anyway, even after I heard the panting and grunting.
The noises came from one of the scaly little finheads. Except that he almost wasn’t scaly anymore. He had too many scars crisscrossing his body, and the crest leaned to the side and had holes in it, like Swiss cheese. He was grunting and gasping as he strained to break the nylon zip restraints that held his hands behind his back and his ankles together. When he spotted A’marie and me in the doorway, he tried to scream instead, but the leather gag muffled the sound.
He lay on the floor on the floor of a storage room with empty shelves, give or take a few old cans of peaches and fruit cocktail. A finhead female and two finhead boys stood around him. His family, I suspected. They were scarred up, too, though not as much. The female had a broken nose and was missing the top of her left ear. The smaller kid had lost the tips of two fingers, and had an oval made of tooth marks on his forearm.
“Thank you,” A’marie said. “I know how hard it is to move him. And that you ran a risk sneaking him in.”
The finhead woman shrugged. “You said it would help.” She scowled at me. “Is it?”
“Is this your husband?” I asked. “What happened to him?” Although I had a hunch I already knew.
Sure enough, she said, “Lord Timon.” She clenched her fist and slashed it back and forth. I’d never seen that particular gesture before, but I was pretty sure it meant she wanted the boss to burn in Hell.
“Why?” I asked.
“My cousin Francisco is a river master in Cuba,” she said. “He wanted to take Ezequiel, my firstborn, to be his apprentice. It was a wonderful opportunity. But Rufino was indentured. He had to beg permission for Ezequiel to leave.”
I assumed that Rufino was the guy squirming on the floor, and that indentured meant almost-a-thrall, maybe almost-a-thrall-till-you-made-good-on-a-debt. “And Timon didn’t appreciate being asked?”
“I was there, Mr. Billy! Rufino was as respectful as anyone could be. He offered to give another year of service. There was no reason for any master to take offense, unless he was just looking for excuses to be cruel!”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Nothing then. Timon was… nice. He said he’d think about it. But then, the next night, Rufino woke up screaming. Naturally, that woke me up, and I asked him what was wrong. He whipped around, saw me, and attacked me. If the boys hadn’t come running, I think he would have killed me.” He face twisted, and she hid it in her hands.
So Ezequiel, who was wearing a baggy orange-and-white Bucs jersey, took up the story. “Dad’s been this way ever since.” His voice cracked. The finheads weren’t exactly human, but apparently they had to suffer through puberty just like we do. “He wants to hurt everybody, but especially us, and even tying him up doesn’t always help. He still finds ways to hurt himself, to make us come in close to stop him. And then he can get at us.”
“Jesus,” I said.
Mrs. Rufino lifted her head. “The joke,” she said, “was that at the end of the week, Timon sent word that Ezequiel had permission to go. Because he knew he wouldn’t, even if I begged. He’d stay to help take care of his father.”
She, the kids, and A’marie all looked at me expectantly. I couldn’t think of a thing to say that wouldn’t make me look like an asshole. Then I felt a shiver inside my chest.
It was the same thing that had happened after Gimble beat up Clarence. I wanted to help somebody who was hurt, so my mojo was revving up.
I hadn’t helped the little squirrel man because I hadn’t known how. I still didn’t, really. But Timon’s coaching had given me an idea, and at least I felt fully charged. Last night, all I’d done was call up the Thunderbird. It mostly hadn’t helped me, but it hadn’t been all that difficult, either, and maybe I was starting to build some magic muscle.
I pictured the silver bird again, just to get to a magic-y state of mind. Then I reached inside myself. It was like trying to dredge up a memory that doesn’t want to come. But I was looking for Red.
When I felt him, I imagined him growing bigger and bigger inside me, until he completely filled me up. Until he was wearing my skin like a glove.
It wasn’t like when the giant’s axe chopped me into five pieces. This time, Red didn’t have a whole other mind of his own, and I didn’t black out when he took over. But my emotions changed.
Imagine if you’d been sick in a hospital bed your whole life, and then, all of a sudden, you were as healthy as an Olympic athlete. Imagine running out of that sad white building into the most beautiful spring day anybody ever saw.
It was kind of like that. I wanted to grab A’marie and jump her bones. I wanted to bust open the dusty old cans on the shelves and gobble the fruit inside. I wanted to run, jump, and slap out rhythms on the wall. To do anything, as long as it was a chance to feel and move.
But Red wasn’t driving. I was, the complete me, and I’d called up Mr. Ka to do a job. I shut my eyes, took a deep breath, and told me to calm down. It blunted the edge of that wild exhilaration. I still felt good, but not crazy good.
“Are you all right?” asked A’marie. “You’ve got this weird grin.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I think that maybe I can help Rufino. I’m going to try.”
I knelt down beside him. He thrashed harder, trying to tear his hands free so he could hit me and to hitch himself around into position to kick me. He looked like a fish flopping in the bottom of a boat.
“Can you guys hold him still?” I asked the others.
They did, although it wasn’t easy, even with A’marie helping. I put both hands on his chest, like I was going to do CPR, and tried to stream some of Red’s energy down my arms and through the point of contact. It flowed in surges, in time with the pumping of my heart.
For maybe three seconds. Then the world blinked, and I was someplace else.
I spun around expecting to see stone columns, and the Pharaoh’s giants coming at me. I didn’t. I was standing under the night sky beside the black expanse of the Hillsborough River. I knew it was the Hillsborough because I could see the silver minarets of the University of Tampa lit up in the distance.
A scream cut through the dark.
I ran in that direction. I figured I was headed into trouble, but not a trap. My gut told me that it wasn’t the Pharaoh or any of my other opponents who’d dumped me here. It was my own magic. If I really wanted to help Rufino, this was where I needed to be.
I heard more screams. Then one of the bridges that cross the river appeared in the darkness ahead, with Tiki torches burning underneath the near end. Since there were a dozen finheads gathered in the pool of yellow light, I stopped running and started sneaking. I was twice as big as any of them, but big only gets you so far.
Afghanistan had taught me how to sneak, and I made it close enough to see what the finheads were doing. I felt like puking when I did.
They had one of their own staked spread-eagled on the ground. It’s tricky recognizing inhuman faces until you get familiar with the particular race, but I was pretty sure the prisoner was Rufino. And that it was his own wife and kids slicing him up with knives while the onlookers laughed and cheered them on. Ezequiel’s Bucs jersey was a giveaway.
I realized this was the nightmare that had driven Rufino nuts. Somehow, he was still stuck inside it, and my job was to get him out.
By blasting it to Hell? Maybe. I wished my rifle into my hands.
It didn’t work. At the moment, I was Red, and weapons weren’t his thing. I considered switching to one of the other souls, but I was afraid that would drop me out of the dream.
Screw it. I was juiced with Red’s energy, and I had surprise on my side. The finheads
I found out when I rushed them.
At first it went okay. They were all so intent on the torture that I was able to get right on top of them before anybody noticed me. I grabbed the closest, who was dressed in baggy shorts and a wifebeater, heaved him up, and slammed him into the graffiti spray-painted on one of the concrete bridge supports. Bone cracked, and when I dropped him, he didn’t get up.
A different guy ran at my flank. I pivoted and snapped a kick into his stomach. He flew backward.
But by then everybody else was spreading out to surround me. The torchlight gleamed on their knives. They
