“License and registration.”
“Yes, sir.” Michael reached for the glove box, trying not to disturb Lenore but failing. Scabby meowed and Lenore stretched, yawning, fisting her eyes.
“Mmm?” she said.
“I don’t usually pull people over,” said the cop or narc or whatever he was. “I usually leave it to my trooper friends to haul folks like you down to the Buncombe County jail. Guess I just felt like doing them a favor this morning. No one ever passes me on that slope.”
Michael suspected there was more to it than that.
“Urau salu ka oalos,” Lenore said.
The man bent over, peering in. “Beg pardon?”
Michael felt the blood leave his face. “She doesn’t speak English, sir.”
“Brolorsor hesook!” she cried.
The man put his hand on the door latch. “Get out of the car. Both of you.”
“Uh, I don’t want to let the cat out, sir. We have to hold onto her real good. Would it be okay if maybe just I get out?”
Lenore’s voice ratcheted up another notch of gravelly rage. “Bawnur mosol ilderbeus!”
Before Michael could pull the latch, the agent wrenched on the door and hauled him out. He twisted Michael around to face the Volkswagen, holding him by the scruff of the neck with his arm crooked up behind him, as if ready to dislocate his shoulder. Scabby was too terrified to bolt for the opening; she cowered under the dashboard.
“All right, now, what do you call this shit?”
He thrust Michael’s head toward the car, letting go of Michael’s arm long enough to point at a large pentacle painted on the roof above the door.
“Well, sir, that’s a five-pointed star, just like forty-nine others you’ll find on the American flag.”
“Looks more like a pentangle to me. You know what that is? I have a feeling you do. I have a feeling you know all about pen-tangles and what you’d do with an inverted crucifix.”
Michael groaned. The cop had seized on the only symbol he recognized and interpreted it in the only terms he knew. There was no point arguing with him, but Michael couldn’t help himself. Defense of his car was habitual now, and the speed made him think for an idiot moment that he could talk his way out of this rationally.
“If you’re talking about Satanism, sir—”
“There you go! You do know, don’t you?”
“Satanism is inverted Christianity. I don’t follow Satan because I don’t follow the Christian religion, or any of the other major western faiths. Nothing against them, I just—”
“You are a fucking Satanist, aren’t you, boy?”
“Excuse me, sir, but you saw a biased TV show or heard a lecture down at headquarters from somebody who makes a living feeding your prejudice. These symbols are older than Christianity. Older than the so-called Devil, who I don’t happen to believe in anyway, sir. But if I did believe in him, that wouldn’t give you the right to hassle me. This is America! I’m guaranteed freedom of religion.”
“Freedom to perform animal sacrifices?”
“If that were part of my religion, then yeah, it should be guaranteed.”
“So what kind of animals do you sacrifice?”
“I don’t. I took a Buddhist oath not to harm any living—”
“Squirrels? Dogs? Maybe bigger animals? You think our Founding Fathers went to the wall for you so you could murder babies for the Devil?”
“They went to the wall to protect their interests in slaves and tobacco—”
“That’s the Devil talking right there!”
“Why don’t you go kiss the Devil’s big red ass?”
Oh, fuck… who said that?
The cop slammed him against the car, catching his jaw on the upper doorframe. “Fuck you, little devil-dick-sucking scum,” he grunted in his ear. “There’s been some nasty ritual-type killings in these woods lately and you’re just the type we’re looking for. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some of these same pretty pictures of yours, these big nasty circles, carved in the skin of the victims….”
Michael gasped as his arm was twisted in a way nature never intended. Lenore’s voice kept getting louder. The cop’s hands moved over his chest, into his jacket, and paused after squeezing the inner pocket, gripping something there. The Black Beauties rattled in their plastic container. Michael’s bowels turned to ice.
“Well, well. What have we here?”
“Wait,” Michael said, sounding lame even to himself.
Just then, Lenore let out her loudest cry yet. The cop scooped out the canister and simultaneously reached into the neatly pressed suit jacket for his gun. Michael, craning around, saw the gun and squirmed away, unable to hold still; he huddled down into the driver’s seat, drawing up his legs.
The man took a moment to uncap the container. Gazing down inside it, he began to grin. “Now, don’t tell me. You have a prescription for these. You’re on a diet, is that it?” He raised the gun again, aiming into the car.
“Please,” Michael begged, opening his hands in supplication. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the gun.
“Out of the car, I said. Both of you.”
Lenore’s whining and mumbling rose to a high pitch. Michael twisted around and screamed at her: “Shut up, goddamn it!”
She wasn’t aware of him. Her eyes were closed and the sounds kept pouring out and the cop was going to arrest them and God knew what would happen then. Maybe they’d already found Tucker; maybe they were already looking for this car.
He looked back and saw the gun still leveled at Lenore. The hand that held the gun was trembling and the barrel wavered, as if the cop were warring with himself. His expression was equally inexplicable—fierce but puzzled.
“Please,” Michael said, “you don’t have to use that. She’s sick. She doesn’t mean anything by it. You don’t have to threaten us.”
The cop’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a silent snarl.
The hand holding the gun began to shake harder, wavering back and forth between Lenore and Michael. The man’s other hand spasmed uncontrollably and opened wide; the container hit the asphalt with a clatter, and black capsules scattered like rain.
The man’s face was turning dark red, almost violet. His lips were drawn back in a rictus, as if he were already dead.
The gun twisted around, around. He is already dead, Michael thought. The cop fought the gun’s inexorable motion with his other hand, but then that second hand betrayed him, caressing the wrist it had formerly opposed. Both hands worked with a common aim, bringing the gun to bear on the cop’s face.
In the dim morning light of the Great Smokey pass, Michael saw a spherical squirming around the agent’s head. It beat like a heart in time to Lenore’s chanted words. The agent fought, fought, pulling his head back as the gun rose toward his lips; but at the last instant he must have surrendered completely, because he bowed his head as if in prayer, going open-mouthed to swallow the barrel.
Michael jammed back deeper into the car, pulling the door shut after him. The slam was lost in the explosion.
For an instant, a balloon of blood-mist inflated around the agent’s head; blood neatly colored in the intricate outlines of a translucent mandala, pumping the empty thing full of the man’s soul.
When he fell, the sphere lingered in space for a moment, superimposed on the shredded mists and blue-patched sky like a translucent red sun. Then it shrank upon itself and vanished, freeing Michael from his stupor.
Such was his need and determination that for a moment he checked the ground for scattered Black Beauties. Only after seeing how much blood was on them, how they floated in the spreading pool of it, did he abandon that particular hope.