The Forest Bull (The Fearless) Read online

  Elizabeth walked in like a wall of ice--beautiful, impenetrable, and frigid. I had sorely undersold her magnetism and beauty because, even in the dim light of the club, she glittered with the light of an approaching star. She was magnificent in the same way I can admire a sword, or a falcon, or a stalking cat. Her purpose, to anyone who would look closely, was clear, and her design, flawless. She flowed onto a stool and motioned once to the bartender, who was instantly at her service. The seat next to her was conveniently empty, and Petra had gone to the front, called by Blue upon seeing my movement towards the bar.

  Risa and Wally watched from the office, silent save their breathing in my earpiece. There was no need for talking now, only me, and the decision before me. Kill her here, or elsewhere under a pretense I would create. I had little faith in my ability to charm the devil, so I took two steps across the carpet, negotiating an oblique path to her side.

  Elizabeth then quelled any notion I had of being her equal in that moment. Turning to me, across the crowd, she patted the stool next to her and waved me over, playfully, without fear, totally aware of my intent before I had formed my plan in my own mind. Her prescience was disturbing, her mockery complete, but I went to her and took a seat next to the mistress who seemed to know entirely too much about my own thoughts.

  I sat without greeting as she poured champagne for me and herself, tapping our glasses together in solidarity. I was too stunned to drink, but she smiled and implored me.

  “Taste the wine, Ring. It’s excellent. Not the usual fare for such a colorful purveyor as your friend, Blue.” The layers of her knowledge seemed limitless after that simple invitation. I proceeded carefully.

  “I won’t insult you by reaching for my knife, but it is most certainly close enough for me to use if I feel pressured. You’re visiting my friend’s establishment, and, more importantly, my home. What can I do for you, Elizabeth?” I asked as I sipped. She was right; the wine was crisp.

  She focused on me, turning in her seat. Her charisma was nearly oppressive, despite her cool reserve. She said, “You have to imagine my confusion over your predicament. On the one hand, you’re helping a seemingly caring father who seeks to return his heir to her place at his side. And, along the way, you’ve been asked to bring his collection of baubles, which is scattered to the winds, but still manages to end up in your hands by some twist of fate. Then, there is the jealous sister, a jumped-up streetwalker whose accent and concept of taste are both, let’s say- -recently acquired. Her framing of me as the penultimate evil is petty, but not unforeseen. She has quite a taste for men, doesn’t she? And a truly dreadful collection of occupations over the centuries, but always returning to her roots as a camp whore, on her knees in smoky tents for bread and protection. You’ve been asked to kill me based on what evidence, may I ask?” Elizabeth was composed and in good humor, both of which made me nervous.

  “I don’t care about Delphine. She isn’t new to me, just a different name, a different accent, but always the same greed accompanied by the same pride. No, I find myself having a difficult time not killing you because of three little acorns. The ones that you seeded me with, that nearly killed me? Those make me so much less forgiving. In fact, my good manners are nearly extinguished, just like you will be soon because of something as simple as a good, old-fashioned murder attempt on your part. Unfortunately for you, my resistance is quite high, even to such unusual methods as you used. So you see, Elizabeth, despite the fact that you’ve given me this truly lovely wine,” and I saluted her with my glass, “I find that I’m not in the forgiving mood tonight.”

  Pouting was not her style. Her eyes took on a steelier shade, and she held out her phone to me, the image causing me to stop short of reaching for my knife.

  Suma. She was spread-eagle on a table, nude, with livid red marks on her stomach and thighs. I could guess what from, and my stomach flipped, curdling with impotent rage. Bile hit my tongue, and I sat very still, waiting for the moment to stabilize until the floating motes in my sight drifted away and I could once again focus on Elizabeth’s perfectly beautiful, evil face. I examined the picture again. On a chair next to Suma crowded two knives, their blades dull and smeared. An ashtray, with cigarette butts strewn about it, and a lighter. In the picture was a new player in our ugly drama--female, tall, thin, with long dark hair and intelligent eyes. She was waving shyly at the camera. You caught me! Her casual embarrassment was jarring, given the background of Suma.

  Elizabeth tucked the phone in her purse, watching me for motion. It was the first reasonable thing she had done since arriving because I was on a knife edge and leaning towards killing her right there.

  “Ring, I’m afraid we’ve started our discussion on a sour note. I apologize for inconveniencing your friend, but I had to guarantee that you would listen to reason.”

  “Reason?” I was apoplectic. I shook in my seat, my hands on the bar and the skin of my knuckles ghost-white. She was so close to her end.

  “Let me say something once, and I want you to remember this when I leave here tonight-and I will leave, no matter your plans for my demise. I am not who, or what, you think I am. I am a woman who is surrounded with a family that diverged from this world long ago. I am made from their thread, but I am not of their cloth. Remember that when you try to kill me, won’t you? Now, on to other matters. I can see by your reaction that I’ve misjudged your opinion about asserting my safety. When I am in my car, safe, I will make one call. One. Suma will be freed. She will call you immediately, and Karolina will help her to her vehicle, to come home to you and her family.” She rose, brushed her lips over my stony face and patted my hand. “A good friend knows when to let pride lose a battle. Let’s hope you are a true friend to Suma. Goodbye, Ring. Leave my family alone, or don’t. The choice is yours, but know that, eventually, you are going to lose to an undying soul who will not kill you, and then you will begin to understand what real sacrifice can be.”

  Even in the clatter of the bar, her heels sounded like the nails in my coffin, pounding with mockery at my weakness as Suma, Suma, I am sorry, forgive me looped in my head, unending and without care for my shame.

  We sat in my truck, mute. Risa and Wally waited for some sign from me that I was going to take action, but I was paralyzed with my failure. Watching Elizabeth leave the Corral unmolested was close to castration for me, but watch her I did, hating every step she took with a ferocity borne of fear. A moment later, my phone rang. Elizabeth.

  “Ring, I’m sending you a picture. Pay attention to detail this time, and I’ll see you soon, I’m sure. A storm is coming to your home, which means trouble for my family.” She delivered this news as fact.

  “Does this picture have anything to do with Suma’s freedom? Because if it doesn’t . . . ,” I let the threat hang, no matter how empty.

  Elizabeth laughed, patronizing and cold. “You fear someone who you have already dispatched. A slip on your part, to be sure, but understandable, given your excitability. I may choose to travel soon, since it will shortly become very unpleasant here. Or don’t you pay attention to the weather? I would think a mariner like you would at least be aware of an oncoming hurricane, which causes such problems with my family’s dinner plans. So many tourists taking wing, it makes other venues seem more attractive. Batten your hatches, Ring. Perhaps we’ll talk before I leave.”

  With a click, she was gone. I looked at the image she sent to my phone, closely. It was the same scene as she had shown me in the Corral. Suma, a victim. Karolina, the torturer. There were two small differences. My stomach fell a thousand yards, crushed by the deception of the picture.

  “What is it?” Risa asked, as Wally leaned in from the back seat.

  “Suma. Her hand. I’m such a fucking idiot, look at her hand! Elizabeth won, and I didn’t even fight her.” I handed my phone to Risa, burying my head in my hands, awash with relief and anger. Suma was fine. Safe, and had been all along. The picture showed a woman with a hand that was slightly deformed, cast in s
hadow, a single extra knuckle pushing outward due to a momentary loss of control. It was not Suma in the image. Finn, who was now ashes in the water, dead by my hand. The scene was staged by Elizabeth, no doubt days before I discovered Finn’s true nature. She used the picture as a trump card, knowing that we would tighten our noose around her neck, but fear for Suma’s life would cut the rope clean.

  And I let Elizabeth walk past me to safety, freed by a lie.

  A storm was, in fact, coming. Beaches emptied of tourists, just as Elizabeth had predicted in her damnably reasonable voice. Our previous concerns let a monstrous weather event sneak upon us, so, in a harried afternoon, Wally and I attached plywood to every window on our house, while Risa lowered the metal shutters at the Hardigan Center. This routine was old hat to us, and we performed like a somewhat oiled machine, with only minor scrapes to show for our efforts at circumventing the fury of nature. I sensed that Elizabeth would not have mentioned the storm had she thought it would turn elsewhere.

  I was unfortunately correct in my assessment of her value as a weathervane. Boon, Pan, Suma and the kids came to stay with us; the remainder of our center friends went inland with relatives, or in the case of Angel, to an armory where his church group volunteered. We were collectively as safe as could be, watching the angry bulk of the cheerily named hurricane Jenny bearing down on the coast. Landfall, if it hit Hollywood, would be at dusk, nearing full tide, and when the city was most vulnerable. The situation did not look good, but, with our family safe, riding it out together seemed to be the best possible plan. Vengeance was far from my mind, but that is an emotion with brawn, and, before I would give control of my rage to the cause of Elizabeth’s demise, I had a call to make--to the forest, for one last warning, a mea culpa of sorts. For, even if Cazimir was an immortal, he deserved to know that Elizabeth had well and truly slipped the leash, and even he could not consider himself safe in behind his barricade of trees.

  “Risa, time for one call to the Baron before the storm takes down the ‘net.” She opened her laptop, only to find the icon for the Baron’s call already pulsing in the corner of the screen. He had an open connection to us. She clicked, and the lodge flooded the screen, along with a scene of unmitigated death.

  Sandor and Ilsa’s feet twitched in unison, their bodies hanging from the beam that held the aurochs horns up for admiration. A wet stain colored Sandor’s pants, one last insult to his body as his bowels loosed in a heave. His tongue began to protrude from a mouth quickly mottling with anoxia. Next to him, Ilsa’s beautiful features were contorted in an ocean of agony. Her eyes locked on the camera for a fleeting second of recognition, then went dull as the weight of her muscular frame pulled vertebra apart with a dull snap. She died in seconds, tears and saliva streaking her face in a last baptism of pain.

  A hand slapped on the work table, the fingers turning white with effort. Cazimir. Rising, he dragged himself into camera height. His shirt was crimson, and he held one arm across the breadth of his stomach, a soft pink coil peeked from the side of his bloodied forearm.

  “She can be anywhere, Ring. Out of her mouth, only lies. Oh, that I ever fathered her, to visit such sin on the world.” His voice was reedy, failing. Looking past us at something unknowable, he slid from the table and our view, and the connection went dark, just as the last breath of life left the haunted lodge in the forest of giants.

  Rain began to hammer the plywood over the picture window in savage, slashing blows, while the wind rose and fell in a bass moan that crept upward in volume with each blast. After a meandering path pulling massive heat energy from the fertile Gulf Stream, Jenny had arrived. The canal was a crashing tub of violence, with whitecap foam blowing off waves that were already topping the seawall and punching at the dock erratically. Aluminum caps from each mooring post were ripped off and flung into the dark, speeding discs of wobbling metal. The entire dock swayed slightly and trees were bent, released, and bent again by the muscular gusts that ebbed but never relented. The water was gunmetal grey, and it was hard to discern where the saltwater ended and the rain began.

  A palm frond banged against the kitchen window and was swept past instantly into the twilight. Awnings and street signs sang in metallic vibrato as the wind lashed them side to side. Risa and Wally sat silently, Gyro panting between them, on the couch. They both looked at their phones, watching weather radar.

  “It’s a direct hit.” Risa was calm, but there was an undertone of worry. I understood. I checked on the kids again, only to find Boon smoothing their hair and whispering to them as they lay curled under blankets alongside the bed, their fear keeping them from the window. Pan was leaning against the wall on his haunches, his hands clenched with frustration and worry. I stood looking out into the false twilight, where shadows blew by in a torrent.

  My phone rang, startling me from watching the storm. I looked at the screen, surprised that a call could connect in the savagery outside. Elizabeth. I looked pointedly at the girls and answered.

  “Ring, I have a problem” she began. The clarity of her voice was shocking. I heard the snap of her lighter and the clink of glass. She sounded like she was in the next room. It was disconcerting, but so was her tone. She spoke in a friendly, conversational way.

  “Inclement weather aside, this is the time to meet. I need to speak to you, and the only place that was open on a day like this hasn’t been open for thirty years, but it’s quiet, and we can chat. This pursuit grows tiresome. You and your friends harried me like a fox these past few months, and for what? Because you think my children have been misbehaving? I assure you, Ring, I have never given birth, but I expect you’ll wish to meet, regardless. It’s getting dark now, nearly time for dinner. Dress appropriately. And do be a dear and bring wine. I’m afraid I’ve finished mine, and we have a great deal to discuss. The eye of the storm will come ashore soon. Stop by then.”

  The connection cut, I told the girls “She’s at my uncle’s, in the Center. Alone, I think. She asked me to bring wine, like a date. Let’s make it a foursome, shall we?” I asked, handing the package from Jim Broward to Wally. “We leave when the eye wall is here. That means time for sleep. And then, time for Elizabeth to sleep. Permanently.”

  In the Wagoneer, I turned the heavy envelope up. A musical clank came from within, and I tore the top away in one motion. Inside were two beautifully made British trench knives, fine examples a century old, built for close fighting in World War I. I handed one each to the girls, who slipped their hands around them at once. They fit perfectly, filling their hands with deadly metal. A long blade finished in a wicked point, designed to be thrust forward or down. There was no time to sharpen them, but they would wreak havoc with contact and aggression. We would supply both of those needs.

  “They’re inscribed”, Risa announced after holding the blade up to the overhead light. “Trevor and William Bruton, of Warwick, England. Brothers who fought together in the infantry. These knives have seen a lot of fighting, I bet. Especially since they were British. They never played defense.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, and backed up into the hammerfall of rain. The noise was deafening and the wind moved the heavy vehicle playfully as I edged down our street. I would have to go very slowly, picking my way through the limbs and errant lawn furniture that dotted the road. Risa leaned forward to get closer. Wally turned halfway as the bullets of water drummed the metal roof and then in seconds, the rain began to slow. The clouds were parting, quickly. It was unsettling after the howling of the past hours.

  “The British had a simple doctrine in war. At Gallipoli, they attacked. At the Somme. Ypres, twice. In Palestine. They always went on the offensive. It was simple but it took incredible discipline.” When Risa spoke of history, it was as if she lived it.

  Wally was testing the heft of her knife, listening and peering upward as the eye of the storm began to pass over, revealing an astounding column of clear, velvety night sky. She pointed to a single, bright star shining in defiance of the storm
that curled around it. “So what does that mean to us when we meet Elizabeth?”

  Risa didn’t hesitate. “Simple. As soon as possible, we attack.”

  After a rocky ride over, my lights hit the Center, and we parked close. I knew the storm would return soon, and I respected the coming violence, both in and out of the building. Getting out, we were surrounded by unnatural calm. Where wind had been screaming minutes before, I could now hear the drip of water. It was unsettling. I pulled on the door without any attempt at stealth, and the glass swung wide, groaning slightly from years of disuse.

  “She’s here.” My voice sounded thunderous in the uneasy quiet. The back of the shop was hidden by a shabby paneled wall. Behind was a long, open space with threadbare carpet and plain walls. I knew that only a card table and chairs lay beyond the flimsy barrier. A single fluorescent fixture popped and hummed, casting a flickering light from beyond the door. Both bulbs pulsed with shadows and glare in alternating moments. The rhythm was disquieting.