Her curious hands went next to the rest of my gear, poking through the pile of supple metal. “How does this all work?”
“You want me to put it on and show you?” Honestly, giving an armor how-to was much preferable to debating mortality. When she nodded, I got up, laying all the pieces out flat so I could get them on correctly. “First, the padding. ’Cause this stuff is heavy, and the links pinch when they move.” Getting chain mail caught in leg or chest hair? Like I said. Excruciating pain.
The padding part of my armor was easy to get into. It was the rest of it that required long hours of practice. Gretchen watched me for a few moments, then got up to help with the buckles. “So you have a handler that helps you get into this stuff for a fight, right?”
That made me laugh a little. Yes, I had a companion along for most of my fights. Usually my buddy Will. But he was there mostly to put the pieces of me back together at the end, rather than dress me at the beginning. “Normally, I’m on my own for this part.” On my own save for my client, often standing in the dark in some deserted location. Waiting for the fitful scent of sulfur on the wind. “But yeah, I have buddies who help out when they can. My best friends.” Well, singular now. Just Will. It was hard to remember to remove Marty from the list.
I held my arms up parallel to the ground while Gretchen worked on the buckles down my sides. “It’s good to have friends. Sometimes, one good friend can make all the difference.”
“Like Dante?”
She smiled a little, still fumbling with the thick leather straps on my armor. “Yeah. He’s the one person in the world I trust above all else. He’s my best friend.”
“Tai said you grew up together?”
“Mhmm. His mom lived next door to us. She’d watch me and my sister sometimes, when Mom had to work. We’ve always been inseparable. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him.”
“What about all those other people? The ones at the party, the ones you waved to at the movie lot. Aren’t they your friends too?”
“They’re just…people I see sometimes. If I drop dead tomorrow, most of them will show up at my funeral just to be seen by the cameras, and then they’ll never think of me again.”
“That’s a bit grim, isn’t it? No, here…that attaches to my belt.” I could have buckled everything on myself faster, but I didn’t think this was all about her seeing me in my armor. She needed to talk, apparently, and this was her excuse.
We got the chausses settled, and I slipped my burned-out bracers back on just for the full effect. I bounced a bit on my toes, jingling as the mail settled into its proper place. Gretchen stepped back to look me up and down, lips pursed thoughtfully.
“Isn’t that stuff heavy?”
“Yup. That’s why I work out to be strong enough to carry it.”
“I can’t imagine being able to move in it, let alone fight.” A ghost of a smile flashed across her face, but it was gone in a heartbeat. “You think I’m a bad person, don’t you? Because of these.” She reached over her shoulder where her shirt had drooped to bare skin, her fingers no doubt touching the upper edges of the iridescent soul tattoos on her back.
“I…I don’t agree with it.” There, that sounded tactful. “I don’t know that I’m really in a position to judge who is ‘bad’ or not.”
“They weren’t always good people themselves, y’know. I mean, what kind of guy offers his soul up to bang a girl thirty years younger than him? A guy with a wife and kids at home…” Before I could answer her, she went on. “I know that doesn’t make it right. You were gonna say that, right?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Just…in the beginning, at first, I thought they maybe really cared for me. I used to think I was in love. But I wasn’t, and they definitely weren’t. They got bragging rights or whatever, and I got their souls.” She kept feeling over her shoulder for the tattoos, her eyes distant.
“Can you feel them? I mean, do you know they’re there?” I’d been dying to ask that since I got here.
“Sometimes. The newer they are, the more I’m aware of it. Then after a while, I just get used to it again, and I don’t think about it anymore.” She turned around, moving her shirt to show off more of her back. “These here at the top, they’re the oldest. If I didn’t see them in the mirror now and then, I wouldn’t remember they were there. The ones down at the bottom…those are newer. Sometimes…” She shook her head, though with her back to me, I couldn’t guess at the look on her face. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Takes a lot for me to throw the crazy card. Sometimes what?”
“Sometimes, when they’re new…I think I hear them. And that’s stupid, ’cause they’re not real souls. I mean, if they were real souls, the people I took them from would be dead. They’re just…liens, I guess. Markers for souls. But sometimes when they’re new, I think I hear them saying things. Whispering. Crying sometimes.”
Later, when I looked back on this, here is where it all started going horribly awry. But at the time, it seemed like the nice thing to do. I reached out and put my hand on her bare shoulder, squeezing a little to offer comfort.
She spun around, throwing her arms around my waist and burying her face against my mail-clad chest with enough force to back me up a couple of steps. “Erm…” Okay, so what do you do there? Awkwardly, I petted her hair a little, not quite sure what to do with this turn of events.
“I don’t want to die,” she whimpered, and I could hear the tears in her voice. Oh boy. I don’t deal well with crying women.
“Hey, look, no one said you were gonna die. And…that’s what I’m here for, right?” I coaxed her to lift up her head, and rapped my knuckles on my mail. “Armor and all. Serve and protect or whatever.”
Gretchen sniffled a little, blue eyes swimming in tears even as she tried to smile for me. “You’re a good person, Jesse. Better than I am.”
“Hey no, you’re a good person—” I’m sure I had really profound stuff to say here, but it’s kinda hard to talk (or think) when a gorgeous woman suddenly kisses you.
Her lips were soft and she smelled like coconut. Those were the first two things I noticed. I could taste the salt of her tears, and the hint of cherry from her lip gloss. Honestly, I was so stunned, it took me a few precious seconds to react. It had been years since I’d been kissed by anyone other than my wife.
My wife…Oh shit, Mira…I caught Gretchen’s arms as she tried to slip them around my neck, and gently held her in place, stepping back out of her embrace. She blinked at me with huge glimmering eyes, obviously never expecting me to stop her. “I’m married, Gretchen. And I love my wife very much.” I said it as gently as possible, ’cause…well, mostly ’cause I didn’t want her to cry anymore. I’d have promised anything (well, almost anything) if she’d just stop leaking from the eyes.
It…didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. The diamond tears welled up in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks, but she nodded with a tiny hiccup of a sob. “And…I’m sure she’s a good person too…just like you….” Finally, she turned away, flopping down on the couch again to hide her face in her folded arms. Her entire frame shook with silent sobs.
Crap. I was seriously close to waking up Tai, just to see if he knew how to deal with this better than I did. Or Dante. Where the hell was Dante when I could really have used him? “Hey…um…you want like…some ice cream or something? Chocolate?” That’s what women liked when they were upset, right? “I could go down and get some….” Yeah, room service would deliver, but that wouldn’t get me out of the room, now, would it?
After a few moments, she nodded, and just as I was about to slip out the door, she called after me, “And whipped cream! Lots of it!”
The door shut behind me and I sagged against it for a moment. Holy crap…This was…what…how…“Holy crap!” I muttered to myself. I was gonna get ice cream for her, and seriously debate a strong shot of whiskey for myself. And I’m normally not a hard liquor kinda guy.
&nbs
p; The elevator dinged, and I hopped on without waiting to see if anyone was getting off. Unfortunately, that resulted in me mowing down poor Dante. He sprawled on the floor of the elevator, and it took us a couple of moments to get our legs untangled from each other. I think I even stepped on his hand once, and he snatched it back with a pained hiss.
“Oh damn, sorry, man.” I offered my hand to help him up, and he gave me the uninjured one so I could pull him to his feet.
He looked me up and down with a puzzled tilt to his head. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“Armor,” I answered, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “She’s crying. Go fix it.” The elevator doors closed on the puzzled look on his face.
Down in the kitchen, no one commented on my armor. They were too busy insisting that the kitchen closed at ten, which was an hour ago, and giving me dirty looks when I kept insisting “No, bigger!” But seriously, how hard is it to understand that I wanted a big ice cream sundae? I finally took the can of whipped topping away from the flustered cook and emptied it over the top of the biggest bowl of ice cream and hot fudge I’d ever seen. And I still wasn’t sure it was big enough. “You got any strawberries? And cherries too, lots of cherries.”
A quart of strawberry syrup and half a jar of maraschino cherries later, I was making my way toward the elevators again (and dammit, the ice cream was already dripping into the links of my armor), when I noticed a commotion in the lobby.
A group of black-coated hotel staff had surrounded someone near the front door, either denying them entrance or…well, I don’t know what the “or” was. An angry voice rose from the center of the circle. “No, I don’t need a fucking ambulance! You just gotta tell me if she’s here!”
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that was Dante’s voice. Curious and more than a bit confused, I went to investigate.
Being tall has its advantages. When I got close enough, I was able to see over most of the heads to find that sure enough Dante was there, leaning heavily on Homeless Felix’s tattered shoulders. Dante’s bright red hair was dingy, the dye having mostly washed or grown out, and there was an ashy grayness to his dark skin. His cheeks were hollowed out, eyes fever-bright, and his clothes were so grimy I almost couldn’t tell the color of what used to be a preppy-looking sweater vest.
“Dante! What the hell happened?” I shouldered my way through the crowd, not caring who I slathered with whipped cream.
Dante frowned, looking me up and down. “Who the hell are you?”
This is the point where I started thinking “Oh shit.” I looked to Felix for answers, which should probably tell you how confused I was. “What happened to him?”
The eccentric sage shook his head sadly, his dreadlocks swaying with a clatter of beads. “Things are not always what they seem, warrior. I tried to tell you…”
“I’ll tell you what happened. Some fucking psycho snatched me off the street and locked me up in a dark room for weeks, draining my goddamn blood like a fucking vampire! That’s what fucking happened!” Dante thrust a hand at my fact, showing me a wrist rubbed raw and blistered by some kind of restraint, and multiple needle-stick sites. “He took my goddamn face! How is that even fucking possible??”
Half an ice cream sundae shifted and slid off the heaping bowl to splatter on the floor around my feet. The melted slop almost covered up the graying clay, drying on my combat boots. I’d tripped over him, I realized, in the elevator not fifteen minutes ago…I stepped on his hand, and there was drying gray mud in the tread of my boot when I checked the sole.
“Gretchen…” I dropped the bowl and heard it shatter into a thousand wet, sticky pieces behind me as I dashed for the elevators. A businessman was just getting into the first open car, and I grabbed him by the collar of his nice suit, tossing him to the side like a rag doll. “Hey!”
I didn’t have time to make stops on the way up. The guy would thank me later. I fumbled as I swiped my keycard for the penthouse, and was faintly relieved when the light flickered green and the doors slid closed. Come on, faster, faster…
It was up there with her. I knew that now. It had been with us all along, maybe. Longer than I’d been in L.A., anyway, ’cause Dante—the Dante downstairs—had no idea who the hell I was. But he’d passed the test! The blood test, he passed. Dante passed through the wards, passed the pin test…
The blood, I decided. Had to be the blood the creature had taken from the real Dante. Made it easier for him to hold the form, maybe allowed the soulless construction to steal the voice. Maybe it let him bleed, too.
“Fucking come on!” I slammed my fist into the wooden paneling in the elevator, as if that would make it climb the floors any faster.
At the penthouse level, I squeezed through the elevator doors before they’d fully opened, startling Spencer who was standing in the hallway with his food cart. The wannabe screenwriter blinked at me in surprise. “But…I just saw you get on the other elevator with Gretchen…”
“You’re sure?” I grabbed his jacket, shaking him once. “You’re sure they got on the elevator?”
“Yeah, completely.” I released him, dashing for Gretchen’s suite. Spencer called after me, “I think it went up to the roof, if that helps…”
I was intent on getting my sword first and foremost. No way was I facing that thing empty-handed again. We were gonna see how well he liked being in giant clay chunks. But I was brought up short by the sight of Tai’s body sprawled facedown on the floor between the two sofas. The remnants of the glass coffee table littered the carpet and crunched underfoot as I scrambled to get to him.
“Tai!” Pulse, pulse, where was the damn pulse…I found it, thankfully, slow but steady in his thick neck. My hands came away stained with sticky blood though, and I found a nasty gash in his raven hair, just behind his left ear. He’d been attacked from behind, clubbed like a baby seal. And his gun holster was empty.
“Holy shit, what happened?” Spencer stood at the top of the stairs, eyes wide in shock. “Is that blood?”
“Don’t just stand there, call 911!” At my sharp command, he seemed to snap out of it, and lurched for the phone.
I carefully rolled the big Maori over, checking him for other injuries, but there didn’t seem to be any. Tai was breathing. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do for him. My sword case was still under the sofa where I’d left it, and I snatched up The Way, headed for the door.
“I called 911!” Spencer reported, like he expected a treat for being such a good puppy. “The ambulance is on the way. Now what do I do?”
“Stay with Tai until they get here. Tell them he has head trauma.”
“And then what?”
“If you value your life, go home, Spencer. Go back to Chicago.” I slammed the door behind me and ran for the elevator again.
19
The roof was deserted, as it should be this late at night. The paper lanterns had been supplemented with string after string of party lights in preparation for the New Year’s festivities, but for now everything was dark.
I stepped out of the elevator, cursing inwardly at the cheerful “ding” I couldn’t prevent. My presence was known, whether I wanted it to be or not. Still, I took care to step softly on the white stone path, straining my ears for signs of where Gretchen and the thing had gone.
It wasn’t hard to find them. Above the sound of the distantly trickling waterfall, all I had to do was follow the sound of Gretchen’s outraged protests. “Get your hands off me! Let me go!” Her strident voice carried through the darkness. I tracked the sound through the narrow pathways until I arrived at the open area where tables and chairs had been clustered around the central reflecting pool.
Dimly, I knew that Spencer said he’d seen me get on the elevator with Gretchen, but I hadn’t truly thought about what that meant until that moment. A tall, slender man held Gretchen by the arm, not even budging as she struggled against his grip. His clothes…well, those weren’t mine. In fact, they’d been on Dante,
last I’d seen. The few inches difference in my height from Dante’s made the blue jeans a bit high-water, and the difference in our weight made the shirt hang loosely on the wiry frame. His blond hair was unconfined, hanging at shoulder length, but the last few inches were fire-engine red, the remnants of the dye in Dante’s short dreads. When he turned, I caught a glimpse of his face. It was mine, sort of. The right nose, kinda pointy. Sharply angled cheeks, but they were smooth, my newly acquired scar only a faint blemish on the surface. The jaw was strong, but without the reddish stubble I’d started to grow. Me, but slightly off. Only someone who didn’t know me well would mistake this thing for the genuine article.
Gretchen jerked against his grip again, and only then did I see the gun held in his free hand. That should have been the first glaring clue that it wasn’t me. Yes, I can shoot. No, I don’t. “I will scream my goddamn head off if you don’t let me go.”
“Go ahead.” Now the voice…the voice he had down. I was used to hearing my own voice out of Axel’s mouth, I knew what I sounded like. “No one will hear you up here.”
“I will.” Seemed like a good line to make an entrance on. I stepped out of the overhung path, dropping The Way’s scabbard in the bushes. I angled the blade just right so the scant light would reflect down it. Melodramatic, yes, but I wanted him to know it was there.
There was a soft gasp from Gretchen as I appeared out of seeming nowhere. “But…” Her eyes were wide as she looked between her captor and me. Okay, so apparently the fake me was more convincing than I’d thought. Obviously, Gretchen hadn’t known the difference.
The golem was a bit less surprised. “Stop where you are.” It leveled Tai’s stolen gun at me. “This has nothing to do with you.”
Slowly, I kept moving forward, one step at a time. “First off, you stealing my face and my voice, that has everything to do with me. Second, you happen to be threatening someone I promised to protect. Again, to do with me. And third, I think you got caught midtransformation. Your hair’s a bit muddled there, your face isn’t quite right. So I think the odds of you hitting the broad side of a barn with that gun are slim to none. I’ll take my chances.” I’d seen this thing be clumsy before, and my guess was that it happened when it had to change form quickly.
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