Into the Shadows

by Jordan Weisman

  Mike righted the Yamaha and waved his partner onto the rear seat. "Next time, you won’t balk at me buying a monofilament whip, will ya, lad? Get on!"

  Tiger hopped onto the back of the motorcycle as Mike muscled it around the corner and into the other alley. Tiger slung the Kalashnikov over his shoulder and shifted the shotgun back to his right hand. He tucked his left arm around Iron Mike’s waist and braced himself as they rocketed out of the alley and onto a street. "Where are we going?"

  "Docks! The Yaks hold enough sway down there that Lone Star isn't going to be able to follow us that closely." He hunkered down behind the half of the windscreen the monofilament line had left on the bike. With a downward jerk of his right hand, he hurled the bike forward, weaving in and out of the night’s sparse traffic.

  Iron Mike ripped along Ninth Street, then cut down to Madison to make a beeline for the docks. The lights were with them most of the way, and when they weren’t, Mike slowed just enough to gauge the traffic, then sliced his way through it. Though they didn’t see any Lone Star pursuit, over and above the squeal of tires and the scream of the Yamaha's engine, they heard the continuous sirens of Lone Star vehicles baying like bloodhounds.

  Suddenly, at the intersection of Third and Madison, there were two Lone Star cruisers stopped nose to nose in a roadblock. Their lights still flashing and sirens wailing, the police cars disgorged four cops. The Stars cocked their rifles and drew a bead.

  Mike shouted a warning to Tiger, then leaned heavily to the right. The rear end of the bike slewed around, flinging both men off as the Lone Star cops cut loose with a withering fusillade. Bullets whined and ricocheted all over the street as Tiger roiled to a stop halfway beneath a parked car. Nowhere did he see Iron Mike.

  The bike caught a pothole that twisted it up and around. It continued with its forward momentum, but now it danced and cavorted down the street like an upended pull-toy being dragged along behind a running child. As it tumbled on toward the roadblock, one of the cops tried insanely to stop it by shooting it. His tracer rounds burned through the heart of the bike and its fuel tank.

  The wall of flame from the gasoline explosion cut Tiger off from the cops’ sight for only a second or two. but that was enough time for him to roll to his feet and duck back around the car that had sheltered him. Off to his right, a ramshackle building’s dark silhouette offered him yet more protection and he started for it, then stopped as he saw Iron Mike face-down on the sidewalk. He ran over, flipped Mike’s coat and grabbed him by the belt. Half-dragging him, half-carrying him. Tiger pulled his partner into the shadows.

  Mike coughed once, then groaned when Tiger set him down. He waved his partner off and pulled himself into a sitting position. "I'll be all right. Just caught one in the stomach. Knocked the wind out of me."

  Tiger said nothing as he ripped the lock off the door of the building. He pushed the door open and waited for someone to protest his entry. When no alarm sounded, he poked in his head, then waved Mike forward, "It's a garage attached to a salvage yard. This must be McKuen’s. Lots of metal to stop bullets."

  Mike followed him in, then carefully shut the door. "If they can’t be sure where we are, they’ll be cautious. That'll give us time to get out of here."

  The windows on the street glowed with the light of the burning motorcycle nestled beneath a cop car. A sudden nova-burst of light and a window-rattling explosion heralded the fiery involvement of one of the cruisers. While the image of Lone Star vehicles blowing up would once have made Tiger laugh heartily, he felt his life sinking into a very black void.

  He looked over at Iron Mike. "I make that two cruisers and three bikes, plus at least two cops they’re going to hit us for." He pointed toward the front of the building where flashing blue lights filled the street. "They’ll be calling in everything they got. They think we blew the top off that Tower, but we were set up."

  Mike nodded wearily. A trickle of blood seeped dow-n from his curly black hair and it smeared across his forehead when he wiped it with the back of one hand. "We’re in deep, all right, lad, no doubt about that. The Halloweeners aren’t going to help us, and that Mr. Johnson ain't even going to bat an eyelash when he sees the newsfax about this whole thing— if we even make the fax."

  "Well. I’ve got thirteen clips left for the AK, and enough shotgun ammo to keep plenty of funeral directors more than happy." Tiger smiled grimly. "What do you say we go out in a blaze of glory?"

  Iron Mike winced. "I don't know about your lovers. Tiger, but my ladies don't look good in black."

  Tiger laughed. "Your women have all been Halloweeners, Mike. All they wear is black."

  "Not when they're with me, boyo." He wiped more blood from his forehead and smeared it on the shoulder of his long-coat. "We’re going to need some help to get out of this one. Tiger." He pointed his Kalashnikov at the pay phone mounted on the wall between faded handbills and a Nagoya-Pirelli calendar. "I think you better give him a call."

  It took Tiger a half-second to puzzle out the identity of the "him" to whom Mike referred. When he made the connection, he shook his head. "No. No way." His stomach felt as if it had imploded. "Being humiliated by Charles the Red, then having some Mr. Johnson set us up is bad enough. Getting jumped by Lone Stars is even worse. But no, dammit. I'd rather be shot to death than call him."

  Mike pulled out his Predator and laid it on the ground beside his Kalashnikov. "I’d be real sure of that, bucko, because it is your only likely alternative right now."

  "Drek!" Tiger dug into his jeans pocket and pulled out a yen coin. He shivered because his hand came away wet and sticky with blood. "I’m gonna die of shame ..."

  Iron Mike snapped the folding stock out on his Kalashnikov. "Better that than lead poisoning. Tiger. It leaves a prettier corpse, and if you get help soon enough, it ain't always fatal."

  IT’S ALL DONE WITH MIRRORS

  by Michael A. Stackpole

  I

  The burning Tower splashed the dirty gray clouds with its red glow, and black smoke slicked the sky like oil leaking from a ruptured supertanker. Much closer to my hiding place was the inferno engulfing two Lone Star cruisers and the remains of a motorcycle, merrily blazing away at the intersection of Third and Madison. Though only twenty meters from the alley where I crouched, neither the light nor warmth of the fire touched me. The heavy, acrid scent of burning rubber would have been enough to drive most sane people from the immediate area, but if I had any claim to sanity. I’d not have been there at all.

  My right hand snaked inside my black leather jacket and withdrew the old Beretta Viper-14 from its shoulder holster. My left hand dug a silencer from the collection of odds and ends in the other pocket. I screwed the long, cold cylinder onto the gun, feeling every tremor that the gritty rasp of thread meeting thread sent through the weapon. I thumbed the safety off and smiled to myself. All systems go.

  Out beyond the Lone Star bonfire, cop cars lined Madison, their flashers strobing in spasmodic syncopation. In their cyanotic light, I could see two dozen cops braced against the vehicles. Hunkered down over their rifles, they scanned the front of McKuen’s Scrap and Salvage Yard for any sign of a target. Behind them, gathered in the sanctuary of an armored car. some Lone Star officers haggled among themselves over tactics and strategies for their assault.

  A bulky shadow suddenly eclipsed my view of everything beyond the alley mouth.

  "What are you doing here?" the cop said. Though phrased as a question, it sounded more like a challenge that also carried a threat. To encourage a swift and satisfying answer, the man pointed his HK227 submachine gun at my belly with an easy, one-handed grip on the weapon.

  I raised my hands slowly, letting him see the Beretta. "Easy, officer. I’m here for the same reason as you. Word on the street says there’s a big bounty on these two terrorists you got trapped in there. I’m just trying to make some yen." I turned my head to the right, giving him full view of the radio earphone and mike hookup on the left side of my face. "I h
ave a iicense to carry this gun."

  The HK227’s muzzle came up, giving me a victim’s-eye-view of the bore. "What’s the radio for?"

  I forced my green eyes wide as though shocked at his perceptiveness. "I’m talking to my partner. He's already gone in." I nodded toward the scrap yard. "You can see him in the shadow of that wrecked bus."

  The cop turned to look, swinging the SMG out of line with my body. Taking two steps forward, I jammed the silencer into his neck just long enough to get his attention, then hit him with the stunner I pulled from my jacket pocket. He jerked as if I’d goosed him with an icicle, then collapsed in a heap. Slipping the stunner back into my pocket, I dragged him deeper into the alley, used his own cuffs on him, then keyed my radio.

  "Hey, Stealth, you ever notice that burning cop cars smell different than other vehicles on fire?"

  "Yeah. It’s all the coffee and doughnuts in the front seat."

  I smiled, but Kid Stealth’s joke took me so much by surprise that I forgot to laugh. Maybe if wasn’t that he usually had no sense of humor, but more that he and I just don’t find the same things funny. After the second or third person dies in his jokes, he kinda loses me.

  "Could be, Stealth. Are you in position?"

  "Yes."

  I could read nothing in the flat tone of his reply. "Any opposition? I took one down to clear my sector."

  "I had two visitors."

  "You didn't . . ."

  Exasperation echoed through his voice. "Wolf, you can’t make omelets without breaking eggs." He waited, perhaps hoping for a reaction, then added, "Or, in this case, shocking the living hell out of them."

  "There may be hope for you yet."

  "If they'd been Shadowriders, they would have died."

  The cold finality in his voice sent a chill through me, and in the back of my mind, I heard the distant howl of a wolf. "I’m going in. Give me a minute or two. If you hear shooting, come on in or not. Your choice."

  "Roger."

  I squatted on my haunches, with my back against the brick wall. Closing my eyes, I forced myself to breathe evenly, using as much conscious control as I could muster to slow my heart rate and dull the pulsing thunder in my ears. As my left hand touched the silver wolf’s-head amulet I wear at my throat, I turned my mind inward and sought the wolf spirit’s haven within the depths of my soul.

  Stepping through the ring of darkness, I greeted the Old One with a smile. He was as black as a bad cop’s heart, but for his glowing red eyes and the scarlet highlights shimmering across his pelt. The wolf spirit seemed to regard me as halfprey, half pack-brother. "Finally, Longtooth, you have come for me. All this skulking about is driving me mad. For once, the Murder Machine is right: there is much to hunt this night."

  I shook my head. "Tonight is not for hunting. Old One. Even Stealth knows tonight is for stalking and rescue. Give me your strength and quickness. I need your battlesense, if only to avoid combat for the moment. These things I require of you."

  A low growl rumbled from his throat, filling the dark with its resonance. "I will grant what you ask, but take heed that whether or not you accept the warrior’s lot, battle will not leave you alone."

  "Understood, Old One. Thank you."

  My eyes opened onto a different world. The wavering shadows given animation by the cop car barbecue no longer proved impenetrable to my sight. The Old One heightened my senses of hearing and smell to where I could hear snatches of Lone Star deliberations, and beneath the acid smell of burning rubber. I could even catch the scent of nervous sweat from the cops.

  The Old One’s gifts to me were comparable to the combat spells cast by other shadowrunners or to the chrome many gillettes used to increase their speed and dexterity. Even so, when I borrowed his abilities, it was with a naturalness others may not always experience with their spells or mechanical augmentation. The wolf spirit was part of me, not grafted on. not conjured, and the whole was definitely greater than the sum of the parts.

  When we weren’t arguing, that is.

  I ignored the Old One’s suggestion that I bite the throat out of the cop I’d stunned, and then headed for the street. I dropped to one knee in the shadow of a parked car. looked about quickly, then sprinted across the street. I leaped to the hood of the Ford Mardi Gras, then up and over the concertina-topped fence of the salvage yard. Though my flight was none too stylish and despite the muddy footing, I struck the landing. To my disappointment, however, I found nary an Olympic vaulting judge in sight to grant me the true acclaim I deserved.

  Two guard dogs, on the other hand, raced across the yard to render their opinion of my performance. Both had started life as rottweilers, but had been tricked out with enough chrome to make most street samurai jealous. Glowing green bars running from one side of their heads to the other replaced their eyes. Razor spurs gleamed from front and back paws, and the spikes encircling their necks weren't studded on any collar. The spring-steel coils running along their jaws combined with their titanium teeth to give the mute beasts enough bite to pierce cast iron and tear whole pieces out of me that I didn’t want to see gone. I let my throat give voice to the Old One’s howl of challenge. One dog decided that a desire to compete in the ’52 Games in Tokyo beat gnawing on whatever the hell I was. With stubby tail tucked between his legs, he ran off to practice being scared. The bitch kept coming, however, deadly in the way she ran, yet eerie in the utter silence of her approach.

  The Viper coughed twice, spitting silver bullets at the hound and flipping smoking cartridges in the air. The first two shots missed, lancing sparks from the twisted wreckage of a Honda subcompact. I tracked right and pulled the trigger two more times. One bullet smashed square into the dog’s chest, slewing her around on the muddy ground. The second struck the beast right behind the shoulder, knocking her down, and opening a raw, wet hole in her pelt.

  The dog thrashed in pain. I pressed the silencer to her head and stroked the trigger once. In shower of sparks, the light in the dog’s eye-bar died, and she lay still.

  Threading my way through massive piles of rusting debris. I sidestepped red-orange puddles and black, greasy chemical lumps embedded in the mud. Remaining alert for another possible electricur, I reached the back door of the garage. I rapped once lightly on the mud-streaked window, then turned the doorknob and admitted myself into their hiding place. "Someone here call a cab?"

  Zag looked at me over the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. "Great Ghost, it's you!"

  They both looked worse for the wear since the last time I’d seen them. Aside from the sharp scent of nervous sweat. I could smell blood and the cloying scent of cordite from both of them. Zig wiped his right hand clean and offered it in a handshake. "Damn glad you made it. Wolf. We didn’t have anyone else to call."

  I tucked the Beretta away in its holster, then met his grip with a firm one of my own. "Anyone on the wrong side of Charles the Red is a friend of mine. Not that I didn't owe you one already for helping get Moira out of that little firelight two weeks ago." I stood on my tiptoes. "You’ve got a nasty gash up there."

  "Aye. Smashed my think box on the curb when I laid the bike down." He returned his hand to the thick mat of black curls. "Almost have the wound closed."

  "Let me." I smiled and flexed the fingers of my right hand. "This is the one spell Raven has actually managed to teach me."

  I pressed my hand over the wound on his head and felt the sticky wetness. Concentrating hard. I visualized the tear in his scalp, then saw it zipping itself closed. Heat gathered in the palm of my hand, and in the fingertips, then leaped like an electric spark onto his head.

  I heard him gasp in surprise, then laugh lightly. "It tickles."

  I opened my eyes and wiped my hand on his coat. "Good. Just as long as it feels better now than it did when you got it." I turned to Zag. "How are you doing?"

  The black man shrugged, doing his best to hide the stiffness in his shoulders and back. "Bumps and bruises, a few scrapes. I’m operational."
/>   "Good. I’m here to tell you boys that the Seattle newsfax is real impressed with your cop-shooting and bike-riding. It’s been just fantastic. According to them, we’ve not seen such wholesale slaughter since the last time the Tigers and the Ancients went at it. And turning the Fairview Tower into a torch, hell, that was inspired."

  Zig held up his hands. "I swear. Wolf, on my sainted mother’s heart, we were there, but we didn’t blow the top floor off the tower, and we didn’t clean, jerk, and toss that Lone Star off the building, neither."

  I nodded. "If I thought you had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation." I keyed the radio. "Still clear. Stealth?"

  "Roger. Ready when you are."

  "Any word from Tark?"

  "No, but we’ve got a clean shot from my position to his access point. I haven’t seen anything wrong."

  "Good. We’re coming your way." I looked back at the two gillettes. "Head on a straight line north. There’s a burned-out bus toward the back. You’ll find a locked gate over by the aft end of it. Wait there. Get going."

  As they ran out the back door, the pay phone, presumably the one Zag had used to call me, started to ring. I walked over to answer it. ducking down quickly, just in case some sniper decided to pop me. "Hello, McKuen’s Scrap Yard. We’re having a fire sale on Lone Star vehicles today. How may I help you?"

  The gruff voice on the other end of the line seethed with fury. "Who the hell is this?"

  "Someone who wouldn’t shed a tear if Lone Star gets a bulk discount on caskets," I snarled. The whooping flutter of a helicopter engine in the background clued me to who the caller had to be. "George Van Housen. I presume?"

  "That’s right, wise guy. We've got this place surrounded. You better give it up now and come along quietly."

  I shook my head. "Thanks a lot for the invite. Georgie Porgie, but face it, we know you set us up. Hell, there were twenty cops there at the Tower and nobody was giving away free food. You better come in shooting, Georgie, ’cause the only way we’re leaving this place is feet first!"