XXI. Heroes & Villains

ENTRY ONE

Recording time: 05:20:10

Authors: Halcyon al-Hurra

Location: Rys, the Rebelʼs Enclave

4

Marcella

Chicago, Illinois

Port: Naigelʼs

October 31st, 2014

Time: 7:30 AM

___________________________

I want Chicago to burn, and I want our white-haired problem dead.

Fail to do so, and Iʼll rip the flesh from you and your loved oneʼs bones. Tick tock, Marcellita.

Winter ate the entrails of Port Naigel the way the waves ate at the shore. Lake Michigan was a greedy lover in the corner of the Port, with a frostiness towards its marriage to the moon, and as the tiny shipping vessels cowered in fear at Port Naigelʼs might, Marcella watched the fishermen tuck themselves away for the day. The Windy City was angry tonight, angry at its string of lovers, angry at its hungry urges – but still, Marcella stood in the cold with her red leather jacket and her abuelaʼs ruby encrusted semi-automatic. She wasnʼt

much of a fan of the weather, of its vengeful agenda, but the day was fairly young. The desolation, the lack of comfort Chicago provided, it was suffocating; pillowy as she smothered it, but she took it in stride. The supernatural needed it: their elegant violence, their lavish depravity. Fed off it, consumed it.

And so did she.

"Hola, muñequita," a man murmured, chucking her a neatly woven backpack. "Do you know why I call you muñequita, Marcella?"

Ciro was an indispensable satyr. Tall, strong, dark with curly coffee-brown hair and curly horns. Half-goat, half-chicano. Marcella took a peek at the bag and handed it back to Ciro. Inside of it, there were photographs of a crypt: infested with rats, swarming with insects, with raw Colombian and Mexican heads impaled upon tall spikes. Marble effigies of men in armor, with limbs twisted in anguish and agony. Ciro left her dates, details, manila files sticky with Bacardí and los explosivos. Wrapped in cocaine with the soft caress of Chicagoʼs animosity, with its foamy ferocity. Sighing, Marcella answered his question.

"Hmm...maybe because youʼre a chauvinistic *ss?"

"Because youʼre a doll; warm on the inside, and scary as sh*t on the outside, and I like you; I like you a lot. This is scary, Marcella, and I like you," Ciro babbled.

Port Naigel whispered around them. Fiercely, with a familiarity to the walls in Havana. Talking with an impending doom, growling with an animalistic predatoriness. With a tight face, Marcella looked to her left and her right, and inhaled the pervading smell of thick Chicagoan coal tersely. The Windy City was unnerving to Marcella, a door-marked exit bound and gagged to explosives, and every-time she stated at Ciro, she grew more nervous. The row houses and lofts were silent, the thick black dust pulling them into the belly of the beast, and as the eyes stared, Marcella grew increasingly paranoid.

"That sounds like something a pedophile would say," Marcella settled, whispering to him hurriedly. "Are you a pedophile, Ciro? Humbert Humbert or some equally fetishized bull?"

"Iʼm eighteen, p*ta."

"Youʼre fresh meat," Marcella murmured simply. "And I canʼt take that risk. Not anymore; not now."

Port Naigel smoked. The sky was a foggy visage of marble and golden opulence, darkened by the smoke, and as Marcella stared – at the sky ants its blackening flesh, the skyʼs charcoal tears. Her breath was labored as she stared at the bag, her body squeezing tightly, and she tried. Tried to make the madness malleable, understand, but d*mn it, she couldnʼt; she couldnʼt.

"There was a man. With shock white hair; mean eyes; a writer. He found me. Every name I went through, every fake passport...it meant nothing. He found me. Everything Iʼve ever worked for, threatened by some p*rvert obsessed with Victorian writing. She gave Louise and Lynx all of Texas. She gave Romeo the California territory, gave Whitney Medellín, gave Trevor and Olivia Florida, and gave Javier Havana. Over one-hundred-and-thirty million in assets. Ciento treinta millones de dólares for the family business, Ciro. And you know what she gave me?"

​

"What?"

"One hot mess after another; a man with shock white hair and one hot mess after another," Marcella murmured, gritting her teeth. "Where the only way out of this life is to drown at the bottom of the frigginʼ Gulf."

Marcellaʼs fist slapped the railing of the Port as an incoherent, involuntary cry sharply torpedoed out of her.

"I was there. For every...outburst, for every time she broke-down, for every murderous rampage in Havana, for every creepy boyfriend, for every dark night, for every homeless morning, for every violent beating in Bogotá. I was there, Ciro. She d*mn near killed us, me and my siblings, and I was there for her. Para mi mamá. I gave her everything: my blood, my sweat, my tears. And she just wrote my goddamn death sentence. She was supposed to keep Virgilʼs body out of the news. She wasnʼt supposed to say anything, or draw any attention, and now? People are asking questions."

She pulled out a picture. The man was on the phone, the angleʼs trajectory receding from the sky, and she stared. Hairline full of billowing white hair, mustache trimmed, eyes cold and covetous as they were dilated, his skin a pasty white.

Ciro stepped closer.

"What does he want?" Ciro asked. "The white haired man? What does he have anything to do with this?"

Marcella gripped her knuckles, massaging them tentatively.

Not him; her.

But she didnʼt tell him that. She couldnʼt afford the repercussions, the backlash, the collateral. She was too tired of it. The white-haired man wasnʼt a threat, but the people that he inspired? They most certainly were.

"What does he want, Marcella?"

"The man wants Havana. Wants to know what happened. Weʼre meeting at his Twelfth Night Pub tonight to negotiate the details in all that, and if I donʼt tell him, I..."

A beat.

"Some of Griselda Blancoʼs men are in town. Old sicarios, looking for some p*ss profit. I have to kill him, Ciro."

Ciroʼs pain became more widely exposed, more virulent in its resplendent sorrow and grief, and Marcella simply watched.

"Colombia has been weak for years, muñequita. Dying. If you get into bed with them, you won't win. Your mamá told you that. This...this is playing with fire."

Winter ate the entrails of Port Naigel the way the waves ate at the shore. Lake Michigan was still that greedy lover in the corner of the Port, with a frostiness towards its marriage to the moon, but she was no longer at its mercy. Grabbing the C-4, a cartelʼs patented C-4, modified with its magic and its might and its mayhem and its martyrʼs blood, Marcella tossed a prick into midair and shot at it.

Once, twice, three times. The C-4 screeched as it flew into the Port, with an unnecessarily shrill cadence, and when it hit the water – everything burned. The docks, eaten alive in a plume of red, the boats screaming at their blackening skin. The fire rose with the fury of a thousand suns, of a thousand deserts, of a thousand flames, and as the coal shrieked, Marcella stared on listlessly.

Burn, burn, burn.

"Thatʼs not C-4," Ciro whispered breathlessly as the fire never stopped, never ceased, plunging, diving, taking, claiming.

"Itʼs witchfyre from ancient Greece. It was made by the Three Witches, and perfected by Daedalus after his son was burned alive by the son. The most deadly explosive in the business, wrapped up in C-4 to make trade kosher in South America," Marcella reiterated.

She stared at him, determined.

"Iʼm not backing out, Ciro," Marcella said simply. "This is my family."

"So what now?" Ciro asked.

Marcella pulled up an article on her phone:

Church in Ruins After Deadly Massacre in LA Parish

October 30th, 2014

Houssam el Hasnaoui | Grimm Staff Writer

THE BLOODEʼS MASSACRE – October 30th, 2014. Kingʼs County, LA.

The Kingʼs County Police Department is currently looking for anyone with information on a rabid dire-wolf on the loose.

At a local church, Saint Bishopʼs Pentecostal, children were involved in a dire-wolf attack. Penned "the Night Wolf" for his attacks being primarily centered in Italian communities celebrating the Feast of Immaculate Conception in Kingʼs County, the rampaging wolf is deemed "deadly," "vicious," and "out-of-control" by the Louisianan officials.

The attack took place at five oʼclock Sunday morning when church-attendees had just finished the sermon. When the Night Wolf – whose head prompted a hunt for a $10,000 bounty – entered the church, a series of ruthless decapitations ensued.

"Kidsʼ heads were ripped off; this is an attack on the Catholic community," a church go-er said.

Warrants have been issued for the arrest of those who released the dire-wolf into the wilderness and the arrest of anyone complicit. Anyone with information about the case or the wolfʼs whereabouts is asked to call Kingʼs PR firm. Anonymous tips can be made at the numbers given on page one, police said.

❦❧♱❦❧

UPDATE AS OF OCTOBER 31, 2014, 05:30 AM: 

As the nature of this investigation shifts, all inquiries regarding stolen first-edition classics such as Holinshedʼs Chronicles, The Prophecy of Berchán, and the Annals of Ulster and a Henry Condell, the last owner of these books and the sole proprietor of the Twelfth Night pubs, shall be directed towards Ingibiorg Finnsdottir, a patron to the Louisianan Fine Arts Society from Chicago, Illinois. Email: ifinnsdottir@lfas.org.

"When I bugged my momʼs phone, I overheard her talking about this article with my uncle Wil, well, heʼs not my uncle uncle even though he lived with us in C-uba, but heʼs not my dad, so I call him uncle–"

"Marcella," Ciro groaned.

"My mom was talking about this case and Wil was convinced that the Order of the Dragon was targeting the Italians in Kingʼs County, trying to pin it on the mercenary group she works for...Los Dobladores," Marcella murmured, flustered.

"The Hellbenders," Ciro repeated, deadpanning.

Marcella nodded. 

"Politically, the optics make sense. The Hellbenders and the Order are two political lobbyists at war, companies vying for the President of the United Statesʼ attention. Everyone knows how corrupt they are. The news is bought-and-paid for with Hellbender and Order money. Whether youʼre human or not, this war has always been around. It makes sense. Politically. But not in real life."

Ciro snorted.

"You sound like a conspiracy theorist," Ciro muttered.

Marcella flashed him her best b*tch-face.

"My mom was lying through her teeth, Ciro. When we came to the United States, Kingʼs County was full oʼ human trafficking. Immaculate Conception, the church they were talking about, was full of it. Everybody from Louisiana knows that. How the wolf factors into it, I really donʼt really know, and I donʼt really know why my mom didnʼt tell Wil anything about it, but what I do know is that Ingibiorg Finnsdottir, whoever she is, is..a criminal. A powerful and desperate criminal, and this memo in this article...these books mean something to her, Ciro–"

"Youʼre in Chicago to buy protection," Ciro blurted, fisting his hands into his hair. "For Christʼs sake, muñequita, itʼs Chicago! You p*ss off that old white man, the one that blackmailed you, and he'll shove a bullet up your *ss! Thatʼs how the Godfather won an Oscar."

Marcella stared at him defiantly.

"Iʼm in Chicago to buy silence, and to do that, I need to blow Chicago off the map. I have to take the fight to the men that threaten my family, that threaten me and the people I love," Marcella countered. "I just need your help, Ciro."

Ciro cupped his face, cursing in Spanish.

"No. Iʼm a high-school dropout who sells...nasty coke to sororities because theyʼre so d*mn easy to scam, Marcella. The only reason I could get you the C-4 the exact way you wanted? Because one of their sugar-daddies owed me a favor. No."

Marcella stared, fuming.

"You said I could trust you with my life once. All Iʼm asking is you return the favor. You trust me, Ciro, I know you do."

"Not like this, Marcella," he countered. "Not like this."

Marcella sighed.

"Crotchless panties."

Ciro stiffened and Marcella smiled evilly, twirling her phone.

"You said you deleted that."

"I think they were pink, frilly. With lace. Yeah: pink, frilly, lacy, crotchless p*nties. And wasnʼt the girl you hooked up with a senatorʼs daughter?"

"That night was the best night of my life," Ciro protested. "I swear to God– "

"One day youʼll thank me for keeping it," Marcella said simply, kissing his cheek. "Weʼll be in touch."

Ciro clicked his tongue, irritated as she walked away.

"Yeah, muñequita," he grumbled with disdain. "Weʼll be in touch."

Tick tock, tick tock.