“Women have no standards at all anymore. They don’t want to work for the complete experience. Seduction takes too much time, better to make a blog post about wanting to ‘get to know people’ I think the phrase is.”
“Rumors . . .” I said.
I locked on the word, ignored the rest. Yup, she wasn’t here for the teapots. Good to know. Asylum toady? Guild spy? Another mancer testing me before she bought a commission? Could have worked for the government . . . but then maybe not with the clothes she wore. She might have been related to Welf too. All possibilities, none the correct answer.
“Look at his little brain go click,” Anne said. “So cute.”
I glanced at the ‘B’ one more time. “If I’m King Henry and you are really Annie B, then doesn’t that mean I get to cut your head off?” I asked, lips pulling back along my teeth.
Something shifted in her. The second gear that Asylum women have when they’re about to put you in place. “You’re going to close down your shop and then you’re going to come with me for a few days,” Annie B told me in plain terms suffering no argument. “I need someone with the skill-set for an Artificer kind of problem that isn’t prisoner to the Guild bylaws and you’ve been volunteered for it. If you try to cut my head off, I’ll kick your little ass. Understand, King Henry?”
Volunteered? Who would volunteer me? Who could volunteer me? Short list. Plutarch, Ceinwyn, or the Lady. “I don’t hire out or build or design without a contract and unless I say so and last I checked—you didn’t offer me payment.” My hands couldn’t take it anymore—they curled into fists. Plutarch, Ceinwyn, or the Lady. Which one would get a kick out of volunteering me without mentioning it to me? All of them. That didn’t help . . .
“Get out of my store before I build up the anima to smash you across the street, you pushy psycho bitch.”
That’s when she punched me in the face so hard I tumbled backwards five feet and slammed into my shelf filled with glassware.
A few thousand dollars worth of antiques cracked behind me as my body splayed out from the impact. My feet slipped under me. You get hit in the right spot on the chin and your legs will go out, no matter how hard the punch. Has to do with the torque on your neck. Nerves don’t meet up with the rest of your body and until the electrical impulses sync up with the brain again you’re out of it. Those impulses take a few seconds to get back together, so my butt hit the floor.
I did three things in those seconds.
First, I pooled anima like only an Ultra can. I was going to need it.
Second, I realized I hadn’t felt anima being drawn before she punched me. You might not see, but you always get a feeling something is going down, like an added sense. For aeromancers it’s like a breeze at the back of their necks. Pyromancers, a heated forehead. Cryomancers, their dicks shrivel up or something. For me and other geomancers it’s a slight rumble under our feet. Like a big truck going down the street kind of rumble. It didn’t matter what anima type was being pooled. It all registered the same. A rumble. More anima, bigger rumble.
This time . . . no rumble.
Third, I realized the hand that had punched my face wasn’t pumping blood at ninety-eight-point-six. It had more in common with a summer day than the foggy night outside my doors. Right . . . My eyes went to her choker immediately. Not to the ‘B’. To the side of her neck, that place where you can check for a pulse under a person’s chin.
Anne’s pulse was so strong I saw it. A shiver. A heart over-processed like some computer chip in a cold chamber. A heartbeat hitting four maybe five-hundred beats a minute. Crap . . .
I’m in trouble.
The darkness said hello.
“Fucking vampire?” I said aloud as my legs joined the party and popped me back up on my feet. “A real fucking vampire?”
Her hand flourished to draw attention to her lips. “I’d show my fangs, but we don’t actually have them. It’s actually one of the more disgusting myths you humans have created about us I’ve always thought.”
“Fucking vampire . . .” I said again.
Damned if I’d ever thought I’d really see one. Ceinwyn told me to leave them alone, so I left them alone. Weres too. ‘Leave politics to the professionals, King Henry,’ that’s what she’d said. They were around somewhere . . . just like homeless people or gangs or drug dealers are around somewhere, but I didn’t want to have to deal with Vamps and Weres just like normal people don’t want to have to deal with the other problems. My shop was enough worry. I figured I’d leave the supernatural treaties to the Asylum’s ESLED—Elementalist Security and Law Enforcement Department.
“Are you properly scared now, little mancer? Will you come without any more complaining?” Anne grinned a mouthful of normal white teeth just to further prove her point about the lack of fangs. “I promise I won’t bite unless you ask for it. Deal?”
I resorted to my most tried and true reaction straight from my childhood. “Fuck. You. Bitch.” I even pointed with each word.
She shrugged, unconcerned with my puffed up bravado. “I don’t want to beat you senseless, but I will. You don’t exactly scare me . . . perhaps you’re not a crusty old man like most Artificers, but . . . come now. You run a shop, don’t you? Straight out of school, don’t know how the world really works. Just living inside their lies, thinking you’re in on the secrets. Do you think you stand any chance against me, scared little boy?”
“That’s right . . .” I agreed with her first comment, fists coming up to a normal stance. It’d been awhile . . . still felt good . . . always felt good. Fighter’s stance with my fists up . . . no anima conversion formulas here. No debt or ledgers either. Just me and her. Easy problem to solve. Right that moment, instantaneous gratification, not some day in the unknown future. “I’m not a crusty old Artificer working for the cocksucking Guild. I run a shop and you damaged my property. So let’s dance our little dance, Annie B. I won’t even use the Mancy to throw you out the door. Nothing but my hands.”
Some kind of freaky groan escaped her, her eyelashes flickering and her tongue arching out to touch her top lip. “Well, well . . . now I know why you get the girls. So very tough . . . do you vibrate too?”
My jab at her face caught only air.
Newsflash—she was fast.
We had a lesson on Vamps but you think I could remember it in the moment? Just like all schooling: it deserts you the moment you don’t need it for a test. Why should History of Elementalism be any different? I grasped at the knowledge I knew was in there somewhere . . . but it was no good. Everything went out of my head. Smart part, stupid part, all gone. It was all instinct. It’s a fight and I’m King Henry Price.
It’s what I did.
What . . . I did . . . after my jab missed, was catch a kick to my hip that threw me sideways and eventually returned me back down to my ass. Could have been worse. At least I missed crashing into another shelf. Not that there wasn’t a therapeutic aspect to smashing the crap, but I couldn’t afford to keep it up. Shrinks cost less than broken antiques.
Rolling over on my shoulder, I let out a hurt gasp I couldn’t control. It was a strong kick . . . I got up feeling it over most of my body.
Annie B hadn’t even moved from her spot by the register. I’d been flying around the store like a dumbass nerd trying to fight a linebacker, but there she was, feet in the same place, not a scratch on her, clothes still neat and tidy.
“I’ve been doing this for longer than you,” she told me with another twist of her lips. “But don’t worry—I’m sure I’ll feel something if you keep on poking at me. You’ll get the rhythm down eventually . . . it’s all in the hips . . .”
Right.
I kept saying that to myself with every bit of information.
My biggest problem in life was I always went for smashing through the wall as my first instinct. It’s not until I’m stopped short that I begin to look for a creative way towards my goal. The Asylum taught me to control my mind and go for the creative ri
ght off the bat, but it hadn’t taught me the trick with my body yet.
My body wanted to smash. It needed to get creative. No time to learn like the present.
She was faster, she hit harder. My advantage was the Mancy. I had just enough pool built up to do something internal—to myself. She’d been doing this a longer time, she said. Which meant she knew what my average anima pool was going to look like too. She knew how to fight mancers and I had no clue how to fight a vampire.
I stared across at Annie B and saw it in her posture as she finally moved, shifting from facing the register to towards me, where I stood thinking. It wasn’t a full stance—her arms were at her side, carefree—but her legs looked ready to kick, wide-set.
“Going to try harder this time?” Annie B teased me. “I so like it hard . . .”
Yeah, she knew mancers alright.
Look at me in the corner.
I didn’t say anything witty. I was never witty before a fight, rarely during too. I was all business. Showboaters pissed me off. Solid fighters who got the job done, that’s what I’d always tried to emulate as a kid. But she doesn’t know that, I thought.
Right.
She knew mancers. Not me.
I smiled on the inside as I roared toward her with an out-of-control punch aimed at her face. I missed again . . . by like a foot . . . but that was fine. That’s the way I’d planned it. Annie B didn’t know that either. She thought I’d blown my anima charge on the punch. Good old iron fist which had stopped so many of my fights back in elementary school.
Annie B thought wrong.
She dodged with a slide backwards then her foot came up just as expected, straight in front of her to land what’s called a push-kick. Push-kick ain’t really about a lot of damage; it’s about making space, keeping the other guy back away from you. Push them away with a stiff foot to their chest.
Only she’s a vamp with her muscles as tight as a virgin’s asshole and what’s considered her blood is flowing at three times the speed of the human maximum. Means she can throw a push-kick that can end fights. At the very least—a push-kick capable of breaking ribs. Anyone that thinks a broken rib is an easy injury has never had one. It will finish you, your breath gone, your chest a mass of pain with every movement of your lungs. Reminder: lungs got to move for you to breathe.
It will finish you . . . unless you’re a geomancer who’s holding back on your anima pool for defense. Good ol’ solid earth burst in my chest, taking the brunt of the push-kick, keeping me right in place. Her eyes flickered in recognition but it was too late. One thing any good fighter knows is that if you have the balls and the jaw to take a punch, you can lay into your opponent. This wasn’t boxing. No clumsy gloves, no referee to save the day. No bell after three minutes. And if you got to three minutes you were going to be a bleeding mound of flesh, from orifices you didn’t know you had.
I shifted my weight from my right to my left with a step of my foot, moving into her space. Get in close—any short guy’s creed.
My left arm came up, not to punch, but to hook around her leg pushed firmly against my chest, sliding it to the crook of my arm, holding her where she was. One foot in my grip, one foot on the floor in three-inch-heels . . . vampire or not, most of Annie B’s concentration instinctually went to keeping herself standing. Instead of covering up, her hands moved to balance the both of us, out at her sides like she was on some balance beam going for the gymnastic gold.
Which left my right hand free to do whatever it wanted.
My right hand wanted to beat in some vamp face.
The first punch caught her in the throat, stunning her, trapping air. It wasn’t iron fist, my anima was burned, my pool was less than a puddle. It was starting to build back up, drip by drip, minutes from being useful. Second punch smashed just above her stomach into her diaphragm, pushing what air was still there out. Third punch clipped her head. All that I’d done to her and Annie B was still fast enough to make it nothing more than a glance.
A reflexive turn of her neck kept me from delivering the full force of the punch. It still snapped her head back, and, so close to her, I saw those velvet eyes lock on me.
In them, I heard that beast in the darkness give a content little gurgle at what she’d found. A part of me, in that split second, remembered my Elementalism as a Weapon teacher, Fines Samson, telling me how above all things vampires are collectors always seeking the best shells.
The way Annie B looked at me . . . like she was thinking I’d make a nice vacation home. It stopped my fourth punch.
Nope, it wasn’t one of those frozen moments of pure prey-like fear. Have some faith in King Henry. I kept moving . . . I just went bigger.
I threw an elbow instead.
A nice tight elbow won’t knock a guy out as easy as a punch, believe it or not. One less fulcrum of strength, less muscles, all that physics crap. An elbow is all in the shoulder. Big muscles, compact motion.
Won’t knock you out as easy.
But what an elbow will do is cut you up quicker than an exacto-knife. Sharp bone ground itself against Annie B’s pale face, right across her cheek. The skin caught on it, twisted, bone on bone in a clean part.
She screeched at me, hands finally stopping their attempt to hold us up. I had a moment to realize I was about to get my ass kicked.
It wasn’t a good moment.
Annie B grabbed at my coat and flipped backwards, legs flinging out as I twisted into the air, the judo throw to end all judo throws. There was no hope for me to roll. I was in the air. Not a place I like to be. Especially when my feet are closer to the ceiling than my head is. It’s just not natural. My shoulders, back, and ass took the impact in a wave as I tumbled over my head and back down. Then I slid a couple more yards just for fun.
I got to my feet slower this time.
But I didn’t gasp.
In fact . . . I was kind of enjoying it.
Annie B’s hand found the gash on her face. Blood dripped. But not human blood. A thick string of the deepest red you could ever imagine spurted from the wound, like a container too full had ripped a seam. It hung, crimson goo, until Anne’s hand rose to it, touched it, pulled it out to stretch over her fingers, and out until she could study it with her eye.
The . . . blood . . . moved.
It curled itself around a finger, finding its way like some snail out of its shell. It twisted on itself, Annie B’s hand guiding it back to her cheek. Damned if it didn’t go worm its way right back into the hole and disappear, the only hint of its existence the trail of what looked like red slime more than blood left on Annie B’s hand.
Her eyes wandered back to me. I wasn’t alone in the darkness any longer. “I haven’t been forcibly damaged by a human in years,” she whispered, both amazed and excited.
“Maybe you need practice at it.” I couldn’t help myself. Nerve was about the only thing holding me up. My back ached. My fist was sore. Punching her is like punching concrete with a layer of padding, not a human. My anima was built up again, ready for something small, but nothing small was going to save my ass from whatever she wanted to do to it. I needed to buy time.
My thumb touched my static ring. Yeah, that would help. So would some of my other artifacts maybe. Of course . . . they were in my shop behind the front, not out here with me.
All I had out there with me and the vampire were antiques. Antiques . . . I stood next to my teapot display. They had to weigh . . . what? Five pounds each? Made of ceramic? Round enough to cup them in a hand . . .
Better than nothing.
“We can stop, King Henry,” Annie B tried. “Just come with me. Two days for your services, that’s all I ask.”
“If you’d asked, maybe I’d have said yes,” I decided. My hand found a teapot behind my back and grabbed onto it. A sadistic part of me hoped it was pink with flowers. “But you ordered . . . and I don’t like ordering. Don’t like people that order, either. Don’t like people who bully. If you are even people. I saw the look,
Annie B. Saw the look like you wanted to wear me like a fur coat. Don’t think I’m going to just walk off with you after that one. This fur coat goes down with a fight.”
Her neck bent from side to side as she moved her tongue to touch her lips once more. As a gesture, it was more animal than human. “And I saw the look in your face, King Henry,” she accused me, her expression all hunger.
I frowned. “What look?”
“The look at the counter . . .” she moaned, throaty, dark tendrils of sound pulling me into her. “Like you wanted to rip my pants off, turn me around, and wear me like a sleeve.”
Vampire or not, she had a fair point with that one. “Didn’t last long . . .” I apologized. “It’s been awhile . . .”
“Neither did mine . . .” she returned. “We all have our urges, human or . . . other. Perhaps if we have a moment of peace and quiet, we can . . . share them with each other.”
My dick dropped out of my pants and ran for the back door. “Come near me and I’ll beat your ass again.”
“Promises . . .” she whispered, feet advancing towards me.
I backed up pace for pace, teapot hidden behind the bulk of my geomancer’s coat. Over my shoulder, the door from the antique store into my shop got closer. “No more playing, Annie B! You come at me and I’ll mess you up, you hear?”
“Bluffing little boy,” she snarled at me, hips, arms, her whole body swaying in a way that got a man’s blood pumping. “Doesn’t have enough of a charge to do anything about the nasty predator stalking him, but is showing his feathers to try to buy himself time.”
Shit.
Annie B leapt the rest of the way to me without any forewarning. One moment it was a slow step by step and then she sprang like some type of Olympic athlete, ten feet through the air, arm whooshing towards my head. If it hit, it would have knocked me out. There’s this kind of jumping punch in MMA called the superman-punch. This thing made all those punches look like the superboy-punch. Would have ended my night early. No time for dessert. Straight to bed, little boy.
The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady Page 6
