How to Ride a Tikbalang Ch. 13

Emilio paced the hall of the abandoned old plantation house he'd occupied at the periphery of the Mt. Biak na Bato National Park. Caves and thick forests still abounded here, and the canopy thickened to blanket the interior of the forested area almost to night-dark, even at midday.

His bait was wriggling, trapped in strong cocoons of liana vines that hung from massive balete trees older, even, than Emilio, that stood at the boundary of the property's garden gone wild. There, behind a now-dry well of sandstone and granite, hung the three creatures who would draw Kidlat out and into Emilio's grasp.

Muffled vocalizations from his three captives merely made the kilkig chuckle. One female and two males. Not a bad catch. All he'd needed to do was point his black blade at the pale pilsen beers they'd been holding as they chatted in that chi-chi nightclub at Bonifacio Global City. His incantations and innate venom did the rest.

The trio had lost consciousness, looking for all the world like they'd become sleeping drunks. So Emilio played the helpful stranger who looked at their IDs and assured the bartender that he was a family friend and would see them home safely. Humans were so easy to dupe.

He'd only meant to take the siblings, Habagat and Amihan Batumbakal, but that pesky, younger brother of the tikbalang Bulalakw who'd hosted Emilio's vengeful consciousness and soul for so long, would not be parted from Habagat or Amihan. So Emilio brought him along for the ride. Feh, what was one more dead tikbalang when all was said and done, anyway?

***

Midmorning light bathed Amihan's heavy head. She had the great-grandmother of all hangovers, but only remembered having had less than one beer. Her mane of straight, light brown hair hung down messy, like Sadako's 'do, all the way down to her waist in snarls straight hair should never even have. What the hell? I can't move my arms. Or my neck. Or my legs. She tried to call out, but thick, leafy tendrils held her mouth shut: They were wrapping around her head, from the top of her skull to just under the hinge of her jaw—and they wrapped so tightly she could not, for the life of her, open her mouth.

Amihan looked around as much as her peripheral vision would permit. Slightly in front of her and to her left hung her brother, Habagat, trussed up in similar fashion by vines wrapping him up so well she could only see his face and one twitching hand. In front of her hung Waki (known to everyone else but her family and his as Kalawakan Busilak Dayo) her brother's best friend, horror etched on his face as he slowly realized how immobile he was in that terrible cocoon of liana creepers.

The vines had only enough give to allow the three to breathe, and only barely. A deep breath was next to impossible for Amihan, unless she wanted to truly lay a hurt on her chest. Damn these boobs , she thought with a despairing sense of irony as she watched Waki struggle to break the coils and only succeeding in chafing his skin against the liana vine's tough skin. They don't make these vines into wicker for nothing. But the strength of these vines , Amihan mused gravely, is unnatural. They're like well-tempered steel. Fuck. Fuckity-fuck-fuck.

The crunching of dry leaves underfoot announced the arrival of another being. One whose menace chased the humid heat away to wrap the three bound beings ahead of him in a sticky, oily chill. Habagat and Waki kept their eyes trained on Emilio, who was now between the three of them. They studied the man with intent eyes making sure they memorized his face. For later.

"I see you're all settled in very nicely, tikbalang, tikbalang and lady," Emilio's words made Amihan bristle with loathing and, if she could have opened her mouth, she'd have spat at him in a most unladylike manner. Since she couldn't move, she simply conserved her strength, casting speaking looks at her brother and his best friend. We can wait.

Not that Emilio was paying attention to the wordless dialogue between his three captives. He took their stillness for fear. He was too busy stroking something hidden under the plackets of his black button-down linen shirt, his fingers tracing the borders of an isosceles triangle under the smooth fabric.

"Don't worry. You won't be up there too long. Kidlat and his lovers should be here soon, and my plans will go as they finally should. I tire of this body. I would have his. And I will." Emilio said this as he pinched Amihan's cheeks while her hazel eyes spat fire at him. "Such a shame I'll have to kill all of you, but, hey, more life for me. More power for me. Plus Bulan will pay for all these centuries of rejection I've had to live with. Lovely. Too bad you won't meet your Uncle Arao. He's quite the firecracker, even if he doesn't know which end of the spear goes into the other guy."

Emilio's hands roved over the curves of Amihan's body, mapping it with lascivious intent, stroking over the coils of liana and squeezing painfully over her breasts, hips and mons, while her brother and his best friend struggled fruitlessly in their bonds. "I know which end goes into the other body, if you know what I mean. I do so love fucking the dead and dying. But that's for later."

***

Cocoy parked his SUV in his designated parking space in the lot beside his apartment building in Manila. He, his tikbalang and diwata were alighting the vehicle when a nuno dressed in farmer's garb of red camisa de chino and heavy denim loped in long strides up to Kidlat, who was moving to the back of the vehicle to unload their things.

"Tikbalang do you recognize me?" The nuno threw the question across the foor or so between him and Kidlat as he tossed his considerably long ponytail back and put his angular face fully in the mid-morning light. "You owe me a boon. I have come to collect it."

"Now?" Kidlat let the word out on an exasperated sigh as Jinx came up behind him. Cocoy, too.

"Now." The nuno's voice was deep and firm. "I have need for you. Someone took something of mine and I want it back. A talisman taken from me."

Kidlat took a deep breath and got his frazzled emotions back under control as he addressed the nuno who had helped him find Cocoy in his dreamwalk: "Gentle nuno, I would gladly pay your boon, but my brother and sister are missing. I must first find them. Then I will do as you bid."

"A kilkig took my amulet, tikbalang. I would have it back." The nuno all but ignored Kidlat's words, his hands gesticulating angrily in the air. "That amulet cannot in the poisoning bastard's hands longer than it already has been. My garden will die without it."

The nuno's life depended on the wild plant life that surrounded its barrow-home, Kidlat remembered. The nuno was a plant-nurturer, and traces of nuno blood surely flowed in the veins of many master-farmers, those who knew the secrets to renewing fallow fields and enriching forests. What this being was asking for was its continued existence—without the talisman, he would die. His ears pricked at the word " kilkig ." Those maleficar's were rare enough. Might it be the kilkig he, Cocoy and Jinx were after?

"Can you tell me any more details, so I may serve you, earth-healer?"

"My amulet is in the birthplace of this nation, where the First Republic was created. That evil creature has it close to a forest, damn his soul to Magwayen's hairy ass. Retrieve it for me. Use it if you have to, but return it to me." The nuno looked the tikbalang in the eye and raised his open, and very, very long palms up and together, nodding once before winking out of the trio's view.

"Wow, don't the Other Worlders know the magic words, like 'please'?" Jinx was irked as she opened the SUV's back door to begin hauling their gear out, and Cocoy moved in to assist her.

"Not all of us," Kidlat said, an apology in his voice. "The nuno are particularly curt about what they want, and pretty sensitive about more things than a hothouse orchid is. Any idea about where that nuno means for us to go? Sorry, I slept through that history class."

"Birth of the First Republic?" Cocoy's spoke with a mixture of surprise and sarcasm. "C'mon, dude, even you should know the nuno referred to Biak na Bato, the mountain. Pilipino ka naman, a. Even if you are a tikbalang."

"Fuckitall. I am too tired to get stuck on the North Luzon Expressway and the parking lot that is Edsa at this time, and I am not up to schlepping myself up a mountain. Again." Jinx muttered, opening her notebook. "Maybe we should ask if there is a diwata for that mountain?" She brought out her mobile phone and dialed Adora's number, making her query as quickly as she could once the niceties of greeting the owner of Pepe's Pole were done.

The three hauled their baggage up to Cocoy's apartment and dumped it just inside the front door before heading to Pepe's Pole on foot, as Adora had instructed Jinx to see her, yesterday.

***

"This is tea rose marble," Adora said to Kidlat after she greeted them at the door of the empty bar, holding up a chicken egg-sized piece of pink marble shot through with swirls of white and gold. "This is what Biak na Bato is made of. Hang on to that." She put the polished rock in the tikbalang's hand.

Adora turned to Jinx, nodding her head toward a fainting couch that reconfigured itself into a set of descending stairs just outside her inner sanctum. "Go down those stairs and touch the marble panel beside the stairs when you get to the basement. Use your fire. Urduja left this with me, in case I needed to see her. She's the guardian of Biak na Bato."

"Urduja, as in the warrior princess of Pangasinan?" Cocoy asked, his curiosity piqued enough for him to forget that he wasn't to speak to Adora until spoken to. Breach of etiquette be damned.

"You know her as a human princess," Adora said to Cocoy. "We know her as a diwata fostered with a king and his kindly queen. Enough questions. Ask them when you get back, Taga Lupa. Oh, and bring that stone back to me intact, please. You break it and you will have to come back the hard way: By bus and elevated rail, with several poor shortstops jammed into your sweaty armpits, like the rest of the population of this country. You are welcome."

Kidlat's stomach was still rumbling and queasy, but at least he had his bearings and strength back. He'd taken some things that might prove useful with him, stashed away in the side pockets of his cargo pants. He'd also made sure Cocoy's ritual jar and Jinx's ledger were in a rucksack he made Cocoy carry.

Jinx didn't really need anything, since her molten nature was stabilized and pretty much under control now. Kidlat let himself have one look at both his lovers from the foot of the stairs, unaware of just how much his adulation of them both shone from his every pore.

Cocoy squeezed Jinx's hand, pointing silently to Kidlat with his lips, lest he spoil the tender moment. He mouthed, "ours," to Jinx, who nodded, quirked her eyebrows and smiled at Cocoy, then cast her smile down at Kidlat. He ignored the currents of desire that wouldn't stop zinging between the three of them, no matter what dire situation was at hand. We will get back to drowning in sex after all this is done. That incentive works.

Jinx's jet hair was curling just under the collar of her light blue shirt, her locks' layers shining with blue highlights in the artificial light. Her dimple-flanked smile drew Kidlat's eyes right back to the moment and away from his intent perusal of her unconsciously sensual descent in her bootleg black jeans and black running shoes. Her nipples were rubbing against the cloth of her bra, a reminder of the way her men had played her body like the sex virtuosos they were. Her thin mesh panties were making the sweetest friction down south, yes, but first they had to find the jackass who poisoned Kidlat.

Cocoy was holding her hand, his long fingers slowly rubbing hers, and he, too, looked mighty fine with his celadon chambray shirt offsetting his natural tan and the copper in his curly hair. I want to remember them like this, looking down at me with reassuring smiles that make me want to be worth that belief.

Kidlat smiled back up at them and motioned for them to step it up a notch. "We need to get to that kilkig, lady and gent." His reminder was gentle, much to his own surprise. They make me want to be better. This is the long run, all right. Wow, Inay was right. Well, okay, so they still made him hard, despite all the trouble that came attached to them, but if this was what Buhawi felt with Tala, then he just had to respect his eldest brother's ability to walk straight when his wife was near.

Cocoy took hold of Kidlat's right hand, and Jinx held the tikbalang's left hand, stretching her other hand to the pink marble tile on the wall beside her. She channeled her fire through that outstretched arm and into the marble, while Kidlat and Cocoy held the stone Adora had lent them in their joined hands. The tikbalang narrowed his focus to finding the kilkig, and Cocoy put together silent incantations for a safe journey and for the favor of whatever gods were listening right at that moment.

The three closed their eyes, focusing their intent on one goal: Arriving at their destination and finding the kilkig they all sought. On their third deep breath, the air changed: It was cooler and smelt of resinous tree sap and of sweet water. They heard the rushing of a stream nearby.

***

"You're a bit late, but I forgive you," a nasty, venomous voice broke the silence of the Kidlat, Cocoy and Jinx. "Never keep me waiting. It's a capital crime—and I will punish you sorely for it."

Indecipherable mutterings spoiled the effect Emilio was hoping for, though, as Amihan had managed to loosen the bonds holding her jaw shut.

"Fire beneath his feet, fire beneath his feet, fire beneath his feet: Blaze!" Amihan managed to yell before the vines clamped her jaw shut again. Flames shot up from the humus underfoot, singing Emilio's face and setting his hair on fire.

Talk about 'wa poise': Emilio let out an almost womanly screech as he batted against the flames on his head, the fingers of one hand snagging on his shirt and ripping away fabric and buttons in the kilkig's haste to smother his flaming hair. He would have looked like the world's most uncoordinated dancer, had it not been for the fire running up and down his pants, shirt and head.

"Stupid bitch!" Emilio yelled, unwisely turning his back on Kidlat, Jinx and Cocoy as he pulled a black blade from the sheath clipped to his belt and pointing it at Amihan. An intense beam of darkness, deep as a starless and moonless night, shot out of the wicked blade's chisel tip to strike Kidlat's little sister in the chest, forcing her body into convulsions so violent some of the vines binding her body snapped at one wrist and ankle.

Cocoy dropped into a crouch as he pulled his rucksack open. He tossed Jinx's ledger out and rummaged frantically for the ritual jar.

Jinx was already on the move, her brain moving from human thought to diwata instinct. Her eyes were already lahar-gray, and her hands were glowing lava-hot as she reached for the kilkig's back. "You don't like it hot, I take it?" The sarcasm dripped angrily from her words as she got hold of the maleficar's face. The smell of roasting human flesh hit her nostrils and she wrinkled her nose. "Ew. You stink."

Kidlat pulled a rescue knife from one of his cargo pockets as he moved to Amihan, Habagat, and Waki, cutting them down as quickly as he inhumanly could.

"It does not matter if you destroy this body, diwata," Emilio said, gritting his teeth through the pain of having his face burned to the bone. "It isn't mine." He pointed his black blade at Kidlat's back, and, again a beam of poisonous shadows shot out. It struck Kidlat between the shoulderblades and screaming agony dropped the tikbalang, first to his knees, then into a ball on the forest floor.

"Go ahead and kill me. Only I can undo the poison coursing through Kidlat's body," Emilio gasped fighting to keep his blade arm raised and aimed at Kidlat. "Then I'll just let this body die and take over your lover's body. And I will fuck you all to death with my poisons running through your blood." He spat out black blood that sizzled and crusted on the diwata's molten hand.

"What is your name, maleficar?" Jinx's voice was deep and layered like vast echoes layer across valleys from the mountainside. "Give me your name or I will burn you out of even my lover and his kin." Where Jinx the human would have taken pity on her prey, this diwata had no pity to give.

"Here, let me help," had Cocoy pulled a golden wire cutter from the ritual jar. He approached the diwata and kilkig from the side, snipping the golden wire holding a piece of black metal in the shape of an isosceles triangle and stamped with ancient tribal symbols. He caught the pendant as it fell. "Snip, snip, hooray. We'll be taking that."

Waki and Habagat were still spitting out woody pieces of liana creeper, and rubbing their feet and hands to get their circulation back. Amihan was curled on her side, vomiting black bile while spasms shook her—and, in as much pain as she seemed to be in, she was glaring at the kilkig with the promise of retribution darkening her eyes to near-black.

Habagat grabbed hold of Emilio's ankles, his big hands clamped like manacles around those joints. Waki stood on the other side of the kilkig, punched the maleficar hard in the solar plexus, then backed off, ready to deliver more blows as needed.

"Go ahead," Emilio gasped through a bloody grin, his face now a mass of burns to the bone. "Kill me. Make my revenge complete."

"Jinx, stop." Cocoy said softly into her ear as he pulled his diwata against his chest. "His spirit is reaching for Kidlat. Don't give him that satisfaction, love. Just let go."

She let go, her gray gaze intent on Emilio as he dropped to the ground at her feet, his hands covering the grotesque ravages of her burning hands on his face.

Cocoy looked to the skies through a break in the leaves above them, raised both his hands, and silently willed lightning to strike Emilio. The smell of ozone filled the air and a blinding flash of light signaled the lightning strike, knocking the kilkig out.

***

Jinx held the cut ends of wire strung through pendant's metal loop between her right thumb and forefinger and smelted the break back together before tossing it to Cocoy.

Habagat and Waki were busy trussing the battered kilkig up in liana creepers, mummy wrapping their tormentor up in the same way he'd trapped them. Waki had stabbed the poisoner's black blade into the ground under a patch of sunlight, where the blade began to soften and melt ever so slowly, like wax left out in the noonday sun.

Amihan was spent from her violent flux, and she lay down on the humus with her eyes closed, the occasional dry heaves still wracking her slight frame.

Kidlat sat beside his youngest sibling, stroking her hair away from her face. "Don't worry, Ms. Sunshine. We're getting out of this alive. You know Inay would kill me if I didn't bring you and Ugly Pants over there and his best friend, Fugly Face, home alive and well."

"Screw you all. Brothers are a pain." Amihan's whisper was raspy, but no less relieved, or bitchy. "You took so long to get to us." She sat up with effort, and no small measure of wounded pride.

"Use the talisman to secure Mr. Asshole Sonofabitch," Jinx called out to Cocoy as he held the little black thing in his hand. "Those vines won't hold him without help." Jinx truly had a much better memory now that she'd come into her diwata glory. The pages of her research were indexed in her brain as if she'd become a walking, talking search engine.