Death Blows

by D. D. Barant

  I hear a meaty thunk above me—and then the clatter of armor as da Vinci’s body collapses on top of mine, the armor’s light and heat turning off like a switch’s been thrown instead of a knife. A knife now embedded in da Vinci’s forehead.

  Tair shoves the body aside, but doesn’t help me up. Instead, he reaches down and picks up the sword as I scramble to my feet.

  “Nice toy,” he says. “I think I’ll keep it.”

  That’s when I notice the hand he’s holding it with is in were form. One clawed forefinger drips with gore up to the knuckle. I glance at da Vinci and see the ugly wound where his right eye used to be. No wonder he dropped his weapon; whatever magic protected his face from the armor’s sunlight obviously didn’t extend to enchanted knives or thrope fingernails.

  “Ahem,” the Quicksilver Kid says. He’s got another knife in his hand, and he’s staring at Tair pointedly. “This dance over, or are we gonna have another go-round?”

  Tair grins at him, then at me. “I’m good. Got me a shiny new toy, a shiny new life… hell, maybe even a shiny new girlfriend.”

  “What?” I manage.

  “Oh, come on,” he says. “Maybe I don’t know you, but I know myself. And no matter what kind of goody-goody I turned into, I doubt my taste in women changed. And no way would I risk my skin for a woman I wasn’t already involved with.”

  He holds his hands wide in invitation. Blood runs down the hilt of the blade and drips to the floor. “Well, you lucked out, didn’t you? Traded in the old model for the new. Fewer miles, better acceleration… and I handle real well on the curves.”

  I glare at him. This… imposter isn’t Dr. Pete. He’s the person Dr. Pete could have been, if he hadn’t straightened his life out. He’s a collection of bad choices and attitude—but under all his bravado and ruthlessness, he still has the potential to become the man I knew.

  The man that’s now dead.

  “We were friends,” I say. “Nothing else.”

  He holds my gaze for a second, and I look away first. He laughs. “Like that, huh? Okay. I like a challenge. Hell, it’s what I live for.”

  And then he leaps for the stairs, wolfing out in midair and making it out the door in two more bounds.

  “Maybe I should have put a blade in him,” the Quicksilver Kid says.

  “No,” I say. “No, I’m—it’s all right that you didn’t. He doesn’t deserve that.”

  “Wasn’t talking about killing him. Could have put it in his leg. Slowed him down some.” The Kid walks around the room, collecting his knives. When he’s got them all, he kneels by da Vinci’s body and strips it of the bandolier. I notice for the first time that he’s leaking little beads of mercury from where the bolts penetrated his arms and legs.

  “You, uh, need those holes looked at?”

  He slides each of the knives into its sheath and buckles the bandolier on. “Nah. Got a patch kit in the car, take care of it myself. And I best be going.”

  “Where?”

  “Hunt down that thrope. Figure the bounty should be considerable to get that sword and the fancy jewel back.”

  He stumps up the stairs without a backward glance. Behind me, I hear someone whine, and whirl around—but it’s only Eisfanger, finally waking up. He slowly transforms back to human. “Whuz,” he says thickly. “Whuz happened?” I stare down at da Vinci’s body. “I guess someone didn’t make their deadline.” And that’s it, pretty much. I call an NSA cleanup crew, but not until I’ve stripped da Vinci’s body of the armor and stashed it in an upstairs closet; Cassius will appreciate getting it back. Then I drive Eisfanger and myself to the hospital, where I get my wounds properly bandaged and look in on Charlie. He’s in the lem ward, which looks a lot more like a garage than a medical facility. He’s on a raised platform, lying on a hard rubber pad, the only bedding a cylindershaped cushion under his head. He’s also naked.

  “Jeez, Charlie,” I say, looking to the side. “You couldn’t use a sheet or something?”

  “For what?” he says. “As the man once said, there ain’t no there there. Hard to be embarrassed by what you ain’t got.” I know he’s right, but somehow his complete lack of genitalia makes it worse. “It’s not so much embarrassing as disturbing.” I spot his fedora hanging on a coatrack and hand it to him without looking. “Put this somewhere strategic, okay?” I give him a quick summary of the events at the da Vinci house.

  “Sheldon Vincent, huh? And of course, you couldn’t wait for me.”

  “You were out of play, and I didn’t know for how long. Da Vinci would have killed someone else—if I hadn’t come along, somebody would still have wound up in that pentagram.”

  “Well, I was banged up pretty bad,” he admits grudgingly. “Guy that patched me said I’d lost a dangerous amount of my insides. Said the only thing that saved me was that someone had the presence of mind to insert a big chunk of animist-charged metal into my chest.”

  “How about that. Those paramedics sure are prepared.”

  “Thing is, the metal was real hot. Melted the plastic a little going in, but the sand absorbed the heat after that.”

  He glances down at my bandaged hands. “Looks like you got banged up a little, too.”

  “This? Nah. Burned myself making toast.”

  “Uh-huh. Careless of you.”

  “Guess so.”

  We look at each other for a moment. “I think I’m gonna get dressed now,” he says.

  “Yeah. Good idea—Ahh!”

  “What?”

  “Did you have to start with the hat?”

  “It was in my hand.”

  “And now it’s on your head. Which would be fine, except you’re still not wearing any pants.”

  “I could take it off again.”

  “No, no, it’s fine. Just trouser up, will you?”

  I find Cassius standing beside Gretchen’s bed, staring down at her sleeping. He looks up when I come in. “Jace. How are you?”

  “Second-degree burns on my hands. Wrenched shoulder. Mild concussion. Knife wound to my right wrist, right beside the two punctures already there. How about you?”

  “I’m fine. Wish I hadn’t been unconscious for the last few hours, but I’ve been brought up to speed. Feeling somewhat stupid, honestly.”

  “About Sheldon Vincent—or should I say, Shelley da Vinci?” I shake my head, then wince as a bolt of pain goes through it. “Don’t be. He kept himself at a distance from events, using Stone as his proxy. There was no way to connect the two, not in any rational manner.”

  “But you did.”

  “Yeah, well, sometimes rationality is a one-trick pony. I think I heard that in a cartoon once.”

  He hesitates, then says, “I understand that certain items are still missing.”

  “The Midnight Sword and the Balancer gem are. The Quicksilver Kid’s on their trail, though—I have the feeling they won’t be missing for long.”

  “And the armor?”

  “Safe. You can pick it up later.”

  He nods, then looks back at Gretchen. “Her child is fine. I think the African Queen just bought herself a great deal of political support.”

  “Gretch’s still zonked out, huh?”

  “Yes. They tell me she broke two of the orderlies’ arms when they tried to restrain her, too. Dr. Pete was just arriving to visit her when all the commotion broke out—he disappeared from the hospital right after that.”

  “Yeah. About that…”

  I do my best to explain what’s happened to Dr. Pete, though I’m a little unclear on the details myself. “He’s calling himself Tair now. He was shadowing me for a while—I almost caught him in a supermarket, but he threw me off by shifting to were form and pretending he was after Dr. Pete. Thing is, he is Dr. Pete—a Dr. Pete that could have been, anyway.”

  It takes a lot to make Cassius look worried, but he looks worried now. “That’s unfortunate. Peter had a troubled past—if he’d continued on that path, he would have become a very dangerous man.
And now, it seems, he has.”

  “Yeah—in the blink of an eye.” I shake my head. “We’re not going to just give up on him, are we? I mean, this isn’t some criminal that may or may not be worth rehabilitating—this is Dr. Pete. We know that underneath it all he’s a good person.”

  “Of course we won’t give up, Jace. But the magic that triggered his change was meant for you—it’s not just a powerful spell, it’s a powerful spell gone wrong. Reversing it will be difficult, maybe even impossible.”

  “Then we’ll do it the old-fashioned way. Worked the first time, didn’t it?”

  He smiles. “Yes, it did. And this time, he’ll have you on his side from the very beginning. I’m sure that’ll make a difference.”

  Gretchen shifts and mutters something in her sleep. I notice that both her wrists are still in padded metal restraints. “Not taking any chances with Gretch, huh?”

  “She’ll wake up with her baby beside her. That’ll calm her down in a hurry—but I don’t want her disabling another orderly before her head clears.”

  “Yeah, she’s got enough to worry about. Single motherhood and getting used to aging again.”

  “I’m hoping I can alleviate some of that.”

  I frown, not sure what he means. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s possible—if you act quickly—to replace a pire father with a surrogate, another donor for the child to draw life force from. I’m going to offer to do so for Gretchen.”

  For a second, I can’t even process it. David Cassius, a vampire who’s spent unknown centuries in the body of an eighteen-year-old, is giving up some of his youth. “I—what? Are you serious?” He gives me a carefully neutral look. “I’m very serious, Jace.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I think that’s wonderful, but—you and Gretch? Really?”

  “It’s not like that,” he says. “She’s one of my most valuable operatives. I have the years to spare—even nine of them will leave me relatively untouched. I think it’s time I added a little more… stature to my image, anyway.”

  “Stature, sure. Maybe you should grow a mustache, too—I understand that really impresses the girls. And helps you get in bars.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  “Plus, you can finally move out of your parents’ basement and get that cool bachelor pad.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Me? Never. I’m a work in progress.” I pause. “And I guess you are, too. Or will be.”

  “It’s not that big a deal, Jace.”

  “ ’Course not, Caligula. It’s not a big deal at all. And definitely not the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen one friend do for another.”

  I lean over and give him an impulsive kiss on the cheek. He looks a little surprised, starts to say something, then stops. “Well,” I say. “I better get going. I’ve got—you know. Things. Call me when she wakes up, okay? I leave him there beside the bed, still looking like he has something to say. I do some hard thinking on my way home.”

  Now that the case is over, it’s back to hunting Aristotle Stoker. I’m beginning to think that the best way to do that is to have him start hunting me … and in fact, I may have already set that in motion.

  My last lead on Stoker had him researching Ahasuerus, the sorceror who created both the golem race and the anti-firearm spell—and the one that brought me across the dimensional divide. If Stoker is looking for Ahasuerus, then the best way to catch him is to bring Ahasuerus to me; and since Ahasuerus is the only one that can send me back, I need to locate him anyway.

  Which might just happen on its own. The third level of the no-guns spell is an alarm system. If the spell is ever broken—even in only one person’s mind—the alarm is supposed to go off, alerting the spell’s caster. Presumably so he can show up in person and eliminate the problem.

  I don’t know if it’ll still work now that da Vinci is dead. Guess I’ll have to wait and see—but if and when he does show up, he’s in for a surprise.

  I pick up the comic book from the seat beside me. It’s the one Dr. Pete lent me, the one of the Bravo Brigade that the government printed. The stated reason for its existence was to counter the power of the Kamic cult—but it was printed after the attack on Wertham, when the members were already dead and their power drained into the bulk of a volcano.

  The government completed the ritual anyway, though. Blood from the Bravos went into the ink, the comic went into the hands of thousands of kids, and then the government used a flimsy excuse to recall and destroy every issue they could get their hands on—except for a select few, no doubt, locked away in a Hexagon or NSA vault for future use.

  But they didn’t get them all. Which means, if I understand my Animism 101 correctly, that the remaining ones still have all the power of the Bravo Brigade’s spell locked up in them. I don’t know how to access it—but human beings have a natural affinity for magic that pires and thropes have to work at.

  If I concentrate, I can feel the slightest hum of something coming from the comic in my hand. Looks like I have some studying to do…

  Because when Ahasuerus shows up, I’m going to be ready.

  “Oh boy,” I say. “Home sweet—”

  “Jace!” Galahad says, and tackles me like a linebacker.

  I hit the floor with a thud, and shove him off me as he attempts to lick my face. “What the hell?” I manage, getting back to my feet.

  Xandra looks up from where she’s curled up on the couch, reading a magazine. “Hey, Jace. Gally’s glad to see you.”

  “Jace! Jace!”

  “So I see. Down, Galahad.” He promptly kneels on the floor, which is endearing but a little creepy. At least he’s wearing pants. “Xandra, what’s he doing here? I thought your family said they’d take care of him until—”

  “Uncle Pete’s gone missing again. Guess you’re back to square one.” And then it hits me. No more Dr. Pete. He won’t be coming by to pick up Galahad like he promised, he won’t be volunteering at the anthrocanine clinic. Galahad won’t have the run of that place anymore—it might even have to shut down. “Ah, well,” I say, and sink onto the couch wearily. “I was kinda getting used to having him around, anyway.”

  “I thought you’d worked things out with Uncle Pete,” Xandra says. “I mean, I know he took off from the hospital—but he’s all right, isn’t he?” She looks at me quizzically. Damn. I’m really not ready to have this conversation. I jam my hands in the pockets of my coat, and find something cold and metallic in the right-hand one, something plastic and rectangular in the left. My brain’s too exhausted to analyze this, so I just pull both objects out.

  In my left is the Blood Cross. Sharp, silver, deadly. It makes my forearm ache just to look at it. In the right is a cassette tape, the one Dr. Pete gave me. The one he said would cheer me up, the one I was too angry to look at. I realize what it is, and start to laugh.

  “Are you all right?” Xandra says as I lurch from the couch and put the cassette in my scavenged tape deck. Please, God, let it be functional. “I’m fine, sweetie. I’ve got something to tell you, but we should listen to this, first.”

  “But you’re crying.” I hit PLAY. And then I’m laughing again, laughing and sniffing and rubbing tears out of my eyes, as the sublime, ridiculous tune “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window” warbles out of the speakers.

  Good-bye, Dr. Pete. I really hope I see you again.

  Read on for an excerpt from DD Barant’s next book

  KILLING ROCKS

  Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  I have this recurring dream where I’ve been ordered by a federal judge to join a support group.

  “Hi,” I say. I’m sitting on a folding chair, part of a circle of people. “My name is Jace, and I am a human being.”

  “Hi, Jace,” everyone choruses.

  “I’ve been a human being for—well, thirty-some odd years. Actually, where I come from, pretty much everyone’s a human being.” A large woman in a floral-print house dress p
uts up her hand. “Don’t use the people around you to justify your actions,” she says primly. “But it’s true,” I insist. “No vampires, no lycanthropes, no golems. And then I got shanghaied into this universe by a shaman named Ahaseurus—believe me, when I find that guy, we are going to have words—and now I’m trapped here until I catch a Free Human Resistance terrorist named Aristotle Stoker—” A weaselly guy with a ridiculous mustache and a BELA LUGOSI FOR PRESIDENT t-shirt puts up his hand. “So none of this is your fault?”

  “No! I’m telling you, I was kidnapped out of my own bedroom—”

  “Why you?” he asks in a nasal voice. “Are you trying to say you’re different from everyone else?”

  “I am different. I’m a criminal profiler for the FBI, specializing in hunting down homicidal psychos—a job that doesn’t seem to exist here. Pires and thropes and lems don’t go crazy—well, they never used to, anyway—so they need me to hunt down Stoker, who’s definitely out of his gourd—” The woman in the flowery dress shakes her head. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Mentally unstable. Deranged. Squirrelly. Nuts. Wacko. Out to lunch—” Nasally Mustache frowns. “You’re no different from anyone else, Jace. You have to accept that before we can help you.”

  “—insane in the brain. Off his meds. Unable to locate his marbles. Needs to be fitted for a long-sleeved love-me jacket so he can hug himself all day long, bats in the control room, long-term resident of a rubber room, lights are on but so is the vacancy sign—”

  The woman sighs. “Sounds to me like you’re in denial, Jace.” The rest of the group mutter and nod their heads. “Normally we insist that members finish each step in the program before they go on to the next, but in your case I think we’ll make an exception. You need to go right to Step Thirteen.”

  She gets to her feet. So does Nasally, and everybody else. “Being human doesn’t have to be a life sentence,” someone says. Coarse grey hair sprouts on the woman’s face as it lengthens into a muzzle filled with long, sharp teeth. Nasally’s teeth are getting longer too, his eyes turning blood-red. “Fur or fangs?” he says as they all reach for me. That’s usually when I wake up.