by S T Branton
All right. I was ready to wrap this up. It was time to roll credits.
Checking to make sure all the humans were safe, I grabbed the nearest shard of wood and threw it at the troll. It had no chance of hurting him, but it achieved the distraction I’d intended. Time to go all in.
Jumping onto a nearby table, I threw myself through the air at him, spreading myself out like a spider monkey. My foot caught him under the chin as I flipped backward. The force of the blow sent him reeling, and I heard his head crack against the wall.
I landed in a crouch, then dove forward, swiping a pint out of the hand of a confused woman. I quickly downed the drink, as much for badass points as for the beer itself, then smashed the empty glass over the troll’s head. That seemed to do the trick, and he slowly went limp.
Part of me wanted to give him another whack for good measure, but I figured that might be overdoing it, considering I was fairly certain at least twenty people had already called the police. There wasn’t enough creativity in me to fancy-talk my way out of this if they showed up. I needed to get out of here now.
Scrambling off him, I grabbed the troll by his wrists and started dragging him across the floor. His head smacked into a chair, and I grimaced. Two men in front of me rushed to move a table out of the way and I flashed them a smile.
“Thank you so much. That’s sweet of you. I had a lovely evening. Goodnight, everyone. Tip your waiters.”
I dragged the troll to the bar door against a backdrop of shocked whispers. A woman caught my eye, and I glanced back at her. She stared at me like she knew me for a fraction of a second, but one of my new fans stepped in front of her to cheer me on, and I lost sight of her.
Pushing away the strange feeling, I yanked the troll through the door and out into the night. I waited for the door to swing closed behind me to roll him off the curb into a puddle. The neon light reflection rippled as the troll sputtered, and I planted a kick in his side to force his face out of the water. No need to add troll drowning to my charges.
“Can I help you get him in a cab?” a man asked as he stepped outside.
My arms flung around the troll in another fake hug. This was awkward family photo circa the 1980s realness, and I hoped it would convince the Samaritan-wannabe for a few more seconds. Sirens rang out in the distance. I blew a stream of air at a chunk of hair that had fallen in front of my eyes. It promptly dropped right back in place.
“You know, I’m good. But thanks so much. Tell the bartender I’ll see him Wednesday. Two crunchy and a soft. All the beans. He’ll know what it means.”
I gave him a finger-wave. That finally seemed to convince him, and he nodded before reluctantly stepping back inside. The troll plopped out of my arms back into the puddle. A soft groan spilled out of him.
Now to figure out what the hell to do with him.
Chapter Eleven
“What am I supposed to do with you now?” I asked the troll.
He let out a garbled groan, and I nudged him with my toe.
“It was a rhetorical question.”
I was in a moral conundrum. A big part of me wanted to just continue with the direction I had already been going during the fight and kill the thing.
If I did it fast enough, no one would notice and I could slip away, letting whoever eventually found him deal with it. But the annoying little Jiminy Cricket part of my brain stopped me. It’s not like I hadn’t disposed of creatures before, and I’d certainly been there with Solon when he did what he needed to do to make sure we both survived the prison. He could wipe out creeps with the best of them.
But that was in there. In The Deep. Out here, breathing in the earthly air, it didn’t feel right to do the exact thing I had been wrongfully accused of. It’s not like I had seen the troll do anything bad. And Solon told me that there were plenty of decent Farsiders, although he was the only one I’d ever met. This troll didn’t seem decent, but did I know enough to off him?
Weighing the ethical pros and cons was wasting time, so I came up with an alternative.
If I tied the troll up in some inconspicuous place, it would ensure he didn’t lash out at the humans again, while also keeping him contained. As much effort as went into not making a huge scene in the bar, the truth was it had been a dumpster fire of fairly epic proportions, and that wouldn’t slide by.
When something like that happened, there was no way the Guild wouldn’t hear about it. They didn’t automatically know what was happening or what crimes were committed, but Farsiders were everywhere. And they sure loved to gossip.
The troll stood out to me in the bar, but if I’d taken the time to look around, there probably would have been more. That meant they knew what was going on and would have alerted the Guild. I looked around and spotted an option. The big dented van a few parking spots down was bound to have what I needed.
It didn’t take long to pop the lock on the back and open the double doors. Most of the lessons I’d need to carry me through my return to The Near came from Solon, but there were a few that were leftovers from my time before prison. One was that big ugly vans like this always had a tangle of bungees or extension cords in the back. Sometimes both.
Grabbing a couple of each, I rushed back to the troll. He was still sprawled out on the ground and I grabbed his arms again, using the same technique from the bar to drag him a few feet down the sidewalk and into a nearby alley. I made quick work of binding his wrists and ankles, then attached them together to make it even harder for him to escape should he spring back to perkiness anytime soon.
It almost wasn’t quickly enough. As I was tying the last of the knots, Splinter started chittering in my pocket. I ducked behind a dumpster as muffled voices announced the arrival of two figures in the alley.
I didn’t have to be closer to them to know they were agents dispatched by the Guild. What I could see from my vantage point was reassuring. Well, as reassuring as anything could be considering the situation. The Guild could have sent out some of their more ruthless agents. Instead, I recognized Philosophers Ficino the Third and Rozanov the Ninth, the bumbling buddy cops of The Heights.
I had seen them in action several times in The Deep, from a distance. I’d been lucky enough to stay out of their hair. Not that they were the worst I’d seen. Far from the high-level thinking and astonishing power of some other wizards, these two represented far less of a risk than most. The lack of intellect did nothing for the confidence of these wizards, and they both puffed out their chests as they prepared to handle the issue in front of them.
“Who do you think tied him up?” Ficino asked.
Rozanov glared at him.
“Who cares? This makes it easier on us.”
“I don’t know. It seems strange to get here all ready to have to take down a rogue troll only to find it already tied up and out like a light.”
“The tip the Guild got said the troll was fighting with someone in the bar,” Rozanov said. “Probably one of them tied him up.
“That means Nearlings must have seen what happened. We need to take care of that.”
“Fights happen in Near bars all the time,” Rozanov dismissed.
“Not like this. It was apparently quite the performance.”
I couldn’t help feeling a little proud about that. It would have been better to get through the fight without causing a ruckus, but the fact that my skills caught the attention of a Farling felt like a compliment. But I couldn’t let that soften me.
Not knowing which of the seemingly unassuming onlookers were Farfolk was disconcerting. I’d have to be more careful and aware of my surroundings moving forward. Disguised Farlings couldn’t be trusted, and I had to protect myself.
Rozanov kicked the troll’s boot.
“Go ahead and call in a crowd control team. They can take care of the Nearsiders in the bar while we get this lump out of the way.”
Ficino crossed his hands in an intricate motion. I knew what that meant—a spell designed to call in reinforcements. They�
��d arrive in a matter of moments, infiltrate the bar, and wipe the memories of everyone there. It was one of the Philosopher Guild’s many methods of maintaining secrecy.
I’d seen it happen during my time in The Deep and it was even more horrifying than it sounded. It was possible not to cause too much damage, and those who only had their minds wiped once or twice could usually get by all right. But some Philosophers took joy in chipping away at people by siphoning away their core memories.
Rather than choosing a few minutes or a couple of days they wanted to selectively remove, they’d wipe away huge chunks of time, digging into the base of the person until they started forgetting basic elements of themselves.
The worst were the ones whose memory of The Deep and why they were there was taken away. They’d come out of the memory removal oblivious to what was happening to them. The wizards let them stumble around, terrified, until they figured out what was going on and started to adapt. Then they’d put them through it again. It was Groundhog Day from hell.
The two Philosophers stepped up closer to the troll and took turns nudging him with their boots. This turned into repeated kicking before they untied him. Even a pair of trained Philosophers wouldn’t fight a troll if they didn’t have to.
They’d loosened up his feet and were trying to navigate the complex series of knots that attached his hands when the troll started waking up. At first, he only made a few grumbling sounds. They could as easily have been him thinking he was having a heart-to-heart with his teddy bear. Then the sounds started turning into discernible words.
“Stupid human bitch,” he muttered.
It wasn’t the most pleasant thing to hear from someone when they first woke up, but it at least verified I hadn’t scrambled his brain too much.
“Did he say human?” Rozanov asked.
Ficino the Third’s eyes widened.
“You don’t think he’s talking about…” he started, but his voice trailed off.
“What? Sara Slick?” Rozanov scoffed. “No way. She’s only some nonsense the Farsiders use to scare kids.”
“I don’t know, man. The Guild is all up in arms about something tonight. And the boss told us to keep a lookout for a badass human-looking chick.”
“The boss doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Think about it. There’s no way some Nearsider did enough to get sent to The Deep. And then escape? Bullshit. No one has ever escaped from The Deep. Especially not some little human woman. She’s nothing more than a boogeyman,” Rozanov told him.
“But you heard him. He said human,” Ficino insisted.
“The drunk ass troll doesn’t know shit. Let’s get this cleaned up.”
I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing. The interaction was one of the most amusing things I’d heard in as long as I could remember. These two men were talking about me like I was what lurked in their nightmares and they had to put on a macho front to avoid admitting they were afraid. Of me. Little rag-wearing, glider rat-carrying, taco-loving, goblin eyeball-stealing Sara Slick.
But it also meant that the Guild had alerted their agents to my escape. Ficino and Rozanov might be too dumb to believe it, but that wouldn’t hold for long. What I had to do next would be more challenging than I had imagined.
The whole incident with the troll only made it harder for me to stay out of their grasp. The Guild would have everyone out hunting for me, and every step of what I faced would draw more attention to me.
The thought that I could ignore it all went through my mind. Maybe Burne was merely some blitzed out monster. Maybe this Hobbes figure and his death cult didn’t really exist. Maybe I could cut my losses and run. It might not last forever, but I could enjoy the time I had free, maybe laying out on the beach eating tacos.
But that dream felt like shit. Tacos or no tacos, escaping from The Deep wasn’t only about regaining my freedom. There was no way I’d be able to live with myself if something bad happened because I wanted to relax. Even if I was putting myself right in the line of danger and risking getting caught, I had to do something.
I had to save the world.
Chapter Twelve
I slipped away from the bar easily enough since the Philosophers had their hands full anyway and made my way deeper into the city. If my dancing partner wasn’t lying, and if Burne hadn’t been full of shit, the Harbingers’ base was several miles away.
The city was quiet, and I moved quickly, trying my best not to get lost in the maze of alleys and dark roads. Burne’s words echoed through my mind as I took in the closed storefronts and peaceful homes.
The war is beginning!
Not here, it wouldn’t. Not if I could help it. My chance at a normal life might have ended, but I could still fight for my family to have one.
I could still hear his voice as I pushed through a gap in the rusty gate of what looked like an abandoned warehouse. Essentially an ugly pale concrete rectangle plopped down in the middle of a parking lot, it reminded me of my brief days of Lego engineering. My imagination conjured a glorious castle. I ended up with a rectangle. A rustic woodland cabin. Rectangle. Impressive city skyscraper. Slightly taller rectangle.
I entered the building through an unmarked door in the back and crouched behind a wall about as inspired as the outside of the building. I waited, the tension building in my stomach as the seconds ticked by. No alarms, no guards coming to arrest me.
The details Burne provided me about the hideout weren’t much, but it was enough to assure me as I stood there in the dust and dirt of the forgotten warehouse floor that I’d found my way to it. Or at least close by. But something didn’t feel quite right.
Standing next to the wall and not being able to see anything wasn’t getting me anywhere. Bracing myself for a situation that could seriously suck if it went wrong, I eased myself further into the room and the sound of voices immediately struck me. I fought the panic rising in me and made for a pile of discarded metal.
From where I hunched behind it, I could barely see two figures. One was dressed in a long red robe that definitely made me think he had bought it at some discount Cults-R-Us store. He stood stone-like in the middle of the room, his face concealed in the darkness of his hood.
The other was a young man with a thick bush of red hair. Instead of a robe, he dressed in jeans and a tattered flannel, but there was no mistaking the pointed ears of a Philosopher. The redhead Philosopher gestured wildly as he spoke while the robed figure stayed eerily steady. Finally, one robed arm moved, a single sharp gesture that shut the young man up.
He nodded, his red hair bobbing, and then he ran off into the shadow of the factory.
Which left only one robed man and me.
I didn’t know what to expect here tonight. Burne’s blathering made it seem like I’d be coming up against an army, but I could probably take down one weirdo in a robe. I started to move, when a sound behind me made my heart jump into my throat.
I whipped around, grabbed the person behind me, and slammed them up against the wall.
“Sara? Holy hell, it is you.”
Chapter Thirteen
The voice clicked in my mind before the face did. Jumbled memories from another lifetime rushed through me. When they finally meshed after a few seconds, I realized I was staring into the shocked, bewildered face of my best friend Alejandra. At least, maybe my best friend. It had been ten years since we’d seen each other, but that was all I had to go with, so I was sticking to it.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” she said.
In that moment, I wasn’t really believing it was me, either.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “How did you find me?”
“I was in the bar.” As soon as she said it, the memory of her face among the other patrons resurfaced. It had been so familiar. Now I knew why. “I snuck out after you and followed you here. What the hell is going on? Where have you been?”
Before I had a chance to try to catch her up or figure out what I was going to do to get her out
of the serious danger she’d wandered into, a set of huge bay doors opened. My eyes darted to the shadowy corner where the robed figure had been standing, but I couldn’t see him anymore. In the time I’d been paying attention to Ally, something had changed. The grinding of metal and roar of an engine announced a truck rolling through the warehouse toward the large open door.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered. “I was right.”
“What?” Ally asked. “What were you right about? What’s going on? Who is that?”
“The Harbingers,” I said. “You need to go. Get out of here.”
“Who are the Harbingers?” Ally asked.
I made sure the locket was secure around my neck. It didn’t have much charge left, but it would have to do.
“Ally, you need to go. Now. Seriously. You need to leave.”
I took a step down the short corridor leading into the open warehouse, and she followed.
“Sara, what’s going on? What are Harbingers?”
I sighed, trying to find an answer that would get her to shut up. I tried the truth.
“The Harbingers are radicalized followers of Hobbes the Twenty-third. They are essentially a cult who will do his bidding no matter what, which right now means starting a war to bring down the Pax Philosophia and go to war with The Near,” I told her as fast as I could get the words out of my mouth.
Her large dark eyes blinked.
“I don’t know what any of those words meant.”
“Yeah and unfortunately now is not the time for a seminar,” I told her.
I pulled the switchblade from my pocket.
“What is that thing?” she asked.
“What does it look like?”
“It looks like you’re about to join up with the Sharks to fight the Jets,” she said, her voice getting higher.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re not far from the truth. Now please get out of here. I have to stop them. If they get out and I lose them, there’s no way I’ll find them again,” I told her before running toward the truck.
