Hate Machine by Stephen Blackmoore

Author:Stephen Blackmoore [Blackmoore, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000 Fiction / General
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
Published: 2022-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

To say I knock on Nicole’s door would imply a level of civility I’m not feeling. I damn near blow it off its hinges with a spell before she finally opens it. I shove my way past her into the foyer with its dust-covered piano.

“Hello to you, too,” she says.

“Can Jimmy see you?”

“He sees just fine.”

“That’s not what I meant and you fucking know it. Can he see you?” A silence that draws out just a beat too long.

“Sort of,” she says.

“I am done with cryptic bullshit. The fuck does that mean?”

“If I weren’t his Keeper, no, he wouldn’t be able to see me. As it stands I’m . . . a little blurry.”

“Blurry.”

“He can sort of see the shape of my future and events, but not very well.”

“Anything else you want to tell me about?”

“No,” she says. “I swear. I’m not—”

“He also can’t affect you with his powers.”

“Goddammit. No, he can’t. Not as much as with most people. And if I’m directly involved in a situation—”

“He loses all visibility to it, period.”

“Not entirely. Like I said, I’m blurry. How do you know all this?” she says.

“A better question is how come you didn’t tell me about it? This is why we weren’t affected by the reality quake last night, isn’t it?”

“Probably, yeah,” she says. “Eric, I hadn’t seen you in almost thirty years and we spent most of last night escaping a burning casino and fighting a spray-foam golem. When the fuck was I going to tell you?”

“Are you in on this? Is this whole thing bullshit?”

“What? No.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” I say. “Convince me you’re not working with Jimmy.”

“Or what?”

“I’m leaning toward beating you to death, but a bullet to the head’s a good option, too.”

“Finish what you started thirty years ago?” she says. “Go ahead. You’ll just speed up the inevitable. I’m already dying.”

“Welcome to the club. We all are.”

“Fuck you, Eric. This is lung cancer. It’s been in remission since the night we made Jimmy. Now it’s exploded. If I don’t find him soon, I’m fucked.”

Now that I know what to look for, I can see it through Mictlantecuhtli’s sight. Tumors in her lungs, down her intestines, liver, stomach. It’s eating away at her bones, carving divots out of her spine. Most people I’d wonder how they’re even walking around, but she’s a mage and we can be stupidly difficult to put down. Then the vision fades.

“Shit. Fine. You have lung cancer. So fucking what?”

“You think I’d be okay with this death sentence if I was working with Jimmy?” she says.

I want this to be simple. I hate this town. I hate these people. I want someone to blame so I can beat the shit out of them and call it a day.

“No,” I say. “You’re too much of a narcissist to do that.”

“And fuck you too. Eric, I need to find Jimmy. I’ve only got a few months left.” It’s more like a couple weeks, but she doesn’t need to know that.

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