Taliesin

“It could be halfway across Maryland by now.”

“I shot it twice before it escaped.”

“Might slow it down,” Zane replies.

Zane Hawke had been the first agent for the Extraordinary Bureau of Investigation (E.B.I.) to arrive on the scene. At fifty-seven, the stocky, unsmiling former Navy SEAL has seen atrocities that have driven other men insane, making him ideal for tracking aliens, demons, and dangerous mythological creatures that threaten humanity.

What Zane has seen so far isn’t encouraging. He runs his hand over his bristly crewcut, thinking about solutions to remedy the situation.

A ten-car pile-up on I-95 has traffic backed up for four miles. Angry and confused motorists stand by their vehicles, demanding explanations from tight-lipped State Police Officers cordoning off the scene. The accident occurred when a Kasha being transported from the E.B.I. office in Hastings, Virginia, to their headquarters in Washington, D.C., escaped.

“How did it happen?”

Driver Remi Ryder rubs his bruised jaw, blinking sporadically because of his swollen eye.

“Poke Hill and Chip Dale were in the back of the van…”

“Only two guards?” Zane asks.

“Budget cuts… We pulled off the highway so Chip could relieve himself. Poke noticed the creature was wearing a St. Catherine Medal. He’s always been a loudmouth and a wise guy. He thought it was sacrilege for the Kasha to be wearing the medal, so he took it from it.”

“Kashas are reasonable creatures. But they’ll kill anyone who takes their Taliesin.”

“What’s a Taliesin?”

“A sacred charm, like a cross, pendant, a coin, a four-leaf clover…”

“…Or a St. Catherine Medal…,” Remi says, the color draining from his face. “The Kasha screamed at Poke to give the medal back. Poke got out and threw the medal across the highway. The next thing I knew, the creature had broken free from its chains. Then Poke screamed. It tore him and Chip apart!”

Zane glances at the blood and gore seeping from the van.

Remi begins to whimper. “I grabbed my gun and came around the back of the van. There it was, eight feet tall, with its wings spread. I shot it twice in the belly, but it kept coming. We fought. I latched onto one of its wings. I think I damaged it. It tried to fly but couldn’t. It screamed and brushed me aside like I was made of paper.”

Looming over Remi, Zane grabs him by his shoulders, shaking him.

“Pull yourself together, Ryder. You’re with the E.B.I. Which way did it go when it escaped?”

“It ran across the highway, which is what caused the pile-up. Then it headed east into the woods.”

Zane barks orders into his radio. “Team A, cover the woods east leading to the town of Fortune. Team B, southeast, leading to Herndon.”

“I couldn’t stop it. It’s my fault.”

“You’re the only human I’ve ever met who fought the creature and lived,” Zane says gruffly. “A Kasha transforms into its true appearance when it's about to strike. They kill us for food, and they kill anyone who takes their Taliesin. They believe objects they bless and designate as their Taliesin can protect them.”

“You said ‘they.’ I thought there was only one of them.”

“They’ve been here before. A hunting party came here in 1898. They killed everyone in the town of Torrence, over five hundred people. The town was raised, and the story was buried. This one is here by accident. The Kasha’s ship crashed deep in the woods near Salas, killing eight of the crew. Two of them survived. One was badly hurt. We found out the hard way that they can transfer into another body. When the wounded Kasha was being treated, it jumped into the body of Ian Hunter, our lead researcher…Realizing what was happening, Hunter killed himself before the Kasha could completely take over his body.”

A red-haired E.B.I. agent with a worried look moves toward them. “People are asking questions, Zane. A few of them have said they saw the creature running across the highway…”

“All right, Rusty, let’s clean up this mess. Everyone who saw the creature gets an amnesia pill, understand? Make it clear to them that they can get ten grand if they take the pill. That goes for the local boys in blue as well. Tell them that if they don’t comply, they’ll get nothing, and we’ll shove the pill down their throats anyway.”

Zane’s radio sounds off. He listens carefully to the message.

“We’ve got it cornered in a cave.”

***

Half a dozen E.B.I. agents close in on the cave.

Inside, the Kasha breathes heavily, watching its clear life’s blood pouring from its scaly body.

It chants in its native tongue, summoning the strength and courage to charge the agents.

It’s distracted by the sound of another creature’s gentle mewing.

A light brown tabby cat pads into the cave, staring curiously at the immense green creature.

The cat approaches the creature, licking its face.

“Love where there has been none,” the Kasha says.

Reaching out with its razor-sharp talons, it pets the cat.

It notices a blue satin ribbon around the cat’s neck that reads: “May good luck always accompany the bearer.”

“…A Taliesin…,” the creature gasps.

Grabbing the cat, it cradles it, snapping its neck.

“I’m sorry. I need the magic in your ribbon to protect me.”

***

A bush next to Agent Rusty Nahl rustles. He points his Uzi at it, relieved when a cat appears. It quietly meows, scurrying away.

“Stupid kitty.”

Zane and his fellow E.B.I. agents charge into the cave, riddling the creature with bullets.

“It’s not moving,” Rusty says.

Zane fires another dozen shells into the creature's dome-like skull.

“Burn the corpse.”

“What if it had time to jump into another host?” Rusty asks.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Zane replies.

***

Officer Harley Hopper sulks over his eighth scotch, downcast when the all-hands-on-deck emergency call came about an incident on I-95, and he was the only officer left at the station.

Ten years ago, Harley’s partner, Rogue Stivack, had planted a gun on a dealer who owed him money and murdered him. Stivack threw Harley under the bus, claiming Harley had shot him. Stivack and his family were murdered in retaliation soon after. Internal Affairs concluded but couldn’t prove that Harley was responsible, making him the precinct pariah assigned to respond to pet rescue calls and direct traffic.

“When will my luck change?” Harley laments as he stumbles out of the bar.

“…Help… Help me!” a distant voice pleads.

Staggering around the corner, Harley sees a man lying on the pavement.

He’s unable to comprehend what’s attacking him.

It appears human but is covered in green, pulsating scales, has a barbed tail, and has broad, feathered wings.

Its long, sharp talons are tearing the man apart.

“Police! Put those claws away and put your wings up!” Harley slurs.

The creature’s blood-red eyes narrow.

Gnashing its pointed, yellow teeth, it snarls, “I’m hungry. Don’t interfere, Five-O, or you’re next.”

Harley draws his weapon. “How’s this for interfering?”

The creature catapults into the starless night, leaving Harley to point his gun at its disappearing shadow.

***

Convinced the scotch made him hallucinate, Harley tells the homicide detectives that he didn’t get a good look at the assailant.

“Looks like a blender assaulted him,” a detective comments.

Harley endures the ignominious process of being checked for cuts as a potential suspect.

A light brown tabby cat strides onto the crime scene. Harley grabs it before it can paw at the corpse.

“Where’d you come from, Garfield?” Harley asks.

The cat purrs contentedly as he pets it.

Harley notices the cat is wearing a blue satin ribbon around its neck.

“Hmm…May good luck always accompany the bearer.”

Harley unties the ribbon. “I’ll take this. You don’t need it. You’ve got nine lives. I only have one, and it sucks!”

The cat scratches Harley on the cheek, drawing blood.

Harley drops the cat, which effortlessly lands on its haunches.

Harley ties the ribbon around his wrist.

What Harley hears next makes him consider swearing off drinking.

“Give me back my Taliesin, or you’ll be sorry.”

***

On the way home, Harley stops at a bodega for a sobering cup of coffee and a scratch-off lottery ticket.

“I never win on these things,” he says to the man with the salt-and-pepper hair behind the glass. “But after what I’ve seen tonight, why not take a shot?”

Harley rubs the silk ribbon.

He scratches off two matching Puss N’ Boots icons on the “Wish Upon a Jackpot” ticket.

He rubs the ribbon again.

A third image of Puss N’ Boots smiles at him.

Jumping up and down, Harley lets out an overjoyed scream.

“I’m a freaking millionaire!”

***

Pint-sized eighteen-year-old Harrison “Peanut” Hood tells his cousin, Robin, that the bodega is nearly empty.

“I don’t like this. We’re kids. We ain’t John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson. Who’s gonna be afraid of us?”

“Everybody.”

Robin unzips his windbreaker. Pulling out a 9mm Ruger with a silencer and extended clip, Peanut’s lanky, dreadlocked twenty-two-year-old cousin smiles confidently.

“Are you sure that thing works?” Peanut asks.

“Bane Bedlam sold it to me. Look, cuz, our dads are bad at pickin’ winners on NFL Sunday and all the days in between. They owe Bedlam a lot of Gouda. This easy jackpot’ll clear their debts.”

“But…” is all Peanut has time to utter before Robin swings open the door to the bodega.

“Give me everythin’ in the drawer!” Robin demands, pointing the gun at the clerk in the booth.

The clerk hesitates.

Not expecting resistance, a jumpy Robin presses the trigger. The gun quietly burps out a stream of bullets. The booth shatters into shards.

“The sucker that told you that booth is bulletproof lied to you. Now, gimme your bank!”

The clerk reaches for his gun. Unprepared for resistance, Robin fires. Hit in the chest by three bullets, the clerk falls backward into a display of cigarettes.

Still holding his winning ticket in his gun hand, Harley identifies himself as a police officer. He’s distracted when the ribbon slides off his wrist. In the split second it takes Harley to draw his gun with his opposite hand, Robin turns and fires at him. The first shot misses, but the second strikes Harley on the side of the head. He falls face-first onto the floor, his blood spreading across the linoleum.

“Jesus, Robbo. You iced a cop!”

Hyperventilating, Robin brags, “That’s the ultimate street cred. Wait till the rest of the gang hears ‘bout this.”

Stepping over the clerk’s dead body, Robin and Peanut empty the cash register.

The pair go into the backroom. Robin pushes aside a picture of a weeping Jesus, revealing a safe.

“All bodega owners hide their heavy lettuce behind Jesus,” Robin says, laughing as he shoots off the tumbler.

Robin swoops the valuables into a sack.

As they hurry toward the door, Peanut notices the ribbon beside Harley’s hand and picks it up.

“What’s that?” Robin asks.

“A good luck charm,” Peanut replies, tying it around his wrist.

“Well, it wasn’t lucky for him, was it?”

Lugging their bags of loot, they exit the bodega.

“We should hoof it,” Peanut advises.

“Relax, it's way past midnight. The Po-Pos are nappin’. You don’t hear any sirens, do you? That’s the advantage of havin’ a silencer. And there’s no witnesses. I tell ya, we’re in the clear, cuz.”

“There’s one witness,” Peanut replies. He points at a cat sitting on the sidewalk, staring at them.

Robin points his gun at the cat.

“Really, bro? All I want is my Taliesin.”

Irritated, Robin grabs Peanut by the collar. “What did you say? Don’t gimme no lip.”

“I didn’t say a thing,” Peanut replies. “But the cat did.”

The cat mutates into a monstrosity with green, throbbing scales, a thorny tail, and broad, feathered wings.

“That sure ain’t Felix the Cat,” Robin says. “What is it?”

“I dunno, but I ain’t stickin’ around to find out,” Peanut replies, running away.

A cold voice echoes their departure, demanding, “GIVE ME BACK MY TALIESIN!”

***

Back in his apartment, Peanut sifts through his share of the loot.

Robin had insisted on taking most of the bills and giving his cousin the coins.

Peanut is attracted to five gold-colored octagon-shaped coins with shields on the front and crosses on the back.

“Crap. I got stuck with the slugs,” Peanut mutters disappointedly.

Curious about the coins' value, Peanut searches the internet for them.

His heart races when he finds a matching photo.

“These are Spanish doubloons! Each of them is worth four thousand dollars!”

Peanut hides the doubloons in a plastic bag under his mattress and is about to share his good fortune with his mother when he hears her arguing with someone.

“He’s a good boy. He’d never do anything like that!”

Bane Bedlam snorts. “That’s what all clueless mothers say. Your husband and his brother owe me. I know Peanut just jacked Sanchez’s bodega, and he and Robin made off with a mint. Robin told me with his dyin’ breath.”

“That crook ain’t gettin’ my money,” Peanut mutters to himself.

Peanut hides the rest of his loot inside a loose floorboard in his closet.

He climbs out the window onto the ledge of the building, eight stories above the ground.

Looking down at the spiked fence and hard concrete steps near the alley, Peanut rubs the ribbon.

“Man, if you’ve got any luck in you, I could sure use it right now.”

Peanut latches onto the drainpipe. Breathing a sigh of relief, he slowly slides down the pipe.

The pipe gives way. Peanut plummets downward and is impaled on the spiked fence.

It’ll be another eight hours before Mrs. McGillicuddy takes out her trash and sees Peanut’s body.

In the meantime, fifty-two-year-old Jinx Brone, one of two witnesses to Peanut’s fall, will benefit from the cash that has fallen out of the boy’s pockets.

Jinx is also attracted to the pretty silk ribbon he sees on the ground.

The second witness, a light-brown tabby cat, watches Jinx from the shadows.

Jinx shivers as a voice warns, “Give me back my Taliesin, or I’ll kill you.”

Jinx dismisses the ominous message to needing a drink.

***

Flush with cash, Jinx buys a gallon of rum.

A few sips into the bottle, he runs into Bane Bedlam.

The two men are a stark contrast in terms of their appearance and lifestyles.

A short-tempered schemer, Bane earns his money through loan sharking and the sale of black-market drugs and guns. A fan of blaxploitation films, Bane is a flashy dresser who wears silk suits and has fur-covered furniture in his apartment.

Jinx has struggled with mental health issues since he was a middle-class prodigy named Jamie and witnessed his beloved father fall into a woodchipper. He gets his ill-fitting clothes from the Salvation Army, eats at soup kitchens, and calls Prospect Park his bedroom.

“Where’d you get the bottle?” Bedlam asks.

“I bought it,” Jinx feebly replies.

Bedlam snatches the bottle from Jinx, taking a healthy swig. “Bull. The only money you ever have is the change you get from recyclin’ empties.”

“I got paid for doing some yard work.”

“Oh yeah? If you got some extra cake, I got a magic pill you’ll like,” Bedlam says, tossing the bottle back to him. “It’ll send you into orbit. You might see the Lord almighty himself.”

***

Jinx sits on his favorite bench in Prospect Park, feeling the effects of Bedlam’s magic pill washing over his consciousness.

Peering from behind a tree, the Kasha’s blood-red eyes watch Jinx.

“What a hopeless species,” it hisses, its green scales pulsating as its tail rattles.

A cat pads toward Jinx.

Jinx picks up the cat, stroking its light brown fur.

A voice says, “…Yeah, that’s it…”

Jinx looks at the cat.

“Did you say something?”

“Just relax, son. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Jinx panics. “Oh man, I took too much! Cats can’t talk! Hey… I recognize that voice... Dad, is that you?”

He puts the cat down on the bench next to him. The cat’s face swirls, taking on his father’s features.

It paws at the ribbon on Jinx’s wrist.

“Wow! Reincarnation is true! You want this ribbon, Dad?”

Jinx ties the ribbon around the cat’s neck.

“May good luck always accompany the bearer. It made me rich. I hope it does something nice for you.”

“It’s my sacred Taliesin. You shouldn’t have taken it,” his father says.

Jinx smiles at his father. His father’s face changes, his skin replaced by green, undulating scales.

Spreading its wings, the Kasha quickly restores the illusion that he’s Jinx’s father.

The world around Jinx spins faster. “I’ve missed you, Dad.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Maybe I can get you something when the world stops spinning.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ve got my next meal picked out.”

***

“A jogger found him like this, with his chest torn open and that silly grin on his face,” Fallon Stills, the County’s Medical Examiner, says.

Stills gingerly reaches into Jinx’s front pants pocket, pulling out a wad of money.

“I’ve known Jinx for five years. I doubt he’s ever had this much cash in his entire life. Whoever slaughtered him was vicious and angry. But judging by that smile, he was happy when he died.”

“I know what killed him. A Kasha.”

“One of your mythical creatures?” Stills jests.

“This should prove to you that they’re all too real.”

A cat prances across the grass.

“Don’t let that four-legged demon anywhere near Jinx’s body,” Fallon says.

The cat hisses at Zane as Fallon picks it up.

“Cats can sense dog lovers,” Fallon teases.

“I’m allergic to most cats. What’s that around its neck?”

“A silk ribbon.”

The cat scratches Fallon. “So much for good luck.”

“A ribbon for good luck…and protection!” Zane realizes. “A Taliesin! Where’d that cat go?”