Blood And Bones Read online

When I was done Yuri said, “It does not surprise me. Elizabeth believes that the vast majority of people, she would call them peasants, are only cattle to be used. She has given others the same gift that she gave you. Always, it was for one reason only, to throw us off her trail. We always seem to be at least one step behind her.”

  “But you know where she’s been?” Johnny asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Yuri said. “But that is of no use to us.”

  I knew what Johnny was getting at.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked him.

  “Only if it involves us taking a little trip backwards,” he answered.

  “I do not understand what you are getting at,” Yuri said.

  “Then just shut up and follow us and you might learn something,” I told him.

  The first place we stopped off at was Johnny’s Bar. We had a few questions to ask Jeanette.

  When Johnny unlocked the door and we stepped inside Jeanette was sitting on a stool drinking a beer and watching Wheel of Fortune. As we walked up the clue was given to a brand new phrase that would be up in the board.

  The moment the blank white squares appeared, a set of 4-3-5-5, she said, “That Old Black Magic.”

  Neither Johnny nor me had to wait to see if Jeanette was correct. She always was.

  Once I asked Jeanette how she did that and her answer was, “It’s a taped program. The answers have already been given.”

  I went on with my questions with, “But how do you know the answers?”

  She laughed at that.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Yeah, I would,” I told her. “I could make some good cash at bars by betting on stuff like that.”

  She only laughed louder. Jeanette was a puzzle wrapped in a question. She was someone I would definitely never completely understand.

  Tonight, I wasn’t going to get into any of that with her.

  Jeanette greeted us with a statement.

  “You have come to ask me if John’s affliction can be cured by traveling back to before it was given to him.”

  “That’s why me and Johnny are here,” I told Jeanette.

  Yuri said, “I am tracking a criminal.”

  Johnny started to introduce Yuri but Jeanette cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Yes, yes, Hungarian Secret Police. I know.”

  “How did ...” Yuri started.

  I interrupted him with, “Don’t even ask.”

  Jeanette continued, “If you travel back to Elizabeth’s home and to her beginning then you will be as you were before you met her. But you cannot return to after the moment that she infected you without destroying her. If you do, you will lose your soul entirely and you will become a thing of the night existing only to hunt for blood. Your hunger would be as an insatiable thirst centuries old and you would be an uncontrollable animal fit only to be put down.’

  Yuri spoke now.

  “I am sworn by the laws of my land to bring Elizabeth back and imprison her if possible. If that is not possible then she must be destroyed.”

  “That don’t make a dam bit of difference. You ain’t coming with us,” Johnny told him. “And by the time we’re back, you won’t have a problem.”

  Part Two

  Good-Bye Cruel World Hello Island Madness

  To be a Hunter

  You got to Go

  To the Jungle!

  ... The Walker In Darkness

  Chapter Ten

  Good-Byes

  Jeanette stood up from the barstool and hugged Johnny fiercely. She stifled back a sob and her voice was thick with emotion when she said, “You be careful my Grandson. Come back wiser and stronger.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Johnny told her. “We’ve done this before. We know what to expect.”

  “Be careful anyway,” she said. “I don’t have a good feeling about you on this trip. There are things waiting for you that you could never imagine exist.”

  “I’ll watch out for him,” I told Jeanette.

  “Now that is what really makes me worry,” Jeanette said. She wiped a tear from her eye and went upstairs.

  Johnny went behind the bar. He reached under it and brought out a sawed-off twelve gauge pump shotgun. He laid that on the counter.

  “That’s mine,” he said.

  He went back underneath and next brought out something that looked like a hand cannon. That pistol was huge!

  “That’s yours,” he said.

  I picked up the chrome plated pistol. It was heavy and felt solid. On the side was engraved, .44 Magnum.

  “Dam!” I told Johnny. “Now this is a big mother fucking gun.”

  “Yeah it is,” he agreed. “I kicked Dirty Harry’s ass and took that away from him. He’s getting too old to carry it anyway.”

  We loaded our pockets with bullets and shotgun shells that Johnny pulled out of some drawers.

  Yuri watched all this and as we finished loading up he told Johnny, “It looks like you’ve got your own private armory back there.”

  “I practically do,” he answered. “In East St. Louis having weapons close by is as important to a tavern owner as knowing how to mix drinks. As a matter of fact, I don’t mix drinks worth shit. But I can sure as shit blow a mother-fucker’s head off in a heartbeat. Because of that the gangs leave me alone and I stay in business.”

  We went out through the front door and Johnny locked up.

  Yuri turned to us on the sidewalk.

  “Make certain that you destroy Elizabeth,” he told us. “She has caused more death and destruction than you can ever know.”

  Johnny looked hard into Yuri’s eyes.

  “One thing that bothers me is that we start talking time travel and you don’t even bat an eye. Most people would be ready to call the state mental institution to lock us up when we start talking like this. What do you know that you ain’t telling us?”

  This made Yuri smile, but the smile was almost like a grimace of pain. “I was assigned to track Elizabeth down over ten years ago,” he said. “I have seen people come back from the dead as hungry raving lunatics. I have been close enough to Elizabeth to have seen her with my own eyes. She looks like a beautiful young woman but she is over three hundred and fifty years old.

  “I have seen these things and much worse. Nothing surprises me when it has to do with Elizabeth.’

  He shook Johnny’s hand, then mine.

  “We’ll put Elizabeth where she belongs,” I told Yuri, “Beneath the ground for good.”

  “One other thing,” Johnny told him. “You’ll never know we did it because all of it will take place before you were born.”

  Then we got in Johnny’s car and left Yuri standing on the sidewalk.

  We didn’t need to say where we were going.

  Both of us knew.

  A couple of years ago Johnny was going with a hot little Oriental stripper who went by the name of Sushi. She and two other strippers were kidnapped.

  We chased them all down, all the way back to Rome at the time when Caligula was the Emperor.

  But that was another story where a lot of Blood For The Masses was shed.

  Tonight we were going to travel back to Elizabeth’s time using the same doorway that we’d used before. This was a trip that was necessary but not one that I was looking forward to.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hellos

  It was getting late and midnight approached.

  Streets flew past as Johnny drove toward the Masonic Temple in Cahokia Illinois. Not many of the regular, ordinary people were still out but the predators, the hunters were coming out in droves.

  We left the streets of East St. Louis and cruised out into the black side roads.

  Johnny glanced over at me as he drove.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you something for awhile,” He said. For some reason his voice seemed heavy, strained.

  “Go ahead. Shoot.” I told him.

  Johnny didn’t hesitate. He dove right on in. />
  “What the fuck happed to you anyway?” he asked. “I mean, you were doing good. You quit drinking. You got your shit together. You were on the way up. Then one thing happened and you tossed it all away. Now, you’re back to square one. Now you don’t seem to give a fuck about anything.”

  “One thing just happened?” I growled back at him. “Sherry getting tortured and murdered just wasn’t one little thing bro!”

  “Remember, I lost Sushi too.”

  “That ain’t the same,” I snarled, “Not even fucking close.”

  “But I lost her.”

  “She wasn’t fucking murdered!”

  Now there was silence between us vibrating in the car. It stayed that way until he pulled up in front of the Masonic Temple.

  I got out and slammed my door shut in the hot sticky pre-midnight air. I came around the front of the Pinto and met Johnny at his door.

  “You don’t need to be going with me bro,” I told him and held my hand out.

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me to him and we gave each other the kind of hug that only lifelong best friends can give.

  “Yes I do,” he said. “You know that and I know that.”

  “I guess I do,” I told him.

  We started walking toward the large wooden double doors at the front of the Masonic Temple.

  As we climbed the steps Johnny said, “We’ve both lost. Don’t you think it’s about time we got some back?”

  “Long over due,” I answered.

  The Masonic Temple was a large stone structure that always reminded me of a courthouse.

  We walked from the dark street up the steps and I lifted my hand to knock on the big oak double doors.

  Johnny reached out, grabbed the knob and turned it.

  The door swung inward.

  “See, that’s another reason why you need me with you,” he said. “You’d have stood here all night banging on that door and it wasn’t even locked.”

  One of the double doors was latched from the top. We stepped past the one that wasn’t and swung the door shut behind us.

  Not a thing was changed from the last time we’d been here. The place was expensively furnished, complete with crystal chandeliers, crushed velvet deeply cushioned settees and large detailed scenic paintings on the walls. The Cahokia Masonic Temple was a rich man’s playhouse.

  It looked like a French Whorehouse to me.

  No one was in the front room to greet us.

  I cupped my hands at my mouth and shouted, “If anybody is here come on out!”

  We waited two long minutes.

  Only silence answered us.

  “These are some stupid mother-fuckers,” I told Johnny. “They leave their front doors wide open with all this expensive shit lying around. If this was East St. Louis, this would be like the Donation to the Wino’s Center. People would carry all this shit out in a heartbeat.”

  “That’s the thing,” Johnny answered. “This ain’t East St. Louis. People that live out here don’t rob their neighbors blind like the idiots that live where we do.”

  “Then what the fuck are we doing living where we do?”

  “Because we are who we are,” he said and we both went through the front room of the temple and headed toward Paul Brady’s office.

  In Brady’s office a thick shag rug with an Oriental Dragon design was thrown back and the trap door in the middle of the floor was gaping open. We saw flickering light from far down in the descending stairway.

  We knew torches were burning at the bottom of the stairs even though we couldn’t see them yet.

  I looked at Johnny.

  He looked at me.

  “It seems like somebody is expecting us,” I told him.

  He lifted the sawed-off shotgun that he carried.

  “Well, let’s not keep them waiting then,” Johnny said.

  “I’m going first,” I said and headed down the stairs.

  “You ain’t getting no argument from me.”

  We went down into the Earth, down the stairs and as we expected at the bottom burning torches were fitted into slots carved into the walls.

  The first time we’d come down here we were in pitch blackness. This time at regular intervals lit torches were placed. It was a whole lot better being able to see where we were going.

  This was a concrete tunnel that we walked through. How or why this place had originally been built was anybody’s guess. But now it was used as Paul Brady’s personal Shrine and Temple to the Goddess Isis.

  We went down into the sloping tunnel. The lit torches made our walking easy and fast. After we came around a turn in the tunnel we started hearing voices.

  I put my finger to my lips and motioned for Johnny to listen.

  “What the fuck do you thing that is?” I asked.

  We both stood silent straining our ears to hear as much as we could.

  After a few minutes Johnny said, “It sounds kind of like chanting or singing.”

  The light sound was in a rhythmic cadence and even though we could barely hear it with our ears I could feel the combined voices vibrate all the way through to my bones.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “But it sure doesn’t sound like the theme to Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.”

  We went toward the sound.

  I wasn’t sure if the chanting was drawing us or if we were moving forward despite the sound. Whatever it was, the sound of the chants got louder. It was pleasant. The voices made me feel warm and relaxed.

  We came around another twist in the tunnel and in front of us was the opening where the stone oval stood.

  This was the same doorway we’d taken when we’d traveled to Ancient Rome. Then, the chamber had been dominated by a massive statue of Asmodias; The God of the Pit.

  The chamber was far different now.

  Chapter Twelve

  Taking the Plunge

  In front of us on their knees were ten beautiful women. All of them had jet black hair that fell down around their shoulders. They had silk skirts on and they were bare from the waist up.

  They were in two lines on both sides of a raised stone platform where Paul Brady, a middle-aged chubby business man type, dressed in monk robes sat cross legged between them.

  The Stone Oval was alive, the hieroglyphics pulsed flickering lights dancing along its surface. In back of the Oval a golden statue of a stunning woman stood smiling. I knew this statue could only be Isis. Inside the middle of the Stone Oval clouds swirled.

  The women chanted. As we entered their hands were on the cement in front of them and they were bowed forward. Then all as one they straightened up raising their arms over their heads looking toward the ceiling. Their breasts jutted forward magnificently.

  “Good Lord!” Johnny said. “I think I’ve died and went to nipple heaven.”

  Paul Brady looked at us now.

  “Go through the portal quickly,” he shouted. “I have prepared the way for you to Elizabeth’s world.”

  “How the fuck did you know where we needed to go?” I yelled back at him.

  “Jeanette called and told me,” he answered. “We were setting up for tonight’s worship when I took the call.”

  Me and Johnny walked to the front of the Stone Oval. The swirling clouds within it made my stomach churn and my head dizzy.

  I looked down the line of chanting women stretching their bodies upward, then lowering their arms to the floor.

  Johnny was staring at them. He was drooling like a dog eyeing a raw steak.

  “How about we invite a few of these sweeties along for the ride?” I said. “We can make this into a real pleasure trip.”

  Paul Brady answered us, “These are vestal virgins. They are sworn to never be touched by the hands of man.”

  “Dam, what a fucking waste,” I told Johnny.

  “Go through now, while the doorway is strong!” Brady shouted.

  The both of us looked at each other and simultaneously said, “Fuck it!”

  Then we ran up the three
steps and dove into the vortex.

  The moment we flew through the threshold from this world into that somewhere-else between worlds we burst into flame. This traveling from one world, one time, and one universe to another was something that I would never get used to.

  All around us was the endless tracts of boundless outer space. Stars twinkled, comets flew past, galaxies collided and we tumbled burning balls of fire from one doorway to another.

  I felt my clothes, my skin, burning, melting, and changing from one existence to another.

  In the distance in front of us growing larger we saw a strange shimmering blue platter. It grew larger as we flew closer.

  I looked at Johnny and saw him doing as I did, tumbling and burning. If I didn’t know better I would have thought the two of us were experiencing flaming death.

  Then the shimmering blue platter grew to the size of a doorway and with a splashing sound that made my ears pop we crashed through to the other side.

  A few times before I had flown out of the portal and nearly broke my neck landing on my face in the dirt. This time I prepared by wrapping my arms around my head and drawing my knees up into my chest.

  We crashed through and I sucked in a lungful of ... something and choked.

  Instantly Johnny smacked into me from behind. He bumped into me and bounced away.

  I couldn’t breath.

  Spots danced in front of my eyes. I floated in shimmering blue not knowing what the hell was going on. Cold surrounded every inch of my body all at once.

  This was out of the frying pan and into the ice.

  The spots dancing in front of my eyes were growing dimmer. Everything around me was going black.

  A hand grabbed my hair and jerked me up. My head broke the surface.

  The surface ... we were in water!

  I coughed and spit a lungful of water, acrid tasting salty water, right into Johnny’s face.

  “Son-of-a bitch!” he yelled. “That’s the last time I save your ass from drowning.”

  I heaved in some air and coughed a few more times and treaded water.