Deicide

by M. K. Gibson

“Okay,” she said, “I’ve got it. Opening the group comm line, she addressed the team. “Okay everyone, here’s what we do.”

  ********

  13 May - 8:02 pm

  Svartleside, On Top of a Speeding SUV - District of Alpdruck

  “Any chance you wanna pull over?” Eric screamed through the bullet holes in the roof of the SUV.

  Passing the massive trees and driving under a canopy of bio-illuminated colors, the fleeing vehicle pulled onto the Trans-City Highway. Mr. Whiskers continued his attempt to dislodge Eric from the roof while he tried to make his escape, but Eric gripped the sport racks tight while bracing himself with his feet. His only saving grace was that Whiskers couldn’t risk jerking the vehicle too hard. Not if he was trying to make it a ley-line jump point.

  “After all the time we’ve spent together, I feel like I’ve gotten to know you,” Eric said. “But you need to learn when you’re beaten. Who knows, you may like prison. I hear that the Rot has amazing scratching posts—”

  Eric dodged as the infuriated Whiskers reached for his weapon. A second later, a burst of gunfire shot through the roof where Eric’s face had been, leaving behind a fairly decent-sized hole. Peering in, Eric could see Mr. Whiskers searching for another magazine.

  “You’re clearly married to your work. But you’re afraid of your boss. And I don’t blame you. Drug lords aren’t known for their humor. You see, in the modern working environment, a person has to realize that employer and employee is actually a two-way street. Basic economics teach us that—”

  “Do you ever shut up!” Mr. Whisker’s growled.

  “No, not really. It’s part of my charm,” Eric taunted. “All kidding aside, you’ve got to be almost out of bullets and the stress must be killing you. I tell you what, you pull over right now and I’ll get you a saucer of milk and a really big ball of yarn to play with.”

  “Shut up!” Mr. Whiskers roared as he reached his clawed hand up through the hole, groping for Eric’s throat.

  Anticipating the move, Eric slipped the zip-tie-style handcuff around the weretiger’s thick wrist and linked it to one he’d already attached to the SUV’s sport rack.

  “Hey, when you were at the dealership buying this car, did you insist on the sport package? Personally, I thank you, but I bet you’re regretting that decision right about now.”

  Mr. Whiskers roared in anger and tried to pull his right hand back in, but it was no use. “Sorry bud,” Eric mocked. “The zip-cuffs are UTF standard. Which meant that they’ve been enchanted to withstand the supernatural power of vampires and mob-level zombies. You’re strong, but not that strong.”

  “Doesn’t matter, cop. The jump point’s up ahead,” Whiskers said.

  Eric looked up to see that the weretiger was in fact correct. The arched semicircle of reflective silver glowed like a beacon.

  A pair of honking vehicles drove up, flanking the SUV. Eric looked to see Jessie in the van to his left and Messer and Cass in Messer’s extended cab pickup to his right.

  “Ha! The cavalry has arrived!” Eric chided. “You’ll never make it!”

  “Watch me!” Mr. Whiskers yelled back. The weretiger stomped down hard on the accelerator, forcing Eric to hang on to the sport racks.

  Man, when this was all over, he may have to go down to the dealership himself.

  Mr. Whiskers swerved slightly from side to side, keeping the vehicles from boxing him in.

  “I think they want you to stop,” Eric said.

  “Vihaan Hu, by order of the Avalantis PD, you are hereby ordered to stop immediately, pull over, and give yourself up. You are under arrest,” Messer’s voice boomed from his truck’s external speakers.

  “See, told ya they wanted you to stop,” Eric said.

  The truck’s red and blue police lights flashed in a piercing, strobe-like pattern. “If you do not comply, you are authorizing the officers on the scene to use extreme force.”

  “Try it!” Whiskers roared. “This car’s bulletproof.”

  Whiskers jerked the vehicle hard to his left, forcing Jessie to back off. Immediately the panicked criminal repeated the process on his right side, forcing Messer’s truck to swerve in order to avoid being hit.

  The jump gate was just over a hundred yards away and coming up fast. Inside the SUV, Whiskers was laughing.

  “Last chance,” Eric said.

  “If your teammates were less worried about hurting their vehicles, they might have stopped me.”

  “Oh, you have beaten us. Whatever shall we do?” Eric said.

  He quickly spoke the command word and released the cuff restraint. Whiskers pulled his arm back into the vehicle.

  “You’re giving up?”

  “We weren’t trying to stop you,” Eric said, peering down the hole in the roof. “We just needed to distract you.”

  “What?”

  The hood of the SUV suddenly exploded upward and crackled as a magical bolt of lighting struck the vehicle, killing the electrical systems. High in the boughs of the highway’s overlapping tree branches, Eric could see Gabby’s silhouette. The elf shot him a quick smile and saluted with the tip of her still-smoking sniper wand.

  “Bulletproof, yes. Magic-proof . . . no.”

  “Deacon, time to go!” Messer yelled.

  “But I’m still taunting the bad guy!”

  “Get your ass in here!” Cass screamed from inside Messer’s pickup.

  “Okay!” he yelled back. “Fine. Let me at least save him.”

  Eric peered once more through the hole in the roof at the enraged weretiger. “This, and your airbags, should keep you safe,” he said as he cracked and dropped a fall pod into the hole.

  “What the—” was all Mr. Whiskers could say before he was enveloped by the thick, spongy gelatin.

  Eric hopped off the SUV and into the back of Messer’s pickup, which immediately began to slow down. The escaping SUV continued directly at the jump gate, but instead of passing though, the SUV slammed into the junction portal as if it were a solid brick wall. Glass shattered, metal squealed, and the vehicle crumpled from the sudden impact.

  Jessie quickly parked, got out, and took a defensive stance beside the van with her weapon drawn. Eric shot her a quick wink as he hopped out of the back of the truck. He made his way to the driver’s side and opened the door. Mr. Whiskers fell out along with the residual fall-pod gelatin slop.

  “It was too bad you were so distracted and that your hood was up,” Eric said as he propped the weretiger up. “Otherwise you would have seen that.”

  Eric tilted Mr. Whiskers’s head so that he could read the large illuminated block letters over the jump gate that read “Portal Gate Closed by Order of Avalantis Transit Authority.”

  ********

  13 May - 9:09 pm

  Trans-City Highway, Ley Line Portal Gate #27 - District of Alpdruck

  The night was a seizure-inducing mess of flashing red and blue APD lights. Several cruisers were parked by the reopened portal gate and were attempting to redirect traffic around the cordoned-off area.

  Messer watched the APD prisoner transport team load Mr. Whiskers into the back of the armored vehicle. Once he was seated and locked into place, the weretiger looked over at Messer. The two men locked eyes. Mr. Whiskers bared his fangs slightly, while Messer’s right hand drifted towards the large knife at his belt.

  Mr. Whiskers looked away.

  The door to the transport was shut and the vehicle took the prisoner to the central station for booking and processing. Satisfied, Messer looked over at his newly assembled team. They sat in the bed of his pickup truck and drank bad coffee from cheap cups.

  They were not perfect, not even close. But they functioned as a team.

  Mostly.

  Every blade needed to be sharpened against a whetstone to remove the nicks and imperfections. In enough time, and with enough patience, a keen edge would form.

  Messer walked over and hopped up into the back of the truck with them. “Well, not bad fo
r your first day.”

  “Are we agents yet?” Cross asked.

  “Not yet,” Messer said.

  “Is there like a cool gadget room, and special magic weapons, and all that?” Arby asked.

  “Yup,” Messer said.

  “Oh, so cool.”

  DeLeon passed him a cup of the cheap coffee. Messer sipped at it, noticing a slight aftertaste of rye whisky. He eyed the four.

  “We’re still on duty,” he said.

  “We . . . weren’t sure of the rules?” Deacon said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Well Sergeant,” DeLeon said, choosing her words carefully. “Since we’re part of MORTAL now, even probationary, we were unsure if the APD code of duty still applied?”

  Cross waved her hand in a dismissive manner. “What Numb-Nuts and New Girl are trying to say is that we just stopped a bad guy and we deserve a drink.”

  “Which one is which?” Deacon asked, leaning in close to DeLeon.

  “To be fair, we asked Gabby first,” Cross said, pointing a thumb over her shoulder at the elf.

  Messer looked at Gabby, who sat atop the truck’s cab and had forgone the coffee and drank straight from a flask.

  “You’re setting a bad example.”

  Gabby finished off the liquor, burped, and gave a thumbs-up.

  “Well, I guess technically you’re off duty. And yes, the rules still apply. But for now, you all earned it.”

  The four of them toasted their cups while Gabby giggled to herself.

  “Okay, did we retrieve any of the vials?” Messer asked.

  “No,” Cross said. “The vials were found in the vehicles disposal unit. The contents were gone.”

  “Actually, that’s not entirely true,” DeLeon said as she produced one full vial.

  “Where did you get that?” Cross asked.

  “Back in the apartment, I palmed one when Whiskers demanded I put them on the floor. I was hoping in the confusion he didn’t count.”

  “Oh girl, you get a gold star for the day!” Deacon said.

  “Well done,” Messer said with an approving nod. “I’ll get it, along with the caduceus, back to the lab for analysis anyway. I think you three—”

  Gabby coughed.

  “Four,” Messer corrected himself, “have more important matters this evening.”

  “What matters?” DeLeon asked.

  “Both you and Cross lost a bet to Deacon,” Messer said with a smile as he shot a wink at the big man. As his did, Deacon’s face lit up.

  “Woo!”

  “What bet?” DeLeon asked. “I didn’t lose a bet.”

  “Over the comm link we heard Deacon bet you that Whiskers was using armor-piercing rounds,” Cross said. “And from the holes in his roof, it’s clear he was.”

  “I—I didn’t—”

  “Deal with it,” Messer said, then turned towards Cross. “And you bet him that Ted wasn’t Hermes’s roommate. Both of you lost.”

  Cross took a deep breath and sighed. “I did.”

  “Deacon, I trust you will make the punishment severe?”

  The man’s face beamed with joy. “Yes Sergeant, I will.”

  DeLeon threw her arms up in exasperation. “What bet?!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  13 May - 10:32 pm

  The Siren’s Cove - District of Windport

  A hundred or more people stared at her. They all watched her, expectantly. Sweat began to form along her forehead and at the back of her neck. She felt more anxious now than when she’d fought the vampires. But there was one thing she was sure of: She was going to kill Arby.

  “Do it, New Girl!” Cross yelled from a table in the front row.

  Jessie narrowed her eyes at the woman. After a quick trip home to freshen up, Cross was even more vampirically beautiful, and thanks to over-the-counter fairy glamours, she’d changed her hair from a dark purple to a bright cyan. She wore a blood-red halter top, matching leather pants, black thigh-high boots, and a black knee-length coat.

  Next to her, Arby was wearing a tuxedo t-shirt, a dark blue sequin vest, jeans, bracelets, and as always, that wide dumb smirk he called a smile.

  Yeah . . . she was going to kill him.

  Gabby sat between them. She had her cell phone out and was taking photos of everything.

  When Jessie had heard what the bet was, her insides turned to ice water. No training, neither in the academy or in the field, had prepared her for the ultimate in public humiliation.

  Karaoke.

  “Ma’am?” the DJ said. “Are you ready?”

  Jessie looked at the Satyr with the headphones and mirrored sunglasses.

  “No.”

  “Sing the goddamn song!” Arby demanded. “And make it hot!”

  Jessie felt . . . well, stupid standing there in her yellow summer dress and black wrap. Arby had told her it was a nice place. But the karaoke bar was heavy with the smell of smoke, booze, and sex. Apparently they disagreed on what was a “nice place” was.

  Jessie gripped the mic in her hand so tight, her knuckles turned white. She heard the thrumming first notes of the song begin and her knees began to buckle and her stomach clenched.

  Damn it . . . she did not want to do this. She would rather go back to the UTF, or hell, even spend the rest of her career with the losers on the Zombie Squad than have to sing the 1990 classic “I Touch Myself” by the Divinyls.

  Looking at the holo-monitor, she saw the lyrics.

  She thought about the first time she had sex and told herself the same thing.

  It’ll take less than four minutes, so just get it over with.

  And for the next three minutes and forty-three seconds, Jessie sang. Or at least she tried to. The screaming and cheering audience of myths and mundanes helped to mask the fact that she was tone deaf. When she tried to dance, even a sway a little, she felt as if her feet had been magnetized to the small stage.

  When the final note escaped her lips, she quickly shut her mouth. Partly out of shame, but mostly to keep the vomit from coming up. The audience applauded, mostly out of pity. She smiled, gulping back down food she didn’t even remember eating.

  She went to sit down, but the DJ stopped her.

  “Miss?”

  “I’m not singing another fucking song!” she blurted out, louder than intended.

  “You still have the microphone,” the DJ said.

  “Oh, right,” she said, not realizing she was holding it. Awkwardly, she looked at the audience as she handed the mic back to the DJ.

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Really?”

  “I wouldn’t quit your day job, but it was fine. Most people suck at this.”

  Jessie squinted at the man, then went and sat down next to Arby, who passed her a beer, which she graciously accepted and began to chug.

  “And that is why you don’t bet me about anything,” Arby laughed.

  “So I see,” Jessie said, setting the now-empty bottle on the table.

  Arby smiled. “Ahh, you did fine.”

  “I’m just glad its over.”

  “Oh, it isn’t,” the big man said, thumbing over his shoulder at Gabby, who was holding up her phone. “We got the whole thing. We’re going to watch this over and over.”

  “Really, Gabby?” Jessie asked.

  The elf squinted and smiled wide in a silent laugh.

  “Our favorite part was when you looked like you were going to wet yourself during the ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ part of the song. And if you play it back, right here, you can see where your soul died a little.”

  Gabby threw her arm around Jessie and held the phone so she could see.

  “Thanks Gabby, I know. I was there.”

  “Next up on stage, let’s hear it for Cassy Cross!” the DJ announced. “Cassy Cross, to the stage.”

  “What did you pick?” Cross asked with a raised eyebrow. The woman oozed serpentine confidence.

  Arby smiled. “You’ll see.”

 
Jessie watched the taller woman stand and take off her coat, revealing the R-rated curves of her body. And from the cheers and calls from the men, and several of the women, she thrived on the attention.

  Cross looked over her shoulder at Jessie and smirked. “Watch and learn, little girl.”

  Jessie narrowed her eyes at the woman who then turned away with a laugh. It was women like her who made it harder for the rest of us, Jessie thought. Those of us who get by on our merit, not our . . . assets.

  “What’s the matter?” Arby asked, bringing her back into the moment. “You’re pretty much eye-screwing Cass. I mean, if you want to ask her out, then go for it. She might say yes. What do you think, Gabby?”

  The elf shrugged then nodded while making a “V” with her fingers and interlocking them.

  “What? No, I—”

  “Look, you don’t like her and she doesn’t like you, that’s clear. Whether it’s because she’s what you want to be, or she sees you as who she used to be, who knows, but—”

  “You’re way off base,” Jessie said, getting frustrated. “I’m going for another drink.”

  “Bring me back a beer?” Arby said. Gabby slapped him in the arm. “I mean bring us back beers?”

  “Fine,” Jessie sighed.

  As she walked towards the bar, the music began to play the song “Scars To Your Beautiful” by Alessia Cara. And then she heard Cross sing.

  Looking over her shoulder, she saw the buxom woman singing with her eyes closed, not needing the prompter. Her voice was soulful, haunting. The cheering crowd was suddenly silent as they were captivated by Cross’s voice and rendition of the song. Jessie swore she saw a tear form in the corner of her eye.

  That bitch.

  She was perfect at everything and it wasn’t fair. She was taller, hotter . . . fuller. And apparently she could cry on command, so that made her a great actress as well.

  Or an undercover officer who’s good at her job, Jessie reminded herself. The bartender, a wide-shouldered Sasquatch in a black tank top with his hair styled into a colored fauxhawk, gave her a chin-up motion.

  “What do you need, hon?” he asked.

  “Singing lessons and three IPA’s,” Jessie said, then looked back at Cross and shook her head. “Make that four.”