Witchblade: Talons

by John Dechancie

  “So?”

  “Maybe I’m coming down with your bug.”

  “You look fine,” Jake said.

  “Thanks. Any particular reason you wanted to talk tonight?”

  “I worry about you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You seem distant. Have anything to do with what happened yesterday?”

  She regarded his cabana-boy good looks. “You’ve been talking with people.”

  “Yeah. I heard it was a freak accident, really freaky. You want to talk about it?”

  She stirred her coffee for no particular reason. “No.”

  He chuckled.

  She put the spoon down. “Oh, maybe. What’s there to say?”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “Talk about freaking. Whip just absolutely freaked. He went buggy. Started screaming at me, and then he tried to make it up a ladder . . .”

  “Ladder?”

  “In that abandoned shop. The ladder broke—metal fatigue, I guess. Rust. It broke, and he fell, and for some reason this sharp metal stuff was beneath him.”

  “The sculpture.”

  “Yeah. Metal work. Welded together. The guy was impaled on a welded work of art.”

  “Weird.”

  “Not the first guy to die for art.”

  “It wasn’t his.”

  Sara shrugged. “Maybe it was. I don’t know. This wasn’t a studio. It was a place that someone was using as a studio. Maybe it was Kool Whip’s.”

  “Was he a sculptor?”

  “Have no idea. He never let on.”

  “And you were chasing after him . . . why, again?”

  She looked away. “God.”

  “Sorry.”

  They did not speak for at least a minute. Suddenly, Sara picked up the sandwich and took a bite, out of pure guilt.

  She made a face. “Alfalfa tastes like grass.”

  “It is grass,” Jake said.

  “Oh.” She smiled. “Yeah.”

  “At least I got a laugh out of you.”

  “Did I laugh? I didn’t notice.”

  “You smiled. It’s a start. I’ve seen you moody, but this . . .”

  “Moodier than usual?”

  Jake nodded. “What’s the problem? By the way, what was Whip screaming about?”

  “Besides something to the effect that he didn’t clobber Smokey?”

  “Besides that.”

  “That I was a witch. I went out and killed guys.”

  “Killed guys?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know exactly what he meant.” She paused. “I guess he means the way people tend to die around me.”

  “Well . . .”

  Sara shrugged in resignation. “It’s true. I know.”

  “You’ve had some strange things happen. Things not easily explained.”

  “Sure have. You don’t know the half of it.”

  “You’ll have to tell me sometime,” Jake said. “Sit me down and explain it all.”

  “Wish I could sit myself down and explain it all,” Sara said.

  “Anyway, I take it the accident has you down. Judging from what you say, it doesn’t sound like your fault.”

  “It wasn’t. It was just so senseless, so haphazard.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And it happened so fast, and there was no chance to save him, prevent it. No chance to help him after.”

  “Useless all the way around.” Jake shook his head.

  “Funny, that’s what the sculptor said.”

  “Huh?”

  “Graffiti to that effect was spray-painted on some of the best pieces. I think the artist wrote them. ‘Useless junk.’ And then, ‘Hopeless.’ ”

  “Maybe he was a better critic than artist?”

  “Didn’t look like it to me. Anyway, it was an especially senseless death. It just got to me. I’ll get over it.”

  Jake smiled grimly. “You’ll get over it. That was good.”

  Sara eyed him suspiciously. “You talking about the cannoli now?”

  “Yeah,” he said quickly. “You going to eat that sandwich?”

  “You want it? I thought you had dinner. And you just had dessert.”

  “It looks good. I love alfalfa. I’m like a cow.”

  She pushed the plate toward him. “Graze away.”

  “Lazlo?”

  He opened his eyes. Someone stood beside the bed. He got a familiar whiff of perfume. “Sophia.”

  “You were sleeping.”

  “Nothing else to do.”

  “They are putting you in another room tomorrow. Regular hospital room.”

  He gestured at the IVs and monitors. “Then I won’t have these things on me?”

  “Not so many. You can maybe sit up.”

  “Good.”

  She came closer. When his eyes finally focused he could see her face well enough to notice the lines. She was dressed well, as usual, bedecked with jewels. She liked diamonds, and wore them for almost any occasion. For all the make-up and miracle wrinkle cream and hair coloring, she was beginning to look a lot older, and he wondered why he had not noticed before. Or had he? He was getting old himself.

  “The doctors say you are surprising them,” she said. “You are getting well so soon.”

  “I always do.”

  “You are stronger than most men. But of course . . .”

  “What?”

  “You know,” she said hesitantly.

  Kontra rolled his eyes. “Oh, please.”

  “Baba has helped you.”

  He turned his head. “Again, this old nonsense.”

  “Do you remember the last time you were shot?”

  “Yes. In Vienna.”

  “Baba helped you then, too.”

  “Baba is always helping me. She should mind her own business.”

  “If she did, you would be dead. This man now, he shoots you with three bullets.”

  “Two. Only two.”

  Maria looked at the ceiling. “ ‘Only,’ he says. In your heart.”

  “They missed.”

  “They missed. They didn’t miss. You had protection.”

  “Magic,” he said with a sneer.

  “You don’t believe. You have never believed.”

  “Nonsense. Magic spells. Do you expect me to believe some old witch woman?”

  “How else do you explain it?”

  “Explain what?”

  “That no one can kill you.”

  “Luck. Strength. I killed that guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “The hit man.”

  “You dreamed it.”

  He raised his head and looked at her intently. “They didn’t find him?”

  “I heard you yell. I was afraid, so I listen. Then I open the door. There you were, bleeding.”

  “No man running?”

  “I heard someone running down the stairs. Maybe. I think so.”

  “Did you see him?”

  She shook her head.

  He lay back. “Then I didn’t strangle the bastard.”

  “How could you strangle him when he was shooting you?”

  “I rushed at him and I got my hands around his neck.”

  She laughed. “With two bullets in you. And you doubt Baba.”

  He had no answer.

  “Your lunch is here,” she said.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “You should eat.”

  “I’m not hungry. Leave me, woman.”

  “I’ll leave. Try to eat, Lazlo.”

  “The food is bad.”

  She smiled. “What hospital has good food? Tomorrow, I will bring you something from the delicatessen.”

  “Good. If they let you.”

  “I will bring it anyway.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Sara liked to walk at night in the city. She’d read something about Thomas Wolfe. Not Tom, but Thomas. He would write all day and stalk the city in the pitch of night, tramping from the Batter
y to the Bronx and back again.

  A walk was nice, but that was a trifle extreme.

  She was a little edgy tonight, and did not know why. The weather was exceptionally clear. No fog, no clouds. What few stars as could be seen from the streets of Manhattan were pinned to a velvet sky. They did their best to shine.

  She stopped suddenly, and looked up, thinking she had heard something strange in the night. She searched the blackness between the buildings. Nothing moved.

  She walked on. The nearest business district well behind her, she walked along a street lined with brownstones.

  There it was again.

  A shriek.

  “What the hell is that?” she muttered. It sounded unusually piercing, and its source seemed to be in the sky somewhere. A light plane with a loudspeaker? What?

  No, it was the shriek of a bird. A screech, a caw. A cry. Like a seagull. Or maybe something else.

  A plane with a loudspeaker broadcasting bird calls. Okay. Either that or a very, very large bird flying very high. A big gull?

  A really big gull.

  Whatever it was cried again. It had a particularly weird sound. There was something almost human about it. The almost is what made it unsettling.

  She walked on, coming presently to an avenue. She stopped and looked up and down it. Was this Madison? Park? It was an unfamiliar part of one of them. Let’s see, she’d started on Lexington. This should be . . . Madison. Wait. No, hadn’t she passed Madison?

  No traffic. Very little. Okay, it was late, but she couldn’t see a headlight. Oh, wait. There’s one, way the hell downtown. And a red light crawled on the horizon uptown. The cross street seemed deserted.

  She looked at her watch. Okay, it must be wrong. It wasn’t that late, was it? How long had she talked with Jake? She tried to remember chairs on the tables when she left. Okay, she did remember that. She thought. So tempis had fugited all over the place. But how late did that restaurant stay open? Not past eleven, surely. She wondered how long she had been walking.

  Missing time?

  Jeepers.

  Screeeeeeeeee.

  “Go away, bird.”

  What bird? What the hell kind of bird could be that loud and . . . and yet so high up there?

  Scanning the sky, she continued on, and her footsteps threatened to become more hurried. So she willed herself to slow. Relax, take it easy.

  Let’s not completely freak out. There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

  The Witchblade was telling her different. Its babble of voices crossed the threshold of hearing. They sometimes warned of danger. At other times they cackled with glee at the approach of something threatening. It was hard to tell whether they were for it or against it.

  She stopped at the next corner, hitting a wall of confusion. She did not recognize this avenue at all. Lined with dark, faceless monoliths, it was no Manhattan thoroughfare she knew.

  “What the hell?”

  She stood unbelieving, casting eyes to either hand, north and south. No familiar landmark presented itself. The dark gathered between towering black shapes. They could have been buildings, but ones that offered no access to mere mortals. Their upper portions had protrusions of some kind. These were skyscrapers, but of a kind she’d never seen. Their bases were without openings, no entrances. Some towers sat on massive pylons and did not have ground floors.

  Nothing made sense here. Was this some kind of housing project she had missed in the newspapers?

  Something had happened to the streets themselves. They had narrowed, were now no wider than alleys.

  Darkness hid any revealing detail. These presences seemed little more than geometric shapes. She was not even sure she was seeing something that existed. Only something that would exist. Or perhaps that could exist? She did not know. The images in her eyes flickered.

  She closed her eyes and massaged them gently with her fingertips.

  Screeeeeeeeee.

  She looked up. A typical urban vista presented itself. Signs glowed reassuringly over closed shops a few streets down. Headlights crawled in the distance. The totally normal had magically reappeared. The mundane had teleported back from the alternate reality where it had been hiding.

  She breathed again.

  The sounds of fluttering wings made her resume her journey westward. She didn’t balk at hurrying now. The Witchblade seemed disturbed, and that was enough motivation. Yes, there was a danger, but perhaps it wasn’t immediate.

  “Yeah,” she told it. “So?”

  No answer. No specifics. No guesses as to what she was facing.

  At the sound of huge beating pinions she began to run. There came a rustling, a fluttering, a swooping, and the click of talons. Was she hearing it or was it in her mind? She sprinted across another wide avenue, fearful for her sanity.

  The thing, whatever it was, sounded as if it had swooped close and passed directly overhead. She hadn’t seen it, had felt only a strong presence, a manifestation of something strange, alien, and evil.

  Evil.

  Or perhaps just unknowably alien and strange. There came with this feeling a sense of intense curiosity and a need to satisfy it, to explore, to discover. To seek out and reconnoiter.

  There was no fear, but there was a wariness, a caution. Nevertheless, this circumspection could not thwart a resolve to fulfill a destiny. To have what was wanted, to gain it, to keep it.

  The sound of its wings filled her ears as she ran. The thing swooped and swooped again, getting closer, and she could feel the wind from its wings and hear the whistle of air as taloned feet flexed and clenched, eager to grasp, to claw, to tear her apart. To rend flesh.

  Evil.

  She hid in shadows and felt a transformation come over her.

  Wings rushed and beat like a racing heart, a darkly malevolent heart. Hovering. Hovering.

  She was ready to come out into the dim light. When she did, the metamorphosis was almost complete. A filigree of delicate metal work had crawled along her body, providing her full breasts and nether portions with cover but leaving little else unexposed. Her right hand and wrist, where the bracelet had lived, and part of the forearm, were now embellished with sharp, spiky gingerbread, covering her fist in an impossible gauntlet of swirls and arabesques. She was nude and yet somehow completely covered. These geometric flourishes bloomed along other parts of her body. Up and down her long legs, around her silky thighs, covering and protecting her knees, shoulders, spine, and neck. All vulnerable points buttressed against assault. Yet wide areas of smooth skin permitted the caress of air. She was a study in dress and undress. She was a paradox.

  She was the Witchblade.

  Striding boldly into a pool of spilled light, she looked up and regarded the thing.

  It was an enigmatic shape in the sky between the buildings. A menacing outline, an abstract intelligence embodied in a suggestion of an avian configuration, monstrous wings flapping impossibly fast. And in the center of the phenomenon, eyes like diamonds.

  She lifted the gauntlet skyward and pointed an impe­rious finger.

  “You!” she shouted. Her voice bruised stone, made windows rattle their mullions.

  The thing hovered and observed. Coolly.

  She flung a question at it with resounding contempt and annoyance: “What?”

  It continued to hover, its raptor’s eyes cold and dispassionate.

  Time perched somewhere else, but nearby. It waited, and watched. At some point it decided that enough eternity had occurred, and began to tick off the seconds again.

  And the thing above, the indeterminate shape in the sky, began to lift, the sound of its immense wings growing into the militant beating of war drums. Its vast obscene bulk rose and receded. And with a final rustle and flutter, it disappeared into the dark sky whence it had come.

  Sara stood in the middle of a deserted New York street.

  She ran her hands over her leather jacket. Checked her pistol, her badge, the money in her pocket. Jingled the change. She
found a piece of lint and flicked it away.

  Back to good old Sara.

  Old. She felt a little older after each manifestation of the Witchblade, a bit longer in the tooth. A stiffness and ache came as additional residuals, but overall it was not altogether a bad feeling. It felt a little like the afterglow of a good, vigorous gym workout, albeit one she had overdone a bit.

  She walked the rest of the way home at a steady pace, not minding the shadows, unafraid, but thoughtful.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  It was a miracle of rare device, but it wasn’t a pleasure dome. Merlin Jones’s pad was more than a place to crash, having some nice stuff in it. Widescreen high-definition television, state of the art sound system. Both had fallen off trucks. Merlin had bought them at a fence’s warehouse for a few hundred dollars apiece instead the thousands they cost retail. There were a few nice pieces of furniture; the couch, for one. It came from a cache of household items retained against failed payment of criminally inflated moving costs. A few other appointments around the one-room apartment were anomalously opulent. Like that massive oak bookshelf, filled to capacity.

  Otherwise, the place was pretty much a mess. Stacks of books lay piled around the room, along with boxes filled to the brim with CDs, DVDs, video tapes, floppy disks, and other tech bric-a-brac. There were dozens more boxes stuffed with stolen procedure manuals from phone companies, Internet service providers, online brokerages, and other concerns.

  Basically, the place was a dump in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

  One of the Die Hard movies was playing on the HDTV, running through the DVD deck. Merlin wasn’t watching. He was doing what he usually did, typing on his keyboard.

  The sound system crashed and banged with alternative rock of some esoteric kind. Someone was screaming obscenities.

  He found it distracting. He picked up a remote and clicked it until the system breathed a sigh of relief and settled down to Mozart on the piano.

  “K. 525,” Merlin said to himself, still typing. It was a piano and orchestra piece.

  The apartment door burst open and two big guys walked in. Merlin looked up. He knew them: Anton and Sergei. Two Russians, both wearing expensive leather jackets, shiny brown and shiny black.

  “Jones,” one of them said.

  “Yeah,” Merlin said.