by Matt Wallace
Lena can’t form words, but she tries to nod.
“Very good, then,” Luciana says pleasantly.
Monrovio releases her. Lena drops to her knees, clutching her throat and gasping for air.
“Take as long as you need, my dear,” Luciana offers, her voice returning to that empty cordiality.
Lena stands, slowly, her eyes burning as they stare up at the monster in boardroom chic standing in front of her.
Monrovio clasps both hands around the handle of her attaché case, holding it in front of her and waiting.
Fists balled and knuckles white, Lena turns and begins walking, slowly.
Satisfied, Luciana treks on, leading her past the picturesque expanse of the bay. They walk down a windowless incline that ends in a pair of industrial clean-room doors. Lena watches as Monrovio enters a code on a touchscreen pad and scans her thumbprint. Air hisses and the doors part from the center, sliding into the walls.
Monrovio graciously motions Lena through.
She immediately feels an intense cold, not like a freezer but enough to raise goose bumps on her flesh. The space beyond is dark save for circular fluorescent lights that seem to illuminate only small areas, like spotlights. Something clinks beneath Lena’s foot and she halts, looking down to see a large drain. The white-tiled floor is pockmarked with them.
She looks up. Dozens of oversized stainless steel bathtubs are bolted to the floor at regular intervals. Thick links of chrome chain ending in restraints sway idly above each tub. Not twenty yards from her stands a massive rack of cutting and bludgeoning implements: knives, cleavers, cudgels, and even cattle prods. The instruments are so clean and polished, they shine even in the darkened space.
“Welcome, Miss Tarr! I’m glad to see the trip agreed with you!”
Allensworth is waiting for them with Bronko.
Lena rushes forward.
“Chef!” she calls to him, grateful relief in her voice.
It’s short-lived.
The pair is standing in front of the only tub whose chains aren’t unburdened. A long bundle dangles, suspended in the air, wrapped from end to end in thick black cloth.
Lena’s brain doesn’t want to acknowledge that it can only be a person concealed under there.
Bronko takes gentle hold of her chin and turns her head from side to side, examining her face. He scowls at her swollen cheek and cut lip, at the fresh bruises on her neck left by Monrovio’s fingers.
“What did they do?” he asks.
Lena pulls her chin away from his hand, shaking her head. “I’m fine.”
“Miss Tarr is full of surprises,” Allensworth interjects. “But then, we’ve learned that time and time again since she was taken under your wing, Byron.”
“Where are we, Chef?” Lena asks Bronko. “What the hell is Gluttony Bay?”
Bronko stares darkly at Allensworth as he answers. “It’s a restaurant . . . one that serves people.”
“The finest human fare in the western hemisphere,” Allensworth confirms without hesitation or shame. “And one of the most ultra-exclusive dining experiences in the world, reserved for only our closest friends and most important allies.”
Bronko looks at him in abject disgust. “This is where folks taken to that CIA black site across the bay end up, ain’t it? Accusin’ folks of being terrorists and enemies of the state so you can serve ’em as dinner to things even worse ’n that.”
Allensworth’s smile only widens. “First of all, it’s a military prison. Secondly, why do you think the prison has never been closed down, despite the public outcry?”
“Jesus.” Lena’s mind is reeling. “Oh my god, those . . . those people back there that I saw . . . the ones stuffing themselves . . .”
“They’re a delicacy of the house,” Monrovio explains. “Gluttony Bay is world-renowned for their sugar-fed Mediterranean beef.”
Lena feels her stomach performing backflips and she has to press a hand against it to stem the wave of nausea.
“This is sick,” Bronko says.
“By whose standards, Byron?” Bronko asks. “A cow would be appalled by the mere concept of a steakhouse, after all.”
“People ain’t cows.”
“That depends on whom you ask. The food chain in our world is not so simple as that in the mundane world. It’s my job to accommodate all species . . . of appetite.”
Lena steps in front of Bronko. “So, what, we’re on the menu, Allensworth? Is that it?”
He actually throws his head back and laughs. “My dear, no! You’re the chefs, not dinner!”
“Then what do you expect is gonna happen here?” Bronko asks.
“We’re going to clarify a few things that desperately need clarifying. The first is the misapprehension you’ve apparently been laboring under that you have the ability to hide things from me. You do not. I know everything. I have known everything. I know you substituted a fast food recipe for the angel you were ordered to serve at the banquet for the Vig’nerash and Oexial clans. I know that doddering old hybrid woman you keep around as some kind of Sunday school teacher spiked the food for the royal goblin wedding. I know you’ve had our new Sceadu president’s ear.”
“Yeah, well, we know a few things too,” Lena fires back. “Like you tried to use us to poison Consoné’s followers, and when that didn’t work, you brainwashed Darren into trying to kill Consoné himself.”
“That’s what I do, my dear,” Allensworth impatiently corrects her. “That’s what you’re for. You serve whatever means I deem fit. In return, you are paid exorbitantly to practice the craft you love on a level unseen by most humans throughout history, and you are allowed access to tiers of society a little person like yourself would otherwise never even know existed. That you don’t understand nor appreciate that exchange only demonstrates a fundamental entitlement on your part.”
“I feed people; I don’t kill ’em,” Bronko insists.
Allensworth raises an eyebrow. “Do you really want to discuss the blood on your hands, Byron?”
Lena looks up at him, but Bronko doesn’t answer.
“It’s a base lack of appreciation,” Allensworth continues. “That’s simply what it comes down to. You two have no appreciation for what you’ve been given, what you have, or the lengths to which I go to facilitate and protect your simple little lives. Byron, you used to. But it seems ever since you hired this young woman, she’s infected you with—”
“Morals?” Lena offers, sarcastically.
“My dear,” Allensworth says, “this evening, I intend to demonstrate that your compass in that arena is sorely lacking true north. You can’t judge a thing until you truly know its scale. And you’ve been paddling around in the kiddy pool of moral decisions.”
Allensworth reaches up and grabs a handful of the garb wrapped around the figure suspended above the tub. With one powerful jerk, he tears away the black shroud, casting it aside.
“Darren!” Lena screams, immediately rushing forward, only to be restrained by Bronko.
“Hold on now, girl!” he warns her.
Darren hangs upside-down, naked, with his wrists bound behind his back. His head and face have both been shaved smooth, and he wears an undersized muzzle compressing his mouth and jaw and rendering him unable to speak. Not that it matters, as he’s currently unconscious.
“What is this?” Bronko demands, still holding Lena at bay.
“Tonight’s special!” Monrovio happily informs them. “And you’ll be preparing it!”
“You motherfucker!” Lena spits at Allensworth.
He’s unmoved. “This evening, the two of you are going to learn just how lucky you are in your current cushy little stations. You’re going to learn how genuinely unburdened you are and how truly insignificant your petty little moral dilemmas become in the grand scheme. You’re going to understand the realities of our world, the real world, and you’re going to experience a taste . . . pardon the pun . . . of just how flexible those vaunted morals of your
s can be.”
Bronko looks from Darren’s helpless face to Allensworth. “You really think I’ll kill this boy for you?”
“No, Byron, I think Miss Tarr will, and you’ll help her prepare him for tonight’s guests at Gluttony Bay. Mexican will be a rare treat for them.”
Lena stares at him in shock and then looks frantically up at Bronko.
“Stop this now,” he tells Allensworth.
“It will stop,” Allensworth insists, “when Miss Tarr proves beyond a shadow of a doubt she can fall in line, take orders, and do what needs to be done. If she cannot, then she can no longer serve our needs. If she cannot, she will also be put on the menu tonight, and you’ll cook alone, Byron. And if you can’t bring yourself to do it, then I will rain fire down upon that decrepit pile of bricks you call a company and everyone inside it. I will raze every single member of your staff to ash and contract a company on which I can depend.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind,” Lena says.
Allensworth sighs. “Look where you are, my dear. Sanity is a relative concept. Your problem is you’re attempting to apply the purely human world’s logic to a world where humans are ants. To rise above, the ants must adapt.”
He gives a pointed nod to Luciana.
“Now, Miss Tarr, I know you’re a talented young chef, but have you ever butchered before? And I mean farm-to-table here.”
Monrovio goes to the tool rack and places her attaché case on the tiled floor. She selects a large, razor-edged butcher’s knife and holds it aloft between two hands. Rejoining them, she presents the instrument to Lena.
“You’ll first need to drain Mister Vargas,” Allensworth continues. “One quick, forceful swipe of the blade across his throat will do the trick. We’ve done the tedious prep work for you, as you can see.”
Lena stares down at the knife being offered to her by the succubus, her breath coming in staccato bursts.
“It’s time to decide, Lena,” Allensworth tells her in a more serious tone. “Either you’re part of the team or you’re not. If you’re not, then as Miss Monrovio said, you’re on the menu.”
“Damn you for this, you bastard,” Bronko curses him, helplessly.
“Being damned has its privileges, Byron,” Allensworth says, echoing Bronko’s own words. “You of all people know that.”
Lena turns her head and looks up at Bronko, lost. There are tears welling in the corners of her eyes.
“Chef?”
Bronko swallows, hard. He looks down on her with all the love and pain and sympathy in the world.
“I know you love him,” he whispers to her. “But he’s already dead, Lena. You have to think of it like that. You didn’t do this. You didn’t do any of it. It’s not your fault, no matter what. But Darren is dead either way. I don’t want it to be both of you, and it doesn’t have to be.”
She blinks at him in disbelief, unable to process or accept that it’s him saying these words to her.
“Chef . . . I can’t . . .”
“You remember what Consoné said. It’s war. You’ve been there. You know what it takes to survive.”
“Not this,” Lena pleads with him.
There are tears in Bronko’s eyes now. “I can’t fix this. I’m sorry.”
Lena knows it’s true. For months, she’s dreaded the moment when Bronko’s stroke would run out and they’d face a lethal situation beyond anyone’s control.
Now it’s come, and it’s far worse than any of her nightmares.
“It’s time, Miss Tarr,” Allensworth says. “We have hungry diners waiting.”
Lena turns from Bronko, staring down once again at the gleaming blade of the knife held in Luciana Monrovio’s hands. She looks past the succubus at Darren, seeing ten years of her life and their friendship in his tormented face.
Lena reaches out and closes her hand around the handle of the knife. She feels Bronko’s hand squeezing her shoulder, trying in vain to comfort her.
“I’m sorry, Darren,” she rasps through the tears.
She wants to believe he can hear her, but Lena knows in that moment, she’ll never speak with her friend again.
PART III
MAN DOWN
FLOCK OF SEAGULLS
The helicopter’s pilot is a pudgy, aviator-shades-clad gremlin chewing on an amber-lit stogie and sitting on three phone books. Ritter introduced him to the team as “Ruby” upon takeoff, and although they seemed dubious, no one could argue with the government-issued wings clipped to his tiny (and, according to Cindy, “adorable”) bomber jacket and the front of his equally tiny (and again, adorable) pilot’s cap.
They’re somewhere over the Florida Keys. The cutting of the chopper’s blades is deafening, and the air whipping through the open cabin of the military surplus vehicle beats against their exposed flesh. Ritter has instructed Ruby to double-time it the whole way, and the gremlin war vet isn’t letting him down.
The brothers Thane have donned their fatigues for the first time since slogging through jungles of South America together fighting rogue brujos and brujas employed by the drug cartels. Though Ritter’s team has never carried firearms (owing largely to their wide margin of inefficacy in repelling supernatural creatures and mystical forces), Marcus is toting Ritter’s pump-action shotgun loaded with dragon bone–filled rounds.
Marcus leans close to shout in Ritter’s ear over the blade song. “Just so we’re clear, and not that I’m complaining or anything, but your plan is to fly this slick right up to a heavily fortified military prison that’s also a pipeline for a cannibal restaurant for the super - mega - extra - human - elite and just . . . land?”
“Basically,” Ritter shouts back, managing to sound indifferent even while yelling at the top of his lungs.
Marcus just stares at him in silence for several long moments.
Then: “You’re fucking with me, right?”
Ritter shakes his head.
Marcus holds up two thumbs in mock enthusiasm. “Awesome!”
Next to Ritter, Cindy is passing the time by sharpening the blade of her tactical tomahawk with a cylindrical whetstone. It’s one of several blades sheathed in scabbards configured to her flak jacket and webbed belt. They’re mostly combat knives, although several throwing weapons coated in black ceramic are concealed within reach from any of several positions in which she might find herself once they’re inside.
There’s also a rucksack filled with a cereal variety pack of explosives resting between her feet.
Hara, who takes up three seats and is the reason Ruby had to trim two hundred pounds of weight off his bird before takeoff, is examining a hand-drawn layout of Gluttony Bay under the glow of a soft blue ChemLight. It’s in Ritter’s hand, composed from several secondhand sources, several of them people and creatures who’d only heard details of the place from others who had supposedly seen the inside of it.
Ever the minimalist, Hara is clad in a simple BDU sweater, black jeans, and moccasins. The only weapons he carries are his hands.
Moon is, at Cindy’s request, heavily strapped into his seat. His fledging “alchemist’s kit” is slung around his neck, and although none of them have seen its contents, Moon assures them it’s essential equipment for a mission like this. Of course, he’d probably also say the same thing about the bag of Cool Ranch Doritos from which he’s currently chomping five chips at a time.
“Seriously, man, what’re we doing?” Marcus presses.
“My intel says the restaurant is an entirely separate structure from the prison, so as long as we’re in and out, we shouldn’t incur any military resistance. I glamoured the chopper before we took off,” Ritter explains. “We won’t show up on radar, and anyone spotting us from the air won’t see a helicopter.”
“What’ll they see? We’re not invisible, are we?”
Ritter shakes his head. “We’re a flock of seagulls.”
The implication hits Marcus, and he breathes a huge sigh of relief.
“Nice, bro! Fuckin�
�� hated that band, but nice!”
Ritter just nods.
Marcus hesitates, but he can’t shake the remaining thought from his mind.
“Hey, Ritt!”
His brother just stares back at him, blank-faced and waiting.
“I’m sorry for my part in all this shit. I didn’t mean to fuck up your situation.”
Ritter is already shaking his head before Marcus finishes. “What’s happening would’ve happened with or without you. The only difference is Lena wouldn’t be pissed at me. I won’t pretend I don’t wish that part hadn’t happened.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that part, then.”
Ritter nods. “I know. Look, we’ve both made a lot of the same mistakes. I’m just older and I got to make a bunch of them before you. Let’s call it even, all right?”
Marcus looks genuinely relieved. “Thanks, man.”
“No worries.”
A moment later: “Hey, Ritt?”
“Yeah?”
“Is Cindy single, or . . .” Marcus asks.
The look Ritter flashes him could wilt houseplants.
“Too soon,” Marcus admits. “I get it.”
EXECUTIONER’S CHOICE
“I recommend taking firm hold of the back of Mr. Vargas’s head with one hand while slicing with the other,” Allensworth offers helpfully.
Lena hefts the two-foot butcher’s knife she’s accepted from Luciana Monrovio. The weight is tremendous, but the balance is perfect. Its edge is razor thin and catches even the errant light from the overhead fluorescent spots.
“I’m sorry, Darren,” she says, staring past Monrovio at her best friend’s unconscious, upside-down face.
She means it, too. She’s sorry she’s let it come to this, for both of them.
She can feel Bronko’s hand, large and rough from their everyday work, like her father’s. He squeezes her shoulder reassuringly.
