Black Box Inc.

by Jake Bible

  Time to assess.

  Red. Dark red. That filled my vision as I lay facedown on the floor, my cheek stuck to what could have been tile. Hard to tell. I lifted my head, tried not to cry out from the holy-crap-my-head-is-gonna-fall-off pain, and stared at the large pool of red I found myself in.

  Blood? Yeah. Blood.

  A lot of blood on hardwood floors.

  My first thought was I’d been stabbed. It happens. More often than I’d like. But a quick mental inventory of the pain told me that wasn’t the issue. Stab wounds tend to make themselves known.

  So, not my blood? I wasn’t jumping to any conclusions yet.

  I pushed up onto my hands and knees and struggled to focus on where I was. I also struggled not to puke. Adding puke to blood would not make the morning any more fun.

  Was it morning?

  I turned my head and glanced at the long row of windows to my left. Yes, it was morning. A gray, rainy morning. I was facing east because the clouds were bright enough for the sun to be hiding somewhere behind them. Most definitely morning.

  Despite my ability to guess the time of day, I still had no idea where the hell I was.

  First job was to get out of the blood, though. I could figure out the where after that crucial step.

  My clothes were soaked through. I stood, very carefully, and unbuttoned my shirt. It was a black-and-green flannel that I dug and was sorry to see go. No salvaging it with that amount of blood. The shirt fell from my hand, and I hugged my chest, feeling the draft in the room for the first time.

  The room.

  Loft apartment. Old wood, old steel beams above, lots of old exposed brick. Old building. From the view of the skyline outside, I was still in Asheville—downtown somewhere. I could see the outlines of all the new hotels going up. Goddamn hotels.

  Greed-fueled gentrification has been threatening the wonderful weird of Asheville for the past decade. Human or monster, tourist heads wanted expensive pillows to sleep on, and enterprising entrepreneurs were great at catering to that want while disregarding the needs of the actual people who lived in the city they were tearing down and building over.

  Okay, still downtown . . .

  I didn’t make it far from Taps & Tapas, then. A slow circle, very slow, and I could see a kitchen on the opposite wall from the row of windows, a ratty couch in the middle of the room, and a single mattress tucked into the corner. No lamps, lights, anything else.

  “Good, you’re awake,” a voice said from behind me.

  I spun about, came close to vomiting and falling over, then steadied myself and stared at the source of the voice.

  “Travis?” I asked, seeing a short, muscular man walk into the loft with a cardboard tray of to-go coffees balanced on top of a take-out box of something that smelled so good. I was starving despite the obvious nausea. Like really starving. I added that to the list of info. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “You’ve always been a classy one, Chase,” Travis replied as he made his way to the kitchen counter and deposited the coffees and food. He turned and gave me that wide bullshit smile of his. Then he looked me up and down. “Nice look for you. Half-naked and blood soaked. At least you were classy enough not to track blood everywhere.”

  “Didn’t intend to be classy,” I said, watching him carefully. If I was trouble, then Travis was trouble’s big brother. We had a complicated relationship. There’s a life debt. The debt is his to owe. “I just woke up.”

  He didn’t respond.

  Travis wasn’t from around Asheville. The same as Sharon and Lassa, he was from one of the other dimensions. For millennia the dimensions were apart, except for some weak spots here and there. Those weak spots were what shamans, witch doctors, psychics, mediums, and other paranormal explorers could tap into and catch glimpses of other realms outside our own. Those weak spots also let magic, good and bad, seep into our reality now and again.

  You know the places. Boulder, Austin, Portland and Eugene, Burlington, Santa Fe and Taos, the entire Bay Area, and other funky spots in the US and across the globe.

  Asheville.

  Then a shift occurred, and the secret held by the religious elite, mad folk, and hippy-dippy cults was out.

  We were not alone. There were many dimensions. An infinite number. The veils had fallen, and not only could we see into other worlds, we could travel to them. And they could see and travel into ours.

  Think of the travel like crossing the borders between countries, except the border crossings were suddenly left wide open. People didn’t need rituals, spells, trances, or blood sacrifices anymore to pierce the veil and spy on another dimension. If they had the will and the power, they could walk right through. Both ways. Plenty of people, and other things, so many other things, had come sauntering into our dimension ten years ago, and everyone’s definition of normal changed.

  Almost everyone. The powers that be on Earth weren’t too keen on letting the cat completely out of the bag. The vortex points like Asheville and the other cities each got their very own Grand Hex. An all-encompassing spell that allowed folks to enjoy, or not, the strangeness while inside the borders of each portal’s geographic area, but as soon as they left, their memories became fuzzy and that sasquatch they’d seen hiking on the Appalachian Trail became a recollection of a really hairy, tall man that had snapped, not growled, at them.

  Until the federal, state, and local political and law-enforcement apparatus could fully get a handle on things, what happens in Ashevegas stays in Ashevegas.

  And, apparently, I was staying in a pool of blood in some random loft in Asheville with a guy who was nowhere even close to human, despite his appearance, who was busy humming to himself as he smiled at me and sipped his coffee.

  I’d be lying if I said it was an unusual morning for me.

  “Care to find me a towel, pal?” I asked.

  “There isn’t one,” Travis replied. “I looked. You may want to put that shirt back on before you freeze to death.”

  “The shirt coated in blood?”

  “Yeah, that shirt.”

  “I’m good.”

  “You sure?”

  “You could give me your shirt since you’re not soaked in blood and shivering.”

  “My shirt? Too small,” Travis said. “You’re a lot taller than me.”

  “Right now,” I said. “You could probably morph and add another foot to your height if you wanted.”

  “Conservation of mass, Chase,” Travis said. “I add a foot to this body and I’d be skinny as a rail. I prefer the muscles when I’m in your land. Humans are so violent, it’s good to have a way to defend myself. And I like this shirt. Sorry.”

  Travis was a shapeshifter. I had zero idea what his real form was, but he always maintained the same face and body when he came to visit. Which was usually only when things were about to get weird. Trouble’s big brother . . .

  “Travis?” I asked. “You gonna clue me in or what?”

  “You don’t remember?” he asked.

  I could tell by the look in his eye that he knew I didn’t remember.

  “No, I don’t. Where are we? Whose place is this?”

  “No clue whose place this is,” Travis said. “I came looking for you and found you in this loft last night. You looked like you had finished working the Dim and tucking something big away. All I saw when I came in was you sweating bullets in the middle of that pool of blood. Then you collapsed and passed out. I didn’t have the heart to wake you so I let you sleep and crashed on that mattress.”

  “You let me sleep in the pool of blood while you slept on a nice, soft mattress?” I replied. “Gee, thanks.”

  “And clean,” Travis said with a smirk. “The mattress is brand new with new sheets. Someone put it here and hadn’t even used it yet. Lucky fo
r me. You sure you don’t know where you are? This is your town.”

  “I’m clueless,” I said. “You know more than me.”

  He knew a lot more than me; that was obvious. The trick with Travis was getting to that knowledge in a roundabout way. If he knew I desperately wanted the knowledge, he’d spend the day toying with me.

  Started a few years ago. Right after I’d figured out I could work the Dim. He’d gotten into some mischief, and I pulled him out of it. The mischief happened to involve a coven of vampires that had been tracking him, since shapeshifter blood was like crack to those bloodsuckers.

  Travis was pinned down in one of Asheville’s many ignored, nontouristy alleys, six vampires standing over him. For some reason, I decided I wanted to help. I’d recently begun crafting the Dim rods and wanted to try them out. I didn’t have Harper around that night to talk me out of being rash, so I marched down the alley, formed myself some rods, and stabbed a few vampires in the backs.

  I missed every single heart. But the misses got their attention away from Travis. They did come after me, though. It was a good thing some of Asheville’s finest, who also had been wanting to test out some new armaments, happened to drive by. One standoff and a SWAT team later, Travis and I were fast friends.

  I didn’t learn about him being a con artist and total scammer until later. But he was one of those people you have in your life that you can’t quit no matter how much you know you should. There was something about Travis that held me back from booting his ass. Complicated relationship.

  My stomach rumbled, and Travis grinned that shit-eating grin even wider.

  “Croissants,” he said as he nodded to the coffees and food. “I visited that café you like up in Weaverville.”

  “Haute Café? You got croissants from Haute Café?”

  “Yep.” Travis handed me a coffee and opened the container.

  The sweet, buttery smell of fresh croissants smacked me upside the head. Haute Café killed it when it came to pastries.

  “How’d you get up there?’ I asked as I sipped my coffee and took a bite of the fresh, hot flaky dough. “That’s fifteen miles. You driving now?”

  “I popped in and out. It’s only two blocks if you know the right weaknesses in the right dimensions to exploit. A few easy shifts and I was outside their front door. Scared the crap out of some tourists, but they got over it and thought it was a hoot.”

  “A hoot? Did you use the word hoot?” I asked, then stuffed the rest of the croissant in my mouth. I was so goddamn hungry.

  “I like the word hoot,” Travis said, leaning against the counter as he blew on his coffee. “It’s a fun word to say. Hoot.”

  I nodded, not really caring about the word hoot anymore, and eyed the five other croissants in the ubiquitous recycled paper take-out container.

  “Eat up, I’m only having coffee,” Travis said.

  I wolfed down two more croissants before I remembered to breathe. Then I took a seat right there on the floor with my coffee. Right in front of the pool of blood. I was too exhausted to care about making a bigger mess. Not like I was going to miraculously stop being blood soaked. I needed to sit, so I sat.

  “My phone,” I said. It wasn’t in my pants. Good thing, or it would have been ruined. No phone survives that amount of blood. I know from experience.

  “I checked the place,” Travis said. “No phone or wallet. No talismans, no nothing. Just you, that nasty couch, the mattress, and the pool of blood.”

  “That’s not like me,” I said. “I don’t lose my phone.”

  “No, you don’t, which is why I worked a little mojo to track you down. You weren’t picking up. I’d bet your entourage is losing their collective minds right now. When you find your phone, you’re going to have at least thirty voice messages from Sharon alone. Care to wager how many texts you have from Harper?”

  “The human brain can’t count that high,” I said. “Especially not a brain that hurts as much as mine does.”

  “Yes, you are a limited species.” He looked past me, and I could tell he was eyeing the blood. His face shifted, losing some of its distinct features, but only for a split second.

  “What?” I looked over my shoulder at the nasty pool. “You sense something?”

  “Not really,” he said and sipped his coffee again. “Weird that I found you last night and Harper didn’t.”

  “Yeah, that is kind of weird.”

  It was. Harper was very strict about my security since there were more than a few extradimensional entities that would love to get their hands on my specific skill set when it comes to the Dim.

  “How’d you ditch her?” Travis asked. “Need another croissant?”

  “Yeah.”

  He tossed me another, and the pastry was gone before he began to speak again.

  “You slipped Harper’s eye somehow. What do you remember?”

  “Nothing. I was at Taps & Tapas—”

  “As usual.”

  “Shut up. I was there and then . . . Nothing. Not until I woke up here feeling like hammered shit.”

  “Because of a Dim hangover?”

  “You said I had finished working the Dim. Something big.” I narrowed my eyes, which hurt like hell. “Right?”

  “I assumed you had. I said that it looked that way, but when I got here you were all sweaty and in the pool of blood. That’s all I can say for sure.”

  “Huh.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah . . . huh.”

  We watched each other for a long while. He gave nothing away. Easy to have a poker face when you can morph your face into any shape you want.

  “So, besides the Dim hangover,” he said, finally finishing our little standoff. “Other than that, you feel healthy?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I could probably eat an entire cow right now, I’m so goddamn hungry, but yeah, I feel healthy.”

  “Good, good . . .”

  “I think so.”

  “You should probably call your peeps,” he said and pulled a burner phone out of his pocket and tossed it to me. Travis exclusively used burners. Con artists’ stock-in-trade. “I only bought a hundred minutes this trip, so don’t use them all up.”

  I fumbled the phone, since my hands were greasy from buttery croissant, and it almost got past me and dropped into the blood, but I managed to get the slippery phone under control and dial a number I knew I’d get the least amount of yelling from. Not that I deserved to get yelled at. I was the victim in all of this.

  “I won’t use all your minutes. Only calling Sharon. I need the crew over here to figure this place out.”

  “Exactly.” Travis perked up. “Lassa too?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Lassa too.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows. “Nice.”

  I typed in Sharon’s number and waited. Then I looked about. “Shit, I don’t know where we are. Did you see the address?”

  “I’ll go outside and look,” he replied.

  “Oh, and while you’re out, could you pick me up more food?” I asked. “Like a lot more. I’ll pay you back. I ain’t figuring out shit until I fill this hole in my gut.”

  Travis chuckled. “Sure thing.” He paused at the door. “Good to see you, Chase.”

  “Fuck off and get my food.”

  The phone picked up as he left the loft, laughing. I got Sharon’s voice mail.

  “Shar, it’s me. Call me back at this number. I borrowed Travis’s burner, so the line is safe.”

  I hung up and listened to my stomach growl. Working the Dim always made me ravenous, but the hunger in my belly was way beyond bad. And it hurt. More than usual. Did the loft have a bathroom?

  I don’t know what I did with the Dim, but it had to have been big.

  T
he burner rang, and I answered it.

  “Hey, Shar,” I said before Sharon could start in on me. “Will ya listen, okay?”

  3

  HARPER CAME bursting into the loft with weapons drawn and eyes raging. She Seal Team Sixed the shit out of that loft before declaring the all clear. I could have told her that, but I wasn’t going to make the situation worse.