by Al K. Line
I grabbed my lemonade and gulped the fizzy mixture, crunching on ice cubes and letting it cool my body. This was all fine, I had it under control, nothing to worry about here. Just me feeling nervous being somewhere vampires weren't welcome, and vampire enforcers even less so.
I turned from the bar and my own distorted reflection in the mirrors behind the neatly arranged bottles of spirits and surveyed the room, hoping to spot Mithnite. Nope, just the crazies doing crazy things. People and Hidden were acting entirely out of character, the violence escalating beyond what was allowed or permitted.
This was proof enough, but it didn't help me in my quest to discover what exactly had been happening or where to search for answers. All this did was make me feel uncomfortable.
Where the hell was Mithnite?
I was relieved when I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder.
"At last," I said as I turned, deciding not to chastise him but to give him the chance to explain. And then my smile turned upside down as a dwarf standing on the bar head-butted me.
Blood splatted from my fractured nose all over his leather, soaked into his beard—it may well have been a female but the beard always makes me think of dwarves as men—and a cruel looking battle axe descended, ready to cleave my skull in two.
Control
My hand shot out and the dwarf's eyes widened. His bushy brows furrowed as he stared from his axe to my face and back again. I snarled as my grip on the two-sided blade that must have weighed fifty pounds bent under forces that by rights should have made my own bones splinter. But this was no ordinary vampire or ordinary magic user he was assaulting, I was the hybrid, the vampire enforcer. And I was also miffed about Mithnite being late.
I shoved back and, loath to loosen his grip on the shaft of his axe—dwarves love their axes more than their own mothers—he flew off the bar and smashed into the bottles. Volatile fumes burned my nostrils as weird and wonderful highly potent alcohol splashed over him along with glass. Before he could get up, I vaulted the bar and landed on his chest with all the force I could muster.
I felt his chest give a little, but strong muscles and also a softness I hadn't expected under the chain mail saved what I now knew was a she from having her lungs pierced by her own ribcage. She swung out with the mangled axe and I jumped up so high I landed back on the bar, shocked by the ease with which it was done, but even more shocked when I slipped on the wet surface and landed flat on my substantial ass.
With a roar, a mop of curly hair followed closely by the head it belonged to appeared as the dwarf jumped up so it could see and then chopped down with the axe. I rolled off and was up in time to see the blade buried deep within the wood. Brewster was coming from the other end of the bar, looking less happy than usual at the assault on his prized serving surface—he may have had to decorate, if not rebuild, on a regular basis, but you messed with his wood at your own peril.
I sniffed and pain made me wince as I remembered the broken nose. Breathing was hard and one nostril kept whistling so, thinking nothing of it, I slammed an open palm into my own nose to straighten it and, stoical, took the lance of fire as it shot up into my forehead—okay, I screamed. The fast healing of the vampire nature took care of the rest, everything knitting back together perfectly so I wouldn't be afraid to look in the mirror. I shunted magic into my head to tighten the skin and stop me having some serious black eyes otherwise. Last thing I wanted was to look like a Panda in a cool coat.
I have to be honest, all this nonsense did nothing to ease the anger I felt, and I almost gave in to it, almost went nuts on this wayward dwarf. But I'm not a violent person, not really, and if I can talk rather than fight I will, so I said, "Lift that axe in anger at me once more and I'll shove it so far up your a—"
"Argh," roared the dwarf. Using the handle of the still buried axe for traction, she swung over the bar and hit with her meaty if short legs wrapped around my neck and her hands pummeling my skull.
Under normal circumstances, such a battering from the fists of a dwarf would leave your skull caved in and neck broken, but all it did was frustrate me. I clamped down on one leg without thinking, going through the thick hide of her clothes, and her hairy legs tickled my tongue. I was so close to biting her it scared me more than anything ever had. That's not me though; I don't turn anyone, ever, no matter what they did or threatened to do. I wasn't even sure if I could turn a dwarf, they weren't human after all, but I restrained myself anyway, wasn't taking the risk. Instead I reached up and grabbed her hair, yanked her off me and up high, then slammed her down onto the bar. She missed the exposed axe head by a fraction and landed hard on her back. Something snapped and her belt split. Pouches slid across the counter and gold spilled in all its gleaming glory.
Now, if you think dwarves love their axes then you haven't seen anything until you've seen them with their gold. It's their fix, their love, their one and only. Their addiction. The dwarf screamed, so high-pitched it made the rest of the room stop their fighting and actually take notice of what was happening. The room fell silent as the dwarf scrambled on all fours to grab its lost booty, seemingly oblivious to the fact its shin bone was sticking out in a most unpleasant manner.
"My gold, my gold," she yelled, scrambling to grab the last few pieces in a beer-soaked meaty hand any blacksmith would be been proud to call his own.
"Can we please stop this nonsense?" I asked sweetly, brushing at my now filthy t-shirt, my nostrils cloying with the thick odor of a dwarf up close and personal. They aren't big on washing, believing precious gold dust could be sluiced away, preferring to wash communally every once in a while in special bath houses where the dirt of mining is washed off and goes through the same processes as the ore they extract in search of more of the yellow stuff.
The dwarf stashed its goodies and grabbed its belt then scrabbled along the counter, heaved on and retrieved the damaged axe before dropping down onto the floor.
She cursed and moaned as the broken leg splintered further, but I turned away in disgust and spied something shining on the counter. With an aha moment, I picked up a tiny nugget between my fingers then bent down and held it up in front of the dwarf. "Are you going to be good now?" I asked.
She nodded her head, eyes full of fear. Not of me, she wasn't scared in the slightest, but that I might keep her gold.
"You have to know that if you don't say 'I'll be good' I'm going to give this to the first person who asks." I smiled sweetly and glanced around the room. A shortage of dwarves descended on us in a panic and the fallen dwarf hissed, "I'll be good." I nodded.
"Back up, guys," I warned the dwarves as they pressed closer. They did as they were told with a lot of grumbling, but they weren't seemingly under the same spell as this one and looked genuinely scared as I gave them a real hard enforcer stare.
"Gimme, gimme." The fallen gold lover held out a hand thick with callouses, palms up, as I dangled the nugget above her and asked, "Why did you attack me? Do you usually go around doing things like this?"
She mumbled to herself then lifted her gaze to meet mine and said in a heavily accented voice, "No, I'm a quiet one, me. Don't want no trouble."
"Then why?"
She shifted and winced as pain enveloped her and fell back, hardly able to support herself with her arm, and said, "Dunno. Just came over me, how much I hated vampires. Thought you was after me so got in first."
"And you weren't scared?"
"What, of you? Not scared of nothing."
I dropped the nugget and she clenched her fist tight then collapsed, unconscious.
I moved away as her buddies clamored round and dragged her up the steps. You could hear her head bumping up every one. I knew they'd save her but that her gold was already pocketed as recompense by the obsessed helpers.
"You owe me for bar," said Brewster.
"Hey, that was the other woman, not me." Brewster just stared at me, until finally I shrugged and said, "Fine," and dropped a much larger gold nugget into his hand.
&
nbsp; Yes, I kept some. You can't blame a girl for that.
Spoiling the Mood
As everyone returned to their drinking, either having forgotten their anger and their lack of fear, or not having succumbed in the first place, I couldn't decide whether to ask questions or not. The sensible side took over and I left them alone, knowing I wouldn't glean more than what I already knew. Judging by the shaking of heads and confused glances my way, anyone who'd been affected was now unsure what had gone down, or why they'd acted the way they had.
Or maybe it was because I was an enforcer now. Of course, that was it. Nobody was coming up to chat because they knew what I was, what my husband was. Faz has a serious reputation and few friends because of it. Hardly surprising when most Hidden have a skeleton or ten in their closet, sometimes literally.
The undercurrent of violence was still present, but no more so than any other time I'd been here. There were several more arguments and fights, but nothing that wasn't to be expected when you put a load of pissed supernatural creatures in a room and tell them to play nice. But the overt hostility, the dismissing of the boundaries you knew better than to cross, seemed to have gone.
It was like someone was flipping a switch on and off. One minute everyone recalled why they didn't pick a fight with the eight-foot troll when they were three feet tall and made of gooey flesh, the next they couldn't care less and had no regard for their own safety and were confident they could smash the rocky lump back into the stone age.
Could someone be doing exactly that? Not a real switch, but a magical one? Casting a spell that would make people act so crazy then stopping it just as suddenly? As far as I knew, nobody had the power to control so many magic users or magical creatures. Hidden were too disparate, from too many places and made of too many constituent parts that it simply wasn't possible.
So what was it?
For ten minutes I sipped on a fresh lemonade and had a nice chat with Brewster, mainly consisting of me rabbiting away and him grunting or just walking off mid-sentence. It was odd talking with the big guy, as even revealed as he truly was he seemed more human than most of his kind. Maybe it was his bartender outfit, or that he'd picked up a few almost human mannerisms, or maybe it was because he was so rude and grunted a lot, just like so many other bartenders I'd had the misfortune to deal with over the years.
The door slammed shut, a waft of cool air eddying around the room for a moment, so welcome I decided I'd leave if Mithnite didn't appear soon.
And then there he was, coming down the steps fast, looking all kinds of messed up.
"Quick, we gotta go," he panted, eyes darting nervously back to the door.
"Okay, what's happening?"
"No time. Later."
"See you, Brewster." Grabbing Mithnite by the arm, I ran to the stage, turned right, and dragged him through a curtain that led to the storage cupboard the acts used as a dressing room.
"Kate, how delightful to see you again," said the Chemist, startled from his reading.
"And you. Sorry, in a rush. Is there another way out of here?"
"Another way? We're in a basement, how could there be?"
"Come on, there has to be. I know for a fact you don't always go out the front. Not if, er, the crowd has been too rowdy."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, looking sheepish. Okay, he looked ghoulish, with half his face drooping to his chest like molten wax and half his head like a burn victim's, hair in thin strands. "Hello, Mithnite. Oh, how rude of me, Kate, how's Spark?"
"Please, this is important," said Mithnite. "And hey, good to see you."
"I'll come visit you, at your home, make you a nice dinner one night after a show."
The Chemist's good eye sparkled and the other weeped the same as always as he jumped to his feet. "Really? Well, in that case follow me."
He stood, moved his stool, dragged a rug aside, and with a grunt lifted up a trapdoor in the wooden floor. "Down we go," he said with a happy lilt as he dropped to all fours, edged over the hole, hung by his hands then dropped.
"Don't forget to close the door and pull the rug back," came a distant muffled voice from far below.
"How do we do that?" I shouted down.
"Easy, just use the ladder and pull the rug over the trap door before you shut it."
"Ladder, why'd you jump then?"
"Cause I like it."
With that, I got Mithnite to get in and stand on the ladder, pushed up the trap door so it was at ninety degrees, got the rug in place, squeezed in behind him and clambered down as he let the door close.
I made it to the bottom by feel alone and Mithnite was beside me a moment later. Then the darkness lifted as the Chemist turned on a dull light.
I stared around and got a sinking suspicion. "Um, exactly where are we?"
"Aha, thought you'd like it. It's the old catacombs, loads of interesting things down here."
"What, like me?" asked someone off in the darkness.
"Is that a ghost?" asked Mithnite, sounding freaked.
"Yeah, there's loads of them," replied the Chemist. "Cool, eh?"
I gulped. "No, not cool."
Do Me a Favor
"Why are you scared of ghosts?" I asked Mithnite, my patience running out, or maybe it had long ago. "You're a bloody demon from the Devil knows where, an impostor, thought you'd be used to them."
Mithnite stopped dead in his tracks and brushed at his hair with shaky hands. "It's not like that, honest, I can explain."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
We stared at each other in the dim light, squinting like in an old Clint Eastwood western. Who'd fire a verbal assault first?
"Well, go on then," I said, my tapping foot echoing down the tunnel. The very freaky, very haunted tunnel.
"Later, okay? Please, Kate, I didn't mean for any of this to happen. Damn, it's only recently any of this has made sense. I didn't know, I'm still not sure I know. It's like a dream, it can't be real. But I have these memories, these pictures in my head. It's all jumbled and I don't know what's happening to me."
"Um, guys, not sure what this is all about but can you save it for later?" The Chemist looked agitated, no easy thing, and kept swatting at ghostly apparitions I was too bloody annoyed to be concerned over.
"Sure, sorry." I turned to Mithnite. "This isn't over," I warned.
"I know. You have to believe me, I didn't know, and then when I did, well, it felt too late. It wasn't until I went to get Faz from the spirit realm that I knew for sure, but I don't want to go back. I can't. I won't."
I looked at him then, really looked, used my enhanced sight to study this awkward young man before me and I knew, not just because of the bright, clear and clean aura that surrounded him like a protective coat of many colors, but because of the man he was. Kind, generous, a little unsure of himself sometimes, in awe of Faz, so desperate to be a good wizard and to escape a childhood he refused to talk about, and I was certain of one thing. "You're a good boy."
"Man, I'm a man," he said, smiling even as he frowned in annoyance.
"Whoo-whoo," came a whisper from the dark as an ethereal vision in peasant clothes from the eighteen hundreds drifted forward and wiggled his arms.
"Do me a favor," I sighed. "You're a ghost, not an attraction at the fairground."
The ghost took off his hat in shock and scratched wispy hair. "Hey, I'm doing my best."
I tutted and said, "Just bugger off. All of you bugger off. I'm not in the mood."
Mithnite and the Chemist and a dozen ghosts all stared at me in shock and chorused, "No need to shout."
Sighing, I followed the Chemist as he led us through the catacombs beneath the city, past disappointed ghosts, broken tombs, alcoves littered with skulls, and ancient carvings in the bedrock. The lamp the Chemist held cast monstrous shadows on the curved walls, never reaching pockets of darkness where bony hands stretched out to frighten us, where women in trailing bridal gowns rushed past in the air, howling and s
creaming and generally being annoying.
I knew they couldn't hurt us, weren't of this world, had been put here either as punishment or because they refused to accept their fate, had returned to their supposed final resting place and now were trapped until they faded away to nothing unless a generous benefactor from the afterlife or a human with strong magic found a way to release them. Not that a lot of them wanted to rest. They'd do anything rather than face the final roll call, even live in a damp tunnel with only occasional visits from the Chemist to break the monotony of centuries.
We marched through them all, never stopping, saying nothing as they complained about us being rude or tried out lame haunting techniques that did nothing but make me angrier and more frustrated and incensed than I already was.
Mithnite kept glancing at me but I remained silent. This was not the place for a long discussion and for him to explain why, and how, he'd done what he did.
I got the feeling he didn't even know, he seemed to be telling the truth about this whole thing.
Then we were free, out in the crisp night air and staring up at stars that shone pale and glorious in the wonderful darkness that made me feel alive and powerful, vibrant and dangerous. My body thrummed in tune with the cold emptiness of the universe; the vampire nature struggled for dominance within.
No Time to Rest
"Right, I have to go," said the Chemist looking nervous.
"Thanks for your help, and I won't forget about dinner." He'd really helped us out but I doubted we were in the clear for long. It was best we parted ways so he didn't get involved.
"Yeah, thanks. Sorry to get you into this, dude, I appreciate it," said Mithnite.
"My pleasure. I would stay, but I've got something, ah, rather volatile brewing at the lab and I've been absent too long already." The Chemist smiled, or tried to, but his disfigurement meant it was never a pretty sight.
