by Jake Bible
Table of Contents
Praise for Jake Bible
Jake Bible’s titles from Bell Bridge Books
Blood Ghast Blues
Copyright
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Please visit these websites for more information about Jake Bible
About the Author
Praise for Jake Bible
“Black Box Inc. is a hoot and a half from beginning to end. Sometimes complete with actual hoots, because the snarkitude exhibited by all the characters—but especially Chase—is often laugh out loud funny.”
—ReadingReality.net
“Forget clawed mutants and moody men of steel. Jake Bible’s Grotesques are the heroes this world needs. Stone Cold Bastards is outright bloody fun . . . an unashamedly campy, no-holds-barred post-apocalyptic thrill ride that will make you cheer.”
—SciFi and Scary
“[In Stone Cold Bastards] there are moments to break your heart and moments that make you want to get out your guns and fight for humanity.”
—Dena Martin, Outlaw Poet, Goodreads
Jake Bible’s titles from
Bell Bridge Books
Stone Cold Bastards
The Black Box Inc. Series
Black Box Inc.
Blood Ghast Blues
Blood Ghast Blues
by
Jake Bible
Bell Bridge Books
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.
Bell Bridge Books
PO BOX 300921
Memphis, TN 38130
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-860-8
Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-874-5
Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.
Copyright © 2018 by Jake Bible
Published in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
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Cover design: Debra Dixon
Interior design: Hank Smith
Photo/Art credits:
Man (manipulated) © Captblack76 | Dreamstime.com
Background (manipulated) © Unholyvault | Dreamstime.com
:Mgbb:01:
1.
“HEY, MAN, SPARE a hex?” a short, fat, extremely dirty little man asked as I crossed the street in front of the Buncombe County courthouse. “A small one will do. You know, or anything you got on ya.”
“No hexes. Sorry,” I said and walked past him. A second short, fat, extremely dirty little man appeared in my path.
“Come on, man. We know you got a hex on ya,” he said.
A third one appeared next to him.
“We can smell it, man,” the third one said.
Leprechauns. Gambling addicts and always panhandling around Asheville since no one would shoot craps with them without proof of real currency. Leprechaun gold was not real currency.
“You want a hex so you can sell it and go throw bones,” I said and tried to shove past the two men. A fourth and fifth arrived. “Seriously?”
“We smell hexes,” the first leprechaun said as he came around and faced me. “You got one on ya.”
I sighed and pulled my wallet from my pocket. I opened it. “Eight bucks is all I got.”
“The hex!” the leprechauns shouted.
“I don’t have a . . . Oh, you mean this,” I said as I pulled a blade from my other pocket. An apocalypse blade.
The leprechauns flinched, eyed each other, then held up their hands and backed away.
“It’s cool, man,” the first one said. “We don’t want no trouble.”
They winked out as fast as they had appeared and I was alone, standing in the middle of the crosswalk. Someone honked a horn and I flipped them off before moving on.
Spending a weekend in county jail for wrongful imprisonment of a woman I deeply cared about had really put things in perspective. Charges had been dropped almost immediately, since said woman didn’t really want to press charges as much as she wanted me to feel what it was like to be cooped up in a small space against my will. Also, there was the whole being innocent because I was saving her damn life, but still . . .
Having time to be truly alone made a person think through certain priorities. So did a good walk through downtown Asheville. I made my way from the courthouse, took care of a bill that needed adjusting, and continued to the office of Black Box Inc. My office.
I said hi to everyone, took the usual shit from my crew of the omnisexual yeti, the Fae-trained assassin, and the zombie MBA, then sat down and got to work.
The past couple weeks had been Hell, almost literally, and I was ready to get back to the normal business grind of hiding family heirlooms from greedy relatives and tucking away magic cauldrons for safekeeping and away from snooping warlocks. Boring, everyday, regular client stuff.
I should have known that wasn’t going to happen.
The office door opened and Chappy Reginue came falling in. Falling because he’d been pushed by two dopplers into our office.
Chappy was a two-bit hustler piece of scum that pretty much got himself into trouble every damn day of his pitiful life. Not our usual clientele, but he had been in a bit of a jam a couple weeks earlier, right before our other trouble started, and I had helped him out. For a very large fee, of course.
“Lawter, you gotta help me,” he said as he picked himself up. He held out his Dim key. “I need to open this up and get that kobold head back.”
“Sharon?” I asked.
“He has not paid the invoice I sent him,” Sharon said.
“No can do, Chappy,” I replied to the sniveling scumbag. “Once you pay your invoice then I can take that key from you and fetch your box. But we are very strict about not retrieving boxes when there’s an outstanding balance on the account.”
“Get the box,” the dopplers said and moved to walk past the wooden rail that marked the boundary between the reception area and the rest of the office.
They hit a wall. Literally. The railing was hexed. No one but employees of Black Box Inc. could get past the barrier unless we wanted them to.
“Get the box,” they said again.
“No,” I said.
Freaking dopplers. The name comes from doppelgänger, but they don’t look exactly alike the way doppelgängers are supposed to. Which pisses me off because why call them dopplers if they don’t look the same? Close, sure, but not identical. I hate that shit.
They do, however, share a psychic link between their idiot brains. Maybe, and I’m not admitting this is correct, maybe they are called dopplers because their brains are identical in their stupidity and they need two to work through one thought?
Doesn’t matter. They are morons of the highest order and used only as muscle in most dimensions. Can’t imagine what their own dimension is like. Jesus, a whole place of nothing but dopplers. That’s a scary thought.
“Lawter, please, man, you gotta help me,” Chappy said. “They’re going to not kill me.”
“Who is?” I asked.
“The One Guy, man!”
“He’s going to not kill you? He said that?”
“Yes!”
Shit . . . not killing. One Guy was notorious for not killing beings and torturing them forever instead. Rumor had it he knew of a dimension that was basically the physical representation of eternity where the pain could last forever.
“Chappy, listen to me. You, too, dopplers, because I don’t plan on repeating this. I am not fetching your box until you pay your bill.”
The box. A black box. That little favor I did for Chappy was to put a kobold head into a black box made of Dim. That’s what I do. It’s why we’re called Black Box Inc.
I have a special gift, an ability to pull a substance called Dim from the space between dimensions, which is also called the Dim, and then form said Dim from the Dim into basically whatever I want. Boxes are easy to craft and clients pay me to drop valuables inside them then banish the boxes to the Dim where they are completely secure until the client hands me a Dim key and wants their goods retrieved.
The process takes very little time, but does drain me of energy, requiring me to eat a god-awful amount of food.
“Lawter, man, please. I need the box.”
“Pay your bill, Mr. Reginue,” Sharon, the zombie, said. She shivered at having to use his last name. Sometimes Sharon is too business-polite for her own good. Sharon Spaglioni is from a dimension made up almost entirely of the undead, except she’s super smart here on Earth because of all the brains she ate back home. Sharon is our business manager and makes sure i’s are dotted, t’s are crossed, and bills get paid. She is very, very good at her job. “Until you’re paid up, we have nothing to discuss.”
“Will cash be all right?” a man said as he walked into the office.
White suit, white hat, white shoes, black shirt and white tie. Face obscured by a hex that made it all soft and out of focus. Except I knew what he looked like. Or used to look like.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” the One Guy said. “I would like to pay this useless speck of dust’s invoice for him, if I may.”
I looked at Sharon, she shrugged. I looked at Lassa, the seven-foot tall yeti, and Harper, my assassin-trained head of security, but their eyes were on the dopplers, leaving the One Guy to me.
“Huh,” was all I said.
“Is that a yes, Chase?” the One Guy asked. “Huh can have so many different meanings.”
Everyone knows a guy. Harper knows a guy that can make blades forged with dragon fire. Lassa knows a guy that can hook us up with a submarine that withstands depths not in existence on Earth. Sharon knows a guy that keeps us from getting audited by the IRS, which is good since our deductions are unorthodox to say the least.
My guy? The One Guy. Former acquaintance from when I was a kid stuck in a household filled with abuse and meth-addled junkies. I escaped to the streets of Asheville, NC, and lived the life of a homeless teen. Homeless was way better than the “home” I bailed from.
The One Guy would have never amounted to jack shit without the extradimensional happening which turned our world into a brand new playground for every off-world crazy and fairy tale being from other dimensions who could suddenly travel to and interact with our world. That . . .opportunity changed One Guy’s fortune. He figured out how to take advantage of some of the magic that seeped through the wide-open portals. He obscured his face, and being a thug from day one, he also quickly learned how to manipulate lesser intelligent beings that came wandering through those same wide-open portals. Like the dopplers. They are his muscle and he is very good at manipulating them into doing his bidding. Not even sure if he paid the lugs or not. The promise of violence seemed to be payment enough for the shared-thought buffoons.
“That’s a huh that means I need to think for a moment,” I said.
“My money is as good as anyone else’s, right?” He grinned that grin of his, all capped teeth and dead eyes. Even through the hex, that grin and those eyes stood out. It was part of his shtick. “If it isn’t, then maybe you’d do it for old time’s sake? Pretty please?”
The dopplers looked confused. They were used to their boss being a cruel bastard to anyone that crossed him. Pretty please was not computing across that psychic link of theirs.
“Open the box,” they said.
“Relax, boys, and let me chat with my old pal Chase here,” the One Guy said as he stepped closer and placed a hand against the barrier. He snatched it back and shook his palm like he’d touched a hot element. “Ow. Nice hex there. If I did pay Chappy’s bill, would that make me a client? Would I be able to step past this tacky railing?”
“Technically, it might,” Sharon said out of the corner of her rotting mouth. The answer was meant for my ears, but with the office being only one large room, the One Guy easily heard it. “I will need to look up the exact parameters of the specific hex.”
“Excellent,” he said as he reached into his jacket.
Lassa was on his feet and growling at the same time Harper pulled a very large, and I’m not kidding when I say very large, S&W .500 Magnum pistol from a drawer in her desk. Harper Kyles is our head of security and looked the part. Battle scars filled her deep brown face like age lines even though she was only in her twenties. She habitually moved thick, raven black dreadlocks out of her eyes with the tip of her knife.
Having security like Harper is a very good idea when in the line of work we’re in. Not everyone has our best interests at heart. Also, my skills sometimes attract the attention of those that would rather force me to do a job than pay us to do that job. Harper keeps me, and the others, safe from all that crap.
“Money,” the One Guy said as he withdrew a wallet and proceeded to pluck hundred dollar bills one by one from inside it. The wallet had to be hexed because it barely bulged, yet out came bill after bill. “What is the exact amount Chappy owes again? He told me, but you know Chappy, he says a lot and most of it is BS.”
“I didn’t say whether or not we’d let you pay,” I responded. “Still thinking that over, Le”—
“Tut tut, Chase. My name is the One Guy. We all have our nom de plumes. The least you can do is let our past be our past and respect my new position in this quaint mountain town of ours.”
“What happened to old time’s sake? Never mind. Don’t answer. It’d be bullshit anyway. And, no, pal, we don’t all have our nom de plumes. We have actual names and we use them.”
“Is that so? My turn to say huh. I am almost sure that many of the extradimensional beings call you defiler of dimensions.”
“That’s a nickname, assface,” Harper snarled. “And it’s a shitty one. Call him Chase or get the fuck out.”
“What she said, dude,” Lassa added, cracking his huge knuckles as he took a couple of steps towards the railing.
Harper didn’t get up to join him, but her eyes narrowed in that way they do right before she pulls the trigger. S
he was an assassin prodigy until she did something bad and got herself exiled from the Fae mafia and their faerie dimension. Not sure what she did, and despite us being friends since we were young teens forced to live on the streets, she never told me. We all have our secrets.
“Can we be civilized, please?” Sharon asked. She held out her hands and stood. “The One Guy here is simply asking to pay Chappy’s delinquent account. While that may or may not entitle him to client privileges, the Dim box would still belong to Chappy and it would be Chappy’s choice whether or not to open it.”
“Yeah! That!” Chappy nearly shouted. “I choose opening it so the dopplers don’t cram boots in my rear end for eternity.”
“I was not proposing that kind of torture, Chappy, but it is creative,” the One Guy said. “I’ll add that to the list.”
“There’s a list?” Chappy whined.
“A long one.”
“Oh, shit, no, come on!”
“Chappy? Shut up,” I said. “One Guy? Why do you need the kobold head?”
“That is my business,” he replied.
“Make it mine too. Tell me why this kobold head is so damn important and I’ll honestly consider letting you pay Chappy’s debt. Don’t tell me and there is no way that is happening.” I hooked my thumb over my shoulder at Harper and Lassa. “What will happen is a whole lot of suck for your dopplers and probably you too. Understood?”
“Chase, we have history”—
“Stop bringing up our history. Otherwise I’ll remind you of how shitty it was and maybe I’ll start feeling like opening some old wounds. I don’t think either of us wants that.”
“You are right. I agree. It was not pleasant . . . for either of us. But now, we have a chance to put all that behind us and forge a new relationship. A business relationship I hope will be profitable for all parties involved.”
“Not interested if you won’t tell me what the kobold head is all about.”
“Chase, do not be rash,” Sharon said.
