by Ben Bequer
“Hell with,” Trevor said. “Let’s make a stand here.”
Mason grabbed him and rushed off, running in the direction they were being herded. Looking laterally down side streets, Trevor could see the two side-trackers staying with them, making sure they kept going straight.
They pursued them South on Waverly Place until they reached Sacramento Street. The side guy to the left was close, almost at the intersection, holding switchblade that he was using to fake shave his face. The right guy was farther away, about a half-block down the street. Behind, the four were keeping a steady pace, never too close, but never letting them feel like they were safe.
“Guess we go right,” Mason said.
Sacramento Street was oddly empty of traffic, both foot and cars, allowing them to run on the street itself. The tattoo guy to the right stopped, drawing a three-section staff from a pocket in his pants and began to twirl it with his right hand. His left arm he had spread wide, open palm facing Trevor and Mason.
The four, now joined by the foppy-haired guy that had chased on the left, pushed in but stopped as well. They all drew weapons. The leader found a rope-dart in his jacket that he twirled with skill. Butterfly knife guy found a second one, now dual wielding. The scalp-shorn attacker drew a foot-long black pole from the back of his jacket, then another and another, attaching them into each other to make a staff. Finally, he drew a spearhead that sported a dagger jutting to the side, and attached it to the end of the staff, making a Chinese Ji dagger axe. The last guy, the blonde/orange hair guy found a full-sized jian sword in a scabbard reversed on his back.
They all gestured the same direction.
“Dammit,” Mason said, looking the way they were pointing.
Ahead of them was a small kid’s park. Apparently, they wanted to have their showdown in the Willie “Woo Woo” Wong Playground, an urban park named after a local basketball star. In the building to the back were basketball courts and a gym intended for lower income children from the neighborhood. Between that structure and Trevor/Mason was a large sand-floor playground with a yellow metal climbing structure in the foreground and a green jungle gym with several rope bridges along the back fence.
Balanced on the wood fence, was a demon.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Extras: Drifters
Wisps of light stretched thin through the forest canopy as the long summer day waned. Nascent traces of a cool evening breeze washed over Alec as he guided his horse down the road. Riding alongside him, Ev lounged in his saddle, flute in hand. He had been working on a melody since midday, using the steady clomp of hooves as a beat to compose with. The tune was a little repetitive, but had an interesting mix of notes in the stanza that Alec enjoyed.
Sitting up in his saddle, Ev exchanged the flute for a pipe, tamping it hard against the side of his boot, the sooty contents falling in clumps to join the horseshit littering the road. Refilling the bowl, he looked past Alec, watching the sun disappear past the horizon. Nursing a little speed out of his borrowed horse, he came up next to Alec.
“You sure we can’t push through to Dulaq?” he said, lighting the pipe with a tinderstick.
“We can, but we don’t need to. There’s an old clearing nearby. We used it all the time when I guarded caravans.”
“I know the one. It’s a patch of grass, Alec. No substitute for a nice bed and a warm hearth.”
“The canopy opens up there and you can see the stars. It’ll be good to sleep under the stars again.”
“No, it won’t.”
“It’s one night. We’ll ride into Dulaq midday tomorrow, and you can drown in ale and food then.”
Ev grumbled around his pipe, the scarweed smoke pleasantly bitter as it touched Alec’s nose. He was about to reach for his own pipe when Gytha shivered underneath him. Alec gently tugged the reigns as the horse’s head perked, and she came to full stop. Ev’s horse was not as well trained, but he was the better rider and brought the horse even with Gytha.
Alec scanned the road, his eye slipping over the shadow just past the horizon twice before focusing on it. Nudging Gytha forward, he gripped the reigns in one hand, the other settling over the hilt of his sword. He heard the muted grinding of Ev’s sword as it slid free of its scabbard. The pipe dangled from his teeth, but his eyes were hard.
Alec kept Gytha at a slow trot until he heard the cries. The horse’s head perked towards the sound and he patted the side of the horse’s head before kicking her into a gallop. He leaned low in the saddle, the wind filling his ears as the cries grew louder. He didn’t need to look for Ev, he was sure the man was right behind him.
He saw the wagon long before the cries became a coherent plea. Turned over on it’s side, the wood axle was cracked into a pair of splintered fragments, one still attached to the wagon by metal rivets, the other pointing straight at the sky, a strange wooden sculpture balanced by a spoked wooden wheel. Pulling Gytha short of the wagon, Alec dismounted, untying a shield from the saddle and drawing his longsword. Ev was on the ground, by the time Alec finished, a short sword in each hand. A small metal shield dangled from his saddle as well, but he preferred a weapon in each hand most of the time.
The stench of rotted meat hung in the air around the wagon. With a look, they circled it from either side. A shattered door hung from the back of the wagon by a single iron hinge, the metal bent at an awkward angle. The sky was painted in dark reds and purples, and he couldn’t make out the inside of the wagon.
Ev nodded at Alec’s silent question and crossed his arms over his chest, his paired swords pointing away from him. “Be’e’du Ominesto,” he said, the words barely a whisper.
Through their long years of friendship, Alec had grown accustomed to Ev’s arcane prowess. Despite all he had been taught to the contrary, wielding the hidden energies of the world did not corrupt a soul. In his experience, the broadened view of the world Wielders earned through years of training, practice, and sacrifice clashed with the more limited doctrines most of the Kishar League adhered to.
That did not mean the physical side effects were any less unsettling. When Ev looked up, his eyes were lined with red energy that moved in asynchronous whorls. He blinked a few times, adjusting to the gifts his spell offered, red motes drifting off the gathered energy, burning to nothing when separated from the whole.
This particular spell allowed Ev to see in any level of darkness. The early twilight was probably akin to having the sun hanging in the midday sky, though Alec had no way to know. The cries were louder, but they would be helping no one by getting ambushed. He waited for Ev to creep towards the open doorway and examine the inside of the darkened wagon. He stayed in the doorway for a dozen heartbeats, leaning in to get a look.
Stepping away, he shook his head and they moved around the wagon. Two bodies lay in the shadow of the destroyed wagon. The man was portly, a pitted club laying within hands reach of his corpse. His chest was a roadmap of puckered thrusts and slashes, blood drying to a dark copper on his white tunic. The killing blow had been a slash across his belly, exposed intestines pouring from the resulting gash. His eyes were open, rolled back to the whites, his face a grimace of pain. He had died slow.
A wail of fear broke Alec’s reverie, and he turned to see what he thought had been a dead woman roll away from him. She wore a long skirted dress stained with dark browns and red that sent a sliver of hot anger up his spine. She gathered her arms under her screaming in pain as she tried to open some distance between them.
Driving the tip of his sword into the hard packed earth, Alec held his arms high, the shield dangling. “Ma’am, I mean you no harm.”
“Please don’t hurt me anymore, please.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, I swear. Look.” He turned the shield towards her, a flame nestled in a field of yellow lilies against a white background, the standard of the Knights of the Flame.
She took a look and her eyes cleared. “Oh thank the Prophets!” Alec knelt beside her, reaching for her hand. She to
ok it in a weak grip and wept. There was a pinched quality to her breathing, so Alec laid the shield down and helped the woman onto her side. As he feared, there was a large puncture on her back, the torn dress seeping into it. As she cried, the edges of the wound split in and out. He’d seen it too many times. Blood was filling her lungs. The woman was dying.
Alec felt’s Ev’s presence over his shoulder, and based on her lack of screams, he had probably undone his spell. “Fucking bandits did this,” he growled, and that stopped her crying. “So much for the Regent’s protection. Look at this.”
Alec turned to see a small collection of child’s toys in his hands. A wooden ball, a doll, a small wicker horse and rider bound in twine. The woman saw Alec turning them in his hands, and held out her hands for them. Handing them over, he saw that though fat tears still poured from the woman’s eyes, she was lucid.
“They killed my husband, my poor Lucco,” she said, her eyes going to the dead man. “But he fought them, gave the children a chance to run. I hope they got away.”
A long viscous strand of blood dripped from her mouth, and her breathing grew even more labored. She tried to lay down, but the slight movement led to a fit of wet, hacking coughs and even more blood pouring from her mouth and nose, staining the entire front of her dress. Ev walked away, shaking his head. Alec tried to make her comfortable, but it was futile. As blood filled her airways, she started clawing at him, her eyes bulging. She died lying in the dirt, terrified and in pain.
Ev returned just as Alec closed the woman’s eyes for the final time, a tattered blanket in his hands. He stepped over to the woman and unfurled it, but Alec grabbed his arm.
“We’re going to bury them.”
Ev opened his mouth to argue, but saw his friend’s face and went back to the wagon. The shovel he found was broken, but still had enough handle left to use. The sun was down, and the cool breeze picked up a crisp edge that made the digging tolerable. By the time husband and wife laid together in the ground, the first moon, Embrus, was high in the sky.
Under the light of the young moon, Alec and Ev walked their horses to the clearing where Alec intended to make camp. It would not be uncommon to find other travelers waiting, fire already blazing in the circle of stones that sit in the middle. Alec usually welcomed a little company at the fire, a chance to trade stories or news, but upon finding the clearing empty, he nodded to himself. Tying Gytha on a loose rein, he unpacked a small feed bucket that he poured some grain in. Ev was performing the same ritual, his back to Alec.
“After we settle the horses, we’re going to look for the children,” Alec said.
“Not a smart idea, little brother,” Ev said.
“Why not? We have the night as cover. With your spell, we can easily navigate the forest.”
“Yes, Xeleph’s Eye will help, but that wagon was attacked hours before we arrived, and we just spent more hours burying those folk. The children are either captured or lost in the forest.”
“You’re telling me we can’t track a bunch of bandits through the forest?”
Ev shrugged as he brushed down his horse. “You have business in Autumnshade.”
Alec dug Gytha’s brush out of a saddlebag and ran it across her flank in tight, precise strokes. “That has nothing to do with this.”
“Of course it doesn’t. Just like there was no way we could have just pushed the horses through to Dulaq. This old girl is a lender, and Gytha has carried your fat ass from Skyreach all the way to Westcross.”
“I wanted to reach Dulaq at midday so we could rest overnight and move on to Autumnshade the following day. It is a sensible course.”
“My point is if we spend the night tromping around in the forest looking for trouble, we will not reach Dulaq at midday tomorrow. If those bandits get lucky, or know the forest better than us, we might not get there at all. You need to be in Autumnshade.”
“You’re full of horseshit. You don’t want to look because you don’t care.”
Ev repacked the brush then poured water in a small bucket so the horse could drink. “There will always be kids who need rescuing, but you only have one sister.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Extras: Blackjack Forsaken
This story is exclusive to our Patreon subscribers at www.patreon.com/unreliablenarrators.
Come by, take a look.
——
There’s one thought that had been rattling in my head for hours - since five hour flight over, and even before, in the taxi to LAX: What the fuck was I doing in Miami?
I knew one person in the entire Eastern seaboard, and I met him six months ago during my almost year-long stint at the California Holding Facility for Metahumans, in a non-place called Chubbuck. It was so far away from everything, in the middle of the California desert, that there were few security measures in the facility. There was nowhere to go but a hundred miles of desert if you head towards Los Angeles. Head the wrong way, say into Nevada, and you were fucked worse. The nearest city was a ghost town called Chambliss. It might have a pretty pastiche name, but most of the people there called it by a name more indicative of the conditions there: Mordor. There was no air conditioning, save for the indoor areas for the guards. The perimeter fence was comical, six foot-tall chain-link that didn’t even keep out the coyotes, much less keep in the criminals it was supposed to contain. Now, it was true, they didn’t hold supers with travel powers there. If you could fly, teleport, whatever, you got fitted with a power restraining system - which made you into a drooling idiot - and were left to rot at a regular California prison while you waited for trial.
In my case, I screwed up bad. If I could go back in time - if that was my power - I’d tell myself one thing in the most unequivocal terms: don’t ever, EVER kill a superhero. I made the mistake of putting down a particularly popular one and it almost cost me my freedom. Mind you, the motherfucker swept down on me in my house - while I was chilling in my underwear, drinking a beer - and decided to redecorate the Malibu beach below my hillside pad with all of my possessions. Ever had a whole house dropped on your head? Well, I don’t recommend it. If not for my super toughness, I’d be dead. Anyway, one moment I had one of those cute houses you see hanging off the side of a cliff overlooking the water, the next, I was digging myself out of a few tons of shattered wood and drywall, and this foppish hero bastard wasn’t done with me.
I mean, of course I was guilty of a ton of shit. I robbed banks, jewelry exchanges...really anything or anyone who had valuable shit that I can take. One of my method operandi was to be sitting at a coffee shop when an armored truck would stop by to pick up the proceeds from a nearby bank. Well, I couldn’t resist. Could you? I had the ability to tear through those doors like if they were tissue, and the least I’d ever hauled was almost twenty grand. My biggest score? A jewelry store. I didn’t take the stuff on the shelves - I went straight for the vault. That heist got me enough to buy a house in Malibu.
But throw a house on me, especially my house, and I’m not going to have a discussion about hypocrisy or irony. I’m going to grab the biggest, heaviest thing I can find and throw it at you.
Was it my fault Atmosphero didn’t dodge the wedge of marble counter that I threw at him like a frisbee? Was it my fault that he tussled with a Class-A strength villain when aside from his amazing thunder and storm powers, he’s a standard human?
I bothered to check on the guy after he got splattered. The marble sliced his body in two and sent his upper body flying almost thirty feet away from the rest of him. I was there in his last few moments, shaking my head, partially in pity, partially in disgust.
Don’t fuck with someone tougher than you. That’s another good rule to live by.
I avoided jail for almost a month, but the
re was only so much my attorney could do to keep me from it. It was my house, registered in my name, and there were fingerprints all over the place. Of course they had enough to hold me, and California has a special process where the forgo fast-tracking trials in the case of supers like me.
My attorney, Sandy, was clear about the whole thing, “Just sit tight. Say nothing, and they’ll have to let you go.”
It was true. Of course I killed the guy, but there was little in the way of hard evidence. Some super was found dead in the shattered remains of some villain’s house. It might sound open and shut, but there has to be motive, there has to be evidence - and of course my fingerprints were on the countertop that cut him in half - it was my fucking house. My DNA was all over the place, that didn’t help the prosecution at all.
Sandy negotiated for my official surrender to authorities a month after Atmosphero’s death and I was out in Chubbuck soon after awaiting trial. They charged me with the super’s murder, as I expected, but they also had twenty-four other charges, from tax evasion (federal) to zoning rights violations (local crap). To be honest, the trickiest part was funneling enough money in clever ways to pay for all the attorneys Sandy brought to bear. It cost me everything I had, but a year almost to the day I had killed Atmosphero they released me. All charges were either dropped or time served. The tax fines were in the seven digits, as were the lawyers fees. At the end of it, I was flat broke, but I was free.
But my almost year in jail did me a lot of good, and now I was moving on, leaving the big city life behind and starting from scratch.
They still have banks in Florida, right?
I was still worried. I’ve spent 99% of my life in Central and Southern California, and now I was getting off a plane without a plan, and without more than a couple hundred bucks in my pocket.
I felt eyes on me the whole way there. On the plane, every lone woman with a child, every old lady, every young guy that might know about the business, they made sure they knew where I was at all times, like some racist fucker on a post-9/11 fight with a dude wearing a keffiyeh. The problem is that they couldn’t know who I am. I’m not even known in L.A. unless you keep track of those things. I’m what they call a small-time villain, and I kept it that way on purpose. I wanted money and a good lifestyle, not to take over the world. Run your shit below radar, my good friend Delphi told me, and he should know. The guy’s never been pinched once and he’s on the edge of fifty. It’s a question of keeping your priorities intact, and not letting your name get out there.
