stereo, then pressed the track-advance button until he got to the part where Johnny Cash sang “Sam Hall”. There were other songs on the album that he deemed good, but Jonah remembered this particular one from the days before there was such a thing as recorded music, and therefore it got played first. “Muh name it is Sam Hall, an’ Ah hate yuh one an’ all,” Jonah sang along, “an’ Ah hate yuh one an’ all...damn yer eyes!” [Rage]?“Not one bit, they’re just words,” Jonah told the ring, then walked over to the desk in the corner of the bedroom. “Just ‘cause Ah say the words don’t mean Ah really feel like thet.” [Jonah Hex of Earth is at peace].“Thet’s right: Ah’m at peace, but Ah kin still yell ‘damn yer eyes’ all Ah like.” A smirk came to his lips as he said, “Why don’t yuh give it a shot? Say ‘damn yer eyes’, nice an’ loud.” He could feel the ring’s frustration as it tried to repeat the phrase, but it just couldn’t do it, eventually conceding defeat by whispering [Fear]. “It’s okay, son,” Jonah told the ring as he flopped down in the desk chair and went back to reading his book. “Just keep listenin’ tuh the music, an’ maybe the words will start tuh pop out when yuh ain’t pushin’ so hard.” Admittedly, Jonah was hoping this experiment would yield results a bit faster. It began three days before, during his first full day in the Saunders household: he’d shown Greg the Elvis CD from Maggie’s truck and asked if there was anything in the house to play it on. Though surprised that Jonah was already aware of what CDs were, Greg happily showed him how to operate the high-end sound system in the living room. As the album played, Greg expounded on all the musical genres that had sprung up over the past hundred-odd years, so Jonah didn’t notice right away that the ring was trying to sing along whenever one of the words in its limited vocabulary came up. Greg, of course, couldn’t hear the ring at all, but once Jonah explained how it didn’t seem capable of saying more than seven words and one sentence, Greg theorized that, since it was “singing” of its own volition, playing music constantly might help the ring expand its vocabulary. They set up a portable stereo on the dresser in Jonah’s room, along with a stack of CDs Greg thought the bounty hunter would enjoy, so that while Jonah spent his days boning up on the century’s-worth of history he’d missed out on, he could keep the tunes spinning in the background. There hadn’t yet been any spontaneous gabbling on the ring’s part, but Jonah tried to remain optimistic. As he skimmed the book -- a rather dry one about the “cold war” America fought against Russia -- Jonah got the sensation of someone looking over his shoulder, a side-effect of the black ring’s presence. It always seemed to intensify when he was reading, whether due to him sitting so still or because of the ring’s curiosity about what was printed on the pages, Jonah wasn’t sure. He hadn’t even been able to determine yet if the ring understood how to read, or if it simply gleaned the information from Jonah’s own mind after he’d read it himself. For now, it was another in a series of mysteries surrounding the ring, and one he was sure he could resolve if it could figure out how to talk properly. The whole situation frustrated him sometimes: How was Jonah supposed to teach the ring anything if it couldn’t tell him what it needed to learn? For all he knew, it was a cussed genius that only lacked a few elocution lessons. Around the time Johnny Cash began singing about the streets of Laredo, Jonah heard the alarm on the front door beep. Thet’ll be Helen, he thought after glancing at the clock by the bed. After only three days in the house, Jonah’s evening routine had become firmly established: Helen would get home by seven, she’d fix up dinner, and the two of them would eat before Greg arrived, usually some time after nine at night, then they’d all wind up in the living room or in Greg’s study, talking about this and that until they finally went to bed around midnight or so. This new life Jonah had wasn’t all that exciting, but it certainly was predictable. He left the bedroom and walked down the hall, meeting Helen just as she shut the front door with her foot -- she was hugging a large paper sack in one arm and a bundle of mail was tucked under the other. “Want a hand?” he asked. “Gladly.” She passed off the sack, saying, “I stopped by this little Indian place near the gallery for some takeout...thought maybe I could broaden your culinary horizons a bit.” “Ah’ve spent a good amount of time with Indians,” he told her as they walked into the kitchen. “Reckon there ain’t nothin’ they’ve ever made thet Ah ain’t already had.” Helen laughed and shook her head, which Jonah found odd, since he hadn’t meant the statement to be funny. He set the sack on the kitchen counter, then scrounged around in the refrigerator for a beer. “How are your studies going?” Helen asked him. “Okay, Ah suppose,” he said with a shrug. “Just wish the books weren’t so dull.” “There’s lots of history programs on TV that might break up the monotony for you.” “No thanks,” he answered rather curtly. She and Greg kept trying to steer him towards watching television, and though he’d sat through some programs with them out of politeness, Jonah hadn’t developed any desire to turn it on when they weren’t around. “Well, the only other thing I can recommend is the Internet, but I doubt you’re ready for that yet.” She began sorting through the mail, tossing it one piece at a time onto the kitchen table, until she got to a large padded envelope. After glancing at the name on the computer-printed label, she said, “Wow, I wasn’t expecting this so soon.” “Come again?” Jonah turned towards her, a bottle of Corona in hand. She handed him the envelope, saying, “Looks like Greg’s friends in the superhero community work pretty fast.” Jonah grunted. Two days before, Greg had snapped a few pictures of him to send off to the fella who ran that “Oracle” whatsits, in order to set up all the proper paperwork Jonah would need for life in the 21st Century. A hundred years ago, if someone wanted to start a new life, it took little more than moving to a new town far from where you started and calling yourself by another name. But nowadays, there was apparently so much information floating around in the ether -- and nearly all of it available to anyone who bothered to look -- that the process had become much more complex, hence the reason Greg was handing it off to the Oracle. “Fast is nice, but let’s see if’n the work is any good,” Jonah said, tearing open the envelope and spreading the contents out on the table: a few small cards, a sheaf of official-looking documents, a cell phone, and a slim, leather-bound booklet. He saw one of the cards bore his picture, so he picked it up and asked Helen, “Why in the world do Ah need a little photograph of muhself?” “That’s your driver’s license. And this,” she told him, inspecting each of the other cards in turn, “is your Social Security card, your private investigator’s license for the state of Arizona, your passport for border crossings, your concealed weapons permit, and a debit card, presumably tied to the same bank account as that checkbook there.” She pointed at the booklet, then began to flip through the larger documents. “The rest of this just looks like background details: birth certificate, school records, credit history...next thing you know, you’ll be getting junk mail with your name on it.” Jonah didn’t know what “junk mail” meant, so he ignored the comment and tossed the driver’s license back onto the table, trading it for the cell phone. Thankfully, it had actual buttons instead of a fancy-dan touchscreen, though he still wasn’t entirely sure how to turn the device on. “Don’t see how this thing’s necessary, either,” he muttered, stabbing buttons at random until the tiny display lit up. “This century’s full of gewgaws Ah could do without.” Suddenly, the cell phone’s ringtone went off -- Jonah recognized it as a telephone bell from his own time, but was perplexed as to how it was making the sound. He looked over at Helen, who said, “It’s your phone, so presumably it’s for you.” He continued to look at her until she leaned over and pointed at a small green button. “Press that one to talk.” Jonah did as instructed. “Who is this?” “Mr. Hex?” The voice on the other end sounded neither male nor female, but it possessed a resonance that sent chills up Jonah’s spine. “This is Oracle. I’m just checking in to see if everything in the package is to your satisfaction.”“Yo’re...yo’re the fella who runs the Oracle?” he said, trying to not let the strange electronic voice unnerve him any more than it already was. “That’s one way of saying it. You can just call me Oracle.” “Okay.” He gave his head a good shake, then said, “How’d yuh know Ah even had this here telephone yet? Or have yuh been callin’ at random ever since yuh put it in the mail?” Oracle laughed, which sounded even stranger than the regular speaking voice. “No, it was a little more sophisticated than that. Saunders asked that I include a GPS chip in the phone in case of emergency. When the package arrived at your position, the tracking system alerted me, and turning on the phone activated a callback.”“Thet’s a whole lot of words Ah don’t understand.” “It’s okay,” Oracle replied, laughing again. “All you need to know is that, if necessary, you can be located anywhere on the face of the Earth, so long as you have that phone on you.”
Jonah pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. “Yo’re joshin’ me.” Helen whispered to him, “What’s going on?” “This fella says he kin figure out wherever Ah am with this gyppy-ass telephone.” “With what?” “Here.” Jonah held out the phone. “Thet voice is puttin’ muh teeth on edge, anyhow.” Tentatively, Helen took it and began speaking with Oracle, and within thirty seconds, she was laughing as well. Jonah found himself getting mildly annoyed by this--he felt like he was the butt of some joke no one wanted to explain to him--so he knocked back some of his beer, then began flipping through the documents Helen set down. Most of it was gibberish to him, but when he looked over the birth certificate, he was glad to see Oracle had kept the information as close to the truth as possible, seeing as how he had enough new things to memorize already. The fella had even been clever enough to scramble the original numbers in Jonah’s birth year, changing it from 1838 to 1983. Thet’ll make me twenty-seven come November, he thought, same as the year the War ended. The notion of being that young again was mind-boggling: despite the youthful, unscarred face he saw in the mirror, Jonah still thought of himself as an old man of sixty-six underneath it all, and supposed there would always be part of him that remained so. So long as it ain’t the part the ladies enjoy, Ah reckon Ah kin deal with it. Setting the documents aside, he turned his attention to the checkbook (a method of payment he’d never really trusted, preferring cash transactions for his line of work) and thumbed through the registry until he reached the sole entry. After staring at it for a good five seconds, he grabbed the cell phone out of Helen’s hand and barked into the receiver, “Where the Hell did the money come from?” “Excuse me?” Oracle said. “There’s a number written down with the checks.” Jonah’s voice had taken on a hard edge. “Ah’m under the impression thet’s been deposited in some account yuh set up fer me?” “Yes, I...”“Ah don’t want it.” “Mr. Hex, if you would just...”“Either yuh conjured the money up from nowheres like yuh did all this paperwork, or yuh stole it from somebody. Now Ah know Ah’m hard up at the moment, but Ah ain’t about tuh get involved in nothin’ shady, especially with a fella who doesn’t even tell folks who he really is.” Helen reached out a hand, saying to him, “Oracle already explained to me about the money. It’s not what you think.” “Ah ain’t gonna take money Ah didn’t earn,” he answered, “especially if’n it’s dirty.” “But you did earn that money,” Oracle told him, “over a hundred years ago.”Jonah was taken aback by the statement. “Yo’re tellin’ me thet Ah made over fourteen thousand dollars an’ just plain forgot about? Ah’ll admit, there’s a few gaps in muh memory, but this seems a mite too large tuh slip through.”
“That’s because you didn’t make it all at once. On a lark, I dug through financial records going back over a century and found multiple accounts in over a dozen states with your name on them. I was rather surprised at first, but then I recalled the banking system wasn’t as tightly-knit back then, plus you were always travelling, so I figure you must’ve been stashing large sums of money in whatever bank was nearby. When you died, your widow most likely didn’t know where all the accounts were, so they went dormant after a while.” Jonah could hear a tapping sound over the phone as Oracle spoke. “From there, it was simply a matter of figuring out which ones could be made active again. The Great Depression wiped out quite a few of them, and various other recessions depleted some of your remaining capital, but once I added in a century’s worth of cumulative interest...well, you’ve seen the result.”“So thet whole fourteen thousand an’ change is legally mine, even after all these years?” “That’s all I could scrounge up for you. I also found a couple of land deeds in your name, but thanks to squatter’s rights and similar laws, you lost your claim to those decades ago. And before you get too excited about your newfound fortune, keep in mind that it’s equal to a year’s pay for a minimum-wage earner in many states, so you’ve got a nice next egg, but you’re not rich.” Oracle paused, then asked, “Were you really going to turn down that much money?”
“Yessir, Ah was. It wouldn’t be right tuh take it without workin’ fer it in some fashion.” “I’ll keep that in mind. Is there anything else I sent along that you have concerns with?”“Cain’t think of nothin’.” He pushed the papers around on the table a bit before saying in a quiet tone, “Sorry fer yellin’ at yuh afore. Ah do appreciate all the work yuh’ve put into this.”
“Apology accepted...and as for the work I put in, that’s what I’m here for. Should you ever need me in the future, just look up ‘O’ in your phone’s directory.”“Thank yuh kindly, sir.” “No problem, Mr. Hex, and welcome back.” There was a click on the line, ending the call, and Jonah set the phone down on top of the documents. Helen regarded him, saying, “You okay with all this now?” “Reckon so. If’n the money is well an’ truly mine, then Ah’ll gladly take it, along with all this other stuff.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Now thet Ah’ve actually got two coins tuh rub together, y’all want me tuh start payin’ fer room an’ board?” “No,” she replied, opening the sack of takeout food, “but if you like, you can foot the bill for dinner tomorrow night.” * * * * * *
When they finally sat down to eat, Jonah was mildly disappointed to find out that the term “Indian” now referred mostly to the country of India, as was the case with that night’s meal. The stuff wasn’t bad, but he’d been looking forward to the sort of food he used to eat when living with the Apache (which he now apparently had to call “Native Americans”). Jonah was still poking at his tandoori chicken when Greg got home at a quarter ‘til eight--he was surprised to see Greg so early, but Helen seemed to know right away what was up, saying to her husband after greeting him with a kiss, “You have to suit up tonight?” “Yep. Got a call from one of my contacts.” Greg sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh. “There’s supposed to be a drug trade happening around eleven o’clock.”
“More marijuana like last week, or heavier stuff?”
“Dragon sweat.”
Helen’s face twisted with worry, while Jonah asked, “Whut in blazes is dragon sweat?”
“Something new that’s been turning up on both sides of the border over the last four months,” Greg said. “The lab guys think it’s a combination of hallucinogenic and amphetamine, but they can’t figure out what exactly it’s made out of. We’ve found it mostly in tab form--they’re little bits of paper infused with the drug that you stick on your tongue -- but there’s also droppers full of the stuff floatin’ around, and those are real easy to OD on. A kid takes too much dragon sweat, and you might as well be dealin’ with a rabid animal...they even foam at the mouth, for Christ’s sake. As of last week, we’ve got six deaths we can trace back to that drug, along with twenty cases of dragon sweat-fueled frenzies.” He shook his head, saying, “The only good thing I have to say about it is that there appears to be only one cartel pushin’ the stuff, so if we can squash them, we can end the whole mess.”
“Ah’ thet’swhut yo’re gonna do tonight? Go out an’ squash ‘em?”
“Well, I’m gonna squash this particular shipment, and I also hope to bag all the bozos who show up tonight so I can grill them for information.”
Jonah reached into his pocket and pulled out the ID cards Oracle had sent him, fanning them out before Greg like it was a royal flush. “Need somebody tuh watch yer back?”
“Hell yes! Now I know we’ll bag ‘em all!”
Greg’s mood brightened greatly as he looked over the other documents, taking bites of his share of the takeout food from time to time. He’d already prepared the necessary paperwork to make Jonah a liaison with the Warpath PD, so all he needed to do was fill in the proper blanks with Jonah’s newly-minted information, and everything would be nice and official. As soon as the two men finished their meal, Greg began to change into what he called his “other uniform”: the distinctive garb of the Vigilante. Jonah didn’t understand why the man bothered since everyone now knew it was Greg behind the bandana, and went so far as to tell him so, to which Greg retorted, “Why were you still wearing a Confederate uniform forty years after the Civil War ended?” Jonah declined to answer, and the discussion was dropped.
Helen tagged along when they went down to the garage beneath the house, where Greg stored his motorcycles. He had over a dozen, though some were incomplete models he used for parts. “You said the other day that you knew how to ride one of these,” Greg said to Jonah as they walked past the vehicles. “You weren’t lyin’ to me, were you?”
“Not a bit...though it has been a while.” Jonah paused by a Harley bedecked in black chrome. “An’ the ones Ah rode had thicker wheels.”
“Oh no, not that one. If there’s a chance you might lay it in the dirt, then you’re gonna take one that doesn’t look so nice.” Greg led him over to another cycle, saying, “This one runs just as good, I promise. Hop on and give it a shot.” Jonah inspected the cycle for a minute, then straddled it, put his foot on the kickstart, and got it roaring on the first try. A slight smile came to his lips: when Jonah had been stuck in that future wasteland of 2050, speeding along on a motorcycle had been one of the few things he found enjoyable (though he could’ve done without the noise and the smell of exhaust). He pushed the cycle forward off of its stand just fine, but when he tried to rev the engine, he twisted the throttle just a shade too much, causing the back tire to skid across the garage floor. “Back off, Ah’ve got it,” Jonah snapped as Greg went to grab the handlebars. “Maybe you two should take horses instead,” Helen suggested.
“Ah said Ah’ve got it!” Jonah straightened out the motorcycle so it was pointed towards the ramp that led outside. “Just ain’t done this in a hunnert an’ thirty-five years, thet’s all.”
“The man says he’s got it,” Greg told his wife, who was still giving him a look of concern. “Don’t worry, we’ve got a couple of hours to get to the rendezvous, so we can take it slow on the road.”
“Okay.” She gave him a kiss, then pulled his bandana up into place. “You be careful.” “Always am.” He hopped on one of the other cycles and pulled it alongside Jonah, telling him, “Just follow behind me, no fancy stuff. Okay?” Jonah nodded, and let Greg take the lead up the ramp. The sun had nearly set, casting a red glow over the Arizona landscape as they drove down a deserted back road. The rendezvous was out in the middle of nowhere, and when they reached the location an hour later, the only light left to see by came from the headlamps on their cycles and the half-moon hanging in the sky. Luckily, the black ring had switched Jonah’s vision over to monochrome without him even having to ask, so he could see the entire area as bright as day, though what he saw puzzled him: a massive white wall looming above a lot full of short metal poles. “This doesn’t make any sense tuh me,” he said to Greg. “Is something goin’ up here or comin’ down?” “It’s a drive-in theatre,” Greg answered. “You park by one of the poles, then pull the little speaker into your car so you can hear the movie that’s being projected on the screen.” They slowly drove their cycles over to a building on the far side of the lot. “Place has changed hands quite a few times over the years, but nobody’s been able to bring in enough business lately to keep it in the black. I tried to buy it myself last year, but some developer from back East outbid me. The dope’s probably gonna knock all this down and put up a big-box store.”
The whole thing still didn’t make sense, but Jonah decided it wasn’t important to the job at hand and ignored it. They stopped their cycles next to the building’s entrance and, after Greg put his lock-picking skills to use, walked them inside the now-shuttered concession stand. Once that was done, Greg looked back outside and said, “We’d better take a few minutes and try to obscure our tracks. Don’t want those smugglers getting wind of us.” Jonah flexed his ring hand, then pointed it in the direction they’d come from. “Yuh heard the man,” Jonah told the ring. “Best get tuh work.” A cloud of dark matter like fine ash poured out of the ring, sweeping across the ground to smooth out both their tire tracks and footprints. As the cloud banked around a corner, Jonah asked, “Yuh think a half-mile out will be enough?” "Yeah, that’ll be fine,” Greg answered, then shook his head with a laugh. “Seein’ you ring-sling like that is gonna take some gettin’ used to.”
“Preachin’ tuh the choir there.” As soon as their trail had been cleared away, they went back inside the building, where Greg began setting up a small video camera on the concession stand’s counter. “Whut’s all thet fer?” Jonah asked as Greg attached a flexible scope lens. “Gatherin’ evidence.” He threaded the tip of the scope through one of the bullet holes in the metal shutter--it appeared that someone had used the concession stand for target practice at some point. “If we record the drug trade from beginning to end, it’ll make it harder for them to shake off the charges in court. Remember that, Hex: we have to let them finish the transaction before we bust ‘em.” He checked the angle on the camera’s tiny monitor. “There, that covers just about the whole lot.” Jonah peered at the night-vision image on the monitor. “Whut’re yuh gonna do if’n they decide tuh do it someplace outside the lot?” "Don’t jinx this, Hex.” Greg dragged a stepstool over to the counter, saying, “Okay, park your butt somewheres, we’ve got some waitin’ to do.” The bounty hunter sat down on the floor cross-legged, then pulled one of his Dragoons from its holster. It was habit for him to check the cylinders when he knew a fight was on the way, and though his guns no longer fired actual bullets, but rather dark matter supplied by the ring, he still felt a need to go through the motions. As he ran his hands over the gun, he could see a deep green tone in his aura, a representation of the ironclad willpower within him that kept the black ring charged. The ring currently held a tinge of green as well, along with a hint of yellow, all muted to a degree by its dark-matter nature. Try an’ stow thet fear, he silently told the ring . Ah don’t want tuh pull the trigger an’ have a dry-fire ‘cause yo’re too scared tuh act.[Will], the ring replied, and Jonah saw the yellow slowly fade out as he and Greg waited for the clock to reach eleven. At around five minutes before the hour, they heard the rumble of an engine--Jonah leapt to his feet and looked through a bullet hole at eye level. “There’s a truck comin’ into the lot,” he whispered. “I see it.” Greg’s attention was split between another peephole and the camera monitor. When he saw two people exit the truck, a grin broke out on his face. “The Lopez brothers...we meet again.” “Yuh know these skunks?” “Local gangbangers, and slippery ones at that. Been tryin’ to nail ‘em for months, but I never could get enough evidence to convict. Reckon that’s gonna change tonight.” “Are they the ones makin’ this dragon sweat stuff?” “No, that’s some Mexican cartel called Los Magos...‘The Magicians’.” Greg moved closer to Jonah in order to keep his voice as low as possible. “From what I’ve heard, they started as plain ol’ coyotes sneakin’ people across the border--they earned the name Los Magos because no one could ever catch them in the act -- then four months ago, they suddenly turned into a drug cartel, dealin’ exclusively in dragon sweat. Don’t know why they changed, other than the notion that sellin’ drugs pays better.” “Maybe we’ll find out once we get a hold of ‘em.” Jonah spotted another truck in the distance. “Get ready, the other half’s a-comin’.” The Lopez brothers had driven there in a small, boxy delivery truck, but the new arrival was a standard pickup with a tarp draped over the cargo in the back. The vehicle pulled up next to the other, and when the driver got out, Jonah said under his breath, “This fella looks like the Devil.” “It’s just a Halloween mask,” Greg replied. “Members of Los Magos hide their faces so nobody can ID them.” Bathed in the glow of their mutual taillights, the Lopez brothers stood silently by as the Los Magos man opened his truck’s tailgate, climbed in, then pulled off the tarp to reveal the cargo: a large, padlocked animal carrier. “Looks like my contact was wrong,” Greg muttered with a hint of disappointment. “No drugs, just illegal dog-fightin’. Still, if we bust ‘em on animal cruelty charges, we might be able to wring some info out of them ‘bout any actual dragon sweat shipments.” “But we’ve gotta wait ‘til they move thet crate from one truck tuh the other.” “Yep.” Greg had his own gun out now, along with his badge, while the brothers handed over a duffle bag to the Los Magos man. Then the three of them slid the carrier off of the truck bed -- the carrier was made of opaque plastic, so it was impossible for either Greg or Jonah to see what condition the dog inside might be in -- and wrestled it over to the other vehicle. The moment it was resting in the back of the delivery truck, Greg slapped Jonah on the shoulder and headed for the door. They slipped outside as quietly as possible, but as soon as they came out from behind the building, Greg hollered, “Police! Everybody on the ground, now!” The biggest advantage Jonah had found to seeing things as Black Lanterns did (aside from perfect night vision) was the ability to glimpse other people’s emotional auras. Even if someone had a flawless poker face or total mastery of their body language, they couldn’t do a damn thing to mask how they felt beneath the surface. So when he saw the Lopez brothers’ auras go from orange to yellow in a heartbeat, he knew they wouldn’t be much of a threat. The Los Magos man, however, went straight to red with a hard frost of green, meaning he would surely fight the lawmen tooth and nail, so by the time the devil-faced dealer pulled a gun out from the waistband of his jeans, Jonah wasn’t surprised at all. “Drop it!” Jonah roared, pointing his own gun at the man’s head--Greg had explained to him about not firing unless fired upon, a rule that rankled him somewhat, but he would do his best to follow it. As the man’s gun swung up, Jonah silently told the ring to toss a shield over himself and Greg, but before it could do so, the Los Magos man quickly turned the gun towards the animal carrier, stuck the muzzle through the wire door, and unloaded three shots. A horrific scream issued forth from the carrier, making the hair on the back of Jonah’s neck stand on end. The sound seemed to free the Lopez brothers from their panic-stricken paralysis, and they began to run off into the night just as the Los Magos man finally pointed his gun at the lawmen and opened fire. By now, the ring had the shield in place, and the bullets bounced harmlessly off of the smoky wall of dark matter. “Kin Ah shoot the bastard now?” Jonah asked Greg. “Worry about the other two,” Greg replied, then ducked around the edge of the shield and popped off a quick shot at the Los Magos man, who went down as the bullet tore through his knee. “I believe my partner told you to drop it,” Greg said as he advanced on the man. “If you don’t, I’ll take care of that other knee for you.” The Los Magos man began to raise the gun, then let it fall to the ground. “Wise choice.” Greg picked up the gun before turning to Jonah again. “Well? Are you gonna get after those Lopez boys or not?” “Already did.” Jonah jerked a thumb in the direction the brothers ran off in, and Greg looked to see them tangled up in a maze of dark-matter ropes strung amongst the speaker poles. “Havin’ this ring sure beats chasin’ owlhoots down.” The Vigilante pulled down his bandana and let out a low whistle. “You really are becomin’ dangerous with that thing,” he said. Unfortunately, he was so focused on Hex’s handiwork that he didn’t spot the Los Magos man pulling out a switchblade, which was soon sinking into his calf. Greg let out a yelp of pain, and without a second thought, Jonah whipped around and shot the Los Magos man in the center of the grinning devil mask he wore. “Stupid...why’d you do that?” Greg gasped as he put a hand over his leg wound. “We needed him for information.” “Reflex,” Jonah answered, then helped Greg hobble over to the delivery truck and sat him down next to the animal carrier. “Next time, Ah’ll let ‘em carve yuh up like a Christmas goose.” Greg began to wrap his bandana around the wound, saying, “In this case, I wish you had. Those Lopez boys might know a little about how Los Magos operates, but I was more anxious to chat up our devilish friend here.” Without looking up, he waved a bloody hand in the direction of the gangbangers. “Speakin’ of which, go haul their butts over here, would ya? I don’t want them to wiggle out of your makeshift spider web while we’re not lookin’.” When he realized Jonah wasn’t moving, he raised his head to see the bounty hunter staring into the animal carrier. “You hear me, Hex?” If Hex did, he made no sign. The man’s face was like stone, his attention focused entirely on whatever lay behind the carrier’s wire door. Greg imagined the dog inside was probably a mess after being shot at point-blank range (to be sure, it didn’t smell very good), but Jonah’s expression didn’t seem like one of disgust or revulsion. Then Jonah used the ring to cut through the padlock so he could open the door...and what he pulled out made Greg blanch. It wasn’t a dog, but rather some sort of lizard-thing about the same size and shape of an adult human. Its arms and legs had been cut off, the stumps cauterized shut, and all the teeth had been pulled out of its elongated snout, leaving behind ragged gums. A bullet had torn through one of its bulbous red eyes and blasted out the back of its head, the ichor pouring out of the resulting hole now mixing with the thin coating of slime upon the creature’s flesh. The smell it gave off only got worse now that Jonah had moved the body, to the point where Greg had to fight back the urge to throw up. “What in God’s name is that?” he choked out. “A bigger problem than drugs or dog-fightin’,” Jonah said. “Y’all got Worms.”
TO BE CONTINUED!
Let s know what you think here!
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