The Devil's Gunman

by Philip S Bolger

  The burning was instant; it was the same blue glow the VHS caused. He screamed and stumbled. I backed off as he flailed with the knife. I exited the elevator long enough to retrieve my VP9, then headed back inside, past the decomposing vampire. I took my duffel, and jumped up to grab the top of the elevator. I did a pull-up, and swung my leg up, getting a grip on the top of the elevator. As I crawled back to a balance, I took a look down. The vampire kept screaming, the burn spreading, eating him up inch-by-inch. He looked up and snarled, his teeth gnashing. Guttural sounds, more animal than human, came from his throat. He was flailing around, but the spreading holy fire was stopping him from being a threat.

  I shook my head and revealed another bottle of holy water. He scrambled to get away, but his crippled leg caused him to slip and fall. I turned the bottle upside down and shook it, coating him with water until he glowed with the blue burning of holy light. I dropped the bottle on his burning body, enjoying the satisfying “clink” as it broke.

  He was still screaming when I climbed the ladder to the next floor and jimmied the elevator door open. I walked over to the stairs and headed down nonchalantly, using the duffel bag to hide the knife wounds in my back. I felt the blood soak my shirt and the pain creep in to replace the retreating adrenaline of combat. I examined the knife as I walked. It didn’t seem magical, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t poisoned. I needed medical attention from someone trustworthy, and I was low on people I trusted. When I reached the ground floor, I opened the rear door and shuffled past people walking around outside. The smell of smoke filled the air, and I knew if I looked up, I’d see my apartment on fire. I kept walking, blending in with the crowd, wanting to get away before too many emergency vehicles arrived. I hoped my prints weren’t on anything that survived. The additional explosives going off told me I probably wouldn’t have to worry about that.

  I reviewed my options for who I could call. Jerry wasn’t likely to fly up here, and Amalfi, if she came, might get here in time to watch me bleed out or die from an infection. I was completely unwilling to call the Patron. I’d seen how asking him for help ended. Josiah might have medical services, but I abandoned that idea when I arrived at my rental and found all four tires slashed and the windscreen smashed in.

  It would have to be someone local.

  I called Lotus and waited for her to pick up.

  “Mr. Soren?” her ancient voice inquired. “I didn’t think you’d be done so quickly. I’m very impressed.”

  “There’s been a complication,” I said, trying to keep the pain out of my voice. “I was ambushed on my way back from a cache. I have a wound in my back that I can’t see, and I’m bleeding badly. Do you have a doctor?”

  Lotus chuckled. “Of course we do, young man. Who do you think owns Health Pals?”

  Health Pals, the largest medical conglomerate in the area, with its annoying jingle and saccharine, child-centric ads, was not something I’d ever thought I’d be glad to hear about.

  “I will arrange discrete treatment,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m on Nicollet Mall near the Millennium Hotel,” I said. “I’m heading south.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Give me a moment.” She put me on hold, with muzak and everything.

  Clearly, Lotus kept up with the times, if the times were the early 1990s. I deliriously wondered if Lotus knew about pogs, but the pangs of nostalgia were overwhelmed by my current blood loss.

  My wound oozed blood as the tinny music echoed in my ears. I smiled at a passing college student, who regarded me with disgust.

  After some time that felt longer than a millennium but just shy of eternity, Lotus came back on the line.

  “Mr. Soren, are you still breathing?” she asked, menace not completely absent from her voice.

  “Yeah, not too well, though,” I said.

  “Head down Nicollet, then over to 1st Avenue near Franklin. There’s a small clinic there, Regency Medical. Ask for Doctor Zhang. You will not be disappointed.”

  I would be if Zhang was a murderous vampire out for my blood, but I was out of options. I wasn’t used to operating on my own. In the past, if I’d been hurt on a job, the Patron had medical support ready. I had to keep in mind that was no longer the case.

  I lurched down the block in fits and starts, gathering my strength only to be overwhelmed by pain a few steps later. My blood loss wasn’t too bad, though the cut was deep. I was fortunate it hadn’t punctured a lung. Those wounds are really nasty—you gurgle until you die because the system that’s supposed to keep you breathing can’t function through a flood of blood. It’s not a quick death, and one that privately terrified me, but I wasn’t having much trouble breathing.

  The sun had set. I kept one hand on my duffel and one on my holstered VP9 as I continued my shuffle of shame.

  Regency Medical was a small outfit with multilingual signs out front offering affordable service. The façade was cracked and worn, and the building looked like a coat of paint was desired rather than achieved. The clinic was sandwiched between an attorney’s office and a tutoring service specializing in teaching English. I would have never guessed the clinic was owned by Health Pals—the dingy front made it clear looks weren’t a priority. The only thing remotely related to Health Pals was a sign on a bench across the way, advertising a family wellness plan.

  I tried to ignore the creeping grey at the edge of my eyesight that told me I’d lost a lot more blood than I’d initially thought. I stumbled through the double doors and into the lobby. A lone secretary, a guy just out of college, shuffled around between waiting people who were coughing and wheezing.

  I was the only one bleeding, though.

  “Hey bud,” I said as casually as I could, trying to ignore the fact that the edge of my vision was getting blurrier. “I’m here to see Doctor Zhang.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Please fill out a—”

  I dropped the duffel bag and turned my back. I heard someone in the waiting room gasp. I wanted to tell them to mind their own business, but I hurt too much for more than one smart remark.

  “I’ve just jumped to the top of her priority list. Lotus is going to be disappointed if I don’t get immediate attention.”

  The guy’s eyes widened, and he choked back a curse as he ran to go get Zhang, motioning for me to follow.

  The clinic only had four or five rooms, and he led me to one, where a nurse quickly stripped my shirt off. I laid face down on an exam table, so when Doctor Zhang walked in, I could only see her feet. I looked up and put on my best smile.

  “Hello Mr. Soren,” she said as I took a good look at her. “Lotus notified me of your arrangement. I’m sorry you were injured so badly. We haven’t lost a patient since I’ve been running Regency. You’re going to be okay.”

  Zhang stood about five foot four, though her posture might’ve made her look taller than she really was. Her chestnut brown hair was pulled up in a bun, and she wore half-moon glasses over her almond-shaped, brown eyes. Her lips were round and full, and the shape of her face reminded me of some of history’s best sculptures. Her scrubs weren’t tight fitting, but they suggested more than a hint of a figure full of soft curves.

  Listen to me, I’m bleeding out and all I can think about are the doctor’s tits. On the other hand, it’s a lot more appealing to think about something that isn’t—

  “He’s been stabbed five times,” the nurse told Zhang as she grabbed some instruments. “He’s lost a lot of blood. We need to notify the police.”

  “No,” Zhang said. “We have a responsibility to protect.”

  She leaned over and looked in my eyes.

  “Mr. Soren, you’re going to be okay. What’s your blood type?”

  “AB positive,” I said.

  Zhang motioned for one of the orderlies to hang some blood. The room swirled in an incoherent mess of colors and sounds, quickly barked orders, and medical terminology. Zhang looked at me and smiled.

  That’s the last thing I remembered b
efore I passed out.

  I awoke, sometime later, alive, sitting in the exam chair. The ground was spotted with blood, probably mine, and I was wearing a hospital gown.

  Doctor Zhang was sitting at her spartan desk, a privacy screen obscuring her monitor as she typed rapidly. The room was silent, save for the ticking of a clock on her desk. The whole place smelled heavily of antiseptic, with the lingering metallic scent of blood underneath. I noticed a bag of blood slowly dripping into me through a needle in my arm.

  “Glad to see you’re awake,” she said. “You lost a lot of blood.”

  “Yeah, knife wounds do that,” I said, trying to be cool. “Luckily, it’s something I’m familiar with.”

  She smiled as she continued typing. “No need to act tough, Mr. Soren. You were crying hysterically when you lost consciousness.”

  Oof, right in the manly ego.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Please call me Nick.”

  “Okay, Nick,” she said, keeping her eyes on her screen and continuing her typing. Her keyboard clicked softly.

  “Can I call you something other than Doctor Zhang?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, coolly, though she did swivel her office chair to face me.

  “Why not?” I asked, immediately annoyed by the sad puppy tone I heard in my voice.

  “You’re a patient, Nick, one who’s confused emergency treatment with speed dating, apparently.”

  Ouch. She read me like a book, then ripped out all the pages she didn’t like—the world’s sexiest editor. I must’ve said a lot of dumb stuff under anesthesia.

  “Alright, alright, fair enough,” I said. “Can you blame a guy who’s lost a lot of blood?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We need to discuss payment. You didn’t have an insurance card in your wallet, just a bunch of twenty dollar bills, and I wasn’t about to help myself.”

  “I mean—” I started.

  She waved her hand. “It’s not my position to judge. Lotus has sent me people like you before, though never this badly injured. My oath says I do no harm. It doesn’t say ‘lowlifes get medical aid.’”

  That stung. I wasn’t a lowlife, damn it! I had a mansion in Deephaven! At worst, I was some kind of Mafioso type, a wise guy made good. Which, I guess, technically, was still a lowlife—but only if you really wanted to be a dick about it.

  “Unfortunately,” she said. “If you tell me anything more, I might have to call the police to keep my orderlies and nurses happy. So please, help me help you, and shut up.”

  That made sense. I contemplated the various medical posters around the room and ignored the fact that this was clearly not an emergency room. I was halfway through a diagram of the human skeleton when I started thinking about the situation I was in.

  There was only one person who knew about my safe house in the apartment building—the Patron. I had to face the facts—for reasons only he knew, he had told the vampires I ran away, and he had likely told them all my little secrets.

  I didn’t hide much from the Patron during my time in service. It wasn’t necessarily voluntary disclosure. He had a way of showing up with pieces of documentation about your life—surveillance footage from a bank security camera or the title for a car you’d bought under a fake name.

  So, I made it a point, from the get-go, to be clean with him about what I knew. Unfortunately, that meant the Patron had a complete map of everywhere I could go.

  He probably suspected me of working against him. Yet something didn’t feel right. I’d been his button man, but he had plenty of other options to leverage against targets. One of his favorite tactics was to force a target to return to a location, to re-sign a lease or answer a court order, and have me waiting on the route. I’d watched him leave one man homeless by having the zoning laws changed, then I garroted the guy as he tried to get a hotel room. That was another issue—I hadn’t run into anyone doing my old job, someone who was here to do to me what I did to Miyoshi.

  I hadn’t received endless letters, or lost my home, or suddenly been descended on by SWAT, or been knifed to death by the Patron’s new gunman. I’d dealt with nothing but vampires, though their goth thrall might’ve counted as a separate faction. There was some angle I wasn’t considering.

  I was lost in thought and didn’t hear Doctor Zhang talking to me until she tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Hey, space cadet!” she said. “You’re needed in reality. We still haven’t discussed payment.”

  “This isn’t a free clinic?” I asked. I’d certainly thought it was. Maybe the blood loss made it look shittier than it actually was, or maybe it was part of some corporate health scheme to save money by totally giving up on appearances.

  She shook her head. “We’re a Health Pals affiliate, which means we need money. Specifically, about $5,000.”

  “Five thousand!” I said. “That’s outrageous!”

  I don’t know why I thought it was outrageous. I’d blown more than that in one afternoon of shopping. But it still felt offensive to me.

  “It’s the price of keeping things peaceful,” she said, her voice firm. “While I’m sure your insurance would cover stab wounds, I’m also sure you don’t want to have to explain to the nice adjuster and the policemen that inevitably follow how and why you ended up with those stab wounds. That’s to say nothing of what I have to tell my staff. You want to imagine what it’s like explaining to a nurse why you have a gun with a glowing, red pentagram on it? Or how about telling an orderly to ignore the bizarre collection we found in your bag? I promise you, it goes down a lot smoother with a coincidental quarterly bonus.”

  She had a point. I’d never really considered damage control. I shrugged.

  “Take it,” I said. “You’ve got my things.”

  “Yes,” Doctor Zhang replied, “but I’m not a thief. I still ask.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was posturing, or if she was being passive aggressive toward my supposed “low life” status. I didn’t care. I just wanted to go home. I swung my legs over the side of the table.

  “So, I’m good to go?” I asked.

  “No, absolutely not,” she said, standing up and motioning for me to lie back down. “You lost a lot of blood. We’ve got your levels back to normal, but you still need rest. That said, I can’t stop you from leaving, but more importantly, I can’t keep you here, either.”

  There was a knock on the door. Before Zhang could invite the person in, the door opened, revealing a smiling Lotus in her wheelchair, pushed by one of her thralls. The scent of five different perfumes clogged my nostrils, but I guess it was better than the antiseptic and blood smells. The jiangshi was dressed in a shirt and jeans, but otherwise, looked just like I’d last seen her.

  “My, my,” she said, savoring each syllable. “The knife of the Duke, injured and supplicating to my coven’s administrations. This is quite fortuitous.”

  She wheeled herself to my bedside, an eager energy in her movements.

  “I was not certain you could be injured,” she said. “But your fallibility is delightful. Remember what I told you about aggression.”

  I shrugged. Zhang looked, awkwardly, between Lotus and me.

  “Collette, gentlemen, please leave us,” Lotus said, motioning impatiently toward the door, without so much as turning her head. The thralls and Doctor Zhang obliged, closing the door behind them, leaving me alone with the jiangshi.

  “I’m not here to gloat, though,” Lotus continued, “just to determine debt.”

  “Now hold on, I just agreed to pay Doctor Zhang,” I said. “I get that everyone needs money, but I think I’ve paid enough.”

  Lotus shook her head.

  “Not that kind of debt. The other kind, the preferred currency in the world beyond the veil. The kind where you now owe me a substantial favor.”

  I’d anticipated this, but frankly, after dealing with the Patron, Lotus was an amateur.

  “Sure,” I said. “You name it.”

  “You take me along on your
mission to kill Anders,” she said, casually. “Coven leadership does not believe I am fit for war. I aim to disprove them.”

  I hadn’t expected that.

  “You are in a wheelchair,” I said. “I don’t think he’ll let himself be literally rolled over.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You disrespectful puppy, I am a jiangshi. I cannot walk. But I can still move.”

  With frightening speed, she bolted out of her chair, stood straight up…and hopped. She held her arms out in front of her like a movie monster, making her look slightly surreal. She hopped very quickly around the room. I couldn’t contain myself, and I burst out laughing.

  She grimaced as she put her arms down by her side.

  “What?” she said. “Do you not see my speed?”

  “You’re-heh heh—you’re a po-hahahaha—you’re a pogo stick vampire!” I said.

  She grimaced again, harder, the frown lines falling in formation across her rigid, green-tinged face. “I do not determine how jiangshi work! I did not ask to be like this!”

  I continued hooting. “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh it just…”

  She sat back down in her chair, a defeated look in her eyes.

  “So you, too, think I am not ready for war. Like Roseville. Like everyone.”

  I could swear I saw the hint of a tear, but only for a second.

  “No,” I said, trying to correct. “I just…It looks ridiculous, Lotus.”

  “I know it does,” she said, bitterly. “In America, vampires are expected to be debonair, classy and sexy. I am an old woman who can hop like an enraged rabbit or must be pushed around.”

  She turned her head and locked her watery eyes with mine.

  “But you would be a fool to dismiss me,” she said, sniffling slightly.

  She shot out her hand and gripped my wrist. It hurt. She was freakishly strong.