Black Box Inc.

by Jake Bible

  Neither of those strategies were going to work on us, which meant they had something else in mind. That something probably involved the massive sharp talons at the end of their claws.

  That shouldn’t be an issue when we had a well-armed killer, a Fae assassin with some magical chain thingy, a banshee ready to get her scream on, a yeti who was jacked up on betrayal anger, and me. I might not have had a gun, but I knew a few ways to defend myself. Once the action started, I was going to ignore Harper and Aspen and totally make some Dim rods. Fuck ’em.

  So, five fighters against a dozen harpies seemed like good odds.

  Except harpies couldn’t be killed.

  Well, technically they could, but no one had figured out how. No one.

  Goddamn harpies.

  “Drive off,” Kek’cha’s Right Head said. “Hop your little mortal butts into that stupid wagon of yers and go. They’ll chase ya for a few miles, then get bored.”

  “Not mortal,” Aspen and Teresa said in unison, then gave each other a sharp glare.

  “Whoopty shit for you two,” Kek’cha’s Left Head said. “Don’t matter. Drive away.”

  “Lassa?” Harper asked.

  “Harpies don’t give up,” Lassa said. “If they’re coming for us, they’ll stay on us. Our best bet is to wound the shit out of them and then bail. Can’t kill them, but we can put them down long enough to be on our way.”

  “They’ll have our scent,” Harper said.

  “My guess is they already do, Harp,” Lassa said. He flinched at the use of her nickname. He turned and stared at her. “Harper. Harpies. Fitting.”

  “Screw you,” Harper said.

  “Focus, children,” Teresa said.

  “What the glowing-about-to-get-loud woman said,” Aspen responded.

  He twirled his gold chain around and around by his leg, like a cowboy with a lariat, then started walking into the road. I would have told him to look both ways first, but I’d rather he got hit by a car, despite the fact we needed him in the oncoming fight. And we hadn’t seen another car since we got on the road.

  The speed of his twirling increased until the gold chain was a blur. Then he whipped it up and out, and a small whirlwind erupted from the tip as the chain snapped and cracked in the air. The whirlwind grew and grew until it was a good fifty feet high.

  The harpies saw the magical weather phenomenon and began shouting curses. Not magical curses, but good old-fashioned swear words and disgustingly descriptive anatomical suggestions. I could tell that both Harper and Lassa were taking mental notes, each for their own reason.

  The whirlwind continued on its path toward the harpies, the mouth of the funnel widening and widening. Massive amounts of scorched dirt and singed rocks were sucked up into the twister, half of those ending up shooting in our direction.

  “Son of a bitch!” Lassa shouted as he got nailed by a pebble moving almost as fast as a bullet. Skin wasn’t pierced, but the bullet pebble knocked him back against the limo. “A little warning, you Fae fuck!”

  “Perhaps taking cover would be in order,” Teresa suggested.

  Teresa and I were already on the passenger side of the limo, protected. Harper grabbed her weapons and crouched down by the rear wheel while Lassa clambered over the top of the limo, dropping down behind the front wheel on our side as a small boulder impacted against the driver’s door.

  “Your buddy isn’t helping much,” Lassa snarled at Harper.

  Harper shrugged and double-checked the magazine in one of the rifles. She adjusted the scope, then put the butt to her shoulder. As soon as there was a break in the sedimentary shrapnel that was pelting the limo, she popped up, took aim, and squeezed off three shots.

  There were three distinct screams of pain easily heard over the roar of the whirlwind.

  “Three down,” she said as she dropped back behind the limo.

  “They won’t stay down,” Teresa said.

  “They won’t be at full fighting strength, either,” Harper countered.

  “Where is Mr. Littlestick?” Teresa asked.

  “Right here,” Aspen said as he casually walked around the back of the limo. He didn’t duck down, didn’t even flinch as rocks flew past him. He smiled down at Harper. “Excellent shooting. Do that six more times and we’ll be done here.”

  “Six?” I asked.

  “My whirlwind took out three,” Aspen said.

  “Yeah, but for how long?” Lassa said.

  “Long enough,” Aspen replied.

  Then two harpies slammed into him. He was knocked to the ground, their talons gripping his body so he couldn’t shake them off. Their mouths were filled with sharp brown teeth, and they immediately tore into him. He tried to fight them, but he couldn’t get any leverage to whip his gold chain about.

  Harper spun on a knee and opened fire, ripping the harpies apart with large-caliber slugs. The bird women screeched and hissed, turning their heads to face Harper as their bodies danced from the continual rifle fire she put in them.

  When the rifle clicked empty, the two harpies were lying on the ground to the side of Aspen, black blood oozing from their mangled bodies.

  “Icky little abomination thinks she can fight,” one said.

  “Needs her boomstick to do the fighting for her,” the other said.

  “Teach her a lesson,” the first said.

  “Claw her eyes out, see how she fights then,” the second said.

  Harper dove and rolled at them, discarding the rifle as she pulled out the goblin sickle. She came up next to the harpies and executed a hard swipe, lopping their heads off in one move without missing a beat.

  The severed heads began to laugh, but the harpy bodies stopped wriggling and moving.

  “Abomination,” the first snapped, clicking its brown teeth at her.

  “You’ll never belong,” the second said, spitting a glob of thick, bloody mucous at Harper.

  Harper didn’t dodge in time, and the glob splatted across her right cheek. She stabbed the end of the sickle through the offending harpy’s eye socket, silencing the bird woman. The other harpy started to say something, but never got a chance as Harper repeated the movement on that one as well.

  She pulled the blade free and wiped her cheek as she scrambled back to us behind the limo.

  “Never mind me,” Aspen said, his chest and face nothing but tattered skin. “I’ll manage on my own.”

  “Yes, we are quite certain you will, Mr. Littlestick,” Teresa said.

  The whirlwind was done, and the silence left in its wake was almost overpowering. Of course, when harpies are around, silence never lasts for long.

  A few heavy thuds and some scraping noise, and I looked up to see four harpy heads staring down at me from the top of the limo.

  “Hello, defiler of dimensions,” one of them said. Her voice was like every nail on every chalkboard. “Would you like to die now?”

  “Nope,” I said and spread my hands out, palms up. The black began to pour from me.

  The harpies laughed.

  “You think you can trap us?” another asked. “Leave it to a defiler to think that.”

  “If all you folks keep calling me that name,” I said as the black smoke took shape, “I may start putting the name on my business cards.”

  “Dude, we don’t have business cards,” Lassa said. “Maybe we should get some, though.”

  He stood up and punched one of the harpies in the nose. The creature cried out as puss and black blood exploded everywhere. Lassa screamed and yanked his hand back, tendrils of green smoke wafting away from his knuckles.

  “Did the big shaved doggie get burned?” the wounded harpy cackled. “Poor little doggie.”

  Lassa fell to his knees as the skin on his knuckles bubbled into a
hundred blisters. Then each blister burst. The smell was almost worse than the carrion stench that was coming off the harpies.

  “How about we handle this like women?” Teresa asked as she stood up and faced the harpies. “With our words.”

  She opened her mouth wide and screamed, “Go the fuck away!”

  The harpies tumbled back across the top of the limo, falling off the other side and rolling out into the road. Even with the earplugs in, that shit hurt. I’d thought I’d experienced a full banshee wail before, but I was wrong. Really, really wrong.

  I leaned over and peered under the limo. I could see the harpies lying out in the road, that black blood seeping from their ears and eyes. Their mouths worked in silent agony as they tried to right themselves, but couldn’t.

  “What the hell did you do to them?” I asked as I stood up.

  “Obliterated their ears, including their inner ears,” Teresa said. “They won’t be standing, let alone flying, anytime soon.”

  There was a loud blast of an air horn and a semitruck came barreling down the road, squashing the harpies into pulp as it roared past the gas station. We all jumped and cried out.

  Kek’cha slow clapped from his seat in front of the gas station.

  “Wasn’t expecting that,” Lassa said, clutching his puss-dripping hand to his chest as we stared at the harpy mess smeared across the road.

  “Oh, dear,” Teresa said as she looked at Lassa. “Will that impede your ability to drive us to our destination?”

  Lassa blinked at her a few times. I could tell he was unsure if he should be pissed off at her lack of empathy for his pain, or if he should shake off the pain and get back to work. Yetis have a pretty damn good work ethic despite the whole snowboarder/ski bum persona so many have, so the struggle between get pissed or get to work was real.

  “I’m good,” he said at last.

  “Well, I’m not,” Aspen whined, still lying on the ground, his body a mess. “A little help, please?”

  No one moved. He sighed, coughed up some blood, then sighed again.

  “I did say please,” he said.

  Harper went and stood over him.

  “What do you need us to do?” she asked.

  “I have a bit of elixir in my satchel in the limo,” he said. “Should fix me right up. Fix up the yeti too.”

  “I ain’t taking any faerie elixir,” Lassa said. “Don’t feel like being your slave for the rest of my life.”

  “It’s only a healing elixir, you big baby,” Aspen said. “I won’t put you under a spell or anything.”

  Harper pushed past me and Teresa and ducked into the limo. She came back out with a satchel in hand and shoved it into my chest.

  “You give it to him,” she said.

  “Me? You give him the goddamn elixir,” I snapped.

  “Can’t,” she said and pointed at Aspen and the blood that had started to pool and spread out from his body. “I can’t touch that.”

  “And I can?” I asked. “No thank you.”

  “I’ll handle this,” Teresa said, yanking the satchel away from me. “Banshees are immune to the influence of faerie blood.”

  “Great, I’ll dispose of the harpy bodies. Put them somewhere they can’t get away from easily.”

  I wished I hadn’t said anything. I’d rather spoon-feed a Fae assassin his medicine than pick up harpy bits and put them in a Dim box. Lassa’s hand, which had finally stopped bubbling up new blisters, was proof enough that touching harpy blood was not a good idea. But, the side effect was only pain, not like the mind fuck faerie blood could produce.

  “Here,” Harper said as she went and opened the trunk. She rummaged about in one of the duffels and came out with a pair of thick gloves. “Dragon hide.”

  “These are banned in every dimension,” I said.

  “The Fae don’t care,” Harper said.

  “We really don’t,” Aspen said as Teresa crouched next to him and poured a thick, bright purple liquid past his shredded lips and into his open mouth. He instantly started to heal, but wasn’t healing fast enough to get up anytime soon.

  “I can’t make a Dim box with dragon-hide gloves on,” I said with a sneer, quite happy with Aspen’s discomfort.

  Harper stared at me for a second, then nodded. She slid the gloves on.

  “Make your box,” she said. “I’ll pile the parts.”

  I made my Dim box. She piled the harpy parts, as much as could be piled, into one heap by the side of the road. Then she quietly scooped the gunk into the Dim box so I could put the top on and seal things tight.

  I could have banished the box into the Dim without a key, so there was no chance of retrieval. But a little voice inside me said that was the wrong move. As Harper turned to put the gloves back in the trunk, and Teresa helped Aspen into the back of the limo while Lassa walked around the vehicle to inspect the damage, I scratched off a Dim key and tucked it into my pocket.

  Harper threw some gold coins at the gas pump, and we all got in, ready for the next leg of our journey.

  Kek’cha waved at us as we drove off.

  17

  IF LASSA WAS trying to hide that he was in some serious pain, he totally failed. He drove with his left hand while his wounded right was held against his chest. We’d driven for several miles without incident, but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to run into more issues. Trouble was almost guaranteed. We needed Lassa at full strength with both hands on the steering wheel.

  “Lassa,” I said in as nice of a voice as I could muster considering the shit few days we’d had. “Maybe you should reconsider taking that elixir.”

  “Maybe you should reconsider opening your mouth again,” Lassa growled with a full-throated yeti growl, born of pain and discomfort. “That goes for all of you.”

  “Didn’t say a word,” Harper responded, then turned to stare out her window.

  “The idiot is right,” Aspen said, his body almost fully healed. “Two hands are better than one.”

  “How’s a broken jaw add up?” Lassa asked. “Do the math on that.”

  “I don’t believe that involves much math,” Aspen said, shifting in his seat. He rolled his eyes. “Well, I tried.”

  “Lassa, please see reason,” Teresa said. “You need to be at full strength when we arrive at Lord Beelzebub’s palace.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Lassa. Pal,” I said. “You let that get any worse and it’s gonna affect your dating game. Would you be attracted to a yeti clutching a hand to his chest that was seeping yellow puss?”

  “Maybe,” Lassa said.

  “Yeah, not a fair question,” Harper said. “Lassa is attracted to almost anyone.”

  “But he understands what I mean,” I said. “Lassa? Come on.”

  “Y’all are doing the opposite of keeping your mouths closed,” he snarled.

  “Only because we care, pal,” I said.

  Lassa didn’t say a word for several miles. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat for a long while, then nodded.

  “Is that a yes?” I asked.

  “Yes, but if I turn into something awful, I’ll kill every one of you with my bare hands.”

  “If you have the will to do so,” Aspen said.

  Lassa growled loud enough to shake the limo.

  “I was joking,” Aspen said. “I already told you it is a simple healing elixir. No tricks. I keep some on me anytime I drive this road. You can see why.”

  Teresa held out a hand, and Aspen dug around in his satchel until he found the elixir and handed it to her. She opened the bottle and sniffed the contents.

  “I do not detect deception,” she said, then put the cork back in, leaned forward, and offered the bottle to Lassa.

  He turned, looked at t
he bottle for a second, then took it with his healthy hand, steering the limo with one of his knees. He pulled the cork out of the bottle with his teeth and spat it onto the dashboard, then downed the elixir before anyone could say anything.

  “Oh, come on!” Aspen cried. “That was all I had left, you big oaf! A sip would have been fine!”