by Don Allmon
So now look at him sleeping there.
The guy was a con man, a hacker, a low-life. Comet didn’t want to think that Jason had friends like this. Jason couldn’t have friends like this. People like this weren’t friends. They were slime. And the cuter the package, the slimier inside.
Except Shaggy had saved them twice now, hadn’t he? In that alley, he’d let Valentine jack into him, a calculated risk to get the data they’d needed, and that took some nerve. It was the kind of thing Prancer would do on a battlefield network, the kind of thing Comet would do. A low-life crook with nerve like that? A low-life crook proud of taking a bullet?
Goddamn, look at him sleeping there.
That’s my jacket on him. Those are my jeans. And someone wearing his clothes, it was almost like touching them. It was enough to give him the shivers. Comet’s jacket would smell like Shaggy when he took it back. It would smell acidic like his sweat, sharp like the mint in his hair, and sweet like fading pot, and Comet would be able to slip on those smells, wrap himself in them like he was wrapping Shaggy around him. And Comet’s jeans would smell like Shaggy too, the dirt and sex of him.
Comet nudged the bed with his foot. “Hey, time to go.” He didn’t try sending. Sending to a sleeping person gave weird dreams.
The bed shook a bit from the nudge, but Shaggy didn’t wake up. So Comet knelt beside the bed and tapped him on the shoulder.
Shaggy’s eyes fluttered half-open, and his hand caught Comet’s wrist. Hypersensitive, life monitors magnifying, Comet could feel the even beat of Shaggy’s heart through his fingertips.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
Shaggy let go of him slowly. The AC wasn’t working and Shaggy’s hair had gone curly and deep copper with sweat. A lock of it stuck to his forehead. He furrowed his brow to dislodge it, and before Comet could really think what he was doing, he brushed it away for him.
Shaggy blinked his sleepy eyes at him.
“You had hair . . .”
“Oh.”
His were beautiful eyes: milk chocolate, with thick and bronzed lashes. Lips exactly that right shade of pink, and Comet leaned closer, so close he could feel the hot stream of Shaggy’s breath on his lips. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. He closed his eyes and brushed his lips on Shaggy’s. The very tip of his tongue slipped past his own lips and pushed into Shaggy. Shaggy let him, and he tasted just a bit sweet, like the memory of bubblegum.
He’s a criminal, he reminded himself. A villain.
Can a villain taste like bubblegum?
Duke will be pissed.
Damn it.
The Reindeer will have a fucking field day with me.
He tastes like bubblegum.
Damn it.
Comet pulled away. He sat on the edge of the bed, ready for Shaggy to come to his senses and push him away (because Comet wasn’t going to come to his senses). He felt a bit dizzy.
Shaggy beetle-browed. “Is this a good idea? I mean, usually when a guy kisses me, next thing that happens is someone shoots at me.”
“Really?”
“Well, it didn’t used to be that way, but recently, yeah.”
Comet stuck his finger into the scarred material where the bullet had hit Shaggy. “You already got shot, so you’re owed one, right?”
Shaggy smiled. “Yeah, that’s right. But I’ll keep the jacket on, just in case.”
And Comet liked that idea. Fucking this guy while he wore nothing but Comet’s jacket—yeah, he liked that idea a lot. He dove at Shaggy, attacking those lips, needing to know how all of him tasted: lips, eyelids, the tip of his nose, the curve of his ears. He ground his hips against Shaggy’s leg. Their fingers entwined and held so tight he was worried he was hurting him. Comet sucked at the softness beneath Shaggy’s chin (where not three hours before Comet had shoved a pistol, and if he opened his eyes and looked, he’d see the semicircle bruise that he’d made).
And he didn’t care what Duke was gonna say, or how all the other Reindeer were gonna laugh at him. Donner would tease him for being seduced by his prisoner; Blitzen would tease him for taking advantage of his prisoner, and he didn’t care either way. He didn’t care about anything but this guy who smelled like bubblegum and pot and had brown eyes gone eclipsed with needing Comet, and lips all brighter red now that they were flushed with blood and wet with Comet’s spit and his own. And Comet slid an arm beneath him and lifted him up so they were sitting, legs in a tangle, so he could feel the swell of Shaggy’s cock against his own.
He whispered Shaggy’s name—“Buzz”—between sucking and kissing and tracing him out with his tongue, practicing the word so when he came in the guy he wouldn’t say “Shaggy,” wouldn’t have to confess it was the name he’d told his gun, though it meant so much more now. Except Buzz wasn’t his real name, was it? No one could be named Buzz Howdy. “That ain’t your real name.”
Buzz laughed, puffs of breath against Comet’s neck between kisses. “And Comet ain’t yours.”
“What is it, then? What name do I say when I’m coming?”
Shaggy’s kisses slowed. Then he untangled himself from Comet. “Everyone calls me Buzz.”
Damn it. Goddamn it. Comet should never have asked. He’d pushed too far too fast and fucked this all up and should never have asked.
Buzz said, “You wouldn’t like me if you knew anything about me. You already don’t like me.”
“I— That’s not—”
“The Blue Unicorn—that hologram you saw at Jason’s place, the AI fragment I told you about—I stole it from a triad a few days ago. They told me it had a glamour, which isn’t supposed to be possible, except it did, and they wanted me to reverse engineer it so they could use it in pornography. And I said yes. And then I saw it, and I realized I knew it. It was modeled on the memories of an old friend of mine, Austin’s sister, Roan. We think that somewhere out there is an AI created by her and the Blue Unicorn was a piece of it.”
Buzz sat cross-legged on the bed, same as he’d done back at Comet’s Greentown apartment. He fidgeted with the hem of Comet’s jeans that he wore. “So I stole it. And Jason and Austin helped me. And when we finally got away, we set her free. And that was supposed to be the end of it, and I was supposed to go . . . well, away . . . but she came back to Jason’s place, and I followed her, but by the time I got there, Dante had already been hurt, and Jason and Austin were already gone, and then you showed up . . .” He scowled. “And you held a gun to my head.”
Triads? The sex industry (and not the good kind, Comet guessed)? And hadn’t he heard stories about a gang war three days ago on Telegraph Hill of all places? Shaggy in the center of it all.
And maybe it was just too hard to imagine, or maybe he didn’t want to, or maybe it was because he’d already known that Shaggy was into some bad shit and Comet had gone ahead and kissed him anyway, or maybe it was because Comet was hardly no saint neither, but it all didn’t make a bit of difference.
And the voice in his head (that always sounded like Duke) said: No, it’s because you’re a romantic, Comet. Because you believe in love at first sight and soul mates and love conquers all. And no matter how much the world shows you otherwise, you want to believe in good guys and happy endings. Because you’re a dipshit.
And I believe my gut, Duke, and that’s why Reindeer Squad’s alive. And my gut says this guy ain’t a villain and maybe he ain’t a hero either, but he’s something. I don’t know what. Something I want to find out.
“Well?” Shaggy said, like he’d been waiting for Comet to walk out and leave him there.
“You’re still pretty fuckable.” Jesus, was that the best he could do?
Shaggy scowled.
“And . . . well . . .” Comet did his shoulder roll and gave Shaggy a faux shit-eating grin, shy and ornery all at once, all braggadocio the way he used to be. “I’m pretty fuckable.” He wagged his thumbs at himself.
“Is that what you are?” Shaggy wasn’t smiling, but Co
met thought he saw the barest flicker of one, the faintest hint of a dimple quickly fought down.
“Maybe not just that.”
“Yeah? What else? Besides an asshole.”
All the showmanship fell to the wayside, because Comet really didn’t know. “What else do you want me to be?”
You hold two magnets apart from each other and close your eyes and feel their attraction. You feel the strange humming slide of it between your fingers, and it seems to grow and grow and grow until your fingers can’t hold plus and minus apart.
“I don’t know, yet,” Shaggy said.
You have to let go, and those bars of metal snap tight in midair.
Snap: jackets a slick rasp of ballistic fabric, hands to clothes, clinging, tangled in hair. Mouths against one another furious; lost seconds like they’d been lost years. They were going to hurt one another. They were going to press themselves into each other like they were one body, some beautiful experiment in teleportation gone perfectly awry. God, there’d be bruises when they were done, deep purple bruises, God, subcutaneous blue, God, whatever it took as long as they were one.
He heard soft pops like tires on road debris, and light flooded the hotel room’s sole window, throwing slatted lines across them and against the wall. In the back of Comet’s mind he’d been aware of the service attendant working on the bike, but now the attendant was gone. And Comet realized he’d made a serious mistake letting his attention wander from where it should have been. They both turned, and the glow went blinding as the source approached fast.
“Aw, shit,” Shaggy said. “See, I told you.”
Comet tackled Shaggy into the narrow gap between bed and wall. He expected a hail of bullets. What he got was a Buick at 60 KPH.
The front of the room crumpled like wet cardboard under a ton of plastic and steel. Their feeble bulb in the bathroom blew. The car plowed right into one twin bed, then the other. The mattresses buckled, and the old, dry pine frames shattered. And all of that wreckage slammed into Comet and Shaggy hard enough to drive them five centimeters into the paneled wall and pin them both there in the darkness.
The car’s engine clicked. Broken wood creaked. Ceiling tiles rattled free from their framing and fell on the car and the ruin of the beds. The carpet they were trapped against smelled rancid.
—Buzz, are you okay? Buzz?
—Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Shaggy struggled a bit. —I can’t move.
Comet shushed him and listened. He didn’t hear anything that sounded human or robotic. He squirmed under the pressure of the mattress and threw his elbow back into the wall behind him. The drywall and wood popped and cracked. A couple of more blows and the thin wall gave, and he pushed his way into the bathroom. He hauled Shaggy through the hole and held a finger to his lips. He gave him a pistol.
Shaggy held it in both hands pointed at the floor, which was probably just something he’d seen done in some cop sim and he looked ridiculous doing it: this cute little guy playing badass soldier. But Shaggy’s eyes were dilated huge, his heart rate and blood pressure were up. He was sweating, breathing shallow, and life monitors gave Comet a list of all the natural endorphins and adrenaline flooding his bloodstream. This wasn’t no game, and Shaggy was scared.
—I can’t see, Shaggy sent.
Comet dialed up the glow of his eyes, and the bathroom’s dingy ceramic reflected the pale blue. Shaggy nodded, calmer now.
—Stay behind me.
Comet looked around the bathroom door out onto the wreckage of the room. The mattresses and frames and blankets and pillows were squashed against the wall. The battleship of a car was barely scratched. Even the windshield hadn’t cracked. The driver’s seat was empty. It had been piloted drone-like.
The car suddenly lurched backward and hung up on something. It rocked, then lurched again and pulled itself free and out into the parking lot. The front wall of the room was completely gone.
Through it he could see the Rolls parked in the middle of the highway. Its headlights were on. Valentine paced in front of the lights, a black silhouette, raincoat and broad hat casting immense shadows. COWBOY and BANDIT paced alongside her. The air was filled with dust from the building collapse, giving the headlights and shadows a thick liquidity like it was the light from some hellmouth with its resident demon rising through.
Shaggy sent, —She’s between us and the bike.
—I know.
Outside, Valentine shouted, “I know the two of you are still alive.”
That hole in the wall was a deathtrap. Comet looked around for another escape, but there were no other windows or doors. Then he noticed the drop ceiling, and through the damage he could see that the hotel walls didn’t go all the way to the roof.
He stood on the toilet and sink and pushed a tile up. He vaulted up to the narrow ridge of the wall separating rooms and pulled Buzz up behind him. Ductwork, wiring casements, and rafters filled the space and ran the length of the hotel over all the rooms. The ties and latticework holding it together looked fragile as hell. They’d have to crawl carefully or they’d fall through. Comet moved the ceiling tile back into place.
Valentine’s shouts were dull but still audible. “You know what I should be doing right now? I should be tearing your motorcycle to pieces and stranding you here so I can cruise in luxury all the way to Boise. Firelight offered me twelve million to kill you, Buzz—you, JT, and Austin, plus the orc girl, unfortunately for her. Yet here I am talking.”
They slowly crawled their way along the rafters. They tried to avoid the ducts, but the space was shallow, less than a meter, and the rafters were triangle braced and hard to maneuver around, so they had to use the ducts to keep from falling. Comet moved silent as dust. Buzz didn’t. The ductwork creaked, and even the soft contact of his knees on it sent dull thuds echoing.
The tiles were rotting and broken. They fit the suspension latticework poorly and light from the Roll’s headlights wavered through cracks.
“I’m hoping to make a deal. Comet, you give me Buzz, and I’ll forget I ever met that wizard. I’ll back right out of that contract. I’ll walk away and pretend I never heard of any of you. JT, Austin, Dante, the Blue Unicorn, any of you. Just give me Buzz Howdy.”
Shaggy’s crawl slowed, just a stutter in his movement. And he tried to hide it, but Comet caught Shaggy’s sidelong glance at him. And then Shaggy kept on, but that sidelong look had stung.
—I’d never do that, Comet sent.
—I know. Another meter of crawling. —I’m sorry. I’ve had two friends try to kill me recently, and I knew them a whole lot better than I know you. Or I thought I did.
—I’d never do that.
—I know. He sounded more confident that time.
The thin filtered light from below wavered. The Buick was moving again. —I wish she’d turn off those goddamn headlights. The station guy said lights attract the ghouls.
—They must have heard the noise already.
They passed over another room.
Outside, tires squealed. The Buick rammed their ruined room again, and the whole building shuddered. Comet held one of the power conduits for balance and Shaggy’s jacket with his other hand.
Silence afterwards, no way to see what was happening below them or outside. The claustrophobic blue glow of Comet’s eyes reflected off billowing dust.
Comet looked at the conduit in his hand. —This motel’s smart?
—Yeah. Out-of-date by about thirty years, but smart.
—Can you hack it from here?
—Wireless is off. You give me a wire, sure. But why?
—I want you to turn the lights on. All of them. Bright as they’ll go.
—Is that a good idea?
—No.
—As long as we’re clear on that.
Comet broke the conduit sheath with his hands and began sorting wires. Shaggy fished through his pocket and produced a cable that would work to patch him in. Outside, Valentine continued to tempt Comet. She told stories about 3
djinn and Shaggy and the work he had done in the past and who he’d done it for. Comet ignored her as best as he could, but he could see the tension in Shaggy’s shoulders.
Shaggy patched himself in, and the motel’s lights blazed.
Valentine stopped talking midsentence.
—If nothing else, that was worth it.
They started their clumsy crawl again. They passed over three more rooms.
The Buick rammed the motel a third time. Everything shook. Structural groaning turned into a roar. Rafters shifted and braces bent. Buzz slipped and his hand went right through a ceiling tile, and the rest of him nearly followed. Comet caught him by the jacket, hauled him back up to the rafters.
The building cracked and trembled. They scrambled, careless, to the end, as the building collapsed behind them.
They dropped down into the motel’s registration. —Stick to the walls. Watch your shadow, Comet warned. Shaggy parted the blinds with two fingers and looked out the window into the lot. Comet peeked over his shoulder, keeping farther back so the dim glow of his eyes wouldn’t be seen from the outside.
The motel was L-shaped. The short wing held the registration desk and back offices; the long wing, the rooms, most now collapsed. Between the two wings was the lot. It was lit like downtown. Alongside the fueling station sat Comet’s bike, a hundred meters away, gleaming yellow and red behind a field of battered old cars. It might as well have been in another state. There was no sign of the old man.
The Buick pulled free of the motel. Debris came with it. A wrecking ball couldn’t have done better.
Valentine scanned the building. Her wide-brimmed hat threw her face in deep shadow. Her cybernetic eye glowed dully through the darkness. COWBOY and BANDIT rotated their heads slowly. Targeting lasers played over surfaces.
And everybody waited for the other to make some move.
The seconds passed into minutes.
Comet started to think it wasn’t going to work. Then the first explosion rattled the blinds.
