Antone’s Place, Part 1
by Martin H Slusser

Jahn Bellevue slid deeper into the soft comfort of his chair. It whispered soothing tones and the thin sounds of sea gulls. Despite the heater blasting through the room and the sun beating down on the solar panels, he was chilled to the bone by the cold eyes of Tommy Drobnicki.

“You remember him?” Tommy’s voice was softer than the form-hugging chair and colder than the bite of wind that smashed paper and trash down the street.

Jahn gave a stiff nod, glancing away from Tommy to the picture under Tommy’s fingertips and pointed nails.

“Yeah. The, ah, Harvesters got him.”

Scars from Anna’s knife stood in sharp, scarlet relief against the pale skin. Tommy’s eyes hardened, and Jahn’s bladder began to leak. Tommy drew a hood over his face.

“You’re certain?”

“I . . . Yeah.” Jahn’s head bobbed in a sharp nod. “They never miss.”

Tommy smiled, but Jahn wasn’t assured. He wore the robes of priesthood openly, a dark charcoal gray with occult marks used as a scarlet trim about the hood, the narrow cuffs and bottom. Deep under the hood, Tommy’s eyes burned with a fanatic’s hatred; their color almost matching the scarlet trim. A musty, bitter odor of datura drifted from the man.

“They’re first-class screw-ups, and we both know that.” The picture slowly tore under Tommy’s fingers. “Make certain. We have Hunters on his trail and more in the offices of the Janissary Project. Both claim he’s still in the city and still alive.”

Watching what the sharp nails were doing to the picture and knowing his face could be next, Jahn again nodded.

“Yeah. I mean, I will. But word is, my boys in the Harvesters nailed him.”

Tommy slid up, out of the chair with a confetti of paper sprinkling from his hand. He left as he came, in silence moving out the door and was gone into the dark halls and damp night.

Eventually, Jahn ceased shuddering and leaned back, cursing Tommy and his own involvement in the coven. When Anna Grey killed old man Grey to protect her son, Benny, he was one of those that witnessed it. She attacked Tommy first, slashing him with the butcher knife until he ran off. Then old man Grey tried to thrust the skean-dubh knife into Benny’s chest, only to kill Benny’s father. And that crazy redskin dink stabbed her father-in-law in the heart.

The snap of steel breaking in Grey’s chest still made him wince. The look of shock on the wrinkled face, the eyes staring through a fine sifting of new snow.

The chair warmed Jahn, calming a fear-based anger. He let it do what it was meant to and reminded himself just why he was involved. Leaning forward, he smiled, a warm and genuine grin that took in the entire office.

Power. From the black oak desk under his hands down to the welfare bums that were contracted to him, it was all about power and by way of the coven he had risen far. He ran, too. Unlike Tommy, he was too young to do any real time. When he was in he used the time, working hard to earn degrees, not sitting in a cell seething with hate and praying to Satan.

“Damned stupid hick,” he muttered, flicking a piece of the picture from the desk. The paper moved, but instead of sinking away to the floor and the tiny machines that cleaned the Hindutva rug, it rose in the air to move back to the desk’s top.

His fax machine chattered. A page slid out with Benny’s picture on it. All but for one small hole. With trembling hands, Jahn reached out, took the piece of paper and lay it in the hole.

Jahn shuddered clear down to his silk socks and genuine crocodile shoes.

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