Weston Ochse - Age of Blood

“Mom, please wake up! The apartment’s on fire!”

Her head lolled and she sighed, expelling a cloud of noxious gin fumes that snapped him into action. He grabbed her by her shoulders and heaved. Her wig fell askew and he fought the urge to fix it. His back was beginning to sting. He wished he was big and strong like his cousin or the other boys, especially Lebron. He’d been left back two years and was the strongest of them all.

Yank managed to jerk her off the bed. Even when she hit the floor, she didn’t wake up. He fought back a sob. He glared through tear-prismed eyes at the half-full glass of gin and juice, and in that moment knew that it had killed her.

He was pulling her through the door when a piece of the ceiling fell on him.

He screamed as his face and hair caught fire and his entire existence was consumed by a pure, crystal moment of pain. Then he was pulled and grabbed. He heard people yelling as he was screaming. Then he was outside, red lights strobing the world as white men pointed at the orange glow behind him.

His screams became sobs as he was rushed to an ambulance and a white woman with a ring in her nose and a tattoo of a hummingbird on her neck began to work on his face. She laid him down. He sobbed and let her turn his head. Then he realized he’d somehow held on to his mother’s wig. The edges were singed and slightly smoking. As his face was caressed by what felt like razor blades, he tried to let go of the fake hair but his fingers wouldn’t follow his commands. So he held it as the sirens screamed and his mother was cremated along with any chance of him living a normal life.

Walker and Jen lay in her single bed, blankets twisted around them. Jen’s head lay in the pocket of Walker’s shoulder. Their breathing was still quick. Sweat shone on their skin from the light coming through the window.

“I wish I could stay like this forever,” Walker said.

Her barely audible words were spoken directly into his ear. “Then why don’t you?”

“Because we’d get hungry eventually,” he offered.

She punched him in the chest. “Seriously.”

“Because I’m a SEAL,” he said simply.

Jen didn’t need any more explanation than that. She got it. She knew. Just like every other woman who’d dated a SEAL, she’d hoped she could change him. Part of Walker wished she could. But another part—the part of him that needed to be at the center of everything—demanded that he be a free ship in the patriotic storm.

“Still, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Will you, now?”

She was quiet for a while, then asked, “What took you so long?”

He looked at her in surprise.

“Not that, silly.” She punched him again. “I meant getting up here. Where were you?”

“Laws wanted me to help him with something down in the catacombs,” he said. “I hurried as fast as I could.”

“I thought Commander Holmes said not to…” She looked at him. “Oh. It was one of those.”

“One of those?”

“You know, the ‘I’m telling you not to do something in order to make it clear I want you to do that.’”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead.

“Sure you don’t.” She snuggled closer and pulled the sheet tighter.

“Part of me wishes you weren’t even here,” he said.

“Thanks a lot.”

“You know what I mean.”

She pretended to have a deep voice. “‘I’m not a big tough Navy SEAL so I might be in danger.’ Is that sort of what you mean?”

He chuckled. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“But I’m safe now.”

“We don’t know what’s gonna go down in Mexico City. We might even be hijacked on the way. There are things going on with the cartels we don’t understand.”

“I’ll make sure I stay behind and out of trouble.”

Walker knew better. He understood the vicissitudes of combat much better than she did and knew that there’d be at least a moment during the next few days when this woman he loved was in the crosshairs. He just had to hope that when that happened he would be there to keep her safe.

They both lay still, staring at the play of light across the ceiling and listening to the celebrations from the streets.

“Do you think YaYa is going to be okay?” she asked.

“He seems fine.”

“But is he really?” Her voice was on the edge of sleep.

“There’s no medical procedure I know of that can tell if a person is possessed. The priest says he’s okay and so does YaYa. My own little fucked-up radar hasn’t been going off. I suppose we’ll just have to keep an eye on him.”

Her breathing became regular. He looked down and saw that she was asleep. He should be so lucky. He was worried about YaYa more than he was willing to let on. He knew how a demon could lurk inside a person, then creep forward to assert control. For all his comments about the power of mind over blood, part of him was worried it still might happen again, even after all these years.

As he fell asleep to the gentle breathing of his girlfriend, he thought about dancing naked and peeing on the old Filipino man. It was always the Filipino man. It was as if his repayment for his mistreatment was to haunt Walker’s dreams. So it was that Walker fell asleep with the gnarled old man grinning at him, possessing the knowledge of what had been done, his look carrying condemnation through eternity.

Walker woke when someone burst into his room. He scrambled to a sitting position, the sheets like pythons trying to hold him down. Startled, he looked around for Jen, but she’d left sometime in the night. Sunlight shot through the windows.

“Get dressed and downstairs,” Holmes commanded. “We have a problem.”

Walker stared bleary-eyed for only a moment, then surged into his gear. He slipped on his shorts and shirt, pulled on socks and boots, then ran downstairs. As he hit the bottom of the staircase, one of the Knights pointed down the hall. Walker ran until he saw a room filled with people. They parted as he entered to let him get a view of what they’d placed on the table. A naked body. Headfirst toward him.

Black skin. Jagged cut at the neck. Bloodless because it had been done hours ago. So deep he could see the spine and the suppurated edges of the esophagus. Above this stood a diamond-shaped soul patch, obstinate in death. And above the face’s rictus grin and the hollow, milky eyes sprung a head of yellow Afro.

J.J.

Walker became aware that people all around him were talking at once.

“I knew we couldn’t trust him. Fucking bastard, Ramon!” Laws said, spittle flying from his mouth. Walker had never seen him so furious.

“We don’t know that it was Ramon.” Holmes turned to Vega. “Tell us again how he was found.”

Vega gestured to a slight man, dressed in the robes of the Knights. His face was weasel-slender but his eyes remained intelligent and focused as he retold what he’d seen.

“He headed south out of town in a car he’d taken,” the man began.

“You followed him?” Laws asked.

The man glanced at Vega.

“I ordered it,” Vega said with a shrug. “We like to know what’s going on in our town. Now can my man continue?”

Holmes nodded.

“At Piedra Blanca, he pulled into a cantina. The man, Ramon, was already inside. They sat with each other and spoke.”

“How did they interact?” Laws asked. “Was it like an interrogation? Was J.J. angry?”

“Not at all. They seemed to be friends. They smiled several times. They even laughed.”