The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Man from Lemuria

Previously: "Focus Pocus" 

"Lemuria?" you echo. "What's that?"

The stranger—Dee, did he call himself?—snorts. "What's that, the guy asks," he mutters with a curling lip. "Which one of you is in charge?"

You flush, but Sydney jumps in before you can retort.

"Look," she says, "maybe we should start over, talk about what we're doing, why we're both looking for ley lines."

"Awesome." Dee cups his hands behind his ears and leans forward with a bright, expectant smile.

"You first," you say.

He rolls his eyes and drops his hands to the table.

"Fine. I'm trying to get home, and that means—obviously—either finding a ley line with the right harmonic resonances, or tracking down the crystal keys of the ten star-kings. As I've no desire to get in a fistfight with a mummy—"

Abruptly he cuts off and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Look, am I boring you with all this?"

"Not at all," Sydney says.

"Hrmph. Well the point is—"

"How can a ley line get you home?" you interrupt. "And where is—?"

"Look, you want the math? By the way, which one of you is it, exactly, who found those toys you were playing with?"

"They're mine," Sydney says after a fractional hesitation.

Dee's eyes glint. "Interesting. So, before I get any deeper into it—" He tosses you a sidelong glower. "Can either of you interpret a differentiated monad? No? Okay, then to dumb it down a little—"

He crosses his arms and tilts his chin.

"So you know how aircraft carriers have slingshots, for shooting jet fighters into the air? Well, if you knew anything about ley lines—" Again, he casts a contemptuous glance at you. "You'd know a ley line's like that. Except it can sling-shot people and things from one spot on the material torus to another. Provided," he adds, "you've done the math correctly."

Sydney smiles. "I'd love to see the math."

"For you, adorable, anything. Just scare me up a pencil and some paper."

* * * * *

Sydney fetches writing material from the barista, and Dee blithely chatters away as he scrawls out a lot of complex equations. You quickly give up on trying to follow any of his explanations, but you can tell by her expression that Sydney is impressed by what he's showing her. She is very pale by the time he's finished, and there's a quaver in her voice as she asks if she can take the paper home with her.

"Sure," Dee says. "Though I'd like to know what you think you're gonna do with it."

Sydney hesitates. "I've got some notes at home I want to compare it to."

Dee grins. "Double-checking that I know what I'm talking about? I know more than whatever you'd be using to check up on me." He cocks his head. "What have you got at home?"

"Just some notes."

He shakes his head. "Tch. And here I've been so generous with what I know. You guys, though, ain't told me shit about yourselves." He crosses his arms.

"It's just some old notebooks my dad left behind," Sydney says. "He died—"

"Died?" Dee's glance sharpens. "How?"

Again, she hesitates. You tense. "Traffic accident," she says.

"Yeah?" Dee's eyebrows go up. "What kind?"

"Just an accident."

"You sure?" He raises a finger. "I'm going to say one word, just word," he tells Sydney, "and I want you to look me in the eye as I say it. Ready?" He shows the tip of his tongue, then says, "Aureax."

Sydney almost comes out of her chair. "What did you say?" she squeaks.

"You heard me, and your guess about why I threw that word into the conversational stew pot will be at least as good as the guess I made in picking it." Dee turns to you. "And what's your interest in all this, champ?" Despite the derisive address, his tone is very sober.

"Me?" You feel yourself impaled on his glittering glance. "I'm just helping Sydney out."

He looks between the two of you, and sucks in his cheeks.

"Okay, so I've told you what I particularly want the ley line for," he says. "Now how about you tell me what you want it particularly for."

Sydney huddles in her seat, and winces. "It's personal," she says.

"That word I hurled at you a moment ago. Is it part of this personal business?"

She swallows. "Maybe."

"Does someone need his ass kicked?"

"Maybe." She hunches under his stare.

Dee drains his coffee and sets the cup down with a bang.

"How much of him do you want left?" he asks. "You want his skull on a pole, or do you want the world scrubbed so clean of his stink that not even his mother will remember he'd ever been born?"

Sydney glares at him from under her brows. "Tough guy," she sneers.

"It's why I'm here."

A sudden fire flares behind his eyes, and his voice rings out harshly, like struck bronze, as he turns his face to the ceiling.

"Only to the gods bow the Fourteen Families of Mu," he cries, "even for the crime of king-slaying." He shows you his palms. "Stained are these with the blood of monarchs, and by my will is the royal tribe of Ur-Belza no more. Yet the Altar of Erregelu refused to drink my gore, though I was stretched naked over it and the prayers of the high priests rose like red smoke into the sky. Banished thereupon was I, that I might trouble innocent Lemuria nevermore."

Red streaks show in his forehead and cheeks, and his teeth flash.

"But this exile will I break, I swear, and Lemuria will again shiver beneath my gaze. Then will I make of Mu a charnel house, and my foes will I break beneath the wheels of my chariot. The feathered crown of Jainko-Er-Jabea will burn upon my brow, and the sky will I blot with the sacrificial smoke of those who worship me not. Tough guy?" he barks, and he pinches a sugar packet between his fingers.

"I beg you to show me him whom you would hurt," he says, "that I might know ere its time the taste of the blood I mean to spill."

A thin stream of smoke geysers from the corner of the sugar packet.

Then it bursts into flames.

* * * * *

Well, that puts a punctuation mark on the evening, and your little party breaks up shortly thereafter. Sydney has no answer for Dee, and with grim insolence he informs her that he can find plenty of people to help him with the ley line, but that she won't be able to find anyone like him for the help she needs.

You are both silent on the drive back to her place, and she only says that she wants to think about things. You, of course, have no idea what to think after that display with the sugar packet. Until that point you were inclined to think Dee a blowhard; now you're afraid partnering with him might be like partnering with a sociopathic mass murderer.

But you're the one who runs into him again, the next day.

You had to help your dad with an errand in the morning, and then together you stopped at Paris Baguette to get a bite and some food to take home to your mom and brother. It was while you were eating that you looked up and saw Dee sauntering in through the door. He ignored you, though, even after pulling off his sunglasses and swaggering to the front counter. He ate in a corner, staring out the window, and for all the world acted like he's never seen you.

While your dad's in the restroom, you seize the chance to go over and talk.

"Glad you finally made it over, champ," he says. "I was starting to think you were chickenshit."

You flush. "I'm with my dad."

"Tell 'im you got business with me. I'll take you home when we're done."

You hesitate, then nod. Your dad looks startled when you catch him outside the restroom door, to say you ran into someone you know and you want to hang out with him, but he nods goes off without you.

"Try not to look so much like a gutted fish," Dee says when you're sitting across from him. "I won't set you on fire." He pops a last crust of bread into his mouth and brushes his fingers on his shirt. "I just wanna talk about you and the girl. You say you're helping her?" His lip curls when you nod. "Well, tell her she wants my help. I'm not gonna get between you two. She looks great even outside a royal harness, but I get plenty of chances to entertain myself. Anyway, if I help you, then you'll help me, and then you'll be rid of me. Right?"

You don't know the diplomatic answer to that; luckily, he doesn't seem to want an answer. "What does she want, exactly?" he asks.

"I don't know," you confess. "She's never told me."

"What do you know about her?"

"I know she's from Kansas City. And I know her dad died in a car wreck," you hurriedly add when Dee glowers at you. "I don't know anything else. Oh, except that he was the one who was, uh, into this stuff, and she found out about it after he died."

"You don't know who she wants to get back at? Who killed him?"

"I don't know that anyone killed him, she told me it was an accident."

"Yeah, well, she gave the game away last night, after I made a couple of shrewd guesses. Someone used stuff like you guys are playing with to kill her dad, and she's got a burr up her ass about getting back at him."

"What are you saying?" you stammer.

"Am I speaking English?" he retorts. "Someone killed her dad, and she wants the killer's guts on a platter."

He spears you with a keen glance. "Will you go that far to help her? Or do you want to turn things over to me? Because I'll crucify the asshole, and I'll get a hard-on while doing it."

* To bow out of this business: "Yielding the Floor, Before You're Mopped With It" 
* To protect Sydney from this guy: "The Story with Sydney" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"