by Bryan Fields
Aerin laughed. “I’m a fully certified Paramedic. Flight-rated too. Taking three or four shifts a week keeps me entertained and out of trouble.” She looked down at Josephine and her smile faded. “Nobody dies in my rig. Ever.”
“Doesn’t a record like that get noticed?”
She nodded. “Yes. When I’m on, my rig gets sent to trauma calls first. Car crashes, gunshot wounds, drug overdoses, you name it. My partners don’t say anything and don’t ask questions.” She looked past me as Rose and Nadia re-entered the kitchen. “What are you three up to now?”
“We’re on a mission from God,” I said.
“Which one?”
I hesitated, but I couldn’t think of a reason not to answer. “Crom. Unless you know someone else who lives at the top of a snow-covered mountain range.”
Aerin thought for a few seconds but shook her head. “There might be, but offhand I don’t know of anyone. What does the Boss want you to do?”
“Steal a car from a Navajo reservation and bring it to Vegas by seven fifteen tomorrow night.” I threw my hands up. “Any idea what your boss would want with a junked car?”
“I’ll ask.” Aerin’s eyes unfocused and the temperature around her dropped like a rock. Snowflakes swirled around our feet and fell, melting, to the floor. Aerin’s eyes cleared and she shook her head. “He’s keeping your mission a secret. You have the knowledge you need to figure it out when you get there. That also means you can’t talk if you’re caught and tortured. It has to be something serious.”
“Oh, well, that’s good. I was afraid he was just sending us out to get coffee and a blueberry scone.” I tried not to sound irritated, but I’m not sure I succeeded. “I hate adventures where the GM wants us to figure out the goal and won’t give us any clues to work from.”
Aerin snorted. “No kidding. My first adventuring company got sent to a haunted, monster-infested ruin once, with orders to return with a pinecone taken from a tree growing in the heart of an old temple.” She sighed and shook her head. “We thought it was some kind of holy relic or something. It took us two months to prepare for that run, and when we finally returned, totally beat to shit, the priest who hired us gave us a ‘good job’ and tossed the pinecone into his fireplace. It was just a damn pinecone the whole time. The priest thought we needed some toughening up, so he decided to push us into something we’d never have done otherwise.”
Nadia paused from arranging her gear bag. “I doubt this is a pinecone run. The stakes are too high. We’ll let you know as soon as we find anything.”
Aerin tried to smile, but her fingers kept tapping against the table. “Let us know when you get there. How are you set for gear? Maybe some of the Houseguard should go with you.”
“Mother, I don’t need the Houseguard babysitting me.” Nadia inspected a glass vial inscribed with a sunburst and tucked it into a folded pair of socks. “We have an adult Dragon with us. Besides, they’re all looking forward to assaulting the Bloodmaiden’s followers with you. None of them want to miss all the fun of storming the castle.”
“We’re storming a castle?” Aerin looked blank for a moment. “Oh, right. Yeah, they would pout. Still…hang on a second.” After making sure Angus was in the front room, she pulled a steel footlocker off her charm bracelet and dug out two dark green cylinders the size of beer cans. “Take these just in case. Angus calls them plasma grenades. I’m not sure what they do, but it has to be something nasty.”
Nadia looked like she’d just been given a handful of dead rats. “Oh, yay, my ovaries will glow in the dark now.”
Rose took them from her. “I can store them safely.” She lifted her shirt up partway and stuffed the grenades into a spot under her armpit. “I’m ready.”
Aerin said, “No, you’re not. Some unfinished business is following you, and you need to deal with it.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed. “What ‘unfinished business’ do you mean?” she snarled.
“I have no idea,” Aerin said. “It’s something personal and the details are none of my concern. But it has the potential to derail this little road trip, so call your mother and get it handled.”
“That’s enough. We’ll talk on the road, we’ll get it handled.” Nadia zipped up her gear bag and tossed me an empty one. “We’ll use this one for trail rations on the way back. Anything else we need?”
Aerin tossed a pinch of dust into the air over us. As it settled, our skin turned concrete grey. It only lasted a few seconds, but it made the hair on my arm stand up. “That will last twelve hours or so, and should stop at least two bullets. Three if they’re small. Oh, and take this…” Aerin pulled a lumpy pearl out of her invisible cloud of stones and handed it to Nadia. “That’s my translator stone. I want that back, young lady. I need it on my duty nights.”
Nadia tossed the stone into the air and it vanished. “I know. I’ll be careful.” She gave Aerin a long hug and whispered, “Thank you, Mother. I love you. And I’ll be careful.” She pulled away and added, “You’ve twinked our gear out enough. Besides, once you all start slaughtering her followers, she’s not going to be paying attention to us.”
Nadia stood between Rose and me, holding her elbows out for us to link arms with her. She gave Aerin a nod and focused on casting her spell.
And then we were in the middle of a junkyard.
Nadia’s landing spot was tucked between two aluminum travel trailers and a row of worked-to-death pickup trucks, all stripped of parts and body panels. They looked like animal bones bleaching around a dried-up waterhole.
Two large dogs that looked to be part Rottweiler ran up, barking and snapping at us. Rose knelt down and said something in Draconic. The dogs fell silent and nosed at her hands. Rose rewarded them with crooning noises and scruffing behind their ears.
The mechanic came around the corner holding a flashlight and a crowbar. He stopped when he saw us and waved the flashlight beam over our faces. “Hmmp.” He tucked the flashlight under his arm long enough to take a pair of jeweler’s screwdrivers out of his mouth and tuck them in his pocket. “Yard’s closed, folks. Come back tomorrow, we find what you need then, yeah?”
I introduced us and said, “We’re here about a car you have over by the back of your office. It’s kind of a mid-fifties land yacht, with big tail fins and an honest-to-God bubble top. If you can sell it to us and maybe help get it drivable by tomorrow morning, I’ll make it worth your while.”
“And I’m Boudreaux Yazzie. People call me Boo, usually because they don’t have enough teeth to pronounce ‘Boudreaux.’” He shook his head. “As nice as you folks are, I gotta’ ask you to leave. I’m only doing this overhaul because my family owns the place and my brother is too drunk to screw a blow-up sheep. Besides, we don’t have a car like that on the lot. I’ve been working here since I turned eight. I think I would have noticed it.”
Nadia stepped forward, charming smile at half-power and feminine wiles on maximum. “It’s urgent that we find this car. If you could let us look around, maybe help us with it, we’d be quite appreciative.”
Boo shook his head and said something in Navajo. “That’s a prayer for the spirits to bless your search, and it’s as much as I can do. You got to leave.”
Nadia snorted. “No, what you said was, ‘There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in the world, but I got four of them right here, thank you God’. Now, how about that car?”
Boo’s jaw dropped. “Um, yeah, I did say that. Um, sorry. But, really, there is no car like that here.” He sighed and shook his head. “Fine, come on. You can see for yourselves.” He led us to the office and around the back of the garage.
A corrugated aluminum awning pierced by green plastic skylights covered the area, sheltering a forty-year-old bottled soda machine, half a dozen lawn chairs around a folding table, a wooden church pew along the garage wall, and a two-foot by five-foot block of Styrofoam supporting a sheepskin dog bed. The German Shepherd sleeping there was thin, his coat gone to gray. He opened one eye to che
ck us out as we passed. I assume he approved, since he sighed and went back to sleep.
The car was sitting exactly as I’d seen it in the vision. The years had taken their toll, even under the shelter. The tires were ruined, the paint was peeling, crazed, or faded, and most of the windows were cracked. The interior was a mass of cracked plastic, split leather, and rotted padding. This did not look hopeful.
Boo sat on one of the lawn chairs and held his hands up. “See? No car. Satisfied? It’s getting late and I have to finish with that carb.”
“I can see it,” I said. “How about you two?”
“Yes.”
“No problem.”
I said, “It’s right here. But if you don’t think it’s real, I guess you don’t mind if we look through it. Go ahead and go back to work; we’ll let you know if we need anything.” I walked to the car and reached for the hood. I hadn’t even touched it when the dog got to his feet and started growling.
“Stop!” Boo stepped forward. “Dude, I’m asking you one more time to leave, now. Just go! It’s…” He looked around and dropped his voice to a whisper. “The car you’re talking about belonged to my great-grandfather. It…” He looked around again, rubbing his hands together. “It vanished in sixty-two, while Granfer Vic was off doing some kind of vision ceremony with his buddies. Someone just stole it, man. Sometime people think they see it out of the corner of their eye, but…it’s gone.”
I felt Rose armor up and start pulling energy into herself for a spell. I stepped away from the car and tripped over a little square thing sticking out of the ground. The dog didn’t lunge for me, so I stood up. “What is this thing sitting in the middle of traffic over here?” I carefully held my hand out for the dog to sniff me. He touched my fingertips with his nose, but didn’t back off.
Boo looked at the ground. “That’s a flagpole holder. Granfer Vic used to fly his code talker flag out there. I think there’s a picture of him and his flag in with all the other family photos in the office. If you want to see it.”
“I’ll try to look later, but for now let’s just see what we can find in the car.”
Nadia said, “I can’t tell how the spell was created, but it’s just a strong Don’t Get Involved aura. We are involved, so it doesn’t work on us.”
“It took a group to create it,” Rose added. “I can feel their energies, but I’ve never encountered this kind of magic before. I didn’t even think Earth-born Humans could do magic, at least not without help.”
I nodded. “Most of us can’t, that’s for sure, but at the moment we have other issues to work on. Boudreaux, the car is there, it’s real, and we need it. We can see it. Can we please just look through it? I have no idea what we need from it, but we need something. I’m just hoping we know it when we see it.”
Rose’s energy level maxed out and she used most of it to increase her strength and muscle density to more Draconic levels. The remainder was more than enough to boost the imperative form to the level of a geas, but she held off casting it. “If you can’t see the car, and no one in your family can, either, we could simply take it and erase your memory of this conversation. That is not our preference. Well, it’s my preference, but for the moment we’re doing this their way.”
“The gentleman will be working with usss…”
The sound of shells being chambered in pump-action shotguns and semi-auto pistols is great for getting your attention. I raised my hands, holding them away from my body, and turned around.
There were only six scarecrows, but the one talking was another of the self-scarred priestesses. I had to look somewhere else—she had whole sections of skin flayed away. Her shotgun was much easier to focus on. She stepped forward and looked at Boo. “Remove the spell or I’ll kill them, and then we’ll go kill your family.”
Nadia snorted. “Is this all you brought? How did you get here, Shadow Step?” She counted up the scarecrows and nodded. “Yeah, Shadow Step. Has to be. You’re Earth-born, so you can’t be using wizardry. You’re using divine blessings, and that’s a big one. You brought as many people with you as you could, and that cost a lot of energy. I think you’re either tapped out or damn close to it. You really want to start a fight when you don’t have shit to work with?”
The priestess started laughing and the scarecrows followed her example. She took her shotgun off Boo and waved it at Nadia. “What are you talking about? We’re the ones with the guns, you stupid bitch!”
Nadia whipped her arm forward as if throwing a bowling ball, and a sphere of purple lightning surrounded the bad guys. Most of them died before they could make a sound, but one or two managed a brief shriek of utter agony before collapsing to the ground. Nadia wiggled her fingers while blowing on the tips. “And I’m the one with the Painweb spell, dumbass.”
Boo looked ready to bolt. “What was that? You…you killed them…”
Nadia said, “Yes, I did, and you’re welcome. That was Painweb, an area-effect direct damage spell that burns out the target’s nerve system from the skin inward to the brain’s pain center. At low power, the pain just knocks the target out. I hit those assholes hard enough to kill a herd of elephants. Any other questions?”
“Yeah. Who are you people?”
I said, “We’re the good guys, Boo. We’re trying to stop a blood demon from gaining enough power and followers to become a goddess. Those guys were some of her worshippers.”
He took in the condition of the bodies and shook his head. “Looks like her church has lousy benefits.”
Boo was still shaken, so I stayed close to him as Rose started searching the bodies. Nadia deployed her Movable Hole and everything but cash, jewelry, and guns went into it. Rose crushed their cell phones and any other electronics they were carrying, just to be safe.
Boo flinched when the first body went into the hole. He turned away and said, “Granfer Vic stayed on with the war department after he came back from Europe. He never told anyone what he was doing. We know he was a code talker, but he got moved all over, not just around the Pacific. Then one day he shows up with this new car and a bunch of new clothes, flashing a lot of money. Retirement bonus, he said. He came to work here, but they say he was always watching people, looking at them like they were up to no good.”
I nodded. “Sounds like he might have had something worth hiding. Did anyone come looking for him, or for the car?”
“I don’t know.” Boo watched Nadia pull the Movable Hole off the ground and shuddered. “My grandma told me never to talk about the car. I used to see it sometimes, but she said it was a magical thing and I shouldn’t talk about it.”
I sighed. “Boo, it’s getting late, and we are short on time. I promise we’ll leave the car with you if we can find whatever we’re looking for. We’re not going to destroy the car, either.”
He nodded. “Well, okay then. How can I help?”
“How fast can you rebuild a car engine?”
Chapter Seventeen
Scrap
The car was such a wreck we decided to search and catalog the contents before thinking about starting any repair work. The most aggressive item I found was a four-foot-long stick needed to hold the trunk open. One end was broken off and whittled down to fit one of the openings on the inside of the trunk, but it was hardly a serious weapon.
Thankfully, once Boo started working with us, the Don’t Get Involved field no longer applied to him. He and I started on the mechanical issues while Rose and Nadia went over the flotsam and jetsam in more detail.
Most of the items in the car were simple pieces of trash. Cigarette boxes, an old roadmap of Bethesda, Maryland, a forgotten soda bottle, and so on. Rose found a hundred-dollar chip from the Sands casino under the back seat and a roll of quarters in the glove box. The trunk yielded a .50 caliber ammo can full of open-end wrenches, screwdrivers, and spare belts for the engine. Someone had added a handle to the L-shaped lug wrench by fitting a wooden dowel over the end and wrapping the whole thing in leather. I suppose you could use
it to klonk someone over the head, but it wasn’t a serious weapon.
Nadia discovered the front passenger seat had a false back. It was locked, but she picked it in under a minute. Inside, we found a steel briefcase secured by a heavy-duty padlock. Rose snapped the lock’s hasp in half using her thumb. The briefcase didn’t want to open, but penetrating oil and Draconic talons triumphed over age, dust, and rust.
For a moment, I’d hoped the answer would be in the case. What we found were Granfer Vic’s retirement papers from the State Department, the title to the car—already signed, and with an undated bill of sale—and an envelope of photos. We took a break to look through the papers, have some coffee, and let Nadia hit us all with a Bender Mender spell. Rose decided to skip the coffee and go out for javelina while the majority of the human population was still asleep.
Most of the photos were portraits of the groups Vic served in during the war. One had twenty guys with bandannas over their faces standing behind a sign that said, “Don’t Ask.” Another picture showed one of the first groups of code talkers, right before the group broke up and went to their assigned posts.
One of the last was Vic standing with his new car. Boo looked it over and said, “It was a concept car in a Detroit auto show and was never intended for sale. Granfer Vic went to the motor company’s head office in Detroit and convinced the right person to let him buy it. He always said it was his power that convinced the company bosses to sell it to him, but I think it was money.”
“Money does seem more likely.” I stood up to stretch and took a look at the family photos Boo had mentioned.
The top row had three Civil War-era photos depicting stoic Native families standing in the desert or next to weathered hogans. The row of photos below that showed two young men, both in World War I uniforms, and then the same two men in civilian clothes, looking older than their years. The next photo was of a dark-haired young man kissing a young woman goodbye in front of a waiting bus. A handwritten note in the upper corner said this was Granfer Vic, off to Marine boot camp. A few wartime pictures of Vic in the South Pacific, always with a guarded expression.
