by Tim Waggoner
“Back to back!” I told Jinx, and given our proximity – not to mention how long we’d worked together – we had no trouble sensing where the other was and pressing our backs together. This position wouldn’t keep me safe from a hurled dark shard, but it was better than nothing. I had no idea if the burst of light had temporarily blinded Quietus – remember, he had no visible eyes – but I hoped it would momentarily distract him if nothing else.
And that’s when I heard the sound.
A strained groaning, loud and deep. It made me think of a sleeping giant starting to come awake and stretch his gargantuan limbs. My vision hadn’t cleared yet, and at first I didn’t believe what I was seeing. Steel legs – thin and jointed like an insect’s – emerged from each side of the Bean, six in all. They braced against the ground, pushed, and one hundred tons of tourist attraction slowly rose into the air.
Jinx started laughing. The worse things get, the more he likes it, and when six stainless steel tentacles protruded from the top of the Bean and began writhing in the air like giant serpents, his laughter grew until I thought he might literally bust a gut. I hate it when that happens. He’s useless for hours afterward, and the mess is horrendous, not to mention the smell.
As Beanzilla lumbered forward, steel tentacles lashing the air, I could only stand and stare. If we’d been in Nod, I’d have had no trouble accepting Beanzilla’s existence. The rules are different over there – very different. But as far as I knew, this sort of reality distortion wasn’t possible on Earth, but there it was, big as life and twice as ugly.
At first I thought Quietus had done something to animate the sculpture, although I had no idea how he might’ve accomplished such a feat. But he appeared as surprised as we were. For a moment, he stood and watched as the monstrous living artwork advanced, but then he began hurling dark shards at it with both hands, throwing them so fast that it was almost as if he were firing an automatic weapon at the creature. The shards struck Beanzilla only to bounce off, without doing more than leaving behind dings and scratches.
More work for the M-gineers, I thought. Of course, the M-gineers wouldn’t be able to do squat unless we could figure out A) what had brought Beanzilla to life and B) reverse the process.
Quietus’ barrage of blades had one other effect: it drew Beanzilla’s attention. The creature swung toward Quietus and although – just like the assassin – it had no identifiable facial features, I could feel it scrutinizing him with a primitive intelligence. Quietus, perhaps out of desperation, continued firing dark shards at Beanzilla as if they were fléchettes, but to no better effect than before. One of the creature’s tentacles whipped toward Quietus and wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his side. Then it lifted the assassin into the air and waved him around as if eager to show the world its new toy.
Jinx stopped laughing. “No fair! He’s ours!”
He let forth a battle cry that sounded like a cross between a dyspeptic Viking heading into battle and a deranged lion that had overdosed on PCP. He ran toward Beanzilla, sledgehammer gripped in both hands.
Beanzilla turned to meet his advance, and as Jinx leaped into the air, ready to do his best John Henry impression on the monster, two of its tentacles streaked toward him. One caught him in midair and coiled around his midsection, while the other tore the sledgehammer from his grip. The tentacle squeezed, and the sledge’s wooden handle splintered. The tentacle then relaxed its hold, and the pieces of Jinx’s hammer tumbled to the ground.
Jinx let out a wail of grief. “Cuthbert! Nooooo!”
Did I mention that Jinx likes to name his weapons?
Without thinking, I aimed my trancer at Beanzilla and fired, but as I’d anticipated, the last blast had depleted the weapon, and nothing happened. I holstered my trancer, and desperately tried to think of a way that I could – alone and without any weapons – single-handedly bring down a one-hundred-ton monster that had taken out a pair of Incubi without so much as batting one of its nonexistent eyes.
I thought Beanzilla would attack me next, but evidently it didn’t view me as much of a threat, for it turned and started crab-walking westward. I couldn’t help feeling a trifle insulted by that. So far, with the exception of Jinx’s beloved sledgehammer, Beanzilla hadn’t done any damage, but once it got outside of Millennium Park, it would become a real threat. New York might be known as the city that never sleeps, but Chicago has its fair share of night owls, and those in the vicinity would be easy pickings for Beanzilla.
I couldn’t let that happen. I started running.
Beanzilla moved quickly for its size, its legs thudding into the ground one after the other, leaving patches of broken concrete in its wake. My hit of rev was starting to wear off, and my legs felt like they were filled with wet sand. But I ignored the burning in my lungs and cramping leg muscles as I ran to catch up with Beanzilla.
I had started chasing the ambulatory sculpture before I had even the inkling of a plan, but I guess my subconscious had come up with something, for my hand reached into my jacket pocket and felt three coiled chains. Each was made of a silvery metal and measured eighteen inches when stretched out end to end.
Of course!
As I ran, I withdrew one of the chains and touched the two ends together. They fused with an audible snick and the chain snapped into the shape of a solid metal ring.
Bound as he was in Beanzilla’s coils, Quietus could do nothing but go along for the ride as his monstrous captor hurried to begin its rampage of terror. Jinx’s arms were still free, though, and he used one of his hands to aim his lapel flower. A stream of liquid arced from the flower’s center to strike the surface of the stainless steel tentacle that held him fast. I was too far away to smell anything, but I could hear the faint sizzling sound of acid eating away at the metal. The bastard had switched the pepper juice back to acid! But I told myself I could be mad at him later. Right now, I had a work of art to stop.
“Jinx!” I shouted. “Catch!”
I said a quick prayer to the First Dreamer and hurled the silver ring toward Jinx. It spun through the air in an arcing trajectory, and I feared it was going to fall short. But Jinx snatched it out of the air.
He looked at the ring. “I’m flattered, but I’m not sure I’m ready for this kind of commitment.”
I ignored his joke. “Maelstrom energy brought this damn thing to life, right? So let’s see if we can turn off its power!” I said.
Jinx gave me one of his disturbingly too-wide grins. He pulled the ring apart, and it immediately fell slack. Then he wrapped it around Beanzilla’s tentacle, the metal stretching to encompass the tentacle’s girth. He then touched the ends together, and the ring stiffened and fastened itself tight to the tentacle’s polished steel surface. For an instant, the ring glimmered with a sheen of multicolored light, which quickly faded.
I wasn’t sure, but it looked as if the tentacle drooped a bit, and the coils around Jinx loosened a touch. And did Beanzilla slow down a little? I thought it did.
I caught up with the walking sculpture and as one of its legs came down, I jumped and wrapped my arms around it. Then I held on as the leg rose into the air again, this time carrying me with it. I caught a disorienting glimpse of myself reflected in the mirrored surface of Beanzilla’s body, and a wave of vertigo hit me.
I looked away from the image and reached into my pocket and removed a second chain. I wrapped it around the leg, doing my best to ignore the nauseating sensation in my stomach as the leg carried me downward, and tried to touch the ends together. But even though the chain stretched, the leg was too wide. I pulled out the second chain, attached it to the first, and that did the trick. The ends met, snicked closed, drew tight to the leg’s surface, and then shone with a glimmer of multicolored light that lasted only a second or two.
Nothing happened right away, and I feared my hastily improvised plan had failed, but then Beanzilla began to slow down. I felt its leg begin to shudder, and I knew the negators were working.
Negators p
revent Incubi from accessing Maelstrom energy, thereby nullifying their abilities and rendering them, if not exactly powerless, no more of a threat than an average human being.
I heard Jinx yell, “Geronimo!” and an instant later, I saw him land on the ground in a crouching position. He immediately rolled out of the way of a severed tentacle that slammed into the spot where he’d landed. It looked like his acid had finally done its work.
He came up on his absurdly large feet and jogged over to where I still clutched Beanzilla’s leg. The creature had stopped walking, but the leg I held onto had frozen at its highest position, stranding me almost thirty feet in the air. From where I was, I couldn’t see Quietus, and I had no idea if he was still caught in the tentacle that had grabbed him or if, like Jinx, he had managed to get free. If Quietus was still trapped, I knew he wouldn’t be for long.
Jinx stood beneath me, arms out.
“Jump!” he said. “I’ll catch you!” He paused a beat. “And this time, I mean it!”
“Like you meant it when you promised you’d give up using acid?”
Still, I didn’t see that I had any other choice. So I closed my eyes, let go, and dropped. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself looking up at Jinx’s face. I expected him to make some sort of smartass comment, or maybe make one of his scary faces – bulging eyes, too-wide smile, sharp teeth. But his normally ice-blue eyes were warm, and the expression on his face might almost have been one of tenderness.
But then he grinned and dropped me on my ass. I said a word that I’d learned from my mother – Lord, can that woman swear! – and then Jinx offered me his hand to help me up.
“Joy buzzer,” I said as I rose to my feet.
He grinned wider and showed me the metal device concealed in his palm.
The Bean was no longer alive – if indeed it ever truly had been – but it still had its legs and tentacles. Well, almost all its tentacles. The M-gineers were going to have their hands full with this cleanup job.
I looked at Jinx. “Quietus?”
He pointed skyward and took a step back just as the assassin landed in front of me, a pair of dark shards in his hands. The assassin lunged toward me, but before he could plunge the blades into my flesh, there was a blur of motion behind him, followed by a sickening thud. Quietus’ head snapped to the side, he staggered, and then collapsed to the ground. Behind him stood Jinx, holding a new sledgehammer and grinning.
“Say hello to Cuthbert Junior.”
TWO
Jinx found a Door in the middle of an alley. It didn’t look like a passageway between dimensions: featureless wood surface, peeling white paint, tarnished metal knob… If I – or any human – tried to open it, I’d find it locked, and if I returned tomorrow night, I’d discover the Door gone, only brick in its place.
Hell, without Jinx along, there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to even see the Door. Doors aren’t invisible to human eyes exactly, but there’s an intrinsic wrongness to them, one that humans sense on a subconscious level. I was a trained officer of the Shadow Watch, and I’d been through Doors dozens of times, and I still felt a compulsion to turn and walk away whenever I looked at one.
We had Quietus in custody, a negator around his neck to nullify his Incubus powers, and another wrapped tight around his wrists to keep him from attacking us by more mundane means. Negators might prevent Incubi from using their special abilities, but they don’t remove their training and experience. Superpowered or not, Quietus was still a master assassin, and we weren’t taking any chances.
Well, I wasn’t. Given Jinx’s penchant for random acts of chaos and mayhem, I had to watch him almost as closely as I did Quietus. I knew my partner would love for Quietus to make a break for it, just so he could fight some more. I wouldn’t put it past Jinx to “accidentally” allow Quietus to escape, so he could have a little more fun.
I’d searched Quietus while he’d been unconscious to see if he carried any other weapons on him. I’d never touched Quietus before, and I was surprised to find his substance – I can’t bring myself to refer to it as flesh – was cool and spongy to the touch. As near as I could tell, he wasn’t wearing any kind of outfit. I could find no zippers, buttons, or seams.
Quietus appeared to be a creature molded entirely from living shadow. He had no pockets, but then, why would he? He didn’t need to carry anything because he could create weapons from his own darkness. He had no wisper on him, which was too bad. The M-gineers could’ve hacked into its system to search for the identity of his employers. Which was, of course, why Quietus didn’t have one.
We walked toward the Door, Quietus between us, each of us holding onto one of his arms. Since my trancer needed recharging – something I couldn’t do on this side of a Door – I held a blade to the assassin’s ribs. M-blades are made from concentrated Maelstrom energy, and while they can kill Incubi if used right, stabbing an Incubi with one interferes with the Maelstrom energy that forms their bodies, causing a kind of short circuit. This results in agony so intense that all an Incubus can do is fall to the ground, drooling and twitching. It’s a wonderful sight to behold, and I was almost sorry that Quietus hadn’t given us any trouble. Audra, I thought to myself, you’re starting to get as bad as Jinx.
Jinx had been in merry mood when we’d captured Quietus, but as time passed without the advent of additional ultraviolence, he’d turned grumpy and taciturn. Normally, anything that got Jinx to shut his nonstop mouth for a while was a good thing in my book, but the grumpier he became – or First Dreamer help me, the more bored he became – the more likely he was to do something impulsive and potentially fatal to anyone in the vicinity, including me. The sooner we opened the Door and stepped through and into Nod, the better.
But just as we reached the Door and Jinx stretched his ivory-colored fingers toward the knob, the Door opened from the other side.
Jinx and I assumed battle-ready positions without releasing our hold on Quietus. We are professionals, after all. I pulled the M-blade away from Quietus’ ribs and pointed it toward the opening Door. Lone Incubi in Nod aren’t supposed to have free access to Doors, but their location on the other side shifts randomly, just as it does on Earth.
In Nod, the Shadow Watch does its best to locate and guard Doors as soon as they appear, but we can never find them all. There are literally thousands of them. So if a rogue Incubus had managed to find an unguarded Door and was using it to sneak into Earth’s dimension, I figured the sight of my M-blade should give it pause. And if the blade didn’t intimidate the living nightmare, then Jinx’s joy buzzer – which he held palm out and was throwing off sparks of high-voltage electricity – should do the trick.
But the being that stepped through the open doorway wasn’t an Incubus. He was human. And what’s more, I recognized him. I lowered my blade and repositioned it against Quietus’ side. Jinx continued to hold his joy buzzer at the ready for several more seconds – before he finally powered it down and lowered his hand to his side.
“Hey, Neil,” I said.
The man stopped, startled. He glanced back and forth between Jinx and me, then he fixed his gaze on Quietus – noting the negators around his neck and wrists – before finally turning his attention back to me. I gave him my brightest smile, but he only scowled in return.
“I should’ve known you and your clown” – he shot a dark glance at Jinx – “would try to sneak out of the city before we arrived.”
Jinx gave Neil a smile too, only his was the sort a shark would give, all teeth and no humor. Neil swallowed and focused his gaze on me once more.
Neil Gonnick was a thin man in his early fifties with a receding hairline and a neatly trimmed mustache. He wore the standard M-gineer uniform: a slightly rumpled gray jumpsuit with a black belt and boots, the dream catcher symbol of the Shadow Watch emblazoned on the right breast. The jumpsuit was covered with pockets, all of which bulged with various tools and tech.
The M-gineers are proud of their uniforms almost to the poi
nt of arrogance, but I’ve always thought they were ugly things that looked as if they’d been inspired by bad 1960s’ science fiction films. Neil carried a trancer holstered at his side, along with a nine-inch crystalline rod slid through a loop on his belt. The M-rod was the prime tool of his trade, allowing whoever had the knowledge and skill to wield it to use Maelstrom energy to affect solid matter. And I had a pretty good idea why he was here and less than pleased to see us. He’d come to clean up our mess.
Still smiling his shark smile, Jinx said, “I thought you pocket-jockeys used your own dimensional portals when you traveled. What happened? Rod go limp?”
Neil clenched his jaw. He hated it when Jinx used the word pocket-jockeys, which meant Jinx used it around the M-gineer whenever he could.
“You two caused a truly impressive amount of damage tonight. In fact, I’d say you achieved a personal worst.”
“It’s not our fault,” I said. “At least, not entirely. There was an Incursion. I called in a full report–”
Neil cut me off. “I’m well aware of that. But I’m also aware of you and your…” – he paused to give Jinx a dubious look – “partner’s record when it comes to collateral damage. You might not be the best officers employed by the Shadow Watch, but I have to admit, when it comes to wanton destruction, you’re unequalled.”
Jinx looked at me. “You hear that, Mommy? We’re number one!”
A noisemaker appeared in his mouth and he blew on it, making a loud blat that sounded like an elephant breaking wind. He tossed a handful of confetti into the air at the same time. I cringed, waiting for the confetti to explode, but it drifted to the ground without igniting, and I was as grateful for Jinx’s restraint as I was surprised.
Neil ignored Jinx and continued. “Because of the severity of the damage, we couldn’t afford to expend any energy on creating personal portals. We already had to waste energy locating Doors that led to Chicago. We’re going to need every bit of M-power we have left to fix this mess before dawn.”
