Sidhe-Devil

by Aaron Allston

  Noriko, Alastair, and Harris were down, each with three or four of the attackers on them. Alastair's eyes were closed and a stream of red ran across his temple. Another club-wielder stood on the table with Zeb, straddling Doc's chest, his club held high, a moment from bringing its stone head down on Doc's skull.

  And for Zeb, the world went red.

  It had happened before, sometimes late in a fight, sometimes when he'd taken a shot to the nose. All the colors would change, as if someone had put a reddish filter across his eyes, and the ability to think—beyond figuring out what it took to break his opponent into pieces—was washed away by pure rage.

  Zeb hit the dwarfish man, a spearhand blow that took him in the throat and crushed his trachea. The clubman staggered back, pain and fear crossing his features, and Zeb kicked him clean past Doc's feet and off the end of the table.

  Zeb leaped across Doc to land on the far edge of the table. He felt the impacts of stone heads hitting where he'd just stood.

  His tactical sense undiminished, Zeb knew he needed help. He couldn't kill every one of these little bastards himself, much as he wanted to. He dropped behind the ring of four clubmen that had Harris pinned down. Three of them saw him and hesitated, each trying to figure out whether to continue to hold Harris or to rise and deal with this new threat. The fourth, his back to Zeb, remained unaware of the danger long enough for Zeb to reach around him. Zeb took his chin in one hand, the back of his head with the other, and twisted. It was surprisingly simple, as one instructor had told him it would be. The clubman's neck made a gruesome snapping noise and it dropped to the floor, nerveless as a puppet.

  And Zeb turned his war-face to the other three. These little men didn't surge toward him. Their eyes grew wide.

  Harris, flat on his back, his arms held by two of the attackers but his legs now free, brought his right knee to his chest and then lashed out, taking one of the attackers beneath the chin. Zeb heard the attacker's teeth crack, saw its jaw deform. It staggered back. His left arm now free, Harris drove his fist into the crotch of his other holder.

  Zeb's sense of timing told him he'd been unaware of events behind him for a second or two too long. He spun. One of the club-wielders was sailing through the air at him, its leap carrying it clean over Doc's body. Zeb pushed off from Doc's table, sending him backwards, and the attacker flew past him to land hard on the concrete floor. Zeb kicked, driving his heel into the back of his attacker's neck. He heard and felt vertebrae crack.

  Harris was up now, and moving toward Alastair. Zeb turned the other way, toward the knot of creatures holding Noriko.

  They had her up off the concrete, stretching her taut and thin, two of them holding her arms and two her legs, as they played tug of war with her. A fifth stood by, its club at the ready, as it watched the contest; there was a wide, uncomplicated smile on its face.

  The macabre quality of the scene almost caused Zeb to hesitate, but redness still suffused everything he saw. He stepped up and threw a kidney-punch into the guard's unprotected back before any of them were aware of him. The guard fell, his strangled cry loud enough to hear. The other four dropped Noriko and tugged their clubs from their belts.

  The first of them charged Zeb, swinging, a blow fast enough to bring home the fact that these little fellows had to be stronger than they looked. Zeb skipped backward, putting his body just outside the thing's swing, and grabbed his attacker's wrist when its arm was at extension. He twisted, bringing the thing's arm up behind its back, then yanked him into the path of the second clubman's attack. The stone club struck his temporary captive in the sternum. Zeb shoved his captive into that attacker, fouling them both temporarily.

  The other two advanced more slowly, moving in tandem, too cautious to make the same mistakes their fellows had. Zeb backed away, glancing around, patting at himself, hoping to find a weapon with which he could block their potentially deadly clubs . . .

  There was something metallic and heavy in his pocket. He drew it out. It was the pistol he'd been given, forgotten in the heat of the moment, forgotten because he never carried guns.

  The clubmen's eyes widened as they realized their quarry was armed. They lunged forward.

  Zeb switched the pistol's safety off and moved rightward, firing as he went. His shot caught the rightmost clubman in the chest and his movement put the injured clubman between him and the other attacker. The uninjured attacker shoved his wounded comrade out of the way; Zeb shot him in the face. That clubman fell, a spray of red matter decorating the support beam behind him.

  There were no attackers in front of him. Zeb spun. In addition to the clubmen he'd put down, there was another one on the floor, its head, shoulder, and right arm severed from the rest of his body; Zeb logged that one as no threat and kept going. His sights passed across Noriko, who was standing, her sword in her hands; she was looking at Zeb with an expression he couldn't read, some combination of dismay and caution. Zeb logged her as no immediate threat and kept turning.

  Another clubman was coming over Doc's table at him. Zeb gave him a double-tap, a sloppy first shot that had to have taken out its right lung and a more accurate follow-up that was dead center in the chest; as that attacker fell, Zeb continued.

  There was Doc, still chained, looking around as if blind and bewildered. No threat; Zeb kept going.

  There were a lot of clubman bodies down. Most were utterly still. A few twitched. Zeb ignored them for the moment, though he'd have to look at the twitchers again in a second or two to make sure they weren't getting up.

  Alastair was up, bleeding heavily from his scalp wound, the lean to his posture suggesting that he wasn't fully functional. He held his autogun in both hands but wasn't pointing it at Zeb. Potential threat. Zeb kept his aim on Alastair but continued turning his head.

  And there was Harris beside him. Harris grabbed his wrist, raised it so Zeb's aim was off Alastair. He was talking. Zeb tried to focus, tried to understand the words.

  "—right, Zeb?" Harris waited for a response. "Are you all right?"

  The words didn't mean anything, so Zeb worked harder to interpret them. He shook his head and the redness that suffused his vision faded, returning the colors of his surroundings to normal. His hearing, dulled as if he'd been underwater, returned. "I'm fine, man. Let go."

  Harris did so. Zeb flipped the pistol's safety and pocketed it again. He felt uneasy, as if there were something he should be remembering. "Who are these little bastards, anyway?"

  "Kobolde," Alastair said. "Very primitive, too. From the Old Country. The kind you see only in books." He was stanching his scalp wound with a handkerchief. He looked pale and wobbly.

  Harris caught his eye. "Zeb?"

  "What?"

  "Rolling tray?"

  "Right." Zeb darted back into the darkness between stacks of supplies and equipment. He looked for more Kobolde, but nothing moved within his sight.

  He reached the object he'd seen before and threw tires and sheet rubber off it, revealing the heavy rolling cart beneath, and began pushing it toward Doc's table.

  He heard more gunfire, single shots from a handgun, and Harris's voice: "I've got him pinned down. Zeb, keep your eyes open. There are more of them out there."

  But nothing sprang at Zeb out of the shadows, and he reached Doc's table and got the cart around in front of it. "C'mere, Harris. Help me lift."

  Between them, they got the front end of the table up on the cart, then moved to the other side and strained to lift the other end.

  Alastair stayed with them. The handkerchief was around his brow as a bandage now, and he kept his attention on their surroundings. He fired two shots out into the darkness as Zeb and Harris lifted the front of Doc's table, and smoke now rose from the barrel of his submachine gun. "I've seen at least three more," he said.

  "Can you talk to them?" Harris asked.

  "Maybe. With thousands of tribes you get thousands of dialects."

  "When we get near the door, tell them this place is about
to blow up, so they'd better run for the hills. For now, brace this cart."

  Harris and Zeb returned to the foot end of Doc's table. They heaved and pushed, sliding the table until as much of it as would fit lay across the cart. Harris told Alastair to stand aside. When next they heaved, the table rolled awkwardly forward. Within moments they went from walking to trotting to running, barely keeping up with the table end they had to lift.

  Zeb heard Noriko repeat the "fall back" signal, heard Alastair open up with his autogun. Then, in the light from Noriko's torch, he saw ahead the doorway out, saw that it was—

  "Too narrow!" Zeb shouted.

  Harris picked up his pace. "Push push push!"

  They hit the doorway like an express train, more than half a ton of wood and metal and flesh travelling nearly as fast as a man can run, and the two corners of Doc's table blew through the doorjamb and adjacent brick wall as though they were plaster. Zeb felt the impact against his shoulder like the kick of a badly-held shotgun. And suddenly they were outside, their rolling table trying to grind to a halt and fall over as it plowed through gravel and overgrown grass—

  The first explosion behind them didn't seem that loud, the rude cough of a giant, followed by shrieking metal within the factory and hammer blows all around them—bricks slamming into the ground. Then came the second explosion, louder, and the third.

  Harris heaved against his corner of the table. The opposite corner slid off the cart, bit into gravel, and the table upended. Harris got around it, under it, kept the top side from smashing full into the ground, kept Doc from being crushed.

  Zeb joined him, helped Harris strain against the table's massive weight. Alastair and Noriko got around as well. Zeb heard bricks crashing into the other side of their wooden shield. He looked down; Doc hung from his chains at full extension, his head inches from the ground, his expression dazed and quizzical, his eyes unfocused.

  There were four more distinct explosions and a further hail of broken bricks. Then there was only the rising roar of fire and scream of bending metal.

  Zeb looked around the edge of the table. What had once been a mountainous building was now a broken egg half, still collapsing, flames rising from its interior. There was no likelihood that any of the attackers could have escaped it.

  Harris cried, "Gaby!"

  No answer. Harris nodded at Alastair. The doctor thumbed the selector switch on the side of his submachine gun and fired two individual shots into the air. He was rewarded with the sound of a shot from the direction of the road. Zeb saw Harris sigh and relax. Closer by, Ixyail broke from a stand of tall grass and ran to the table, her attention on Doc.

  As they carefully pushed the table over to set it back on its feet, Noriko said, "Zeb?"

  "Yes?"

  "You are a priest of Morrigan or Crow-Badb?"

  "No."

  "Of one of the other war-makers?"

  He shook his head. "I'm a manager of fighters. I'm not a priest of anything."

  She turned away, her features schooled once again into peaceful unreadability, but Zeb thought he caught for a second time some lingering worry in her eyes.

  Harris said, "Zeb?"

  "What?"

  "Did I or did I not tell you this would be dangerous?"

  Zeb reached around to touch his shoulder where it was throbbing. His fingers came away wet and he looked at the blood on them. "Yes, you did. But there's hearing it, and then there's experiencing it."

  * * *

  Police and firemen came from three surrounding towns to investigate the explosions. They looked at identification papers Alastair and Gaby offered and became very cooperative.

  "That's a trip," said Zeb.

  Harris asked, "What is?"

  "Cop just asked if I wanted a cup of something. Shock." He moved his shoulder around. His jacket and shirt were now off, and Alastair had applied a bandage to the bite he'd received. It was starting to stiffen.

  Gaby smiled. "It's xioc, ex-eye-oh-see. A chocolate drink. More bitter than coffee. What most people drink here instead of coffee."

  "My point is, most of the times I've been approached by cops on the real world, they've asked me something different, like whether I'd grope the wall while they patted me down. Or else."

  "Any time you're in Novimagos," said Harris, "which is the north part of the Eastern Seaboard, you tell the police—that is, the various city guards—that you're a consultant with the Sidhe Foundation. You'll get cooperation. Maybe after they check out your credentials, but soon."

  Gaby shrugged. "At least, it's usually worth a cup of xioc."

  Doc, wrapped in a blanket from Noriko's trunk, sat in the passenger seat of her car, the door open, his bare feet on the ground. The movements of his eyes suggested that he could see again, and he seemed to be talking coherently. He was flanked by Alastair and Ish and had been talking to them and to the senior guardsman on site for some time.

  Now, finally, Zeb had an opportunity to get a good look at Doc. The man was tall, a couple of inches over Zeb's six foot two, and very pale of complexion. His eyes were sky-blue and his hair, nearly pure white, fell below his shoulders; it was now bound back in a tail. To Zeb's eye, his features and build were a little odd: He seemed to have just a little too much muscle for his swimmer's frame, while his features, handsome and elegant, seemed to belong to a cruel storybook prince somehow softened by experience and compassion.

  The senior guardsman finally nodded and withdrew. Doc waved Gaby, Harris, Zeb and Noriko over.

  Harris asked, "How're you doing, Doc?"

  The tall man shook his head. "My mind is still wooly. But I don't think I'm hurt. And I can focus now." He held out his hand palm upward. A small flame, like one from a cigarette lighter, sprouted from his palm, but did no harm to his skin. Other flames ignited from the tips of each of his fingers. He closed his hand into a fist and the flames were smothered.

  Gaby gestured at the ruin of the factory, where firemen still trained water on flames licking through a collapsed wall. "How did you get here?"

  "I'm not sure. I was—" Doc paused so long Zeb was sure he'd forgotten he was talking. "This morning, I went out on an errand. It's the anniversary of my father's death. Before dawn, I went to the temple of Longarm Lug to make my respects—my father was a priest of that order.

  "As I was leaving, descending the steps, I saw a girl trip and I reached down to steady her. I didn't get a good look at her. Dark hair, worn short and tightly curled. She grabbed at me, I thought for balance—"

  "No woman grabs at you just for balance."

  "Thank you, Ish. And she had me wrapped up long enough for her confederate to shoot me. I think he was behind a column."

  "Shoot you?" said Gaby. "I didn't see a gunshot wound. Alastair, is he—"

  "It wasn't a normal gun," Doc said. "It sounded like a small-caliber rifle, but before I blacked out, I looked down and saw the missile. It had struck through my shirt into my chest. It looked like a tiny brass syringe. I have to conclude it was filled with a powerful narcotic."

  "Dart-gun," said Harris. "They use them all the time on the grim world, mostly to drug wild animals so they can be tagged and tracked."

  Doc managed a wry smile. "Am I tagged?"

  Alastair, who had obviously heard this and more already, looked dissatisfied. "So they kidnap you, subject you to erotic dreams—"

  "I'd better have been in them," said Ish, her voice a growl.

  "You were, dear heart," Doc said.

  "—and then leave you to die. I don't get it. Except," the doctor added, "it is the way I'd prefer to die. Perhaps someone thought he was doing you a favor."

  "I'll have to thank him," said Doc. "Just before I realign all the bones in his skull."

  "I think we're through here," said Harris. "If there are any more leads to be found, we'll have to find them tomorrow. Let's get back to Neckerdam and tuck Doc into bed."

  * * *

  On the drive back, Harris, Zeb and Gaby were piled into the
driver's compartment with Noriko. Zeb marveled that with four people in it, it was still fairly comfortable. Even more than before, though, he missed having seat belts available. In the passenger compartment, Doc slumbered, his head in Ish's lap, Alastair on the opposite side of the seat. The window was down between the driver's compartment and passenger compartment.

  Harris asked Zeb, "Seen enough?"

  "You're joking. I haven't even had the nickel tour."

  "Well, then, I'm going to treat you to the best hotel in Neckerdam. Arrange you a native guide so you can see all the sights."

  "Wait, wait, wait. And what are you going to be up to?"

  Harris shrugged. "Foundation business. My job."

  "Yeah, let's talk about that. What is this `She Foundation'?"

  "Well, first," Gaby said, "though it's pronounced `she,' it's spelled ess-eye-dee-aitch-ee. You don't hear the word much today on the grim world, except as part of the word `banshee.' Anyway, the Sidhe Foundation solves problems."

  Zeb nodded. "You mentioned that before. What sort of problems? I've already gotten the impression you don't just fix flat tires."

  Gaby smiled. "No, it's a little more involved than that. We look into strange events. Crimes that make no sense to city guards. Rituals that might do very nasty things to innocent people. Gangland activity that suggests big changes. Anything that could get very dangerous very fast."

  "Who pays for all this?"

  Harris jerked his thumb toward Doc. "The big guy. He's rich. Mostly from inventions and big engineering jobs. And sometimes grateful rulers will just dump loads of money on us when we've solved one of their little problems."

  "But sometimes," Gaby said, "bad eamons—bad guys, I mean—will start something and then say to themselves, `You know, as soon as news of this breaks, Doc Sidhe is going to come after us.' So they start things off by gunning for Doc."

  "So that might have been what led to this attack on your boss?"

  Gaby nodded. "It's worked that way before."