It’s the little things.
Too much weight on one foot to make sure my ribs don’t scream. Going wide around corners to not bump my thumb against them. Shaky Stick being too big, SDR being too small, and having no just right.
Thinking about the Curator. About Val. About Asylum lies. Even about Christmas. Don’t get too cocky, kid. Got cocky. Four, five, six guys with guns? No problem. Val and me handle them no problem. Don’t get too cocky, kid.
I headed down the hallway, checked a couple doors, found them unlocked. Inside one was a bar bathroom. Another looked like a quickie room with a torn up bed, plush carpet, and mirrored ceiling. Bar, strip club, whore house, smuggler ring, whatever this place was . . . it was all disgusting.
Still no sign of Christmas.
Probably a good thing. No teenage girl should have to wonder about this shit. Even today, even with the fully-aware-seen-a-thousand-pornos-by-twelve internet children we keep on popping out into this madhouse of a society. This shit would still scar.
The smell . . . ain’t going to describe it, but you can imagine.
Sex and piss and shit and throw up and then . . . left to mix and match. For months? For years?
It’s the little things.
How can you focus on the little things with that reek sticking to your skin?
I turned around another corner of hallway. I had a feel for the place now. Hallways surrounding the main bar area, each with little rooms connected off of them. Second floor probably had balconies, more rooms for sex or drugs or whatever the occupant wanted for the night—long as they had the coin, right?
One hallway left.
With a big swinging double door on either side directly in the middle. Old time saloon shit. Easy for the waitresses to move in and out with food and drink trays for those desperate enough to sample this place’s potato wedges or buffalo wings. I listened at either door, but heard nothing. Maybe they did all leave.
Maybe we’re too fucking late.
What would I do if Christmas was already gone?
Another call to Vega?
Road trip to Curator territory as some last second Hail Mary?
Admit failure? Get tied up with ESLED and Ceinwyn for real?
I don’t know if I could do that. Making peace with Vega was both smart and adult . . . but admitting failure again so quickly? Admit I’m still some child lost in the one-in-a-mil world yet again?
I pushed through the saloon doors into the kitchen.
I blinked immediately. Here was real light. Here was life too. Three guys sitting at a table drinking some Buds. They had on the same tactical gear and black clothes as before, but no facemasks, no comms on their ears. Two swigged at beer bottles but didn’t stop on my account. The third pointed something gun-like at me. “About time you wandered in here, you noisy bastard,” he growled.
Tasers . . . apparently not a whole lot of metal on them.
Tasers . . . knock your ass out damn quick.
[CLICK]
I came to just in time to feel a gun press up against the back of my head.
Well . . . at least you know they’re still here.
“Tell me: why shouldn’t I have Matrix blow your brains out?” one of the guys asked.
They’d moved me to the bar proper. Unlike the rest of the place it smelt vaguely like sawdust. More lights, big fluorescent stuff. Balconies on the second floor too, just like expected. I glanced up there, searching for shadows but finding none. My head turned around the rest of the room, took in a distinct lack of Valentine Ward tied up next to me.
Well . . . at least the badass ex-girlfriend is still at large.
I was cuffed to a chair, arms behind my back. Coat was still on, SDR still on my finger, Shaky Stick in its holder, and the GOB in my belt loops. They’d taken and laid out the remainder of my artifacts on the bar like captured weapons. My carefully built up anima pool was gone.
Well . . . nah, nevermind. You’re pretty fucked.
Matrix tapped the back of my skull with his pistol. “Answer Terminator’s question.”
I eyed the third guy instead. “Let me guess: Danko?”
Big ass ex-military turned mercenary white guy like all the others in this outfit, he grinned at me. “Kimble.”
I shook my head, trying to keep it down, seem as pacifist and friendly as I could. Given that it’s me . . . it’s not very friendly, but I tried. “Why shouldn’t you shoot me . . .”
“That’s the question,” Terminator said around another swig from his bottle.
“Don’t want to know how I found this place?” I asked.
I started pooling. Five minutes felt like an eternity. Much to Ceinwyn’s disappointment, instead of my mouth getting me killed, it looked like my mouth would have to keep me alive.
“Found this place?” Kimble asked.
But Terminator answered for me after a bit of squinting. “This guy was at the house where we got the kid.”
“What’s with that? Stealing kids?” I prodded. “Seems pretty messed up for fine gentlemen like yourselves. Should be guarding rich folk on yachts or the like, lot more money in it and you don’t earn a boarding pass straight to Hell.”
Terminator nodded behind me and Matrix smacked the butt of his pistol into my ear. I felt blood drip. “Touchy subject?” I pushed some more.
Terminator studied me for a time. I took him for the number two man to the corpusmancer leading this bunch. He motioned to my artifacts on the bar. “You’re like her, a freak?”
“A mancer,” I corrected.
Kimble gave a whistle. “Think they’d pay for him too?”
“Lot more to keep a man under control than a girl,” Matrix said.
“Might be worth more too,” Kimble countered.
Terminator seemed to think both sides over before motioning towards Matrix to holster his weapon. There was no argument once the decision was made. “Don’t think this means you’re going to survive this,” he warned.
“I always plan for death,” I mouthed off, “find it keeps me alive.”
Matrix left the room, came back with three more beers to pass around. He sat down on the same side as the rest. Shaved head, white guy, soldier, yadda, yadda. Really not a lot to differentiate them. Besides the movie character codenames. “I’d offer one, but you look the sort who’d use the opportunity to headbutt me. Then I’d have to kill you. Then we’d be out of money. Not fond of being out of money.”
“Plenty fond of killing people though?”
All three of them chuckled. Terminator nodded at me. “You look like you’ve killed. Not so different from us.”
I shrugged as much as I could. Pool kept growing. Not sure what I’d use it on. Cuffs, of course. Maybe their beer bottles if I could manage it, glass barely takes any anima to break. Still left me up against three trained guys with guns.
Val . . . please be watching.
“Not yet, but I’m not against it morally,” I said, thinking that if I could distract these guys long enough for Val to get into position to burn one of them down . . . well, I might as well claim them as my body count. “Kidnapping girls though . . . against that.”
“Ten million dollars,” Terminator said. “One week of prep, two days for the op. Split across our little group . . . not retirement money, but pretty close. All for one little freak girl.”
“Freak,” I whispered.
“What else should I call your kind?”
“Heh . . . not sure, ‘master’ maybe? Being as how it’s a freak paying you and a freak leading your little group.”
Matrix squinted. “He mean Conan?”
“Oh, you didn’t know,” I shrugged again, using the movement to get a feel on the cuff links. “Yeah, easy to tell a big bad corpusmancer when you fight one. And your boss? Big bad corpusmancer. Not high enough on the ladder to be clued in on that little fact, Termy?”
Kimble spit on the wooden floor. Wasn’t the first time for the floor. Probably wasn’t the hundredth or the thous
andth time neither. If humans had a bodily fluid that floor had felt it drip-drop down. “How many freaks are there then?”
He’d asked his friends, but I answered with an unnerving chuckle, “Thousands upon thousands, Kimble.”
Matrix glared at me. “Can still shoot him.”
“I’m not shooting ten million dollars.”
“If he’s a freak can’t he do that voodoo though? You saw what that chick did with the fireball.”
All three studied me.
I chuckled some more. “If I could do that, you three would already be craters.”
“How’d you find us, anyway? You never answered,” Matrix reminded everyone. He really did seem to be the smartest of the three.
“Know the name Horatio Vega?”
“Should we?” Terminator asked.
“Sounds Mexican,” Kimble helpfully pointed out.
“Runs the Coyote Nation, also my brother-in-law.”
“Coyote Nation?”
“More freaks . . . different kind of freaks than me.”
They seemed disturbed that the world might be more complicated than they’d imagined. “So?”
“So . . . big gangster, told me where you would have gotten your gear from and I made the guy talk.”
“Washington,” Terminator scowled, “I’ll fucking shoot him myself.”
“Shouldn’t trust no black guy in a suit,” Kimble pointed out helpfully yet again. He really did seem to be the stupidest of the three. “Told you all, but . . . didn’t listen.”
Almost there. I planned my moves out in my head. Step by step. But first . . . “Doesn’t really matter though, does it? Girl’s already gone, right?”
Three kidnappers nodded at that. Kimble kept being helpful. “Left with Conan and a few others. Took her to get our pay.”
“The Curator,” I pushed.
No answer, even from Kimble.
“Guess he’s as scary as they say.”
Still nothing.
“Didn’t meet him?”
“I met him,” Terminator finally said. “Man has eyes like a zealot—or a jihadist. Righteous eyes, believes he’s doing God’s work . . . or the Devil’s work given he’s a freak.”
“She’s gone,” I repeated, loud enough so my voice carried. “Seattle I’m betting. Up north.”
Kimble gave a shit-eating grin. “Look on the bright side, you get sold off next and maybe the Curator will let you be roommates.”
There’s a lot of fucked up parts about this thing we call life. But the most fucked up? That assholes like Kimble are the ones who survive shit, while smart and dedicated men like Terminator and Matrix get shit on by Fate. Survival of the fittest? Biggest lie of all. If only . . . if only . . .
Why did Kimble get to survive? Some quality the others lacked? No. Nothing so honorable, nothing so logical. He just happened to be the closest to me. Meant he was mine instead of Val’s . . . and my poor ass doesn’t have no special effects team backing it up.
Plenty of pool now.
“Ya know,” I said, bothering to make a smart ass remark for once, forfeiting all surprise—probably the taser talking, “if you fuckers didn’t have three or four beers into you, you probably would have asked if I was alone.”
All three guys turned to cover the doors, expecting someone to come charging through. Beers or not, their hands went quick to their sidearms too. Only . . . nothing happened. Cuz Val ain’t stupid. Knew me well enough to know that wasn’t my move, just the prelude.
I’m a freak after all.
A mancer.
You can surprise us. But if we have even five minutes to prepare, especially five minutes while you let your guard down drinking a brewski . . .
My move was anima.
I split my pool double, one half a nice clean crack into the middle link of my cuffs. Strong steel, but like most things in life, it only takes one piece fouling up to ruin your day. My hands came free, my right going for the GOB, that thick metal belt at my waist, the other throwing an arc of geo-anima into the air in front of me.
Glass, buttons, and zipper links all popped. Didn’t hurt them much, maybe a cut or two, but it sure kept them busy. Illusion, subterfuge, shock and awe. Not overpowering the kidnappers but outthinking the kidnappers.
Cuz I’m not just a normal freak, am I?
Not just your every day monster in the dark.
I’m the monster at your feet.
Geomancer.
My real move was my artifacts.
Why’s it called a GOB?
Geo Obstruction Belt.
Also . . . it kind of looks a little like a goblin when it’s activated.
The front catch came undone easily enough, followed by a quick struggle to untangle the thing from my belt loops. All three kidnappers shook their hands, judging wounds. One, maybe two seconds. All I needed to finish pulling the GOB out, then it was in my hand, a button depressed, and it got tossed to the floor.
Good ol’ Terminator was fastest on the draw, gun finally coming out of its holster. He glanced at me, just itched to shoot me, but his greed warred with his survival instinct too. Here was another mancer freak, same as the girl, easy millions just sitting there. Ain’t many men around like good ol’ Joker, willing to burn millions just to see the flames.
The GOB activated in a snap, uncoiling and rising off the ground like a real magic trick. Now you see me, now you don’t, only in reverse. Those metal triangular links began flowing with geo-anima, the metal buckle of the ‘belt’ at the heart. One side spun into a slim triangular linked torso and legs, the other into slim triangular linked arms and a head.
It stood maybe four and a half feet tall, all gleaming metal, hollow on the inside, but on the outside a mess of claws and talons and row after row of triangular teeth. My GOB, scary as any horror movie and in the flesh . . . the metal flesh at least. It didn’t move towards anyone, but instead snapped its claws and bit with its teeth, metal scrapping metal. In its throat a trio of triangles ground against each other, making a sound like a dull, broken engine.
Am I a badass Artificer, or what?
One of these days I might even figure out how to make it walk. And actually attack people. Instead of just standing there looking tough. Like a tardflower.
With Terminator, Matrix, and Kimble, or anyone outside of the one-in-a-mil world looking tough and sharp and scary was plenty. They don’t have the knowledge base to think: this actually being a fully functioning golem capable of hiding as a belt would take untold amounts of geo-anima which even the Guild of Artificers wouldn’t waste on something so outlandish, not to mention a captive geo-anima concentrate willing to serve you.
The cocksuckers in the Guild do have golems apparently, but I’ve never seen one. They’re also bulky monstrosities worthy of Frankenstein’s monster, not a belt going badass at a button press. Like all my inventions over the past year: I was faking it. Oh, yeah, baby, right there, that’s the spot, I can’t see straight, you go, big daddy.
Terminator, Matrix, and Kimble didn’t have a clue. So they did what any trained mercenary would do. They shot the shit out of my GOB.
Instead of me.
Instead of Val.
There’s always more anima in the world.
Only one King Henry Price.
Only one Valentine Ward.
Who came bursting through the kitchen double doors right on cue, hands up, eyes shining despite being as black as Hades itself. The kidnappers were lucky they didn’t see her coming. No one should have to see that look on Boomworm’s face. At least I gave them that . . . at least I gave them a quick, sudden death, focused on the GOB and not on the living inferno coming their way.
I reached forward before she could conjure, grabbing Kimble’s shoulder and hauling him backwards. My other hand pushed into the small of his back, my SDR Mark 2 activating off of a measly five-second-pool just in time to knock him out cold. Three threats to two threats. Saving his miserable life, but more importantly: saving Val fro
m having to kill him.
I was expecting a wash of fire in front of my face, burning Terminator, Matrix, and my now shot up GOB from existence. Heat and death, all the things needed for a good witch burning after Sunday mass. Or another Fireball of Doom, front row seat to the circus this time, kid! Don’t pet the tigers!
Val spread both palms at her two targets and this intense concentrated beam of pure heat jumped out of each, more like lightning than fire. Only, whitish-pink, bright enough to leave an afterimage long after its passing. It shot out, almost curled out of control, twisting, barely contained as it made its way across the bar floor.
An inch of death, from the center of Val’s palms right toward kidnapper hearts. Flash, sizzle, gone, followed by thumping bodies with precise holes in their chests. Some real Lost Ark of the Covenant shit.
Everything went still.
My GOB dropped back into a belt, bullet holes through the links.
Kimble moaned at my feet.
My eyes blinked, trying to see and unsee both.
“You’re right,” Val said into the silence, breathing heavily and unable to take her eyes off of the bodies, “splitting a pool does come naturally once you try it.”
I looked at her, really looked at her. Saw how much it hurt her to do it, but she’d still done it anyway. Saved me. Girl saving the guy after his stupid ass got captured by the thugs. Fucking backwards to every story ever told.
“Why’d you save him? Does he know something? Does he know where Christmas is?” Val asked.
She swayed on her feet. Val’s something special, probably special enough that us mortals get annoyed about it, but she’s not invincible. Rising to those heights . . . got some Icarus in her, gives those angel wings a mighty singe every time she flies too high.
I went to her, put an arm around her. “No Christmas here,” I said bluntly, just ripping the band-aid off. “She’s already gone . . . and this idiot don’t know a thing outside of it really being this Curator guy.”
She finally collapsed from the weight of it all. Killing, worrying, staying strong. Smashed from the sky by the hand of Fate or God or a cruel roll of dice.
But I was there to catch her. Keep her on her feet. She grabbed at me, burying her face in my shoulder for a bit of agony. “What are we going to do now?” she whispered, not quite hysterical but out of options and ideas both.
The Foul Mouth and the Troubled Boomworm (The King Henry Tapes) Page 20
