The Legend of Sleepy Phoenix
© 2006 by Kyt Dotson

Jason Salter dared to check his rearview mirror again. The single bright-star of a motorcycle headlight still hung there. It had been there for the past half-hour while he wove the cab through the Foothills’ winding neighborhood roads. Every turn, every bend, it reappeared in the distance—seeming almost a quarter-mile off—and remained a steady companion.

Old urban legends sprang to his mind in paranoid bursts, but he pushed them away. Ahwatukee wasn’t exactly gang central and wasn’t the end of civilization either. Rich subdivisions sprang up all around in carefully cultivated rows. To the north, South Mountain reared up into the star speckled midnight horizon like a torn piece of paper, and the red lights of the radio towers shimmered like fireworks suspended in the sky.

In the mirror, the ominous headlight began to draw closer. Jason watched it nervously, blowing air out between pursed lips as he gripped the steering wheel tightly.

The radio squawked, jolting him. Gary doing dispatch. Jason depressed the send button. “This is Sierra Alpha Three-Six-Nine, come back.”

“Salter, what’s your twenty? Over.”

Jason got himself into the hack business only four months earlier. Coming out of pizza delivery in metro Phoenix it seemed a step up, and it paid a bit better. On the old delivery job, the drivers kept in contact with cell phones, and the radio jargon wasn’t always easy to remember.

“Uuuh, what? Over.”

A long pause.

“Where are you at? Over.” Jason could almost make out the sigh before the radio clicked back in.

“I’m hanging-ten east on Chandler, then I’ll hop on I-10.”

“You’re way off station, Salter.”

“Couldn’t be helped,” he said, “the dude I picked up at Sky Harbor changed his mind mid-drive.”

“I have a fare for you,” Gary said, “but he’s cooling his heels the other side of Tempe.”

“I’m supposed to be off in twenty.”

“Did it really take you an entire hour and a half to drive that last fare down there?”

Jason didn’t feel like saying that he got lost.

“Nevermind,” Gary said. “The boss says you can take some overtime if you like. With Jack and Sue out, three of our chariots in the garage, and the old man’s daughter taking the next few days off we’re kinda short handed. Whaddya say?”

He slowed the cab to a stop for a red light and thought over his reply. Behind him, a low, deep thrum rumbled in a cadence that reminded him of the hoof beats on stone.

Jason pressed send. “Sure. I could use the money.”

The drumming tempo slowly rose in volume and diminished in rhythm as it approached, idling down to an unhurried pace. The light from the single headlight glowed momentarily through his back window and slid off to the side as the thrumming rolled up beside the cab.

Jason turned his head to look.

“I’ll hand you over to this fare in Tempe,” the radio crackled. “I’ll get the address. It’s not handy. Andrea got it and went to the can.”

The first thing that he noticed about the bike was the bright silver-polished pipes running along the engine framed by the black leathered legs of the rider. The smell of oil and exhaust billowed up through the half-open window as Jason’s ran his gaze over the black and chrome sweep of the fenders.

Ahead, the light turned green.

He put his eyes to the road and listened as the bike’s engine roared to galloping life beside him. The motorcyclist paced the taxi easily even when Jason pushed the gas. Eagerly, the bike revved his engine and forged ahead; grinning, Jason followed. The next stoplight wasn’t for another two miles or more, so he poured on, drinking in the exhilaration of the race. The bike had pressed ahead early, but the cab gained.

Soon they were once again neck and neck. The stoplight ahead flashed from red to green. Jason smirked at his midnight companion, whose bike now thundered like an entire herd of mustangs charging across the blacktop. The biker’s leather outfit whipped and billowed as the taxi’s speedometer needle began to exceed 60 mph.

Grinning in maniac delight through the wind lashing at his hair and eyes, Jason craned his head to glimpse his speed-rival. His broad shoulders surmounted a barrel chest, and his gloved hands engulfed the handlebar grips; but when Jason’s gaze met the man’s eyes—

 “Sierra Alpha,” Gary said, “I have that fare’s location...”

Or where his eyes should have been.

“Holy shit!”

A black gloved hand reached through the window. Glass shattered. Brakes shrieked—the cab kissed the narrow side of a brick wall—and everything stopped.

“Sierra Alpha are you out there?” the radio hissed weakly as the wind howled across the lonely road. “Salter, unless you’re chatting up some blonde with big knockers, I expect you to pick up the radio.”

 

“I know it's your day off, but we don't have enough people to cover the entire shift that night.”

Irritated, Vex drummed her fingers on the kitchen counter and bit her lip, cradling the phone between her shoulder and cheek. She knew she could say no, but it wasn't going to happen. With three of the taxi company’s cabs in the garage and one more driver out of commission it wasn't like she could find someone to cover that shift. Halloween night and she was going to have to spend at least six hours on the job. She mused that maybe she could get off early for good behavior.

Normally, her dad wouldn't have been the one calling. It would have been Gary, night manager of the Phoenix branch and dispatcher who ruled his garage with an iron hand and his radio with a sharp tongue. He was not one to mince words or back away from responsibility, so why he'd gone and asked her dad to call from the Vegas office she couldn't follow. Seemed she was going to have some words with Gary about using family against her. Of course, her dad did own the company, so it could just be politics.

Finally, into the telephone she said, “Fine. I'll do it.”

There must have been a rough edge to her tone because her dad was quiet for a moment.

“Vicks.”

“Don't call me that,” she said. “It makes me sound like cough syrup.”

“Darling?”

“What else do you want, Da?”

“You don't have to go see him in the hospital, you know. I reckon that I can't stop you anyway, never have, but this time, why don't you just leave it well enough alone. I know he's one of your coworkers, but just because of the...accident, you don't have to go and see him. You're not obligated."

Vex sighed. He couldn't even bring himself to say it—to say, “Just because your mother died in a car accident.” Even though he himself had only learned of that tragedy a year after it happened he still couldn't grasp how much that had bent Vex's mental world. Car accidents, freak or ordinary, gained a strange semblance to that heart-breaking memory and earned their own superstitious ceremony. Her mother had died at the scene, Vex never got to visit her in any hospital; never had a chance to say goodbye.

“He's a friend of mine, Da,” Vex said. It wasn't worth fighting with him over, but she wasn't going to back down. “I want to make sure he's okay. This isn't about mom.”

“Fine," her dad said, she could almost see the creases forming on his brow. “Just promise me you won't take him a rose.”

“Whatever.”

 

Vex brought a rose anyway; it was part of the ceremony. She tucked it carefully beneath her leather jacket as she slid out of the cab. It was already midmorning and the Arizona heat produced rippling shadows along the concrete walkway that undulated like smoke between the silhouettes of feathery bushes. Nurses wearing various colors of scrubs and smocks hung about outside the front door, chatting in the shadows. Vex snickered at the number who sucked on cigarettes through pursed lips, blowing threads of white between narrowly parted lips.

“I’m looking for Jason Salter,” she told the receptionist, a bored looking woman wearing huge framed glasses. “I think he’s in room thirteen nineteen? But, I don’t know how to get there.”

“Take the elevator to the third floor, turn left, and just follow the numbers on the wall.”

“Thanks.”

Salter was the only person in the room. He had been propped up on the far bed, white sheets swaddled around him with several pillows underneath his head. The TV was on and he muted the sound a moment after she stepped in. The antiseptic “cleanness” smell clung to everything as she walked past the other, empty, bed. Suppressed feelings of grief and discomfort mingled with the smell; the hospital smell, the scent of loss. She wondered how many other people felt this way about hospitals, not a place to find healing, but a place where injury could be found. A limbo between walking free in the world and recovering from illness, avoided during the best of times.

“Vex!” Salter said from his bed. It was obvious that he couldn’t turn his head very much. The dark lines of purple bruises were still visible on his neck and face, his lower lip sported swelling and a black barbed-wire row of stitches. In spite of his injuries, he tried to smile cheerily, which expressed more like an ugly grimace instead. “You’re a sight for bored eyes. I’d hug you if I could, dudette… As you can see, I’m rather tied up at the moment.”

“You look like hell, Jason,” Vex said, crossing her arms.

Jason’s grimace-smile faltered and turned into a lop-sided sneer which Vex figured approximated a wide grin. He winced and brought a bruised hand up to touch his cheek. “Yeah, I feel like hell too. Like a sumo is dancing the hula in my head.” The hand fell away. “Did you bring me a rose?”

“What gave you the impression that I brought you a flower?”

“Is that your hand in your jacket or are you just happy to see me?”

Returning his sneer, Vex produced the black rose from beneath her jacket. The dark petals, tucked neatly together at the tip, jostled as she laid it in Jason’s hand. He took it delicately and inhaled the scent.

“Who told?” she asked.

“Gary called me after they brought me out of the ICU.”

“Ah, yeah. He’s the one who gave me your room number and what time to visit. I should have guessed. When do they think you’ll be getting back to work?”

“Well.” Jason propped himself up in the bed. “I hear that I have a few more days here. My ribs may take a bit to heal, but maybe a week or so after they send me home. Or so they say.”

Vex nodded.

“Sucks,” he continued. “I’m going to miss out on Halloween. I even had some nice props lined up for the trick or treaters. That’s what’s stashed in the duffel I asked you to stow in your cab’s trunk. Won’t be able to use ‘em now. Maybe next year.”

“And dad gave me your shift that night, even. You making an accordion out of your ride put us both in a bind, didn’t it.”

“I’m sorry, dudette. I really am.” He hesitated a moment and the grimace-smile faded. “I didn’t really plan on getting run off the road.”

“I saw the police report. I’d say someone else planned it for you,” she said.

The Ahwatukee P.D. speculated that it was just an isolated incident. Someone had smashed the driver’s side window with a crowbar or a baseball bat and run him off the road. When Salter came to he looked at the list of items found at the scene and nothing was missing—not even his fare money. So the detectives concluded that it was probably random. Of course, Vex knew that Jason had a big mouth and bar hopped a lot, so he could have pissed someone off and just wasn’t telling.

“Yeah, the police report,” he said and sank back into the pillow. He turned his head to look directly at her and took a pained breath. “There’s another reason I asked Gary to let you know my room number. He told me that you visit everyone at the job who gets in a wreck, but I had to be sure you’d come.”

“You torque off some girl’s boyfriend or something?”

“Think so? With the way that biker dude ran me down, I’d sure think so. But no, it’s weirder than that… Way weirder. When the motorcycle came up on me, I got this totally bad vibe.”

“Vibe? What are you, sixteen?”

“You’re actually into witchcraft and stuff, right? That’s not just for show to go with your whole Goth chick thing.” He was staring at the silver pentacle necklace hanging around her neck. “Your dad doesn’t like it when anyone brings it up, but everyone around the garage knows you’re into something. One of my exes was into Wicca, so, I recognize the signs…”

Vex put up her hand to stop him. “Jason. Pull your foot out of your mouth and just tell me what’s up.” He frowned; it actually looked like a frown even with the stitches on his lip. “Yes. I’m into ‘witchcraft.’ Now talk.”

It took him so long to choose his words, she wondered if he was actually going to tell her.

“He had no head,” he blurted. The bluntness of the statement caused Vex to sit back in her seat. Jason made a cutting motion with his hand across his neck. “The dude’s body only went up to his shoulders and stopped. No helmet. No head. Nada.”

“No head,” she repeated.

Jason ordinarily came across with a stoner cross surfer-dude attitude and nothing seemed to bend his sense of humor. When he’d started working with her, he even tried some playful attempts at flirtation—which she shot down with her usual casual disinterest. The fact that he got the hint after the second time but didn’t resent it definitely put him in a different class of human beings than most. A teller of tall tales, Jason Salter was not; that meant that there was a stray chance there really was a headless biker out there.

The bruises and stitches curling Jason’s mouth into a scowl added an edge of sober severity to the sternly serious expression on his face.

“I’d seen some batshit crazy stuff out in Honolulu,” he said, “but never a dude with no head. I sure couldn’t tell the police that—and I hope you don’t tell Gary or your dad I said that—but I just had to tell someone what I saw. This dude wasn’t wearing a costume.

“And that’s it. I kinda get the impression you help people out with this sort of stuff. Nothing fazes you and you take those weird calls that make Gary shake his head. I guess I just got nobody to talk to about this sort of thing. So, thanks for hearing me out.”

“I’ll do you one better: I’ll look into it.” At her words, his sneering grin returned with a vengeance, more terrible than ever. “Tell me everything you remember, starting when you first saw the motorcycle. And Jason, stop smiling. It’s scary.”

 

“Squawk. Dispatch, this is Victor-Echo,” Vex said into her radio after she returned to her car. “Just checking in. Over.”

“How’s Salter? Over.”

“Really banged up, Gary. He took that crash pretty hard. You should see his face. Came back with this crazy story…”

“Biker bashing out one of our chariot windows? Things don’t get much more ugly than that.” Gary paused a moment, still broadcasting. “It gets worse,” he said. “I just got some reports that Salter’s case isn’t as isolated as the P.D. wanted to say. Just yesterday night someone else got hit—another cabbie. You watch your ass out there. Over.”

“I always do. Thanks for the warning. Victor-Echo out.”

She tried not to think of the other reason her father didn’t want her visiting Salter in the hospital. He couldn’t know the actual depth of her crusade to discover what happened to her mother; instead he likely figured she had a morbid fascination with car crashes borne out of years-latent teenage anger at the accident—and its totally mysterious circumstances.

Moments after hearing from Salter that a headless biker attacked him it was impossible to suppress a flash of curiosity. But better angels of Vex’s reason reminded her that this guy seemed to only strike at night; her mother had died midday. In light of the fact that the taxi industry had just developed a strange predator almost overnight, though, added another dimension to the problem that just could not be ignored.

She needed to see someone who might know more about a phantom, headless biker. And Vex knew exactly where to find one.

During her father’s early years, before he met her mother, he rode with a gang of bikers who crossed most of the Western United States. He’d taken her to meet them a few times, she blurrily recalled, when she was five and six, and it was impossible not to find some of his old buddies parked along Mill Avenue from time to time. But, she knew, the best place to find them was a run-down, after-hours dive called the Kickstand.

 

The Kickstand was as shabby looking as hole-in-the-wall bar could get if Vex had ever seen one. The only neon lights in the dirty front window that still worked promoted various brands of domestic beer, and of those few were even readable between their fitfully buzzing flickers. Motorcycles of every make, model, and vintage lined up in strangely orderly rows on the dusty lot in front, producing a shimmering labyrinth of chrome, acrylic paint, and flashing handlebar mirrors. She likened the lot immediately to a hedge maze crafted from metal and testosterone.

The sounds of carousing and carrying on murmured over the crackling echoes of billiards as she pushed the front door open and slid through a heavy cloud of smoke. The hazy fog fled at her footsteps, disturbed by her passage as it languidly sketched out the curves of seated figures, the bar, and blurred halos around working and broken light fixtures alike.

A few eyes glanced her way over mugs of half-drunk beer, but just as quickly returned to nursing their drinks when she ignored them and headed straight for the pool tables in back.

“Bill,” she said, stopping short of the green table. “Allow me to buy you a drink.”

The man who turned and looked in her direction leaned on his pool cue and scratched his large nose. Dirty white hair hung over his wide brow and a graying beard hid his square jaw, so smooth the transition between his beard and hair it seemed welded to his face. He moved slowly, his barrel chest rising and falling as if his jacket were a mountain on a thinner man. Vex knew most of it was his own bulk and not the jacket. After a moment, a smile split his beard.

“Who am I to turn down a lady,” he said, took a long drag off of his cigarette and stubbed it out on the edge of the table. Long streamers of white smoke blew out of his nose as he exhaled. The other man at the table, a thin man with short cut blonde hair, straightened up from where he was about to take a shot at the eight ball and glanced at Bill.

Vex turned her head to the side and addressed the bartender. “Gregory, two glasses of Sam Adams, for Bill and his friend.”

The man behind the counter nodded and swept a pair of mugs from the nearby rack.

“No thanks,” Bill’s red-faced, cue-wielding partner huffed. She didn’t recognize him, and Vex thought she’d met most all of her father’s friends who frequented the place—and it seemed like he was friends with everyone at the Kickstand.

With the agility of a striking cobra, Bill rounded the corner of the billiard’s table and cuffed his partner. “Please don’t mind Jimmy. He loses his manners when he’s three sheets to the wind.” The other man wobbled as he gripped him by the collar. “Jimmy. This is Vincent’s kid, Vex. You treat her nice now.”

Jimmy swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbed on his thin neck. “You’re Harrow’s daughter?”

Heads nodded all around the room. Vex didn’t nod, she just tilted her head slightly. It was best not to interfere with the games these guys got themselves into. Already several familiar whiskered faces had emerged from the lingering smoke. White teeth grinning between dark beards gleamed all around, reminding her of the twisted parody of the Cheshire cat. If the cat wore leather, that was.

Bill released Jimmy and he caught himself on the pool table. “Sure, I’ll gladly accept a beer ma’am.”

Gregory passed by with the frothing mugs of beer as more people slid from their tables and sauntered over. Between the rapidly closing quarters and the thick smoke, Vex tried her best not to feel claustrophobic in the midst of all the friendly smiles.

“How is ole Vince?” “He hasn’t been around in a bit.” “You’re looking quite good.” “I can see she inherited his brow line but not his fashion sense.”

Before the group became too much, it was Bill that came to her rescue. “Don’t crowd the girl!” he hollered. “Balls! You’d think that nobody’s ever had one of their kids visit. And Doc, you bumped the table. Back up! Give her some air.”

The faces withdrew and Vex smiled. “Thanks guys. Da’s fine.”

Bill nodded. “Alright,” he said. “Out with it. Why’d you come down here? Sure thing not to just buy old Bill a drink. Don’t you youngsters have more interesting things to get up to?”

“A friend of mine ran into something that I think you might know something about. A chrome trimmed black bike with a headless motorcyclist…”

“Ah yes,” the wizened old biker said, leaning back onto his pool cue like it was a medicine staff. “Well, a drink for a story is fair pay. Just sit back and listen to old Bill.”

Vex made a glance around: there were no seats but the pool table.

“Where are my manners… Someone get the lady a chair!”

Someone kicked a stool across the hardwood floor. It skittered to a stop near her. Suddenly, Vex felt five years old again—surrounded by the aged and kindly faces of her impromptu uncles. Overwhelmed, she sat down without objection. A hush passed over the room, even the men near the bar rumbling in their drinks moments before went quiet.

“So you’d like to know about the damned Indian,” Bill said, his voice becoming a sonorous storytelling baritone. “Now, when I say Indian I don’t mean injun like Native American. I’m talking about his bike. Black and chrome, if I recall right, a custom Chief.”

“I hear the bike was a Spirit,” a voice piped up.

Laughter bucked through the crowd. “He’s a spirit all right,” another voice replied.

Bill pursed his lips, a facial expression that seemed to make his beard pucker about the middle. “Am I telling this story or am I not? The Spirit didn’t come out until a few years ago and that damned Indian has been around for a great time longer. So, shaddup and listen.”

A murmur rustled through the room but the assembled men went quiet again and Bill returned his somber gaze back to Vex.

“News of how the Indian came to be are poorly remembered at best, but listen to old Bill and I’ll tell you what I know.

“Now, in spite of the name he’s gotten over the years, the Indian isn’t. Fact is, he was probably German or maybe even some other white skinned European variety.”

“I hear he might have been Hessian,” Jimmy said.

Bill ignored the outburst and kept on. “Some people say the he was from Maine, others that he was from California. He may have been from both of those places and perhaps also from none. What most people agree about the damned Indian is that he was a wanderer, a nomad you might say. Never staying in one place for very long.

“That is—until he died.

“As you might have guessed, on account of his head. The way I figure it is that he was coming up out of the south, out from the Reservation, just passing through as was his usual. During a night of bad weather and no moon; the type of night when all the crows hide in the trees and don’t shout in the dark he happened on a particularly bad stretch of road. And at the same time a Mac truck driver, heavy on his load and a bit light on his sleep came toward that same road.

“Together they met at some forsaken intersection.” Bill moved his hands in front of them like arrows intersecting each other. “And the truck driver ran the light, his lights obscured by dust or inattention… It wasn’t he who struck the Indian; it was the Indian who struck him. Cleaved his head clear from the biker’s shoulders and that Mac driver dragged the boy’s body clear all the way Tucson, his final destination.

“People say he didn’t even know the body was there until a mechanic found the lifeless torso and limbs tangled in the axels.”

Bill paused a moment to down the last swig of his beer and leaned forward.

“True story, I tell you, but it’s not the best part. People say that the Indian returns on starless nights when the sky is a cowl of grey, driving up out of Tucson, looking for his missing head. Damned to ride the road that his body dragged over. Beginning at dusk he searches—vainly—for his missing head, only to be caught by the dawn.”

 

Salter’s cab, taxi 369, had been towed to the Fairlight garage after the ambulance and police patrol cars left the scene. Gary told Vex that the vehicle now amounted to probably little more than scrap metal. The frame managed to only barely withstand the wall and the engine cracked clear through on impact. The cab, crumpled and forlorn, sat in an unused garage alongside the main stalls—the dusty white light filtering in through the high windows and the smell of motor oil always reminded her of sick horses. This garage was for sick cars.

The taxi’s windshield and driver’s side windows were both gone, leaving only the passenger’s side window, which sported a multitude of spider web cracks. Looking at the back of the cab one would have thought it hadn’t been damaged at all—with the exception of the trunk, which seemed to have violently twisted open during the accident. Fragments of safety glass still twinkled inside, sitting atop the upholstery. Peering through the vacant driver’s side window, Vex noticed her own eyes gazing back from the passenger’s seat, the rearview mirror rested there.

She reached into her pocket and withdrew a lipstick canister, Pale Moonlight White. It applied slickly to the surface of the driver’s side mirror as she drew an incantation circle and traced out the Futhark based runes for memory and change.

In her experience with psychometry, objects didn’t remember things like people did; their recollections did, however, often remember people. Jason’s intimate presence with the side mirror at the time of the accident would probably be enough to cement at least a few glimpses of the headless Indian biker. Hopefully one glimpse enough for her to know the face of her faceless prey.

Vex touched her fingers to the pattern and exhaled, looking internally for that place where divination resets, the strange sensation of burning butterflies seated sometimes in her sternum. When she found it, the world shifted. Divining through psychometry always made her think of Johnny Smith from The Dead Zone, but the connections were never so perfect or encompassing. Instead, flashes of insight, the strange sense of forgetting something passed over her like an electric current.

—the bright single headlight of a motorcycle resolved into view, hazy and wavering as if across a great distance, for a moment it was three headlights, one in the center and two smaller on the sides. A dark shape mounted behind the glowing light.

—a motorcycle, black and bronze, seemed to float on nothing. The asphalt road quivered like a torrent of black beneath its wheels as it levitated alongside the taxi, Vex could see the cab’s exterior curving away—familiar. The Indian appeared as described, a keg-chested, leather clad mountain atop his bike. Thick arms gripped the handlebars, neckline ending in nothing.

—the Indian turned, only visible by the shoulders shifting. A shadow crossed her vision.

—the road had stopped moving, the stars were fixed in place. This motionlessness made her queasy in a way that the non-world of driving hadn’t before. The ponderous bulk of the Indian, no longer astride his bike, walked away from the mirror and toward the back of the cab.

The mirror could recall no more.

“Thank you,” Vex said to the mirror. It couldn’t hear her, she knew, but she still felt it was important to offer thanks. She wiped the lipstick off of the mirror with a handkerchief. “Now that I’ve seen you, I can find you.”

When she returned to the main garage to check out, Andrea waved her down from the dispatch table. “Happy Halloween!” she called.

“Thanks, you too,” Vex said. “It’ll be happier when I get off of this shift.”

As a taxi dispatcher, Andrea Bass was mild mannered, witty, and to-the-point—all the things that Gary wasn’t. Wrinkles formed around her mouth when she smiled at the joking tone in Vex’s complaint and she nodded, the blue bow she tied into her graying hair bobbing as she did so. Outside of her job as a dispatcher, Andrea gave Vex the impression of an Old West Sunday schoolmarm—she would have looked poignant and stunning in a dress with a shady hat. Vex’s father had hired her out of retirement from being a day care coordinator. Gone from babysitting toddlers to babysitting childish hacks, it couldn’t have been that big of a trade for her.

“Don’t get too down on yourself, hon,” Andrea prodded cheerfully. “It’s only a six-hour run. Tomorrow is another day and a couple temp drivers are coming in. We’ll recover. We always do.”

Vex nodded. “Say, does Gary still have that pair of company cell phones in his desk? The ones with the headsets.”

“You need them for something? I have a key to his desk. I doubt he’d mind.”

“Yes. Jason promised to keep me company tonight.”

“From his hospital bed?” Andrea’s keys jingled as she flipped through them. “What a sweet kid.”

 

“I don’t understand why I have to stay on the phone with you for six hours,” Salter griped in her ear after she dialed his room at the hospital. “It’s not like it’s my fault I was put out of commission.”

It was three hours in and he was already complaining.

“Yeah, yeah,” Vex said. “Quit yer whining, Jason. I’m taking your shift, so you can keep me company. Also, I have some interesting news for you.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

In the distance, the sun had begun to dip into the horizon. Deep crimsons and salmon pinks spread themselves along the edges of the clouds and blazed along the dim silhouettes of mountains breaking the otherwise flat landscape.

Vex grinned maliciously. “I found a way to track the guy who put you out of commission. I’m going to start hunting him after the sun goes down.”

“Dude. That’s awesome,” he said. “I can just see your itinerary now. Vex Harrow. Halloween Night. Item one: kill monster biker. But how are you going to hunt him down and do your shift at the same time?”

“I don’t really see these two things are mutually exclusive. I’m going to try to be down in the area you were hit.”

Jason paused a moment. “What about fares?”

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I have that angle covered.”

Vex realized that chances were very good she could stay out of Ahwatukee by pushing fares off onto other drivers and affiliates until the last possible moment. Not a sound behavior, but since she was supposedly off today, nobody would call her on it. It would leave her plenty of time to hunt.

The sun set entirely and swallowed the red sunset with it, the clouds followed in long blankets, covering the stars and leaving a dead grey darkness above. After twilight passed, so did the navy blue of the dusk sky. The only color left in the world appeared in the glow of jack-o’-lanterns hanging from the trees of Mill Avenue, colorful costumes trotted past along the roadsides, and the strange outfits of her fares.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Salter said after a long stretch of silence. “I mean, to count this guy has run four people off the road.” He spoke up because Vex had mentioned that she was picking up a fare in Ahwatukee who only needed a short jump, putting her squarely in the attack zone.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t gone up against weirder things back on Hawaii,” Vex said. “With kahunas and angry volcano spirits.”

“Yeah, well, the only big kahuna that I knew back in Honolulu was a guy with a big belly who would marry people with leis and crap—and the volcano never rode up on me and put out my window with its fist. So I’m going to have to say no.”

“Poor baby,” Vex jibed. “Welcome to Phoenix… Ah, here we are.” She pulled the cab over next to the address in the dispatch. An apartment door opened above, some goodbyes were said, and the fares skittered down the steps. “What’d you know? It’s a pair of goblins.”

The two kids, teenagers by the eager look of them, were painted green head to toe, even their hair. They sported pointed ears, ragged outfits that showed a lot of green skin, and bubbly voices. Into the cab spilled a boy and a girl who smooched and schmoozed their way into the back seat.

“Where to?” Vex asked even though she already knew. The boy repeated the final destination, she logged it in her journey log, and set off.

The two goblins in the back seat set about making out. Vex hoped against hope that the green paint was sweat-proof; she didn’t want to have to be cleaning it off of her back seat.

“Goblins?” Salter asked. “What are they doing?”

“Snogging, I think.”

“Sounds fun.”

Vex just shook her head and turned out onto the main road. Soon, she found herself driving a lonely stretch of road, mountains rising into the bleak and empty sky on one side, and the fading lights of civilization flickering in and out of visibility through the hills to her right. The pair in the back continued to ignore the rest of the world as they clawed and pawed each other urgently. Vex restrained herself from checking the journey log, wondering if the drop-off was a motel.

The kids in the back weren’t up for conversation, so Vex turned Jason’s attention back to the story about the Indian.

“When I went to see my uncle Bill to ask about this guy, he told me a lot of stuff,” she said. “But there’s some things that I don’t quite get. If it’s the same headless guy from the story, then something must have changed recently.”

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently he prowls starless nights, and in twenty, maybe thirty years, he hasn’t attacked anyone. Until recently. Like you said, four people have been run off the road by this guy. Something changed.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like cabbies.” Jason sniggered, a sound that broke off into coughing. “Ugh, I still can’t laugh.”

“That’s odd too.” Vex drummed her fingers on the dash and took a deep breath. “If I were him, I would be attacking truck drivers...”

The deep thrumming tempo of almost hoof beats brought her attention to the foreground. Her eyes flickered up to the rearview mirror, the road ahead was completely empty, the road behind as well—with the exception of a single approaching light. It grew larger, casting rainbows in the mirror, as she watched.

“Ah hell,” she said under her breath.

“What’s up?” Salter asked.

“Jason… what road were you on when you got hit?”

“Chandler.”

Vex checked one of the passing road signs to be sure. “I think we have a problem.”

“It’s him?”

She pulled the compartment between the seats open and snatched up a magical tool she has secreted there. The carefully edged bit of obsidian, inscribed with transmutation sigils, pressed coolly against her palm—it warmed with dramatic suddenness when she focused on it. A crawling tingle prickled along the flesh of her hand.

“Talk to me, what’s going on?” Salter said.

“Hoof beats,” she replied. “Just like you described. I’m willing to bet this is the Indian.”

“You are serious. Vex, listen to me,” Salter said, “get out of there. Turn off the road. ”

“Too late for that.”

The booming cadence of the motorcycle had reached a grand crescendo as the cycle came up astride the cab. Vex turned to look. None of the stories told nor the vision through the side mirror had given the Indian and his bike good credit. He was a mountain of a man, covered head—well, neck—to toe in leather. His body swathed in flapping midnight black material that appeared new and tattered all at once. The sheer presence of the man on the motorcycle brought it an edge of preternatural violence.

The shoulders swayed as the Indian looked at her; Vex returned the missing stare, daring him to challenge her.

She squeezed her hand tight around the obsidian. Ethereal light spread through the cab as withering magical energies wreathed her hand with pluming azure light. The wards set into the bulletproof windows writhed in her mage-vision, eagerly waiting contact—like the spines of a porcupine they primed themselves for attack.

But the Indian did nothing. When Salter encountered him, he had tried to race him. The headless nothing seemed to be considering her carefully. After that moment of consideration the motorbike slowed—the hoof beat drumming slowing with it—and fell away from the cab.

Vex tried to track him in her rearview and side mirrors. “What is he doing—”

WHAM! A giant fist came down on the trunk of her cab. Primed like springs, magical wards exploded.

“You did not just hit my cab!” she yelled.

The hoof beat tempo stuttered for a moment and recovered. The Indian paused as if in surprise for a moment; then shifted, hitting his accelerator, and roared off past the taxi.

“What’s going on?” Jason cried in her ear.

“I think that he just realized that I’m armed,” Vex said.

“Armed? You have a gun?”

“Something like that…” Vex could barely restrain the anger from her voice. “That’s it—nobody touches my cab—this bastard is mine.”

She rolled down the window so she could get a clear shot. Salter’s reply was drown out by engine noise when she down-shifted and hit the gas as hard as she could, just like she’d been shown by the man she bought the taxi from. The rpm gauge pegged as the turbo-charger kicked in and the custom-built police-interceptor engine replied with a staggering burst of acceleration.

The wind roared all around her and shrieked past the open window, the red taillights of the Indian grew larger in her vision as she closed. The motorcycle blew up a cloud of grey smoke from its tires as it pushed faster, but the taxi’s engine proved superior and inexorably closed the distance between. The Indian ran full-speed through a red-light, empty intersection; not taking her foot off the gas, Vex followed him through.

She had switched the hand gripping the obsidian shard; the brilliant sapphire nimbus of lethal energies cast writhing shadows across her intent, predatory expression.

Another, poor-lit intersection appeared ahead—closing fast. That light was red also. The walk signal hadn’t yet changed. It was a good thing no cops were around.

“…going…happening?” she could hear snatches of Jason’s speech in her ear as she watched herself speed towards the red light and kept her eyes locked on the headless leather jacket.

As the Indian started to pass into the intersection, Vex drew her arm back—but then something strange happened.

The motorcycle slammed on his brakes. The bike fishtailed and spun, large legs springing out to steady his halt, and stopped solidly at the edge of the wan illumination beneath the poorly maintained stoplight. The cab tore through the intersection, past the biker, and Vex applied her brakes hard. The dead grey skies spun above, dust and exhaust spilled through the open window of the cab, and the halo of blue light around her fist faltered and died.

Ahead, framed visibly in the blinding beams of the taxi’s headlights, the Indian sat and waited. He did not move. His leathery bulk sat atop the large motorcycle as if relaxed, the shoulders barely moving up and down like calm breathing. Vex narrowed her eyes.

“What’s going on?” Jason shouted in her ear. “Can you hear me? For fuck’s sake talk to me!”

“Everything’s fine,” Vex said. “You can stop shouting.”

“Did you get him?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean not exactly?”

“I mean, we stopped. He stopped… I’m staring at him right now. I’m getting out of the car.” Vex pulled the door handle and set her feet on the asphalt. A gentle wind blowing down off of South Mountain blew away the stink of burnt fuel and replaced it with the smells of desert. “I think this is the intersection he died at…he may not be able to cross it.”

The Indian’s idle died and he dismounted.

“Is that wise?” Jason said.

“I think it’s a stand-off,” Vex said. “But…there’s still something I don’t understand. Four days ago something happened to bring him out of his routine.”

She glanced back at the trunk of her cab, where the Indian had slammed his fist down. The trunk of Salter’s cab had also had its trunk torn open. The rear-end of his taxi had otherwise not been damaged at all. Now it seemed a little strange that it was torn open.

Keeping one eye on the monstrous biker standing on the other side of the road, she went to the back of her cab and popped the trunk open. The only object inside was a bulky green duffel bag with green stripes. The name “JASON SALTER” had been poorly scrawled on the side with a heavy indelible marker.

“Jason…” she said. “You told me you left a duffel in my trunk when we talked last. What exactly is in it?”

“Oh, just something that I found at a construction site that I dropped this dude off at. A Halloween prop.”

Vex grabbed the duffel and pulled it to herself. She checked across the road, the Indian had not stirred. She unzipped the duffel and peered inside. Among a myriad of various trick-or-treat paraphernalia, lollipops, candy bars, Jolly Ranchers, and other candy, sat an object that would have explained everything had she known it was there. And it was there the entire time.

“I thought maybe it would make a nice bowl,” Jason explained in her ear, knowing what she was looking at.

“Jason…” she said slowly. “You are a fucking retard.”

Before he could protest, she yanked the headset out and tossed the phone in the trunk.

The Indian waited across the intersection, silently astride his bike, watching when she stepped out into harsh beams of the taxi headlights. The leather-clad shoulders shifted slightly when it saw what she held in her hands, a giant glove at the end of a huge arm extended towards Vex.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

She tossed. The Indian caught his skull deftly and gingerly placed it on his shoulders. The grinning jaw line smiled back at her as it faded into black, to be replaced by the reflective shield of a helmet.

“Thank you.”

The words seemed to hang for a moment. The motorcyclist extended his hand again, bowed, and melted into the night like an oil painting dropped in water. As the last of his form faded, Vex saw the helmet lift as if he was looking into the sky.

The Indian motorcycle remained, physical and real.

“Hey,” a voice piped up from the back seat of the cab, “why have we stopped? Are we there?”

It was the goblins.

She had completely forgotten they were even there! Of course, the two kids had managed to miss everything that had just happened if the first thing that came to mind was a question like that.

“I had to take a pit stop.”

“A pit stop in the middle of nowhere?”

Vex shrugged. “So, do either of you kids want a motorcycle?”