Blaze of Chaos

by C. J. Strange

  I turn to face him after retrieving my bat, and to my shock, he’s already gotten a slab up from the floor beneath the altar and is in the process of removing several more. I approach with a mixture of intrigue and annoyance, pulling a face.

  “Really? A secret passage?”

  “I prefer my stereotypes trite and timeworn, but to the point,” he purrs over his shoulder, only regarding me visually when he smirks and adds, “With everything else in life, there’s always room for a little… deviance.”

  Good grief. I part my lips, but before I can verbally respond, someone on the roof has barked a single-syllabled command, and both doors are simultaneously under siege.

  Fuck!

  I’m fairly sure I only scream it inwardly, and not aloud. But I can’t be certain, because the ear-splitting explosion of gunfire drowns out all other sound. I drop to my knees like a stone, hard and fast. Our two makeshift barricades shatter and crack, sending splintering wood flying in all directions, and a stream of bullets rips into the tapestry behind us.

  A shrill whistle to my left causes me to snap my head across. Before I can properly react, a pair of slender but strong hands have taken hold of my shirt and belt, and dragged me into the passageway. I land slumped against him, both feet groping for purchase on—anything—before they’re able to locate the metal rung of a ladder.

  “Pardon the wandering hands, darling, but it appears time has decided to switch sides on us.”

  “I’m not a bloody dog, I don’t answer to a whistle,” I’m griping as I get my bearings. I have a slew of monikers I use off-the-cuff when I meet new folk, but on some unknown reflex I find myself adding, “It’s Penny.”

  The strange man is below me, partially wrapped around me to grip the ladder either side of my waist. The tunnel is stone, and would barely be wide enough to accommodate Duncan if he were with us.

  Jesus to fuck, Dee… he's going to absolutely murder me when he finds out about this. So much for me having his respect as his lieutenant.

  “Penny, how splendid. Rhys Shields—nomadic radical and visionary. And oh, so much more than just a heavenly face.”

  “Pleasure making your acquaintance, Rhys. Now hold my legs.”

  “Well, if you insist.”

  Anchored by my surprise ally, I squeeze my baseball bat between my thighs and stretch both arms above me. My hands grasp the edge of one of the paving slabs at the mouth of the passageway. This is one of those times when I wish I prayed to Nova, I think glumly as I brace myself for the oncoming influx of what can only be described as an exhaustion migraine. I know the limits of my abilities, as sad and second-rate as they are. I know when the spark inside of me, the one that allows me to do all of the supernatural things I shouldn’t be able to do, is fading fast. That time is now.

  With a growling, snarling cry of strained effort, I pour as much energy into my arms as I’m able to without passing out, and wrench the concrete sideways. It stretches like stiff, solid taffy, or week-old gum with barely any elasticity left. My fingers are barely able to retain their grip as they prolongate the slab to block off the top of the tunnel. Simultaneously, we’re both enveloped in darkness and sealed off from our assailants. At least, for now.

  I don’t know if it’s the sudden loss of light coupled with the height, or if it’s just sheer exhaustion, but my world veers violently left upward and all of my muscles spasm and release at once. Rhys’ body tightens, and I hear him chuckle as he takes my full weight.

  “Come along, no time for theatrics. Can you climb down?”

  One hand locates the same rung as before, the other retrieving my bat, and I nod. “Yeah.”

  “Good. You don’t seem the fainting type to me.”

  The ladder plunges for what seems to be miles into a thick, inky blackness that almost threatens to eat us alive. “I have a trusted colleague waiting just inside the treeline,” says Rhys from below me, as we descend as quickly as we’re able to blind. “We’re both personally of the professional opinion that Branch 9, the Sovereignty, and the entire current political climate of this country can shove it. If you’ll accept, we would be thrilled to offer you our assistance in swiftly exiting the area.”

  Even with every instinct screaming the same reminder that this could be a very carefully baited trap, I can't contain a smirk at his choice of language. “So, you’ve been here before then?”

  “Mm? Oh, not once in my life. I just happened to stumble upon this incredibly useful secret passageway that leads right into the church. Would you believe it?”

  It sure seems a mite far-fetched, I muse grimly to myself, but I decide not to voice my skepticism. I can hear the telltale scraping of shoes over stone announcing the end of our descent. Rhys steps away so that I can reach terra firma, his hand brushing mine in the dark. In an instant, it’s gone again, though the ghost of his fingers against my own continues to tease my skin.

  “This way. The tunnel starts to slope upward here.”

  Do I have a choice? It’s a fairly rhetorical question at this point. I’m trapped between a rock and a hard place—except instead of a rock, it’s an attractive stranger, and instead of a hard place, it's a whole chapel’s worth of English-flavored Gestapo.

  I think I’m good with the rock.

  “So,” Rhys continues cheerfully as we break into a light jog side-by-side, “a fellow Botch-Job then, are you?”

  “Those of us who aren't total fucking bigots prefer the term ‘Anomaly’,” I scoff back. “But in short, yes.”

  “And you appear to have a rather keen affinity with flooring?”

  I snort a laugh. Duncan would grumble at me for being so open with someone I don’t know well enough, but something about this man tells me I can trust him. I have an odd feeling I’ve met him before somewhere. “Matter shifting,” I confess, without arrogance. “It’s rare, or so I’ve been told. Makes finding information about it or any sort of a mentor next to impossible.”

  “What can you do?”

  “This and that,” I reply vaguely. “Mostly mucking with physics, changing the state of an object from a solid to a liquid, that sort of thing. Nothing too fancy.”

  “That sounds like jolly good fun to me.”

  “And yourself?”

  “Here.”

  In the dimness, I can just make out the shape of Rhys’ body as it skids to a halt, and I follow his lead. He guides my hands by the wrists to the rungs of a second ladder, and I only pause for a moment before starting my ascent.

  I haven’t missed the way he dodged my question, without even a sliver or a speck of grace. Not at all.

  If this is another ambush, I swear…

  I reach the top rung and my head hits what appears to be a wooden trapdoor. My hand gropes blindly for a lock or a latch of some description, easing the heavy door open an inch at a time, completely unaware of what I might be about to wander so willingly into.

  I’m going to shove that heavenly face he’s so proud of right up his own arse.

  21 Alfie’s Announcement

  “OI, DIESEL! YOUR MATES all joining us later, then!?”

  The base of my pint glass hits the bar top, sharply. Kendra’s head snaps up; it really mucks with my head how much she can read my mind, and she swears she ain’t got no Magick that allows her to do that. Huge breach of my privacy that’d be, she said. Either way, she knows I’m in a foul mood, and she’s been hovering around me since I got in.

  “Probably, eh? Who cares,” I call back to the lads by the pool table, my voice petering off into a mutter, and I glance back up at Kendra.

  She quirks an eyebrow.

  “What?” I demand.

  “Another?” she asks, folding her arms over her cleavage. “Three pints of lager in thirty-five minutes? Are we aiming for a new world record here, or something?”

  “Well, they’re starting to taste weaker, so I need another one.”

  “You’re getting pretty drunk.”

  “Isn’t your job to get me drunk?�
��

  “No,” she says flatly. “I’m the steward here. My job is to run the place, and be your therapist.” She snatches my glass off the bar and refills it. “So, why don’t you earn this one by telling me what the fuck happened between you and that girl of yours?”

  “She ain’t my girl,” I snap, and my glare heats up when Kendra’s smirk widens. “She ain’t! I keep telling you that. We’re just mates.”

  “And I keep telling you, Diesel, sure. I believe you.” Kendra tops my pint off with Sprite and places it on a fresh beer mat beside my hand. “You want to earn one on the house, or not? Spill.”

  She’s so bloody persistent, it’s a pain in the arse. I scoff and wrap my hand around the pint, watching steam float up from the surface of the glass beneath the intense, inhuman heat of my hand. “I don't know if they're coming down tonight,” I mumble, half-hoping she doesn't even hear it. In the middle of my chest, the bubble of fury that's been boiling away continues to simmer angrily. The shame hurts, physically—like a broken bone, or a pulled muscle.

  See? I told you. When it comes down to the wire, no one could ever see a tosser like you as actual family.

  “Oh, Diesel. I'm sorry, mate.” Kendra quickly looks around to check on the half-filled room of patrons before leaning on the bar in front of me. I shrug, closing my eyes as I down almost half my pint in one breath and wipe my mouth on the back of my hand.

  “You know what, it's fine. Really.” A surge of renewed energy hits me at about the same time as the alcohol, filling me with warmth that for once isn't my own. “They've got their own priorities, and I've got mine. Sometimes mates don't see eye to eye, you know? Sometimes you gotta go in different directions, not let each other hold you back.”

  “That sounds healthy?” says Kendra, but she sounds unsure. “Diesel, looking out for yourself is all well and good, but not everything is black and white. There are many shades of gray.”

  “Sure, whatever,” I mutter, not meaning it as viciously as it leaves my body. The idea of various shades and levels and tones of this situation existing within a spectrum of grays isn't something I want to fucking think about right now; I just want to drown my sorrows and bitch about what wankers they all are for abandoning me like this.

  With a sad smile, Kendra squeezes my forearm and straightens up.

  “I bet you ten quid,” she says as she collects two rocks glasses from the shelf over the bar, “that your mates will be here later. All of them.”

  She bustles off to serve another customer, leaving me alone with my cynicism. Because I know I’m being cynical, I’m not a complete ‘eejit’ as the thistle-dick would say. But awareness doesn’t make the rut any easier to climb out of, not once I’ve toppled into the pit of self-pity and self-abuse.

  You’re wasted, mate. You only use froo-froo language like that when you’re wasted.

  And what a way to be wasted, too. Alone at the bar on a Saturday night while my mates are out kicking arse and having a blast.

  The thought is enough to urge me to down the rest of my beer. It thickens the hazy fog that’s been descending across my vision since I left the van, chugging whatever was left in my hip flask from last night's shenanigans. We got a bit jolly once we were done laying surveillance equipment down on the beach. I think I remember a wheelbarrow, and Penny being in said wheelbarrow. I was too annihilated to remember most of it. A stab of pain jabs me in the gut. Right—it hurts to think about her at the moment. It hurts to think about all of them.

  I’ve always been a loner, unless I like you. It’s kind of my nature, not that I want to sound like a wannabe comic book protagonist, or anything. It’s just the way it’s always been. I don’t make friends easy, and I don’t play nice when I do. Those who keep me around long enough for me to form a near-obsessive bond with them usually tire of my emotionally explosive exploits in a year or two, which is why I’m not in contact with anybody from my childhood, or from my life before it became all about B.L.A.Z.E.

  Except for Penny Starling. The one fate won’t let get away.

  Ugh. Now you’re getting all slushy, you pillock.

  “Diesel!”

  My stool rocks on its legs as the fast-becoming-familiar face of my new best mate drops onto the one next door, throwing his massive arm across both of my shoulders.

  “No one else tonight?” Atlas forgetting we don’t all have supernatural strength is something I’m still getting used to, and I grunt as he squeezes me between his arm and his ribcage. “What about them, they ever gonna be done dealing with whatever important work of theirs keeps them from meeting us lovely local color?”

  “It’s important work, all right.” Despite my annoyance at the brigade, my loyalty to the cause doesn’t falter any. It’ll be a freezing cold day in this hell of ours when I deny my dedication to the Anomaly rights movement of Britain.

  “If you say so,” laughs Atlas. I squirm enough that he finally lets me go, though not without a hearty slap on the back, which nearly sends me toppling over in the other direction.

  “All Botches too, yeah?”

  “Don’t fucking use language like that, you cunt,” I spit back. There’s an aggression in my tone that we’re both entirely comfortable throwing back and forth in casual conversation. “Especially when you’re talking about my brigade.”

  Atlas chuckles over the glass of bourbon I notice is in his other hand. I shouldn’t be surprised, he usually has a glass of bourbon in one hand. “I remember my last brigade, if you could call ‘em that,” he says, like an old biddy banging on about the war, which reminds me he’s a good two dozen years older than me. “Good people, they were. Just a couple folk I met down the pub before I moved out this way to… get away from all the memories.”

  I’ve drank with Atlas every night I’ve been in town, and he’s never spoken this soberly to me. This could be a proper historic moment right here. As I’ve been sitting here in my own misery, wondering whether or not this will be the time I open my big fat mouth and don’t regret it, a fellow Novanite opens up to me. This is the kind of thing She’d refer to as a neatly-tied bow between two otherwise frayed individual fate lines. Maybe there’s a reason he's bringing up his old brigade, and maybe there’s a reason mine pissed me off so badly tonight.

  “What happened to them?”

  Atlas doesn’t even blink at my bluntness. It’s why we get on so well, he’s just as much of an arsehole as me. “Bashing Squad,” he says, and I can legitimately hear the anguish in his voice. Part of me worries that’s what I’m going to sound like talking about B.L.A.Z.E. one day. It reinforces my need to see those ashes rekindled.

  “Fuck,” is my sympathetic response.

  “Basically.” He drains his glass, and motions to Kendra. “Got up, went to work, had a family. Got home…”

  “And not so much,” I finish for him, quietly. He nods.

  It has to end here.

  “They can’t keep doing this to us,” I grind out, not even realizing my teeth are clenched until the words have trouble getting past them. My entire body is trembling. A tiny flame kisses its way across the knuckles of my left hand, dancing across each one in turn before evaporating as I become aware of its presence. “And we can’t keep letting them do it.”

  “I know, son. But we do.”

  “Yeah,” I reply. When I stare at him, the look in his eyes tells me he can see the literal fire burning in mine. “And that’s why we can’t sit around and do jack-shit any longer.”

  If Penny and Duncan are going to prioritize their personal goals ahead of those of the brigade’s, then why the hell shouldn’t I do the same?

  It only takes me half a second to stand up, and not on the thick, worn-through carpet that’s twice as old as I am—on the seat of my stool, then up onto the bar top, using Atlas’ gargantuan mountain of a shoulder as an anchor point.

  “Diesel, seriously? On the bar?” Kendra drops a pint and a bourbon off next to where my trainers are trying to suss out the sticky surface. “It
’s not even eight yet!”

  “Give your chest a rest, would you, love?” I scowl down at her, with absolutely no intention of removing myself from the bar top. “You’re not getting a striptease. You’re getting a speech.”

  Kendra raises her eyebrow as Atlas turns to holler at the rest of the pub, garnering everybody’s attention. “Is it going to be worth listening to at my current level of sobriety, or do I need to join you all?”

  “Whatever floats your boat.”

  “I can’t wait. Don’t break my bar.”

  Courtesy of Atlas’ booming announcements, the Faux Globe’s current punters (most of which I already know by face if not by name, and most of which I’ve learned are also Anomalies) are all staring in my direction, waiting to hear what I have to say. My throat is tight all of a sudden, and my tongue and teeth are dry. I stretch a hand down for my lager, which Kendra helps me reach.

  “All right then…” My voice is thinner than I want it to sound, and I immediately start to think about how much better a job Penny would be doing if she were the one here giving this rally-rousing call to arms. She has this way of orating that makes you just want to get up and do something. If she were here, we would leave this establishment with our numbers having skyrocketed.

  Whether or not I can convince thirty-something ordinary citizens of this godforsaken country to throw their lives away for a fleeting chance at freedom is another kettle of fish.

  I sip my lager to wet my lips. “All right,” I repeat. “I don’t know if any of you heard, because KING News seems to have forgotten to report on it—” Several boos are thrust up from the crowd, and I can’t help but snicker in agreement.

  “I know, why report anything that actually happens,” I continue with a bitter amusement biting into my tone. “Whether you heard about it or not: the Bashing Squad succeeded in totally leveling B.L.A.Z.E.’s headquarters in Manchester last weekend. They took out at least seven-eighths of the entire brigade. As far as the Sovereignty know, B.L.A.Z.E. is fucking dead. Gone.”

  I’m not shocked at the silence that follows my declaration. It only feeds my furor.