Hexing Harlots Box Set Read online

  Hexing Harlots

  JJ Andrews

  Edited by Marisa Chenery

  Cover design by Dar Albert

  Copyright 2019 JJ Andrews. Published by JJ Andrews. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Hexes & Pros

  Deployment of the Heart

  Between the Lines

  HEXES & PROS

  The truth is stranger than fiction. JJ Andrews’ Hexes & Pros is a work of fiction imbued with real-life experiences of police work collected by the author as one might find buried treasure. Digging deep in the sands of time, grain by grain, to reveal what lies beneath.

  Officer Tom Wolfson loves his life. Loves his job. Believes in the duty, the shield and walks the thin blue line with pride. But nothing in his life is real. It’s a product of a powerful hex cast by an angry witch who runs a bordello dedicated to dark goddesses of mayhem, nightmares and madness. She creates Tom to punish a client who had been a tad bit cavalier with the affections of her patrons in days of old. The client is a god, a god of chaos and fire, and the chorus of goddesses he wronged in his younger days demand satisfaction.

  She traps not only him, but his fellow deities in a curse, which gives them mortal lives and power bills, social security numbers and coffeemakers. Hexlives. Tom, alone, remembers who he is, but is cursed to silence. And worse, the creation’s desire to serve and protect trumps the longing of the god to break free. That divine being—Loki—lives surrounded by the pervasive odor of defeat, fear, impotence, panic, danger and death. He wishes at times he had a god to whom he could pray. But he was a god, and now, he is a prisoner in dark blue. Odin’s hexlife is that of a Catholic priest. And poor Baldur is a glazed-doughnut-wielding homeless drunk with virulent STDs.

  Loki has come to loathe dark blue. Dark blue anything. Blueberries, old Pontiacs—it doesn’t matter. When it comes to his forced existence as Officer Tom, he wants out. He wants revenge. He wants to never have to wear a smile again that hides the deep, personal trauma of police work. Officer Tom compartmentalizes the fatigue of being expected to be a social worker, keep traffic under control, take reports and issue tickets for auto accidents, find missing persons and act as a resource for kids. No amount of training or experience could have prepared a cop for every situation—yet that is the expectation. And much to Loki’s chagrin, his alter-ego does it with a smile. Then Officer Tom is sent on a call to investigate an aggressive panhandling squirrel. And finds he is not exactly without ally.

  With his partner, Officer Aliyah Najarah, and backed by other gods forced into a hexlife, Loki confronts the source of his nightmare and finds the line between reality and madness is thin, and blue. It will take more than a service weapon and taser to set things straight. It will take the abatement of an onus that Officer Tom wishes will never end.

  Acknowledgements

  This author thanks medic trainer, KM, for her input in moving the severely injured, LM of Whatcom County Search and Rescue for always pointing me in the right direction, Detective Bo, Officer Melissa and Officer Mark of the Bellingham Police Department for their assistance with this novel, from allowing me to tap on their body armor to emptying the contents of their med kits so I could play with combat gauze to answering my questions—my many, many questions. Additionally, thanks go to former officer, Karl, whose stories comprise a great deal of this book.

  Much of the police work in this novel is based on factual events. Because of the knowledge I now have regarding the lives and missions of police officers, I have new-found respect for our men and women in uniform. This author supports law enforcement.

  For Karl, whose valuable time was given to me after he inspired this novel with an off-hand comment in July 2016. Never give a writer an idea. And, as always, my love and gratitude go to my husband, Denny, who never doubts me, and never stops me from running amok when inspiration strikes.

  Chapter One

  He didn’t remember his name. He thought he had once been someone important, but not so much now. In fact, he believed he was lower than the broken concrete rubble he urinated upon. His dick hurt. He had little blisters along one side. Holding it to go pee was an unpleasant experience. It itched and burned and kind of oozed. He was fairly certain it was some form of sexually transmitted disease since he had taken comfort with working girls a time or two. Maybe they were girls. Just another thing he didn’t remember. He had convinced himself that his forgetful nature was the largest hinderance to any kind of gentrification in his life. No name, no memory. No insurance. No nothing. Except he always seemed to have a twenty for beer. The inside breast pocket of his jacket refilled. Never more than twenty dollars at a time, and only once per day. It was enough to keep him in suds. His thoughts were interrupted by a clearing of the throat from behind him.

  He turned, his penis still exposed. “Oh. It’s you. I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? That dark blue clothing. You wear that a lot.”

  “I’ve asked you before not to urinate in the alley. Folks don’t need to smell your piss.” It was Officer Wolfson. “Come on, Baldur, let’s get you a cup of coffee and into a shelter for the night.”

  “Who is this Baldur?” He held out his penis. “I got something wrong with my dick. It looks like a Christmas tree. I think I’ll hang some mistletoe from it.” He laughed hysterically.

  *

  Mistletoe. Tom winced. The little parasitic plant known as mistletoe had once been his undoing. A single dart cast had led to an eon of suffering. In a different lifetime. In an existence now trapped in a cage of mind and memory. When his name was Loki. When he was a god. “That is one ugly Johnson. Put it away, and I’ll refresh your shoddy memory…again. Maybe this time I’ll get you into the hospital clinic.”

  “I like my coffee sweet,” Baldur said. “And the doctors won’t see me. I don’t know who I am. I can’t sign my name. No picture ID.”

  “Yes. I know. The coffee shop is just around the corner. You remember that place?”

  Baldur nodded. “What is your name?”

  “You can call me Officer Wolfson. Officer Tom is all right too.”

  “But that’s not your real name, is it?”

  Tom pursed his lips and led Baldur out of the alley. “No, sir. It is not.”

  “Who are you hiding from?”

  Tom sighed. “Same people you are, old friend. Same people.”

  Officer Tom Wolfson had a profound sense of deja vu when it came to the homeless, venereal disease-ridden, forgetful Baldur. He knew the man’s true identity. He knew who both of them were. Were being the keyword. The onus he carried kept him in line. A thin blue line. He was gagged by a hex. Stifled. If he did anything but behave as a cop with a heart of gold, there was pain. And boils. And open sores. Took weeks to heal. Even trying to force his true name from between his lips was verboten. He’d been jinxed. A goddamn curse. I really should have known better than to pick up that hooker. Her magic smell
ed so good. And she openly displayed a pentagram while on the stroll. I am an easy mark for witches offering sex. They’ve always been my weakness. Tom glanced into the sideview mirror of a car parked inside the entrance to the hospital parking lot as he and Baldur walked to the café. He saw his true self. No one else did.

  He was entrenched in his accursed life. He was a puppet dangling off someone’s sick idea of a joke. It affected his sense of reason and made him forgetful as to what he needed to do to regain his godhood. The job was his focus, his daily bread, his lifeblood. It was his only priority. The job left him no personal time. He had responsibilities. Duty. I like my cage. I like the mask. I like the daily grind. The dark blue uniform over the Kevlar vest in ninety-eight-degree heat. The paperwork. I like who I am and what I do. It’s not me, but that damned witch bitch made me happy in my personal perdition. I don’t want to be happy. I want to break worlds. I am Old Flame Hair. Loki. Trickster god. Not a mortal law enforcement officer.

  To everyone else he was a fifty-ish cop with graying hair and blue eyes. I was never meant to be lawful good. It is killing me—yet with each day, I grow to love my new life more and more. Fucking clever witch. Fucking powerful spell. It’s like being in an episode of the Twilight Zone-like drama called “Hospital Cop.” And poor Baldur here. He is seriously screwed. Even more so than I. And Odin—he is lost. I’m never going to be able to reach him without magic. He glanced up the street to the huge Catholic church, whose diocese owned all the land from waterfront to the grounds on the far side of St. Anthony’s Hospital.

  Overseeing it all was Father Frenzi. Odin is a goddamn priest. Priest of the old and forgotten section of a city with congregants who lived in delipidated warehouses, under docks, in the maintenance vestibules of the sewers. Crack-hoes, users, thieves and folks who cashed checks for seventy-nine percent on the dollar. Hail Mary and welcome to the dregs of society. I patrol a teeming rickety expanse and microcosm of a greater evil and larger metropolitan urban area, with sub-par housing, an empty convent, boarded up storefronts and a hospital built almost a hundred years ago with additions that make it resemble the Winchester Mystery Mansion.

  This is where the poor get poorer and even developers fail to roll in with deals. Where medical students from across town with grades on the low end of the spectrum pay the coroner under the table to peel back the skin of cadavers to study that which lies beneath in hopes of improving their marks. There is never a shortage of supply in the morgue. This place is nasty. It carries a vile aroma, and blood splatter is viewed as modern art by the citizenry. Literally. A frame had been hurriedly painted around a splatter on a wall in an alley. And it is my beat.

  Baldur hesitated at the entrance to the coffee shop. “I like my coffee sweet.”

  “And that’s how you shall have it. Go on in. Grab an empty booth in the back.” Officer Tom/Loki called out to his partner, “Ali, I’m taking a guest for coffee.” He pressed his radio button. “822 chow.”

  “Right behind you, Tom.” It was Ali Najarah, his partner on bike patrol. She’d just returned from a month-long leave of absence. She’d gone to Florida. A new perfume had traveled with her—one with residual magic. Maybe it was her visit to Disney World.

  At any rate, he was glad she was back. Her replacement had been a by-the-book-soon-to-be-retired overweight cop who was none too happy about being assigned to the Khrayshi Station in the old hospital district. Saddler. What an ass. Can’t keep his hands off the strippers, nor they their hands out of his paycheck. Let’s see…he’s on trophy stripper ex-wife number two. Alimony is a bitch. He is the epitomy of all that is bad in Khrayshi.

  Named after a Polish immigrant who had set up shop in the area some hundred and fifty years prior. It had a nickname. Krazy Town. Tom’s beat was literally, nuts. The hospital, its grounds, the church and its grounds, a pothole ridden parking lot, and stretching out a few blocks in every direction, the dilapidated houses of Khrayshi citizens. A few blocks east, the streets were cleaner, the businesses making a buck and the hookers felt safer. Didn’t see many working girls in Krazy Town. Unless they were trading sex for drugs and didn’t recoil at their prospects for clients. The precinct couldn’t be called the Krazy Station, so the force just referred to the area as “Old Town,” to distinguish even further from life across the bridge.

  Ali put in a call. “540 chow.” She was a no-nonsense gal with black eyes and a hearty laugh. A little overweight, but delightfully so. She would have been a prime target for Loki’s affections back in the day. When I was divine. As it was, he had a crush on her, but Officer Tom would never, ever put the moves on his partner.

  Dispatch replied. “822, 540, confirmed.”

  He walked behind Baldur and pulled his bike into a corner. He went back and held the door for Ali to roll her bike in. He held up three fingers at the counter waitress. She knew what he wanted. And like always, she’d put it on his tab. Baldur wasn’t the only homeless man he treated to coffee. Though Baldur was the most downtrodden.

  Tom slid into a booth opposite Baldur. He pulled a worn paperback out of his back pocket. A 1970 novelization of Beneath the Planet of the Apes. He owned a dozen copies and was never without one. It was a subtle reminder from the divine entity trapped inside him, behind the badge. He was compelled to read a dog-eared page whenever he could. Behold the truth that abides in us. Reveal that truth unto that Maker. I reveal my inmost self unto my god. It was Loki’s way of reminding him that he was not Officer Friendly, but product of a hex in which Loki was trapped and made impotent of godhood. Forced to be lawful good. Tom ignored that he was nothing but a spell-cast cop with a beat in a city that didn’t exist by virtue of some whore’s curse placed upon Loki and his kin. It all felt real to him. Maybe that was the point.

  Ali headed to the restroom. Tom liked to watch her walk away as much as he liked looking at her round ass astride her bike. How can I not be real with feelings like these? I would give my life for her—and not only because she is my partner.

  The faded green Naugahyde bench seats had seen better days. The tabletop had a plexiglass cover under which a dozen local businesses had an advertisement. None of them were still in business. “So, Baldur—we need to talk about getting you seen at the urgent care clinic.”

  “Can’t go to the clinic.” He toyed with the sugar packets.

  “Yes, you can. They will see you if I bring you in.”

  “I got no name. No memories. No clean socks.”

  “None of that matters. They will give you something to clear up that rash on your penis.”

  “Got that from one of those hoors on East Second Avenue. A man’s gotta have a piece of tail every now and then or he’ll go mad. Course I’m not sure if it was a filly or a colt.”

  Tom sighed. This was never easy. “Do not make me arrest you, Baldur—and that is your name. If I haul you in, you’ll get medical assistance.” He paused. “You are more than the life you lead. Do you not recall any part of it?”

  “No. I don’t remember if I ate breakfast most days.”

  “You and I are living lives that are not of our choosing. We upset a coven of witch sex-workers. They hexed us. A powerful magical spell.”

  “What’s your name? Your real name.”

  “I can’t utter it aloud. It is part of my curse. Just call me Tom.”

  “Better than me. I can’t remember much more than where to pick up the best return for deposit bottles and when the tavern opens.”

  “We are victims of a profound curse, Baldur. I’m the only one who had a bodily physical change, but all of us are affected.”

  “I don’t know from Baldur. I only know me—the nameless son of a bitch who sleeps in the shelter and drinks the rest of the time.”

  “You don’t have to live that way,” Tom replied.

  “I have to live this way just as much as you have to live life as a cop.” He paused. “Wow. How the fuck do I know that?”

  “Random godly wisdom sometimes breeches the wall. The he
x suppressed our true identities and powers and slipped us into mortal lives. But we’ve been divine for so long little snippets remain, always just out of reach.”

  “Until we open up our gobs to speak and a jewel falls out? I feel a tingle in my fingertips sometimes.”

  “It’s residual godhood.”

  “Oh, that’s good. I thought it might be diabetic neuropathy. Truthfully, Tom—I’m not unhappy. Even with the dirty feet and corrupted dick, I like myself. Yeah. I’m not unhappy. With any of it.”

  “Neither am I. And that’s the biggest problem and reason I want to find that witch

  and make her remove the curse.”

  The server set a tray of coffees on the table.

  Baldur lifted his and saluted Tom. “Hell of a witch. We need to bottle what she’s peddling and sell it in six packs.”

  “That’s for sure. I almost admire her abilities. Odin could tell us how to end the curse, but he is not the man he used to be,” Tom said flatly.

  “Who’s Odin?”

  “Your father. My friend. Our king.”

  “Hmmm. What’s his hexlife?” Baldur asked.

  Hexlife. I like that. “He is a very old pagan god who is now a priest at St. Anthony’s. A Catholic priest. Odin—the old Odin—was never celibate. Ever. He was born begetting children. And now he preaches to teens about abstinence and the perils of alcohol. Odin pretty much invented alcohol. This is so against his nature.” Tom paused. “I’ve got to get him sorted. He kind of wears his godhood like daily growth of his beard. Some folks ‘round here must sense it. It’s a problem. We have some white nationalists attending mass now. And skinheads hang out at the church. I’m pretty sure it’s not Jesus they’re looking for. They’re looking for recognition and validation from an ancient god of the Scandinavian peoples. Odin had a zero-tolerance policy for racism when he was himself. It will not end well.”