originally posted September 23, 2010
Me and the Devil Blues
The lines formed into words, mysterious and arcane. I blinked and then took a hand to rub at my eyes. The twists and loops of the unknown language seemed to vibrate with their own energy, falling in and out of focus. I looked away, setting the guitar strings down in my lap. From that short of a distance, the spell looked like decretive scrollwork along the body of the instrument.
"I don't know how he ever found it," Kyana Lincoln told me as she pulled close the curtains as protection against the bright afternoon glare. "I don't know how he ever learned about it. I do know my mother left him over it. How could she compete with something that could give you your dreams? She was only human, after all." I watched her as she moved around the living room, touching pictures and books, looking to re-establish some connection with reality.
"My father was a damn fool. My brother even more so." I watched as she picked up a picture frame and stared at it.
"He wanted the guitar? Roscoe?"
Kyana nodded. "He called me, just before the wake. He begged me for it. After all the hurt that damn thing has caused, he begged me for it." She shook her head. "I said no. Burying that thing with my dead old man seem the best thing to do; lock it up, put it in a vault, and cover it up with dirt. Roscoe sounded so desperate. I half expected him to show up at the wake and pull it from dad's cold hands in front of God and everybody. When he didn't. I thought he must have hatched some other damn fool plan."
"So you took the guitar from your father's casket when the funeral director left you alone with the body. You were the only family there." Sometimes I just need to hear it all played out. I need to occasionally know if I'm exactly right. "You stashed it, under a table, behind a desk somewhere. You cut your hand breaking the window to get back into the room, that night. The funeral home didn't think anything was stolen, because they didn't know the instrument was in the room."
Kyana nodded, once. Today, it didn't feel terribly good to be right. "I have to take this from you," I explained. "I know a place. I have a friend that collects such things, and keeps them safe." She nodded again. I leaned back on the couch as a shadow passed across the closed curtains. "I still can't believe it. 'Blind' Detroit Lincoln really did trade his sight for success."
His daughter shook her head as she crossed the room to hand me the picture. A young Detroit Lincoln smiled up at me, his arm around his young, obviously happy son. "No. That really was an accident," Kyana told me. "I think... I think the guitar demanded a sacrifice. You had to give up something important. If my father thought anything was more important that music, it was his little boy."
The enormity of what my favorite blues legend had done settled on me. How could someone lose focus of family? I thought of my fiancée, my step daughter to be, my sister. Detroit Lincoln had been blind in more ways than one. The room darkened; a passing cloud of a storm to come.
Except? Except the forecast didn't call for rain.
I stood, handing the guitar in my lap to Kyana. The light escaping the curtains of the large, bay window shimmered and twisted as if some living thing. Cautiously, I pulled back the flimsy fabric. An angry mass of gray waited for some unknown signal on the other side of the glass. Dark, leather wings beat in slow rhythms. Death by sharpened teeth and razor claws lingered just a few feet away. Demonlings. DEMON waited for us out there. Roscoe had ratted his sister out, or they figured it for themselves. The supernatural bad guys would love to get their hands on a magical item of this power.
I reached for my massive messenger bag and the quick release tube containing my sword; then realized I had left them, safely locked away in a secure compartment in the trunk of my car. "Do you have a basement?" I asked, as the window started to bend and crack. As I heard the shattering of glass, I popped my emergency beacon, and called for Kyana to run.
I pushed the shocked figure away from the window, driving her down a hallway I hoped ended in a closet. I heard the beating of small wings as I shoved her into the confined space next to a vacuum cleaner and shut the door. I spun, reaching out and grabbing the neck of the closest creature and dashing its skull against a nearby wall. I felt the first cut across my forearm, the burning left by a demonic claw.
Five minutes. I needed to last five minutes. My previous unarmed encounter with a handful of demonlings put me in the hospital after two minutes. I couldn't count the number I faced now. The narrow hallway prevented them from attacking en masse. "Yay me!" for getting into a defensible position.
For a short time, I thought I would make it. I felt tiny bones snap beneath my hands and feet. The demonlings did not fend for their injured. They would dispatch a casualty to more quickly reach me, their jaws snapping and claws flashing. For a short time, I really did think I would make it. Then a claw scraped across my forehead. Head wounds bleed, a lot. I can't tell you exactly how much, but it was certainly enough to blind me on that side of my face.
I crouched down, protecting my vulnerable side from the endless mass of creatures. I felt more welts rise, flesh torn, the deep bites of tiny teeth. I remember reaching out and crushing a wing in my had as two of the creatures dangled from my extended arm, greedy mouths sunk into my forearm. I don't know exactly when the panic started. I don't know when I realized I wasn't going to make it.
She had led the rescue team herself. Her Shinobi swept over the demonling summoning Morbanes outside the house. Silent Strike waded into the structure, cutting down the creatures with mercurial fluidity and that amazing flexibility of hers. She wore her crimson armor, and her eye's had that violet glow they get when she uses her powers.
I felt the pace of the attacks slacken, then stop completely. Uncounted bits of gray flesh lay around the floor, chunks of demonling dissected by her magic sword. I looked up at her with my good eye. "Hi honey," I quipped, whiping the blood from my face and grinning. "How was your day?
--
"Ow! That stings!" The burning sensation faded as Kori's deft fingers worked in the cream into the wound. One of the wounds. I had a ton for them. "You should go to the hospital," she told me, sitting on the bed behind me. "I should make you go to the hospital on principle."
I rolled my eyes, thankful she couldn't see my face as she attended to the other bites and scratches on my back. "You have the very best medics. They stopped the bleeding just fine. Besides," I sat up and turned to her, "I like my nurse at home, better." She scowled at me.
"Thank you," I told her. I watched her eyes soften. "Thank you for coming to get me."
"Chance," she paused as the air caught in her throat. "My heart… I didn't know what I'd find." I wrapped her in my arms and felt hers fall around me. We held each other for a span of heartbeats.
She pulled away and began to apply cream to the wounds on my chest. "What happened to the guitar?" she asked.
"Tucked away, secure in Meri's magical warehouse. I don't think it will see the light of day for at least one thousand years."
"Kyana Lincoln?"
"Uninjured. I don't know how, but none of the demonlings got past me."
"That's because," she looked up at me with a tight lipped grin, "besides your obvious stupidity, you really are quite good." I chuckled softly. "Roscoe?" she asked.
"The police are weighing charges against him for hiring the Kings to steal from his father's grave. I'm hoping they don't do anything. With the guitar locked away, he might have a shot at a normal life. I'm trying to figure out how to reach out to him, help get himself back on his feet."
She nodded, smearing a dab of ointment on an unbandaged bite. I didn't ask about the DEMON agents her team apprehended. I trusted her to handle them appropriately. Kori tilted her head as she closed the cap on the tube of antibiotic cream in her hand. Red hair cascaded down one shoulder. "And you? How are you feeling."
I reached out to take her hand in mine. "I've been reminded, reminded of what's really important to me." I kissed her fingers. "It may feel like a spell, but this between us? It's a special type of magic."
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