CHAPTER 51: TICKET TO POWER

  CYPRUS ALLEY—NOVEMBER 23rd, 1992 | EARLY MORNING

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  Guts had developed a new habit of waking up Cameron at the ass-crack of dawn.

  For practical reasons, he had to keep the sprite in its cage by his air mattress, or Leroy would throw a fit. It was the latest addition to the ‘my house, my rules’ thing he had going on. At one point or another, Leroy had apparently gone clothes-hopping in the bargain bin at a thrift store or something the day prior, and stocked Cameron’s closet with choices that weren’t completely horrible.

  His options before were: his black hoodie with a few holes in it, his workwear pants, a clunky leather belt, and the beige denim jacket that Leroy had already got him. Plus his six-year-old boots, but those would last him forever. Socks and underwear were never an issue; Leroy had seen to getting him those before Cameron had officially become his underarbiter as a part of his welcoming care-package, which also included the toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, shampoo and body wash in his bathroom.

  His expanded options were: denim jeans, black cargos, gray carpenter pants, a long sleeve black thermal with visible red seams, a light gray pullover sweater, and a handful of tee shirts, one of which was a touring tee-shirt from Pearl Jam that made Cameron grimace whenever he saw it.

  After showering, he decided on the black cargos and the gray pullover, and finally removed the gauze on his ear, now a half-ear. Seemed that the prior dose of the pasteurized demon blood helped some, but as he already knew, while one dose might’ve closed that hole in his arm from the bullet wound, it sure as hell wouldn’t bring his ear back.

  Breakfast was cereal, milk, and Leroy’s kettle-brewed coffee that was beginning to grow on Cameron. Foot, Leroy’s black cat, kept trying to swat at Guts from inside of his sprite-cage, and Guts, well-aware of the danger that a twelve-pound cat posed to Cameron, blinked over and over again. There wasn’t much said between them that morning. Mostly questions on Leroy’s end about how Janice and Tania were holding up. When they’d stopped by Allure Artificer the night prior, he found Janice hard at work, with an impromptu alchemy lab set up in the middle of Esme’s loft.

  ?

  “Christ, what’s that smell?” Cameron asked, covering his nose with his black tee shirt.

  Tania sat on the couch with some sort of magazine in hand with what seemed to be at least three or four scarves looted from Esme’s closet wrapped around her face. Her eyes were tired, like the fumes were making her sick. Between that, the black baseball cap on her head and the cargo shorts that went down to her ankles, all she needed was a gun, and she’d look like a South Ender with an appetite for someone’s wallet.

  “Manesbane Tonic! Or, it will be, a few hours from now. The not so great smell is strigoi urine, which I am surprised Esme was able to get me on such short notice,” Janice said.

  At the very least, her makeshift workstation was next to an open window. Not that it helped in Tania’s case.

  “Miss us already, Cameron?” Tania asked, her voice muffled beneath the layers of scarves.

  “I—no, Leroy just wanted me to check on you guys.”

  “Not much to see,” Tania muttered. “You bring food, or anything?”

  Cameron waved around his hands. “Empty-handed. Sorry.”

  Tania groaned. “You tell Leroy next time he decides to send you up here to come prepared. Esme’s pantry is nearly empty.”

  Cameron set his jaw. “Already?”

  Tania threw the magazine flat onto the coffee table in front of her. “Sorry, were you the one living with a fucking feeding tube in your mouth for weeks on-end?”

  “Yeah, alright, point taken, calm down,” Cameron said, eyes widening. Her raised voice brought him back to the transport vehicle they’d all been in, and all he could think about was her in her half-stepped transformation. Gray skin, vibrant yellow eyes, wild and crazy wolfish hair, black with those maroon undertones. And claws. Her claws in his shoulder, pinning him against a metal wall.

  “I’ll get Leroy to place an order for some pizza, or something,” Cameron continued.

  “Onion, anchovies, bacon, sausage, chicken, and beef,” Tania declared.

  “What?” Cameron asked.

  “The toppings. And if they have sides, an 8-piece of chicken wings,” Tania said.

  Cameron eyed her up and down. She was lithe, but not by choice. A feeding-tube diet tended to do that, and it was a miracle she wasn’t downright emaciated. Maybe the whole lycan regeneration thing prevented her body from fully breaking down. With a sharp inhale, Cameron issued her a nod, and made for the door.

  Janice glanced over her shoulder. In the absence of a beaker, she was using one of Esme's mugs: a ceramic bear with a very big stomach. “Oh! Ah, before you go, there’s—... I have a plastic bucket over here, with some alchemical waste. Could you please take it down for me, and dump it?”

  Cameron’s mouth dropped open. “Dump it? Dump it where, Janice?”

  “The storm drain will do,” Janice said awkwardly.

  Tania erupted in a sudden and singular chortle. “I’ll cross my fingers for you and pray that you don’t spill it onto your foot or something. Cameron Half-Ear feels earned. Cameron the Toeless just sounds like it was born from a stupid, oafish accident.”

  “When have you ever called me that? When has anyone called me that? What is this, Lord of the Rings or something?” Cameron asked.

  “Well, I did, just now. And I’m hoping I don’t have to start calling you that second one,” Tania matter-of-factly, as if it was a gravely serious and all too real possibility. Beneath those layers of scarves, she was probably well on the verge of giggling to herself.

  Cameron paced over to Janice, grabbed the bucket with his free hand, and grimaced beneath the shirt covering his face.

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  Uncle Lieberman didn’t harass them when they passed through the office at Lieberman Scrap and Stack. Leroy must’ve paid him yesterday, and Cameron didn’t even want to know how much. Fog slithered between the stacks of rusty cars and piles of disjointed scrap, what looked like a natural circumference around the clearing that they’d been practicing in yesterday. Garland Height’s skyline loomed in the distance, and gray skies lingered overhead, the same as they did every morning.

  Cameron reached for his Reign 18, haphazardly tucked into his front belt. At least now the safety was on.

  Leroy rested a hand on his hip. “Later. Frankly, you improved faster than I expected yesterday. So, today’s focus is the meat and potatoes.”

  Cameron loosened his grip. “The what?”

  “Your abilities, Kessler,” Leroy clarified. “We’ll begin with something simple. Do you know what you are?”

  Cameron crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, asshole. I know what I am. What kind of question is that?”

  “Humor me here, Kessler. Explain it,” Leroy asked, gesturing with a nod of the head, as if inviting him to continue.

  “A hexling. One of my parents was, or is, a demonic contractor. Like you.”

  “Your mother?” Leroy asked.

  “No,” Cameron answered curtly. “Or, if she was, she never told me. Don’t see why she would hide something like that, and if she did have access to that kind of power, she sure as hell wouldn’t have spent most of her life job-hopping.”

  “So your father, then,” Leroy asked.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Cameron muttered.

  He hadn’t thought about that man for a long while, and the only memory he had of him was a picture his mother had framed in their old apartment. Wolfish and gray eyes, like Cameron’s, dark-brown hair, wearing a smirk that must’ve melted his mother’s heart. Whoever he was, he was younger then. It was an unsettling thought, knowing that if he did even meet him, it’s unlikely Cameron would even recognize him. Worse, there was a chance that man didn’t even know Cameron existed.

  “What does it matter?” Cameron blurted, his voice louder and punchy.

  “It matters more than you realize. Your abilities, and all hexling abilities at-large, are derivatives of the abilities that your contractor parent has. Derivative but different.”

  Cameron narrowed his gaze. “Yeah, go on.”

  “Hexling abilities are strict. They veer on the side of being physical, as in, they often all follow a principle of being transformations that mimic an aspect of what their contractor-parent’s abilities are. Say I had a kid. Yaerzul lets me freeze liquids, and mold them freely into different forms of ice so long as I have enough water to shape it. I can’t just create a giant pillar of ice.”

  “You’ve done that before,” Cameron retorted.

  “With mist and fog, yeah. Outside, especially in Brinehaven, I benefit from the weather being as shitty as it is. Inside? I have to be smarter, more intentional. But anyways—my make-believe kid. Let’s call her Betty.”

  Cameron almost laughed. “Betty? Really?”

  Leroy glared at him. “Betty would inherit a transformation based on what Yaerzul does, more or less. Her transformation might be, I don’t know, claws. Ice claws that suck up surrounding water or liquids to expand and grow. Say I had a second daughter, we’ll call her Nancy. Nancy might have some weird set of ice spikes on her back that react to oncoming threats, and pierce them. No hexling is the same, and where a contractor and a hexling differ is the fact that the hexling’s abilities are often internal.”

  “They don’t require a source,” Cameron muttered.

  “I didn’t say that,” Leroy said firmly. “Barring a few exceptions, there are very few things in the world that we live in that don’t demand a price of admission. A one way ticket to power isn’t cheap.”

  Cameron looked at his hand. “No. It isn’t. And it doesn’t take a genius to understand what a hexling pays.”

  “Then by all means, Kessler, share it with the class,” Leroy said.

  “Our souls.”

  “You’re right and you’re wrong,” Leroy explained.

  Cameron grimaced. “How can I be both? How does that even make sense?”

  “Hexlings are a rare occurrence. Exceedingly rare, Kessler, because even among demonic contractors who’ve committed what many consider to be the ultimate taboo, there are few who would knowingly have a child. History doesn’t have that many reference points, as far as I know, but a visit to the Brinehaven College of the Arts might enlighten you more than I can. I can tell you this, though. Most hexlings die in childbirth, right next to the mother's unfortunate enough to push them out.”

  “And yet, I’m here,” Cameron muttered.

  “And yet, you’re here,” Leroy repeated. “And the question that nobody seems to be able to answer is whether or not your abilities are a product of your soul being forfeited slowly, over time, or if you even have one at all. Nobody seems to know, and every man of letters who thinks they know what’s what seems to disagree with one another. One theory is that it's being slowly eaten over time by whatever big bad is inside of you. The next guy might say that the demon exists where your soul should be, sort of like a proxy, or—"

  “A surrogate soul," Cameron muttered.

  He didn't know which was worse: the idea that his soul was slowly being devoured over the course of his life, or if everything that made him him was being steered by the hand of something else—or if that was even what having a proxy soul entailed. His head felt like it was spinning, and he was beginning to question Leroy's authenticity. Not because he didn't believe it, but because skepticism felt easier than accepting an answer that wasn't yet clear, or might not ever be clear.

  "How do you even know all of this?" Cameron asked.

  Leroy raised a single finger. “Everything I know, Kessler, is what I've had to learn over the years. Believe it or not, you're not the first hexling I've had to deal with. There were others. Meaner ones, stronger ones, and somehow, you're still luckier than all of them. "

  Cameron grimaced. "How's that?"

  Leroy tipped his hat. "Because I let you live. Look, I'm hardly the pinnacle of goddamn knowledge, but I'm the best you've got. And another thing I know, and people smarter than me know, is that hexlings who are older tend to be stronger. But we’re pressed for time, and I can’t imagine you want to wait until you’re my age to give me a proper challenge when that day comes. Plus, I need you sharp for the raid. Your usual tactic of punching things until they can't be punched won't cut it. Not this time.”

  Cameron clenched his fist. "Yeah, fine. Anything else you care to share with the class, or can we get started?"

  Leroy raised a second finger. “Hexlings, more so than even contractors themselves, have a deeper connection to whatever has laid claim over their soul... or, non-soul. For me, it’s something I acquired. For you, it’s something you were born with. Something innate—something a part of you. And the Order of the Wardens, or any demon-hunter worthy of the profession, Kessler, will tell you one thing when it comes to demons.”

  Cameron squinted. “And what’s that?”

  “You never let a demon announce itself. You kill it before it gets the chance, because if it does, your chances of death multiply ten times over. That’s where its power lies; in its pride. In its presence, and its willingness to say something that was never meant to be said in the world of the living. And inside of you, Kessler, there’s a demon who’s never had the chance to do that.”

  “Get to the point, Leroy. What is it that you are suggesting?”

  “Earlier, Kessler, I said that the men of letters are in disagreement with one another. That when it comes to having a clear answer to what makes a hexling tick, that there’s not a clear consensus. I misspoke. There is one thing. A... ritual that all hexlings seem to have access to, and a risky one at that.”

  “Nothing is without risk. If there’s anything you’ve taught me, it’s that,” Cameron stated. “This ritual. What’s it called?”

  Leroy settled his gaze onto Cameron, with a newfound graveness to his features, and weight to his tired eyes. “The Rite of the Whispered Name.”

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  GUTS

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