Age of Blood

29

Walker left the room, but instead of continuing upstairs for a reunion with Jen, he turned left and found a private corner. His proximity to YaYa had brought back a flood of memories he’d rather have cut from his brain with a steak knife.

Little Jackie Walker waiting in the pile of trash. The liquid from banana skins, coffee grounds, and rain-soaked rags seeping through his clothes, making him shiver. His teeth chattering. He feels what could be gravel or hardened chunks of dog shit against the soft skin of his bare chest. A piece of rubber he’d seen thrown away by the Hookers on Llollo Street in Barrio Barretto rests like a deflated sausage two inches from his nose. A wasp crawls inside, causing the rubber to wriggle and jump. He feels rats scurrying along the backs of his legs. When they sniff at his skin, he fights the urge to jerk as their whiskers tickle the soft underskin of his knees.

Feral.

Like a pig.

Like a dog.

He is wild and eager to gnaw on something that screams.

Walker had been possessed for a time and it had almost killed him. Now, the blood-memory of the event was used as a supernatural early-warning radar, and as he’d sat near YaYa it had gone off like NORAD during a Russian multiple-nuclear-launch drill. He’d tried to define the strange energy coming from the SEAL. Walker had been unable to put it into context while he’d been close to YaYa, but now that he was away, he was able to define it. Malice. Pure. Concentrated. Malice. And for a young man whose joie de vivre was contagious, malice was the last thing Walker would have expected coming from him.

But Walker had to be sure before he went to Laws and Holmes. He didn’t want to be wrong about this, so he tracked down Yank, who was trying to talk to one of the Knights about food.

“Do you speaky Englisho?” he was saying as Walker jerked him away.

“Follow me,” Walker said, without further comment. Hoover fell in beside the two SEALs as they went up the stairs. He saw Jen through a doorway, working, but didn’t go inside. She wore jeans and a simple white blouse, and had her red hair pulled into a loose bun. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to hold her. But that would have to wait.

He checked the rooms on the right side until he found YaYa sitting on a bed, glaring at the floor with barely contained… malice.

Walker and Hoover went into the room first. “Come in and close the door,” he said to Yank.

Hoover’s ears were laid back. Her tail was between her legs. The hackles along her spine were at attention and her legs were bent, not to leap, but to cower. And if there was one thing Hoover had never done, it was cower.

When the door was closed, Yank joined Walker at the foot of YaYa’s bed. The room was little more than a monastic cell. A cross hung on one wall beside a single window. The small twin bed pressed against the other. Beside it was a small table with a bible and several unopened bottles of spring water.

“What’s going on?” Yank asked.

“Ask YaYa.” Walker felt the buzz like an undercurrent of electricity. It set him on edge. He brought his upper and lower jaw shut to keep his teeth from chattering.

It was clear that Yank couldn’t feel what both the dog and Walker had zinging through their senses. “What’s going on, YaYa?” Walker asked.

YaYa had been looking at the floor this entire time. He turned his head slowly and appraised the two SEALs with glowing eyes. He pulled his mouth into an impossible grin, the edges of his lips almost touching his ears. But instead of speaking, he chattered like an insect.

The sound sent shivers up Walker’s spine, shivers that were so painful, he wanted to cry out. But he couldn’t. Other than YaYa himself, Walker was the only one who knew what was going on and he had to keep his head about him.

Yank’s jaw had dropped about as far as humanly possible. “The fuck is going on?”

Walker pulled his headset from where it hung at his waist, and spoke low and quick. “Break. Break. Ghost One and Two, this is Ghost Four. Come to my location now. Bring flexicuffs.”

A second passed, then, “Four, this is One. What’s your location?”

“YaYa’s room. Second floor. Left of stairs. Sixth door on left.”

YaYa had returned to normal. “What are you doing?” he asked with unnatural calm.

“Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine,” Walker said. “Be ready, Yank.”

“For what?”

No sooner had Yank asked the question than YaYa launched himself not at them, but toward the window. Glass crashed as his arm bashed through. Yank dove and caught YaYa’s feet with no time to spare and jerked him back inside. YaYa ended up on the floor, his right arm gushing blood, but that didn’t stop him from fighting. He lashed out with a leg and caught Yank downtown central. Yank fell to one knee, which brought his face closer to YaYa. Walker never remembered Jabouri being anything other than average in combatives, but the speed and energy delivered from his fists to Yank’s head were incredible.

Feet pounded in the hall and the door swung open.

Holmes and Laws braced in the doorway.

“Possessed!” Walker cried. He grabbed Yank and hauled him backward as Holmes and Laws descended on YaYa. One grabbed his legs, the other his arms. The bed hit the wall and the nightstand overturned. Blood flew everywhere as YaYa barked and hissed, trying to shake loose as his teammates hogtied his ankles and wrists. He wouldn’t give up. His limbs rattled on the wooden, impossible drum rolls of leavemethefuckalone.

“He’s going to break his back!” Laws cried. He turned YaYa onto his stomach and cinched the ankle and wrist cuffs together. Trussed as he was, YaYa’s hysterics were reduced, but his convulsions threatened to dislocate every joint in his body.

Three Knights appeared at the door, Vega in the forefront. “What have you brought into our house?” he commanded.

“We need a priest,” Holmes shouted at him.

“I am a priest.”

Holmes paused only briefly. “Of course you are. Get the fuck in here and do something about this.”

“Not here. Not now.” Vega gestured for one of his men to enter.

A slender guy with a plastic box in his hand stepped into the room. He slid to his knees and opened the box. He pulled free a syringe and plunged it into YaYa’s stomach like a pro. The effect wasn’t immediate, but about five seconds later YaYa’s limbs slowed and his howling dropped to a mere whimper. After half a minute, YaYa was as still as the dead.

“What’d you do to him?” Holmes asked, sitting up and rubbing his jaw from where he’d been hit at least once.

“Put him out. Can’t work with them this way. I never understand it either. They know they’re going to be found out, so why fight it?” The slender guy stood and left the room.

Vega pointed toward YaYa’s still form. “Have your men take him and follow Rodrigo. We have a special cell for him. A place where he won’t get hurt until we have time for an exorcism.”

“You’re not taking him anywhere without my permission.” Holmes stood, putting himself between YaYa and the door.

Vega gave as good as he got. “Then you’re going to give me that permission. You brought this evil into my house. I cannot with any good intention let it go upon the free world. Now that he’s here, we’re going to try to get him out of his current state. SEALs or no SEALs, you must not try and stop us.”

Holmes’s face was implacable when he said, “Fine. Laws, make sure he’s in a good place. We have to go out on mission, but once we’re done, it’s back here to see if we can save YaYa.”

Walker and Laws grabbed YaYa and lifted him by his arms and legs. As they passed by, Holmes placed a hand on YaYa’s head. “You fight that thing inside you, YaYa. Fight it like you’ve fought nothing else in your life.”