Kill Baxter Read online

  ‘Darryl.’ Harold’s tone is fatherly. ‘You know what we said about that. Let’s keep all the bottled-up hate for expression time.’

  ‘Well done to Malcolm Gladwell. He should be commended for his strong narratives that are accessible to the general public. I’m happy for his success,’ Darryl says through gritted teeth.

  ‘That’s better,’ Harold replies with a smile.

  ‘Sissy van der Spuy,’ says a tall blonde as she dabs at her lipstick. ‘I tweeted a racist joke. But I’m not racist, I know lots of black people.’

  ‘Of course you do, Sissy,’ Harold says, patting her on the shoulder.

  Round the group they go. People who have disgraced and humiliated themselves and been shunned by society.

  ‘You see,’ Harold says, spreading his arms wide. ‘We’re all the same. The Internet turned its harsh, cruel, outraged eye upon us. The world hates us now, Baxter. But at least we’re all in it together. Listening to your stories, I realised that in a way you’re just like us. You too have lost your position in the world.’

  I am in no way like these people. I am in NO WAY LIKE THESE PEOPLE.

  ‘We do creative therapy mostly,’ Harold says. ‘Responding creatively to a traumatic situation has tremendous potential to heal.’

  ‘I made these.’ Sissy proudly shows me a pair of earrings.

  ‘I don’t know if papier mâché earrings in the colours of the old South African flag are inherently therapeutic for someone accused of racism,’ I say.

  Darryl raises a finger. ‘That’s where you’re mistaken. It doesn’t matter if it’s wrong or inappropriate. It’s expressive; it’s like flushing poison from your system.’ He holds up a beautifully rendered picture of Malcolm Gladwell with his hair alight and his eyes bleeding.

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘I understand that this will be your last session before you leave for your new school. I urge you to channel your frustration into some kind of project. Perhaps throwing yourself into your studies will help?’ Harold says.

  ‘OK,’ I say, tired and wanting to get as far away from this group as possible. ‘I’ll try.’

  Ronin is slumped in the driver’s seat of the Cortina, picking his fingernails with a knife. ‘God, what took you so long? You cured yet? I could wait while you knock one out in the bushes.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m OK,’ I say with a sarcastic smile. ‘Besides, nobody is apparently ever cured of addiction. Only in remission.’

  The bounty hunter has become a closer friend than I could ever have anticipated. Thanks largely to the fact that he helped me rescue Esmé. He’s the only one that I can really talk to about all the strange creeping, crawling, screeching, roaring things that cling to Cape Town’s underbelly. Plus he always has drugs and alcohol.

  ‘Well, rather you than me,’ he says. ‘Sitting around in groups with a bunch of slack-jawed morons would drive me insane.’

  ‘I thought acid, booze and monsters already drove you insane.’

  He purses his lips and nods. ‘True. Speaking of.’ He takes a sip from his hip flask. ‘I’ve got a little therapeutic announcement of my own. This is my last drink. Ever.’

  ‘Da-dum tish,’ I say. ‘Good one.’

  He gives me his serial-killer look that he usually reserves for scaring small children. ‘Do I look like I’m joking?’

  ‘You’re giving up drinking?’ I say, raising my eyebrows. ‘That’s like anyone else saying they’re giving up breathing.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking that maybe I should try and change my life too. Being back with Sue has made me think about stuff. Deep stuff, you know?’

  ‘You’re talking to the definitive example of how love fucked someone up,’ I say. ‘So yeah, I get it. But what prompted this little lifestyle change?’

  He shrugs. ‘Sue’s off on a smuggling trip and I want to be clean by the time she gets back.’

  ‘Why? She drinks the same amount as you, probably more.’

  ‘I left her at the altar because I was running away from stuff, you know, running away from myself and shit.’ He looks at me. ‘Go ahead, make a snarky comment. I fucking dare you.’

  I hold up my hands. ‘Wasn’t going to.’

  ‘I even bought a book.’ He closes his knife, reaches into his trench coat and pulls out a bright yellow paperback with a grinning idiot on the cover giving a thumbs-up sign: The New You: Tips For a Happier, Healthier Lifestyle.

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Serious as ball cancer, sparky,’ he says.

  ‘Well, good luck to both of us.’ I grab the hip flask from Ronin and take a swig. ‘We’re both going to need it.’ I hold up the hip flask. ‘You might want to get rid of this then.’ He grabs it out of my hand and shoves it back into his coat. ‘I’m going to keep it right here with me. It’ll remind me to resist the temptation.’ He taps his temple. ‘Reverse psychology, sparky.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. I lean back in the passenger seat as Ronin starts the car. ‘So where we going today anyway?’

  ‘School shopping for you. Gun shopping for me,’ he says.

  School shopping because I’ve been forced to accept Tone’s offer and enrol in Hexpoort, a magical training facility in the middle of nowhere. It sucks, but it’s my only real option, my preference for not being stabbed and sexually assaulted precluding any involvement in the South African penal system. That and the fact that I honestly have no other prospects for the future. While other kids my age were off interning in law firms and media houses, I was gaining valuable work experience catching elementals and fighting things that go bump in the night.

  ‘So what’s Hexpoort like anyway?’ I ask as we drive. I tried googling it but I got one ominous website before my laptop went nuts with malware warnings and the browser shut down.

  ‘Oh,’ Ronin says, and I catch the involuntary grimace on his face. ‘Fine, just fine.’

  ‘Right.’ A cold drop of fear slides down my throat and settles in my belly. If it makes Ronin grimace, then it must be bad. Really bad.

  We weave through the traffic, as usual Ronin using the rules of the road as more of a rough guideline than an absolute fact.

  ‘Jesus, slow down,’ I say, gripping the dashboard. ‘Do you always have to go so fast?’ I’ll be pissed if I survived the apocalypse only to be killed by Ronin’s bad driving.

  ‘Yes,’ he grunts and speeds up a little.

  ‘Such a child,’ I mutter as we hurtle through a red light.

  ‘So where are we gonna be buying these books and guns?’ I ask.

  ‘Hidden Designation Zone Four.’ Ronin cuts in front of a taxi and responds to the blaring of a horn with the middle finger.

  ‘Catchy name,’ I say.

  ‘That’s official. Mostly it’s just called the Freak Quarter.’

  The Cortina slides into the chaos of Wynberg station. Fruit vendors and guys selling bric-a-brac compete with taxi drivers in a war of who can shout the loudest. A guy with a pit bull on a leash is arguing with a skinny security guard, and two huge Nigerian bodybuilders are flexing for ladies getting their hair braided in a sidewalk hair salon.

  We pull into a side road in front of an old factory with a large picture of a boot on it that says ‘Osmans Shoe Manufacture’. Ronin leans on the hooter and a guy selling fruit in front of the building waves his hand irritably and limps over to a large tarpaulin covering the entrance. With a flourish he pulls it aside and Ronin eases the car through, stopping briefly to deposit a couple of coins into the fruit seller’s open palm. He gives us a gold-fronted smile and ushers us in like we’re royalty.

  Inside, the factory is huge, and empty except for dozens of cars parked around the entrance. Ronin pulls in next to a silver Jeep and we get out.

  We walk over to a red diamond painted on the bare floor. Ronin spits on the ground, cuts his thumb with his knife and chants a few sentences in Xhosa. I pick out something about ‘blood’ and ‘fence’. He grabs me by the sleeve and yanks me through a murky tra
nslucent barrier that I didn’t even know was there. It feels like walking through a wall of sewer water and I instinctively hold my breath. The world shimmers and sparkles like when you stand up too quickly. The dancing sparkles in my vision start to solidify and the empty building becomes an undulating ocean of colour, sound and smell.

  ‘Armmerghh,’ I mutter. A moment of nausea rises as my vision adjusts to the sudden switch.

  ‘I see you’re your usual eloquent self when we do anything magical,’ Ronin says. ‘You’d think you’d be used to it by now.’

  The truth is, I’m not. It still hurts to use my fledgling Siener ability and I’ve tried to avoid it as much as possible. But my general perception of reality has definitely shifted and I now have a sort of general anxiety about the world. After the whole battling giant Crows and mutants experience, I find myself gloomily wondering whether there are even worse things out there.

  We push our way through the throng. The Freak Quarter is part market, part festival, part shopping district. I see bearded dwarven kids getting rides on grumpy-looking unicorns. A Tokoloshe wearing an American flag bandanna trying to hustle a trio of heavily made up elven women in stilettos. An anthropomorphic snake in a Mexican poncho busks with a battered guitar and a harmonica.

  A dirty-looking dwarf approaches us with a handful of jewellery. ‘Looking for real dwarven gold?’ he murmurs. ‘I’ll make you a special deal because I like the look of your faces.’

  ‘Ah, very nice,’ Ronin says, turning over a gold ring in his fingers.

  The guy grins, showing a mouthful of brown teeth. ‘Only the best.’

  Ronin draws a shape over the handful of shiny jewellery with his finger. It shimmers like ice cream melting in the sun, revealing a small pile of rusted bolts and screws.

  ‘I think we’ll pass,’ he says.

  ‘Fokken poes,’ the dwarf hisses as he scuttles away.

  ‘Street conjurors used to be all over the place,’ Ronin says. ‘But they were successfully regulated in the Hidden community. Now they tend to stick to working for banks and for medical insurance companies.’

  ‘Boys?’ a bright voice calls.

  I turn around. ‘Pat?’

  ‘Baxter!’ she says and gives me a hug, inadvertently spiking me in the cheek with a sharp crystal earring. She holds my shoulders and looks at me with her kindly eyes, her curly white hair bouncing up and down.

  Pat runs the Haven, a shelter for the strange things that exist in the realm of the Hidden. She was the first one to explain something of this world that I found myself thrust into. Basically, entire races of weird creatures exist in the dark and shadowy corners of life and MK6 spends all their time making sure the majority of people don’t find out. By any means necessary.

  ‘How lovely to see you!’ Before I can reply, she turns away. ‘Adopt a sprite. Save a life!’ She shoves a pamphlet into the hand of an old dwarf, who tries desperately not to take it. Pat persists and eventually he gives up, grunts and shoves it into his pocket.

  ‘The little darlings need good homes.’

  ‘You’re too fussy, Pat,’ Ronin says good-naturedly. ‘If people want to adopt, just let them have one of the little bastards.’

  Pat’s bright face turns instantly stormy. ‘Jackson Ronin, I will not have one of my babies in an unfit home!’

  ‘He’s just winding you up,’ I say. ‘Ignore him.’

  Pat glares at Ronin and then gives me a big smile. ‘Tone says you’re going to Hexpoort.’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll love the Draken there. Beautiful creatures,’ she says. ‘Such charming natures.’

  Ronin makes a noise like he’s choking on a chicken bone.

  ‘Well, we’d better get going,’ he says. ‘Got a lot to do.’

  ‘Have fun, Baxter,’ Pat says. ‘I know you’ll love it there. I just know it.’

  ‘Adopt a sprite,’ she says to a man with a scaled face in a suit as we walk away. ‘Make a difference!’

  We jostle our way back through the market towards a set of iron steps that lead to the second floor. A crowd of the Hidden has gathered in the market’s central area, where a stage made out of plastic crates has been set up. The hippie that stands on it has a brown and black snout and a set of powerful jaws.

  ‘Is that an anthropomorphic hyena dressed in tie-dye and yoga pants?’ I ask.

  ‘Kholomodumo,’ Ronin says. ‘Real mean bastards.’

  ‘How long do we have to put up with this?’ it shouts as it shuffles up and down on the crates. ‘Project Staal is taking our children, destroying our families.’

  A guy with wild hair, no front teeth and a non-standard approach to personal hygiene shoves a pamphlet into my hand. Ronin grunts as he grabs the guy by the collar and propels him forcefully out of our way.

  The pamphlet is typeset in a garish bright green font. ‘Manifesto of the Bone Kraal,’ I read out loud.

  ‘Put that down,’ Ronin says, trying to grab it from me.

  ‘Um, why?’ I say, jerking it out of reach.

  ‘Because that kind of shit can land you in an MK6 interrogation room, and you don’t want to be there, trust me.’

  ‘MK6 is scared of these clowns?’ I scan the page. ‘Blah, blah, oppression, transparency, et cetera, et cetera.’

  ‘Not exactly scared,’ Ronin says, scratching his beard. ‘But those clowns are on the MK shit list.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask. ‘This is my world now too. I should know about this stuff.’

  ‘Your world?’ Ronin chuckles and shakes his head. ‘I wouldn’t be getting all possessive about it, sparky. But OK. The Bone Kraal are agitators. They want transparency, accountability, democracy in the way the Hidden are treated.’

  ‘Sounds, you know, righteous and noble,’ I say.

  Ronin raises an eyebrow. ‘Oh, the naivety of the young and stupid. It’s not righteous and noble when you’re part of a black ops government agency that is conspiring to hide the fact that monsters and magic are real. Then it’s terrorism. THAT is your world.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. But I shove the pamphlet into my pocket. Fuck the Man.

  We skirt the crowd and make our way up the old iron staircase in the corner of the factory to the second floor, which is a maze of shops and stalls. Ronin leads me to a huge corrugated-iron shop that occupies a quarter of the floor space. DEMENTERTAINMENT says a sign in lurid pink neon, and the entrance is flanked by huge wooden speakers blasting weird disjointed seventies psychedelic rock.

  ‘Everything we need is in here,’ Ronin says with a grin.

  I look doubtfully at the skulls, crystals, feathers, rock posters, herbs, incense and old vinyl. Easing my way past a stuffed cat wearing battle armour, I follow Ronin inside.

  ‘Edred Blackheath, scumbag sorcerer, former grave-robber and collector of all things magical,’ he calls out as we approach the counter. The guy behind it is leaning on his elbows and flicking through a magazine. He has long grey-streaked black hair, and is wearing a dirty pink Hello Kitty T-shirt, a leather waistcoat and a tacky turquoise faux Native American choker around his neck. A tattoo of a waterfall flows from his left eye down his cheekbone to his chin, and two large gold hoop earrings hang from his ears.

  ‘Jackie Ronin,’ Edred says. ‘Just plain scumbag.’

  ‘C’mon, Ed.’ Ronin leans forward and grips the man’s hand. ‘Be nice.’

  ‘When was I ever nice?’ Edred says and pulls Ronin into a gruff hug. ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘Baxter Zevcenko,’ I say.

  ‘This is Zevcenko?’ Edred raises an eyebrow. ‘This is the tyke that took on Basson? Well, well, I must admit I thought he’d be more … impressive.’

  ‘You and me both,’ Ronin says with a grin, grabbing a stool and sitting down in front of the counter.

  I give them a sarcastic smile and then raise both my middle fingers.

  Edred laughs. ‘That’s the spirit, my boy.’

  ‘How’s things, Ed?’ Ronin asks.
/>   ‘Well, I’ve been attending so many funerals lately, you’d think I was living in a fucking old-age home.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been hearing things,’ Ronin says.

  ‘More agents dead, their teeth taken for Muti.’ Ed shakes his head. ‘MK6 agents being hunted like dogs. Never thought I’d see the day.’

  ‘Come on, you don’t believe this Muti Man urban legend, do you?’

  Ed looks at Ronin. ‘Well, someone or something is killing those agents,’ he says. ‘And the Blood Kraal are doing fuck all to find out who.’

  ‘There are enough things out there that want to do that without inventing some bogeyman.’

  Ed shrugs. ‘Suit yourself. If you want to stick your head in the sand, there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘C’mon …’ Ronin says.

  Ed raises a hand. ‘Conversation closed. I know what Ronin’s here for, but what can I do for you, young Master Zevcenko?’

  ‘I need whatever’s on the Hexpoort curriculum for this year,’ I say.

  ‘Ah, a Poort initiate, eh?’ He smiles at me with tobacco-stained teeth. ‘They get younger every year.’ He pulls a fat brown folder from beneath the counter. ‘Hexpoort, Hexpoort,’ he says as he flicks through it. ‘Perhaps not the most prestigious occult educator out there, but certainly still one of the best. Here we go, the Hexpoort first-year curriculum.’ He sucks his teeth. ‘This is going to cost you.’

  ‘I have to buy textbooks?’ I say. ‘MK6 are a government agency, aren’t they, like, government-sponsored?’

  ‘The government can’t even get enough textbooks for basic education. You really think they’re going to spring for a couple of hundred copies of Crowley’s Magick Without Tears every year?’

  ‘I’m guessing no?’

  ‘You guess right. Some of the stuff you can find online for free, but the rarer things you have to get from me.’

  ‘OK, so what else is going on there? I’m gonna need what, a wand and a spellbook or something?’

  Ed sighs and slams his hand down on the counter. ‘Popular culture has ruined magic. Utterly ruined it.’

  ‘Here we go,’ Ronin mutters and pulls a cigarette from his pocket.