Apocalypse Now Now (22 page)

‘Like what exactly?’

‘Bad shit and lots of it. I can’t really remember that much because Mirth had me on a whole lot of experimental drugs to increase strength and endurance.’ He tries to smile but it comes out more like a grimace. ‘I was pretty screwed up,’ he says softly. ‘Well,
more
screwed up than I am now. Baresh helped me. Stopped me from going crazy and stopped me from being the monster that Mirth tried to make me into.’

I watch him as he lights a cigarette and gets up to stretch. I feel sorry for Ronin. He’s like a dog with rabies; unpleasant and aggressive with a sense of doom surrounding him.

‘We all do bad things,’ I say, a little lamely. I tell him about Mikey Markowitz. We spent a whole holiday programming a game in BASIC together. There was this sense of camaraderie that we’d had. I still remember the feeling. Two months later I had to cut him loose.

‘Why?’ Ronin says.

‘Politics. Mikey was not a good person to be around. He attracted scorn and ridicule and I couldn’t have that while I was building the Spider. So I ignored him and pretended not to watch him become a sad loner. I guess I’m not really a good person either,’ I say to Ronin.

I end up telling him about how I’ve pretty much manipulated everyone I’ve ever known. I can remember them all, each little betrayal, false flag and fake emotion I’ve used. Surprisingly Ronin doesn’t laugh. He looks at me the whole time with his weird blue
eyes, smoking his cigarette right down to the filter as I talk. When I’ve finished he strokes his beard. ‘You’re a pretty weird kid,’ he says.

‘I know,’ I say, and wonder whether I’m genuinely just realising this now or whether I’ve always known it.

He shrugs. ‘Guess we’ve all got our problems.’

‘Yeah,’ I say.

We sit for a while in silence. ‘So what happened to Baresh?’ I eventually say to break it.

‘Baresh was powerful and Mirth resented him for it. When the Crows killed him, I wanted to go after them but Mirth wouldn’t let me. We had a falling-out and I resigned. I thought I would be nailed for sure but Pat stood up for me. She quit too. I don’t know what I would have done without her.

I think about last night’s weird dream. ‘Do you trust her?’ I say. ‘Pat, I mean.’

‘Completely,’ he says. ‘Why?’

I tell him about the dream. Well, the part about the glowing man stroking Tony Montana.

He looks at me. ‘This dream. It felt like finding that door in the club?’

‘Kinda,’ I say. ‘I don’t even know what that was.’

I’m about to continue when my phone rings. It’s Kyle and he’s panicking. He says that Rafe is pretty much bouncing off the walls and that I have to get there. Now. The tone of his voice doesn’t leave much room for manoeuvring. Kyle is a pretty laid-back guy but when he gets freaked out it’s like trying to reason with a chihuahua on crystal meth.

‘I’ve got to go sort this out,’ I tell Ronin with a sigh. He nods but he’s stroking his beard braid thoughtfully. ‘Obambo are more than rare – they’re extinct. If she thinks she can stop him from being killed …’ He looks up at me. ‘I’ll give Pat a call,’ he says.

I don’t have time to wait for a train so I phone for a cab. It comes quickly, a sputtering grey Mazda with a skew ‘Taxi’ sign on
top of it. The driver is a sullen Senegalese guy wearing a muscle top and a beret. It doesn’t take long to get to Kyle’s house and I pay him and get out.

‘What’s up, hombre?’ I say when Kyle opens the door. He looks tired. His hair is mussed up and he has dark rings around his eyes. ‘This is up,’ he says, holding up several pages of computer paper. ‘Fifteen hours of this.’

Rafe has been drawing. A lot. Non-stop, in fact. Kyle has had to play nursemaid and try to keep my parents from figuring out that I’m not there.

‘Your mom phoned like four times,’ he says. ‘I’m out of excuses for why you can’t come to the phone.’

‘I’ll phone her,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell her that we’re having a great time and that we want to stay another night.’

‘What?’ he says. ‘Bax, I don’t know whether –’

‘What the hell are these?’ I say.

Rafe’s crayon drawings are scattered around Kyle’s room like some kind of postmodern art installation. Hundreds of them.

There’s one of me next to a guy with fiery red hair and a sword. There are several where we’re walking with grey men with weird colourful bulges on their necks. There’s one of a big black creature with wings looming above me. ‘This is what I’ve been trying to tell you,’ Kyle says tiredly. ‘He hasn’t stopped.’

Rafe is lying on the floor of Kyle’s room and scribbling furiously with his crayons on a sheet of paper. ‘Rafe,’ I say. ‘Rafe!’ He looks up. ‘What is this? How do you know to draw this?’

He shrugs and lifts the drawing he’s been working on. It’s a picture of what looks like me with a knife in my hand and a red eye on my forehead.

‘That’s why I’ve been freaking out,’ Kyle says. ‘He’s been drawing stuff with the Mountain Killer eye on it.’

‘Jesus, Rafe,’ I whisper and sit down next to him on the floor.

He takes the crayon in his fist and writes a single word on top of the picture: ‘Siener’.

‘Bax, seriously,’ Kyle says. ‘You need to tell me what’s going on.’

So I do. I tell him about what’s been happening. About
everything
that’s been happening. He looks at me sceptically when I tell him about the elemental; his eyebrows raise so high when I tell him about the Flesh Palace and the Anansi that I swear he’s going to burst a blood vessel in his eye.

‘Seriously,’ I say, ‘I know it sounds totally ridiculous, but it’s true.’

The painkillers are wearing off and my ribs begin to throb again. I shift uncomfortably.

‘Bax, are you sure you’re OK? I mean, I don’t think you’re lying. It’s just that maybe something’s going on in your head.’ He makes a swirling motion above his head.

‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ I say. ‘But we’re going to find the guy that the tooth belongs to. He must know where Esmé is and after that, well, it doesn’t matter.’

‘I’m coming with you,’ Kyle says, folding his arms. ‘I’m sick of being left out of this.’

‘No, please,’ I say, ‘I’m begging you. I need you to run interference with my folks and keep Rafe away from all this. If my parents find out that I’ve hired a supernatural bounty hunter they’ll probably have me committed.’ Kyle doesn’t unfold his arms. ‘I didn’t want to do this,’ I say. ‘But I’m invoking the Angela Dimbleton favour.’

Invoking the name of Angela Dimbleton is not something I’d do lightly. But I don’t have a choice. The Angela Dimbleton favour is an oath that I swore to Kyle and it happened like this: Kyle’s first attempt at sex wasn’t, well, very successful. It was with a girl named Angela Dimbleton, the biggest, most loud-mouthed gossip at Westridge. YouTube videos went viral slower than Angela Dimbleton spread gossip. When she and Kyle got it on the results were less than spectacular. They were dismal in fact. Kyle was a little quick off the mark. Like hadn’t-even-gotten-his-pants-off quick.

Having anything embarrassing happen in the presence of Angela Dimbleton was bad news but suffering from premature ejaculation while getting it on with her was pretty much like posting it on your Facebook wall.

Kyle called me, mortified, and asked for my help. Luckily for him I’d been preparing a dossier on Angela Dimbleton. I’d hoped to use the dirt to force Dimbleton to help us sell porn but Kyle begged me. So I’d phoned Angela and had a little talk about her, her super-religious family and the abortion clinic she’d been seen coming out of. She’d folded, and the story about Lightning-Quick Kyle had been quashed. Kyle had been so grateful that he’d promised he’d do anything should I call in the favour. ANYTHING.

‘Angela Dimbleton?’ he says morosely. ‘Really?’

I nod. ‘Sorry, but I really need this.’

‘OK,’ he says. ‘But then the debt is paid.’

I smile. ‘In full, Flash.’

‘Screw you,’ Kyle says with a rueful smile.

Kyle’s mom is heading out and offers me a lift. I decide it would be a good idea to accept. If my mom phones her she can say she’s seen me. ‘Yoga class?’ she says enthusiastically as she steers the car onto the highway. ‘I’ve always wanted to do yoga.’

‘Very good for the spine,’ I say with a smile. ‘Helps with all kinds of lifestyle diseases.’

‘Modern life is so dangerous,’ she says sadly.

I get her to drop me a block away from Ronin’s. ‘This is where you do yoga?’ she says, looking doubtfully at the decrepit industrial buildings. ‘My teacher is very authentic,’ I say. ‘She doesn’t believe in materialism.’

‘Oh, of course,’ Kyle’s mom says with a smile of acknowledgement. ‘You must give me her number.’

‘I will. Namaste,’ I say, putting my hands into prayer position.

‘Namaste,’ she says solemnly.

I wait until she drives away and then take a side road that leads toward Ronin’s building. I’m walking past a large rusty metal gate covered in a graffiti mural of an angel when a car pulls up in front of me. A large familiar shape struggles out of the car and lumbers toward me.

‘Well, if it isn’t my favourite serial killer,’ Schoeman says.

‘This is harassment,’ I say, trying to walk faster and then exhaling in pain as my ribs start to hurt again.

‘No, this is police work,’ he says, coming to stand in front of me, his huge frame blocking my way. ‘A new victim means new evidence.’

‘Esmé?’ I say, a sick feeling in my stomach.

‘No,’ he says. ‘But maybe you can tell me why the time of death of this new unfortunate was found to be during the exact time that you evaded our surveillance?’

‘Incompetence?’ I suggest. His thick arm darts forward like a python and slams me against the rusty metal gate.

‘We get a call from people inside a club known for making pornography. One that you and your crazy bounty hunter friend were seen entering. They say it’s total chaos, they need help. We get there but it’s already surrounded by black vans and guys waving government agency badges. We’re told to step down.’

‘I’ve seen this movie,’ I say. His fist tightens on my T-shirt.

‘A reporter who was working on some kind of story involving a supernatural dog-fighting ring shows up at home blubbing uselessly. And you, well, you spontaneously decide to hire some kind of supernatural bounty hunter. Would you like to guess what the common thread is here?’

I widen my eyes. ‘That you have no idea what’s going on?’

He leans his chubby face in toward mine. ‘You’re testing my patience.’

‘You’re subjecting me to police brutality.’

He points a chubby finger at me. ‘I’m putting you away, Zevcenko. You’re not going to juvenile detention. You’re going to Pollsmoor. You know what they do in –’

‘Spare me your prison fantasies,’ I say.

He slams me into the metal gate once more for good measure and then releases my T-shirt. ‘I know it’s you,’ he says. ‘I just have to prove it.’

He waddles away and I wait until he’s gone before I make my way to Ronin’s.

I meet Ronin outside his office and tell him about Schoeman. He looks down the road and waves. ‘Yep, there an undercover car sticking out like a teenage zit,’ he says. ‘We’re going to have to lose them again.’

‘Where are we going?’ I say.

‘Pat’s,’ he says. ‘I spoke to her. She’s definitely hiding something.’

Ronin repeats the ritual with the cocaine and the rat and we spend almost an hour losing the cop car. While we drive Ronin explains to me about magic.

Apparently it’s connected to genetics. While anybody can theoretically do any kind of magic, every genetic pool has a specific connection to their heritage, a Wyrrd, which gives them a predilection for a specific kind of hoodoo. The Xhosa are apparently good with air and sound magic. That’s why Tone is able to do what he does.

‘I probably have some Dwarven ancestors,’ Ronin says. ‘I’m
bringing this up because the stuff you saw at the Flesh Palace might be connected to your Wyrrd,’ he says. ‘If you don’t get some training it can fuck you up.’

‘The Sieners,’ I say.

‘You’re Afrikaans?’ he says.

‘Polish and Afrikaans on my dad’s side,’ I tell him.

He nods. ‘It’s possible. Although very few people have those genes. The English made a point of trying to wipe them out. Enemies with genuine far-sight is a pain in the ass when you’re trying to build an empire. The English have a long tradition of sending warlocks into South Africa, an essential part of their efforts here. That’s where Mirth’s specialties come from, mostly spirit work, which translate to demonology or necromancy if you’re an asshole, which Mirth most certainly is, exacerbated by the fact that he’s half Crow.’