by Jake Bible
“Can I get a hug at least?” the One Guy asked. He received a slap across the face by several tentacles. “That’s a no.”
“We load up now,” Maaike said.
“Quick question,” I said. “No gassing up? Plenty of hexes that can make that happen, but they tend to mess with engines. Even on the Gory Gauntlet we gassed up.”
“This ride does not need gas,” Goss said.
He was a large man, thick in the chest and shoulders, and had a tangle of curly, unruly red hair on top of his head. His face was covered in scars. When he grinned at me, the inside of his mouth looked like an endless cavern.
“This ride never needs gas,” Verber said.
He was as big as Goss and was completely bald. Although it looked like he had some fuzz of hair on top. That moved. I tried not to look too closely at it.
I pointed at my own head. “Aren’t headless horsemen supposed to be, uh, headless?”
“Show him,” Maaike said.
I blinked and the truck was no longer a truck, but a massive wagon made up of human bones with a stinking, bloody covering stitched together from human skin. Maggots crawled across every inch of the wagon. Large candles made from the thighs of corpses sputtered and flamed inside.
When I could pull my eyes away from the monstrosity, I turned to see Goss and Verber were indeed headless. They cradled their heads under their left arms. The skin looked like moldy cheese. In their other hands they held long whips that were made from human spines.
Then I blinked and it was a normal truck with two big guys standing by the cab.
“That’ll teach me to ask too many questions,” I said.
“I doubt that,” Harper said and walked to the back of the truck. “Leonard? After you.”
The One Guy ignored the use of his name, nodded and climbed in. No recliners or chairs. Only benches along the walls. The One Guy didn’t take a bench, but sat down cross-legged in the middle of the truck.
Diane kissed Lassa then climbed quickly on top of the truck.
“This should be fun,” Lassa said as he clapped me on the shoulder and walked to the cab. He climbed in and was quickly followed by Goss and Verber.
“Chase,” Violete said. “If you have to, do not hesitate to use the Dim to take the blood ghasts out of the equation. I know you have worries about banishing them, but they can be dealt with later.”
“We’ll see,” I said. “We don’t know we’re going to have a ton of blood ghasts coming for us for sure.”
“Oh, they’re coming,” the One Guy called from inside the truck.
The tone in his voice was pure bait. I didn’t bite and stayed quiet. We were prepared for blood ghasts if they came. If they didn’t, and the One Guy was wrong, then that was a positive. No need to engage when he was obviously just being the One Guy.
Elias and Teddy climbed in. Elias held out a hand and helped Violete inside, leaving me, Harper, and Maaike to stand by the doors. Doors. Not a sliding door, but two side-by-side doors that could be locked, latched, and secured from the inside. Not that doors did much to stop blood ghasts. But it was the thought that counted.
“We live through this and Black Box Inc. will owe the Exiles a good deal,” Maaike said. “Are you truly prepared for a debt like that?”
“As much as you are prepared to risk your lives to gain our indebtedness,” Harper said.
“Lawter?” Maaike asked me. “You’ll bear more of the burden of the debt than anyone. While Stolen aren’t exactly a dime a dozen, they are out there. More of you aren’t.”
“Don’t say shit like that. It only adds to his ego,” Harper said and climbed in.
“I’m cool with the debt,” I said, ignoring Harper’s ego comment. “You seem like good people. I’m going to trust I’m right and when the time comes, the debt you call in is payable without killing me.”
“Might not be.”
“A boy can dream. And at least with your help maybe I’ll live long enough to dream for a while longer.”
I climbed in and Maaike gave me a nod then shut and latched the doors. We could hear her climb up on top then all was quiet.
A walkie squawked and Harper pulled one from her belt. We all had walkies. No need for radio silence since we were expecting to be discovered. Best to stay in communication with the guys up front and the women on top.
“Moving out,” Lassa said over the walkie. “We’ll pick up the package at Exit 118. As long as the One Guy isn’t lying.”
“I’m not,” the One Guy replied from his seat on the floor. “Tell him to look for a 1972 Dodge Charger. Fire engine red. Those will be the guys with the parts.”
The inside of the truck was strung with strands of bare bulbed lights, so it was easy to see the glare he gave me.
“The price I paid to get the parts is one we’ll discuss later,” he said. “The Exiles aren’t the only ones expecting some Dim work down the road.”
“Your problem,” I said and took a seat on one of the benches as the truck jolted and bumped out of the parking lot. “You deal with it.”
“We’ll see about that, Chase.”
“Oh, shut up will ya?” Teddy barked. “You little tiny humans and your little tiny problems. Try being an exiled hellhound and see how your perspective changes!”
He sat on the opposite bench, shotgun across his lap, corner of his lip up in a snarl.
“Eventually you little shits will be dead. Teddy? Nope. Teddy lives forever. An eternity of being Teddy.” He tapped his temple. “You couldn’t handle one day being me.”
“Drop it,” Elias said quietly. “They’ll never understand.”
“Or never want to,” the One Guy said.
Harper punched him so hard that one of his teeth came loose and clattered to the floor next to him. It was a testament to how much of his humanity the One Guy had lost over the years of being so defensively hexed. His entire mouth should have been a mangled mess. Except he only lost a tooth. Just a single tooth. Harper shook her fist and looked at Teddy. After a second the exiled hellhound gave a slight nod and turned his attention away from us.
Not that there was much to look at in the truck. The benches. The lights. The closed ports in the walls. Shotguns and assault rifles hooked in strategic places. Us. That was about all there was to see.
Violete stood swaying with the motion of the truck, her back to all of us as she faced the direction of the cab. I watched her for a long while, but she didn’t budge. Never looked over her shoulder at anything anyone said. Fifteen minutes passed before I got up and went to her side.
“Centuries as an Exile,” I said. “All because you didn’t want to mutilate yourself?”
“There might have been other reasons,” she said without turning to look at me.
“I’m sure there were.” I studied the wall in front of us. “Nice wall.”
“What would you like to ask me, Chase?”
“Your appearance. You don’t hide it. Everyone else hides theirs. Why not you?”
“I don’t have to,” she said, still not looking at me. “People choose what they want to see and not see. I have been on Earth so long that it has become second nature for humanity to look away from who I truly am. No magic involved.”
“When you say you’ve been around for centuries, about how long are we talking, really?”
“Why so curious?”
“I thought I knew a lot about the extradimensional BS that has happened to Earth. Way more than your average bear. But the past couple of months have taught me I don’t know even a small percentage of what’s out there. I doubt I ever will. But, while I’m standing next to the leader of the Exiles . . .”
“You thought you’d ask a few questions.”
“I thought I’d ask a few questions.”
&nb
sp; “I have been around for millennia,” Violete said.
“Millennia? As in plural?”
“As in plural.”
“That’s a lot of centuries.”
“I had already been here a long time when the world was flooded and a certain human refused to let me on his boat.”
She turned and looked at me.
“It was a very big boat and he had room. But he was full of fear. So he barred me from the safety of his hold.”
She looked away again.
“I tormented his people for a very long time after that. Not something I’m proud of. Until I met a young girl that would have been close to a hundred generations removed, but still of his bloodline. I was going to flay her alive and leave her for her parents to mourn over.”
“Okay . . .”
“But she gave me a handful of berries.”
“I like berries. Berries are good.”
She laughed and gave me a side look. “Yes, Chase, berries are good. Would you like me to finish?”
“Sorry.”
“The girl handed me the berries and began to cry. Not because she was scared of me. The complete opposite. Because she saw me for who I was and wanted my help. I knelt next to her and she looked me straight in the face and opened her mouth. Razor sharp teeth lined her gums and her tongue was a shredded mess. Someone had hexed her. It was awful.”
“She needed a monster to help her fight a monster.”
“Yes. Precisely. Despite the fact she had heard the legend of what I was and how much I hated her ancestors, she was willing to ask for my help against someone that scared her even more. All she had in the world was that handful of berries. My wrath had turned her family into not much more than vermin among the civilization that had built up over time.”
“Did you help her?”
“Of course I helped her. What kind of story do you think I’m telling? I helped her completely. I found the man responsible, he was an imp of a man that considered himself wise in the ways of magic, but all he was was a coward that had found a crack in the dimensions and was syphoning off power to use against girls like her. If they refused him then he cursed them. The idiot didn’t even know how to form a hex properly. It was dumb luck when it worked. Horrible luck for the girl.”
“And the man? What’d you do?”
“I spat acid all over him and watched as he screamed and pleaded and melted into a puddle before my eyes. Then I helped the girl as much as I could. I found her a healer that did have more than dumb luck with hexes. When I returned her to her family, I realized that I didn’t have it in me anymore to torment their line. It was exhausting keeping that anger and hatred burning for so many years. It is such a waste of a life to stay mad at those that you perceived to have wronged you. Much better to let the anger fall away and get on with living.”
“She’s talking about us, Chase,” the One Guy said from behind us.
“Yes, Leonard, I figured that out,” I said. I rolled my eyes at Violete. “I did.”
“I know,” she said and patted my arm. “Think about it. No hurry. Don’t be stupid and trust right away. But at some point the feud you two have will become too exhausting to maintain. Don’t let it drag you down so much that you forget to live.”
“Thanks, but I’m good,” I said. “Life ain’t so bad, actually. I’ve got good friends and a job that I like.” I looked about the truck. “Sometimes like.”
All of our walkies squawked.
“Coming up on the handoff,” Lassa announced.
“That means I’m up,” Violete said as Elias opened one of the ports. “Get ready.”
She went to the port and tentacle after tentacle shot outside the truck and returned with a backpack in hand. After ten were piled at her feet, she stepped back and Elias closed the port.
We all stared at the backpacks.
“I’d hate to run into some kobolds right now,” I said. “This wouldn’t be easy to explain.”
28.
MY BEST CALCULATION is we made it about sixty miles before we got hit.
It wasn’t blood ghasts. Not that it was much better.
Goddamn Portal Patriots militia assholes.
“Don’t they know they’re nothing in all of this?” I shouted at the One Guy as the truck was peppered by automatic gunfire. “These guys are pawns, right?”
“Oh, they’re pawns,” the One Guy said, his arms wrapped over his head. “But, have you ever known pawns to be very bright?”
“Fair enough,” I said as I crouch-walked over to where Harper was positioned next to one of the open ports. “What do you see?”
“A bunch of assholes in pickup trucks,” she said.
A bullet ricocheted off the frame of the open port, but Harper didn’t flinch. Goss and Verber insisted that nothing man-made could penetrate their truck. Now, if the militia started using something a little less conventional then it would get interesting.
“Lassa?” I asked over the walkie as I crouch-walked back across the truck to where Elias was standing, shotgun ready. “How we looking?”
“Good question. Hey, beautiful women kicking ass up top? How’s the view?” he asked, shunting my question to those with the better view.
“Eight pickup trucks. Four on one side, four in back,” Maaike said, her voice a crackling mess from the road noise. “Looking like six dipshits per truck, all heavily armed.”
“I can hear that,” I said as the bullets continued to impact the sides of the truck. “Are we taking them out or what?”
“No,” Maaike replied. “We let them fire until they either run out of ammunition or decide to attack with something else. Right now we look like a truck being attacked. I want to keep it that way in case law enforcement not in the know shows up. The DEX will try to keep them back, but there’s always some yahoo in enforcement that has to play Wyatt Earp. Let the militia be Earp’s target, not us.”
“We wait,” Lassa said.
“I can handle that,” I said and clipped the walkie to the front pocket of my jeans.
It was hard not to flinch at every bullet that winged off the side of the truck. Spending one’s teen years on the streets tends to condition you to ducking and covering your head at the sound of gunfire.
Case in point.
“You’re safe,” I said to the One Guy who was busy covering his head with his arms. “If we’re risking the wrath of kobolds by using royal parts to banish blood ghasts then I think you can handle some pot shots by human supremacists.”
“Hardly pot shots,” the One Guy replied. But he did lower his arms. “I’ve had more than my share of hexed bullets come for me, so my instinct is a little more honed than yours.”
“Quite the goddamn assumption,” I said. “And also, tough shit. You chose your life. You want to be kingpin of Asheville? You’re gonna get shot at, hexed bullets or no hexed bullets. People and beings will always be gunning for you.”
He faced me fully and smiled. “Exactly, Chase. Now you see why I was doing what I was doing. It was time to not be gunned at.”
I watched him, looking for the lie. I couldn’t find it. Or not that lie. Plenty of lies on his face, but that statement rang true. At least it rang true enough in his head that he believed his BS.
“Fair enough,” I said. “Except you were sacrificing me and my friends to get away from the life you created. So fuck you and the horse you rode in on, pal.”
“Can we stop with the horse comments?” Elias asked from his spot by a port.
“My bad,” I said.
The truck shook. Hard.
“Should that happen?” I asked, turning to Harper. “Harp?”
She was looking out her port and frowning.
“New players,” she said. “Maybe different militia, bu
t I don’t know. They have cars, not trucks. Doesn’t mean”—
“What kind of cars?” the One Guy asked.
“Little compacts with those fins and flashy lights on the wheels,” Harper said. “Very Tokyo Drift.”
“Shit,” the One Guy said and glanced at the backpacks. “Kobolds. They found us.”
“Well, that’s just goddamn great,” I said and threw up my hands. The truck shook again. “Kobolds do know how to use hexed weapons. This should get interesting.”
“Elias. Teddy. Target the kobolds,” Violete ordered from her spot in the truck. She really wasn’t fazed by any of it.
We heard a high shrieking from above then a loud boom. The truck shook again, but not from any direct impact. It shook from the concussion of whatever went boom.
“Maaike is on it,” Harper said, her head halfway out the port. She ducked back as something blue and bright went whizzing past. “Sort of.”
Another shriek and another boom.
“What is she firing up there?” I asked.
“Lightning,” Violete replied.
“That’s handy,” I said as another crashing boom shook the truck. “Valkyries can throw lightning?”
“Maaike can,” Violete replied. “She stole it from one of her gods and never gave it back. Hard to give up that kind of power.”
“Yeah, I bet. I doubt I could give up using Dim anytime soon.”
My walkie clicked and Maaike’s voice came crackling out of the speaker.
“Lawter? You up for using your Dim?” she asked.
“Sure, but how?” I replied.
“Get close to the doors. Elias? Teddy? Brace him. Goss and Verber will position the truck and I’ll let you know when to open the back doors. Prep a few boxes and get ready to throw.”
“Traps?”
“Yeah. Like you did to Violete’s tail.”
