Son of Abel (The Judge of Mystics Book 1) Read online

  Detroit, Michigan.

  Present Day.

  “Hot damn.” Caleb grumbled, thumbing the door handle of his rented sedan. Flames blew across his cheek. Smoke curled around his lungs like a pack and a half of unfiltered cigarettes. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and dialled 9-1-1, rubbing his thumb and forefinger up the bridge of his nose.

  “911, what is the emergency?” The girl’s voice sang like a tired belle at her own ball. Caleb turned his back on the fire and covered a cough with his sleeve.

  “Fire.” Caleb brushed his pinkie against the paper he’d laid on the passenger seat, running his fingernail along the outline of the ancient tattoo. His scribbled notes punctuated the page.

  “Fire? Okay, sir where are you?”

  “112th and Gibson, Fleet Heart Tattooing.”

  “Are you inside the building?”

  “Insi-no. No I’m not inside the burning building.” Caleb rolled his eyes and bit back a sardonic answer. Maybe a fake scream... That would teach the Operator.

  “Okay. Is there anyone in the building?”

  “I don’t know.” Caleb rubbed at his forehead.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, I pulled up and the place was on fire.”

  “You pulled up?”

  “Yeah… is there a fire truck coming?”

  “Yes, the firefighters are on their way, Sir. Stay on the line, please. My name’s Phyllis, can I have your name, please?”

  Caleb groaned. “Listen. I drove up and the place was on fire. You say the firefighters are coming, I don’t want to stick around for a show.”

  “Sir? Sir! Stay on the line, please.” Phyllis stuttered.

  Caleb tossed the phone into the burning tattoo parlour. The hiss, crackle and pops of caustic liquids filtered into the smoky air and he covered his mouth with a handkerchief from his jacket. He pulled another burner phone out of the glove box and flicked the screen to life. The keys rustled in the ignition as he started the sedan’s engine. Caleb punched in a phone number and hit speakerphone.

  “For the love. Finnegan.” He barked, backing out of the lot. Four blocks up and one left turn later he heard the sirens roaring closer to the blaze.

  “Mauthisen, me bloke how are ya?” Finnegan’s crackling voice burst into the car’s cabin. Caleb rubbed his forehead, turned off the radio and shut the windows.

  “Fleet Heart’s burning to the ground, that’s how I am.”

  Silence. The sound of a clinking bottle against glass. Caleb reopened the window and coughed.

  “Where are you at, then?”

  “116th and Hillside, I’m making toward the Pub. You gonna be busy?”

  “No! No, I’ll clear my schedule. Shouldn’t take more’n fifteen. Help yourself to a drink on the house, eh? A nice whiskey or pint of bitters. That’ll help ease the situation.”

  “Schedule, huh? Blonde or redhead?”

  “Ginger as me mother’s aunt.” Finnegan grinned into his phone, disconnecting with no less oblige. Caleb ground his teeth and headed toward Finnegan’s Bluff Public House, est. 1898. Finn’d owned it as long as it’d been open, a fae with more lifetimes than licks of sense and Caleb readied for the constant uproar and bitter pints of an old school party like none left in the world.

  He parked out back, shut the door with a slam and shouldered his grey peacoat across thick Scandinavian shoulders. Music peppered, popped, and sang out of the architectural nightmare’s windows. Hip Hop thudding from one window became cool cat jazz glowing warmly from another in the chill night. Caleb leaned against the car and turned his ear to a window near the Pub’s oldest corner, lit only by yellowed candles. Hand carved details flickered between the nightly shadows, a magnum opus of the carvings Caleb distantly remembered a raven-haired grandfather chiselled out of scrap wood. The old man blew layers of sawdust and pine to the ground, where Caleb sat grabbing pieces big enough to smell the forest they left behind. The singer’s voice bathed Caleb in an acoustic swell of ocean waters lapping up on narrow shores. Was the song a reminder or a revelation? He saw fish tangled in nets dragged to the town drying racks. Caleb shut his eyes and yearned to run his hands along wool knitted into another bright sweater. The voice lilted on, her thick Scandinavian inflections dancing, playing to the drummer’s beat. Caleb licked his lips and tasted the mead, the brisk honey wine and midnight ales frothing in their drinking horns. He tasted the frost in the wind and wondered what Spring would look like after the short northern thaw.

  A car horn honked in the street. Caleb bent down and took the creased paper from the passenger seat.

  “Please let this be the last stop.”

  The music pouring from the window gave him no comfort as he rubbed his chin and walked inside the Pub.

  The commotion was more monumental than the smoke coating the walls. Fiddlers and a drummer threw into their craft with an abandon many would call magical, and many would be right. Each nook and cranny held tables, booths, alcoves with mismatched wing chairs and tiny tables dedicated to keeping pints, bottles, shots and plates in untidy array. Caleb shouldered past the crowd of glower hipsters, nostalgic Irishmen and uncomfortable dates toward a long, narrow bar built and expanded through the years with the bric-a-brac of failed bars, forgotten tops and bottoms, and the occasional rough-hewn wooden statue or carved buttress from Ireland, Norway, China, Scotland or wherever you pleased to look.

  “Colin, is Finn around?”

  “Yes Sir, Master Mauthisen, he’s clearing his schedule upstairs, I reckon. Should be down in a step or seven. Pint?”

  “Yeah, the stout kay? Not that double IPA hipster shit.”

  Colin’s eyelids rose, he tipped a pint glass under a spigot and pulled the handle. A froth of dark, caramel beer flooded into the glass. Caleb nudged a dispassionate youth in plaid and thick rimmed glasses away and took refuge at the bar’s only surviving stool.

  “The heck happen to the bar stools?” Caleb asked, leaning down to pick up the grey cat rubbing against his leg. He rubbed his knuckles along the cat’s purring head and felt the beginning of a smirk break onto his face.

  “Roving band of Vikings.”

  “Roving band of Vikings… tckt. Course, was Wodins-day.” He kicked his stool another pace over, let the cat run off and palmed his drink. An Irish reel burst into the air, carried across the bulbous crannies of Finnegan’s Pub. Caleb watched dancers rush an empty spot in the middle, shouldering less nubile guests to the sides and walls. A girl sidled up, kicking her heels and hiking her skirt an inch above her knees. The rich scent of a cool spring morning fluttered from her, a dainty rain-fresh woodland bathed in wildflowers and rich moss. Caleb rubbed his cheek and pinched his neck.

  ‘Not now, buddy. Don’t fall.’

  “Dance with me?” She batted her pale green eyelids, rich hazel eyes perching atop his face and hunched shoulders.

  “Dance with him.” Caleb nodded to the wastrel in plaid rubbing his brown hair behind his ears. She shrugged and sprung off, skipping over to take the wastrel’s hand and lead him to the dance floor.

  “Forgot you were harder to please than an Englishman at tea time.”

  “Thought your kind didn’t serve theirs.” Caleb nodded to the dryad girl shaking her hips, a hand on the hipster’s chest. An odd green sheen sprouted from her fingertips, coating the man’s clothing with the wood nymph’s pollen. Caleb sipped his stout and watched the girl through the ruddy mirror of the bar.

  “Times’re tougher than Queen Maeve’s day. It don’t make me mind much more’n that. She follows the rules well enough.”

  “Ash?”

  “Elm. Drink up, eh? Drink up!” Finnegan slid another pint across the bar, hopping up on a stool which formed out of the bric-a-brac. Elm shouldered the man’s arm around her as she danced. He grinned, latched on as the pollen filtered up his throat and into his nose. Caleb sunk into his pint and turned his eyes to the tiny Irishman propped up on the stool.

  “You get shorter?” He asked
Finnegan.

  “Har har. Why’s it, I wonder, that every tattoo place I send you to has an outrageous accident minutes before you arrive?”

  “I’m lucky.” Caleb grabbed his next pint.

  “If you’ve got any luck at all it’s the bad kind, mate. What’s so important for you? Got a girlfriend?”

  “Delilah count?”

  Finnegan shivered. “Give up on the harpy. Do us all good.”

  “She’s a friend.”

  “She’s a whoring succubus.”

  “She’s a woman who talks back and means it.” Caleb piped up over his stout liquor. He had to scowl into the glass to keep from grinning and losing his drink. Images of Finnegan diving under the bar away from Delilah’s demanding scoffs took him. Didn't know a man could yelp so loud and reach that high of a pitch.

  “Do I gotta pull the truth from your bone marrow? What’s the unfortunate fetish with tattoos about?”

  Caleb dug into his peacoat and pulled out the piece of printer paper folded in quarters. He slid it across the bar top. Finnegan unfolded it and his gold eyes went wide. Finnegan clicked his fingers and the pub went dead quiet. Empty, but for the bartender who seemed to float in place, anchored to the bar like a ghost to a graveyard.

  “Beast o’lake and field, how’d… what… but…” Finnegan tossed the page on the counter and rubbed his hands on his pants.

  “I’m out.”

  “Finnegan, buddy come on.”

  Finnegan shook his head and leapt off the stool, pacing wildly away from Caleb and the bar.

  “Finn, it’s just a tattoo!” Caleb said, over another gulp of stout.

  “I ain’t bringing that level of hell on my house.”

  “You’re a leprechaun for God’s sake!”

  Finnegan wheeled around, his finger in the air. He screeched and cursed in a language long dead and twice removed. He seemed to expand from the middle, sucking in enough air to turn his belly into a bloated zephyrous bag.

  “That one, the big one! There’s no power in the universe which will give you one inch of distance from that, or what that mark represents and I ain’t helping you commit spiritual suicide! ‘Cause this might be my parlour but it’s His world! Get out!”

  “Finnegan, come on! It’s just a tattoo. I have to understand it!”

  “Why!?”

  Caleb worked his jaw. He closed his lips and pulled his hand through thick blond hair.

  “I have to know.” Caleb muttered, hugging into his peacoat.

  “There’s no knowledge worth keeping on the end of that road. None. Burn it! Be done with it. Never… Never ask me to damn you, your God’s a jealous keeper and I’m a minor fae. You want me to do anything but march you to the door and bar you for the rest of your life, you tell me why the mark’s got you wound up.”

  “I have to know what it takes.”

  “He’s been burning tattoo parlours before you get there. There was an earthquake on one, remember? Damn near lost your car down the fault line in Japan. Then that riot in Bavaria! I think you’ve got your answer, mate. He’s not given up on you.” Finnegan kept his finger stuck in the air, an unholy lightning rod against the conflagration of the heavens. Caleb chewed his cheek and his tongue, held his hands in front of his chest.

  “I have to know if there’s a measure of sin before he pulls the plug.”

  Finnegan shook his head.

  “Saints preserve us.” Finnegan sat on his barstool and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. He took a long, burning swig and grimaced. "What about that book of old Sal's?"

  “He kept it in his basement.” Caleb gripped the whiskey bottle harder, taking a long drag.

  “Caleb, I cannae help you. Seems your guardian angels are burning buildings to keep you from getting that mark and swinging the ruddy sword of Eden in your path to stop you. That should tell you enough.”

  “It should.”

  “Go home, Caleb. Find a dainty banshee to banish back to hell or exorcise a demon from some poor sod in Cleveland.”

  “Cleveland? Why Cleveland?”

  “There were a bunch of raging Vikings in here last night. Got cleave, cut, slice, dice and all manner of chopping language in me head.” The leprechaun rubbed his temples and picked up the paper. A flame burst between them, turning paper to cinder.

  “Home, huh?” Caleb said, watching the ash cling to the side of his wet pint glass.

  “Or closest to it. Here.” Finnegan snapped his fingers and a door settled into the wall beside the rickety bar.

  “Go through it. It’ll take you to the closest place to home. It’s the best I can offer you, mate.”

  “Thanks Finnegan.” Caleb walked to the door and put his hand on the knob. “Oh! My bag’s in the rental… car.”

  He turned round to the sight of a woman in an evening gown, threading an earring in her ear.

  “Damn. I loved that gun.” Caleb let go of the front door and stepped inside.

  “Hi Delilah.”

  Chapter 3

  Finnegan watched Caleb vanish. He felt the dredge of his body heat, the descent of his bit of power which the deal allowed him. The deal. Bah!

  The deal. The Leprechaun leaned back on his bar stool and tapped his fingers along the bar. Caleb’s news threw Finnegan off his pint, but not off a good chuckle.

  “Ginger’s still upstairs, ain’t she?” Colin said, scrubbing at a pint glass with his towel.

  Finnegan shrugged with a half-smile. “Bit of a prude, really…”

  Colin picked up Finnegan’s pint and dumped it. He pulled over the bottle of whiskey and poured a drag into the empty glass.

  “What’s Caleb on about, eh?” Finnegan said, fondling the glass in his hand.

  “Fiddling with that sort. T’ain’t a speck of good down that road.” he laughed and turned his ear to the upper corner, where a lonely harpist warbled in an old viking’s prayer to one or the other gods. He near spat on the floor.

  “Tons of people flood the Pub each week and you’re wondering why the one who ought to keep searching dug up something useful?” Colin drawled. Finnegan rubbed his chin and bit into his thumbnail.

  “Not what he thinks he’ll find, me boy.” Finnegan said. He pursed his lips and drank the whiskey, shuddering into the burn which struck down his throat and belly.

  “What he wants to find I’m worried on.”

  “But you sent him home.”

  “Sure. Sent him off, I did. Trouble with Mauthisen, that home of his no longer exists. Get me my phone, good lad.” Finnegan sat with his back against the bar as Colin’s ghost hovered toward a cupboard with a rotary telephone locked behind glass. Finn produced a small address book out of his pocket and flipped pages.

  “Sal ought to know. Got a good head about him and his book, that old chap.”

  The phone rang until a clumsy hand plucked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Sal! It’s Finnegan.” Finnegan grinned into the handle, tucking it against his cheek and shoulder.

  “No, I’m Sal. Name’s not Finner-gin.”

  “No, Sal, I know, Sal.” Finnegan chuckled.

  “No, I’m Sal. Whose this?”

  “Finnegan.”

  “Finnegan ain’t here. Hasn’t visited since I got wrinkles.”

  “Salomon, this is Finnegan. Finnegan the Fae. Friend of Caleb Mauthisen’s?”

  “I know who Finnegan is, young man. What’s the trouble with your voice? Bite raw rhubarb?”

  Finnegan groaned and pushed his palm into his cheek.

  “It’s me, Sal.” Finnegan said. Humans. How many blinks did he have before they vanished?

  “Finnegan! What can I do for you, young man?”

  Finnegan chortled, his eyes beginning to burn around the edges.

  “Caleb’s gone off searching his Dad’s old tattoo. Remember the one on his shoulder? That big scar?”

  “… Yes.” Go on, Sal seemed to say, his voice casting off its dust.

  “I need to find Raynar
. He’s got to know what his kid’s up to. He’s got to care this time, eh? What’s the Book say, Sal?”

  “Raynar will come for his son, Finnegan. Our issue’s a bigger one. What’ll Caleb do when he finds his answers?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to prevent, Sal. What’s the Book say?”

  “Finnegan, the Book was stolen.”

  Finnegan’s phone clattered to the ground, springing back on its’ corkscrew cord. He lunged for it, rustled it back on his ear.

  “What?!”

  “Cleaning lady, far as I can tell. Young thing, Croatian refugee. I don’t have the Book of Knowledge anymore, Finnegan.” Sal heaved, his brittle lungs basking in the huff of air.

  “Was a time I’d never let it happen. I’d’ve figured it out, worked the Book, sent the girl off or educated her. I should have put my open eyes to it, but the cataracts’ve dimmed me. I’m not the man I was when Caleb handed me a massive leather book and whispered a few tidbits of advice. The world I lived in hasn’t seen the light of day for decades, Finn. And how much more yours, hmm? I’m an old man, but you’re older. Raynar’s older still.”

  “In people years, maybe. Thought you lost the short-term thinking, you old codger.”

  “Can’t fool me. You feel it.”

  “Let’s wait a couple centuries and see if you’re right.” Finnegan paused.

  “The question isn’t what happens when Caleb gets his answers. You’re rightly scared of it, but that’s not the worst. The question is about time, my fellow. How much time must pass before our worlds are over? How long must we pay recompense for our part in history?”

  Sal broke into a long sputtering cough. Finnegan sat on his barstool, black telephone receiver pushed into his ear and chin. The Pub distended into a lean disquiet. Colin was a shadow. The bar top faded into a plank of cold, moss-strewn stone. The floor, which was polished by thousands of dancing feet shifted into a pad of well-pressed dirt. Incandescent light paled into a foggy sunshine flickering through broken cloud cover and bits of damp. Sitting on a stone in his sacred circle, Finnegan became conscious of his age and illusions in Sal’s sagging, inebriant voice.