by Leod D. Fitz
Not being able to use my left hand didn’t slow me down very much. I simply used the limb to apply pressure as I sawed with my right hand. It took me just under two minutes of vigorous sawing to get his first leg off, but it finally came free in a burst of blood and a muffled howl of pain. I squirted some lighter fluid on the wound and lit it up.
“For a while there, I almost felt sorry for these assholes, you know?” I said conversationally towards Tricia. “They can’t help but search for the keys. It’s a compulsion. They have to find them, have to take them back to their master.”
I paused as I whipped the saw back and forth on the chimera’s next leg. “Shitty way to live? Right?” I gasped as I paused about a quarter of the way through. “Miserable way to live. But they lost any sympathy I might have had when I realized what they cost the world.”
I went back to sawing, putting extra pressure on this time. Like the surgery Tricia had done to separate Orrin and I, my work on Abydos needed to be fast and hard, or it would undo itself.
My muscles were screaming by the time I pulled the second leg free. I stepped back, leaning over heavily and gasping for air as Patricia applied the fluid and set it on fire.
She coughed and made a face at the smell. Too me, it smelled delicious.
“Wouldn’t this be a good time to be asking him questions?” Patricia asked as she waited for me to recover.
I contemplated that. “I don’t think so. I read somewhere that torture is a very ineffective means of getting information. This is retribution. He did this, or something like it to somebody else, and he did it because he’s a freaking lunatic who thinks he’s a god. I’m tired of people like him taking and taking and— “
“Hey! Piss pot! Wally! You boys here?”
I closed my eyes in annoyance.
Patricia blinked and looked around. “Did you hear something?”
“Tricia, darling, when you realized that somebody was on the premises, did you, by any chance, lock the door so that nobody would follow you when you came charging down here?”
Trish blinked. “Um, I don’t remember. I was kind of in a rush cause of all the screaming down here.”
I sighed. “Never mind. Here.” I shoved the hack saw into her hands and headed out the door.
“You… you want me to cut off his extra arm?”
“If you feel like it.” I headed up the stairs.
My self-proclaimed partner was waiting for me, a goon on either side of him.
Nick’s face broke into a smile when he saw me.
“Hey! Wally!” He paused, looking me over. I looked down. I was covered in blood, my left hand wrapped in gauze, sweat glistening off of every part of me that wasn’t bloody.
“What the hell happened to you? And what the hell is that awful smell?”
I considered the question for a moment. “You caught me at a bad time, Nicky.”
“Yeah? Looks like I caught you in the middle of butchering a fucking pig! Jesus.”
I sighed. “Now really isn’t a good time, Nicky. Any chance you can come back tomorrow?”
“Nah, this’ll only take a minute. I heard the good news! You unloaded all those goods in a couple of days? Good on you! I’m going to have to start giving you serious shipments! So, where’s my money?”
I took a deep breath, a variety of lies flickering through my mind. I settled on the truth.
“There is no money, Nicky.”
“No money? What do you mean? You don’t have the money here? Where’d you put it?”
I shook my head. “There’s no money anywhere. I didn’t sell your drugs, I flushed them down the toilet.”
Nicky’s eyes widened in surprise and rage. “You did what?” He moved towards me, his goons flanking him.
I stayed where I was. It had been a long day and I didn’t feel like pretending to be scared by a bunch of stupid thugs who wouldn’t last five minutes against a couple of newly turned neckbiters.
I cleared my throat and spoke louder. “I took the drugs into the bathroom. I dumped them into the toilet, and I flushed the toilet. Would you like me to write it down for you? Should I compose a stanza explaining it?”
Nicky’s face contorted in rage. “Why you little— “
A shriek of agony interrupted whatever he was about to say.
Nicky blink and looked towards the door. “What the fuck was that? You got other people here? Wally? You trying to pull something?”
I grimaced. Abydos must have managed to spit out his gag.
“Look, Nicky, today is just a really bad day. I mean, you wouldn’t believe the shit I’m dealing with. And I mean that quite seriously, you wouldn’t believe it. Can’t you just come back tomorrow? I promise, I’ll still be here, and you can even bring more guys in to beat me up if that’s what you want.”
Nicky’s eyes flickered between the basement door and me. “Beat you up? You think I’m going to let this go with a couple punches? You owe me serious money, you piece of shit! You’re going to have to— “
I never found out what I was going to have to do because Abydos chose that moment to race up the staircase, tear through the door, and make a beeline for the front door.
I wasn’t about to let that happen. I took two steps and grabbed his right arm as he passed. I wrapped both my arms around his right bicep, then yanked backwards and leapt forwards locking my legs around his left arm. I pulled together as hard as I could.
My weight and the pressure to his body made his back arch and threw him off course so that he ran straight into a wall. The chimera bounced off so that he landed on top of me. I locked my left arm around his shoulder, and reached back with my right hand to grab the necrotic dagger out of my pocket. In three quick slices, I opened his throat, belly and groin, and then I shoved the dagger into his heart.
Abydos made a high pitched gasping noise, quivered for a moment, and fell still.
A half second later, Patricia, now splattered in blood, burst through the door. “Mr. Walter! He got out of the-- Oh, you got him.”
She blinked, looking between me and the three visitors.
“Um, Mr. Walter?”
I pulled myself off of Abydos ripped the dagger out of his chest, wiped it on his shirt, and turned calmly to my assistant. “Tricia, sweetie, I’m going to deal with these nice men, do you think you can get this body back downstairs for me? Or do I need to do that myself as well?”
Tricia lowered her head in shame. “I’m sorry, Mr. Walter.”
She wrapped her arms around Abydos’s chest and heaved him slowly to the stairs, leaving a trail of blood.
At the stairs, she circled around behind him and pushed until he bounced down the steps, into the basement.
I waited until the she closed the door behind her to turn back to Nicky and his boys.
They were all standing, slack-jawed. One of them had his gun halfway pulled, the other hadn’t even gotten that far. I ran through exactly what it was they had seen and exactly what men like this would think that meant.
“What the fuck was that? Who do you— “
I raised a hand, stopping him mid-sentence. “This is not a conversation you have in front of the help.” I pointed at the two goons.
Nicky stared at me thoughtfully for several seconds. I smiled politely and waited.
“Go ahead. If I’m not back in ten minutes, come in, guns blazing, don’t let anyone out alive.”
The goons nodded and retreated from the lobby, never taking their eyes off of me.
And I never took my eyes off of Nicky.
I waited until he opened his mouth to speak, then I started talking.
“You damned well know who I work for, Nicky.”
He looked perturbed for a moment, then realization swept his face. “You mean— “
“Stop! Don’t say the name. Don’t even think the name. Because if you say it, if I know for sure that you know for sure who I work for, I’m going to have to tell somebody. As long as I don’t know that you know, not a hu
ndred percent, then I don’t have to do shit.”
“Jesus, I didn’t know he had a place out here.”
“Of course you didn’t fucking know! That’s the point, isn’t it? What’s the use of having a place like this if everybody knows where it is? Don’t be a moron. And you understand that a place like this can’t afford to do things like sell drugs to kids, can it? Because all it would take is one arrest, one little excuse that lets a cop walk in and start poking around, and all of the sudden things are going to get fucking ugly, aren’t they?”
Nick swallowed. “You should’ve just told me— “
“Were you not listening a second a go? I can’t tell anyone. Anyone. In fact, I’m not telling you now, and you’re not going to tell your boys jack shit when you leave this place, are you? Because if one of them gets picked up and decides to go state’s evidence, and the feds come poking around this place, do you know what happens next?”
“What?”
“Well, for starters, I die, me and my family. That girl you didn’t see running through here a minute ago? She dies too. Oh, and you and everyone you love will die. That’s what fucking happens. Forget about this place, Nicky. Forget you ever heard about it. Forget about piss-pot Percy, even if he comes begging to buy a dime bag from you, you act like you’ve never heard of the asshole, because as far as you’re concerned this place doesn’t exist on any goddamned map! You understand me?”
Nicky nodded slowly.
“Thank god. Now get the fuck out of here.”
The gangster practically ran for the door.
I shook my head as I locked the door, then licked up the blood trail that led to the stairs. Fucking gangsters.
Patricia had Abydos’s remains back up on the gurney and was just about done burning his neck where she’d cut off his head.
“Hey, Mr. Walter. I’m so sorry about that. When I was cutting that arm off I must’ve started cutting through the duct tape…”
I waved her excuses off. “What’s done is done. Just try to learn from your mistakes.” I stared down at the body. “Well, I guess I won’t be getting any answers out of him, now, will I?”
“Um, no sir.”
We stared at the corpse for a moment. I grabbed one of the severed limbs and took a large bite out of it. As a rule, I’m not a fan of fresh meat, but there’s a distinct limit to how much rotten meat you can have lying around before it starts to stink the whole place up.
“Mr. Walter?”
“Yes Tricia?”
“Wasn’t Percy supposed to come in today?”
I snorted. “Percy was supposed to do a lot of things. What Percy actually does is take care of Percy. He’ll show up again in the next couple of days, pretending he was sick or something.”
“But he wasn’t?”
“No, he was laying low. Hiding out somewhere to make sure that if that asshole you met upstairs decided to kill me, or if I decided to kill him, that Percy wouldn’t get killed in the crossfire.”
“Oh.” She considered that for several long seconds. “Mr. Walter?”
“Yes, Tricia?”
“When do I get paid? Is it, like, a daily thing, or once a week, or what?”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Oh my god. Really, Tricia? Really?”
Chapter 16
The sun hadn’t even come out when my brother called me up. That wasn’t a problem. All injuries I’d had to sleep off and all the late nights I’d been enduring had completely fucked up my sleep schedule. I was wide awake.
On the way to my brother’s apartment I noticed a white paneled van behind me for a couple of blocks. Simon’s complex is impossible to reach unless somebody shows you how to get there, thanks to a spell that the owner of the place put on it. But following somebody to the complex is essentially the same as being shown the way, so a couple blocks out I took a sudden turn and circled the block.
The van didn’t follow me. “I’m getting paranoid,” I murmured to myself as I pulled into Simon’s apartment complex.
Predictably, the place smelled like the inside of a bong. Just as predictably, he was not alone.
Surprisingly, one of his guests was male.
“Hey Walter! Sorry about calling you so late. I totally lost track of the time.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s four-thirty in the morning. That’s early, Simon, not late.”
“Four-thirty?” Simon blinked. “Shit. I’ve got class in a couple hours.”
“Does that mean we’re going to bed soon?” one of the girls asked.
“Oh, hell no, Si!” called out the surprise male guest, from somewhere out of sight. “You promised a full on smoke out experience for me and my girl, remember?”
Simon grinned and turned back to someone I couldn’t see. “Relax, I remember! And I’m always good to my word!” He turned back to me. “Geez, some people. Well, anyway, here’s your thing.” He slapped the worn red notebook into my hands. “We’ll talk about the rest of the deal later today. Or tomorrow. You know, sometime.”
I snorted. “Crazy bastard.”
Simon winked at me and shut the door.
On the other side, I could hear him talking to his guests. “Okay, where’s the bong? No, not that one, the faerie glass bong.”
I shook my head, shoved the notebook into my inner jacket pocket and returned to my truck.
In the back, I saw the corner of the shredded mattress Sherry and I had used, still resting.
I’d hung onto that for entirely too long.
A couple of back roads put me on the street that led by the dump. I glanced in my rearview mirror and spotted a white paneled van. A bit disconcerting, but I didn’t have any reason to think that it was the same one.
Still, it made me nervous.
I made a sharp turn at the next street and watched as the van went right by me.
Fine, I really was being paranoid. I shook my head and turned my attention back to the road ahead of me. For the sake of my nerves, I kept to back roads as I made my way just past city limits.
At the edge of the dump property, I pulled off the road and trudged a few yards dragging the mattress behind me. A quick couple of breaths and I spun around and launched the mattress over the fence, and about twenty yards into the dump.
There. Done. I stood in the early morning, enjoying the crispness of the fall morning, and the stench of the landfill. Life wasn’t perfect, admittedly, but I’d had a better one than so many people. The chimera thing was a definite low point, but I had a pretty good idea now of how to get rid of them. Things were looking up again.
I was smiling right up until the wind shifted and instead of breathing the intoxicating rot of the dump, I smelled three people approaching behind me.
I spun around.
Sure enough, the white paneled van was parked next to my truck, and four menacing figures were approaching. Damn Andres and his invisible scent.
“Oh, fuck me.”
“I assure you,” Andres purred as he approached. “That is the least of the many, many things I’m going to do to you.”
Eryx practically slithered through the grass, metal club in his hand, his unblinking eyes filled with hate. Tallus pulled his goggles and jacket off and flew up several feet, attaching his bracers to his arms, as his middle appendages were still missing.
Jayr waved the searing blade back and forth as though mocking me with it.
I still had the necrotic blade on me. I’d wanted to start carrying one of the searing daggers with me as well, but Tricia was upset about me losing the sword.
I also had the knuckles.
The knuckles slipped over my hands in a quick motion.
The chimeras, spotting my plan, accelerated towards me, but not fast enough. I jumped over the fence and into the dump.
Turning around, I saw Talus rising into the air, carrying Eryx with him, while Jayr simply leaped over the chain link divider. And as for Andres, he was already on the other side, making his way slowly up the mound of trash towards
me.
“So much for divide and conquer,” I muttered, pulling out the necrotic blade.
I moved carefully to one side, keeping my movements small and controlled enough that I wouldn’t trigger the brass knuckles.
Talus and Eryx reached me first.
Talus dropped his companion, who threw a half a dozen blows at me. I danced backwards a few steps, avoiding them, then moved forward, aiming the necrotic dagger at his rib cage.
The dagger dropped from my hand and my wrist sang in agony.
I hadn’t expected Andres to reach us for several more seconds, and he’d slipped in under my radar, striking my wrist like a baseball bat.
I moved laterally, trying to keep Andres between myself and Eryx as I struck out at him a dozen times in two seconds.
Not one of my blows hit. He moved like a wraith, with impossibly quick grace and mesmerizing fluidity.
Andres caught my still aching left hand as it slid by him, and applied pressure that dropped me to my knees.
I shook in pain. The chimera twisted my arm and suddenly I was lying face first in the garbage. Feet slammed into my ribs and head. More feet arrived and began smashing into my thighs and crotch.
“Abydos’s blade,” moaned Eryx, just barely audible over the sound of my beating.
“I told him to wait. He was foolish. He let his pride guide him.” Andres’s voice was devoid of compassion. He turned his attention back to the men attacking me. “That’s enough.”
At his command the rest of the chimeras immediately stopped beating me.
Andres released my hand and I curled it under my body, gasping for air, my face half buried in a pile of old garments.
“Get him up.”
Hands grabbed me and I found myself lifted to a standing position, with my arms pinned painfully behind my back.
Andres looked around us. “What a perfect place this would be for an interrogation.” He sighed. “Too bad the employees would interrupt us. I suppose we’ll have to make do in our new residence. It isn’t as nice as the one you burned down, but it’s far away from prying eyes.”
I grunted in reply. It was about all I could manage.
Andres picked the necrotic blade out of a pile of garbage and handed it to Talus. “See if he has anything else on him before you tie him up.”
