Still, the fact that Papa Danwe was blocking my efforts at communication made me even more determined to succeed. I needed to talk to Jamal. He obviously had something important to say, something the Haitian didn't want me to find out.
Well, if you can't bring Mohammed to the mountain, bring the mountain to Mohammed. That's not a spell formula, just a saying that came to mind. If I couldn't reach Jamal in the Beyond, maybe I could bring him to me.
It was a little after two in the morning, and I still had time. I went down to the garage and put my toolbox and several cans of spray paint in the trunk of my car. Then I drove to Crenshaw, back to Jamal's apartment.
When I got to his door, I juiced the lock and let myself in. Anton had removed the corpse as ordered. The small apartment was empty and quiet. I set the toolbox on the floor beside the bondage rack and went to work.
The rack was really just two fitted timbers bolted together to form an X. I unbolted and separated them, laying them on the floor side by side. I closed up the toolbox and ran it down to the car, then returned for the first of the timbers. The beams were heavy, but I was able to get them down to the car, one at a time, using a little juice. With the top of the convertible down, they fit in the backseat, more or less. It was something to cling to the next time some prick in a Prius smirked at my vintage Motown gas-guzzler.
I went back to the apartment and stuffed some things from Jamal's closet into a duffel bag. On the way out, I grabbed the stapler Anton had used with the magazine cover to protect Jamal's modesty. I went down to my car and drove to the playground where I'd talked to his crew.
There was no one on the playground at that hour, even in Crenshaw. The security lights had likely been broken within hours of being installed, and the concrete was lit only by a feeble moon and the ambient orange glow of the sleeping city.
I hauled the timbers out to midcourt and reassembled the bondage rack. I'd packed some of Jamal's clothes in the duffel bag, and I took them out and stapled them to the rack. There was a Lakers jersey, jeans and a pair of Nikes. Next, I went to work with the spray paint.
The tags Jamal had laid down all over the playground were designed to tap the juice of the place. There was a fair amount of it, and Jamal had done good work. I'd be able to get plenty of power, and best of all, in a way it would be Jamal's juice I was flowing. I just needed to hook up his tags to the ritual I was building.
I used the spray paint to lay down a circle around the bondage rack. When the circle was complete, I grabbed a detailer out of the toolbox and began stenciling symbols into the painted line of the circle and the wood of the bondage rack. Ordinarily I'm not really into symbol work, but in this case I was just copying Jamal's tags, in miniature. When I was finished, I scrounged up some broken boards and garbage and built a fire in front of the rack. Once the fire was blazing, I stripped off my clothes and started dancing naked around the circle.
It was a little pagan, more than a little ridiculous, and not the way I usually roll, but sometimes the oldest magic requires the oldest methods. The fire and the nude dancing would attract spirits. Jamal's tags, the rack and the clothes stapled to it would ensure that the ritual called more loudly to Jamal than to anything else out there in the Beyond.
If the summoning ritual was successful, Jamal's shade would be pulled out of the Beyond to fill his clothes and be bound to the rack. Once bound, I was pretty sure I could hold him there long enough to find out who killed him, and why. Even Papa Danwe wouldn't be able to stop me. At least, not before I got what I needed.
I started chanting as I danced naked around the summoning circle. For hard-core necromantic work, you can't beat Lovecraft. "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die," I chanted, over and over. I chanted quietly. If anyone saw me doing this shit, I'd never live it down.
I tapped Jamal's tags and started flowing juice into the ritual. The symbols stenciled into the paint and the wood began to glow orange, matching the dancing light of the fire. The juice flowed around the circle and into the rack, then punched through into the Beyond.
It started to pull. A cold wind blew in from nowhere, and Jamal's shirt and pants began to swell, filling out. A hazy, insubstantial form began to take shape.
Then a huge dog, like hell's own mastiff, burst out of the fire and crashed into me. I went down under the weight of the beast and tumbled onto the rough concrete. The surface did cruel things to my naked body, but I barely noticed. I was too busy trying to keep the creature's massive jaws away from my throat.
The beast loomed over me, pressing me down into the court. Then it lifted its head and howled. The sound sent goose bumps percolating across my bruised and bleeding skin. An answering howl split the night, then another, and another.
"Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly," I said, spinning a close-combat spell in my mind.
Nothing happened.
"That's bad," I said.
My summoning spell was still active. It shouldn't have been, but it was drawing all the juice I could flow into the circle, into the Beyond. Unless I could flow some juice into a new spell, I'd just be babbling stupid quotations while the dog ate me. I triggered the repulsion spell in my pinkie ring, but I'd drained all the juice from it when I hit the Vampire Fred.
I cursed and struggled, trying to beat the mastiff down with my fists, but it was pinning my arms to the cracked concrete. Its jaws were wide, drool spattered my face, and its breath smelled like the worm-ridden intestinal tract of a moldering corpse. Maybe even worse. I got one arm free and slammed it into the beast's jaws as it went for my throat again.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another of the creatures slouching through the shadows on the other side of the playground.
With my left forearm still in the creature's mouth, I grabbed an ear with my right hand and pressed my thumb into its eye. I pressed hard, and tried to put a little juice into it. I didn't have enough to power a spell, but I thought, maybe…
The beast's eye exploded. Raw magic, pulsing bloodred, sprayed from the wound, spattering the side of my face. I pushed against the creature and it leaped away, howling.
I heard a low growl and turned in time to get my arm up as another creature lunged at me. I was trying for a kind of stiff-arm move, but it probably looked like I was cowering and trying to shield my head from the thing's gaping jaws. Again, I fought to divert some juice from the summoning spell into the blow.
My arm thrust into the creature's chest, pushing all the way through it and out its back. The beast's momentum carried it into me and we went down.
I didn't have to push this one off of me, because the creature was disintegrating. Writhing, crimson energy burned away its flesh as it howled, and in seconds it was nothing but a smoking grease spot on the court. Tendrils of smoke curled from the concrete and were pulled toward the circle, into the fire, vanishing in the flames. I felt that cold wind on my skin again, and now it seemed to be pulled from every direction at once into the center of my summoning circle.
I raised myself to one knee and looked for the next attacker. The creature I had wounded was circling the battle warily, looking for an opening with its remaining eye and brushing at the other with a massive, taloned paw. The other two beasts were preparing to eat me.
They came at me from opposite directions, crouching low and baring fangs the length of my hand. There was no way I could keep both of them off me. I still couldn't grab enough juice to spin a spell.
I was screwed.
I had just enough time to fumble my gun out of the shoulder holster and squeeze off a wild shot as the creatures pounced. The shot missed.
The beasts hurtled through the air toward me, and then seemed to stretch out in midflight, their squat, powerful bodies pulled into impossibly elongated shapes. They sailed over my head, yelping in frustration, and incandescent red energy began to devour them as they were pulled into the circle. A moment later, what was left of their bodies vanished into the flames.