by Ivan Turner
Castes Book 1
The Prestige
Ivan Turner
Copyright 2012 by Ivan Turner
The people and events in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.
In the days before civilization, the days when dark things combed the landscape, three races of people fought for control of their lands. Caught between the aggressive dwarves and the scheming elves, the humans tried to broker a peace and bring about a society in which all three races could coexist. While the dwarves laughed at the idea of peace, the elves dissected the humans' proposal bit by bit. A Constitution, they called it. It brought forth four tenets:
All dwarves are created equally.
All humans are created equally.
All elves are created equally.
All people are not created equally.
In the 21st century, a dwarf named Owen Keefe wants more for himself. Instead of laboring away at the docks or in a machine shop or on an oil rig, he has become an officer of the law. Kept low by his human superiors, berated by his dwarf brethren, Owen has always walked a fine line between where he comes from and where he wants to go. That fine line though, has thinned and thinned over the years. Now, it’s about to shrivel into nothing, and Owen Keefe will be forced to take sides.
Chapter I
It was close to ten pm, nearing the end of his shift. Though no good dwarf would ever admit it, he was tired, exhausted. The work was hard, not necessarily because of the work itself, but because of the stress that came along with it. For a dwarf, it was easy to arrest a human, or even a small group of them. Drug addicts, even those unable to feel any physical pain, were easy collars. Teenagers in gangs were tough as nails until they had to stare down their noses at the rugged countenance of a dwarf in uniform. The tiny pistols that they bought on the streets were far less intimidating than a good battle axe in the hands of a skilled warrior. Of course, policemen were not allowed to carry axes. They carried guns and batons, just like their quarry. Guns! They were a human invention for human defense. But Officer Owen Keefe was a dwarf in a human occupation and, therefore, followed the rules set down by the humans in charge.
A lot of the cops whose shifts ended at ten were already heading for the locker rooms. They would be out of their uniforms and gone before Owen even began his preliminary exit routine. It was another disadvantage of being a dwarf in law enforcement. If he started his routine early, he’d get called on it despite the fact that humans all around him were doing it without reprimand. There would be no official punishment, but suddenly someone would find work for him at the ends of his shifts. Inevitably, he’d be forced to stay late almost every day for a month or more. The extra work wouldn’t bother him. Like most dwarves, Owen had chosen his profession and loved his work. He could throw himself into it with complete focus until exhaustion claimed him. But the inequity of it bothered him and the snickering behind his back caused him tension no dwarf was supposed to feel. In his grandfather’s time, if a human snickered at a dwarf, that human lost his teeth.
“Keefe!” Sergeant Ryan shouted, coming across the squad room. “You still on?”
Owen looked at the clock. “Six more minutes, sir.”
The sergeant paused for a moment, considering the clock and the dwarf at the same time. Owen knew what was coming even before Ryan had made up his mind.
“You’ve got a call.”
Ryan was a stereotype of stereotypes. He was a fifty eight year old sergeant who’d had to fight every last inch to get where he was. He’d been a cop for thirty six years, could have retired almost twice over, but had nothing else in his life despite a wife and six kids. The position of sergeant made him feel powerful even though there were several lieutenants and a captain handing out orders above him. He liked to push Owen and the dwarf rookies around because it made him feel superior. It was his way of coping with the knowledge that, even though he was surrounded by humans on a daily basis, the real ones pulling his strings were the elves.
Most humans tolerated their elf masters because the societal ceiling for a human was pretty high. Most dwarves hated elves to the very core. Owen was a bit more forgiving. He didn’t like elves. Not in the least. Like his brethren, he did his very best to steer clear of their presence. But in his line of work, he was in a position to like humans even less. The thing about humans was that they were mostly just like Sergeant Ryan. They liked to throw their weight around, but were really just puppets of the elves.
Still, despite these feelings and despite knowing that there was no justice in his having been assigned this call, all Owen replied with was a yes, sir.
“Good boy,” Ryan said, turning away. “Report to Blake.”
“Shit,” Blake said as Owen walked up to him. Blake was also a uniformed officer. Owen had almost six years seniority on him. “What the fuck, Keefe? Aren’t you off?”
That was another thing Owen didn’t understand about humans. They seemed to have this insatiable hunger for profanity. They used it to express all kinds of emotions. They used it to fill the gaps in sentences. They used it as their very breaths. Dwarves didn’t do that. Elves didn’t do that. For dwarves, emotions were meant to be expressed through actions, not words. Words were for communicating ideas.
“Sergeant Ryan ordered me to your squad,” Owen said flatly.
“Shit,” Blake repeated. At that point, he could have been a bastard and ordered Owen off the squad. He could have replaced him and left before Owen could go to Ryan. That would have put him in a terrible spot that would have caused him weeks of turmoil.
But he didn’t do that. Instead, he accepted things as they were and ordered everyone down to their ride, a black truck with seating for six and plenty of room for gear in the back. The NYPD, under the direction of Mayor Van Kerrigan, had just made a deal with Van Kerrigan Motors. Like all of the other car companies, Van Kerrigan was elf owned. The CEO of the company was some distant cousin of the Mayor’s. The first of the cars had started coming in within the last week. Owen had gotten to see one, but not drive it. Dwarves didn’t drive Van Kerrigans. They were designed for people of a taller stature.
Blake gave them their briefing as they drove.
“We’re heading out to Lancey’s Pub over on McKinley Street. A group of men were beating up on a couple of dwarves who were at the bar drinking. There’s already an ambulance on the scene.”
A couple of the other officers asked questions but Owen kept his mouth shut. What seemed obvious to him was that the story was missing some pieces. He knew Lancy’s. It was a favorite hangout for machine workers. There was no such thing as a group of humans that could take on even a couple of those dwarves. It would take a dozen humans at least and they would have to be coordinated. He listened to his colleagues’ questions, but ignored the answers. The questions were inane and irrelevant. Not one of these guys was smart enough to figure out the value of x. Owen was already doing the work in his head. By the time they arrived, he’d have half the situation assessed.
Owen had been a cop for twenty four years. His father and six brothers had all been oilers, working on the rigs. Up until about thirty years before, Owen, the youngest of his siblings, had felt that he would be heading in that direction as well. But things had changed. An accident on a rig had claimed the lives of his father and his two eldest brothers. Owen had worked hard to discover the details of the accident, which had proven to be no accident. Though he hadn’t actually solved the case, he had developed it. When he’d presented his research to human investigators, they had thanked him for his time and summarily dismissed him. Still, four months later, a rival company,
this one run by humans instead of elves, was shut down and its executives indicted. Until that point, Owen didn’t know that there even were humans in the oil business. After the company was shut down, he did some more research. They were apparently the only human company. Though there was no further evidence to support his next hypothesis, he was fairly certain that they’d been framed. The elves had set them up to take the fall for the accident and summarily put them out of business.
The end result of all of that was that he decided not to pick up the family mantle. He walked away from oiling and went to college. He majored in criminology in the hopes of becoming a federal agent, but that dream had been derailed early on. Though getting through college wasn’t very difficult (lots of dwarves went to college), attaining a position that used the degree proved impossible. So he had taken the police exam, aced it, and joined the NYPD. As soon as he was eligible, he took the detective’s exam. Having breezed through that one, too, he filed his paperwork and waited for the promotion. It never came. Fifteen years later, it had still never come.
His wife, Esmerelda, had begged him to leave the force. Though she had met him as a cop and married him as a cop, she didn’t care for him as a cop. Every six months, like clockwork, he filed the paperwork for his promotion. Every six months, like clockwork, he was denied. And yet he carried on.
With three minutes to go before they reached their destination, he pulled out his mobile phone and dialed home.
“What’s up, Da,” his daughter said when she answered the phone. “Are you going to be late? Because if you’re going to be late, Ma’s going to be pissed.”
Owen rolled his eyes. Joi was sixteen years old and every bit the typical teenager. Of course, when he applied the expression typical, he meant a typical human teenager. Dwarf girls didn’t spend all day and night on their phones and computers and they certainly didn’t get involved with the human pop stars. Joi was in a primarily human school. To her credit, she had made her way, finding friends, getting involved in school activities, and, for the most part, avoiding some of the terrible prejudices that sometimes reared their ugly heads. Being in a predominantly human situation himself, Owen knew what difficulties she might have encountered had she been a different person. Still, though, he didn’t like looking across the table and seeing a dwarf, but hearing a human.
“There was a late call,” he said. “Tell Ma I’ll be home when I’m done.”
“When’s that going to be?” Joi asked distractedly.
Blake turned and gave Owen a look.
Owen looked back. “Not sure. Hafta go now.”
“Ok, Da. Have fun.”
Owen put the phone away just as they pulled up in front of Lancey’s. It didn’t seem that there was going to be much for them to do. The action was over and done with. An ambulance was already on the scene. There were police barriers set up to keep the crowd of spectators at bay. On the ground near the entrance to the bar was a body covered in a sheet. As he got out of the car, Owen gave it a good look. By the height and girth, he could tell that it was a dwarf. Something had stained its way through the sheet by the corpse’s head. Not too far away, a second dwarf was being loaded onto a stretcher. His arm had been put into a splint and his face was badly burned. The burns oozed something that wasn’t quite pus and wasn’t quite blood. The two human EMTs barely gave Owen a glance as he approached but the dwarf victim looked up at him.
“This was the work of an elf?” Owen asked. “An elf did this?”
The dwarf nodded slightly. He tried to say something, but the damage to his mouth made it impossible for him to string together a coherent sentence.
“That’s all right,” Owen said. “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
But the dwarf rolled his eyes, because no one ever got to the bottom of anything with elves. They took care of their own. If an elf ever went on a crime spree, the police rarely ever did anything more than report it. Then other elves, usually members of the suspect’s family, would move in and take charge. If a crime was severe enough, it was turned over to the Elf Judiciary Board, in which case the perpetrator might be confined to his or her home for rehabilitation. It was a pretty sorry state of affairs if you think about it. Some bastard of an elf had just committed murder and he was going to be imprisoned in his own home for maybe a month while other elves talked him through his pain. His pain.
“Keefe!” Blake shouted. “What the hell are you doing? Crowd control, now!”
The bulk of the crowd was comprised of dwarf machine workers. There were a few humans milling about, but no elves. You wouldn’t see an elf this close to the machine district at night. They only came around in the middle of the day to check on their holdings. Owen recognized the owner of Lancey’s, a solid dwarf whose own fifty years working the factories had earned him a good reputation among his peers. Most of the others were clientele, but some from other nearby establishments had wandered over to see about all the fuss. The dwarves in the crowd all shared the same look on their faces. Just as Owen had known that an elf was responsible, so did they all. The wounds had very clearly been the result of spellfire. Magic attacks came from one place and one place only. It was highly illegal for anyone who was not an elf to practice magic of any sort. The law was very easily enforced since only about two percent of humans and less than one percent of dwarves were even capable of it. Meanwhile, every elf born to the Earth could weave a spell. Owen had seen a few cases of illegal magic over his years. Most, though, involved magical talismans that had been handed down from generation to generation and stupidly activated.
A blue Van Kerrigan sedan pulled up to the scene. It was a newer model, one of the more fuel efficient ones. The detectives had arrived. Standing at the barrier, Owen watched as Travis Anton unfolded himself from the driver’s seat. Anton was a tall man, about six feet four inches. Owen had gotten into a conversation with him once and bought himself a stiff neck to show for it. He was in his late forties but looked like he was in his late twenties. He filled out a suit the way no human had a right to. Having come from Dallas, Texas, he applied good old cowboy strength to his job. Suspects rarely hassled him, colleagues respected him, and superiors gave him leeway whenever he asked for it. Even Owen thought pretty highly of him. He was a tough guy and a dwarf appreciates a tough guy no matter which skin is covering his bones.
Coming out of the driver’s side was Anton’s partner, Jessica Church. She was much smaller than Anton, a little heavy on the bottom and a little light on top. Especially by dwarf standards. At just over five feet tall, she was short for a human but still taller than Owen. She’d been a detective for almost eight years and had been Anton’s partner for six of those years.
Owen watched as the two detectives first went to the victim and then to the bar’s owner. He paid careful attention to their mannerisms. The way a human detective approached a dwarf witness was essential to whether or not he or she was going to get any answers. In a case such as this, when the perpetrator was clearly an elf, the dwarves would likely be forthcoming. Dwarf on dwarf crimes, however, were particular thorns in policemen’s sides. It might be less of a problem if the department would promote a dwarf to detective. Owen had surreptitiously made this point several times, but to no avail.
After speaking with Lancey’s owner, Anton seemed to lose interest in the case. He went to a couple of other suspects, as did Church, but they didn’t linger. They were heading back to their car when Blake approached them, talking quickly. Anton nodded his head a few times, shrugged his shoulders once, and opened the door of his car. Church was already inside.
Owen had had enough.
“Detective,” he called out.
Both Anton and Blake looked up. Anton said something into his open door and Church got out. She came over to Owen.
“Officer?”
“Keefe, ma’am,” Owen said. “Are you giving up the case?”
“The
re’s no case,” she said in a dejected tone.
“You mean, because the suspect is an elf?”
She nodded. “The Judiciary Board will handle it.”
“Meanwhile, the bastard’s going to run around all night killing dwarves.”
Detective Church looked almost as saddened by that as Owen felt.
“Why can’t we just track him down and arrest him?” Owen asked. “Sure, the elves will come and take him off our hands once they find out we have him, but he’ll be off the streets for tonight at least.”
Church thought about that for a moment, then told him to wait. She went back over to the car and rounded the passenger’s side to where Anton and Blake were still talking. They both paid her immediate attention as she began talking to them. At one point, both Blake and Anton looked over at Owen. The expression on Anton’s face was unidentifiable. The look on Blake’s face was plain as day. All at once, Anton shook his head and turned to get into the car. Though Owen could only see half of Church’s face, he saw that half scowl. Grabbing her partner by the sleeve, she pulled all six feet four inches of him back up and looked at him, tiny mouth spitting out argument after argument. Anton raised his arms as he argued back, then turned back to the car again. Church smacked him in the back of shoulder. She’d have gone for the head for sure, but couldn’t reach it. Heaving a great sigh, he turned once again and engaged her.
To Owen, the most amusing thing about the conversation was Blake. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, looking back and forth from one to the other as if it were some tennis match. He was pretty powerless to make this decision. At best, he could have called in the problem to Captain Walters, but he didn’t. When Anton finally relented, Blake was brought into the conversation as if he’d been involved the whole time. He nodded. Then he nodded again. Then he started for his own vehicle but was hauled back by Anton’s large arm. When Anton said something else, Blake shook his head. To Owen, he looked angry. He indicated the scene around them, then pointed to his own car. Anton shook his head and pointed also. To his surprise, Owen saw that the detective was pointing right at him. Then he pointed to one of the other officers that had come over with them. Blake looked at the human officer indicated and shook his head. Anton said something else and then pointed at Owen. Blake looked at him, his eyes burning.
“Fine!” he said loudly. “Keefe, you’re with them.”
Surprised, but pleasantly so, Owen abandoned his position and rushed over to the car as fast as his little dwarf legs would carry him. Anton gave him a quick once over and then ordered him into the back seat. Then he muttered a curt acknowledgement to Blake and got into the car himself. Church went around the other side.
“How long have you been on the force?” Anton asked, once they were on their way. He had a Texas accent that he flaunted proudly.
“Twenty four years,” Owen said.
“Detective Church compiled a list of other locations mentioned by the suspect. We’re hoping to head him off. He’s operating with a group of five or six humans. According to witnesses, the human suspects were beating up on the victims. Whenever the victims attempted to fight back, the elf suspect would use spellfire to knock them back down. Since elves aren’t usually this kind of sociopathic, we’re going to assume he’s under the influence of some sort of narcotic. Probably acid. That stuff rips right through an elf brain. Got all that?”
“Under the circumstances, it seems likely that he’ll resist arrest,” Owen mentioned.
Eyes on the road, Anton nodded. “In that case, keep the hell out of the way.”
“If you wound an elf, you may as well lay down and die,” Church chimed in. “We’re looking to subdue him until someone from his family can come and pick him up. Like you said, Keefe, we’re just looking to get him off the streets and save lives. Let’s not have any illusions about justice.”
Anton shot her a look that was half reprimand and half approval.
“May I see the list of locations?” Owen asked.
Swiping her finger across her phone two or three times, Church handed the device back to him. Owen hated smart phones. They were made by humans for humans. Dwarf fingers were short and thick and had a difficult time working the stupid little things. Of course, that was just an excuse. His daughter had no problem with it. Looking at the list, he gently moved his finger over the screen to scroll down. He recognized every bar on it as a dwarf watering hole. He’d patronized most of them himself in the past twenty years or so. One of them, Blubber Belly’s Dragonwater, was his favorite. It was right in the docking district. He knew the owner well and was friendly with several of the regulars. A personal instinct told him to recommend that place first, but it wasn’t likely to be one of the homicidal elf’s stops. It was too far away. Two other places were more likely. One, Shawn’s, was a hole in the wall. Only the lowest of the low lives hung out there. Owen knew it to be a den of crime. It was where human thieves went when they were looking for dwarf employers.
The second bar was a more likely target. The place, Taggerty’s, had a more modern setup. The owner had sunk a lot of money into it to hopefully attract an eclectic clientele and it had worked. On the weekends, the place was a favorite hangout for the younger crowd. During the week, it served the standard crew of thirsty dwarf workers. It was a Thursday and there would be a decent crowd drinking and laughing at human sports.
Owen suggested it to the two detectives.
Church looked over at Anton, who shrugged his shoulders and made a right turn.
When they pulled up, they were too late. The place had already been hit. There were two ambulances on the scene. Two dwarves were dead, one being the owner of the bar. There was also a dead human.
Anton was furious. “Jess, get on the radio to dispatch and find out why this call never came out over the wire. Then find out if there have been anymore calls.”
While she did that, Owen accompanied Anton over to the bodies. Owen didn’t recognize the second dead dwarf. The human looked to be in his low to middle twenties. His head was shaved and there was a tattoo running across the left side of his skull that wrapped around his ear. Owen harrumphed. He didn’t really understand the human fascination with tattoos. War paint was one thing, but tattoos were permanent. If you were going to adorn your body, it was important to be able to alter the adornment based on the situation. He had to give credit where credit was due, though. The process had probably been extremely painful.
The EMTs had covered him with a sheet and Owen pulled it back to inspect the body. His chest was caved in and blackened. Someone had hit him hard enough to kill him.
After speaking with a couple of witnesses, Anton came back over to Owen and crouched next to him. “This guy ran with the elf. Taggerty charged him and hit him right in the chest. Killed him instantly.”
Owen nodded to himself. Getting hit by a charging dwarf head was kind of like taking a direct hit from a cannon ball.
“Travis.” Church came running up to them. “There have been two calls to report the elf. He’s got anywhere from eight to ten humans in his group now and they were spotted coming off of Rector Street and onto Broadway.”
Owen asked for the list again and she handed it over. They had bypassed Shawn’s. There was really only one place they could be going next. It was a place called, ironically enough, Owen’s. The owner was a human, but he’d managed to attract a decent sized dwarf clientele, largely by being anti-elf.
The three police officers piled into their car and headed straight for it, sirens blaring, lights flashing.
“Remember,” Church warned Owen as she checked her sidearm. “Back us up only. Keep the lackeys at bay. Don’t engage the elf, whatever you do.”
With gritted teeth, Owen nodded.
Elf magic was an anomaly that human scientists had been trying to sort out for generations. Much of it was benign. It could be used to discover oil wells
or create weather bubbles for growing crops or, more likely, wine grapes. Some of it was dangerous. A powerful elf could turn mythical dark energy into spellfire. It wasn’t actually fire. The elf’s hands became a conduit for incredible heat. An adept sorcerer could then direct the heat at a target and do as much or as little damage as he liked, depending on his control of the spell. The use of magic such as spellfire, though, seemed to take its toll on the casters. In dwarf lore, there were rumors of maddened and disfigured elves who had started out as brave soldiers on the front lines of their armies. Elves that abused the power of magic didn’t ever lose that power, though. Just their minds.
Owen and the detectives pulled up to the bar just in time to see the beginning of the conflict. The bar was just off Broadway, on a small alley two blocks up from Rector. A crowd of men had gathered around it, blocking any view of the door. Still, they could just make out a distortion in the air above the heads of the crowd. Then there was an explosion and bits of wood and plaster fired into the air. Members of the throng reared back, bringing their arms up to their faces. Some of them scattered, not interested in what was to follow. Others stayed. These were the men in the elf’s group. There were about ten of them and most of them were armed with baseball bats and pry bars. Church was already calling for backup as Anton and Owen got out of the car. Anton had his gun out while Owen chose his baton.
The air around the ruined doorway was crackling with magical residue. The smell was indefinable. It was almost like the smell of exhaust, but laced with something sweet. Holding up his badge and his gun, Anton announced their arrival and ordered the group to stand down. Some of their swagger drained out of them when they saw him. Anton was an impressive figure. Tall and thick, with a booming cowboy’s voice, he struck fear into the hearts of men. But as Church joined them, also drawing her weapon, a tall figure detached itself from the back of the crowd and took his place as their leader.
“Run along, now,” the elf said to Anton directly.
“Yeah! Fuck off, cops,” one of the men yelled. He was just a kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old.
“All of you drop your weapons and get down on the ground,” Church ordered in a commanding voice.
“Fuck you, bitch,” the same kid cried out.
There were other men with the group, some of them sporting similar tattoos to the one Owen had seen on the dead man back at Taggerty’s. Two men in particular stood close by the elf. They were unarmed except for their expressions which labeled them as dangerous. Clearly, they were the elf’s officers in this operation.
The average height of an elf male was about six feet. There wasn’t much variation as the gene pool was undiluted. Asian elves were a bit shorter, averaging at five foot ten. But even they had spawned from Europe so their features did not resemble those of Asian humans. This elf was about six foot two. He stood only slightly shorter than Anton and was built like the wisp of a tree branch. His skin was a pale pink and sparkled in the street lights. Green eyes blazed with a furious intensity but Anton, Church, and even Owen could see the flecks of madness in them. His blonde hair was thick and long, tied back behind his head in a pony tail. As he came forward, his long fingers curled and uncurled at his sides, the distortion of elf spellfire hovering around the tips.
There was going to be no intimidating this elf.
“What’s your name, son?” Anton asked, putting his gun away. Church looked at him with a bit of panic in her eyes, but he ignored her.
“You mean you don’t recognize me?” the elf asked.
“Yeah, why don’t you recognize him?” one of the humans echoed. This one was wearing a ribbed tank top that had a blood stain on the left shoulder strap. Somehow it managed to stay tucked into his jeans despite the constant press of his overlarge belly. He was holding a two by four and had a cigarette tucked behind his ear. If there was ever a creature that filled out a stereotype, this guy was it.
Owen marveled at the disparity of human intelligence. Some were brilliant academically. Others could build things with their hands almost as well as dwarves. Still others were barely intelligent enough to rival well trained dogs.
The trouble with recognizing elves is that, unless they took great care to distinguish themselves physically, most of them looked alike. Again, it was due to that thin gene pool. Aside from the consistency of height, they all had blondish hair within a narrow color spectrum. Their eyes were either deep green or deep blue. There were no fat elves. Not even one. Something about the way they metabolized fats and carbohydrates prevented them from ever being more than sticks. Human women all over the world were jealous of them. To most humans and dwarves, all elves looked alike. And all elves knew it.
Still, Anton was a detective and not likely to be intimidated by a silly question. “’Course I recognize you. I just forget your name is all.”
The elf’s eyes narrowed. The heads of the men in his group turned to look at him. Anton was stalling. Already, they could hear sirens in the distance.
“This is Troy Van Walls,” said the man with the two by four. His tone was menacing, laced with the confidence that was borne of running with an elf.
But the introduction was important. Anton had heard of Troy Van Walls. Troy was the son of Lester Van Walls, who owned four casinos in Atlantic City. Lester was one of the richest elves in the country. He held sway with the presidents of several large corporations and some politicians. Aside from his name, Troy was mostly kept out of the news. With the elf lifespan reaching an average of three hundred years, most of them found their own way, which was easy due to the caste system that existed in their society. They chose a path and followed it with all the support of the rich and powerful. But Troy Van Walls hadn't yet chosen a path. If Troy had made his choice, Anton would have heard about it. Everyone would have heard about it.
“We don’t have time for this,” Owen muttered out of the corner of his mouth. He could see the change in the elf’s features as the sirens grew louder. Their backup was probably less than five minutes from the scene and Van Walls was probably less than fifteen seconds from exploding. But by attracting his attention, Owen had actually invalidated his own assessment. As soon as Van Walls noticed him, a dwarf in uniform, he struck.
Owen was ready and dived out of the way. Though their frames are built to take punishment, not avoid it, spellfire was much more than they could handle. But dwarves are slow and stocky. The heat grabbed hold of his shoulder and turned his uniform sleeve to ash. The skin underneath blackened but he was away before any real damage could be done.
Anton cursed loudly as he went for his gun. He managed to pull it out of its holster, but couldn’t bring it to bear. Walls’ group had rushed forward. Too responsible to fire into a crowd, even one that seemed to have blood on its mind, Anton used his pistol as a melee weapon. Church reared back and tried to take aim but she was also too well trained to fire under the circumstances. Taking her finger off the trigger, she gripped the weapon around the hammer and the guard and also used it as a melee weapon. She was an expert hand to hand fighter, but the press of several armed men tired her out quickly.
Feeling the rage building within him, Owen jumped to his feet and waded into the fray. He went first to Anton, who had taken three or four blows from various weapons. Discarding his baton, the dwarf used his hands to peel men away from the detective. He took them unawares, grabbing them by their shirts or the waistlines of their trousers and yanking them off of their feet. Within seconds, he had the last of them away and turned toward Church.
Though he’d cleared Anton of combatants, he’d done no real harm. Now, though, the men were getting to their feet and putting themselves in his way. Curling his short fingers into powerful fists, Owen lashed out at anyone stupid enough to try and block him. There was a ten inch difference between him and the shortest of the humans. In hand to hand, dwarves knew better than to try for the face. Instead, they p
owered through flimsy human muscles. What was a rock hard lining of a man’s stomach was the result of doughnuts and television for a dwarf. These sorry sons of bitches were no match for him. Despite getting hit once with a bat and twice with pry bars, Owen knocked the wind out of all of them. Stepping through a crowd of gasping, breathless men, he began to extricate Church from her predicament.
Throughout all of this, Troy Van Walls was building another blast of spellfire. Several hours ago, as Anton had surmised, he had taken a tab of acid. On his “trip”, he had envisioned not only that there were dwarves who wanted him killed, but that every dwarf in the world wanted him killed. It was an extreme notion, even for an elf. Even for an elf on an acid trip. But Van Walls was an extreme case. Even sober, he sometimes suffered from paranoid delusions, paranoid delusions that were often fostered by an external source. At length, Troy Van Walls had set out to eliminate every dwarf he could find in an effort to cleanse the planet of the foul creatures. When he’d seen Owen, really seen him, he’d been utterly disgusted. The idea that a dwarf should serve as a police officer was an affront to his very existence. The police protected the citizens. He was a citizen. How could a dwarf protect him when they were all actually trying to kill him?
Taking aim, he unleashed another lance of spellfire at Owen. This time, it was pure luck that saved the dwarf officer. Van Walls was too blinded by his paranoia to care that one of his own lackeys had gotten in between him and his target. The human caught the blast on his right side. His arm withered and turned to ash. The left side of his chest blackened and he screamed horribly as the magic ravaged him. Van Walls didn’t care. Not only didn’t he let up, but he intensified the blast in an effort to power through the obstacle and reach his target. Some of the residual heat did hit Owen. He felt it, like a bad sunburn on the back of his uniform. Turning, he stepped out of the way, moving toward the car. Dropping the blast, Van Walls tracked Owen’s movement. His fingers were literally smoldering, smoky tendrils trailing from their tips. Anton could now see that the acid was working hand in hand with the madness of using too much powerful magic. It was something he’d seen two or three times before. It was common in Texas, where the elf tycoons really had no one to answer to. Here in New York, the Judiciary Board was a bit more severe.
No matter what, there would be no reasoning with this elf.
Still, Anton felt obligated to give a warning. When he did so, the elf turned just his head. He glared at Anton and then flexed his hands once again. But Anton wasn’t in any danger. This elf was looking to finish off Owen.
He raised his hands and the heat distortion flowed outward once again. Anton fired his weapon. The bullet impacted with the elf’s shoulder, spinning him around. The spellfire missed Owen by a foot, then jumped and danced, searing through the car doors and leaving scars all along the street. Getting it under control, the elf quenched the magic and then turned once again. Making a fist, his arm began to glow with a green light. The wound thereon closed up as Anton watched.
“Get on the ground, you son of a bitch,” he said.
Van Walls was all by himself now. There was a certain sense of invulnerability that went with being an elf’s lackey. No police officer would dare use force to subdue him and, by extension, the lackeys were protected. But Anton seemed to have made up his mind about Troy Van Walls. That he was an elf had ceased to have any relevance to the situation. Even those humans who had not felt Owen’s iron fists were backing away from the altercation. Only the two giants that had flanked him earlier stayed near.
Like a bolt of lightning, Van Walls pointed his fingers at Owen once again. Anton didn’t hesitate. This time when he fired, the elf’s head snapped to the side and his body went to the ground. The buildup of magic in his fingers backfired and his hands went blurry, encapsulated in a bubble of powerful magic. Within, they burned until there was nothing more than charred bones where his fingers had been. He dropped to the ground, dead of the bullet wound to his head, but mutilated by his own magic.
There was silence for a long time after that. Those from Van Walls’ gang that could run did so. The two giants, who had stayed by his side, stumbled around for a bit before taking off awkwardly. The wounded and the dazed just held their bruised bodies and stared at the dead elf, wondering how it was that they had been stupid enough to follow him.
Church came up on Anton’s side and whispered his name. Owen was up and looking down at Van Walls’ body. He looked over at Anton and suddenly reassessed his evaluation of everything he’d learned in his fifty eight years of life. This swaggering blowhard southwestern cowboy had saved his life. And it wasn’t nearly as simple as that. Using lethal force to prevent an elf from killing a dwarf was very likely going to get him imprisoned, if not executed.
“I don’t know what to say,” Owen muttered to him.
“Dwarves never do,” Anton said. He put away his gun as several other police cars and three ambulances finally pulled up to the scene. “You’d better take charge, Jess.”
There was no way around it. Even if, by some miracle, Anton would be cleared of the charges, he had to surrender himself to the police. The killing of an elf started as a murder charge and, under very rare circumstances, was downgraded to manslaughter or self defense. Unfortunately, the defense of another, especially a dwarf, had never been applied.
Jessica Church commanded the scene, giving orders to uniformed police and auxiliary personnel as they arrived. She had one eye on the job and the other eye on her partner, cuffed and in the back of a patrol car. It wasn’t fair, she knew. But she was powerless to do anything about it.
The Lieutenant showed up twenty minutes later. He was furious. He shouted at Church and at Anton. When he got to Owen, he had nothing left to say. He put him off duty and sent him home. He was ordered not to report for work the next day.
