“It’s not just that. If you go in there and kill Mictlantecuhtli you’re screwed.”
“This is, what, the thousandth time you’ve told me this? Here’s the thing. I don’t believe you. I think you’re trying to keep me from killing him because, well, he’s you. So I’m going to ignore that advice, like I’ve been doing, and go carve out his heart. Maybe I’ll eat it. You never know. I’m wacky that way.”
“So you’re siding with Santa Muerte, then.”
“No, I’m not. This is not an either or thing. I’m going to kill her, too. In fact, I’m not just going to kill her, I’m going to kill her really, really hard. I’m going to tear those bones apart and build a hamster wheel or maybe an end table out of them. Then I’ll feed the leftovers to dogs. I think she’d appreciate that, don’t you?”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic about this,” Alex says, an offended tone in his voice.
“You keep trying to warn me away from this and it never works. You’re not keeping me from going in there. I’m not getting any sleep. Neither one of us is getting what we want right now. So let’s just end this. Cut the cord. Don’t bug me, anymore. Pretty soon you’ll either be out of my head or I’ll be dead. Either way, I win.”
“No,” he says, “you won’t. Because when you go in there, your body turning to stone, he’ll kick your ass before you can kill him. Then you’re stuck. Awake, aware and encased in jade for all eternity. I’m sure you’ll just love it.”
“I know what I’m getting into. But thanks for your concern, mom. It’s really touching.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“And you’re just a chunk of bad memories stuck in my skull. I’m really looking forward to getting rid of you.”
“Everything fine here, gents?” Darius looms over the table, two tumblers of amber liquid in his meaty palms. He sets them down on the table in front of us. “Heard me some raised voice over here. Thought, now that’s not a way for good folks to conduct themselves in my establishment. So I thought I’d help smooth out the road. Drink up, take the conversation down a notch.”
We both stare at him. “Are you making this happen?” I say.
“Not me,” Alex says.
I’ve had plenty of these visions by now. Mostly with Mictlantecuhtli until I managed to block him out completely, and now with this leftover bit of his consciousness. But they’ve never had anyone else in them. It’s always been me and him. That’s it. When something has happened, a blown tire, a light bulb exploding, something that interrupts the conversation, it’s been a signal that the vision is about to end.
But this one doesn’t seem to be ending.
I sniff at the alcohol. Like the real Darius’s drinks it’s a weird concoction I can’t identify. The real deal tastes like a hundred different things inside of ten seconds and all of them will be good.
I don’t know that I trust this, though, so I don’t drink it.
“Oh, don’t look so surprised, gentlemen,” Darius says. “I may be locked away and buried way up in the land of liquid sunshine, but that don’t mean I can’t put myself out there from time to time.”
Holy shit. Now I get it. “Butthead over here didn’t pick this place, did he?” I say.
“He might have been . . . influenced a bit.”
“What are you talking about?” Alex says. “I—” He freezes, cracks crawling across his face and down his body like crazing on pottery. He explodes into fragments the size of sand grains and blows away on an unfelt wind.
“Ah,” Darius says, as if he’s just had the most satisfying shit of his life. “That’s so much better.” He slides into Alex’s empty seat. He’s a big man but moves with surprising grace. “How you live with that garbage in your head I have no idea.”
He gives me a big smile with too many bright, white teeth. “You and me, son, we need to have ourselves a conversation.”
“So it really is you?” I ask.
“You got no way to tell for sure, so you’ll have to trust me. Or not. Up to you.”
“You certainly sound like Darius. Only I thought I was persona non grata in your bar.”
“You are. This isn’t my bar. It’s your dream. It just happens to be your dream of my bar. So it works. I’ve been waiting for you or that chunk of Aztec dickcheese floating inside your head to have this dream for months now. Finally realized I had to take matters into my own hands. Think of it as your dream with a little help.”
“Okay. How? I mean, magic, obviously. But how’d you get a spell into Mictlan?” There’s a lot I don’t know about magic, that nobody knows about magic. The best we can really say is, “because it works.” I haven’t heard of any human mages figuring out how to cast in one plane and directly affect another beyond summoning spells. When I’m over in the ghost side of things nothing I do affects the living side and vice versa. Not that that means a whole lot. One thing mages are really good at is keeping our secrets.
“Son, when I say I’m from the old country I mean the really old country. I’m some grade-A, antediluvian shit over here. I know a thing or two about bending cosmic powers to my will.”