by Tim Waggoner
By the time Budgie returned, Jinx, Russell, and I were up to our chins in liquid asphalt. Jinx dipped his mouth toward the goo, stuck out his tongue, and tasted it. His tongue flew back into his mouth with the speed of a frog catching an insect. He swished his tongue around in his mouth, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Not enough tar for my taste, but overall, not bad.”
As Budgie lowered to rescue us, Jinx reached out to grab both my hand and Russell’s. As an Incubus, he was stronger than both of us combined, and if Budgie’s claws had to sink into his flesh to maintain their grip, he’d heal a hell of a lot faster than we would. Budgie’s clawed feet dipped into the asphalt and fastened on Jinx’s shoulders, and the pterosaur flapped hard, not only trying to pull us free but attempting to keep from getting stuck himself. At first, Jinx didn’t move, and I feared it was too late for us. I felt myself sink even further, the asphalt rising over my cheeks, and I tilted my head back so I could get a few more precious breaths of air before I went down.
But then there was a loud sucking sound, and Budgie pulled Jinx free, bringing Russell and me along for the ride.
Budgie might have been an Incubus, but that didn’t mean the creature’s strength was inexhaustible. His flapping slowed, and he started losing altitude. Budgie had carried a lot of weight over the last few minutes, and it looked as if he was running out of energy. But then Abe called out, “You can do it, boy! You can do it!”
Budgie sank another few inches, until my feet nearly touched the asphalt quicksand again, but then he redoubled his efforts and started gaining altitude once more. As he’d done for the others, he deposited us on the building’s roof, then landed and folded his wings against his body.
“Wait a minute!” I said. “What about the Darkness?”
“What about me?”
I nearly jumped when I realized the Darkness stood next to me. Unlike our clothes, his robe was free of black stains. At least, I think it was. As black as the Darkness’ robe was, it was hard to tell.
“If you could get out of there on your own,” I said, “why didn’t you rescue Maggie and Abe yourself?”
The Darkness turned to look at Abe, who was laughing and stroking Budgie’s long beak-mouth. In response, the pterosaur was making a sound like a cooing pigeon.
“If I had, Budgie wouldn’t have come,” the Darkness said.
I was about to ask how the hell he’d known that, when Maggie said, “We have to do something to help the others!”
“I’m not sure there’s anything we can do,” Russell said. “We barely got free of that goop as it was.”
I turned to the Darkness, but he shook his head. “There are no shadows within the asphalt. Without shadows, I cannot travel.”
I looked at Maggie. “Jack and Lizzie will be OK, although they’ll probably be so pissed off at our leaving them that they’ll want to eviscerate Jinx and me the next time we meet.”
“What else is new?” Jinx said.
“What about Connie?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “She’s in the Deathmobile, and that should protect her for a while.”
“Until her air runs out,” Jinx said cheerfully.
I shot him a dark look, but he only smiled at me.
I’d managed to hold onto my trancer while stuck in the asphalt, although it didn’t have much juice left by this point. I’d lost the M-blade Russell had given me, though, which was a damn shame. It had been a hell of a weapon. Russell still held his rapier, although he’d lost his trancer. Jinx reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out Cuthbert Junior, or a replacement. Either he’d managed to store the hammer before he’d sunk too far, or he’d lost it and pulled out a new one. I didn’t want to ask. The last thing we needed was for Jinx to start mourning the loss of one of his beloved Cuthberts.
I turned to look out over the parking lot. Broken car-bots – dozens of frozen, wounded, maimed, and mutilated Incubi – and a patch of asphalt that might or might not remain liquefied. It was an impressive amount of damage for a single night, even by Jinx’s and my standards. But we weren’t finished yet.
“Whatever we’re going to do next, we need to get on with it,” Russell said. “It won’t be long before the Lords make their next move.”
Bloodshedder woofed in agreement.
“Do you think they might do something to the building?” Maggie said, clearly nervous. “Like they did to the parking lot?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I don’t know how much control they have over the effects of the Incursions they create, but regardless, I doubt they’d risk bringing the entire building down on top of them.”
“Then again,” Russell said, “these are Incubi we’re talking about.”
“Hey!” Jinx said. “That’s racial profiling!”
Russell had a point, but his remark didn’t make Maggie feel any better. She kept glancing nervously back and forth between the parking lot and the rooftop, as if she expected it to go soft beneath us any moment, or perhaps burst into flame.
The Darkness took note of her emotional state and stepped close to her.
“You are distressed,” he said.
“Yes, dear,” she said, “but I’ll be OK. Don’t worry.”
The Darkness cocked his head to the side. “Your pulse is elevated and somewhat erratic. I think it’s time that we go.” He turned his hooded face toward us, and I had a momentary impression of human features shrouded by the blackness within. “Good luck.”
Maggie’s expression became stern. “Now, see here, we are not going to abandon our friends when they need–”
That’s as far as she got before the Darkness took a step toward her, wrapped his shadowy robe around her, and then they both vanished.
“Maggie?” Abe said. Then he sighed. “Oh well, I suppose it’s for the best.”
We could’ve used the Darkness’ help, but I agreed with Abe. I felt better knowing that Maggie was somewhere safe.
The roof had an exterior door, but there was no way I was going to use it as an entrance into the building. Too obvious. I turned to Abe.
“Do you think Budgie has enough strength left to lower us to one of the windows?” I figured that since so many Incubi had raced out of the building to attack us, there was almost no one left inside. So if we could break one of the upper-floor windows, we could get inside without the Fata Morgana realizing it.
Abe patted the pterosaur’s leather-skinned neck. “I’m sure he’s recovered sufficiently by now – especially if he can carry us one at a time.”
Russell grinned. “That’s an excellent idea, Audra! Bloodshedder will be able to crawl down the building on her own. She can go first and break the window for us.”
“Great!” I said. “Let’s get–”
I was about to say going, but then the roof door burst open and Quietus stepped out. He was followed by an Incubus I didn’t recognize – a thick, squat, greenish creature with stubby arms and legs covered with wickedly sharp spines. Some kind of cactus-thing, with two black holes for eyes and a wide slit for a mouth.
After the two Incubi, a human-looking woman stepped through the open doorway. It was Dr Kauffman, looking exactly the same as she had when I’d seen her earlier that day. She smiled coolly at us, and although her expression remained professionally neutral, I had the sense that she was amused.
When I saw the next person come through the doorway, I felt both joy and relief. It was Sanderson, and he looked unharmed. I almost called out to him, but then I noted the vacant look on his face, and his dull glassy eyes. I saw then he had a rainbow-colored collar around his neck, but it wasn’t a negator. It was wider and thicker than that, and it was fashioned from solidified M-energy.
And when the next person stepped through the doorway and onto the roof, I wasn’t surprised. But that was only because of my little chat with Deacon Booze. I’d learned all kinds of interesting tidbits from him, such as the fact there was a traitor in the Shadow Watch. I’d even learned his n
ame. Neil Gonnick, the M-gineer Jinx and I had run into on our way to take Quietus to Nod.
Neil smiled. “Hello, Audra. Good to see you again.”
Jinx sighed. “So much for our sneak attack.”
THIRTEEN
But then Jinx brightened.
“Hey, this means I don’t have to wait to bash your heads in! That’s great!”
“You’re not going to bash anything,” Cactus-Face said in a woman’s voice. It took me a second to recognize it as belonging to the receptionist Jinx and I had encountered when we’d first visited Perchance to Dream. It seemed like everyone who’d worked here was an Incubus. I tried to remember her name. Valerie? No, Vivian.
“If you want to get to the Fata Morgana,” she said, “you’ll have to go through me first!”
She started running toward us on her stumpy green legs, flicking her arms and shooting needles toward us as if they were fléchettes. Jinx stepped in front of me to shield me from the worst of the attack, but I still caught a couple needles, one in my shoulder, and another in the back of my hand.
Bloodshedder leaped in front of Russell, planted her feet, and growled at Vivian. Russell half-turned away from her and raised his cape as a protective barrier. Up to now, I’d assumed the cape was only an affectation, part of his Nocturne cover. But the cactus needles bounced off the cloth without penetrating it. I wondered if I could get one for myself, except in gray.
The barrage of needles struck Budgie, and the pterosaur let out a pained squawk. He launched himself into the air, grabbed hold of Abe – who’d caught a few needles himself – and flapping furiously, he quickly gained altitude.
As Vivian came closer, I could sense what Jinx planned to do, so I waited for just the right moment, and then I moved out from behind him to give him room to maneuver. Vivian stopped firing needles as she drew near Jinx. Instead, she spread her arms wide, and it was clear she intended to give him one extremely painful bear hug. But before she could reach him, Jinx stepped to the side, and I saw that the front of his body was covered with cactus needles from head to toe, thin trails of blood trickling from dozens of tiny wounds.
Vivian tried to stop, but she was moving too fast, and her body wasn’t designed for quick course corrections. As she passed Jinx, he swung Cuthbert Junior with a two-handed grip and the sledge struck Vivian on the back with a sickeningly hollow thump. Chunks of cactus flew as a result of the blow, but far more spectacularly, the impact sent Vivian flying over the side of the building. She arced through the air, screaming in rage and frustration, only to land in the liquefied asphalt with a loud kerplunk and disappear beneath the surface.
“Hot damn!” Jinx said. “Hole in one!”
He grinned savagely, and if he was frightening before, seeing him grin like that while bleeding from dozens of wounds from Vivian’s impromptu acupuncture treatment made him look almost demonic.
While we’d been dealing with Vivian, Budgie had continued flying away with Abe.
“Go back!” Abe shouted. “We have to help them!”
But Budgie refused to listen to Abe’s pleas. Just as with Maggie and the Darkness, Budgie was determined to protect his Ideator. Good. I didn’t want Abe to get hurt any more than he already had. He and Budgie had helped us get to this point. We’d take it from here.
Jinx and I turned around to face Dr Kauffman and the others. Russell lowered his cape. He’d caught a cactus needle in his cheek, but that seemed to be the extent of his injuries. He plucked it out and dropped it to the roof. Bloodshedder’s hide was far tougher than Jinx’s, and although a number of needles were embedded in her skin, none appeared to have penetrated very far, and the tiny wounds weren’t bleeding. A quick shake of her body dislodged most of them.
Jinx took in a large breath of air, stuck his thumb in his mouth, and blew. The needles sticking in his flesh popped out and showered down onto the roof. As soon as they were out, the pinpoint wounds began to heal. Like Russell, I removed my needles by hand.
“Vivian always was something of a hothead,” Kauffman said. “Must’ve been the desert climate.”
I took a step toward her, but Quietus flicked his hand toward me, and a shard of darkness flew through the air to thunk into the roof near my feet. I got the message loud and clear, and I stayed where I was.
“Hello, Quietus,” I said. “Or should I say Parker Schulte?”
The assassin didn’t say anything, of course, but he inclined his head.
“It figures,” I said. “Day Aspects are often opposite to Night ones. You don’t speak a word at night–”
“–and you can’t shut the hell up during the day,” Jinx finished.
“He serves the cause in many ways,” Kauffman said.
“Serves?” Russell said. “He’s a hired assassin. He does what he does for pay.”
“True,” Kauffman said. “But we compensate him very well. In all kinds of ways.”
She reached out to stroke Quietus’ arm, and I felt my gorge rise. I did not want to imagine the two of them having sex.
Kauffman went on. “I must say, Russell, I’m surprised to discover that you’re aiding Audra and her… pet.” She glanced at Jinx and curled her upper lip in disdain. Jinx gave her the finger.
Kauffman turned back to Russell. “You had me believing that like Quietus, it was all about the money for you. I must say that I’m impressed. I’m not easy to fool.”
Russell shrugged. “I took a couple acting classes in college.”
“They obviously paid off for you. Kudos.”
Kudos? I thought. Who the hell talks like that?
“So are you an officer of the Shadow Watch like Audra, albeit an undercover one?” Kauffman asked. “Or did they just pay you more than we did?”
“Neither,” Russell said.
“So we have a hero among us?” she said. “How romantic.”
Quietus seemed to be focused on Russell, so I tried taking a step forward to see if he was paying attention.
“Nice try,” Neil said.
He pulled a familiar silver sphere from one of his many pockets. He thumbed the nozzle on the side and hurled it toward us. Yellowish gas began spraying out of the sphere, but just as the toporian grenade reached us, Jinx swung Cuthbert Junior. The hammer’s head hit the sphere with a metallic clang, and the grenade arced away from the rooftop, trailing streams of torporian gas behind it.
“Home run!” Jinx yelled.
There was a sickly-sweet smell in the air like rotting apples, but not enough toporian had been released to do us any harm.
“That was my last grenade,” Neil said. He sighed. “Guess I’ll just have to rely on this.”
He wore a side holster, and from it he drew what I thought at first was a trancer. But then I saw that the pistol’s design was different than Shadow Watch standard issue. Instead of being silver, it was flat black, and it had a thick nozzle resembling a silencer on the end of the barrel.
“This gun also releases torporian gas,” he said, “but in more focused, controlled bursts. I call it a torpion.”
Jinx, Russell, Bloodshedder, and I just looked at him blankly.
“Torpion,” Neil said. “It shoots torporian gas, and it strikes as swift as a scorpion. Tor-pi-on. Get it?”
“That’s a terrible name!” I said.
“Dreadful,” Jinx agreed.
“Sleeper might work better,” I said.
“Not bad,” Jinx said. “How about the Zzzapper?”
“Maybe… the Dozer?”
“The Hibernator?”
“The Slumberizer?”
Neil’s face had turned a bright red during our exchange. “Shut up!” he shouted.
Jinx looked thoughtful for a moment, then he said, “No, that definitely won’t work.”
“Its name is irrelevant,” Kauffman said. “For centuries, the Lords have sought a weapon that would be effective not only on humans, but on Incubi and Ideators as well. With torporian, we now have that weapon.”
“Th
e attack on the Rookery was its first large-scale test,” Neil said. “And it exceeded our expectations. It even worked on Sanderson.”
Neil patted Sanderson’s shoulder, but Sanderson didn’t respond.
I knew then who had deactivated the Rookery’s security system.
“If you have a weapon that can put people to sleep,” I said, “then why kill Damon and Eklips?”
“They were too much of a threat,” Kauffman said.
“They were real officers,” Neil added. “Legends, really. Unlike you and Jinx. You’re not dangerous.” He sneered. “You’re merely annoying.”
Jinx gritted his teeth, the sound like metal screeching on metal. “Why don’t you put the fucking gun down, and I’ll show you how dangerous I am?”
“It doesn’t seem like that much of a weapon to me,” Russell said. “All any of us have to do is hold our breath.”
“Torporian is a very versatile drug,” Kauffman said. “It can be administered orally, as an inhalant–”
Bloodshedder – probably tired of all this talk – chose that moment to spring forward and rushed toward Kauffman. Kauffman showed no reaction as the demon dog bounded toward her. Neither did Quietus. The assassin simply stood motionless as Neil aimed his gun and squeezed the trigger. A stream of yellow gas struck Bloodshedder in the face, and she managed to continue running a couple more feet before her eyes closed and she collapsed, her momentum causing her body to slide until her muzzle almost touched Kauffman’s shoes.
“Or it can be administered topically,” Kauffman said. “And as you can see, it’s extremely fast-acting.”
Bloodshedder wasn’t dead. I could see she was still breathing, but she wasn’t going to be any help for the foreseeable future.
Russell gripped the handle of his rapier more tightly, and his jaw clenched in anger. He started to take a step forward, but then he stopped himself. If Neil could take down Bloodshedder that easily, he could certainly do the same to us. The best we could do right now was to keep Kauffman and Neil talking and wait for some kind of advantage to present itself.
“Why publicize torporian as a regular sleep aid?” I asked. “For that matter, why bother with establishing Perchance to Dream at all?”
