in his employ.
“Anyway,” the Voice continued. “Don’t sweat the small stuff, Olivier, I will take care of that.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now … I have a very positive feeling about you, young man. If you keep your eyes open and survive the next few years, I think you and I shall become close. Yes, close indeed.”
That thought nearly stopped my heart. “Thank you, sir.” I don’t think I was capable of saying anything else at that point.
“Good. Good.”
“That’s that,” Julian muttered, lips pursed.
Redeemer, Liar … prophesies of restoring balance to the world? I slipped the pages back into the manila envelope, more confused than ever. What the heck had I gotten myself into?
I looked over to the other bed and saw that Jude was fast asleep, snoring softly. A flick of a switch and the bedside light went out. For what seemed like hours, I lay in the dark wondering what terrible things might await us at journey’s end.
Chapter Eight
Jude
After scrubbing away my morning breath with a toothbrush, I dressed in black jeans and a black Cabo Wabo t-shirt, along with black Converse sneakers. What can I say? I like black.
Speaking of which, when I exited the bathroom, Mike had on his black uniform, if you can call a priest’s outfit a uniform. Still, he looked pretty snazzy for a big guy with a handlebar moustache.
I didn’t bother to ask how much he’d read; he’d tell me when the time was right. The knowledge that would unfold for him, if it didn’t drive him nuts, would allow me to see how far the Church’s forgiveness extended.
Despite the Rio Grande only a few hundred yards away, the air was dry enough to suck the moisture right out of my skin, such a contrast to the turgid humidity of Omaha.
Maybe it was the contented lull that had slid eel-like through my brain, or the mental fatigue of being on the run, or even the lack of constant training, but five steps into the parking lot, my eyes fixed on the Corolla, I stepped into a puddle of water.
Where that puddle had come from, I don’t know, but there it was in the middle of the otherwise bone-dry asphalt parking lot, soaking into my sneaker while dread clamped cold hands into my guts. Unlike with the shower I had taken earlier, I hadn’t used Avoidance to mask myself from the element.
Water talks.
I shouted, “Mike! We gotta go! Now, man!” Without waiting for an answer, I ran to the Corolla and made ready, trusting Mike would sense the urgency. A few seconds later my trust was rewarded as he opened the rear door and tossed our duffels in the back seat.
“What’s going on?” he panted, snapping the seatbelt around his waist.
“It’s Water,” I grunted as the Corolla fired up. Tire marks followed us out of the lot as we sped away. “I told you that Water was looking for me; what I didn’t tell you was how motivated Water would be in its search.”
“Mind explaining?”
“When God created the world, He gave life to the elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, to help keep the world in harmony. Four original elements, the Four Old Ones, the Primals. Legend says they had no Language, only the feel for their kind. For millennia they were the caretakers of the natural world.”
“Four old elementals. I would hazard a guess that they are powerful.”
“Yeah, you could say that. Like the ocean is ‘pretty powerful.’ ”
“Then where did the other elementals come from?”
“All I have is conjecture, gleaned from various sources.” I turned onto the 10, racing north toward Sunland Park and Las Cruces. To our left, Juarez was revealed in all of its squalid and rotten glory, a gritty shame of a border town.
“Conjecture away,” Mike urged.
“Okay. It seems that when an elemental becomes large, or great in power, it … buds, or splits, shearing off a part of itself, a new elemental. Mitosis on a magical level.”
“So how did he find this Primal Water, if it so powerful?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
We passed quite a few miles of flat dry land in easy silence; then, just as we put a little town called Anthony in the rearview mirror, I felt a trembly sort of rumble from the front of the car.
“Damn,” I swore through gritted teeth.
Mike jolted out of his meditations. “What?”
“Left front tire is about to go,” I grumbled angrily as I braked and steered the car to the shoulder.
A quick inspection revealed a bubble in the sidewall of the tire, seconds away from blowing wide open. “Damn,” I swore again.
“Don’t worry, I have a spare,” Mike commented as he came around the car. “A rubber donut.”
A few minutes later saw us struggling with lug nuts rusted tight to the steel rim. Grunting and straining, we tugged on the lug wrench, shaking the little car back and forth.
Just as the third nut groaned loose, a voice hammered our ears, carried on the dry, dry breeze, “You gents look like you could use a little help.”
Mike and I stood staring at the stranger in the light of the morning sun. “Just changing a tire,” said Mike, extending a dirty hand.
The stranger was a big man with small piggy eyes, a red bulb of nose, an enormous belly that strained his green t-shirt and dirty jeans. A much-crumpled cowboy hat rested on his round head. “A priest, really?” He ignored the hand and began to laugh, round gut jiggling and jaggling.
“Yeah,” Mike replied, puzzled, and slowly lowered his hand.
Still laughing, the stranger raised a fist the size of a dinner plate and, faster than I thought a big guy like that could move, punched Mike in the stomach. The priest folded like a bad poker hand around that big fist. Still laughing, the stranger lifted Mike by the back of his shirt with one hand as if he weighed nothing and threw him clear over the car to disappear on the other side.
A Word burst from between my lips, bringing the acrid stench of burning insulation: Force. I had summoned a two-by-three foot pane of energy, which was hurled with a velocity in direct proportion to the volume used. I had shouted at the top of my lungs.
And nothing happened.
Oh, a pained look spasmed across the stranger’s face, but then he smiled, revealing teeth that were all canines. “Ouch.”
“Demon,” I spat, fists bunching.
The Hellspawn laughed again, human vocal cords ripping asunder beneath the vocal assault. “And they said you’re a smart one. Can’t see it, really.” It spat a gobbet of blood onto the asphalt, as its eyes began to glow a venomous red.
No time for pussyfooting around. Strength and Vigor brought the smell of ammonia and peanuts. For the next ten minutes I knew I could lift a Volvo over my head, run miles without a hitch and, like Tony the Tiger would say, feel
Pain, like red-hot razors slicing through my flesh, stunned me for a brief moment, giving the demon a chance to deliver a blow to the chest that flung me into the Corolla’s bumper hard enough to snap my spine. Shock, agony, an awful feeling as if my personal universe was collapsing in on itself condensed into a tiny, dense spot of spiritual
