by Joey Ruff
“All these years,” Stone said, “You kept that a secret.” There was almost an awe in her voice, a quiet respect and sympathy. Chuck turned and looked her, looked down at the ground. She put her hand on his shoulder.
“And so you became an agent,” I said with a grin. He looked at me with a confused look on his face. “You knew there was something out there,” I said, “and you decided you had to protect people. Especially if, like your father, they didn’t believe you.” I shrugged.
“You never told me,” Stone said.
“I…,” he said.
“I get it. You don’t owe me anything.”
He nodded, and she hugged him.
I turned around and walked back towards the car. Before I got to the gate, I heard Stone’s phone. It rang twice, and she answered it. “Yeah?”
I turned to look at her.
“Really? How many?” She listened a minute. “Okay. No, we’re on our way.”
She hung up the phone and looked at Chuck. “Shootout at the docks. Looks like smugglers.”
“We’re going?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“No, Swyftt. We’re going. You’re a civilian. We’ll drop you off at your car.”
23
When we got back to the car lot, the crowds had dispersed. A few employees lingered among the wreckage, inspecting the vehicles and assessing the damage. They didn’t pay any attention to us.
Stone popped the trunk, and I collected my guns. As they drove away, my phone rang. It was Ape.
“Yeah?” I said.
“How am I supposed to teach Jamie to use his ability when I don’t understand it myself?”
“I don’t know. You’re the sciency one. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“It would be a hell of a lot easier to do this, Jono, if I knew what I was dealing with.”
“Have you not found anything in your books about bubbly gremlin powers?”
“Do you listen to yourself? I’m supposed to figure out where the weatherman’s ability comes from, teach him how to control it, and track the history of Rino’s house? Where the hell are you? Still gallivanting around town with that harpy?”
“First of all, nobody says ‘gallivanting’ anymore. Second, I’m in FBI custody. Don’t you watch the news?”
“Jono… Wait, how are you answering your phone?”
“Relax, mate. I’ll give Dr. Cooper a call and see if the results came in from the bloodwork. Maybe that will give us some clues.”
“By us, you mean me.”
“Whatever.”
When I hung up, I called Cooper. I got her voicemail. “It’s Swyftt. Call me.”
I got in the car and sped off towards the harbor. Stone never said not to follow her, just that I couldn’t be there in an official capacity.
It was nearly too late by the time I arrived.
Stone’s sedan was parked near a few squad cars, but nobody was around. The alleys between the long warehouse buildings were empty, and all was still. That is, apart from the sound of gunfire.
I parked about a block away and approached slowly, loaded for bear and looking to party. As I snuck up one of the alleys, I drew a Glock and moved past the small freighter that hung like a carcass. It seemed like I’d just been to the docks, and I was pretty familiar with the area.
While I could hear the shots, I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. The last smugglers had been shipping the bonnacon in a crate when it broke open in a warehouse, and I figured if this was the same group, there was a chance they might be in the same place.
I rounded the corner. A few yards away, sprawled on the ground behind a few large crates on a pallet jack, an officer lay bleeding. I couldn’t tell if he was dead or just unconscious.
Holding my gun to one side, I felt for his pulse. I couldn’t find one.
Mortar exploded from the brick wall of the warehouse behind me. I ducked low and dove to the side as two more shots struck the pavement. I scrambled across to the crate.
More shots rang out, and the wood of the crate groaned and splintered.
I peeked around the crate to the docked freighter and noticed the shooter on the edge of the rail. He was about a hundred yards off and had a high-powered rifle. The Glock was only good for about half that distance, but Grace’s rifle barrel would make it and then some.
Grace was already loaded, and I took aim. Her sights were old, and I didn’t normally make long-distance shots with her. Hell, most things I fought charged, not leaving me time for well-placed distance shots.
I held my breath for stability, caught the man in my crosshairs, and pulled the trigger. I hit the wall of the ship near him and that triggered immediate retaliatory gunfire. I ducked back behind the crate as the bullets drummed into the wood, sending stuffing into the air that rained down on me like the white fluff in a snowglobe.
While I waited for him to spend his clip, I reloaded. When the shooter fell silent, I took aim. Fired. He screamed and stopped shooting. As I watched, he scrambled to his feet, wrapped his arm around his torso, and stumbled deeper into the boat.
Moving from the crate, I continued on with a little more caution. I holstered Grace and grabbed both Glocks. Sure, Grace had better range, but the Glocks held 15 rounds each in a standard clip. The ship the man had fired from was a pretty standard shipping vessel. Chinese lettering was stamped on the side, and it was large enough to hold several dozen semi trailers. The engine rumbled to life as I neared.
As the ship started to move forward, I quickened my pace. The boarding ramp stood stationary on the edge of the pier. I moved for it.
I broke from the shadow of a large truck into the open. The ship was pulling away to my right, and on the left were the open doors of a warehouse. Guns barked from both directions. From my angle, I couldn’t see anyone in the warehouse, but a burly man stood in the middle of the ship, an uzi with an extended clip in his hand. I fired at him.
The bullets from the warehouse hit the side of the ship like ramming mosquitoes.
The uzi man saw me coming and turned to me. I fired at him as I ran, but my shots went wide. I wasn’t a terribly good shot from a distance, let alone when I was running and trying to hit a target that was moving away from me.
My feet hit the wooden plank of the boarding ramp with a series of loud, hollow thumps as bullets struck the side of the ramp. I holstered the Glocks and quickly judged the distance. The ship was only a few yards from the ramp.
I jumped.
For a brief minute, my legs bicycled through the air, and I thought I was going to make it. Then I felt the ragged tear against my shoulder, felt the blinding heat overcome my vision.
My fingertips struck the edge of the ship’s metal rail and my body struck the side. My head slammed against the metal so hard I saw a bright flash like dancing stars. Then I fell.
The water was quick to swallow me, and I tossed and rolled in the ship’s undercurrent. It took me a minute to realize what was happening, but by that time, I felt someone swim up on me from behind, felt an arm snake across my chest. Then I was being pulled.
We surfaced, and the swimmer pulled us over to a metal ladder with a few heavy gasps for air. I was a bit dazed, but when I felt the ladder against my back, I heard Stone’s voice say, “Can you climb by yourself?”
I nodded and turned clumsily, putting my hand on the rung. My shoulder burned as I climbed. I didn’t know how bad the wound was and couldn’t lift my arm very high. I climbed slowly and felt Stone behind me. Chuck waited at the top of the ladder and helped me onto the pier. He had a towel in his hands and a big, goofy grin on his face.
“That was awesome,” he said. I didn’t smile. Nor did I think it was awesome. “What were you thinking?”
I wrapped myself in the towel and collapsed against the stone wall at the pier’s edge. “Don’t you dare tell anyone about that.”
“What?” Stone asked, pulling herself up. She was panting heavily and dripping e
verywhere. “Don’t want anyone to know the great Jonothan Swyftt isn’t invincible?”
I tried to laugh and began coughing. Soon, I was hacking up bay water.
“I was supposed to make it,” I said, eventually.
“Now who’s watching too many movies?” Chuck asked.
Stone knelt beside me. “Jesus, you’re hit.”
I nodded. “Nothing wounded but my pride, love.” I moved my arm. “Fuck.”
“Let me see,” she said. She lowered the towel from my shoulder and touched me, examining the wound. “Looks like he grazed you. Does it hurt?”
“Nothing I can’t manage.”
“Good,” she said. She stood above me and extended her hand. “Because I need your take on something.”
I nodded again and accepted the proffered hand with my uninjured arm. As she led the way, Chuck trailed just behind, giggling to himself like a fucking idiot. “I wish I’d videoed that to put on YouTube. It was hilarious the way you bounced off the side of that ship.”
Stone stopped before a crate that was almost as tall as she was. Stamped on the sides it said Caution and This end up with arrows pointing to the top, and all around that were Chinese pictographs.
I put my wet palm against the wood.
“What is it?” she asked.
Uniformed officers gathered around, coming from the open mouth of the warehouse. They stood idly as if expecting a street performance, all intently watching the crate.
I shrugged. “No idea,” I said. “But I’d be careful when I open it.”
“We’re taking it into evidence,” she said. “We’re not opening it here.”
“Why?” Chuck asked. “You think it’s a bomb or something?”
“No,” I told him, “but whatever’s inside…is alive.”
“What, like immigrant workers?”
“How do you know?” Stone asked.
Some of the uniformed officers stepped a little closer while a couple others backed away.
“Because he’s psychic,” Chuck said, and the officers seemed to echo his sentiment with nodding heads.
“No,” I said, looking him in the eyes. “And stop saying that.” I turned back to Stone. “It’s Five Wood.”
“What does that mean?”
“Gopher wood, love. It’s used to ship hostile animals due to its, well, calming effect.”
“And this Gopher wood is another part of your insider supernatural knowledge, is it?”
“It’s from the Bible,” I told her. “Go read Genesis. Noah’s ark.”
“By hostile animals,” Chuck said, “You of course mean lions and alligators, right?”
“Something like that.”
They hadn’t seen the bonnacon, and I didn’t tell them about the Crab Dip.
I looked at Stone. “I would open it, and I’d do it here, in the open air.”
“You’re not gonna ask where the crate came from?” she asked.
“It came from those blokes on the boat what were shooting at us.”
She gave me a blank look. “Yeah. They dropped it when we showed up. It looked like they had other crates on their ship.”
“Which is now halfway down the coast,” Chuck said.
I nodded.
After a minute, Stone looked at the uniformed officers and said, “Find something to pop this open.”
After a minute’s search, three crowbars were found in the warehouse, and the officers stood on either side of the crate and pried the side off. Inside was a collection of animals ranging from the size of a man’s finger to the size of a newborn baby. There were two dozen of them, maybe more; I couldn’t tell exactly as they were piled atop each other. All of them were asleep. Their pink heads were completely bald, and but for the tufts of thin, auburn hair on their shoulders, forearms, and legs, so were their bodies. They had tails like giant earthworms that curled about them or wriggled side to side idly.
“Holy shit,” Chuck said. “What are they?”
“I never saw anything like them,” said one of the officers. “They’re like monkeys, right?”
“I think it looks more like a weasel,” another said.
I stepped forward and plucked one of the smaller ones from the top of the pile and walked about a yard from the crate. I held it in the palm of one hand while the other gripped the handle of Grace. I shook the animal gently. Slowly, its eyes cracked open and began to look around warily.
It sat up, and one of the officers got closer. “It’s so cute,” she said.
The officer reached a cautious hand towards the hairless monkey-weasel, and at first the creature didn’t mind. It let the officer get within an inch and then with one finger, the officer stroked the back of its head.
Without warning, the creature spun, bit through the tip of her finger, and burst spontaneously into flames. Dazzling, dancing tongues of fire lit the back of its head like a match and scored a ridge down its back to the tip of its tail. Small licks of red-orange flame burned from the tops of its hands and feet.
The heat was so intense, I screamed and dropped it. Stone, Chuck and the officers scattered as it hit the ground. The moment its feet touched down, it pounced towards the female officer. I had Grace at the ready. “Get down,” I said. She ducked to the side, and I pulled the trigger.
The monkey exploded like a frog with a firecracker.
“What the hell was that?” the officer asked.
“Raiju,” I said. “Technically, these are all ka-raiju.”
The officers stared at me with blank faces.
“Nobody reads fucking stories anymore? They’re Japanese fire spirits.”
“Japanese?” Stone asked. “What are they doing stateside?”
“Obviously, someone’s importing them,” Chuck said.
“Obviously,” she echoed. “But why, genius?”
They both looked at me. “How the hell should I know?”
“Don’t you have someone you go talk to about this kind of thing?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Only problem is, my usual informant, bloke named Seven….”
“Right,” Chuck said. He looked at Stone. “The vic from the…”
“I got it,” she said. She looked at me. “You don’t know anyone else?”
“I know plenty,” I said. “The question is how to find them and will they talk to me?” I thought about it a second and said, “I think I know a guy.”
“Great,” Stone said. She turned back to the officers that stood next to the crate. “What do we do with these guys?”
“Box ‘em up and take them to impound?” Chuck suggested.
Stone was silent as she watched the sleeping mound. “Raiju,” she said. “Who fucking knew.” She looked at Chuck. He shrugged. “They’re kinda cute when they’re unconscious,” she added.
As I turned to walk off, Stone said, “Swyftt, wait. We’ve radioed this in. There’s an ambulance on the way. Let them patch you up first.”
I nodded.
“So who’s this informant? Do I even wanna know?”
I smiled. “Darlin’, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
24
I left the docks and headed over to Beacon Hill, to a little shop on Beacon Avenue South called Mr. Chin’s. It was a curio shop.
My shoulder burned a little still, but the medics did a decent job patching me up, even if my arm didn’t move as freely as I’d like.
I parked on the curb outside the shop and entered to the familiar twinkling of bells above the door.
Inside, shelves bore the strange and wonderful: kabuki masks, samurai swords, tiny foo lion statues. I passed a display by the window that sported cages of various sizes and in various colors, each engraved with strange characters. To my left, another display held hand-carved wooden boxes emblazoned with the image of a phoenix on the lids. Yet another held potted plants, herbs and flowers in purples and whites with splashes of orange.
The air hung heavy with smoke and smelled sweet, like floral incense as I moved
to the counter. I didn’t see anyone, and as I waited I perused the shelves behind the counter with the kind of curiosity that killed cats. There were small, jeweled daggers, little pouches of incense, old worn leather tomes, Japanese ink paintings of birds or pagodas.
An object on a center shelf seemed to draw my eye, however. It was a ram’s horn that had been bleached white with a bright red ribbon tied around the mouthpiece. As I reached for it, I heard a small voice tinkling like magic behind me. “I wouldn’t touch that one, Mr. Swyftt.”
I turned to see a very old, very pleasant Japanese man. At five-foot-three, he was mostly bald, with what white hair that remained grown out long and worn back in a braid. He had almond skin and small eyes, even by Asian standards, and a long white mustache that drooped from his face and would touch his chest if he bent his head. He wore a red kimono with white cherry blossoms printed on the hem.
When he said my name, it came out “Meester Sweeftt.”
“Mr. Chin,” I said with a slight bow.
I’m pretty sure Chin wasn’t his real name, but blokes like Chin never gave out their real name. Names had power.
“If you aren’t careful, you might summon the hounds.”
“What hounds?”
He looked at me unblinking. “That is a Harlequin Horn, Mr. Swyftt. Very, very rare. I believe there are only three left on the entire planet.”
“Where are the other two?”
“One is very safe,” he said. “The other belongs to the Huntsman, who answers the call of the other two.”
“The Huntsman?” I said. “You mean the horn…?”
“Invokes the Great Hunt. Yes.”
“Right,” I said. “We wouldn’t want that.” I studied his face for a moment, but it never changed. “You especially, mate.”
He smiled cheerily. “You say that because I am a fox. I am aware of your English sports, after all. You do know the Great Hunt of which I speak?”
“Of course,” I said. “Fucking Korrigan games.”
“Not just Korrigan. Many great spirits ride alongside the Hunters, and hounds are summoned to bay for their masters. It is a hunt for the vagrant dead. If they meet one of the living, he is given an opportunity to join the hunt or to die.”
