by M. R. Forbes
13
Something stupid this way comes
“So why are we going to Vegas?” Frank asked.
We were riding in the back of a cab on our way to the airport. I was still ruffled over how much it had cost to get a seat on a leather-friendly jet, especially when I remembered that I wasn’t getting paid a damn thing for the job. I had to get out of the damsels in distress business. It only paid off a third of the time.
“Because my Operator won’t answer her fucking phone,” I replied.
I had been trying to call Prithi for the two hours it had taken us to get organized. That had included packing my tools of the trade in a way that the TSA wouldn’t notice, getting more clothes for Frank, and hooking up with a local trader to make a withdrawal from my account onto a new secured card. I had gone to voicemail every single time, and if I hadn’t been slightly worried about her welfare, I might have been even more angry.
“Is that the Indian girl you were talking to last night?” he asked.
“Yeah. Her name is Prithi. She’s a pain in the ass.”
He laughed in a low rumble. “My sister’s like that.”
“Is she Indian?”
He laughed harder. “Nah, pal. She’s Hispanic like me.”
“You’re Hispanic? Frank Dobson?”
He was laughing hard enough that his guffaws were vibrating the interior of the cab. “I’m just messing with you, pal. I’m Irish and Polish.” He pointed a huge finger at me. “But keep the jokes to yourself.”
“I don’t tell jokes,” I said. Frank was going to find out sooner or later that nobody cared where you were from when you were a leather. Nobody gave a crap if you were Asian or African or whatever. You were a leather, and that was it.
“I don’t know. You seem like a light-hearted kind of fella to me.”
I glared at him, and he laughed. He had been through some kind of crazy shit, and the fact that he was still so jovial was pissing me off. Everyone should be as miserable about life as I was.
“Seriously, though,” he said. “What the hell have I gotten myself into?”
“I warned you last night, and again this morning.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He was silent. I stared out the window, watching the other cars go by in the opposite direction, most of them cabs. The reversal had done a lot to get cars off the road and people using mass transit. I guess the possibility of having your car snatched up by a giant eagle or attacked by a griffin was enough to convince most people there was safety in size and numbers. They saw the news reports and probably thought it was an everyday occurrence when in reality the Houses did a pretty good job of monitoring the wildlife and keeping it clear of civilization. That didn’t mean occasional attacks didn’t happen, but they were rare enough that I never gave it much thought. It was much rarer than dying in an accident between two cars, but that had never gotten people off the road.
I picked up my phone and called Prithi again. I didn’t want to go to Vegas. Not only did I hate the place in general, but it brought back too many Jin memories that I wasn’t ready to confront. At least one of the starred locations on the list was in LA, a short drive from the desert. I had mapped it online before we left, getting a satellite view of a huge Hollywood-type mansion perched on the edge of a cliff. It seemed a little too obvious as the home of a wizard, but if I was going to trust Sandman enough to do this in the first place, I was going to trust her all the way.
The phone rang six times and went to voicemail. I disconnected.
“Still nothing?” Frank asked.
“No.”
“You think Mr. Black went after her?”
It was the possibility I didn’t want to consider. She was using a Blackout server, so her involvement should have been invisible, and besides it was bad form to go after an Operator instead of the ghost. Still, I couldn’t rule it out completely. Not when Amos had already shot up the inside of a motel to get closer to me.
It was nice to think I was keeping Black off-balance, even if no part of me believed it was true.
“It isn’t likely. She’s probably doing something stupid like having sex.”
“In the morning? For two hours? That’s the kind of girl I want to meet.”
“Number one, she’s gay. Number two, you would crush her.”
“Yeah. That’s a downside, isn’t it? I mean, every part of me is bigger, right? But I guess I need to stick to my own kind or risk killing someone. Except have you seen female trolls? Ugh.” He shook his head. “The ogres aren’t much better.”
“To each their own,” I said. “Some are better looking than others.”
“Would you go with an ogre? If they wouldn’t crush you, I mean?”
“I’m not a racist if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Nah. There’s a difference between being racist and being open-minded when it comes to matters of the heart. Beauty in the eye of the beholder, and all that.”
“Now you’re talking about love, not lust. I’ve never had the opportunity, but I wouldn’t discriminate like that.”
“That’s easy to say. Before I was this, I never would have considered another race.”
“Not even an elf?”
“Especially not an elf. Close to being human, but not quite. You ever heard of the uncanny valley?”
“That usually gets defined in relation to machines. Fake things.”
“It still applies here. Elves are so much like humans, except not quite. It made my skin crawl every time I was around one. And I don’t mean that to sound like a racist asshole. I’m just being honest with you.”
“What about now?”
“I don’t know. Stick me with an elf and we’ll find out. I’m looking at my own type with new eyes, though.”
I knew what he was saying about elves, but like most other humans I found the slight differences appealing instead of repulsive. Again, to each their own.
I called Prithi again. She didn’t answer again. The cab veered off the highway, the airport coming into view ahead. A helicopter hung in the air above it, a gun mounted on either side of the fuselage, along with a pair of gunners. They were keeping watch for things that might crash a plane if they slammed into it or got pulled into the engines.
I pocketed the phone and returned my attention to the window, watching the airport draw nearer. My anger was turning to worry in a hurry.
I could only hope she was doing something stupid.
14
A gentle interlude
I was the only homo sapien on the flight.
I had expected that I would be in the minority on the converted 747. I hadn’t expected I would be the only one on it that wasn’t at least nine feet tall and covered in greenish-gray skin. Even the stewards and stewardesses were new humans, which left me to wonder if the pilots were too.
Not that there was anything wrong with it.
Fortunately, I was used to being one of a kind, and so I settled into my oversized seat with a calm that I doubted any other pure human passenger could have mustered. I got a lot of stares, and I knew they were making comments about me, but I was used to that. My half-deadness led to plenty of stares of their own, and I was happy that for once it wasn’t the predominate factor that was generating the looks.
Frank wasn’t as comfortable, and it was obvious. In part, it had to be because he was getting as many stares as I was. He was a hybrid, and while that genetic combination was possible via natural means, it was also rarer than a Yeti sighting. The main difference between him and me was that the leathers were talking to him, asking him questions about his heritage in a way that was both endearingly curious in a social-bonding way, and also incredibly rude.
And of course, he wasn’t going to tell them the truth about his creation, which left him stuttering and me laughing behind my hoodie as he tried to make up enough lies to cover the fact that he was an experiment gone bad. It impressed me that he continued to stay upbeat during the first hour of the flight w
hen the bombardment was the worst. It amused me when one of the female ogres on board passed him her phone number.
I spent the last half of the trip with my eyes closed, enjoying the silence that came from being high above the magical fields. It gave me a rare chance just to be Conor Night, the plain, ordinary human, instead of Conor Night the necromancer.
Until the demon in my carry-on decided to ruin it.
“It is coming.”
The voice drove its way into my head from nowhere, jarring my eyes open and causing me to sit up straight. The leathers around us gave me a look while I glanced up at the compartment where my bag was resting. The mask and dice were inside.
“It is coming,” the thing repeated, its laughter echoing in my skull around its voice.
“What are you talking about?” I whispered.
“You will see. You will see. We have a deal. A bargain. A pact. When it comes, you will understand.”
I put my hands on my head as if that could relieve some of the pressure. “When what comes?”
“You are mine, Necromancer. The power of a soul, for the power of a soul. Do not forget. We have a deal.”
The laughter grew louder, and I clenched my teeth and leaned forward, trying not to look too crazy. I had no idea what the demon was talking about. I only knew that it wasn’t good. I hated that my trust in the evil thing that lived in the dice had diminished even as my reliance on it had increased. I hated how much I knew I would need it to handle this job, even while I increasingly despised its existence. I had used the artifacts only sparingly in the last few months, but even then my need to wear the ring had continued to solidify the bond I knew had been forming since I had taken the dice from New Orleans.
“Are you okay, boss?” Frank asked, noticing that I was shaking.
The demon’s laughter was diminishing. Why had it decided to remind me of our deal now, of all times? There was no part of me that believed it was a coincidence.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I lied.
Everything was changing too much, too fast.
It left a sour taste in my mouth and a sick twist in my stomach that for once wasn’t because of the cancer.
15
All apologies
Vegas.
Stepping off the plane and into the ugly, slot machine infested hallways of the airport did nothing to improve my mood, which had been beyond sour since the entity in the mask decided to flex its muscle. I had been stuck on the flight for hours after that, forced to listen to Frank keep going on and on with the ogre woman behind us, growing more comfortable and flirtatious in his new skin as the minutes passed.
He was a beaming ray of golden sunshine as we trekked across the concourse toward the cabs outside, and even my thick hood couldn’t keep him out.
“I’m starting to like this,” Frank said, practically bouncing beside me. “Girls never gave me much attention when I was human. Probably because I was pretty ugly for a pure.” He guffawed annoyingly. “I’m still ugly, but the scales are a little more balanced now.”
“I’m happy for you, Frank,” I said. “Can you stop talking?”
“Why so sour, Conor?” he asked. “You and me are going to do great things. I can feel it.”
“My operator, my friend, isn’t answering her phone. She’s been ignoring me for the last ten hours. That’s a problem for me.”
I didn’t mention the mask. He wouldn’t get it anyway.
His beaming faded slightly. “Yeah. Don’t worry, boss, we’ll find her. Like you said, she’s probably just tied up with her girlfriend.”
“Two hours is a stretch. Nearly half a day is either impossible or disgusting.”
“You never spent a day in bed with anyone?”
I thought about Karen. We had always taken our time. Not ten hours worth of it. “No. You?”
“I wish.”
We reached the line of cabs, waiting with many of the other leathers who had gotten off the same flight. The ogre woman was near the front of the line, and when she saw Frank she smiled and waved.
“You need a ride?” she asked, waving to her cab.
Frank looked at me. I nodded.
“Yeah, we do. Thanks, Tiffany.”
We circumvented the que, piling in behind Tiffany.
“This is my friend, Conor,” Frank said.
“Nice to meet you,” Tiffany said.
I put out my hand. She drew back slightly at the sight of it before shaking, careful to keep her grip lax.
“Where to?” the driver asked. He was a leather, too. An orc. They were shorter than ogres, with tougher, spiny skin.
I gave the driver the address to Myra’s apartment, not far from the New York, New York Hotel where the Blackout was hidden.
“I’m going to the strip,” Tiffany said. She looked at Frank. “I’m not sure where just yet. I figured I would decide once I got here. Have you ever been to Vegas before?”
“Not me,” Frank said. “I was locked-” He paused. “I didn’t get much time off from my old job.”
The cab started rolling. I leaned back and tried to remove myself from the conversation.
“What about you, Conor?” Tiffany asked.
So much for that.
“A couple of times.”
There was silence while she waited for me to elaborate. I didn’t.
“I’ve never been here either,” Tiffany said. “Maybe we can meet later, and show each other around?”
“Heh. Yeah, sure, I would-” Frank noticed me glaring at him. “I don’t think we’ll have time. I’ve got your number, though.”
“Are you his friend or his keeper?” she said, looking at me. “It’s just like a pure to try to lead us along by a leash like we’re some kind of animal.”
I held my mouth shut to keep the groan from coming out. Racism wasn’t limited to one side.
“He isn’t leading me,” Frank said. “We’re business partners, and we have a job to take care of. It wouldn’t be fair for me to leave him to it on his own; it’s both our asses at stake.”
Tiffany seemed satisfied with the explanation.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I get a little carried away sometimes. I had a friend when I was growing up. She was a troll. She went to school one day and never came back.”
That got me to look at her. “They took her?”
“Someone did. Her parents were heartbroken, and so was I.”
Trolls were the most in-demand of all the new humans because of the healing power of their puss. I wasn’t going to tell Tiffany that her friend was probably still alive, having spent however many years in captivity, being drained daily for the milky substance.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She stared at me as if I were speaking another language. “You’re sorry?”
“Conor’s no anti-leather,” Frank said.
“There’s something about you, though,” Tiffany replied.
“I’m dying,” I said. “I have cancer.”
She froze. I could imagine her brain trying to get her lips to say, “I’m sorry.” She looked away instead. Her compassion only went so far.
Frank noticed it too, and he didn’t seem that happy about it. We fell into an uncomfortable silence.
It stayed that way until we reached our destination.
16
Smooth operator
“Myra! Prithi!”
I knocked hard on the door the apartment for the third time.
For the third time, nobody answered.
“Want me to smash it?” Frank asked.
“And bust her door? No.”
I opened my bag and dug through it, picking up the flight-secure box inside. It looked like one of those fancy aluminum briefcases the bad guys always carried their millions in but was way better than that. This one had been magicked to be invisible to any kind of inspection other than visual, and would have cost me a fortune if Tarakona hadn’t given it to me as a gift.
I clicked it open and grabbed my picks
from inside.
“Woah. What’s that?” Frank asked.
I looked up at him. He was looking at the mask.
I glanced at it for a second, shivered, and closed the case. “Let’s hope you don’t have a chance to find out.”
I put the box bag in the bag, knocked one more time, and then picked the lock. I felt my breath catch in my throat as I pushed the door open.
A pair of almost-full wine glasses were sitting on top of the coffee table, next to a vape pen. A sweet smell lingered in the air, but it wasn’t pheromones.
“Cookies,” Frank said, drawing in a heavy breath of air.
Nothing in the apartment was disturbed. A tray of chocolate chip cookies was on the counter in the open kitchen. None of them were missing.
It was as if they had just vanished where they were standing.
Not good.
“Prithi?” I said again. I didn’t expect anyone to answer. There was nobody here.
“What happened to them?” Frank asked.
I shook my head, crossing the living room to the bedroom in the back. I pushed the door open, hoping there might be some indication of what had happened. If Mr. Black had taken them, he would want me to know about it.
I paused when I saw Myra laying on top of the still-made bed. She was wearing a white, silk nightgown, her arms at her sides.
“Myra?” I said, moving over to her.
I could sense Frank in the doorway behind me as I leaned down over her.
“Myra?”
I checked her pulse. It was steady. In fact, her eyes opened the moment I touched her.
She gasped, breathing in as if she had forgotten how, bolting upright. She saw Frank instead of me and started to scream.
I put my hand over her mouth.
“Myra, it’s Conor. Shut up.”
Her eyes flicked over to me, and she stopped making noise. Her chest was heaving in panic.
