“Boss, I got it,” Rose said, “You’re never going to believe the name he used—”
“I got my records back here, ya’ll might as well come take a look. I don’t want no trouble, ‘specially the eff a bee eye or the IRS. Got no time for that foolishness.”
“Humor him?” Vivian said.
“Yeah,” I whispered and started walking down a row of kitchen appliances toward the middle of the warehouse.
“Boss, it’s redonkulous,” Rose said, and I felt her land on my shoulder, holding onto the collar of my shirt.
“Shhh, let me talk to the guy since Vivian scared him and we’ll be out of here.”
“I didn’t scare him.”
“You went all club fed on him. Probably skips out on reporting half of his income.”
“It’s not the only thing he was skipping out on,” Vivian said and wrinkled her nose as we passed a station full of Kitchen-Aid mixers.
“Those are big stand mixers for baking,” I told her.
“They… Oh.” Vivian said and suddenly turned a little red in the face.
That’s when I realized… growing up, she’d never had to have learned how to cook, bake. From when we’d shared a gaze, I knew she’d had a privileged upbringing and what probably looked like a plug-in torture device was nothing more than a mixer with a bread hook on it.
“You coming or not?” the auctioneer yelled as we came into his sight.
He was behind a circular desk that had three stools at different points behind a cash register. The lighting there was better than other parts of the warehouse, and I looked up to see arc-sodium lights with heavy ballasts hanging from the ceiling. Around the circular checkout area were several stools on the outside. I pulled one out for Vivian, and she sat down, then I took a seat next to her as the auctioneer pulled out a large book.
“Got lucky, the sign-in sheet is right here,” he said, “and I remember the feller. He wanted to use a credit card, but I don’t do much in the way of plastic. Cash only sales.”
I spun the book around, so it was facing us, and he put his finger next to a name.
Tim Curry, 4032b, Apt. 14, Hollywood Boulevard, Las Vegas, Nevada.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, writing it down. “You didn’t happen to get a copy of his driver’s license, did you?” I asked him.
“Now I’m not above helping the law but—”
“If you can give us a copy, if you have it, I’ll be able to close up this side of the investigation, and you’ll never hear from us again,” Vivian said and then gave him a big smile.
He looked like he was going to say something and then faltered as he got a goofy look on his face. Vivian’s smile grew predatory as he turned and started rifling in a file cabinet under the countertop.
“She’s good,” Rose said quietly.
I was about to shush her when the auctioneer made a grunting sound and then stood up quickly. I winced as he banged his head on the edge of the counter. He rubbed the back of his head as Vivian made a sympathetic sound.
“You okay?” she asked him.
“Sure, I just keep forgetting about the overhang and pow!”
“Pow,” I agreed.
“So here you go,” he said, slapping the page in front of me. “Keep it. The fella was so mad he said he wasn’t gonna come back.”
“Had he been here before?” I asked him.
“A few times,” the auctioneer said. “Mostly buying books. Once he bought an old silver necklace.”
“Do you—”
“You said you were done!” he said then looked pointedly at me, then Vivian.
“So we did. Thank you,” Vivian said. “And you might want to ice that.”
We walked outside, and the fresh air assaulted my senses. It wasn’t that it smelled unpleasant inside the warehouse, but it was like walking into somebody else’s residence. It didn’t smell familiar or homey. The smell from outside had a bit of a salty, sea smell. Something I enjoyed. JJ was leaned against the side of the building, his big arms wrapped around Dana. Zania and Kiersten were talking off to the side, both ladies smiling as the breeze made Kiersten’s hair swirl around her head. They all looked up at us as the door closed behind us.
“Did you get what we need?” Zania asked.
I looked at the Nevada driver’s license, feeling a thrill. The picture was of Vassago, but the identification looked real enough. Perhaps he really had…
Kiersten pulled the copy out of my hand and looked it over, her eyes going wide.
“It could be a fake, I mean look at the name he used,” Vivian told her.
“Tim Curry?” Zania said, reading over Kiersten’s shoulder.
“I don’t know the name,” Kiersten said.
“Me neither,” Vivian agreed.
“Yeah, cuz the clown from IT isn’t gonna be a real deal assassin,” JJ said with a laugh.
“Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Dana told him, punching him on the shoulder.
“No, Tim Curry is the dude from Clue,” Rose told them, becoming visible and shaking her wand in everyone’s general direction.
“And Annie,” I told them all. “Listen, it’s an alias. The name of a British actor. We have an address that leads us back to—”
“Las Vegas,” Vivian said. “Oh no. He followed me in from Vegas, didn’t he?” Vivian said, turning to me suddenly.
“I… I don’t know,” I told her, but something seemed to click in my mind, and it made sense to me.
“Well, let’s get to an out of sight place, and I’ll open us a gate, and we’ll get directions,” Kiersten said.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” I told her and began walking back in the direction we’d come from.
This time it took us about fifteen minutes to get there, and I was about to call it far enough from prying eyes when the sound of an engine filled the air. We all spun and looked as an old Chevy Astrovan crested a gentle hill we’d climbed earlier and come barreling our way, far too fast to be safely driving on this old dirt road.
Immediately I scanned the futures and saw in the next ten seconds the van was going to swerve into us, sending us into broken heaps of flesh and bone if we didn’t move.
“Unfriendlies,” I told everyone.
Rose took off in flight as JJ and Dana leaped to the side of the road, in a crouch. They had worn loose-fitting clothing and were about to strip when I realized Zania was standing there, her mouth agape, jack lighted by the coming headlights in the dusky part of the day. Kiersten stumbled as she tried to snag at the girl, and I saw she wasn’t going to make it in the futures I checked. I took three steps and scooped the young woman up and leaped as the van overtook us. My left hip exploded in pain, and a scream left my lips involuntarily as I hit the ground rolling, Zania tucked into my arms, screaming herself.
Every tumble and roll sent pain exploding through my body, and as I came to a stop, I realized that my left leg was spasming. Zania pushed herself free and then laid a cool hand on my brow. The pain started easing, and I saw her eyes wobble as her own gift started working. I heard JJ and Dana roar a challenge as the sound of brakes filled the air. Then I smelled something hot, burning, and out of the corner of my eye saw Kiersten go up in a ball of living flames.
“Hold still,” Zania told me, “you stupid chauvinistic piece of—”
The pain swamped me for an unknown amount of time, but as I sat up, I saw Zania was dancing away from three shambling figures, gore and runny puss running off their skin like slime. The smell of death was strong, but not the recent kind. The smell of corruption and burnt flesh was overwhelming, and I pushed myself to my feet as I realized that we’d been attacked. I didn’t have time to get my backpack out, so I pulled one pistol and started firing. The unbinding runes had been extremely helpful before, and unlike the conflagration rounds, they wouldn’t blow chunks in human targets the way they had the man who’d held the gate open when the bureau was under attack.
The shots were fast, but not rushed
. I used my sight to check the futures and saw I wasn’t going to miss and only adjusted my aim so I wouldn’t have bullet fragments exit one corpse and hit Zania by mistake. I was drawing the pistol on my left as two brown blurs raced across my vision and tackled a large figure that had loomed to my left. The werewolves were in their wolf form, and as the larger wolf would run past and hit the creature, the smaller wolf would attack the back of its legs. That’s when I realized that it looked to be a nightmare creation, probably inspired by Frankenstein. Body parts were roughly sown on, but the creature had three legs and four arms. The head had weeping sutures where it attached to the neck, and the skin on the face had been removed. Two glowing orbs were where the eye sockets had been.
“I’m going to puke,” Zania groaned as the corpses I’d shot dissolved into a puddle of goo at her feet.
“What happened?” I asked, taking a snapshot at the creature.
The round hit it, and the flesh around the wound started to liquefy, but a second later it solidified again as if I’d melted it.
“Van dumped zombies after it hit you, somebody ran off into the woods, now we’re getting overrun. You know, the usual,” she said, wiping the sweat from her brow and only managing to smear gore on her forehead.
“Where are the rest?” I asked as I took another careful shot and sent two bullets from both guns at what I could only guess was a flesh Gollum.
“Chased after the necromancer. I told them you would be okay, but there were more zombies left after Vivian did her undead spell rip thing.”
My rounds had hit the creature JJ and Dana were attacking in the head; it staggered the creature and JJ transformed mid-leap into his hybrid form and sank both sets of claws into the creature’s neck, his muzzle going on to rip and tear as the arms started trying to pull him off. That was when Dana hit it from the front, making it overbalance, and the third leg crumpled under the combined weight of two werewolves.
“Let’s go help the others,” I told her.
“You got the juice?” she asked me.
“I’m hurt, but I can move,” I told her. “Let's go, we can’t get separated.”
She made her way and fell in step behind me as I heard a rending sound and then a victory howl as JJ held up the head of the creature, the flesh already beginning to slough off, the eye sockets going dark. I holstered a pistol and reloaded the other that I’d nearly fired dry and then used my sight to look into the futures where we found the rest of the strike team. I was concentrating when I felt Zania’s hand on my shoulder, breaking my concentration.
“Stop, not right now, you paused walking, so I checked, you were going too deep,” she said. “You’re not ready yet.”
“I think I know where we need to go,” I said and started moving, her hand staying on my shoulder, so I knew she was hot on my tail.
“I could feel it when I touched you, you were getting swamped—”
Her words were cut off as a loud scream pierced the night. I checked the futures and saw that was the direction I wanted to go and began to run. I had already checked what would happen if we both stayed here for a minute and I knew nothing would attack, so I ran without worrying whether Zania was following me or not. I left her behind rather quickly, my longer legs eating up the distance as I rushed behind a large tree and looked out around the side. Two brown blurs flashed by as both Dana and JJ in their hybrid forms rushed a horror in the middle of the forest.
Kiersten had a corona of fire coming off one arm while the other was making a complicated gesture, and a gate opened behind a creature that made the flesh Gollum look like a tinker toy. JJ hit it head on as I came around the tree, firing at the kneecaps. My runed silver bullets struck, and the creature roared as first JJ then Dana hit it, almost five hundred pounds of mass, and its legs buckled. It fell onto its back, almost into the portal, and Kiersten cursed.
“Keep firing on it,” she called as her fire melted away sections of the beast, only to have them heal and regrow in front of her.
I didn’t hesitate and fired both pistols empty, reloaded the left and was about to continue firing it when JJ got to his feet. He howled a challenge, and the patchwork of dead human corpses slowly made its way to its feet, a viscous fluid running from its mouth like slime. It took one shambling step forward when a movement off to my side caught my eye. I raised my gun and almost fired when I realized it was Zania. I scanned the futures and saw she was approaching somebody veiled that none of us could see with our regular sight. I had a good direction on the mage who was controlling the undead and took careful aim, using my sight as an overlay for my human vision and started firing.
Gouts of blood erupted, and the mage dropped his veil, clutching at his chest. Zania took off at a sprint, the way a track star would, and I watched in horror as she neared the man; he turned and started to raise a dagger he pulled from his belt. I started to shout a warning and stopped firing because she was now in the way. She touched the man’s hand as she ran past him and both of them dropped, him lifeless, her into a spasming mess. There was a loud wheezing sound, and I turned to see the monstrosity collapse as JJ and Dana hit it again.
Kiersten turned off her human flamethrower act and took off running for Zania, and I went running toward JJ and Dana. I almost stumbled over Vivian who was sitting prone over another mage, somebody I’d never seen before. His face was almost as bloody as Vivian’s knuckles. Black power shimmered over her hand as she snarled something unintelligible at him.
“Vivian,” I yelled.
“This is the gate mage they used this time,” she said in a voice thick with rage.
“Don’t kill him, we need somebody to question…” I let my words drop.
“Sebastian?” the man asked.
“Was he the necromancer?” I asked him, angry.
“My brother, is my brother Sebastian…? Yes, he’s the summoner, the death mage.”
“I’ll check on him myself,” I told him.
“Boss, you need to talk to Zania,” Rose said, appearing out of thin air in an explosion of rainbow glitter, her pageboy haircut flying all over.
“Not now, Rose,” I told her before turning back to the downed mage. “Who sent you, the Empress? Vassago?” I asked him.
“I… They’ll kill me,” he blubbered. “Is Sebastian okay?” he repeated, which was starting to get on my nerves.
An assassination team was supposed to be hardcore, not a blubbering mess of barely twenty-year-old—
“Boss, Zania is going to pieces over the mage she killed,” Rose insisted.
The man on the ground’s eyes filled with tears, and I saw the moment he made a choice. I checked the futures even as my gun hand came up. I knew I was going to be too late, and he chomped down hard and started convulsing.
“Dammit, I wasn’t wargaming that far enough out ahead,” I said as the body started spasming and a white foam trickled out the side of his mouth.
Vivian backed away from the convulsing man, looking at me.
“Cyanide capsule or capped tooth,” I told her. “He’s gone, let’s go check on Zania.”
Vivian got up, brushing leaves and dirt off her knees.
“Your clothing is pretty messed up,” she told me.
“Later,” I told her, dismissing the comment because I had a pretty good idea what was wrong with Zania.
“Oh-kay…” Vivian said and started walking in the direction I was heading.
Rose beat me there, poofing from where I had been with Vivian to about thirty feet in front of me.
“Boss, it’s not magical,” she said as the young mage twitched and spasmed.
“I know what it is,” I told her, kneeling down.
“No,” she screamed as I scooped her up and held her close to my chest before settling back against a tree for support.
“Shhhhh,” I said, setting her down next to me. “I know, I know,” I told her as she began to sob.
“I’ve never—”
“You didn’t, not really,” I interru
pted so she wouldn’t have to say it.
“I could have saved him; instead I—”
“No you couldn’t, I can see the future,” I told her. “He was already going when you got there.”
She cried harder, and suddenly Kiersten and Vivian were in front of us with Rose flying in an erratic pattern.
“Is she okay?” Kiersten asked softly.
“She’s the one who located the necromancer,” I said, nodding to the downed man.
He’d quit bleeding the moment his heart had stopped pumping, and he stared lifelessly at the sky as loose leaf litter covered his body where he’d fallen.
“You tagged him good,” JJ said, walking up, wearing his loose basketball shorts. “Two to the chest.”
“You forgot one to the head,” Dana noted, walking up completely in the nude.
Zania noticed them both and hiccupped and then did a double take again.
“The transformation is rough on clothing,” I told her, “and Zania was too close for me to tag him with a third shot. Nice job, you two. You put a big hurt on those flesh golems.”
“Yeah, thought the one at the road had me beat,” JJ said. “He’d grabbed me once, and I was about to get my head ate off when Dana hamstrung it. I got away before it could heal up. What were those things?”
I looked at Kiersten, who shook her head, and Vivian made a shrugging motion with her shoulders.
“I don’t want to be gross,” I told Zania, “but look at the body. You see where I shot him?”
“You hit the left ventricle and the mitral valve,” Zania said, sniffing, her body starting to calm. “His brain was already dying.”
“And even if you could have saved him, would he have ever been the same again with parts of his brain dead?”
“I…”
“You did him a favor. You took the pain away. As one of our enemies, you showed him a mercy he didn’t deserve. You were never supposed to be in combat, but you’ve made me proud,” Kiersten said.
Corny as that sounded to me, it worked. Zania pushed herself to her feet, using my shoulder as a spot to leverage herself up, and she brushed herself off. I got to my feet as well.
Second Sight: The Rune Sight Chronicles Page 12
