Tails You Lose

by Lisa Smedman

  She wound up dancing beside an enormous sasquatch who turned in a slow-mo circle, his hairy white arms extended like rotor blades, and a cluster of dwarves whose holopic headbands were projecting realistic images of West Coast Native masks. The arched beak of a thunderbird mask swept like a ghostly sword through Night Owl's waist as one of the dwarves whipped his head to the side and then back again. Another mask seemed to purse its wooden mouth and howl like a wolf, while the dwarf wearing it scrambled around the floor on all fours.

  A wave of giggles swept through the crowd toward Night Owl. and a moment later she found herself doubled over and clutching her stomach as tears spilled down her face. The sasquatch's hairy arm thumped down across her back in magic-induced camaraderie, and then the wave was past, leaving them both gasping for breath. Night Owl peeled the heavy arm off her shoulders and staggered away.

  She found herself in the middle of a group of young Full Blood elves in Vashon Island suits who were spraying each other's expensive clothing with water pistols filled with body paint. A splatter of fire-red paint hit Night Owl just as an illusory beam of sunlight lanced down from the ceiling above. Bright green grass appeared to burst out of the floor below her feet. Even though she was wearing boots, it felt as though she were standing on the soft springy grass in bare feet.

  Instantly her irritation at getting splashed was gone, replaced by a warm, happy glow that flashed through her like sunshine. She embraced one of the elves, hugging him like a long-lost brother. The elf, a teenager with model-perfect features, smiled back at her and shouted something in Salish that was lost in the throbbing music. It didn't matter that she couldn't understand him; she felt a rush of empathy for the kid. She could also sense the petty jealousy of everyone who looked at him like hot wax dripping on her exposed back.

  She gripped his face in her hands. "It's not our fault that we're perfect," she shouted back at him. "We were made in the year of the rat—the year of the lab rat!"

  Then the beam of sunlight swept away. The kid wrenched his face out of her hands, his eyes shooting a wave of hot anger at Night Owl. She backed away, surprised to see that her hands had left bruises on his cheeks. In that same instant, a rush of excitement swept across the crowd. Caught up in its frenzy, the elf and his friends ran after it, whooping with glee. Suddenly alone, Night Owl realized she'd been projecting her own insecurities—filling in a stranger's blanks with her own past.

  She sagged her way over to the edge of the room and sat on the floor with her back against one of the pillars. Here in the shadow between the pillar and the wall, with the catwalk a few meters over her head, she was temporarily out of the streams of magic that pulsed across the dance floor.

  She found herself at eye level with one of the club's astral patrons: a spirit with grainy, concrete-colored skin and blinking eyes that looked as though they were covered in oil slicks. The spirit's scalp was hidden by a multicolored tangle of hair-thin electrical wires. It wore a suit made from a patchwork of discarded fast-food wrappers and had plastic bags wrapped around its feet. It smiled at Night Owl, then opened its mouth into a perfect rectangle, exposing twin rows of square teeth that were miniature computer-monitor screens.

  Words scrolled across the incisors: SOMEONE'S LOOKING FOR YOU.

  Night Owl sat up.

  "Who?"

  A MAN WITH STRANGE EYES.

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  TATYANA SENT ME TO FIND YOU.

  Night Owl sprang to her feet, keeping the pillar between herself and the dance floor. She leaned out to scan the crowd but didn't see anyone she recognized as a Red Lotus ganger. That didn't mean anything, though. The shaman Wu had already proved that he could sneak up on her invisibly, and the Red Lotus were always recruiting new members from the city's illegals. That teenage girl in the shimmy skirt might be a ganger—she could have sneaked a blade into the club tucked into her ample cleavage. Or the old guy with flexible glow tubes braided into his beard who kept glancing over his shoulder like he was afraid someone was going to jump him. He was a Euro, but he might be with the Red Lotus, just the same. You never could tell who was going to put a bullet into your back . . .

  Had the spirit moved? Night Owl spun around, her right eye twitching like crazy. Her left hand whipped to her empty holster in a futile search for her Predator. Then she realized what had just happened. When she'd leaned out from behind the pillar, she'd been caught in the edge of a paranoia wash.

  Only when her heart slowed its beat from rapid-fire to single shot did her eye finally stop spasming. She leaned back against the pillar, catching her breath. Even without the emotion spell pumping her full of adrenaline, she realized she'd made a mistake in coming to the Magic Box. She needed to shift out of here, before the man with the strange eyes found her. Unless . . .

  She looked down at the spirit, which was waiting patiently beside her. Crouching down so that it would hear her over the chest-rattling music, she shouted into its ear, "Did Tatyana let the man with the strange eyes inside?"

  The spirit grinned. YES.

  "Is he with the Red Lotus?"

  NO. TATYANA SAID SHE'D NEVER SEEN HIM BEFORE.

  Night Owl sighed with relief. Tatyana had run with the Screamin' Mimis for several years and knew every ganger in town. Maybe Strange Eyes wasn't looking to flatline Night Owl after all. The encounter with Wu and his dragon master two nights ago had left her twitchy. For all she knew, the guy was another Johnson with a nice, fat credstick in his hand.

  "Where is he?"

  The spirit slowly scanned the room. I DON'T SEE HIM.

  Great. Night Owl would have to scope the fellow out on her own. She thanked the spirit, which dematerialized back into the concrete floor, leaving a scattering of food wrappers behind, and stood with her back against the wall, trying to keep out of the wash of spells. Her night-vision goggles were hanging from a clip on her belt. She snugged them down over her eyes and activated their binocular function. The most logical place to stand and look for someone was on the catwalks above. Night Owl slowly turned her head, scanning for anyone who matched the description the spirit had given her.

  She spotted her target halfway down the catwalk on her left. She knew he had to be her man—he had the strangest eyes she'd ever seen: pure white, without a hint of iris or pupil. They had to be cybered—although why he hadn't opted for natural-tint models or even mirrored lenses was a mystery. The bulging expanse of white reminded her of a hard-boiled egg.

  She studied his profile and then decreased the magnification until his entire body was within the goggles' field of view.

  Strange Eyes was Eurasian—no surprise, so was half the population of Vancouver—with an elongated face and a high forehead creased deeply with frown lines. He seemed to be naturally bald—there wasn't any stubble on his scalp—and was probably in his midforties. He wore white dress linens, an Armante cloak that hung as if it was lined with ballistic cloth, and soft black cotton slippers that were probably soaked through, given the heavy rain outside. He stood like a terra cotta statue of an ancient Chinese warrior, arms folded over his chest, his strange white eyes staring out over the crowd. Despite the throng of people moving back and forth across the catwalk, no one bumped into him. It was as if he projected an aura that defied anyone to so much as brush against him.

  Night Owl reached into her pocket and pulled out a parking token, flipping it into the air and catching it without even looking at it. Heads, she'd meet with Strange Eyes and see what he had to say. Tails, she'd blow out of here and leave the freaky fragger behind. Still staring at her man through her goggles, she ran a fingertip across the token, reading the face of it by feel. She felt the squarish outline of a longhouse: tails. Time to fade.

  Something about the mystery man held her attention, however, as she slipped the token back into her pocket. She zoomed the goggles back in for a closer look at his face. She was curious about those eyes—was he blind? It was odd that he never blinked. Not once.

  Just a
s his face filled her field of view, he turned his head. Although she was more than a hundred meters away from him, Night Owl felt a chill run down her spine as his gaze met hers full on. Although she couldn't tell where those blank white eyes were looking, she was certain he had seen her. She felt as though her gut had suddenly filled with ice water.

  An illusion flashed in the air between them, flooding the goggles with a bright blue-white light that left

  Night Owl blinking. Yanking the goggles away from her eyes, she saw that one of the mages had filled the air above the dance floor with a roiling mushroom cloud. Surround-sound speakers spread a rumble across the dance floor, rattling Night Owl's chest until it was difficult to breathe. When the mushroom cloud cleared a second or two later, the man with the blank white eyes was gone from the catwalk.

  Still blinking away the spots from her eyes, Night Owl hurried toward a spiral staircase in the corner of the room. The brief close-up of Strange Eyes had creeped her out; she wouldn't have done any biz with him even if the token had landed heads-up. She certainly didn't want to come face to face with the fragger here in the club, without the comfortable weight of her Ares Predator in her holster.

  She climbed the stairs two at a time, deked her way past a slower group of giggle-gasping patrons, and burst into a run as soon as she hit the catwalk. The exit door was just ahead.

  So was Strange Eyes. He stood just in front of the exit, one hand extended toward her, palm up, as if he expected her to take his hand. Skidding to a halt, Night Owl found herself mesmerized by his blank white eyes, which both repulsed and compelled her. She began backing slowly away but found herself unable to look at anything but those bulging white orbs. His fingers twitched—once, impatiently—and a voice whispered in her mind as he spoke: Come with me.

  Like a sleepwalking child, Night Owl walked forward and took his hand, letting him lead her through the exit door. A distant part of her mind was screaming in protest, but the spell he'd used to influence her was too strong to resist. As they passed through the room at the top of the stairs, Night Owl wrenched her head to the side and shot a pleading look at the shaman with the snakeskin tie. The effort took everything she had; it was almost impossible to make her body do anything more than follow Strange Eyes through the room. Words seemed to creak out of her mouth, and sweat trickled down her forehead as she forced a hand into her pocket to pull out a token.

  "My . . . coat."

  Strange Eyes paused, obviously wanting to keep up the facade that Night Owl was going with him willingly. The shaman, oblivious to Night Owl's struggle, bowed and took the token from her trembling hand. He reached into the wall and came out with her duster.

  Strange Eyes plucked the duster from her hand and draped it over his arm. He tugged on Night Owl's hand, forcing her to follow him down the stairs.

  The door opened, and Strange Eyes walked her out of the club. As they passed Tatyana, the troll took one look and threw a slap at Strange Eyes with her shock glove. Without even looking at her, Strange Eyes whipped his body to the side, avoiding her blow. He barked two words at her: "Stand aside!" Tatyana shuddered, then slowly backed out onto the sidewalk. Rain soaking her broad shoulders, she stared helplessly as Night Owl was led away.

  As they walked down the sidewalk. Strange Eyes patted down Night Owl's duster, checking its pockets, and then handed the coat to her and gestured that she should wear it. She pulled it on stiffly over her already soaking-wet shirt and followed him around the corner to a Mitsubishi Nightsky limousine with Seattle plates. A door in the back opened, and Strange Eyes climbed inside. Still compelled by the spell he had cast upon her, Night Owl followed.

  The door closed with a weighty thud that told Night Owl the limo was armored, and she heard locks click into place. The inside of the vehicle was climate-controlled, but Night Owl shivered as she sat down on the plush suede bench seat that faced the one Strange Eyes was sitting on. Somewhere behind a smoked glass panel that hid the rest of the limo's interior, a driver put the car into gear. The limo rolled smoothly out into traffic, away from the Magic Box.

  Strange Eyes sat quietly, staring at nothing and everything. Unlike Night Owl, he was perfectly dry; only the soles of his feet left damp patches on the carpet. He'd dropped the spell he'd used to compel Night Owl to follow him; she could no longer feel the back-of-the-neck tingle of magic at work. But the fact that Strange Eves was sitting alone with her in the cavernous limo interior, without any muscle to back him up, suggested to Night Owl that he was either very powerful or overly confident. She didn't want to gamble on the latter.

  She took comfort in one fact: if his goal had been to flatline her, she'd be a corpse already. She steeled her voice and did her best to meet the blank look of those bulging white eyes. "What do you want?"

  She almost expected a telepathic voice to accompany his words, like the one that had whispered in her mind when he worked his magic upon her. But it seemed his vocal cords did work independently after all.

  "Information." He laid his hands gently on his knees. His fingers were long and narrow, and a band of green stone—a jade ring—was on the little finger of his left hand. "The dragon Chiao hired you to perform a task for him. I want to know what it was."

  His English was fluent but slightly clipped; after a moment Night Owl placed his accent: Singapore. His question told her that he wasn't with the Red Lotus, and the fact that Tatyana hadn't recognized him meant that he probably wasn't local. The limo told her he was fronting for someone with nuyen—lots of it. She decided that Strange Eyes must be with a rival gang—one with a vested interest in whatever the Red Lotus was up to.

  Spilling the skinny on a run wasn't something a smart shadowrunner did—not if she wanted to continue breathing. But if Strange Eyes was as powerful as he made himself out to be, he just might give the Red Lotus and its dragon master a run for their money. If a gang war broke out, maybe Night Owl would be temporarily overlooked; she could do a fade while both sides dusted it up. With luck, there wouldn't be any survivors left to remember her.

  She didn't want to appear too eager to spill, however, so she pretended to stall for time. She dropped the dragon's name as if she'd known it all along.

  "How do you know about my meet with Chiao?" she asked. "And how did you find me?"

  Strange Eyes slid his long fingers into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a SkyTrain token. "I had a little chat with Wu. He gave me your name." He leaned forward and handed Night Owl the token. She glanced down at it and saw a crust of what looked like dried blood on one side. She rubbed the token against the wet fabric of her jeans, cleaning it. Whoever Strange Eyes was, he'd just paid for any information he wanted, as far as she was concerned. "Chiao hired me to steal a jade statue."

  "Who from?"

  "Akira Kageyama."

  Strange Eyes never blinked, but his posture suddenly stiffened. "Describe the statue."

  Night Owl told him about the statue of Fu Shen that she'd boosted from Kageyama's condoplex. When she got to the part about a Chinese character being engraved on the statue's back, Strange Eyes practically vibrated with excitement.

  "What did it say?"

  "Fu" Night Owl answered. "Bat."

  The frown lines in Strange Eyes' forehead deepened. He turned his head slightly, as if glancing elsewhere while he was thinking, and Night Owl could sense that he was no longer looking directly at her. She shrugged off the wet duster, laying it down on the seat next to her with the star-shaped "brooch" uppermost. She played with the SkyTrain token, keeping her left hand within a few centimeters of the shuriken. It was still pinned to the lapel, but if she could contrive a way to prick Strange Eyes with it, she might be able to take him down. All she needed to do was "drop" the SkyTrain token into the folds of the duster, and that would give her the excuse she needed to pick the coat up. The windows were all tinted ink-black, and Night Owl couldn't see any surveillance vidcams in the limo; she suspected that Strange Eyes wanted to keep this conversation priva
te. That was to her advantage—there wouldn't be anyone looking on when she made her move . . .

  The blank eyes swung back in her direction. "Did Chiao say why he wanted the statue?"

  It was time to curry favor, to try to get Strange Eyes to relax. Night Owl tossed him another byte of data. "The dragon wasn't interested in the statue itself. Chiao wanted whatever was inside it. The statue was hollow."

  Strange Eyes' bulging white eyes bored into her with an intensity that prickled Night Owl's skin.

  "What was inside it?" he asked.

  Night Owl paused, trying to decide whether to bluff. If she made up something that sounded valuable and told Strange Eyes that she'd have to lead him to it, maybe he'd keep her alive. On the other hand, maybe he'd decide that she knew too much. She let her gaze drop to the SkyTrain token in her hands and frowned at it as she turned it over and over, wishing she could let it make a heads-or-tails decision for her.

  Strange Eyes read more into her glance than she'd intended. "A coin," he whispered. "Of course."

  Night Owl could hear awe and greed in his voice. She looked up, met his blank stare, and nodded. "That's right," she said, embellishing as she went along. "A lucky coin."

  Strange Eyes blinked.

  Night Owl could see that she'd startled him—and that somehow, unwittingly, she'd blundered. She was within a millimeter of being flatlined—as soon as he found out whatever else he wanted to know, she could kiss her hoop goodbye. Strange Eyes leaned forward on the seat, his slender fingers curving into the shape of claws.

  "It's the fourth Coin of Luck, isn't it?" he hissed. "Where is it now'?"

  Night Owl jerked back, pretending to be startled. Her left hand fell on the duster. She dropped her voice to a whisper, as if she were spooked. "I gave the statue to Chiao, but I took the coin out of it first. It's in—"