Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,23

going through the Council to reach each other if we can help it, so when Riley wants to get at me, he usually sends one of the wandering lost souls that zip here and there through Brooklyn looking for something to do.

“It’s cool,” I say. “I was around the corner at Esther’s. Whatchu got?”

“Had soulcatcher patrols movin’ up and down the block for the past day or two. One of ’em just saw an unusual-looking character streak past, and by streak I do mean streak, and disappear into this building. He called for backup like a good little newbie, and here we are.”

“Thing is?”

“Thing is, then he went in after it and hasn’t been heard from since.”

“I see.” Ghostly forms swirl around us in a controlled frenzy. The Council soulcatchers wear thick, shimmering helmets shaped more or less like horseshoe crabs without the pointy tail. Their bodies and faces are hidden beneath flowing robes. Overall, they cut an imposing image, but today their nervous energy fills the air till it’s almost hard to breathe. I wonder if the living folks around pick up on all this disturbance.

Suddenly Dro’s beside us, panting. “What’d I miss?”

Riley runs it down for him, and we walk to the building—an old brick four-story on Bergen between a clinic and an abandoned car lot. Behind us, the soulcatchers fall into position. I feel their swarthy ferocity carry me forward like a gust of wind. They’re ready to die the final death to help their brother. They’re furious and determined and afraid.

I walk into the dingy hallway and draw my blade. At a signal from Riley, the soulcatchers flood around us in a torrent, burst up the stairwell and into the various apartments. They howl as they rush forward, a desperate and bone-chilling battle cry that never fails to unsettle me.

I nod toward the basement, and Riley draws his own blade, a shimmering shadow in the dim hallway. We walk forward side by side, and I feel the long night of confusion blow off me in the fevered charge of the moment. Riley is the most ferocious motherfucker I know. Something sinister and freakish awaits us. Whatever it is threatens not just him and me, but this whole neighborhood, Mama Esther, and possibly the entire natural order of the afterlife. Everything else becomes blissfully petty in the face of all that. No wonder Riley seems to have gotten his swagger back too.

I open the door slowly, hear nothing, sense nothing from below and sidestep, blade first, down the basement stairs. It’s dark as fuck, but the ickiness hangs in the air like a chemical cloud. From out of the emptiness, someone yells. It’s a living human yell, at once terrified and triumphant. The urgent shriek of someone who has absolutely lost his mind. Beneath it all, there’s another voice, a softer one, blubbering and whimpering.

I flinch and then flail for a dangling light chain. The voice is sobbing now, sobbing and gurgling, and that thickness in the air keeps getting thicker. I finally swat the chain and then catch it in my hand and pull. It takes a second to sort through the tangled tableau in front of me. The naked man stands on top of something, lifting one pale foot and then the other. He’s hunched forward like he’s about to pounce, and his mouth opens and closes around a series of shouts, sobs, and cackles. A black tangle of greasy hair hangs down over his face and shoulders. His long arms stretch to either side; one hand is wrapped around the face of a soulcatcher, who’s hovering there miserably. Then I realize that the thing the naked man is standing on is actually a person—the one who’d been doing the whimpering. A very tall person. “Moishe!” I say, more out of sheer surprise than anything else.

“Mr. Delacruz,” Moishe whimpers. “Please . . .”

Soulcatchers flush down the stairs and form a circle around where the naked man is howling. In about five seconds, Riley will give the signal and they will burst forward like a single death-dealing machine and end this whole horrible situation. Just before they do though, the naked man gets eerily quiet and turns to me. His beady little eyes glare out from the squinched-up gray face, and instead of the fermenting hysteria of a madman, I see something much worse: intelligence. He seems somehow familiar, a junky I’ve bumped into a few times around the way, I think. The guy smiles, a