The Hunt for Lilywhite (part three)
In which we go back in time a bit.
Previously in The Bone Angel, series 2:
The hunt for the elusive Lilywhite, a human influencer working to gather an army to aid the return of the ancient and savage Old Gods, continues. While Maddalena rests up in LeeLee’s apartment, the Hunter and his colleague Claudia discuss Moon Road business on Mariposa Street. Maddalena receives an unexpected phone call. As the Hunter debates his next move, we take a look at the messy start of this mission.
Read previous episodes here: One Two
One month ago . . .
“I just need one thing,” said the Hunter, pistol pointed straight at the heart of the woman with the eyes of an owl. “Then he’s all yours.”
She paused, knife poised an inch from the Shadow op’s skinny throat. “And that would be — what?”
Down on his knees on the luminous surface of the Moon Road, the Shadowborn sobbed and sniveled. He was a skinny thing, all long legs and arms in the spidery way a lot of them have, and his greasy black hair stuck out every which way under a green wool cap. Tied with a cold rope around his wrists, his hands writhed and twisted.
“Where the hell is Lilywhite?” The Hunter took a step forward, then another.
The green capped Shadowborn drew a ragged breath. “Look, I don’t know nothing about this Lily-whatever. Swear! I was just gonna go Earthside for a little bit, get me some good shit to sell on the market.”
They were all standing (and kneeling) on the curving edge of the Road, where a black railing dotted with reflectors kept casual travelers from careening over into the icy black void of the Betwixt and Between that contains the universe’s many dimensions. Across that railing, floating like a circle of golden fog, hung one of the portals to the Earthside.
On the other side of this portal would be a slab of black stone in a desert dotted with tall cacti and scrub brush — a contact point where the veil is thin, the Road grows playful and travel is easy between the worlds. That was where this whiny little shit was headed just a few minutes ago. Before the Committee swooped in and fucked up the plan.
The bone aching cold of the Road numbed the Hunter’s hands even inside his gloves, and he was losing patience. He’d chased this low level operative all the way from the Shadowlands, operating on a tip that he meant to go Earthside for a rendezvous with the mysterious human provocateur known as Lilywhite.
That would make the Hunter’s mission much easier. Shorter, too. He hated going undercover for long stretches, especially on the Earthside, where he’d have to wear the glamour of an Earthsider’s face like an ill-fitting second skin. And this time, of all things, he’d have to play the part of a fucking priest.
But damned if this Committee agent hadn’t popped up and intercepted him just before the Hunter had squeezed that all important intel from the op’s pointy little head and pitched him over the rail.
The Committee of the Shadowlands was working its own agenda, which probably had as much to do with fucking over the Directorate just for kicks as it did with protecting Lilywhite’s growing network of acolytes eager to storm the Moon Road.
Hence this woman, who stood mere feet from the railing, gripping the unfortunate prisoner by the hair with one hand and pressing that long knife against his neck with the other.
The captive whimpered.
“Come on. I ain’t no spy. Just a businessman. You want, I can get you a good deal on some sneakers, maybe a cell phone?”
“They work like shit over here.” The Hunter’s finger twitched on the trigger. “Do better.”
The owlish woman pressed the point of the knife into the Shadowborn op’s neck. “If the Directorate’s wasting a Hunter on you, it’s got to be good,” she told him. The captive winced.
The knife drew blood, trickling in a dark stream along his dingy collar. Point made, the Committee’s agent slipped the blade back into the sheath at her belt. “Nah. You might actually be useful. Let’s go, bud.”
In a blur of moving air, she shifted to her true shape the owl. Spreading her wings wide, she launched herself into the air. Her captive, gripped by enormous talons, rose with her, howling.
“Suck it, Hunter.”
You too, lady. Crossly, the Hunter pulled the trigger, but the shot went wide as she swung suddenly sideways, hoisting the Shadowborn op over the railing.
He flailed in the shifter’s steely grip, his own shape wavering between a gangly, human-ish individual in Earthside Adidas sneakers and something with considerably more legs and a shiny black carapace.
With a muttered “Fuck!” the Hunter lunged after them, grabbing one of the Shadowborn’s spindly ankles.
The Committee agent’s wing smacked him hard on the temple. Unbalanced, he stumbled into the railing, his pistol spinning from his grip into the emptiness beyond. The Hunter snagged the op’s other leg and hauled back, but a talon the length of his hand came slashing down his arm.
Then one final swat from those massive wings sent them both tumbling into the bleak black cold of the void between the worlds.
The Hunter had gone through the Betwixt and Between more times than he could count, carrying out the grim work of the Directorate on the Earthside and other places where the worlds along the Moon Road happen to touch.
It had always been an orderly affair, gear ready and mission clear in his mind. But this time, he was dropping unmoored into that icy, sparkling darkness. His head throbbed from the owl shifter’s buffeting blow and his grip on the Shadowborn’s dingy pants was slicking with his own blood.
He let go.
He felt, rather than heard, the Shadowborn shrieking. Hot wetness spattered his face. Gasping, he righted himself like a swimmer fighting the tide and plunged into the portal to the Earthside.
Facedown in the dirt with the taste of blood in his mouth and the air sucked out of his lungs, the Hunter took a deep breath and came up coughing, staring straight into the glare of headlights not a yard from his head.
Between him and the headlights stood the silhouette of a pair of booted legs and the barrel of a rifle.
Beyond the headlights, scrubby desert brush stretched toward a range of knife edged mountains, a few towering cacti casting long fingered shadows under a sharp white moon. The portal hung, fuzzy gold, over a slab of glassy black rock set into the side of the hill he’d just rolled down.
Mission accomplished, sort of. This is indeed Soledad City, hot and spiky and dry as bones bleaching in the sun. But there’s nothing left of the unfortunate Shadow op except the blood drying on the Hunter’s face. And he’d known where to find Lilywhite.
The boots stepped a little closer. “Dios mio!”
Well, crap. The Hunter reached past the whirling in his head for the glamour, drawing over himself the look of a brown haired, brown skinned middle aged man, maybe a little bit drunk. That’d explain being out here all alone in the road at whatever hour it might be.
But the glamour doesn’t come. Howzabout another? The Hunter tried for the look that had worked in places like Reykjavik and Glastonbury: blond and longhaired, swap the checkered shirt for a T shirt with a rock band logo.
Still nothing. His head rang from the impact of the Committee agent’s wings and the gash on his arm, quickly congealing, burned with the cold of the Betwixt and Between.
He lurched to his knees and made one more try for the glamour, coming up with the blond guy in a checkered shirt, the rock band T-shirt underneath. That should hide the wound anyway. Then he curled up in the unforgiving beam of the headlights and puked up the last meal he’d had on the Other Side.
The boots crunched closer. The rifle barrel pointed right at his nose. “Do you need help, friend?” The voice was Spanish accented, full of wary concern.
“Can you take me to the City?” the Hunter wheezed. “To the Cathedral of San Clemente. I need to see Father Louis.”
“Ay, no,” said the owner of the boots, reaching down a hand to haul the Hunter to his feet. The man shook his head sadly.
“Father Louis is dead. We have a new priest now. Father Teodoro.”
Behind the Scenes: I’m not always a fan of flashbacks, but sometimes they’re the best way to get backstory out of the way. And they can become mini-stories in their own right. So here is a glimpse at the chaotic start of this mission. The Hunter’s a seasoned assassin, a mercenary of the Wild Hunt, but even he can have a bad day.
The ongoing debate about the use of AI led me to try an experiment and see if a bot could really bring my mental image to life. It took multiple attempts with an image generator to produce the one at the top of this episode - a reasonably acceptable version of the hero of this story. From the same prompt, the bot variously produced versions of the Hunter resembling Geralt from The Witcher, a romance cover boy with windswept hair, and a moody older man who looked like he belonged in a cigar commercial.
I don’t really love this result either. But it points up the limitations of AI image generators and how badly they break their promise to “make your vision real.” It takes repeated prompting to get even close, but still no cigar.
Anyway, I’ll comment more on that if anyone’s interested. For now, we’ll have one more flashback showing the Hunter’s meeting with the real Father Teodoro and its aftermath. Then it’s back to the main storyline.
I’m amazed and grateful at the positive comments on the world of the Moon Road. There are plenty of stories in this weird universe so I’ll keep telling them.
Till next time -
JM
Nice to get this peek into the other side. I enjoyed the flashback. Good action and description. The picture of the Hunter is interesting, but i agree with you. AI has its limits, especially in the realm of imagination.