Swamp Kings 2 (Bayou Bishops #20)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Fathom eyed Maggie and Beth both straining to see what his moody brother was up to.

Beth covered her mouth with a gasp.

“What’s he doing?” Maggie wondered.

“He’s… oh my God.”

Fathom turned in his seat and looked out his window, unable to see a thing. He faced forward and tossed an electrical current through the back of the rig, detecting his brother approaching. With a little human? Fathom regarded Fin in the seat opposite him. “Do you know what he’s doing?”

Fetch finally came into view with a little girl leeched to him, his hands pressed upon her body and head as if to ensure the bond was leechy enough. He eyed Fin again. “What do you know about this?” he demanded to his aloof sibling.

“I know nothing other than Elenore.”

“Miss Maggie and Beth,” Fetch muttered at the door. “Meet Lucy. She said I can be her daddy till her real mommy and daddy return from visiting Jesus.”

“Oh my God,” both women cried happily as Fathom angled his head at his brother, searching for signs of this malfunction.

“Hi Lucy! Is that your doll?” Maggie whispered.

The little girl’s head came off his chest for a nod. “Her name is Fetch. She fetches sadness and throws it in the trash can.”

Fathom practically fell into Fetch when he suddenly opened to his incessant mental knocking, finding himself in some kind of bubble party in his blood.

What are you doing?

I think it's obvious, Uncle Fathom .

Did you even consult Rowan about this?

The bubble party came to an instant standstill as Fetch sat next to him with his little human souvenir.

Fathom moved across the aisle and sat next to Fin as the women flocked over, bubbling with maternal ecstasy.

My wife will be thrilled , Fetch assured . Uncle Fin, what do you think of our daughter?

Are you glitching?

“Lucy, I’d like to introduce you to my brothers.”

Now? Fin asked, alarmed as the little girl looked at both of them with curious brown eyes.

Fetch pointed with a finger. “That’s Fathom. And that’s Fin.”

The little girl turned more, studying them intently then taking hold of Fetch’s face and turning it to her. Her little eyes widened. “You’re triplets!” she realized, her tiny mouth happy as she looked over at them again.

“We are,” Fetch praised.

Again, she eyed them with pure wonder. “You can be my uncles if you want,” she said. “Do you have any little girls or boys?”

She’s looking right at you, Fathom informed Fin.

And now she’s looking at you, Fin said, passing it back.

“I think they’re shy,” Fetch whispered to her.

“We do not,” Fathom answered.

“Do you have any sisters?” she asked.

“No,” Fin answered, taking his turn.

“Me neither,” she said. “I had a brother once, but only for two days. His name was Daniel Lee.” She lay her head back on Fetch’s shoulder, her little hand reaching up and toying with his ear. “He went visit Jesus before mommy and daddy did.”

Fathom eyed Fetch, wanting to stab him in the eye with a bolt of electricity for dragging them into this strange… malware .

“What games do you like to play?” she asked, keeping her head on Fetch .

“We don’t play games,” Fathom said.

She climbed off Fetch and sat on the edge of the couch, facing them in a full-on assault. “Cause you don’t know how?” she asked, her question honest as the universe.

“Because we don’t like games,” Fin said.

“Not even rock paper scissors?” she pressed, undeterred.

“We don’t know that game,” Fathom said, instantly realizing his mistake as she made her way over and sat right between them.

She held out her palm and made a fist of the other. “Rock. Paper. Scissors,” she explained. “This means rock, this means paper, and this one’s scissors,” she said, her pointer and middle finger open. “Rock smashes scissors, scissors cuts paper and paper smothers rock.”

“How does paper smother rock?” Fin demanded carefully.

She gave him a perturbed shrug. “It just does,” she said, resigned to the fallacy.

Fathom eyed Fetch, who sat with both arms on top of the couch, grin beaming like the sun while Lucy went on.

“So, you do rock paper scissors, then on the fourth time, you decide which you’re gonna be, rock paper or scissors. If I choose rock and you choose scissors, I crush you. And if you choose paper and I choose scissors, I cut you.”

She stared at him, her head tilted against her shoulder.

“And if he chooses paper and you choose rock, he smothers you,” Fin said. “And the game is over.”

She turned her attention to Fin. “You always play two out of three,” she informed, getting back to eyeing Fathom. “So, you wanna play?”

“I think Fin understands it better than I do,” Fathom said, getting a full body muscle spasm that Fathom overrode with an electrical discharge.

She turned to Fin now. “You want to?” She waited for many seconds then said, “You can say no.”

Fathom felt Fetch’s bright smile burning his retinas .

“One round,” Fin decided, the little body turning its full attention to him.

“You gotta get ready,” she said, holding her fist in her palm.

Fin did the same.

“We’ll practice first,” she decided. “Follow me.” She softly pounded her little fist against her palm slowly, “Rock…paper…scissors. Now you choose your weapon.” She played scissor-fingers on her palm. “See, you chose rock, so you get to smush me. Get it?”

Fin flicked his gaze to Fathom. “I do,” he said.

Fathom watched, measuring the child’s mental acuity as they played. She’d lost the first and won the second.

Isn’t it cheating if you use your powers to discern her intentions? Fathom cut in.

I’m simply using my creator-given tools, the same as she is.

A little unequally matched, wouldn’t you say?

I would, but I didn’t ask for this.

Such a grueling test of your powers.

I can’t help that I have more, and it’s not helpful to her to be treated like she’s handicapped.

But she is.

She is not.

Brothers, Fetch cut in, amused.

“Last one,” she warned. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Fin said.

Fathom used his tools and this time he saw a shift in her little brain waves, almost like a flash glitch. He froze, seeing she’d played scissors rather than the intended rock. Did you let her win?

I did not. She changed her mind at the very last measures in a second.

Intuition, Fetch marveled. It’s like our powers, only they don’t come with controls. I’ve seen this phenomenon in Rowan.

The little girl held up her hand toward him. “You did very good for your first try,” she praised. “You’re supposed to slap my palm with yours,” she instructed. Fin raised his hand, and she grabbed it, forcing the smack. “Like that.”

She turned to Fathom now. “You wanna play? ”

“I do,” he said, ready to study this phenomenon again.

“Two out of three,” she reminded.

Fathom followed all her directions, curious over the fuzz that seemed to collect on his electrical systems as he did. She did it again, he marveled to his brothers when she switched her answers on the third tie breaker, right at the farthest edge of the final second. Are you helping her? he asked Fetch.

Not a single bit, Uncle Fathom, he assured.

“You did very good,” she praised him too, nodding with a happy smile. “You’ll probably beat me next time.”

The women giggled quietly as they watched and Fathom eyed her little palm, up and waiting for the loser’s smack. He gave it and she suddenly climbed in his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Thank you for playing with me Uncle Fathom,” she mumbled.

She crawled off and crawled right up Fin next. “Thank you, Uncle Fin.”

She turned and ran to Fetch now, and he laughed when she lunged on him, catching her in his arms. Fathom and Fin measured the difference in their hug, noting the use of her full body, the wattage of energy used, and how she never let him go.

****

“What’s on your mind,” Seer asked quietly from the passenger seat. “I can feel it cutting into my skull, whatever it is.”

Bishop didn’t know how to put it into words, or which shit to start with. “Well, my gifts were driving me nuts and I figured out an on off switch for them,” he said.

“Yeah?” He felt Seer’s eyes on him.

“Everything I touched, looked at, heard, smelled—it was all coming with… information about each. Shit I didn’t need or want, just a flood of unchecked data in a constant state of rapid flow.”

“Well… that’s good,” he said, nodding slowly for many seconds.

“I’m worried about this vision you had,” he forced out.

“I figured that,” he muttered, more nods .

“It’s not making sense. You see us rescuing Mabel, you don’t see anything about kids, we rescue what you don’t see and don’t rescue what you do.” He moved his hands along the steering wheel, unable to shake the dread. “We weren’t gonna take Spook and we did. Even though he didn’t ride with us… what if that screwed it up?”

“We don’t know it’s screwed up.”

“We don’t know it wasn’t,” he challenged, glancing at the weary look on his face. Bishop really didn’t like it, none of it. “I didn’t want to look at the drawing of what would happen if I didn’t fulfill the vision and now, I think I need to know.”

“Well, brother, I didn’t bring it,” he sighed. “Didn’t think we needed it.”

“Do you still think that?” Bishop kept him in his peripheral, watching his expressions for clues. Lots of fucking sighing going on.

“I think we did everything we were supposed to do and just didn’t understand the vision entirely.”

That didn’t feel right. “Tell me what was on the other drawing.”

“Fuck, I just remembered,” Seer said, digging his phone from his coat pocket hanging on his seat. “I took pictures just in case.”

Bishop eyed the mirrors, checking the roads were still empty as he slowly came to a stop. Seer handed him the phone and he took it, sliding his fingers over it to enlarge it. “What am I looking at?” he wondered.

Seer leaned and pointed. “That’s you covered in blood in a shattered mirror.”

Bishop angled his head, then rotated the phone. “Is this the right picture?"

Seer looked. “Yes,” he assured.

Bishop glanced at him then back at the phone. “This is a city with a bunch of faceless people…fighting against what looks like soldiers. That’s what I see. Holy fuck.”

Seer took the phone, staring, shaking his head as Bishop pulled his phone out and called his wife. “It’s like that other fucking picture she drew,” Bishop said as the phone rang.

“Hi,” she answered, her tone full of hidden things again.

“Can you come up here, I need you to look at something.” He hung up and looked at Seer’s phone again. He handed it to him, and he turned the image every which way. “It doesn’t change for me.”

The door opened and Bishop stood, showing her the phone. “What do you see?”

She leaned in. “Uhhh, looks like… a giant man standing over a city with… lots of little people… worshipping him?”

Bishop looked at Seer.

“Where did you get that?” Beth asked.

“Remember I told you there was a second drawing that Maggie drew?”

“Yes,” she nodded, worry filling her gaze.

“Remember the picture with the ravens and crows and how we all saw something different?”

“Yes,” she nodded, glancing at the phone then back at him. “You see something different?”

“We all three do. Get Maggie in here,” he urged. “We need to know what she sees.”

Bishop hurried and kissed her before she left, turning every which way in the small space before collapsing in his seat and checking the mirrors again.

“If the image has a different picture for everybody that looks at it,” Seer said. “Then that means it’s likely relevant in a spiritual way.”

Bishop eyed him. “Please tell me we didn’t drive across the US to not rescue the woman we were supposed to because we mistook a spiritual message for a literal one.”

Seer sat too, looking perplexed. “It felt right,” he said, staring into space then raising his gaze. “It still does.”

The door opened and they all stood, showing Maggie the phone. “What do you see?” Bishop demanded.

“That’s the picture I drew,” she said lightly. “Of the empty cradle and that… doll in the shadows.”

“Holy shit,” Bishop marveled.

“What’s wrong?” Maggie hurried as he sat heavily again.

“There’s a name for this kind of thing,” Beth said, angling her head at it. “Anamorphic,” she remembered. “Depending on how you look at it or how your brain works, you see one thing while another person sees another. Pretty cool,” she murmured.

“It’s not fucking cool,” Bishop corrected. “It’s a drawing of a vision from God . Seer sees a bloody me in a shattered glass, I see a war with soldiers, and you see what you see.” He looked at Seer. “How about we haul ass back to the swamp and then we can ooh and ahh all about what the fuck this could mean.”

“Good idea,” he muttered.

“I’ll show it to the rest and see what they see,” Beth said as Bishop got the rig back on the road. They had three hours to go still, and he really didn’t want to be on the road after dark now.

“Seer, get Spook up here. I want him to find us a faster route without any added risks.”

“Got it,” he said, patting his shoulder as he headed out.