Tavon stabbed several French fries into the gooey mess that was the Mr Dan's Open-Faced Chili Cheeseburger. Gulping down the fries and licking the remaining chili cheese sauce from his dirt-caked fingers, he chanced a peek at Merle and, feeling uncomfortable, he returned his attentions to his plate.
"Curious." Merle stared with mild fascination. "Who are you, my guy?"
"Tavon. Tavon Little." Tavon peered up with distrustful eyes, arm guarding his plate, then went back to mealing.
"Never bring strays where you lay."
"He kinda ain't got it all," Lady G said, more of Merle, not all too sure of Tavon, though fiends she had a better sense for.
"Nah, he good," King said.
"Can I get a new fries? These are greasy." Rhianna pushed the object of disdain away from her, sat back, and folded her arms.
"What you expect from Mr Dan's?"
"Girl, you better eat those fries and be grateful," Lady G said. "It's not like you paying for them."
Rhianna buried her head in her plate like an ostrich.
"What's this about, King?" Wayne asked.
"The gathering of knights," Merle said, ignored by the group.
"I'm not sure," King said. "It's like I have these flashes. Like things aren't what they're meant to be. And I have this feeling like I'm supposed to be doing something."
"Why you?" Wayne pressed.
"He is the dream of a waiting dragon," Merle said.
"Does he ever shut the fuck up?"
King waved off Merle's comments, or rather, Wayne's reaction to them. "Not me. Us. It's like I can almost see the whole story, but when I think on it too hard, it all slips away from me. Merle told me you've all seen something and I thought if we got together, maybe we could sort it out."
"How does Merle know what we've seen?" Wayne glared at him with distrust.
"Magic," Merle said.
"Magic?"
"Magic."
"Bullshit. Chronic maybe," Wayne said.
"In my day, magic was much more commonplace. There's no room for magic in your lives, only darkness. You've forgotten how to dream. To imagine possibilities. All you know is this." Merle knocked on the table. "Continue to make your mud pies and never think to dream of the ocean. Now, some still serve the Old Ways, but there are the Old Ways and ways older still. It is the eternal struggle. The struggle chooses its vessels and we fight where we are. I warn against the beast that sleeps."
"Did that make a damn lick of sense?" Wayne asked.
King steepled his fingers in front of his face and sifted through Merle's words. Like everything else of late, they made sense, an inelegant poem, again, as long as he didn't think about it too hard.
"Sometimes, it seems, we fight the same fight over and over. The players essentially the same, as if light and dark battle to rule each age. The beast changes his form to suit the needs of the age, but the goal is the same: to usher in an age of darkness."
"And the form of the beast?" King finally asked.
"I don't-" Merle started.
"Drugs," Tavon interrupted. "It all always comes down to money and drugs."
"And the sons of Luther," Merle said.
"Sons?" King asked.
"Luther had a second son. Your half-brother. He goes by the name Dred."
The revelation slapped King in the face. It was as if he'd jumped into the deep end of a pool only to be caught in a riptide. He pushed away from the table, suddenly unable to catch his breath. A dark shiver ran along him. His half-brother had lived in his shadow for so long. Everyone continued their chatter without notice.
"Dred? He the one always beefin' with Night," Tavon said.
"OK, someone's going to have to slow this down for me. I can't keep all of this straight," Lott said.
"Shee-it. Any fool knows this." Tavon sat up straight, class suddenly in session. "Right now, the two biggest players in this here game are Night and Dred. Night stays over at the Phoenix. No one knows where Dred hangs his head, but rumor has it that he's been a west side nigga for life."
"So Night runs the east side and Dred runs the west side?"
"It's not that simple. You got to think of the city like a checker board. Dred has the red squares and Night has the black ones. Li'l Nam belongs to Night. Down by where you stay," Tavon turned to Wayne, "that's Dred's. But with all the real estate these two have, they steady beefin' over Breton Court."
"You know why?" King asked, though gripped with a sudden claustrophobic sense about his reality.
"No one knows. No one sees Night or Dred on the streets."
"Egbo. No go. No more," Merle offered. "They are whispers in the nightmares."
"They lieutenants do all the real work: Green for Night and Baylon for Dred," Tavon said.
Baylon. The name stung with the familiar pangs of betrayal. King thought that after all this time, hearing the name wouldn't bother him. Yet with the fresh mention, it all came rushing back. All the time they'd spent together coming up. Running through Breton Court with the air of ownership, the young princes of Breton tearing up shit until…
"What about B?" King asked Tavon.
"Who?"
"Baylon. How he fit into this?"
"He's Dred's number two. To be honest, I can't figure out why Dred reached out to him in the first place. It's not as if he had a long resume of overseeing the soldiers, not the way Dred could, even from… his situation. His name rings out like that. Baylon, though, he ain't got no name. He ain't got it like that. Everybody knows he's Dred's errand boy, eyes and ears anyway. Baylon's feeling the heat. Junie and Parker were his people. The troll brothers were called in cause Dred was looking weak."
"Sounds like the shit is building up," Wayne said.
"Yeah, that's the vibe I got," King said. "Like things are about to go to the next level."
"What you think?" Baylon stepped aside so that Michaela and Marshall could view the array unimpeded, the finest merchandise laid out for display along the table. Sig Sauer. Glock. Desert Eagle. Boxes of corresponding bullets stacked like bricks in a pyramid of violence above each. Baylon had even gone so far as to drape the table with a red velvet cloth. Presentation was important. Michaela picked up the Desert Eagle, the light glinting from it.
"They look pretty, but they a waste for us," she said.
"Why?"
"The type of move you talking about making… it ain't a gun type of play. Even if it was, we ain't exactly gun folk. We enjoy getting our hands dirty."
"I'm serious about Green," Baylon said.
"Dred cool with this? I mean, way I see it, we barely got this ship righted. Ain't no one in a position to go after Night's folk direct."
"We ain't." Baylon's face grew hot at her "we barely got this ship righted" comment; the insinuation being that he had anything to do with the ship being off-course. "We are taking out one man."
"Green's…"
"Whatever. If you ain't up for it, say the word."
"And Dred?"
"I got this. If we can handle the job."
"You don't know shit about what's what, do you? Got no idea who we are and what Green is?" Michaela squared up against him. She had a few inches on him, worse was her mien of sheer aggression. Close up, he could see each wart, each errant hair on her chin. The frenzied anger in her eyes. He'd back down if he could and noted his error in directly provoking her.
"Here's what I know and what I need to know: Night and Dred have a truce that will last as long as it takes for one of them to slide a knife into the back of the other cleanly. As I, no, we owe a lot to Dred, we have a vested interest in making sure his is not the back ventilated. As Night owes everything to Green, should he be taken out, Night becomes little more than a shadow puppet. All you got to do is tell me if you can take out Green."
"It'll be like old times," Michaela said.