by Jake Bible
“You two all right?” Maaike asked over the walkie.
I unclipped it from my waist and pressed the button, my eyes never leaving Kasper.
“We’re good,” I said. “Having a nice chat with a big friendly giant.”
“Don’t BFG me, hoss,” Kasper said. “Get out of here.”
“We’re being given the all-clear to bail,” I said, still staring at the giant. “Coming back to you.”
“I got him covered,” Maaike said.
“I’m letting you go,” Kasper said. “No need to cover shit, valkyrie.”
“He says”—
“I can hear him from here,” Maaike interrupted.
“Come on,” Harper said. “Let’s do as the nice giant says.”
“The DEX will come for you,” Kasper said. “But you should be able to make it home before they catch up. You’ll have home-field advantage.”
“Thanks,” I said as I and Harper steadily backed away from the giant.
Once out of arm’s reach, in case he changed his mind, we turned and hurried to the flesh wagon. Verber was sitting in the front and he gave us a nod.
“Need me to kill him?” he asked. “I heard his name. I speak it and he’s done for.”
“No. He’s chill,” I said. “But thanks.”
Diane was off to the side of the road, puking her guts out. Black blood spewed from her like a firehose as Lassa rubbed her back. He gave us a yikes look then pointed at the road behind the flesh wagon.
“That’s our ride,” he said, taking a quick step back to keep a particularly gnarly splash from getting on him.
I peered at the headlights hurrying our way and squinted.
“That going to be big enough for all of us?” I asked.
“We’re not going with,” Maaike said from up top, rifle over her shoulder. “We’re going back to Roanoke. From there? Who fucking knows.”
“Violete?” I asked.
“Here,” Violete said, making me jump as she sat up from the front of the wagon. She must have been lying down, resting across Verber’s lap. “We’ll get by. Roanoke is home. We’ll persevere.”
“The DEX will”—
“I am aware of what the DEX will do,” Violete interrupted. “They have tried before, in all their incarnations. We’ll persevere.”
She put extra emphasis on the last word, telling me that the subject was closed.
Our ride drew closer then came to a stop. It looked like a nice sedan, but hard to tell with the glare of the headlights blocking our view. The driver’s door opened and a good-sized troll got out.
“Lassa?” the troll called.
“Here,” Lassa said and gave the back of Diane’s head a quick kiss then looked up at Maaike. “You’ll be fine getting back? I can call another troll.”
“We’ll have the wagon fixed up in seconds,” Maaike said. “Right, Verber?”
“I’m already working on it,” Verber said.
I stared at the flesh wagon, but couldn’t see a difference. I met Maaike’s eyes and she nodded.
“Trust us. It’ll be ready for travel as soon as you’re gone,” she said.
“We ain’t got all night,” the troll driver called.
“Come on,” Lassa said, patting me on the back as he hurried past. “We gotta go, dude.”
“I owe you,” I said to Violete. “We owe you.”
“Yes, Chase Lawter, you do,” she responded as Harper pulled me towards the waiting vehicle. “We will collect.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said.
I gave Maaike one last nod then we were next to the sedan, a black Mercedes, and the troll was opening doors and hurrying us in.
33.
“ASHEVILLE IS ONLY about thirty minutes away,” the troll driver said as the sun came up over the horizon. The bullet and hex-proof glass warped the light slightly, but it was still a nice sight as the orange dawn crested the mountain tops that streamed by as we raced along Interstate 26. “But I’ve been instructed to drop you somewhere else.”
“What?” Lassa snapped, beating the rest of us to the question. He was sitting in the passenger’s seat while Harper and I were in the back. “Dude, not cool. You’re supposed to drop us at our office.”
“I know, I know,” the troll said. He held up his phone to show a text message. “My boss got a call from the DEX. Drop you at this location or our chapter gets into some serious tax issues. Stupid government. Always gotta push the little guys around.”
“How much not to drop us off at that location?” I asked. I was so exhausted I could barely keep my head from lolling back against the seat. But if I let that happen then it would be goodnight, Chase. “We’ll make it worth your while.”
“No, you won’t,” the troll said. “I got specific instructions not to take any deals. They’re waiting.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Not cool,” Lassa repeated. “Way not cool. We’re gonna have some serious problems over this. Total breach of contract, dude.”
“Extenuating circumstances,” the troll replied. “My boss will make it right.” He paused. “If you live. Never know with the DEX . . . .”
“Great,” I said.
My stomach rumbled then clenched with hunger. The cramps were getting worse and worse and it was hard to focus. I turned to Harper and she was busy looking out her window at the landscape rolling by.
“Thoughts?” I asked. “We’re being taken to the belly of the beast.”
“We’ll be fine,” she said and looked over at me. She was smiling. Then she looked up at the driver. “That address you dropping us at in Mars Hill?”
“Yeah,” the troll replied. “Some diner.”
Harper looked at me again and the smile widened.
“Mediation, remember?”
“Mediation for what?” Lassa asked. “The One Guy is gone. We royally screwed the Exiles. Half the DEX was either killed by blood ghasts or by us.”
“They were killed by blood ghasts,” I said. “We killed what they turned into, pal.”
“Not the point, dude,” Lassa replied. “The point is we left a trail of bodies and chaos on an interstate for all the country to see. Redneck militias. Kobold car gangs. Those damn catfish. A flood, dude. There was a flood.”
“Mediation was set up before all that,” Harper said. “Dragons keep their appointments and the DEX knows better than to cancel with dragons. We go, we sit, we listen, we wait for our fate to be decided. It’ll be fast and fair.”
“Dragons,” Lassa said and shook his head. “Not cool, dudes. They take a sniff and don’t like us and we’re burnt bacon. Crispy critters served on toast.”
“Stop talking about food,” I groaned as my stomach growled so loud that the troll driver looked over his shoulder at me.
“You ain’t gonna be sick in my car, are ya?” he asked.
“Nothing in my belly to puke up, pal,” I replied.
“You open the door and throw up on the road if ya gotta,” he said and focused back on driving.
He took the next exit and we wound our way up into the small downtown of Mars Hill. As soon as he found the diner he brought the car to a halt and gave us all an apologetic look. He held up his phone again.
“Boss says no charge,” the troll driver announced like he was doing us a favor. “But ya gotta get out now. Like now. I can’t wait for ya.”
“Thanks, dude,” Lassa said in a tone that was far from thankful. The troll winced. Having Lassa pissed at you cuts right to the heart. “This isn’t over, though.”
“Give me a second,” Harper said as she got out of the car. “Let me scope the area.”
I was in no hurry. It was gonna take a lot of effort to make my legs move.
“We
’re good,” she said as she ducked her head back into the car. “You need help?”
“I got this,” I said as I used sheer willpower to open my door and climb out without falling flat on my face. I stood for a second then looked up and down the street. “Lots of SUVs with tinted windows. Must be a douche convention.”
The door to the diner, which was like every other small town diner in the country, opened and a sunglasses wearing, faceless DEX drone pointed at us and nodded.
“That our invitation? Thanks, pal,” I said as I walked on wobbly legs into the diner with Lassa then Harper right behind.
I heard the squeal of tires and guessed that the troll was outta there. Didn’t blame him. The DEX drone closed the door behind us and blocked our way out by doing that asshole thing all douche drones do. He stood in front of the door with his hands crossed in front of him. Idiot. Like Harper couldn’t Swiss cheese his ass if she wanted to.
“Mr. Lawter,” Ducheré called from the end of a long table that had been set up in the center of the diner. “Come have a seat.”
I would have argued with her, made some smart ass comment, but the table also happened to be loaded with platter after platter of breakfast foods. Scrambled eggs, fried eggs, poached eggs. Bacon, sausage links, sausage patties, country ham. Biscuits, toast, pancakes, waffles. Donuts and muffins. Fresh fruit and pitchers of orange juice. Carafes of coffee at each place setting. No staff was around, so they must have cooked, served and bailed. I couldn’t blame them.
“Who we got here?” I asked, trying to sound cool while keeping myself from drooling down the front of my gore-encrusted shirt. “Care to make introductions?”
“Of course,” Ducheré said.
She was seated at the end of the table, but not the head. At the head was a man dressed in an expensive suit. He had possibly the whitest skin I’d ever seen in my life. It was like white crayon white.
“This is Director Ansel Graille,” Ducheré said without getting up from her seat to the white man’s right. “He runs the DEX.”
“Which one?” I asked. “You gotta favorite faction . . . Graille, is it?”
The man only stared at me with crystal blue eyes. “Sit, Mr. Lawter.”
I took a seat in the chair at the opposite end of the table. He was the head of that side, I was the head of this side. Lassa sat to my left and Harper took the seat at my right.
Between us and the DEX dicks were six elderly folks. Three men and three women. Indiscriminate skin color, eye color, any color, really. The more I looked at them the harder they were to describe.
Dragons.
The reality was dragons were rarely in their massive, scaly lizard forms. There was an old children’s book that came to mind as I tried to focus on facial details but failed. Everyone Knows What A Dragon Looks Like, was the title of the book. The dragon in that was depicted as a kindly, old gentleman that was seeking shelter and food for the night, but was rejected by every villager except for a young boy that swept the streets for a bowl of rice each day. Long story short, the dragon helped the boy because of his kindness.
It was a sweet story. But it was a story and I had no illusions that the dragons seated on either side of the food-laden table were going to smile benevolently at us and give us all kind words of wisdom.
“Edgar will speak for the dragons,” Ducheré said.
“Yes, thank you, Alexandrine,” one of the old men said as he stood and nodded at each end of the table, making eye contact with me for a good few seconds before he addressed the others.
If I concentrated, I could see he had thinning white hair combed carefully over a suntanned scalp. He was pudgy, but not fat, and his hands looked powerful as vices. But that was all he allowed me to focus on before his features started to blur again.
“There is a crisis in this dimension,” Edgar said. “Those that want the truth revealed are fighting those that do not. Many of you work with and for each other. Many work outside the law and system. Many of those systems and laws are none you have an awareness of, even the DEX.”
“We will discuss those details later,” Graille said.
“I think not. They are laws and systems not for you,” Edgar replied. “And do not ask. We are not here for that. What we are here for is to broker a solution to the conflict at hand. How can Black Box Inc. continue to do the work it needs to do while a fractured DEX struggles with its own identity? That is the question.”
“No, I’m sorry, but that is not the question,” Ducheré snapped. “The question is what do we do with Black Box Inc. after their treasonous betrayal. They colluded with the One Guy and look what happened as a result. He is lost in the wind and several miles of public interstate were turned into a war zone that will take us weeks to clean up.”
“Lady, you don’t know the half of what went down,” I said. I stared at the food and shook my head. “I’m sorry, but is this shit for eating or am I being tortured?”
“Please, eat,” one of the other dragons said. She was old, but there were streaks of bright red hair shot throughout the stark white locks that were braided behind her head. That was all I could see of her. “The defiler of dimensions must keep his strength up.”
“Special Agent Ducheré has expressed our position,” Graille said. “Perhaps Mr. Lawter can express his people’s?”
I had already started piling a plate with food, and didn’t stop as Graille glared down the table at me.
“Our position is that the One Guy played us, the DEX played us, some good folks got hurt because of all that, and all we want to do is go home, get cleaned up, and forget all this crap happened so we can run our business,” I said. I shoved a fistful of bacon into my mouth then chewed for a long time before swallowing. “Lassa? Harp? Am I right?”
“You ain’t wrong, dude,” Lassa said.
“Sounds about right,” Harper said, she plucked a donut from a platter and shoved it into her mouth.
“I ain’t wrong and I sound about right,” I said. “That’s our position.”
“Yes, well, that isn’t much of a position,” Edgar said. “But I understand where you are coming from. Unfortunately, reality must intercede and we all have to face the facts of what has happened over the course of the past couple of days.”
He bowed his head then snapped his fingers.
Two older men came from the diner’s kitchen door with something gripped between them.
“Holy shit,” Lassa whispered.
The two men held a blood ghast. They actually were gripping a blood ghast and keeping it controlled. It struggled and hissed and looked all around like it wanted to murder everyone and everything. But it wasn’t going anywhere soon.
Edgar chuckled at the shocked looks on all of our faces. I almost laughed too as I saw Ducheré and Graille squirm in their seats.
“Eight,” Harper whispered to me.
“What?” I whispered back around a mouthful of pancakes.
“We thought there were only six dragons in Mars Hill. Those are two more.”
“Oh. Shit.”
The men brought the blood ghast to the edge of the table closest to the DEX folks. To their credit, they didn’t flee. They even got their squirming under control once it was apparent the blood ghast could not get free.
“The only persons not complicit in the summoning of these abominations are the members of Black Box Inc.,” Edgar continued. “They have been caught in the middle of a battle that began long before the portals in the vortex points opened wide. I will suggest they are allowed to go about their way and business without any governmental repercussions.”
“I think not,” Graille said. A little flush had risen in his cheeks at Edgar’s suggestion. He took a long, slow breath then grinned down the table at me. “Laws are laws and Mr. Lawter’s crew has broken many on their flight
to and from DC. I’m afraid that those I answer to will not allow either him or his cohorts to get off without consequences.”
“I did not say there wouldn’t be consequences,” Edgar countered. “There will be. Mr. Lawter is the defiler of dimensions and he has done something that should not have been done. There will be a reckoning for his actions. I suggested that his company not be penalized by the government. What the Universe brings down on him and his friends is out of all of our control, Mr. Graille. I suggest we get out of the way of that.”
“Still not acceptable,” Graille said. “I’m sorry, Edgar. But Black Box Inc. has to answer for their actions.”
Edgar sighed and started to speak, but the woman next to him gently touched his arm and he sat down. She cleared her throat and slowly stood up. Her knees popped and her back creaked as she struggled to straighten her spine. She finally gave up and rested one hand on the table as she looked at each of us.
Then she waved her hand and the two men removed the blood ghast from the dining room and took the monster back into the kitchen. There was a flash then a shriek and the smell of burning hair wafted out of the door that swung back and forth, back and forth, until it lost its momentum and went still.
“We have been asked to mediate,” the woman said, not offering her name. “We were asked by one of our cousins, a peluda named Violete. She is not of our species or our dimension, but she is related in ways that none of you present can comprehend. We have great respect for Violete and will not dishonor her by giving in to demands from petty men and women that want nothing from this meeting other than their own aggrandizement. You, Ms. Ducheré, agreed to this mediation. Mr. Graille, by attending the mediation, has agreed to the terms as well. Same with Black Box Inc.”
I raised my hand, which was smeared with bacon grease and sausage juices. The woman slowly turned her head and gave me a dead eye stare that caused external body parts to retreat deep inside me. But I kept that hand up until she sighed and nodded.
