Fierce Lessons (Ghosts & Demons Series Book 3) Page 7

  Victor shot her a nasty look. “Your words would have carried more weight if you had waited for me to ask your opinion. I was talking to Iowa and you didn’t give her a chance to answer.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Manny said.

  “Doubtful. And Wilmington? You’re volunteering for this mission? I’ll miss you at my side here.”

  “There are hundreds of sword singers and spear slingers and gun toters in the Keep,” Wil said. “You have a wide choice of bodyguards, sir.”

  Victor looked perturbed. “True. But none like you. You have already taken a bullet for me.”

  “This is about more than helping out the suicidal immortal who has locked himself in the basement,” I said. “This demon, Chronos, is powerful. If we let him remain a free-range chicken, he’s trouble. We’ve got to get some Magicals together to put some kind of binding spell on Merlin, too. This box Merlin mentioned. Have you got two of them? One for Merlin and one for the one who looks like a Stanford professor?”

  Victor shook his head. “There is only one.”

  “Merlin’s toying with the idea of opening a rift to the demon dimension. He sounds too impatient and unstable. There’s nothing more dangerous than a rift to the Ra right under us.”

  “Very well,” Victor said. “I’ll work on that angle from here and try to gather enough magic folk to contain Merlin. Let’s talk about your team. Who do you want to take to Stanford, or did you picture this as a Charlie’s Angels sort of situation?”

  “Any word on Rory?”

  “He’s still recovering from your last misadventure,” Victor said.

  I took a couple of deep breaths, determined to speak slowly. Mama said that Victor’s mood could slip into heat and sharpness easily. She blamed the fact that Trick had gotten so close to him and Lynda had nearly killed him.

  I thought Victor’s crankiness was really about mourning the loss of Samantha Biggs to the demon dimension. I missed my old boss, too, but Sam and Victor had had a fling once, a long time ago. I suspected it meant more to Victor than a lost weekend in bed. There had been no funeral for Sam. The night Castille Funeral Homes burned to the ground around me, I hadn’t seen Key, the battle demon, kill her. There was no body to bury. We were sure Peter Smythe had spirited her away, through a rift to Ba’al’s dimension. For what reason, I could not guess.

  I had pleaded with Victor to find a way for us to mount a rescue. Tears fell from his eyes as he refused. She was beyond our help now. “She may as well be on Mars,” he’d said. “We cannot go after her.”

  Seeing Victor this way now — abrupt and impatient and humorless — hurt me. The first day I’d met Victor Fuentes in a cemetery he’d exuded old world charm. In his role as conductor of the Choir Invisible, I gave no one more respect. Victor was my hero. I suspected he blamed me for failing to save Sam. Victor now acted almost as distant as she was. Victor, my greatest role model, seemed missing in action.

  “Iowa?” Wil nudged me.

  “Hm?”

  “Victor suggested some more sword singers for the ride West.”

  “The Circle of Knives is six bodyguards. They don’t know we’re coming. With a Magical to point them out, we could isolate them and take them one at a time, maybe. They’re humans. We won’t even have to kill them. We’ve got lots of non-lethal options in the arsenal. Let’s use them.”

  Manny nodded. “Waco.”

  I didn’t follow. “What?”

  “The government took down a religious nut who was stockpiling weapons.”

  “David Koresh,” Victor said. “I remember. He had some kind of cult down there. The government got a lot of heat because so many women and children died. They went in through the front door, guns blazing. The FBI used a tank, as I recall.”

  Manhattan nodded. “But the cult leader had been in town the day before, away from his compound. A couple of FBI guys could have arrested him and had him handcuffed and whisked him away without any trouble. Their tactical error was to choose the wrong battleground. We can do this quietly, as long as we nab the big bad’s bodyguards when they go out for milk or stop to take a leak, right?”

  I smiled at Victor. “This is why I need her with me.”

  “And you’ll need me for muscle,” Wil said.

  “And good looks,” Manny added.

  I rolled my eyes. When Manny had a new conquest, every day was junior high all over again. I’d have to keep Manny and Wil busy on this business trip.

  “And you’ll need me,” a man announced from a far doorway.

  We turned and stared at Patton Oswalt, the famous comedian.

  “Wow! I, uh, I-I…um. Wow,” Wilmington gushed, obviously star struck. “You’re one of my favorite comedians!”

  The man sighed. “I’m not him. See, this is why I was huge in Eastern Europe but I still can’t fill a high school auditorium in goddamn Dubuque.”

  We said nothing. We stared. The likeness was so uncanny I was sure he was Patton Oswalt. He even sounded like Patton Oswalt.

  “I’ve been meaning to watch you on that show,” Manny said. “I mean — ”

  “Still not him,” the man said, exasperated. “I can prove it. I won’t say anything funny.”

  A moment passed and he stared at us. To his disappointment, that deadpan look made Manny, Wil and I break into laughter.

  “I’m the Great Psymon, Psymon the Inimitable!”

  “Okay, Psymon, Psymon,” Victor said. “They’re going to need a mind reader.”

  Psymon tossed me my cell phone.

  “Oh, right,” I said. “You’re Fawn’s dad.”

  He made a sour face. “I love that kid more than life and chocolate fudge cake and gingerbread cookies with coffee, but I’m sure that, forever and always, my greatest achievement is that I will be the footnote who was her father. I will only ever be known in relation to Fawn. I’ll always be her Dad, when I’m not Patton Oswalt, of course.”

  “There are worse things,” Wil said. “What if you were Bill Cosby’s twin?”

  Psymon did not look amused.

  “Is Fawn’s last name, ‘the Inimitable,’ too?” Manny asked. “That’s a lot for a kid to carry around.”

  “Platt,” he said. “My last name is really Platt.”

  “Sorry,” Manny said.

  “Me, too.”

  I moved to shake his hand. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Patton…I mean, Mr. Oswa — uh, Mr. Platt.”

  “Call me Psymon. And no, I never thought about doing some kind of tribute act. Geez, I’d love that guy so much if we didn’t have the same face.”

  Lesson 167: We measure ourselves against others. Whether that person is a celebrity who happens to be your unrelated twin, a precocious daughter destined for greatness or your greatest hero, make sure you’re measuring your worth against the right idol.

  I wish I had chosen better.

  12

  My hapkido teacher, Kevin Chang, waited for us at the Newark Airport. He was supervising six sword singers, keeping them busy loading gear into a Challenger jet.

  While Manhattan and Wilmington hauled a trunk from the Keep’s helicopter, I paused to look for the misty wistful out on the runway. The dead crash victim had wandered farther down the runway than I remembered. The ghost seemed to be staring at a windsock. I wondered what the ghost was thinking. Almost all ghosts seem to be waiting for something.

  The only misty wistful I knew who wanted to stay and help fight the Ra was Rory and he was still recovering from the sneak attack by my half-brother.

  I just reread that sentence. Oh, my God! My life is like a weird Spanish soap opera on Telemundo, but with ghosts. Or maybe it’s more like Spider-Man’s life, where everybody, his friends and even Aunt May, gets dragged into every fight and becomes a villain or a victim.

  Speaking of victims… “Mr. Chang? I haven’t seen much of you since Medicament.”

  He glanced my way, took in my horned head, nodded, and went back to watching the sword singers load the plane. I suspected his mood
was sour, like he might tell me to pump out one hundred pushups at any moment.

  I was wrong. “I should have come to see you,” he said.

  “That’s okay, sir.”

  “No,” he said. “It is not.”

  “You lost a lot, Mr. Chang. I don’t blame you for being busy with other things.”

  “The explosion destroyed my accounting office and the dojang,” he said. “I lost nothing of real consequence…not there.”

  “Your house?”

  “It is far enough from town that it is fine. The property value has plummeted, but Victor informs me I will be compensated.”

  “At least there’s that.”

  “None of that matters. Nothing can compensate me for the losses I have suffered that have no price tag. What’s worse is that I brought all the trouble on myself.”

  “You had a mission.”

  Mr. Chang gave me another look, longer this time. His gaze lingered on my horns. “Yes. We got Victor his secret weapon but your mother has not spoken to me since the quarry. Neither has my daughter.”

  Malta emerged from the plane at that moment. She wore a long trench coat, but when the wind pulled it back, I could see shiny black armor. Her breastplate was decorated with a gold eagle, its wings spread. Very Wonder Woman.

  Malta noticed me talking to her father. She threw me a glare, picked up a big backpack and disappeared back into the plane.

  “Malta is still pissed at me, too, I see.”

  “She will follow orders. She knows all that we do is for a greater cause. It is a pity she does not see that I, too, was only following orders when I did what I did.”

  There is something very creepy about that phrase. I was only following orders. There’s a rule on the Internet that is applied overly much. Godwin’s Law states that the longer a discussion goes on, some commenter will invoke comparisons to Hitler. It has become customary that anyone who mentions any comparison to Nazis automatically loses the argument. Like all that stuff about fast food being the new Holocaust, for instance. Or, if Hitler had won the war, all private vocational schools would be exactly as they are now. Godwin’s law has been perverted so some dough heads think no Nazi simile or metaphor can ever be mentioned again. As if that comparison can’t ever be apt. I touched one of my horns and decided to stop thinking about Godwin’s Law. It made me nervous that I was casting Victor and Mr. Chang in a bad light.

  “My wife,” Mr. Chang said. “I lost her, too. Again.”

  I thought this sad fact was somewhat mitigated by the fact that she was already dead. However, a single tear tracked down my master’s cheek before he rubbed it away with a calloused knuckle.

  I’d never seen Kevin Chang cry. I’d seen him get hit hard once, though. And now, to lighten the mood and to swerve away from getting maudlin or thinking about Nazis, here’s a warm memory of nunchucks.

  When I was fifteen, I practiced in a corner of Mr. Chang’s dojang with nunchaku. The first time I’d handled the weapon, it looked simple enough: two sticks tied together by rope. I’d seen videos of Bruce Lee looking badass with a pair of nunchaku and couldn’t wait to try them out. Watch Enter the Dragon. No one can deny Bruce Lee’s high level of badassery in that movie. Anyway, with images of Bruce taking on an army in my head, I began to swing the weapon before Mr. Chang got back from the bathroom. Within a minute, both my nostrils were bleeding. You can’t say the weapon isn’t effective. For the next few months I practiced with the nunchucks wearing a hockey helmet. I got pretty good with them. Nunchucks with round sticks hurt, but nunchucks cut into hexagonal sticks can leave bloody cuts behind with each strike.

  The trick to the nunchucks is not to whirl them around your head and body like Bruce Lee did for the movies. That’s for show. Until you’re ready to strike your opponent, each strike is a chambered round. You don’t show off with nunchucks except in competitions. In competitions, the nunchucks look scary, but you aren’t hitting anything but air.

  In a real fight, you use them differently. Each strike flashes out and back, out and back. They’re hard to control once they’ve actually struck something. I’d never used them in a real fight until the day Mr. Chang was attacked.

  I was working out with the nunchucks (and had graduated from wearing the hockey helmet) when an Iowa Hawkeye came into Mr. Chang’s dojang with two of his friends. They were all smiles and exaggerated bows at the door.

  As Mr. Chang extended his hand to welcome the big football player, the surprise attack came. The Hawkeye landed a sucker punch on my teacher’s jaw and kicked Mr. Chang square in the balls.

  The guy stepped back to crow about it, arms held high and victorious. Showing off for his buddies, not only was he a dick, but a racist, too. He taunted my teacher in a high, sing song Asian accent that didn’t fit Mr. Chang’s drawl at all. “A true martial arts master,” the Hawkeye said, “would never be taken by surprise!”

  Mr. Chang didn’t cry even though he’d been hit hard. He looked annoyed. He gasped and choked back rising vomit. He took a few deep breaths and nodded.

  “How’s that feel, Mr. Miyagi?”

  “It hurts.”

  “S’posed to, bitch!”

  “Should I call your mother?” Mr. Chang whispered. “Or do you want me to give you your spanking now and get it over with?” His voice was barely audible.

  The football player brought his head forward, straining to hear. “What did you say to me?”

  Whispering to an opponent is an old trick. It brings them close enough to mess them up.

  Mr. Chang said in a loud, clear voice, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.”

  The football player was still smiling when Mr. Chang delivered an uppercut to his jaw. Two front teeth popped out with the first punch. Then Mr. Chang kicked the inside of the big guy’s knee and the Hawkeye went down, howling.

  “You watch too many dumb martial arts movies,” Mr. Chang said. “Anyone can be fooled by a smile. I’m smiling right now and wishing you well. I hope you don’t lose your football scholarship. That would be terrible. Perhaps some time off the field will force you to spend some time on actual scholarship. You need some personal development time. That’ll get you some.”

  The football player rolled around on the floor a while, holding his knee. His two buddies eyed Mr. Chang.

  My teacher called to me. I was smart enough to bring the nunchucks. One of the guys bolted out of the dojang immediately.

  “Tammy, please hold the door for these gentlemen. They’re leaving.”

  The remaining friend eyed me and my weapon. “What’s your name?”

  “None of your beeswax is my name.”

  He chuckled. “And how old are you, little Miss Beeswax?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “You know how to use them numb-chucks?”

  I looked from the bully to Mr. Chang. My master said nothing. He was watching to see how I would handle myself. That gave me some spine.

  “They’re called nunchaku or, more commonly in the United States, nunchucks, numb nuts. And you’re trespassing,” I said. “Mr. Chang wants you to leave. Go. We don’t want any more trouble.”

  His friend was still on the floor, gasping. The bully kept staring at me. A smile spread across his face slowly. “If Mr. Chang wants me to leave, why is he getting a fifteen-year-old girl to get me to leave?”

  He ignored me and took a step toward Mr. Chang, bringing up his fists. My first strike with the nunchucks snapped across his knuckles. He grimaced and stepped back, his breath hissing fast through his teeth. His right hand was useless as a fist, nerves buzzing. I was sure I’d broken at least one of his knuckles.

  “He’s asking me to deal with you because if this goes to court, you’ll get to tell everyone that you were beaten up by a little girl.”

  “Gimme that!” He reached for my weapon.

  The next strike broke his left wrist.

  “Sonofabitch!” The big guy stepped back, nearly tripping over his fallen friend.
His eyes rolled back for a moment as the pain slammed into his brain.

  Mr. Chang cleared his throat. “This boy,” he pointed to his attacker, “has a torn medial collateral ligament. You should both get to a hospital.”

  The bully grimaced at me, his face bright red with pain.

  “He will need help to get back in your car. Never come back here,” Mr. Chang said. “And you will need your friend to help you wipe your ass for the next four to six weeks.”

  I had never heard my hapkido teacher use the word, “ass.” Mama said that and many more bad words quite frequently. I heard the curse of “numb nuts,” from Mama when I was really young when she spoke of my father.

  The bully began to curse me out in terms that would not be allowed on cable television. I say “began” because my third strike went into his crotch. The fourth strike of my nunchucks took out his left knee.

  The bully went down, screaming a long vowel sound.

  “Testicles and lateral collateral ligament,” Mr. Chang announced. “That was much worse than a punch in the groin. I don’t imagine the term numb nuts applies to you at all. I’m sure that hurts a lot.”

  Lesson 168: When your opponent lets out a long vowel sound in a high register, it usually means you’ve won.

  “To hobble out of here,” Mr. Chang said, “you will need to lean heavily on each other. I suggest you stick together. Two morons like you won’t have many friends in life. The one who ran away was too smart to be your friend.”

  They hobbled out quietly. I missed out on a lot of sleep worrying that the entire football team would show up at the dojang someday. They didn’t, so I guess Mr. Chang was right. Nobody else liked those assholes, either.

  I liked Mr. Chang. Despite the fact that he had led me down into the quarry to become a horned freak, his heart had been in the right place. We had a lot of history together. Knowing what I might someday be, he’d trained me to defend myself. I was crushed that I was now a horned freak but staying mad at Kevin Chang wasn’t in me.

  Friends, even when they’re assholes, somehow become family and you have to forgive them. It was beyond me why his real daughter hadn’t forgiven him already.