by Tim Waggoner
A few people laughed. A few very stupid people, for Jinx noted every one of them, and night was approaching fast.
I went on. “We’d consider it a solid if you’d take a look around and see if you can identify the assassin–”
“Or assassins,” Jinx put in.
“–for us. We’ll take it from there.”
“Why should we?” someone asked. “What’s in it for us?”
Before I could answer, Deacon Booze emerged from the back room and came out from behind the bar. He carried a medieval-looking war axe, the metal tempered with multicolored threads of solidified M-energy.
“Ooo, I want one of those,” Jinx said. He was practically drooling.
“You are the last person in existence who should have one,” I said.
“I’ll tell you what’s in it for you,” Deacon called out in a loud voice. “Free drinks for life.”
That raised more than a few eyebrows.
“And,” Deacon added. “I’ll answer one question. Any question – free of charge. I’ll answer it honestly and fully, too. No hints, no half-truths, no omissions.”
The room burst into excited conversation, which quickly turned into mass confusion as Deacon’s patrons began searching whoever was closest to them for weapons.
Russell took off his sunglasses and grinned at me. Have I mentioned that he has a great smile? Well, he does. Especially when he’s using it to show his appreciation for how brilliant I am.
Of course, the frisking swiftly resulted in arguing as friends and acquaintances accused one another of having serious trust issues. This, in turn, led to shouting, which was immediately followed by someone throwing a punch. Things went downhill at warp speed after that.
Deacon walked over to our table, Mordacity following. So far, the fighting hadn’t reached us yet. The Fata Morgana sat and watched the chaos. I expected her to be amused by the violence, but she looked bored.
Deacon sighed. “I just replaced all the tables and chairs last month.”
“Rumor is you have a warehouse filled with spare furniture,” Mordacity said. “For occasions such as this.”
Deacon scowled. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
The Fata Morgana had been quiet for a while, but now she spoke.
“There are your assassins. Two of them. Well done, Audra.”
She inclined her head, and I looked in the direction she’d indicated. Besides Russell – who’d lifted Bloodshedder onto the top of his table so she could bark at anyone who came too close – there were only two other people in the bar who weren’t fighting. One was the man with red dreadlocks, and the other was the woman sitting with him. Both were looking at us, expressions neutral, gazes intense. Then, as if by unspoken signal, they stood and drew hand weapons I’d never seen before. They were shaped somewhat like trancers, but they were black – so black that they seemed to draw in the light around them and swallow it.
Jinx and I pointed our trancers at the two of them…
…and, at that precise instant, the sun set.
* * * * *
The change spread rapidly throughout the bar, and beings who’d appeared to be normal men and women became a variety of other things – emphasis on things.
Night Jinx grinned, holstered his trancer, pulled Cuthbert Junior from the inside pocket of his jacket, and threw himself into the thick of the melee. I had no idea if he intended to go after the assassins or seek to deliver payback to those who’d mocked him earlier. Either way, he swung his sledgehammer back and forth in vicious arcs, sending Incubi flying in all directions.
Deacon Booze now had the head of a pink elephant with long ivory tusks, and he trumpeted his anger, but no one in the bar took any notice. Mordacity had transformed into his bone knight Aspect, complete with sword. I didn’t know where the weapon went when he was in his Day Aspect. I once asked him, but all he’d done was smile enigmatically. The Fata Morgana remained in her human guise, proof that she’d told the truth about her diminished powers. Or proof that she still had her powers and was projecting a hell of a convincing illusion of humanity.
Russell was an Ideator like me, so he didn’t change, but his little dachshund suddenly become a huge demonic hound, furred and scaled, with wicked-looking spikes jutting upward from her tail. She was now so heavy that the table collapsed beneath her. She sprang to her feet instantly, and, like Jinx, launched herself into the fight. Russell drew his M-energy rapier from wherever he’d been hiding it, and started to make his way toward the assassins.
Speaking of the assassins, they had transformed as well. The male had become a lumpy brown creature about seven feet tall. He was roughly human-shaped, although he lacked distinct features. He had no fingers, only thumbs, and his eyes were hardly more than holes, his mouth a broad slash. He still had crimson dreadlocks, only now they looked like they had been formed out of thick red licorice. He wore no clothing, but he had three large dark brown buttons on his chest to suggest a shirt or jacket. I wasn’t sure, but I thought the buttons were formed from huge chocolate chips.
Like the male, the female assassin’s clothes vanished when she changed. She still retained a basic humanoid form, but she was covered in obsidian scales, and her hands and feet had become curved black talons. Her face had assumed a reptilian aspect – narrowed brow, diminished nose, yellow eyes, and sharp ivory teeth. She looked dangerous as hell.
Both assassins still held their strange dark weapons and now they used them. Beams of shadowy light lanced from the gun muzzles – one headed toward me, the other toward Jinx, who was too busy pounding the snot out of a creature that looked like it was made of hundreds of eyeballs to notice. But there were too many people in the way for them to get a clean shot at either of us.
The dreadlocked assassin’s beam struck Lady Grimalkin, a cat-headed woman in a Victorian gown. The energy blast hit her between the shoulder blades, and she yowled in pain. Her body stiffened and she spun around, giving me an excellent view of the fist-sized hole that had been punched all the way through her back and chest. There was no blood, no ragged flesh. The hole’s circumference was smooth and dry, almost as if the black beam had cauterized it.
The reptile woman’s blast was also intercepted by an unfortunate Incubus. Catermolar looked like a giant green caterpillar with a mouthful of oversized, crooked, yellow human teeth. The beam struck the Incubus in the side of the face, and the front half of its head, gigantic teeth and all, vanished. Incubi can take a lot of damage, but whatever the nature of the strange ebon energy, the injuries it dealt were too much for the Incubi to heal. Both Lady Grimalkin and Catermolar went down and stayed down.
“Jinx!” I shouted. “Get the woman’s gun!”
I fired my trancer at the dreadlocked assassin, the beam set on maximum strength. I’m no marksman, but I’m a much better shot than I was when I started out, and I usually hit what I shoot at. But, before the M-energy could strike the assassin, his form blurred and suddenly he was standing next to me. He smashed his dark gun into the side of my head, moving so swiftly that I didn’t have time to try to avoid the blow. Fireworks went off behind my eyes, and the next thing I knew I was looking up at the assassin from my vantage point on the floor.
His mouth was stretched into a smile as he spoke in sing-song.
“Run, run, as fast as you can. You can’t escape me, I’m the Gingerdread Man!”
He let out a maniacal laugh, or at least that’s what I assumed he was attempting to do. It came out sounding more like an asthmatic’s wheezing.
I propped myself up on my elbow, my head spinning and throbbing. I’d lost my grip on my trancer when I fell, but I didn’t see it close by. It must’ve slid away when I dropped it, I thought. Or maybe someone accidentally kicked it away. Not that I’d be able to shoot the damn thing straight right now if I still had it.
“Nice try on the laugh, Cookie-Boy, but you’ve got nothing on my partner. His laugh is so scary that, when you hear it, you’ll pee yourself and then the ur
ine will schlurp right back into your body because it’s too terrified to stay out.”
Maybe I was exaggerating, but not by much. I was stalling for time to get my head together enough to do something other than be an excellent target. At that moment, I wondered how Jinx was doing. Had he managed to disarm the reptilian assassin or did she manage to shoot him with her strange weapon and put one or more fist-sized holes in him? And then, as if the thought was a trigger, a wave of dizziness that had nothing to do with the blow I’d taken to the head came over me, and my vision blurred. When it cleared, I found myself looking into a snarling reptilian face, yellow eyes blazing with hate.
“Not now,” I moaned with Jinx’s voice.
The woman snarled and head-butted me. I felt the blow, but it didn’t hurt much more than if she’d roughly shoved me. I took a couple steps back, more out of surprise than because of the strength of the blow. Still snarling, the woman lunged forward, claws raised to tear me to shreds. I didn’t know what had happened to her weird gun. Presumably Jinx had disarmed her before we’d switched bodies. I didn’t have time to worry about details right then. I had to do what I could to save my partner’s hide.
I was holding Cuthbert Junior in my right hand, and I brought the hammer up to block the assassin’s attack. At least, that’s what I intended to do. But, because I wasn’t used to Jinx’s strength and speed, I ended up hurling Cuthbert Junior toward the ceiling, where the hammer smashed through plaster and became embedded.
The assassin actually paused in her attack to look up at the handle protruding from the ceiling. She then looked at me and sneered.
“Dumbass.”
At that moment I couldn’t disagree with her.
Jinx has all kinds of nasty toys concealed on his person, any one of which would ruin my opponent’s day. But I had no idea where on his body they were stashed, or if they were occupying the same dimensional space that I was at the moment. And, even if I could get my hands on one of his party favors, I’d have no idea how to use it. So I decided to go with what I knew, and I hit the reptile woman in the jaw with a hard right cross, putting every ounce of muscle into the punch that I could. Jinx’s body obeyed me, more or less, and although the punch was less than coordinated, it landed where I wanted. The woman’s head snapped to the side so hard that, if she hadn’t been an Incubus, her neck would’ve snapped. She staggered to the side but managed to stay on her feet. I suddenly had a new respect for Jinx. I thought of him as a chaotic, uncontrollable, one-man wrecking crew, but if he was this strong, the only reason he didn’t kill just about anyone he came up against was because, despite all evidence to the contrary, he actually did know the meaning of restraint.
The assassin’s lower jaw no longer aligned with her upper, and she worked it back and forth until it popped into place. Then, without missing a beat, she came at me with her claws again. I tried to side-step, intending to grab hold of one of her arms as she went past, spin her around, and then throw her – preferably into something nice and hard, such as the nearest wall. But I still didn’t have full control of Jinx’s body, and, instead of simply moving a foot or two to the side, I made a fully-fledged leap. I flew sideways through the air for maybe a dozen feet before I collided with an Incubus who resembled a body builder with the head of a naked mole rat, and we both went down. This time the impact hurt a bit more than getting head-butted by the reptile woman, but not by much. No wonder Jinx was always so willing to rush into danger. I could get used to wearing a body this durable.
I jumped to my feet and spared a second to glance in the direction of my real body, which Jinx currently inhabited. The Gingerdread Man was racing back and forth, trying to get to Jinx, but Mordacity, Russell, Bloodshedder, and Deacon had formed a circle around me – around Jinx, I mean – preventing the assassin from getting to him. Jinx was firing my trancer between his protectors, attempting to strike the speedster, but the assassin was too fast, and each shot missed, the energy beams going wild and striking whoever was unlucky enough to be in their path.
As glad as I was to see my friends protecting my body, it also pissed me off big-time. Did they think I was so helpless that I needed all of them to come to my rescue? And, with the exception of Bloodshedder, they were all male. Talk about being sexist! When this was over, I was going to have to conduct a few attitude-adjustment sessions.
The Fata Morgana still sat at her table, seemingly relaxed and unconcerned for her own safety, despite her supposed reduction in power. Maybe she was so used to being strong that it never occurred to her that she might be in danger. Or maybe at this point she no longer gave a damn. She noticed me looking at her, smiled, and gave me a wink, as if she recognized who I really was inside.
Before I could pursue that line of thought any further, Mole-Rat Head rose to his feet, grabbed hold of my shoulder, and spun me around to face him. His overdeveloped muscles strained the fabric of his black turtleneck and black pants. His head was a pink, wrinkled, ugly thing, and his two protruding front teeth came to sharp points, as if they’d been filed.
He – or maybe it was really a buff she – made a fist and drew it back to throw a punch. Before I could make a conscious move to defend myself, Jinx’s overlarge boutonniere squirted a jet of foul-smelling liquid into the mole rat’s eyes. There was a sizzling sound, followed instantly by the mole rat’s scream. He clapped his hands to his eyes and, still screaming, began stumbling around, knocking into people and tables.
I don’t know how many times I’ve told Jinx not to use acid in his boutonniere, but at that moment I was grateful that he’d ignored me once again.
Over in one corner stood a group of men and women, all of whom were doing their best to stay as far away from the fighting as they could. They were Ideators like me, but, unlike me, none of them had been trained to handle themselves in a fight – especially one involving Incubi. They were smart to stay the hell back, and I knew that, if they’d been able to reach the door, they’d have fled the bar as fast as they could.
I was about to turn around and check on the reptile woman when I felt something sharp rake across my back. The sensation was followed by a mild stinging, more like an itch, really. But when I spun around and saw the reptile woman standing there, blood dripping from the claws on her right hand, I knew I’d sustained a serious wound to my back. Jinx healed swiftly in his Night Aspect, but I realized that I didn’t know just how swiftly. Would I be in danger of passing out from blood loss if I didn’t tend to the wound soon? Or were the furrows the assassin had gouged into Jinx’s flesh already in the process of healing? Not that the assassin intended to give me a chance to deal with my injury.
She grinned, giving me an excellent view of her twin rows of sharp teeth. Then she opened her mouth wide and a sulfurous stink filled the air, and I felt heat on my face.
Shit! She’s a fire-breather!
I lifted one of Jinx’s enormous feet, said a quick prayer to the First Dreamer, and then said, “Go-go Gadget shoe spring!”
A panel on the sole of Jinx’s shoe slid open and a coil of metal shot forward and struck the reptile woman in the chest. She flew backwards, her mouth snapping shut as she did, and there was a muffled whump! as her fire blast was contained. She soared across the room, miraculously not hitting anyone, until her flight terminated when she smashed into a wall. She bounced off, fell to the floor, and lay there, writhing and howling in pain as smoke poured from her mouth. Even if her mouth and throat could withstand ejecting fire, being forced to swallow it as it ignited was a different matter.
I braced myself with my other leg in anticipation of the spring returning to the shoe, and, when it did, I managed to keep my balance. The longer I remained in Jinx’s body, the more I was getting the hang of it. I put my foot back down on the floor and looked up to where Cuthbert Junior was stuck in the ceiling. I was tempted to make a jump for the hammer, but I wasn’t sure I had that much control over Jinx’s body yet, and I feared there was an excellent chance I’d end up overshooting my
mark and getting stuck in the ceiling myself.
I looked back to where the reptile woman had landed, but I didn’t see her. I searched for her, but fighting was still going on throughout the bar, and all the combatants obstructed my vision. An instant later I heard an ear-splitting shriek, and a gust of wind blasted past me, knocking me back a few steps. The door then slammed open with such force that it tore halfway off its hinges. I turned to look at “Audra” and the others and saw no sign of the Gingerdread Man. It seemed he, and most likely his dragonish partner, had beat a hasty retreat.
The fighting among the rest of Wet Dreams’ patrons continued unabated until Deacon Booze trumpeted an elephant call that shook the entire room. It didn’t hurt that he held his war ax over his head at the same time. One by one, the remaining combatants settled down, and, several moments later, the bar was quiet and still. A surprising number of tables and chairs had escaped destruction, and those Incubi who were still conscious – if not altogether unscathed – sat down and looked at Deacon like guilty children who’d just been scolded by an adult. A moment later, the Incubi lying on the floor began to get up, all save Lady Grimalkin and Catermolar. They continued lying where they’d fallen, and I feared they wouldn’t be rising again.
Mordacity sheathed his bone sword in its scabbard and went over to check on them. As he did, Jinx came over to me, still wearing my body. He was chewing a mouthful of something.
“That guy really was made out of cookie,” he said, spraying bits of food as he spoke. “He’s a real wimp about getting bit, though. Then again, considering where I bit him, I suppose I can’t blame him.” He finished chewing and swallowed.
“I cannot believe what you just did with my mouth.”
Now that things had settled down, Russell and Bloodshedder came over to us. Russell’s cape was missing a large section on the left side, and I guessed that he’d narrowly avoided getting killed by the Gingerdread Man’s strange weapon.
