Part 18

The silver scarf hangs loosely about her neck and I can barely make out the tip of a tattoo, maybe a snakes forked tongue, poking above the fabric. 

“You must be Dairy Mary,” she says, her voice nasally and her words clipped.  She follows this with a forced smile, revealing porcelain-like teeth.

“Yes, and you are?”  Mary responds, trying to maintain an air of confidence.

“You can call me Catherine, or Cat if you must.”  She turns and peers down her beak-like nose at me.  I stand my ground and glare back, resisting the urge to look away.  She blinks first and glance at Freak Beans, who refuses to make eye contact with her.  As she turns back to Mary, her scarf slips down, revealing that the tattoo is indeed a snake.  I blink and I swear the snake moved. 

“Well Catherine,”  Mary says, “What can I do for you?”

Again with the blinding smile.  “I just wanted to meet the object of my Cyrus’ affections.”

“Your Cyrus?”  I ask, and the snake does move, slithers up her neck until I can see it’s entire head.  As if I am watching a 3-D movie, the snake peels away from her neck.  I shudder as I watch the snake taste the air with it’s tongue.

“Yes, he’s my, partner of sorts.”  The snake climbs further out of her coat, coiling about her neck and left shoulder.

“You can’t go in there!”  I hear someone shout out in the hallway and a moment later, the Russian bursts into the room and shoves Catherine.

“Come on!”  He says and grabs my arm, pulling me out of the room.  Benny does not need to be told twice and falls in line behind us.  I watch over my shoulder for Mary, who appears a moment later.  We run deeper into the hospital and Rush jerks me into an unoccupied room, followed closely by Freak Beans and Mary. 

Giving the door a kick, it closes behind her.  “What was that all about?”  She asks, but the Russian cuts his eyes at her, pulling aside a time-stained curtain and revealing a ladder mounted against the wall leading up to the next floor.

“Up!”  He says and pushes me toward the ladder. 

I look over my shoulder at him and he motions with both of his hands for me to get moving.  I begin my ascent and he herds my other companions into the corner and drops the curtain back into place.  As I poke my head into the room above the ladder shakes and I look down to see Benny right behind me.  I turn my attention back to the room I was entering.  A layer of dust coats almost everything, save a path from the ladder to the closed door.  A rusting metal rack lay on it’s side on the floor near me.  I climb out of the hole and into the room, coughing as I kick up some of the dust.

“Shhh!” I hear from below.

“What happened back there?”  I hear Mary ask again.

“Go.  Up.”  Rush says.

“Not until you tell me what that was about.”

“Nyeht.”

I can imagine him shaking his head.  I scramble further into the room as Benny climbs off of the ladder.

“Bah!” I here the Russian say.  “I do not trust witch!”  All is quiet for a few seconds and he joins us.  I look down through the hole and my head almost collides with Mary’s as she ascends. 

“She’s a witch?”  Benny asks, standing up and dusting himself off as he walks toward the door.

Rush nods.  “Yes, and she’s his witch.”

“It’s locked,” Benny says, his hand still on the doorknob. 

The Russian tilts his head slightly and pulls out his Sigil Sphere.  “Are you Prince?”  He asks, then adds, “Back to the tunnels.”

I close my eyes, but can see the bright flash of light through my eyelids.  I open them and he is gone, leaving Benny, Mary and myself. 

“What was that all about?”  Mary asks again, ignoring the choice before her. 

I begin fishing my own sphere out of a pocket and I see that Benny is doing the same.  I hear Cat’s voice somewhere below us, “I just wanted to say ‘Hi.’  I was hoping we could be friends.”  She shouts. I hear a door open below us, but no further noise.

“Come on, we’ve got to go now,” I say, holding out my hand so Mary can take it.  Benny does the same.

“Ah, there you are,”  I hear the metal grating against metal as the curtain is pulled aside in the room
we had just exited. 

Mary grabs both of our hands and as we all disappear, I hope that Benny picked the same tunnels I had to transfer us to.  The last thing I see as we blink out is the head of the snake appear through the opening in the floor.

Part 17

I searched for three days with no signs of either Benny or Mary.  Well almost three days, I spent the rush hours at my usual corners, earning enough to get by.  Finally I hear word of Benny having been seen entering the old Saint Vincents Hospital and finish my afternoon on the corner, netting another twelve dollars, most of which I promptly spend on a toasted meatball sub, one of the few delicacies I allowed myself on the rare occasions when I am feeling confident. 

Wiping marinara sauce from the corner of my mouth, I catch a glimpse out the window of Cyrus pushing a shopping trolley down the street, a middle-aged red headed woman walking beside him.  She wore a red wool coat and a silver scarf and not once did she look in my direction.  I watch Cyrus’s mouth move, wishing I could read lips, and she laughs politely.  Quickly I gather what few possessions I have with me, mainly my gloves, a threadbare black fedora and my long brown coat, throw my trash away and dart outside.  I look in the direction they had gone and do not see them, run to the corner, but they are gone.

I duck into an alley and pull my Sigil Sphere from my pocket, rotating it until the image of a spot near the hospital appears within, and I am there, the two boxcars with my initials in them painted onto the side of an old tenement building in Hell’s Kitchen.  Two blocks later and I’ve pulled on my gloves, donned the hat, and am standing before the run down structure that once hosted the sick and now serves as a hotel of sorts to the poor and infamous.  I bypass the front door, eyeing it’s padlock and laughing to myself.  The side door is boarded over with fresh plywood, holes drilled to accommodate a small metal chain that served to hold them shut.  I knock on the wood, three sharp taps followed by a pause and then a fourth and then step back.  Both doors swing open like some giant walk-in freezer, the pins removed from the left hinges and the wood and chains holding everything together.  A man, dressed in a tattered brown suit and grey fingerless gloves smiles a gap-toothed smile at me and says “Come in.” 

I oblige, stepping past him and into the small room beyond.  I ask a woman seated at… I hesitate to actually call it a desk, but it was a few crates stacked atop each other, “Have you seen Freak Beans,” and she points me to a room, after I hand her two fairly clean one dollar bills.  As I walk down the hallway, I can clearly make out Mary’s voice.

“So, Charlie and the Russian have both told me that only seven Princes remain, what happened to the other five?”

I turn the corner just as Benny starts to answer.  His top hat is on the bed and his scalp is peeling in places, the few remaining black curls hanging on for dear life, pressed firm against his dark skin.

“Where have you been?”  I ask, trying to keep my voice calm, completely drowning out Benny’s response to Mary’s question.

“I needed to think.”  Mary answers, looking me directly in the eye for the first time that I can recall.

“About?”  I ask, but I know the answer.

“What Jenny told me.”

“And?”

“She’s right,”  She pauses and before I have a chance to prompt her, she continues.  “I do know what I need to do.”

She is smiling as I ask, “And what exactly, is that?” 

“I need to become one of the Underground Princes,”

Benny’s jaw hung open, and noises I hear outside of our small room seemed to grind to a halt.

“What?”  I ask incredulously.

“I need to find one of the missing Princes and take their Sphere…”

“I’m not sure it works that way,” Benny says as he picks up his hat and places it, slightly crooked, upon his head with both hands.  His Sigil Sphere is in his hands as she utters her next sentence.

“I could always kill one of you and take yours.”  Her serious facade breaks and she laughs.  At any other time, the sound would have been beautiful. 

I laugh nervously along with her.  I glance at Freak Beans, who is eyeing the glass orb in his hand.  “Wait,” I tell him and realize how thin the walls are as the noises in the hallway resume.  I lower my voice, “Benny, hold on.  I just saw Cyrus again.”

“What happened?”  He asks, setting the sphere in his lap.

I take a few steps further into the room, bringing myself within a few feet of him and whisper, prompting Mary to join us.  “He was with some woman, a red head in a red coat, ring any bells?”

Benny’s eyebrows furrow, and he removes the top hat, scratches his head, and replaces it.  “No, how long ago was this?”

“Twenty, thirty minutes ago, tops.”

“Do you think he’s found someone else to be his bride?”  Mary asks, the corners of her mouth turning up.

I shake my head, “That’s not the impression she gave me.”  I look at Mary and quickly add “But I did not talk to her or anything so I could be wrong,” when I saw her frown.  “They walked by where I was eating.”

“Wait, did she have a tattoo of a snake coiled about her shoulders and neck?”  Benny asks animatedly, using his hands to indicate the ink reptile’s position. 

I close my eyes, trying to picture the woman in reds neck but all I can see is her scarf blowing in a wind I was sure I was imagining.  “I… I don’t know.  Who is she?”

“Her name is Samantha and she’s been trying to take over our corner of the world for a while now.

“You almost done in there?”  Comes a female voice from the other side of the door, followed by a heavy knock.  “You only payed for six hours, and that was up fifteen minutes ago.”

I open the door and am stiff armed aside as the woman in the red coat and silver scarf pushes her way inside.

Part 16

I step through the doorway looking over my shoulder, back towards Old Jenny, and run into something.  I snap my head around and get a mouth full of Mary’s hair.  It all happens in that moment.  I blink, trying to dismiss Cyrus from my vision, but in that instant when my eyes are closed, Freak Beans and Dairy Mary disappear.  I open my eyes and Cyrus is still there, acne scars and all.

“Nice to see you again Charlie,”  Cyrus says. 

Tall, probably six foot two, I find myself looking at the bridge of his crooked nose.  I lift my gaze, meeting his steel blue eyes with my own.  I break first, taking a step away, my back coming up against the door.  He smiles, snorts, and takes a step to the right.  I take the opportunity to step away from the wall, turning as I do so and so does he, like some obscene dance.  “How can I be of assistance Cyrus?”  I ask him.

He runs a hand through his stringy, shoulder-length brown hair, “That woman,” He nods at where Mary had stood, “is she with you?”

I am acutely aware of the wind whistling from his nose with each exhale as a couple of answers run through my mind, starting with what woman.    I decide upon a more smart-ass approach though, not my brightest idea.  “Apparently, she’s with Freak Beans.”

His flesh stings my cheek, the crack of his hand slapping me echoing back from the grey concrete walls.

“Boys, if you are going to fight, take it to the Graveyard,”  Jenny shouts from within.

He motions for me, “After you,” he says with a sinister smile. 

I reach into my pocket, and he grabs my arm. 

“You’re not leaving yet, are you?  Things were just getting interesting.”

I pull away, pull my hand out with a cigarette .  He lights it before it has made it to my lips.  I watch as the smoke curls away from my mouth, wondering where the breeze is coming from. 

“You know what I want, do you not?”  He says, straightening his blue dress shirt.  Half the buttons are missing, exposing the greying undershirt beneath clinging to his thin frame. 

“A queen,” I reply, blowing a stream of smoke towards him and watching it float away on the unseen breeze.  “But why?”  I ask.

He snorts.  “Control, what else?” 

“But what about the curse?”

“Do you think some paltry curse scares me?  I am destined to be the king down here, as my ancestors were before me!”

“What?”  I say, coughing on the smoke I had just inhaled.  I toss the cigarette aside, listen to the sizzle as the glowing tip lands in the small rivulet of filthy water that runs down the center of the tunnel. 

“Where do you think the Spheres came from?  My great grandfather used to be the King, but that was too much for some people and that witch-“

“I can hear you you fool.  Both of you get in here,” Jenny yelled. 

I immediately do so, turning my back to Cyrus, pulling the screen door open and entering Jenny’s again, letting go of the door behind me, not paying attention of Cyrus’ location.  I smile as he curses when the door swings shut on him. 

I seat myself in the same chair I had occupied a few minutes prior and look at the old woman, who appears to have not moved, despite a cup of steaming brown liquid in front of her.

“First Cyrus, lets make sure you are not omitting anything.  Your great grandfather Samual was a tyrant, demanding taxes from those who had none to give, roughing them up when they failed to pay.”  Jenny begins her own tale and I lean back, trying to ignore the whistling coming from two chairs over, where Cyrus sits.

“Yes, but-“ Cyrus starts, but Jenny holds up a hand and stops him.

“You started this on my front lawn and now you are going to let me finish it!”  She lifts the cup, a beige ceramic mug with at least two large chips missing from the rim, takes a sip and smiles as the steam hits her face.  “Your great grandfather, and his whole brood for that matter, were nothing but a bunch of bullies that held sway over this domain through fist and blade.  And then they met their match.  Twelve men rose up from beneath the tattered clothes they wore, broke the chains that held them as nothing more than servants to Samual, and those twelve men took back their freedom with fists and blades of their own.  And as they stood over the expired form of their oppressor, they vowed that a time such as that would never come again.  It was then that one of the twelve, a man everyone only knew as Father, produced the Sigil Spheres from a burlap sack upon his back.  He gave one to each of his companions, keeping the final one for himself.  He told them of the powers they held in their hands, and also told them of the curse, that if one of the twelve should ever rise up and take a newly fallen queen, the powers would be extinguished, and that darkness would fall over the land, as another time such as the reign of the tyrant Samual would be upon them.”

I looked from the calm face of Old Jenny to Cyrus’, who was trying to hide a smirk.

“And you believe all of that, do you?”  Cyrus asked.

The old woman cackles, “You began to say it yourself out there.  ‘That witch…’  That Witch what?  That witch conspired with the Father to take Samual down?  That Witch provided the very blade that caused the mortal wound to your great grandfather?  Or how about That Witch made the very orbs you cling to, the very power which you try to manipulate day in and day out so that you can regain the throne your ancestor once held.  I can see through you, Cyrus Adair!  And I will oppose your very existence if I have to!”

I look back at Old Jenny, trying to process what she has just said, and am blinded as Cyrus uses his own Sigil Sphere to disappear.

“It is no matter, Mary knows what she must do now,”  Old Jenny smiles her gap-toothed smile and I am left to wonder what that is.