Painkiller

by Robert J. Crane

  So, instead, he stalked her like a creeper, dimly aware as he hopped a taxi and said, “Follow that cab,” that this wasn’t likely to end any better if the cabbie got overexcited in one direction or another. Harry sussed out exactly what to say to keep the man calm and do what needed to be done, though, and a hundred bucks in cab fare later they ended up at a hotel in the sticks. Sienna Nealon and her brother, a tall guy with a look on his face like he’d just had a stiff drink right out of a dill pickle jar, walked into the hotel.

  Harry had waited twenty minutes and followed, checking in right after them. He’d asked a couple questions of the clerk and got him to go into the back room long enough to get a moment with the computer. He’d fished for the number for Ms. Nealon’s hotel room and found it with thirty seconds to spare. When the clerk came back, Harry was leaning with his elbow on the front desk, just smiling politely, a perfectly patient customer.

  Harry glanced at the clock when he got to his room. It was a quarter past two. He sighed, staring in annoyance at the non-smoking sign prominently propped up on the desk, and shuffled over to the minibar. He chose two little bottles of the whiskey and got a plastic cup out of the bathroom. He poured himself a glass, a tall one, and settled onto the bed with his clothes still on. He set the alarm for eleven-thirty in the morning, figuring that’d be enough sleep to guarantee a rested, measured response from Nealon, and then waited for sleep to take him.

  Tomorrow, he’d see this thing settled one way or another.

  51.

  Sienna

  Graves was outside my damned door, and I was standing there wearing nothing but a bedspread. He had his hands on his hips, his eighties jacket all puffed out around his arms and chest, his old jeans looking ragged and tattered and kinda like they weren’t from recent decades, and an indifferent look on his face. His hair was a little messy, too, and his skin had that sallow tone that smokers sometimes get after years of use, like the tobacco was just oozing out of every pore. I could smell it, along with hints of rosemary, and it didn’t go well with the burnt scent wafting off my skin.

  “You cheeky son of a bitch,” I pronounced, dropping the bedspread and raising my hands to fight.

  His eyes went south. All the way south. “Whoa,” he said, eyebrows heading in the opposite direction.

  I did the only thing I could think of to respond to that. I threw a punch at his face.

  And the bastard dodged it, not fast, but well enough that I didn’t even graze him. He did it confidently, like it was the easiest thing. I, naturally, followed up with another punch as his eyes continued to run unhampered over my naked body.

  He dodged it again.

  “Hold still, you asshole!” I shouted as I came at him again and the bastard dipped right out of the way just in time. I shouted at him more out of frustration than any actual belief he’d hold still and let me jack him in the jaw.

  He sniffed as my arm went flying past his face, and broke into a wide grin. “Is that … man, it smells like someone lit a stick of Teen Spirit on fire.”

  I grunted in aggravation as I started to come at him again. He was grinning at me in a sheepish but not really sort of way, like maybe a little guilt but not enough to get his damned searching eyes to stop. “Hey,” he said, “knock it off, will you? I’m here to surrender.”

  I actually did stop before throwing another punch at him. “You’re here to what?”

  “To surrender,” he said, putting his hands up in front of him. “To throw in the towel.” He paused. “Actually, if I had a towel I would absolutely give it to you right now—” He waved a hand up and down to indicate me, standing there, in the hallway of the hotel, starkers.

  “Get back to the surrendering thing or I’m going to start throwing fire at you.”

  “Right,” he said, nodding and bringing his gaze back to my eyes. “I give up. You’ve got me.” He thrust his hands forward like he expected me to handcuff him. “I yield to your authority, and I am your prisoner.”

  I just stood there for a minute, staring at him. This schtick was familiar, and I was every sort of suspicious. “Why?” I asked.

  “Because,” he said, and now he was serious, “you’re going to die.” He must have sensed my immediate instinct to punch him, because he held the hands up in front of his face to remind me of his surrender. “I’m not threatening you.”

  “It sure sounds like it,” I said, “so you might want to explain yourself.”

  “I’m a Cassandra,” he said, the look on his face at once urgent and clouded with a hint of … worry? “So when I say you’re going to die, I mean it … I mean that I’ve seen your future, and I can tell you that somehow, some way, in the next couple of days … you and your brother are going to die … and I think a lot of other people … innocent ones … are going to go with you as well.”

  52.

  Phinneus

  Phinneus wasn’t quite blind, but he couldn’t exactly see real well, either. His vision had certainly improved overnight, and now if he squinted he could make out most of the details on the television screen—the newscaster’s pretty face, the outline of the graphic at her shoulder—it was all coming back to him, but a little slower than he needed it to.

  Phinneus spun the cylinder of his Colt Peacemaker idly, then spun it again. It was good and lubed up, six rounds loaded, ready for the next fight. Phinneus was ready for the next fight, too, but in a city as big as Chicago, his tracking skills weren’t as useful as they’d been on his last job, which had been in West Texas. That had been fun, following his quarry’s footsteps like he might have a wounded deer. He’d gotten to use the Peacemaker then, too, which wasn’t something that happened all that often.

  He sighed in regret over the loss of the Winchester 1873. He’d kept the damned thing for almost a century and a half. It was probably worth twice as much as this job would pay, and he was more than a little sore about it. Yeah, once it was all over, chances were good he’d be paying a little visit to wherever the Naperville police stored evidence. Right now he didn’t have the time nor the inclination for a liberation mission, but it would happen. He couldn’t let that pass, nossir.

  For now, though, he squinted at the TV screen. His next lead was going to have to come from either the one who’d hired him, or else by tracing one of the other assassins. Veronika Acheron didn’t tend to leave much of a trail, but a speedster like Colin did, blowing with a stiff breeze and pounding his feet against the pavement hard in excess of hundreds of miles an hour didn’t exactly allow for travel without a trace.

  Pretty soon he’d be back on the trail, but for now, Phinneus just stared at the TV, his vision improving minute by minute, and visualized what it was going to be like to plug Sienna Nealon with all six shots from the Peacemaker.

  53.

  Sienna

  “I don’t get it,” Reed said, staring at our prisoner with a sleepy, befuddled look on his face. “You’re giving up? Because the world is ending or something?”

  “Because I think the metahumans in Chicago are going to die, yes,” Graves said, looking both wary and tired of explaining himself by this point. We were all sitting in the living room of our hotel suite, Reed with his shirt off on the couch, Graves sitting in the desk chair opposite us, and me, uh, still naked under the bedspread I had wrapped around me like a toga. “I’ve seen it.”

  “So why are you here?” Reed asked, looking at him through bleary eyes. “Why not just leave?”

  Graves looked like someone had poked him in the back with a gun, all resigned and annoyed. “Look … I don’t know what you think of me—”

  “That you’re a murderer,” I said quickly.

  “That you’re a killer,” Reed added.

  “That you need an Extreme Wardrobe Makeover, Eighties Edition.” I slipped that little knife in at the buzzer.

  Graves stared down at himself and frowned, lines creasing his face. “I’m not taking fashion advice from the girl who’s currently sporting a look last favored in the
Roman Empire.”

  “Listen, Graves—” I said.

  “That’s not my name,” he said with more than a little annoyance.

  “Your name’s not Graves?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

  “My name is Harrison …” He paused, looking uncomfortable, “… Harry …”

  “Harrison Wells?” I asked, jumping in.

  “He said ‘Harry,’” Reed cut him off. “It’s Chicago, and he’s performing acts of wizardry, disappearing and whatnot. Clearly his last name is ‘Dresden.’”

  “The hell are you people talking about?” Harry shook his head. “Yes, my last name is Graves, okay? But call me Harry, please.”

  “How about I call you a coroner van?” I asked, starting to fold my arms in front of me before realizing that it would cause me to flash the prisoner in question. I quickly went back to holding my toga. “Why did you kill Dr. Carlton Jacobs?” I asked, getting right to the point.

  He looked like a teenager with his hand caught in the nookie jar. “Well, he needed to die.”

  “Not exactly selling us on why we should work with you,” I said, glancing at Reed, who wore a look of mounting concern.

  “Okay, so, here’s the thing,” Harry said, lowering his head, closing his eyes, and launching into his explanation. “I was gambling with the guy a few days ago—”

  “At the casino off State Street,” I said, drawing a look of surprise from Harry. “We know.”

  “Right, well,” Harry said, “I try and keep my head down, see? I don’t like using my power on people. Cards … yeah, I use it all the time—”

  “Cheater, cheater,” Reed said, sounding almost scandalized at the thought of dirty play. Clearly worse than the murder we were after Harry for already.

  “—but I don’t like to read peoples’ futures,” Harry said, tapping his finger against his leg like he needed a smoke. “They’re messy. The happy moments don’t exactly come jumping out at you; it’s mostly the sad and horrifying shit that comes tumbling through your brain when you open yourself up to it. So, I’m gambling with this guy, and he’s in my personal bubble, and I’m ignoring him as best I can, and then—boom—he lays a hand on my shoulder and I see it.”

  I listened, trying to reconstruct the scene in my mind from the memory I’d stolen from Thuggy. It all tracked so far. “See what?” I asked.

  “Your professor,” Harry said, leaning back in his chair, “he had a lot of deaths in his future. He was going to kill a lot of people, and they were going to die badly.” He cringed, the faint crow’s feet around his eyes wrinkling. “Now look, I can ignore minor stuff all day long—you know, I bump into someone and they’re going to get beaten to death in twenty years … hey, I’ll turn a blind eye and go on about my business. But some guy is going to kill hundreds? Maybe more? And it’s coming soon?” He shook his head. “That I can’t just pass up on. So I waited for him outside, traced his path in my head, and when he came through, I socked him in the jaw and killed him.”

  Reed and I exchanged a look. “What about the runner at the beach?” Reed asked, still suspicious.

  “Oh, that guy,” Harry said, making a disgusted sound deep in his throat. “He was a week away from murdering an ex-girlfriend and her roommate. He was a major creepo, a stalker I think they call them nowadays—in my days we just called them creepos—yeah, he was going to break into her apartment and get caught by the roommate, kill her with his bare hands, and lie in wait until his ex came back, then—”

  “All right, well, I don’t need to hear any more of that,” Reed said, standing abruptly. He looked straight at me. “You believe this guy?”

  I stared at Harry and he stared back at me. In my eyes, not at my exposed shoulders or cleavage or anything. “You gotta believe me,” Harry said, open-faced as any human being I’d ever seen. “I wouldn’t be here if this was the kinda thing I could just walk away from. Putting myself in your crosshairs after dodging away from you on the Mag Mile is like the last thing on my list of shit to do. It’s more like, ‘gamble, drink, smoke, stay the hell away from the law.’”

  “That part I believe,” I said, not taking my eyes off him. “The other parts, though … how was Doctor Jacobs going to kill people?”

  Harry took a deep breath. “That I don’t know. When you’re looking into a person’s future by accident, it all sort of blurs by to the big events. All I could see was the screaming, dying pain of thousands, and it was all tied to this guy’s fate. He did it, somehow, that I could see, so I figured removing him from the equation would, you know, change the future. I thought it was done.” He inclined his head toward me, once, sharply. “Then I caught a glimpse of you at the beach—”

  “And you said, ‘You’re going to die,’” I repeated.

  “Because I could see it on you,” Harry said, nodding at me, “that exact same kind of death I saw Jacobs causing, and it was as obvious as your—” he raised a hand to point at my chest and then apparently thought the better of it. “Uhh … well, it was obvious.” He turned to look at Reed. “It’s on you, too. Screaming, painful death, and it’s only a few days away. But I walk down the street, and your average Joe … nada. Their future retains its normal shape, the probabilities are there like you’d see in any other city, any other normal case.” He made a face. “Except for a couple, here and there, utterly random. They’ve got this ticking clock over ’em, too.”

  “You think they’re metas,” I said, not looking away from him.

  “I do,” he said, “because I looked into one of their futures and saw the man very subtly tinkering with the odds at a roulette wheel. This was at another casino I frequent, see—”

  “I’m detecting a pattern in your life, yes,” I said, frowning at him.

  “If you see death coming for metas,” Reed asked, thinking about it, “what do you see when you look at yourself?”

  “A Cassandra can’t look into their own future, sonny boy,” Harry said airily. “We can only see the future as it relates to other people or objects. Like, if your sister there wanted to put that TV over my head like a collar, I could see the TV in ghostly motion, along with the probabilities for where it would land based on my reaction, and I’d see her movement, but … I’m left out of the equation.” He shrugged. “Fortunately, I can see cards being flipped over before they turn, and a roulette ball settling before the wheel even turns, which horse crosses the finish line before the race starts—you get the picture. Anyway, what the hell else do you need in life, really?”

  “A clearer idea of what the hell is going on here, for one,” I said sourly.

  “Are you believing him now?” Reed asked, shooting me an urgent look.

  “Mostly,” I said. “He fights like a Cassandra, that’s for sure.”

  “He makes love like one, too,” Harry said, a little too full of himself for my taste, “not that you’d know.” I just gawked at him, kinda not believing he’d just said that. “I can read the future, see. It tells what I need to do to make a lady—”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s not cool,” Reed said, covering his face like he could blot that image out of his mind.

  My phone rang before I could respond, which was a good thing, because I was kind of stunned speechless. I could hear the phone buzzing in my room, and Harry looked at me. “You should get that,” he said. “It’s important for your future.”

  “You should get it for me,” I replied, the wheels in my head becoming unstuck, “because I’m afraid if I get up my toga is going to fall off.”

  “I already saw you completely naked.” He stared at me for a second before cracking a grin. “All right. It’s not going to fall off, but there’s a split up the side that’s going to give me a great view if you—” He stopped, shaking his head, and then stood, heading to my room. “Yeah, I’ll get it for you.”

  “Are you seriously believing this?” Reed hissed into my ear the second Harry had walked into my room. I could still see him, and I suspected he could hear what we were saying.


  “I’m getting there,” I said as Harry returned, bringing my phone with him. He tossed it to me lightly and I caught it in the hand that wasn’t holding together my bedspread. “Hello?” I asked.

  “Ms. Nealon, this is Jonathan Chang,” came the voice on the other end of the line. “I was hoping I might be able to prevail upon you to meet me for lunch today.”

  “You should say yes,” Harry said, giving me an encouraging smile.

  “I don’t have a thing to wear,” I hissed.

  “Even better,” Harry said.

  “I’ve got a reservation at Carrier Cattle Co. Downtown for 12:30. Can I count on you to join me?” Mr. Chang asked. “I’m about to leave from my office to catch the private jet I chartered, and I’d hate to head for Chicago if you can’t make it.”

  Harry nodded. “Table for five,” he whispered.

  I looked at him in puzzlement. “Sure,” I said into the phone. “I can do that.”

  “What?” Reed asked, standing up again. “Right now? We’re going to do this now?”

  “What else are you going to do?” Harry said with a shrug. “Let me peer into your future for you—yeah, still horrible death … unless you go to lunch.” I looked at him with wide eyes. “Seriously,” he said. “The probability of death changes if you say yes to this guy. I can see it.” His stomach rumbled audibly. “Also, I’m hungry, and my room's minibar is out of the best kinds of booze.”

  “That’ll be fine, Mr. Chang,” I said.

  “Excellent,” Chang said. “I’ll see you at 12:30. Also, I saw what happened at Soldier Field last night. I think I might be able to assist in your current dilemma.”