by Jake Bible
“Don’t you have to vote on it?” the One Guy smirked as much as a doppler face could smirk.
“Head of security,” she countered. “My call. Read the fine print, dumbass. We are now in survival mode, so I’m in charge.”
“I wouldn’t argue with her, dude,” Lassa said.
“Chase?” the One Guy asked.
“Harper’s got the conch,” I said. “You’re in her merciless hands now.”
Here was the thing, though: no matter what the One Guy said, I wasn’t going to believe a word of it. He was lying through his doppler teeth. I’d let Harper interrogate him, but I had no intention of trusting his answers, no matter the questions. The One Guy would never tell us the truth and I knew that.
The trick was to make him think he had us snowed. That way, he’d keep talking and eventually I could stitch the truth together from his many strands of deceit.
“Harp?” I said. “Have at it.”
The One Guy shifted uncomfortably. Despite his pathological need to lie, I did see honest fear on that doppler face. Not much, only hints, but enough to make me wonder if the One Guy’s mind was having a hard time thinking with the doppler’s brain. That hunk of grey matter may not have been firing as fast as he was used to.
“All right, all right,” he said finally. “I’ll lay it out there and maybe we can make a new deal? Simplify things so I get to DC alive?”
“That was the original deal,” Harper said. “What part of your plan don’t we know about?”
“All of it,” the One Guy said. He tried to laugh it off, but none of us was smiling. Harper was downright salivating to kill the guy. “Yes, I thought this attack was the one I set up. The truck is supposed to be ambushed, way down the road from here, and make it look like I had been killed. I wouldn’t be, of course. I’d be off and ready to live a new life as someone else. Away from blood ghasts and government bullshit.”
“You got in over your head with the DEX, huh?” Harper asked. “Boo freaking hoo.”
“No, no, they got in over their heads and have been too stupid to recover,” he said and pointed at the bodies. “They have a mole, you moron. One that is working for the Portal Patriots and ratting out all the CIs. My deal with the DEX was very beneficial until . . .”
“Until CIs started getting ripped open by blood ghasts,” I said.
“Yeah. Until that.”
“Huh. Then answer me this, master planner. Why did you yell at me in the truck to not let the blood ghast get you?”
“That was for show.”
“Nope. Don’t buy it. You don’t do anything simply for show.” Of course, he did. The One Guy was all about the show. “Spill it.”
There was the sound of sirens far off in the distance. For the first time since the attack I realized we weren’t in Asheville anymore. We were in the parking lot of a rural gas station with scorched corpses laying on the pavement and an overturned truck with a huge hole in it.
We were about to have a lot of problems.
“Cliff’s Notes, bitch,” Harper said as her left hand glowed bright blue. “Or I freeze your nuts off then feed them to you like frozen grapes.”
“Damn,” Lassa muttered.
“Okay, okay, I was going to summon a blood ghast and use the cover of that to force Chase to open the Dim box so I could, uh, reconnect with my real body,” the One Guy said. “From there it was all sleight of hand. Doppler dies, I make it look like my real body dies, you guys get away and tell the tale of my demise. I’m free to hide in a tropical paradise that I bought off some two-bit dictator with debt problems. Game over.”
Lassa and Harper glanced at me. They weren’t buying it, either, but knew better than to play their hands and say that out loud. The holes in the One Guy’s story were huge. I was right; that doppler brain was making it hard for the One Guy to pull his usual scumbag mind tricks. Good.
The sirens were getting louder, but that wasn’t the loudest noise. The screeching of tires got our attention and we turned to see a minivan come barreling into the parking lot, a very alarmed Troy at the wheel.
“In! In! In!” he yelled as the side door slid open. “We got ten seconds! Maybe!”
Harper leapt at the One Guy and grabbed his doppler arm, dragging him out of the truck and into the minivan as Lassa scrambled to grab Harper’s weapons crate while I scratched a Dim key off the box then sent it into the space between dimensions. We tumbled into the van as Troy hit the gas and we were gone from the scene before the flashing lights of the local police could be seen in the rear view mirror.
“Lassa!” Harper shouted.
“I got it!” Lassa shouted back.
“Chase!” Harper shouted.
“I got it!” I shouted to her as I held up the Dim key. Then I shoved the key into the One Guy’s face. “You ever want to see your real body again, you’ll tell us every damn thing you know about what’s going on. Am I clear?”
For one second I thought he was going to try to snatch the key from my hand. But he came to his senses, knowing it wouldn’t do him a bit of good, and his eyes flicked towards Harper. All the tension left his doppler body and he closed his eyes.
“Get comfy,” he said. “This is gonna take a while.”
I’m sure it was . . .
18.
THE EXPLANATION didn’t take as long as it could have. Harper’s playing with her goblin sickle may have expedited the exposition.
“You sent the blood ghast after us at the Raven’s Perch,” I said. I kept my voice even and calm despite the fact I wanted to get back to raging pissed and rekindle our scrap from the truck. “All to force our hands to help you.”
“Yes,” the One Guy said.
“What about the first blood ghast?” Harper asked.
“I didn’t send that one,” the One Guy said. “That thing is still loose in Asheville somewhere looking for me.”
“No. I’m talking about the first one,” Harper said as she twirled the sickle around then aimed the tip of the blade at one of the One Guy’s eyes. “The one that killed those kids before the extradimensional happening.”
“What answer lets me keep my eye?” the One Guy replied.
“No promises,” Harper said.
The One Guy shrugged. “Not my eye anyway. Doesn’t matter.” His lip curled up. “Yeah. That was me. I met someone that started showing me . . . things. I didn’t mean for the kids to get ripped apart, but the magic got out of hand and shit happens.”
“That someone that was showing you things? He the one that banished the blood ghast?” Harper asked.
“Yep. Did it without using a body part. Fun fact”—
“Say fun fact again and I take both eyes,” Harper snarled.
“Right. Becalm yourself, Harper. What I was going to tell you all is kobolds are far from the only beings that can be dismembered and used to summon and control blood ghasts.”
“And control? Of course,” I said as I leaned back in my seat. His plan to use a blood ghast to create a false death made a little more sense. Good on him for fixing that hole in his story.
Troy was driving with Lassa riding shotgun. Harper was in the middle seat row with the One Guy. I was in the way back scrunched next to Harper’s weapons crate. I could barely nudge it an inch to give myself more room. Lassa had picked it up like it was a throw pillow. One more of many reasons never to pick a fight with a yeti.
“What’d you want the kobold head for?” I asked. “You’re using some other being’s parts to do your blood ghast dirty work, so why the kobold head?”
“Come on, Chase. You’re a smart guy. Figure it out,” the One Guy said.
“Left or right?” Harper asked.
“No, hold on,” I said. “He can keep his eyes. I can figure this out.”
I wished I’d grabbed a cooler instead of scratching off a key from the One Guy’s Dim box. I was starving and it made my head hurt. But despite the hunger headache, I was still able to think it all through; to think like the One Guy.
I said after a couple of seconds, “That kobold head was a lead you planned to follow. It was part of the royal line that’s being used to summon blood ghasts and kill CIs. You were going to try to trace the head back to the people doing the killing. Reverse engineering the hit, right?”
“There you go,” the One Guy said. “I knew you had the brainpower to connect the dots. It’s why I’ve let you stick around, Chase. You’re resourceful.” He spread his hands and almost lost a finger from Harper’s sickle. “Yikes. Easy there. I was only going to include all of you in the compliment. You may not think it, but I respect Black Box Inc. You found a niche and you own it. That takes guts.”
Flattery that he knew we’d all mentally call bullshit on. He was directing our minds back to loathing him instead of looking for the obvious inconsistencies of his tall tale. He was good. It would take the entire trip of me listening to his BS to be able to see the whole picture, but I was patient, no matter what my external attitude showed. Dealing with the One Guy was a long game.
“What parts?” Harper asked. “What being are you using to summon and control blood ghasts with?”
“Oh, fine, I’ll tell you,” the One Guy said. He eyed the goblin sickle and smiled. “Once you put that away and promise not to attack me when I reveal my little secret.”
She did not put the sickle away.
“Harp,” I said. “He’s contained. You can pull it back out and lop off any body part of his you want if he tries anything.”
Harper slid the goblin sickle inside her jacket and eased back from the One Guy.
“Thank you,” he said and took a theatrical deep breath. “If you want complete control over a blood ghast, not to mention summoning and banishing power with only one hex and body part then you must work for it.”
He pointed a finger at Harper.
“You find a Harper. Or unfortunate children like her,” he continued.
Silence.
A long silence, followed by:
“What?”
“Huh?”
“Dude, that doesn’t make sense.”
“The Stolen,” Troy said. “You guys never heard of the magic the Stolen possess?” He glanced over his shoulder at Harper. “I mean, everyone knows you got one in the company.” He returned his attention to the road. “Plenty of babes out there that kick ass. Not many that kick ass and are a Stolen.”
“Oh! Points to the troll!” the One Guy said and clapped his hands together. “You, my muscled friend, have made my day.”
“Harp? What’s he talking about?” I asked.
“I don’t . . . I don’t know,” Harper admitted and I could tell it pained her to do so.
She’d spent almost her entire childhood as a prisoner of the Fae, forced to train as an assassin until she was exiled by Daphne. I found it very hard to believe she didn’t know what Troy was talking about.
“Harp. Dude,” Lassa said.
Sounded like he didn’t buy it either.
“No. I don’t know,” Harper insisted.
“Troy knows. The One Guy knows. How do you not know?” I asked.
“Do you fucking know?” she shouted at me. “Or you?” She rounded on Lassa.
“Whoa. Cool it, Harp,” Lassa said and held up his hands. He was simultaneously trying to calm her and protect himself in case she went nutso. “I know a lot, but not everything, dude. Yetis are a mountain culture, not a magic culture.”
“And humans are clueless about most everything,” I said. “I know more than most, but cut me a break, Harp.”
“How about you cut me a break, Chase?” she spat at me. The One Guy had hit a nerve, that was for sure. “I was the one taken. I was the one brainwashed and trained then sent packing for no reason that anyone told me about. One day I was the prodigy the next I was back in Asheville, forced to live on the streets with a bunch of wussy ass teens that could barely wipe their butts, let alone protect themselves. You think I don’t wonder about the why every single day of my life?”
The One Guy raised a hand. “May I enlighten you, Harper? I have done my homework. Even called in a favor or two to get the full story. That’s how I learned of the, well, properties of the Stolen. All in trying to unwrap the mysterious enigma of Ms. Harper Kyles.”
“Don’t kill him,” I said as I watched Harper tense even more. The condescension in the One Guy’s voice made me want to kill him too.
“Talk,” Harper said through gritted teeth.
“Children are taken all the time by the faeries and exchanged for changelings,” the One Guy explained. “That explains much of the criminal underworld in human society. You would not believe how many of the more successful crime lords are actually changelings. Of course, most have no idea what they truly are, and in truth, it makes no difference one way or the other.
“Now, let me make something clear, only a small percentage of the children taken to the faerie dimension are the Stolen. There is a difference. Most humans are raised to be slaves and servants for the faerie elite. Workers that can’t fight back because humans are shit at magic by nature and in the faerie dimension? Forget about it.”
“Then who are the Stolen?” Harper asked. Her voice was even and measured. Good for her.
“Oh, those are the special children. The babies sought after across the globe. Only a few come around in every generation. The children that have that spark, that predisposition towards the magical. Left alone they would become more than human. But taken by the faerie, they become the Stolen. Power exponential. Some have become the greatest magic users ever. You’ve probably heard of a few.”
“Daphne got herself one and turned her into a killer instead of a witch or sorceress? Sounds like a waste, pal,” I said.
“Depends on what you want killed,” the One Guy said. “And don’t ask. I don’t know that part. But it has to be god level. At the very least, dragon level.”
“You think Harper can kill a dragon?” Lassa asked. “Dude, I love her like family, but that’s a bit much.”
“I could,” Harper said so quietly that we almost didn’t hear her over the road noise.
“Of course you can,” the One Guy said. “That’s why the Mars Hill dragons don’t worry me. Worst case scenario, we have a Harper in town.”
I studied Harper’s face. After a few seconds she looked directly at me.
“What?” she asked.
“It’s up to you to believe him,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” Harper replied. She glanced at Troy. “He full of it?”
“Sure he is,” Troy said. “But not on this subject. He’s talking straight about what the Stolen are. I can’t say that you’re one for sure, but the One Guy ain’t lying about the Stolen in general.”
“Doesn’t change a thing, Harp,” I said to her. “Being a Stolen. You’re still you.”
“And what a marvelous you she is,” the One Guy said. “I should be panicking right now, but look at the company I’m in. Super powerful Stolen child. A yeti with muscles to spare. A dickhead that has a gift for the Dim.”
“Fuck you, Leonard,” I said.
That sucked the air out of the minivan.
Lassa’s eyes went wide. He looked at me then looked at the One Guy.
“Leonard?” Lassa asked.
“I should kill you for that,” the One Guy said. No lie in that threat.
“Shut up,” Harper said and flicked his nose with her right forefinger. “I’ve known your name for years. Chase told me a long time ago. It isn’t that much of a secret.”
The minivan swerved and began to
slow down.
“Sorry, Troy. Are we distracting you with all this Stolen shit?” I asked.
No response. The minivan continued to slow down.
“Troy? Dude?” Lassa asked.
Troy began to shake and gasp for air.
“Get . . . out,” he hissed. His foot hit the brake and the minivan slid sideways until coming to a jarring halt. “Get . . . out . . . now.”
Then Troy exploded as a blood ghast ripped free from his body.
We got out of the minivan.
19.
WE RAN AS FAST as we could to the cover of the woods that bordered the rural highway. That meant we had to leave Harper’s weapons chest behind. We were armed with only what was on us.
Or in my case, what I could make from the Dim. Which wouldn’t be much more than an icepick if I didn’t get some food soon.
The minivan shook like a bunch of drunk football fans were rocking it from side to side. It was impossible to see what was going on inside since the windows were coated with Troy, but I didn’t have any illusions that the blood ghast would stay contained for long.
“How . . . ?” Harper hissed as she started pulling weapons from her hexed pockets.
“No freaking clue, dude,” Lassa replied, taking a sawed-off shotgun and a machete from her. Only Harper would think to pack a machete. “Poor Troy.”
“Yes, poor Troy,” the One Guy said. “But he’s dead. Time to think of poor us.” He turned and looked at Harper. “May I?”
“Not a fucking chance, asshole,” Harper said as she tucked a .45 into one of my pockets and handed me a protein bar. “All I had on me.”
I wolfed it down. It didn’t do shit for the hole gnawing at my stomach, but it was better than nothing. Harper held out three magazines for the .45.
“Guns won’t help much,” I said, taking the magazines anyway.
“Not against that thing,” Harper said, pointing her chin at the suddenly still minivan. “But someone summoned it. The pistol is for that someone.”
