Whatever.
The fact was that it didn’t work and here we were with a couple of intruders pointing weapons at us.
Worse, I couldn’t even get word out to Reaper and Brazen that they needed to move with caution when that fifteen minutes was up. Based on my mental clock, I’d guess we had another two or three minutes before they came to mount a rescue attempt. That assumed that they followed my orders precisely, which I doubted would happen.
“So who are you people anyway?” I asked, looking at the female guard.
“Patrons of Keller,” she replied with an air of piety, standing a little straighter. The other guard came to attention, too. “We are his arm of force.”
Creepy.
“Right,” I said. Then, thinking quickly, I added, “Can anyone join up?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“How do you mean?”
I shrugged.
“It’s just that this gig is obviously a wash, since you guys took over this floor like it was nothing.” I then leaned in conspiratorially and put my hand up to my mouth as if I were trying to block Kix and Pecker from hearing my next comment. “And, don’t look now, but it’s not like we hire the cream of the crop here, if you see what I’m saying?”
“Hey,” Kix jeered, “are you talking about us?”
I just gave the guard a ‘see what I mean?’ look and lowered my hand.
The guards glanced at each other for a moment, seemingly confused by the exchange.
“I…uh…” She trailed off.
“What are you doing?” Pecker asked.
“Yeah, what are you doing?” Kix chimed in.
“Trying to get information, you idiots. Now either shut up or play along.”
The air in the room was a bit still for a few moments.
That wouldn’t last though.
I assumed that Reaper and Brazen would be breaking through the door at any moment, but until then I needed to get as much information as I could.
Seeing the guard had said they were from the “Patrons of Keller,” that told me that the chief was right about who was orchestrating this attack. I mean, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out anyway. We had been under attack by Keller for a while now. But it was nice knowing it was actually him this time, and not some other proxy that he’d duped into doing his dirty work.
“Look, I’ve just grown a bit tired of being on the losing side is all.” I sighed for effect. “Story of my life, really.”
The guards looked at each other again. “Huh?”
I turned to Pecker and Kix.
“Aren’t you guys tired of always losing to elite forces like this?” I asked.
“We…what?” replied Kix.
“Yeah,” Pecker announced, lowering his hands. “Now that you mention it, I am tired of it. They’re always well-trained, smarter than us, faster, and better looking, too.” He’d thrown a wink at the female guard. “It would be nice to be on the winning side for once.”
Kix’s eyes were darting all over the place. Finally, he turned to Pecker.
“You, too?” he said with exasperation. “How could you betray the PPD, Pecker?”
“Now, now,” the male guard piped up. “There’s no sense in name-calling.”
“His name is Pecker,” I clarified, pointing at the goblin.
The guard blinked. “Oh.”
“Didn’t I say to play along, Kix?”
“That’s what I’m doing! If we all act like we want to change sides, where will the drama be? We’re trying to stall here, right?”
Well, I’ll be damned.
Every now and then Kix or Brazen would do something impressive. It didn’t happen a lot, but when it did I was often the most shocked person in the room.
“I’m impressed,” I replied slowly, “and, no, we’re trying to get information here.”
“You know how it goes, Kix,” Pecker grunted. “You sign up for the force and they treat you like dirt from day one. Yeah, I know that’s all part of the training program, but it never seems to end, does it?”
“Not really, no,” Kix replied, looking at his feet.
“But think about working with people like these soldiers,” Pecker continued, pointing at the guards. “There’s three of us and two of them, but who has the upper hand? They do. Why? Because they’re elite, that’s why.” He turned his attention back to the guards. “You are elite, right?”
They shared a couple of glances. The male guard was nodding and the female guard was shaking her head. She turned her shaking head into a slow nod.
“Exactly,” confirmed Pecker. “I’m with Piper on this. We should change sides.”
“Great,” I said, clapping my hands. “So, where do we sign up?”
“Uh…” the male guard started. “I…you…well…hmmm.”
“You’ll have to speak with our supervisor, I guess,” the female guard said finally. “He’ll be down in a minute.” She paused. “Actually, shouldn’t he have been here by now?”
“Depends,” the guy replied. “Sometimes the boss clears the first floor and just keeps a skeleton crew there.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I did complain about Harry playing games again, though, so you’d think that would have brought him down.”
“Harry is always joking around,” his counterpart replied in support. “I refused to work with him after the first couple of missions together. He got me in trouble way too many times.”
“Exactly.”
That’s when the doors burst open.
Reaper and Brazen had entered the room.
Chapter 8
Now, you would think that the guards would have realized their predicament and dropped their weapons.
That didn’t happen.
Well, sort of, anyway. The dude wisely dropped his, but the girl we’d been speaking with…no. She must have had some Rambo blood in her too, because she rolled off to the right and came up like a ninja, releasing a round that burst right through Brazen’s arm. Another bullet blew the hat off Reaper’s head as he dived to knock the wearbear to the ground.
I went after her, but Pecker got there first.
It wasn’t pretty.
His backpack went flying, sliding under one of the tables as he grabbed the guard by her jaw and spun her head with such force that the resulting crack rattled my bones.
She hadn’t even had time to screech.
“Damn,” I rasped, staring down at the scene of Pecker’s muscles rippling. “I’m…” I blinked a few times. “Damn.”
He stepped away from her, his eyes moving back from blazing red to their standard yellowish-green. The look on his face was drawn, almost ashamed.
“I’m sorry about that,” he whispered. “She was going to kill Reaper and Brazen, and I couldn’t—”
“That was fucking amazing,” I said, interrupting him. “You don’t have a damn thing to apologize about.”
That’s when Rube Pecker did something I’d never seen him do. He wiped a tear from his eye. In fact, I’d never seen any goblin do that before. In all fairness, though, it wasn’t like I hung around with a lot of goblins.
“I try to control it as best I can,” he fretted as Kix worked on Brazen’s arm while Reaper kept the other guard under his sights, “but when someone I care about is in trouble, it’s almost impossible.”
I stepped over to him and put my hand on his shoulder.
“Seriously, Pecker,” I said, kneeling down to his height, “you did the right thing. Even if you work in the tech department, you’re still on the force, and that means that sometimes you have to get violent. There’s nothing wrong with what you did.”
“Yeah?” he said, wiping his nose and then putting his head on my arm. “It just really bugs me when that happens. It’s like I have no control over it.”
This was awkward. I felt like I was holding that kid from A Christmas Story after he beat the shit out of the town bully.
Except for one thing…
“Anyway,�
�� I said, “you did the right thing.” I looked directly in his eyes. “I also appreciate that you’re upset. Honestly, I do. But if you don’t take your hand off my breast immediately, it’ll be your neck that gets snapped next.”
He gingerly removed his hand.
After smacking him on the back of his head, I turned to the other three.
“Brazen okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just caught my bicep. Stings like fuck, but at least it wasn’t my shooting arm.”
I glanced around. “Good. We’ll get you to Dr. Hale, assuming she’s already been shuffled out.”
“Where’s Agnes?” Reaper asked, his glowing hands pointing threateningly at the second guard. “I don’t see or hear her.”
“She’s fine, Reap,” Pecker answered. “I put her in my backpack, along with a bunch of other stuff.”
With that, Pecker crawled under the table and retrieved his stuff. It had spilled open, but he soon had everything shoved back in it.
“Why can’t I hear her?” Reaper asked.
Pecker looked suddenly uncomfortable.
He even gulped.
“Pecker?” Reaper pressed.
His shoulders slumped. “She asked me to install a connector so she could be part of the conversation.”
“Oh,” Reaper said, calming slightly. “That’s not so bad.”
“Yeah, except that I had to put her under for the procedure,” Pecker continued, “and she hasn’t woken up yet.”
Reaper’s face was seriously crestfallen. He truly loved that turtle.
“Is she going to be all right?”
“Of course she is!” Pecker’s face was defiant. Then it dropped a bit. “I hope so, anyway. I’ve never done the procedure on a turtle before, you know? But she insisted.”
Reaper took in a long, slow breath and released it.
“You should have asked for my permission first,” he asserted.
“That’s what I said,” Pecker retaliated. “Agnes told me that she was old enough to make her own decisions.” He licked his lips. “Actually, her exact words were ‘I am not a child, Pecker. I can make my own damn decisions, thank you very much’.”
Reaper nodded sadly.
“Sounds like something she would say.”
While they were having their fun little chat, I’d taken the liberty of retrieving my gun from the still living guard. Kix got his gun back, too.
Brazen was up on his feet now. He nodded at Pecker in that man way that says ‘I owe you one’ without using any actual words. Pecker’s return nod said ‘ain’t nothin’ but a thing.’
“Right,” I stated, pressing my gun to the guard’s head. “Now, here’s how it’s going to work. I’m going to ask you questions and you’re going to answer them. If you choose not to answer...well, lights out. Clear?”
He nodded with wide eyes.
“How many goons did Keller bring?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. I pressed the gun more firmly against his temple. “I honestly don’t know. But…but…but I’d say around fifty.”
“The officers should be able to handle that,” noted Kix.
“How much magic is involved?” I pushed forward, ignoring Kix’s comment. “I know what Keller brings to the table all on his own, but are there any other mages or wizards with him?”
“Yes,” the guard replied without hesitation. “At least ten, if not more.”
With that admission, I gave Kix a sidelong glance. His prior confidence had diminished greatly.
“Hey, wait a second here,” Pecker spoke up before I could continue my questioning. “How did you guys get in? There’s no portal down here.” He then coughed. “Well, technically, there is one, but it’s been out of commission for years. Since the old war, in fact.”
We all turned as one to the guard. He was slowly nodding, indicating that it was their mode of invasion.
“But how?” Pecker nearly shrieked. “It’s not been used in forever, and it would require…” Our resident goblin turned and looked at me, pointing. “Mole.”
I reached up and ran a hand across my cheek.
“Where?”
Pecker’s eyes went dull.
“Not that kind of mole, Piper,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m saying that Keller had someone on the inside. It’s the only way that the portal could have been powered up.”
“Shit.”
Chapter 9
I’d warned the guard that if we saw another set of bad guys heading our way, he’d be a goner. My hope was it would stop him from informing anyone of his current situation. I’m certain his hope was that there weren’t going to be any other guards patrolling the area at all. Inadvertent or not, his head was on the line.
When we stepped back out into the hallway, I noticed the body of another one of Keller’s goons.
“Supervisor?” I asked.
“Yep,” the guard replied, his face ashen.
“Crushed his head before we busted into Pecker’s office,” noted Brazen.
The misshaped skull of the guy lying on the floor was a testament to how powerful a werebear was, even when in human form.
“Let’s drag him back into the room,” I commanded, grabbing a leg. “We don’t want anyone to stumble upon him while we’re doing our thing.”
Reaper grabbed his other leg and we pulled him into Pecker’s office.
“Piper,” said Kix through the connector when I stepped back out, “maybe it’d be a good idea for me to envenomate this guy and put him into a dream state so we don’t have him along as baggage?”
“Great idea, actually,” I replied. “How long will that take?”
In response, Kix held up his hand and stared at it. Blue ink began to slide up his fingers until his flesh was completely dark. It looked like he’d shoved his hand in a vat of blueberries, except that it was a number of shades deeper.
He reached out and put his fingers on the guard’s neck. An instant later, the guy’s eyes looked heavy. They were barely staying open.
“What should I have him dream about?” Kix asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Make him think he’s fucking a bunch of male goats, for all I care.”
“Don’t do that,” Reaper remarked. “It’s disturbing.”
“Fine, female goats then.”
“That’s not much better.”
“I was only kidding anyway, Reap,” I shot back, wondering if he’d ever catch on to sarcasm.
Brazen looked over at his partner. “Just make the guy think he’s been drinking a lot and it’s time to sleep it off. Stick it in his head that he’ll have one hell of a hangover when he wakes up, too. That way he doesn’t want to wake up anytime soon.”
“Good idea, Brazen,” Kix agreed.
About two minutes later, the guard was groaning in his sleep. He was lying on his side under one of the tables in Pecker’s office. If he was found like this by one of his fellow goons, his fate would have been worse than if we’d just shot him, but those were the risks you took when signing up to work for an evil overlord.
“Right,” I said, not feeling all that happy that things were taking longer than they should have. “Can we go now, please?”
“Where to?” asked Pecker.
“Wherever the portal room is,” I answered. “If it’s still open, we need to shut it down.”
Our friendly neighborhood goblin pushed his way out the door, turned right, and marched purposefully down the hallway.
I had my gun at the ready, as did Kix and Brazen. Reaper’s hands were aglow, too. He wasn’t a fan of using guns, but that was okay as long as his magic was ready to go. Usually it wasn’t, so it was nice to see that he was with the program at this point. That probably had to do with the gravity of the situation, though we’d been neck deep in shit before and he still needed a little nudge to fire up his magical weaponry.
The door to the storage area that Pecker guided us to had multiple guards standing watch. These looked more
gruff than the others we’d dealt with.
“Kix,” I said in broadcast mode, “set me another empiric for ten seconds.”
“Wait a second here,” Pecker broke in. “Set you one for ten seconds? Are you saying you have Shimmer Empirics?”
“I guess,” I replied with a shrug. “Didn’t know what they were called, but they’re pretty nifty.”
“When they work,” Pecker agreed. “The problem is they don’t always work, and when they don’t they just make a loud popping sound and throw smoke up in the air.”
Kix and I shared a couple of shocked looks.
“Was that information in the documentation?”
“Not that I saw,” Kix replied, “but I didn’t exactly have a ton of time to study.”
“It’s in there,” Pecker assured us. “Anyway, you guys might want to be ready, in case this goes bad.”
Fortunately, it didn’t go bad, and this time my launch was perfect. I knew this because all the guards in the area suddenly disappeared.
“I hear footsteps,” Reaper stated.
“Down here,” yelled a woman’s voice. “Quick!”
The footsteps turned into heavy footfalls. Lots of them.
“You five, go that way,” commanded the woman. “Shoot to kill. No survivors. Go, go, go!”
There wasn’t even time to futz with another empiric before the first bullet bounced off the wall near my head.
“Get to the portal room,” I cried. “Now!”
Chapter 10
Fortunately, there was nobody inside the room. Unfortunately, the guards who had been chasing us were doing their damndest to get through the door. Worse, it sounded like more were arriving by the minute.
We had a decent chokepoint to fire at them, but if there were any mages among their numbers, we’d be fucked in no time.
“All right,” I said as the banging and hollering continued, sounding like a swarm of zombies in a bad movie, “we need to get through that mass of people somehow. Any suggestions?”
“Surrender?” offered Kix.
Major Feeding: A Piper & Payne Supernatural Thriller (Netherworld Paranormal Police Department Book 4) Page 3
