The Third Shot
Chapter twenty-one
Nyomi
We hurried down the hall.
The Silent One had already disappeared around the corner.
“One thing, I know is that his ass better be okay.” Deja picked up her pace. “Or I’m shooting up everybody on this motherfucking island.”
I widened my eyes.
“Motherfucker going to show me love and then die?” Deja sucked her teeth. “I don’t fucking think so.”
“He’s going to be okay.”
Deja’s shoulders tensed. “He better be.”
A few of my guards got in front of us with their guns out.
Please, Rin. You have to be okay. What the fuck happened?
I tried to make a vision come, but the hallway stayed the hallway.
Not knowing what the hell I was doing, I tried to push harder for a vision. My pulse climbed in my temples. Pressure built behind my eyes until they ached. My jaw locked.
Come on!
My hands curled into fists at my sides and stayed there. Heat crawled up the back of my neck.
Show me what happened. Show me Rin. Show me where he is. Show me anything.
The hallway stayed a hallway.
Does he have to be in front of me? Is that the rule?
We rounded the corner and there was no Silent One in sight, just a long ass hallway.
“Girl, this place is too damned big.” Deja shifted to speed walking. “I’m close to fucking running.”
I fixed my eyes on Deja’s back and pushed for some vision.
Come on. Come on.
The edges of the hall blurred for half a heartbeat. Then they snapped back into themselves like nothing had happened.
What the fuck?
I stared at her back and tried to look past her, into wherever Rin had been left bleeding.
And a vision finally came.
I stood in a room I had never seen.
A yellow lamp was on a folding table. The plaster walls had cracks. A map was spread flat under a coffee cup holding one corner down.
Deja and Nika leaned over the map. Deja’s braids were pulled back tight, and she had on all black. Nika stood by her in a black bonnet, black hoodie, and ripped jeans.
Coiled rope lay on the table by the map.
Betty Boop sat next to the rope.
Deja tapped a building on the map with one finger. “So. . .we go in this way—”
"Girl, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Nika placed her hands in her pocket. “We should just call the cops."
"Girl, no cops are coming to save those little Black girls."
"Who the fuck do you think you are, cuz?” Nika frowned. “The Black Spider-Woman or something?"
"You wasn't complaining when I saved you from getting your ass beat."
Nika frowned. "That's low."
"Sorry."
Nika reached down and pulled up a Dora the Explorer backpack from the floor. The bright cartoon face on the worn fabric looked crazy in the context of this moment.
“Like damn, bitch. I’m just saying. You don’t have to be bringing up my business like that.” Nika unzipped the bag and pulled out two clown masks. "Anyway, I brought these masks to hide our faces."
"Bitch, we're not about to rob a bank!"
"Eh, just in case the cameras pick us up."
"That pimp don't have any fucking security cameras. Jaiden told me."
“Man, I don’t know Jaiden.” Nika tried to hand Deja one of the masks.
“First of all, where did you get those masks because I know you didn’t spend no money to get them?”
“Hell no. I pulled the masks out the dumpster behind that costume shop on—”
“Girl, if you don’t get those dirty ass masks out of my face.”
“I cleaned them.”
“I’m not wearing that.”
“Fine, then you go to jail.” Nika put the masks up.
“Alright.” Deja tapped the map again. "Look. We go in there with the gun pointed, and we say, 'Let Vicky and the other girls go, or we're putting bullets in your asses.'"
Nika swallowed. "What if they shoot first?"
Even as she asked, her hands were checking the small revolver in her hoodie pocket. Scared and steady at the same time.
"Then we have to shoot first.” Deja shrugged. “Soon as you see someone go to their gun just pull the trigger—"
"Girl, this is not Fast and Furious."
The vision let me go.
The hallway came back around me.
My feet had kept walking the whole time. That should have scared me more than it did. Deja's back was still ahead of me.
What the fuck? And why does that name Vicky sound familiar.
A headache came. Warm liquid dripped from my nose. I touched it and looked at my fingertips.
Blood.
I wiped under my nose.
I have to stop doing this until I can understand it.
The corridor kept moving past me. My guards kept their rhythm. Deja kept her shoulders tight ahead of me.
We rounded the last corner. Thank God this one was short. Even more, the Silent One waited at the end of the corridor in front of a heavy set of doors.
The hood stayed still as we approached.
Once we got to him, he swung the doors open.
The courtyard stretched wide enough to swallow the corridor's tension whole. Stone walls were on three sides with a sky cracked open above, and moonlight spilled. Weeds had split the paving stones apart in long crooked lines, and the moonlight caught the edges of each break.
The war lived at a distance.
Gunfire popped on the far side of the island in soft clipped bursts that could have been firecrackers if I didn't know better. Men's voices rose somewhere beyond the trees and folded into themselves before they reached us. Smoke drifted across the moon in slow gray ribbons.
The lanterns along the courtyard path burned low and orange under it.
Five Red Silent Ones stood in a ring at the center of the courtyard. Their robes hung still in air that should have moved them. The hoods made their faces dark wells.
The moonlight ran along the curve of each shoulder and lost itself in the folds.
Rin lay on the ground inside the ring.
Oh, fuck!
His body jolted in small hard spasms against the stones. His fingers had curled in on themselves like he was trying to hold a shape only he could see. Thin dark lines of blood ran from the corner of his mouth to his jaw.
Deja made a sound I hadn't heard her make before. “Baby. . .”
Rin's hand twitched against the stones as if he heard Deja and was trying to reach out to her.
Deja rushed forward.
“Stay there.” One Silent One stepped out of the circle and pulled the hood down.
I saw her face.
The Death Guardian.
She stepped out of the ring with a knife in her gloved hand. “Before you come over to him, you will need to make two decisions.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Deja's hand moved to Betty Boop at her hip but didn't pull it out. “And what’s wrong with Rin?”
I got to Deja’s side. “She’s a friend too.”
“I don’t know these people.” Deja sneered at the Death Guardian. “And why does she have a knife? We have to get Rin in the hospital.”
“Put that little gun up. We don’t have time for this.” The Death Guardian walked our way through a column of moonlight. The silver blade shimmered. "We need your blood, and a sacrifice.”
“Girl, I don’t know who you are, but you better get out of my way, talking about a sacrifice.” Deja tried to go past her and go to Rin.
The Death Guardian moved into her path without rushing. “Do you want to heal him?”
“Of course.”
“Then, listen. We don’t have much time—”
"What happened to him?”
“Yoichi saved Rin and then gave him. . .something to help him heal. However, something old always needs something new.”
Horror covered Deja’s face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The Death Guardian’s voice lowered and she said the oddest thing. “Mrs. Loretta, your apple trees are always so big and full. What do you feed them?”
Deja gasped and inched back.
“I just feed them with bad men, Eartha.”
Deja shivered. “What the hell?”
“Do you remember that day when your grandmother’s neighbor asked and your grandmother said that and laughed?”
“Y-yes.”
“And you were so scared.” The Death Guardian gave her a sad smile.
“But your grandmother held all that confidence and from that day on you knew that the women in your family were strong. No police ever came about all those bodies under the apple tree. But, the apples kept coming every season bigger and juicier each time. And although you couldn’t eat the apple pies like everyone else in the family.
. .you knew that one should trust their hearts before they trust what they see in front of them. ”
“W-who are you?”
The Death Guardian’s voice went low. "We need your blood."
Deja's hands shook. "O-kay."
“And you will need to make another decision.”
“What is it?”
The Death Guardian turned her hooded face to me. "You should leave."
"I'm not going anywhere." I took a step forward. “Deja doesn’t need to sacrifice. No more. . .babies—”
“Tora, don’t worry. This will be different—”
“I’m not leaving Deja’s side—”
"They will need their privacy when he returns."
Privacy?
My mind went sideways for one full breath.
Is this about to get sexual or something?
I let out a long sigh. “Deja, I’ll be in the hallway.”
Deja nodded. “Okay.”
“Thank you, Tora.” The Death Guardian nodded. "Also. . .when the Dragon returns. . .please let him know that Yoichi must rest for thirty days before returning."
I trembled. "But. . .Yoichi is okay?"
"Yes, Tora."
"And Rin will be fine?"
"Yes. Goodnight, Tora."
That goodnight shut the door on my further participation.
“Follow me, Deja.” The Death Guardian turned and walked back toward the ring without waiting to see if I'd obey her.
Deja followed her.
Another Silent One came out of the shadows of the courtyard. “This way, Tora.”
Damn it. What’s Deja’s sacrifice?
I turned and headed off.
My guards moved with me.
Bamboo rustled within the distant sounds of the war.
I looked over my shoulder one more time.
The Red Silent Ones parted just enough.
Deja stepped into the ring. The moonlight made her face glow on one side.
She looked back at me once across the stones. Her eyes were wet. She wasn't crying, but she was holding those tears.
I held her look.
It’s going to be okay, Deja.
She turned to Rin on the ground.
The Silent Ones closed around her.
I turned my gaze back to the front.
My guard opened the door.
I stepped back into the building, and it was right then that I remembered why that Vicky name sounded familiar.
Wait a minute. Vicky Jamison. That’s the little girl.
I had done an interview years ago with this officer in a precinct that smelled like burnt coffee. He'd been telling me about an empty commercial building in Brooklyn where they'd found a pimp dead on the floor.
His name had been Dorian. Two shots had killed him. One in the crotch. One in the forehead.
The officer had said it like he was a little impressed.
I hadn’t really cared about the whole murder even though the police were on top of it.
The trafficking ring had been the actual story. This Dorian had been hired by some powerful men to move Black girls out of New York through the sewer system to outlets in other cities.
The officer had walked me through the maps and the names of the girls they'd found.
And one name had stayed with me long after the story ran.
Vicky Jamison. Ten years old.
So excited to get this out to the public, I had brought the story to my paper. My editor had said it wasn't important enough.
Later, I had pitched it to three more outlets before someone finally ran it. I'd taken the byline at a tenth of what the original paper would have paid, just to get the names out where someone could read them.
However, the next day. . .that outlet went bankrupt and was closed. Some powerful men had made some calls to get it shut down.
I spent months trying to discover who. . .but nothing ever came up except dead witnesses and empty buildings.
They’d covered everything up.
But, at least Deja killed the pimp helping them. Fuck. . .that was the third Betty Boop shooting.