King Maker

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Green was on it. There was no getting inside Green's mind. His was the primal thoughts of nature unbound. Elemental. A force of nature. The ways of a dragon were easier to understand. Most people assumed him to be a soldier, a corner boy, a thug in clean vines. Those things they understood. Those things – however violent, however toxic, however shallow and dehumanizing – wouldn't leave them screaming in the night. Green was Green. And Green was eternal. So when the bug-ridden girl – with too-thin arms but whose body wasn't too far removed from the voluptuous beauty she'd once been – ambled towards him, he was unmoved. To the casual observer, it might have seemed that pussy was pussy, easy to get, and thus none especially swayed Green. She could display her wares in the sauntering suggestion of seduction in order to mooch a vial, but it would do her no good. On a good day, he would ignore her with a glare of casual disdain which would freeze the blood in her veins. On a bad day, well, the streets ran rampant with tales of Green on a bad day. He was on it. If ambitious fiends tried to run game on him, if daring street thieves raided his stashes, or simply if fools just came up short, miscounting money or just losing shit cause they were careless, Green was on them. Eyes on point, never faltering.

There was a time when he enjoyed this time of the morning. The world was still fairly dark, but with the hint of sunrise, the day was still full of promise and imminent hope. Dew, an equal-opportunity shroud, blanketed windshields and grass. His blood afire against the cool of the fading night, he used to be at his most creative, his most alive. Now the mornings drained him. So much work left undone and yet to be done. Those fleeing the dawn's light still left a mess in their wake, and the day served only to remind him that night would once again return.

"Fellas, time to tool up," Green said to the latest bunch of workers he supervised. His was an ancient and dark voice, the sound of twigs snapping like brittle bones. Somehow he'd been relegated to middle management, too far separated from the pulse of the streets, too far from the thrill and experience of life; but he had found ways to make up for it. Supervising from street level, for one thing.

"What's up?" a young, rock-faced soldier asked because he was ready to call it a night.

"Just some business I have to settle. Make sure we have no other surprises."

• • •

The gray sky lightened with the rising sun. The street lights hadn't turned off, obstinately clinging to the embers of night. The Durham Brothers pulled into a side street on the other side of the bridge that crossed the creek that separated Breton Court from the rest of housing addition. Their long and ample limbs jutted ridiculously from the Ford Focus which creaked noisily when they exited. Pressing smooth their outfits, one last primp before their engagement, they shambled along the sidewalk, then veered off as they got to the bridge, careful to remain out of the direct line of sight from Green. They cut through the yard of the house they parked in front of, whose backyard opened onto a sloping hillside that terminated at the creek. The bridge wasn't the largest by any stretch, little more than a culvert, but it would suffice.

"He out there," Marshall said.

"I didn't see anyone, but, yeah, I can feel him." Michaela closed her eyes, double-checking the odd stirring in the core of her being.

"You think he can feel us?"

"He Green, ain't he?"

"Yeah, but we're in our-" Marshall started.

"Place of power. True." The bridge became an echo chamber whenever a car rumbled along it. The murky creek water lapped at the edges of the embankment, riffles of current thinned by the lack of rain. Overgrown with weeds, overturned grocery carts divided the channel. The yellow and brown of fallen leaves blanketed much of the embankment, blown under and trapped by the mild breeze. Michaela shuddered with her own chill. "But Green's outside. It's all his place of power."

"Be a good time to hit him. Late fall. Winter's only technically a few days away. Close enough."

"Not much of a plan."

"We hit. Hard. A lot. What more do we need?" Marshall blew out a snot rocket then wiped his porcine nose with the back of his hand.

"You're right. Ain't no plan at all."

The siblings did a fist bump.

"Let's do this."

Octavia Burke drove because she never trusted Lee's judgment behind the wheel and idly turned onto Georgetown Road from 86th Street. They had opted to grab a bite at the Thai House and then head back to Breton Court to do some follow-up interviews. Georgetown Road was one of those confusing streets. Remaining Georgetown Road until it crossed Lafayette Road, "Georgetown Road" picked up again a street light south on Lafayette Road and the winding street they continued to travel on became Pike Plaza from the corner strip mall for the few blocks until the street wound past a Meijer at which point it became Moller Road. Moller Road and High School Road were the east and west boundaries, respectively, of Breton Drive, the side street leading to the world within the isolated world of Breton Court.

"I don't have to explain myself to you." Lee slouched in his seat, a vacant stare etching the glass of the window. The defensiveness of his voice bit at his ears, though it was too late to do anything about it.

"I guess it's OK to date hookers then."

"She's no hooker." Again his voice betrayed him, raised in too vehement a protest. Part of him wondered about her practiced ease of seduction, not wanting to confront the notion of what a beautiful woman like her might see in someone like him.

"So she says."

"So her sheet says. I don't pay for poon, pardon my fuckin' French."

"She's not a pro, but you ran her anyway. Nice." Octavia shifted in her seat turning as much of her back to him as possible. Some days, she didn't want to even look at him. "Play semantics all you want, just cause demanding a freebie ain't technically paying for it."

"Even if she was a pro, and she ain't, getting a little on the side – as long as no money changes hands – ain't a crime."

"It is if you let her walk rather than bring her in." Octavia fixed her eyes on the road, not deigning to chance even a glance in his direction. Once folks started getting on her nerves, she found it easier to block them out as if they weren't there.

"It's not like that."

"What's it like then?"

"It's like… none of your business." Lee, with his trailer-park features and sensibilities, wasn't going to admit that women who looked like Omarosa rarely took a second glance at guys who looked like him. Especially black women. And he was tired of the black women he encountered taking one whiff of him and deciding not only that they knew him, but that they were better than him.

His silence told Octavia everything she needed to know.

A call came across the radio about a fight occurring by the Breton Court bridge. Lee sighed. Civvies rarely understood the dangers of a fight, though, in light of the recent shooting, maybe they might comprehend them a little better. When folks closed in on you, it wasn't as if you could just draw your gun and back them down. In the heat of a melee, with hands and fists everywhere, folks kicking and punching with no skill or thought, your gun was only yours as long as you held it. Then the call came in about shots fired as they screeched to a halt at the intersection just prior to the bridge. The intervening silence brought its own ghosts.

For years, Octavia had been haunted by a recurring dream. She would be chasing a perp, his face always a blur, never quite coming into focus. Suddenly, he'd turn to face her and draw his weapon. She fired her gun first but the bullets never hit him. They'd be on target, center mass, but the bullets would stop a foot short and clatter against the ground.

Lee's ghosts were memories that brought to mind the old hates. He remembered his first day out with his field training officer, Maeda Graham, a bear of a man, even then. Everything was so new to Lee, hearing the sounds of the street and the language he'd never heard, from the cops' insider jargon to the hard language of the streets (even the streets he grew up on took on a new, harsh aspect). All of it was confusing as hell, like seeing life for the first time.

It was also how he learned to hate the animals over at the Phoenix. He and Maeda caught a call of shots fired over there. They arrived in the middle of a shootout, so they decided to wait for back-up. Fresh out of the Academy, all Lee could think about was protecting the civilians. As he and Maeda crouched behind their vehicle, garbage started raining down on them. On them. They who were trying to quell the violence perpetrated against the citizens, their community, their children. The guardians got garbage dumped on them. Amidst the chaos, the warring gangs declared a temporary armistice, and turned their guns jointly a-blazing at Maeda and him. Maeda, determined to go after anyone who dared fire on "true po-lice", yelled where to meet him – the intersection of two streets Lee had never heard of – then took off. Being a rookie, he had no idea where to go or if to go, since that meant abandoning his partner. So he squatted low, kept his head down and prayed, holding his gun with both hands praying his shaking alone squeezed off a few rounds. He'd never been so scared in his life.

Until he saw the figure covered in blood lumbering toward him and Octavia, a bloodied rock in one hand and a severed head in the other.

• • •

The three of them stood there underneath the bridge, all hard and eye-fucking each other like a gunfight scene from an old spaghetti western. Except that this wasn't every man for himself. Nor was this like any other bridge. The creek that the bridge spanned was a natural ley line, augmenting the bridge as a place of power for the trolls. Also for Green. The Durham Brothers were essentially one person. His protestations aside, Marshall was a follower; no shame on it since that was the way he was wired. In his size 17 combat boots and Army camo pants, topped by a black T-shirt with a heavy metal band no one had heard of (but the picture was cool, he thought), he needed someone's lead to connect with. His hands balled and relaxed, balled and relaxed, flexing into meaty clubs waiting for the go moment. He turned to Michaela.

"What you going to do?" Michaela asked.

"Probably get my ass kicked," Green said, "but I'll go down like a man. And there ain't no shame in a man being taken down by another man. That shit happens. There's always someone stronger."

Michaela's brown gypsy skirt flared in the slight breeze. It had a way of making her figure more squat than it should. Standing next to Marshall, she seemed like a man in poor drag with her bunchedup nose and porcine eyes. An old myth ran through her head: the Incarnation of Spring, must be slain in winter.

Michaela and Green's eyes met. His laconic glare was nothing but white death, snow-blind eyes staring into a blizzard. Michaela's eyes betrayed fear. Only a hint, not enough for her brother to see. Spit flew from her mouth.

It was go time.

Michaela charged Green, throwing a wide punch. He sidestepped the punch but hooked her underneath her shoulder and dropped her to the ground by back-sweeping her legs. He turned when his mind registered the approaching shadow only to have the full weight of Marshall's punch slam into his jaw, bowling him over.

Marshall dipped his head down and rammed Green in a tackle that pinned him against the concrete wall of the bridge. Marshall held Green up with one arm and punched with the other. Green clawed at the arm.

"Marshall!" Michaela yelled.

From her vantage point she could see what Marshall couldn't: with every slam into the embankment, Green's skin splintered through his clothes, leaves and branches jutting then retreating like an overstuffed garbage bag full of raked fall leaves – his skin knitting itself back under the illusion of flesh. Green turned to her, his eyes aglow with emerald fire, aiming one free hand at Marshall. In an instant, the length of his arm shot through Marshall's mouth out the back of his head. A wayward stalk, a jutting branch which pulled back into the shape of Green's hand as it withdrew from Marshall's skull, still gore-covered, bits of gray matter stuck between his fingers.

Marshall stood there, a fist-sized hole in the back of his head, still holding Green to the wall as if what remained of his brain couldn't process why he was holding the man when, in fact, he should be dead. Green fell from his grasp as the body finally decided to collapse. Limping aside, a mixture of blood and sap poured from Green's wounds.

"No!" Michaela charged him, wild-eyed and unthinking. Green hinged forward, doubled over by the force of her fist in his gut. His eyes bulged out and breath left him. She stepped in and kicked him for all she was worth, stomping on his side like he was a fire in need of extinguishing. He caught her foot, pulled her off balance, and toppled her. He scrambled on top of her and drove his fist into her face. The crack sounded like a tree branch toppling. She elbowed him in his side, the force of which knocked him from her, and staggered to her feet.

The two circled each other. Green held his side. What appeared to be green flames, mystical energy, trailed from his eyes. His clothes a tattered mess, stained with blood and a viscous, clear fluid. Michaela spat out blood and a tooth. Snot ran down her face which she wiped with the back of her hand. Her eyes glazed with the resignation that perhaps it was not close enough to winter. Catching a glimpse of her fallen twin, she stood from her crouch, her legs a buckling mess.

They rushed each other one last time. Green's fingers raked across her face even as her meaty fists connected with his already-wounded side. His fingers dug deeper, finding purchase in her eye sockets and nostrils. His fingers extended into those cavities. Michaela's left eye burst, a mix of bone and blood, the eye dangling free from its socket. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as he kept pulling. He drove the talon-like nails into her face and pulled. Her skull cracked, a slow splitting egg, her expression a frozen rictus of – if not terror – with a sense of understanding eternity. Her head exploded in a rain of brain matter and blood.

Green staggered forward, his fingers slowly withdrawing into the approximation of a human shape. Michaela's body collapsed onto her knees and held that position, a headless supplicant in prayer before tumbling over. Slowly, he climbed the hill leading up to Breton Court. The shouts of his boys were a mishmash of sounds. He saw them running toward him, slowing as he came into their eyesight. His alien – the word their minds would scramble to elucidate was ancient, but to them he would simply be alien – elemental form, the disfigured form they knew as Green, horrified them. They raised their guns toward him. The weapons reports echoed, the flight of bullets whirred past him.

"Get down," one yelled.

Green was about to turn when a slug burned into his back. More emerald flames erupted from the wounds. His skin was like aged parchment sewn together by rough cords which now threatened to tear loose in sheets. He needed time to fully heal. Time that Junie – in his harried amble and eyes a mix of terror and frenzy – was not about to give him.

Anger consumed Junie. To compare his anger to cancer did a disservice to the disease. His anger filled his every waking moment, defined his very core, and seeped into every pore of his body. He wore his anger like a life-preserver, clinging to it because not only was it all he knew, but he was desperately afraid to let it go. It was so much a part of him, he didn't know how to function without it. So Junie had no choice. He had to do what men did. Parker was gone, but he didn't know what to do with the anger. He didn't know who to blame. He couldn't blame God because God had long turned his back on the shit stain he called a life. He couldn't blame Parker because sometimes you got got. They all knew how the game would end for them. He couldn't blame himself for contenting, no, consigning both he and Parker to a life without vision or purpose. But he knew in the shriveled remains of the thing he called a heart that this whole mess had to be someone's fault. He wasn't a particularly contemplative man. He felt. He acted. Had he been of the more reflective type, he would have realized that he raged at the futility of his world. A world he accepted and was complicit with. Anger and blame was all he knew and it twisted him up inside. Burning up all that was good and decent in him until there was nothing left but the rage. A rage occasionally assuaged by drugs.

But Parker was still dead. That boy had potential. Potential Junie knew he didn't know how to encourage. All he knew was this life. He didn't know from books or college or a straight life. He didn't have the tools to get him out. He thought by teaching him the game, by being there, he could protect him. Be like a father to him. He failed at both. Damn it all. Men like Junie didn't love. Love fucked with him or he'd fuck it up. Either way, he didn't truck with no love. He did know about respect. And consequences. Rage was the all-consuming consequence. Once men like him figured out this was all there was to their lives, this was all they'd ever be, a calm would overtake them. An existential peace that came with figuring out something most folks hadn't. And was freeing. Junie was ready to die, a samurai ready to fall in honor to his master. For Junie, the master of his life was the game. His hoodie drawn up, a burial shroud, and the gun heavier than usual in his hand. He recalled the first lesson Baylon taught him: "Don't be caught half-stepping with your gun on safety."

Green stumbled up the embankment, each step a struggle. His clothes ripped to tatters, the man appeared to have been used as a retrieval stick for a rabid dog. He lumbered toward Junie, eyes unfocused, as if unaware of Junie's presence. That was how it had been for Junie his entire life. Even when he was present in the classroom, in the meetings, he wasn't there. No one saw him. No one took him seriously.

He squeezed the trigger and didn't quit pulling it.

• • •

Green was officially pissed off.

Green grabbed a stone from the broken concrete of the bridge and charged toward Junie. His muscles flexed like a bound cord of twigs. His flesh threatened to be rent from him with each step. The eldritch fires seethed in spurts, he barely contained them now. The assault by the troll brothers took their toll on him, causing him to expend more power than he expected. Drawing on the green, the force of life, the elder magicks that held even his current form together, taxed him on many levels. He was tired. This age exhausted him. The effrontery of this mortal intruding on the soliloquy of his thoughts, however, elicited a more than commensurate response.

Junie fired wildly, the courage of the gun waning as his target didn't shrivel and cower but rather ran toward him. He all but dropped the gun to turn tail himself, but Green was upon him before he could move.

"Now we play the most ancient of games," Green said, his voice a fatigued whisper, the sound of dead leaves scurrying across cracked pavement. "Only one has ever bested me in it. You and the trolls have tried your best to behead me, but I still stand. Now, we see how well you do."

Green shoved Junie, face down against the sidewalk, pinning his head with his left hand as he straddled the man's body. Junie feared Green was about to rape him, to punk him out in front of his entire crew. Entreating words pleaded for Green to not do what he thought about doing, to leave him with some measure of dignity. Hot tears scalded Junie's cheeks, ashamed at himself for begging, much less being in this position again. The life had its costs and Junie had already paid dearly during his last bid in prison. Memories he thought he had dealt with, blocked out, and moved on from. Yet they haunted part of his soul and further stoked the flames of anger.

Green raised the rock above his head then brought the edge of it down on Junie's neck. The first blow nearly severed his head clean off, silencing Junie's merlings with a single wet thud. The next three were pure rage. Junie's blood splattered on Green. Heedless of the sanguine shower, Green went about his task with grim determination. His fury nearly spent, he roared with the righteous indignation of spring interrupted by a last blast of winter. The wails of sirens quickly drowned out his cry as Five-O screeched to a halt along either side of the bridge.

A dull roar filled Lee's ears. His mind couldn't quite digest the chaos going on around him, not fully process what he was seeing. Through the cacophony of white noise, he heard his partner yell at the man, if indeed he was a man. A disfigured creature, branches protruding from his face like a man who ran his car into a tree with such force he'd become one with it. Not much of his skin or clothes remained. Octavia ordered him to drop whatever it was he had in his hand and lace his fingers behind his head. All Lee could do without having to think about the sight in front of him was parrot his partner, repeating the command of "on your knees, get on your knees" like a mantra hoping its familiarity would somehow center him. The man, locked in his weary stride, carried himself with a laid-back yet incontrol aspect, an ambulatory bush attempting a pimp stroll. Under the mucous, the blood, and torn clothes, he had to be Green. What was wrong with his skin? Lee kept asking himself, his brain not leaping to believe what his eyes took in.

The rest of Green's boys scattered without command. The radio car pulling up from the west side of Breton Drive boxed them in. The nervous officers drew their weapons, the scene uncertain, radioing for more back-up. They shot panicked, disbelieving glares at one another before settling on focusing on the straggling – and equally confused – soldiers. The equation of portending violence amounted to four officers (and thus four guns) against two street soldiers and Green, in-between them.

Green stood tall.

One of his soldiers ducked behind the row of cars along the front parking lot. The other ran back and forth between the sheltering presence of Green and the presumed safety of being taken into police custody. His body, if not quite his conscious mind deciding between having Green's back by facing down the officers (he had skidded to a halt mid-jetting out as they slammed their brakes) and darting between the rowhouses in the better course of valor, or turning himself in to be hauled far away from the entire scene. Such decisions were better made without having a gun drawn.

As he doubled back toward the cars, the first soldier popped his head up, gun clearly visible through the car's windshield. Lee fired the first shot. Dropping his gun in reflex, the second soldier hit the ground, spread-eagled before the officers nearest him could fire. He held his hands up, deliberately and quite visibly away from the gun, but kept his head ducked. The former soldier opened fire, heedless to Green being in the way. One of Lee's rounds hit Green in the shoulder. Green staggered backward, wavered for a moment, then toppled over the bridge railing. A heavy splash soon followed.

Lee eyed the side of the bridge, preparing for Green to sneak up the embankment. The ambling mass never arrived. Distracted by the thought of being taken unawares – from all that he'd learned, Green never backed down from anything, no matter the odds against him – Lee stepped out from the shield of his car door. Due to more luck than skill, the shooter caught him in his leg. Collapsing in a hail of profanities, Lee's world had been reduced to pain. He didn't know from where, couldn't even tell which leg though his body knew, and he clutched the wound. He only knew pain.

Octavia darted out from behind her door, presenting herself as a more immediate threat. The soldier turned to draw a bead on her. Too nervous and untrained, his aim faltered. Hers did not. She hit him twice in the arm and shoulder. The gun fell from his hand.

"Lee, you all right?" she yelled in his direction but didn't take her eyes from the perp. She eased over to him and kicked the gun away. With a nod, she had the uniform officers secure him.

"I'm all right. You get him?"

"He's down. Don't you move, motherfucker." As one of the officers pulled the first soldier's arms behind him, locking him down in cuffs, she began stomping him in his side with a flurry of kicks. "What. The fuck. Were you thinking? Shooting at police?"

The flashing lights of the radio cars tinted their faces red. The blood on the pavement looked like spilt red Kool Aid. Plastic number placards dotted the scene like a game of connect the shell casings. Whispers coalesced into a dull susurrus of background chatter: "… could he have been set up?" "… came out blasting… " "… don't know what to think…" "… Glock 17…"

"Losing blood here," Lee whined. "I think I'm gonna pass out."

"How is he?" Octavia asked to the ambulance driver.

"I've seen worse paper cuts," the attending paramedic joked. The bullet had passed through the fleshy part of Lee's spindly leg, missing any vital arteries.

"Any sign of Green?" Lee asked, struggling to sit up in the gurney even as the paramedic tried to load him into their wagon.

"Nothing. He went over the side and then vanished," Octavia said.

"He looked bad. Not quite…" he wanted to say "human" but his mind still wouldn't let his thoughts go there.

"Like Death eating a soda cracker."

"What?"

"Something my grandmother used to say."

"We've got to go," the paramedic said.

"I'm B+, if anyone needs to know," Lee started up again. "Get me to Community North. Don't try and drop me off at Wishard. Wishard's for homeless people and welfare cheats."

"Get him out of here," Octavia said, her smile a matter of relief that her partner would be OK more than any actual affection for him. It would be a long day and she feared they hadn't seen the last of it.