have been mistaken for shooting stars departed from the Yard, rising up into the night sky like meteors in reverse. It meant the Tzitzimime had moved on in confusion, and that she had a moment or two before they’d come around to thinking she might have been their prey after all. But a moment was all she needed in order to drop out of sight.
Lia scooped her tomcat up and tucked him inside her coat. She hurried over to the wide concrete tube that seemed to be planted in the earth, swung her legs over the lip, and climbed down a steel ladder bolted to the inside of it.
Some feet below ground level was a hatch. Lia turned a big spoked wheel to unseal it, then pulled it open and climbed on down, letting the hatch door slam shut after her with an ear-hammering metallic clang. She spun a second wheel, a less-corroded twin to the exterior one, in the opposite direction now that she was inside and underground. There was a bolt that locked the hatch in place and Lia threw it, battening herself in for the remainder of the night.
Lights buzzed and flickered to life when she hit a wall switch before climbing down the ladder’s last few rungs and into her home of the last ten years. She thought of it as Bag End, her hobbit hole, buried deep in the sheltering earth. Old signage on the unpainted walls indicated that the big concrete bunker had originally been intended for use as a bomb shelter.
Lia opened her peacoat, letting her tomcat out. She dumped the coat over the back of a chair and kicked off her Chuck Taylors as she picked her way over to the dark corner of the room that housed her bed.
The furnishings she twisted past were all cleverly repurposed objects. There was a dented surgical crash cart for a dresser, while a pharmacist’s cabinet with cracked, chickenwire-embedded glass doors served as an overcrowded bookcase. Her table was a carved mahogany door she’d topped with a salvaged slab of green-edged glass. There were pictures, toys, and bits of statuary all over the place. Many things that looked alive, as Lia was an animist by inclination and therefore always felt a need to make objects with personality feel welcome when they showed up, wanting to spend a part of their long, strange lives with her. As a result her place felt funky, weird and witchy, although it was undeniably cozy, too.
Lia stopped by her bed and took the tarnished, Navy-crested Zippo from her pocket. She considered it for a long moment before setting it on a wooden shelf stuffed with secondhand books, wondering who might’ve owned it before her and how they’d come to leave it outside an office belonging to the Aztec God of the Dead.
She didn’t imagine the antique’s previous steward was apt to come looking for it, in any case.
Lia flopped down onto her futon, fully clothed, on top of the covers. Tom curled up next to her and purred loudly. Within minutes they were both asleep.
Ignored and unnoticed, the dead man’s lighter warmed up by gradual degrees, until its case smoldered in an ominous shade of orange. Slight curls of smoke rose from the shelf it sat on.
Now that its dormant magic had been kindled by a witch’s touch, the heated anchor on its side pulsed like the slow and steady beat of a living heart-
Retrospective No.1 ~ 1950
Dexter Graves lit a cigarette, snapped his lighter shut, then tipped the brim of his fedora back so he could look all the way up the tall front of an old, brick office building located on the southern edge of Hollywood. A few of the local oldtimers still called it the Silent Tower, though Graves had never learned why. The sky was clear and blue above it, and the structure itself was as silent as a tomb, lacking identifying signage of any kind. It was in obvious use and good repair, however, despite its half-century of wear and weathering. Most of its neighbors were newer by decades, and in truth next to nobody remembered its name anymore. Graves had done a fair bit of digging before turning it up himself. At thirteen stories high, the Tower must’ve been one of the first tall buildings erected in this area, back in its day, but the public records regarding it were as sketchy on that score as they were on any number of others.
As soon as the little-used street in front of it was entirely clear of both pedestrian and motor traffic, Graves ambled across with perfect nonchalance, making a low-key beeline for the building’s front door. He drew a leather wallet that bristled with lockpicking rakes from his trenchcoat’s inside pocket, meaning to admit himself to the so- called Silent Tower on his own recognizance. He was aces at getting in where he hadn’t been invited. But then the only tension bar in his entire goddamn pick set broke off as soon as he leveraged it against the lock’s sturdy tumblers, and that was it for the subtle approach. Graves snarled a curse, glanced around, then just kicked the door right the hell in.
He dove for the deck when a startled thug stationed in the front hall reflexively unloaded a shotgun in his direction, and a burst of jamb shrapnel filled the air.
The wild blast tore the fedora from Graves’ head, but he managed to tackle the gunman around the knees (aided greatly by gravity and luck), and took him down to the polished parquet floor. The scattergun discharged a second time, causing jagged chunks of ceiling plaster to rain down on the guard’s undefended head. He was knocked senseless.
Graves stood up and dusted off his coat, taking his good luck in stride. He claimed his adversary’s plaster- dusty hat to replace his own, shook it off, and put it on his head. Then he picked up the man’s shotgun, cocked it, and pushed forward before nerves could get the better of him. He knew full well that he wouldn’t get another chance at this. Not now. But he had reason to believe that a lady of his acquaintance was being held here against her will, and that was the sort of thing Dex Graves wouldn’t let slide.
He heard footfalls and ducked behind a potted palm situated outside a fancy set of double-doors at the end of the hall. A bare instant later three new thugs in big-shouldered suits burst through them at a full run, but failed to see him.
Graves was grinning when he darted through the swinging doors, wholly unnoticed by the trio of Johnny- come-latelys-only to run smack into a man he recognized as Juan San Martin, Miguel ‘Mickey Hardface’ Caradura’s chief enforcer. Big Juan, as they called him, was an ugly mountain of muscle overlaid with flab and wrapped in dark blue pinstripes. They’d never met before, but Graves knew better than to mount an assault on somebody else’s turf without doing his homework.
Big Juan grabbed hold of Graves’ shotgun before he could bring it into play. With his other hand he hoisted Graves up by his shirtfront and hurled him back through the double doors, separating him from the weapon. Big Juan raised the gun as Graves tumbled ass over tits back down the hallway he’d just escaped. The doors banged off the walls and bounced shut again, catching Big Juan’s shotgun barrel between them. The noise made the troop of lackeys who were almost out the front entrance realize they’d missed their quarry, and they came running back in Graves’ direction at full tilt.
Graves hurled himself against the double-doors, down near floor level, pinning Big Juan’s gunbarrel between them. He clamped his hands over his ears (as well as over the brim of his fedora) a split-second before Juan let off a deafening, double-barreled blast, scant inches above his head.
Big Juan’s blind shotgun barrage splattered the fastest of the three returning goons right out of commission. Graves winced and the other two men dove aside, out of the line of fire.
He reached up, grabbed hold of the trapped gunbarrel with both hands, and yanked on it viciously, with all the force he could apply. He felt an unbalanced Big Juan topple face-first into the closed doors, and heard him bellow when his nose made solid, crunching contact with the heavy planes of polished wood.
In the instant after he felt the impact and heard Juan’s resultant shout, Graves was able to rip the shotgun right out of the big man’s hands with a second, well-timed pull. San Martin grunted, stumbling to his knees as the doors swung open before him.
Graves kicked one of them hard, whacking Big Juan square in the face with it for a second time. The human mound fell backwards into the foyer as Graves whirled, cocking the shotgun he’d recaptured from his oversized adversary, and fired twice after the two henchmen who were caught in the front hallway.
The swinging doors fell shut.
An instant later they banged open again and Graves strode into the foyer. Big Juan looked up as Graves loomed over him and trained the shotgun’s long barrel right down between his eyes.
