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

  “What do we do, Sal? How do we pull Caleb back? Got to be a way.”

  “Pull him back? Caleb must find his answers. When he finds those answers, we must be there to help him side on the same path he follows now: as impartial judge and executioner. Without Caleb Mauthisen the Outsider, we’re all a pack of whimsical cavalry galavanting across the fields killing serfs. Caleb Mauthisen the god? It’ll be inter dimensional war. Look to the Ravens, Finnegan. They’ve got nothing to do but watch over Thor’s fallen sons. And come visit, you wank. I’m old, bored and the kids don’t visit.” Salomon Calder, Emeritus Keeper of the Book of Knowledge clanked the handle of his phone down and left Finnegan with a thin long scream on its end.

  “When did he get old?” Finnegan said, rubbing his knuckle on his forehead. Find the Ravens, find Ray. Simple, finding two birds on an entire planet. Sal’s head must have gone off. The Pub metamorphosed into its’ tables, cheery music, a wood and concrete bar and Colin the bartender pouring pints for the folk who’d found it.

  “What’s the last door Ray used when he was here?” Finnegan flipped through a leather book, leafing through pages named ‘Upstairs #4’, ‘Yellow Knob w/Custard Stain’, ‘Gerry’s Bunnykins Wallpaper’. Colin hung around the bar moving top shelf liquor and sniffing at old dry bottles. The ghost patted dust into jars with labels too murky to make out in the bar’s dim light.

  “That girl of his. The one what shot you. He’d popped by for a pint and a couple of cocktails between rounds. Left his bathrobe on the stool. Think she picked it up.” Colin said.

  “Wh-oh. Livia.” Finnegan grunted. “What is it with Caleb and his Dad picking unflappable women? Aha! Here. ‘Officer’s Barracks #13’. That’s the one.”

  Finnegan waved his hand and an impeccable olive door maneuvered through the tumult of tables, chairs and alcoves. A small copper plate resided equidistant to the four corners. ‘Cpt. Livia ‘Fury’ Maddox, Fury Squadron’ had been engraved in serif-script. A series of numbers-and-dashes laid out underneath, punched by an onerous hand. The Leprechaun stared at the copper knob with its’ blue glowing ring and exhaled sharply through his nose.

  “Keep the ruddy door open, eh me lad?” Finnegan stood at the crux of the door. A breath shuddered out of his lungs. The safety of his pub rested in the burrows and ridges of his spinal column, a gripping love which had the only power to shake him to his jittering core. His pub. His domain. Prince of his world, the ancient Fae felt tidings of the planet outside. A place of keyboards, dial-tones and neon awaited him. Disembodied voices poured out of thin rectangles and folk lived with a blind, yet constant momentum.

  Out there, Finnegan had nothing but his wits, his address book and a map he’d folded in his coat. Finnegan grabbed his wool peacoat and licked his lips. No magic out there?

  “For your own good, Mauthisen… Don’t know why I try.” Finnegan winced as he turned the handle on Livia’s door, creaking it open by inches until the yawning silence of an empty room met his ears.

  “Ah, there’s a mercy.” Finnegan groaned. His footsteps collided with a faux fur rug of thick white pile. He lifted his foot and let it hang in the air, throwing one shoe at a time back into the Pub.

  A Norwegian-language bible sat atop a dog eared novel by Murakami on the standard-issue metal bedside table. A double bed, meticulously made and dressed in red sheets and three thin green army blankets sat beside the white wall. A desk was wedged between the bedside table and the wall, giving a view of the room’s only window. The window’s blackout drapes had been lined with red brocade, and gold piping. Finnegan grazed his hand along the edge: hand-sewn by what seemed to be thick, masculine fingers. Another desk sat along the wall perpendicular to the bed. The desk was dressed with a white sheet. Green rectangular placemats cut from old army blankets and gold rimmed plates, cups, bowls and wine glasses were set out for two. An unlit candle rested inside an anti-tank shell casing, lit and extinguished enough times for the wax to cascade in the stillness of a waterfall frozen by the arctic cold.

  Finn passed beside a mini photo printer, which blinked Low Battery… Low Battery... The ginger man’s eyes cast upon the bulletin board and its’ wares. Whatever homeliness in the space had the touch of Raynar Einridsen. Father of Caleb and countless dead sons and daughters, Raynar spent lifetimes shirking responsibilities. Raynar had become a Master of Blurred Vision. Each photo printed and pinned on the cork board descended into the thin musk of focus skewed by distance, by light, by shadow, by motion. Amidst official papers placed at precise right angles were dozens of pictures of Livia, world cities and hips draped in red sheets and natural light.

  A stern faced young thing, Livia would have been rather pretty if she’d smile. As Finnegan let himself drift, he saw glimmers of a quiet confidence growing in the petite blonde. In all of them, a singular message played for Livia Maddox, Fury of the skies:

  “You’re beautiful. You’re worthwhile. You’re loved”.

  Finnegan stopped and scratched his ginger hairline. Raynar rutting a pretty young pilot was casual news. Raynar falling in love was news worthy of Queen Selyka’s Court. The last time…

  Crash! Finnegan’s head flung up as a crash clanged down the Barracks hall. Livia’s obtuse organization skills had outlined her life better than the Zoroastrians mapped the stars. Borrowing a pen from the desk, Finnegan jotted down information on Livia’s schedule. Ray wouldn’t leave her… not like… crash! Clang! A rush of fervent voices.

  Finnegan rushed the pen to its’ spot and sprang through the door. Slamming it shut, Finnegan felt the brisk honey spiced whiskey of his Pub rest around him.

  “Find him?”

  “Do you see him clambering after?” Finnegan gulped, fixing the lapels of his hunter green peacoat.

  Colin looked up. He kept cleaning a glass.

  “Need a drink?”

  “I need a songbird, s’what I need. We haven’t been taking the situation with Ray and that blonde serious. He ain’t gonna spit her out, no wonder Caleb’s gone off the map!” Finnegan’s Pub rested in a downbeat. The history of man and woman seeped into the bar top, etched by knives, daggers, pens, forks and desperation. How’d it been that a Scandinavian punched his way into the fabric of the Pub itself? By the time the Leprechaun recognized how significant Raynar had been, he was three drinks in to a six drink minimum and finger deep in a new spot of trouble. A bit of fun never hurt anyone. Not in the long run…

  Caleb proved that to be untrue. Caleb proved to be the rule’s exception. Raynar’s only living son stared the world’s longest party in the face and saw it with an uneasy clarity and unyielding rebuke. While Ray partied and preached his homilies across the hedonist’s altar, his son became capable of nothing but eternal, consummate vision. Ray shook, and danced, and drank, and rutted, and ran. He loved none but his God and his child. Intimacy was the enemy. Finnegan fondled a glass of whiskey and smiled. The Leprechaun and the Viking shared their fear of opening tender, emotional places.

  But now Raynar had fallen for a grim fighter pilot. Caleb went digging into the personal affairs every family on earth could trace back to with a broken and dotted line.

  What could be more dangerous than a Viking's son finding the truth in the world’s longest row? Digging into his address book, Finnegan tried one of Raynar’s numbers.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  Click.

  Chapter 4

  “Caleb. You smell like sage.” Delilah’s heavily lined and painted eyes narrowed. She set her earring on the granite counter of her kitchen and tugged on the cuff of her elbow-length red gloves.

  “Finnegan was being glib. Or trying to be cute. He gave me a door and… it brought me here.” Caleb shrugged.

  “Where were you, then?” She huffed, holding up a gold and diamond bracelet. Caleb walked over and clasped the bracelet around her wrist, sighing as he heard the click of the lock.

  “Michigan. I was in Michigan.”

  “Your clothe
s didn’t make it, did they?”

  “They’re in the trunk of my rental… Damn Delilah I didn’t ask to be here. I’m sorry.”

  “Gee, if you’d have said that more often I might be more forgiving.” Delilah checked her coiffed hair in one of the framed mirrors which lined every wall. She pushed down on a tiara which rode the bound and fancied ebony curls atop her head.

  “Which one, the apology or the ‘didn’t ask to be here’?” Caleb said, as he pulled off his peacoat and hung it by the door, sliding his hands along the jacket of his suit.

  “Oh good, you’re dressed… Not… entirely presentable, but you’ll do.” She held out her hand and Caleb took it, keeping her steady as she put on one, then the other high heeled shoe. He walked to the counter and took the earring, brushing a curl behind her ear before threading the earring in its pierced hole. Her perfume sang with a distant spice defined by the roasting fires of her childhood and the dried flowers her mother had hung around the caravan.

  “Thank you, Caleb.” Delilah whispered. “You smell like a medieval faire.”

  “Finnegan… it’s… it’s Finnegan… Do for what?”

  “Is that old codger still skulking around the shallow underbelly of the drinking man’s world?” She asked, smacking her lips.

  “Kitty, claws.” Caleb chuckled. Finnegan’s last working charm had curdled on Delilah’s milky skin years ago. Their war flickered like gunpowder scattered in a room lit by candlelight. Caleb rested in the middle, a being of rain soaking the potential conflagration between the Gypsy and the Fae.

  Delilah hissed. “Go put on some cologne and at least change your shirt and tie. Go! Go. I’ll wait.”

  “Thanks. Where are you going?” Caleb kissed Delilah’s cheek and jogged into the bedroom’s colossal walk in closet. He hung at the doorway, captivated by the shore of False Creek and Vancouver’s glistening night life.

  “Why’d that bat of a Leprechaun send you to my door? Were you causing trouble? Am I your time out?” Delilah’s hand pushed at Caleb’s back, grabbing on to the collar of his jacket and yanking it off his shoulders. Caleb let the jacket slip into her hands, unthreading his tie and leaving it on a vacant valet stand in the corner. He dusted his body with cologne and rubbed his face with a towel sprayed with what he thought was toner or laundry spray, or some form of feminine torture device. His hand brushed against a series of shirts and his eyebrow rose.

  “Thought you torched these, Lilah.”

  “I was angry. I said anything to hurt you. Marcy had taken the dry-cleaning to the laundry and she was such a good girl, she brought it back and hung it up like normal. Domestics, they don’t… they don’t ask. They do. The shirts were hung so nice I couldn’t… one doesn’t torch tailored shirts.”

  “Good on Marcy.” Caleb smirked and buttoned up a french cuffed white shirt and tucked it into his trousers. He went back to the valet stand and pulled a pair of cufflinks from the tray. Delilah’s inability to deal with the absence of his meagre wardrobe gave a modicum of hope to the weary traveller. Should he grab a garbage bag and steal it all back? Leave the harpy with nothing? Should he be the better man and let her hang on to things he barely wore, if at all, anymore? She could keep foggy memories of him, dusted and maintained by the hired help while he ventured beyond his once passionate gypsy queen. He checked his hair in the mirror and pulled a comb through it, giving up when Delilah put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Here.” She helped him put on the jacket and dragged a lint brush over the shoulders. Her hand pressed a pocket square into the front pocket. Had it taken a trick from Finnegan to notice the fatigue crinkling at the corners of her dazzling honey eyes? The room lulled in an oceanic disquiet, threading back and forth as the tide on Jericho Beach. The damned Leprechaun.

  Damned Finnegan, sending him here.

  “I don’t have shoes for a party.”

  “Look again, blind old mouse.” Delilah cooed. Her shoulder nudged toward the section of closet not chock full of dresses, skirts, blouses and power suits. He sat on the roman bench propped in the middle of the room and pulled on a pair of well tended, shining dress shoes. The closet stretched - a concave envelope around the void which nestled in his chest when he looked at her. He put his forearms on his knees and stared at the navy blue clad seductress, whose namesake defeated the world’s strongest man with her gasps, slender neck and raven hair. Where was Delilah hiding the scissors, he wondered? How many more men had Delilah defeated since he’d been gone? Caleb looked at his watch and shut his eyes.

  “Michigan time. What time is it?”

  “Here.” Delilah passed him a gold omega, holding her hand out for the battered steel favourite he’d taken with him after words stopped tasting so sweet.

  “Thanks. Where’re we going?”

  “Charity function at the MOA. Some slightly Arabic government is donating some slightly Arabic things to the Museum. It's… an effort to increase the codependency and understanding of distant spheres of cultural influence or some nonsense. I wasn’t listening when Pierre Ordonne offered me the tickets.”

  “Pierre! He’s not your date, is he?!”

  “Why, darling? Are you jealous of what you never owned?” Delilah put a red clad hand on a navy hip, swivelling away from Caleb and sauntering out toward the hall.

  “I…” Caleb rose and rubbed his hands on his face. He yawned and shook his head.

  “I’m too tired for Pierre. He’s a prick.”

  “Yes, he is. But! Pierre is a prick with connections and there’s one or two I want to become acquainted with in an academic sort of way.” Delilah shrugged and poured cream in a mug of coffee, stirring it with a spoon before passing the cup to Caleb.

  “Drink up. Why’d the leprechaun decide to be cute and send you here, again? What did you do?”

  Caleb sipped and grunted. “Goddamn it woman! What’d you do, buy jet fuel?”

  “Two packets of instant coffee and lukewarm tap water. Drink it. Whatever swill Finnegan fed you ought to be banned by International Accord. This will get you moving in my direction. The right direction, by the by.”

  Caleb grimaced and downed the coffee, sniffing a pinch of cinnamon and something far more nefarious in the mix. He shut his eyes and winced. When his eyes adjusted back to Delilah's flat, he stared at a door with pink stains across the door jamb. The door seemed to shimmer, to burst in series of concentric circles and faerie enchantment.

  “What’d you put in this?”

  Delilah shrugged, pulling on a white fur stole.

  “Darling! I simply have too many important things in life to remember, your coffee isn’t one of them.” She grinned through red painted lips, and put her hand to the front door.

  “Are you ready? Or should I leave you staring at my daughter's door?”

  The fatigue swirled away with the dregs of coffee, descending to a once-lived dream of Michigan fires and Finnegan’s screeching voice. What had he been yelling about? Why was he staring at the door of a little girl he’d never met? A haze stole Caleb’s stooped shoulders. The disparate information his brain fed him about a Leprechaun and the world’s longest running kegger dissipated. Caleb grinned.

  “Yes, milady. I’m ready. What's her name? Your girl. Think I forgot her name.” He set the mug on the kitchen island and looked at the girl’s pink door.

  “Lilith. Honestly, why does it matter? Put the insubordinate thing in boarding school. The Swiss can deal with her.” Delilah pursed her lips, shoving her arms against her chest and hiding in the stole.

  "Lilith..." The name stung bitterly in the back of his throat. Lilith… didn’t seem right.

  "Come along, Chauffeur. You may pick the car. What were you looking for in Michigan?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Cain’s tattoo.”

  Delilah tripped the entire way to her floor’s elevator. Her lips worked at a litany of dying words until they got to the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology. The silence was more priceless than weaving her
Koenigsegg in downtown traffic at seventy kilometres an hour.

  Caleb hung back with the totem poles while Delilah plied her trade. She was the belle of every ball and society’s number one woman, although none of those society guys and dolls could say why. Delilah was the ultimate deceiver, the cold hearted minx working for a purpose she’d never mention in any form of pillow talk or casual brunch. Half colluding, half conniving, always up to something, she hung on the arms of gentlemen and ladies alike with an efficiency the German Auto Industry would find staggering. Caleb sipped champagne and tried not to grin like the Cheshire Cat watching Alice play with cards. First Nations, Old Money West Vancouverites & Academics played cultural soldiers with the Arabian and East African delegates who marvelled at the Raven and The First Men. He nodded a student with a serving platter over and pulled three stuffed mushrooms and smoked salmon to his mouth. Leaning against a pane of glass cooled his shoulder, as a woman in a button blanket weaved through the crowd with a drummer and a small procession.

  Photographers elbowed each other for the better spot, one lonely camera guy staked his claim with a heavy duty tripod topped with a $1,000 DSLR. Cheapskate. The drumming started and the crowd quieted. Delilah led an Arabian delegate by the arm, commenting on the tribal headpiece he wore and how good it was to see a man at peace with himself. Caleb snorted and sidled up, rubbing his hands on a handkerchief before putting one on the small of Delilah’s back.

  She bucked, but smiled at the Delegate.

  “Caleb! Sheik Abdul Abbayah of Iran, meet Dr. Caleb Mauthisen.”

  The Sheik bowed his head and offered a hand. “Your companion, Madame?”

  “Her bodyguard, mostly. Reverend, ah, not Doctor.” Caleb offered his hand and a grin.

  “My childhood friend. He’s now a successful Doctor of … what was your PhD in again?”

  “Divinity, Delilah.” Caleb saluted with his champagne flute.

  “Shh, it’s about to start.” The Iranian Sheik shook Caleb’s hand and nodded to the woman and her crew of First Nations artists as they broke out in song and dance. The sight was quintessential West Coast. Caleb could smell the sea and the smoking houses. He imagined longhouses, carvings and the tawny skin of a raven haired beauty as she ran through the forest loam toward the sea. The spell cast by the performers was as pungent and breathtaking as a rose garden or honey from the comb.