Next month I come with a plan, a bag of swag to trade, and a shopping list.
Another set of bells rang out, and Eastwood turned back to the auction area. “Time to settle up.”
Ree swung the bag of goods onto her other shoulder, feeling the burn in her forearms. The ring would be a hell of a lot lighter than all the crap she was lugging around now, though she suspected the bag contained more than his bids.
Back in the auction area, there was a short line of bidders in front of the auctioneer and her sharp-dressed staff. Lucretia and Sven had made up enough to be chatting amicably ahead of them. A half-dozen auction winners collected their goods, walking away with knives, discs, tomes, and more before Eastwood approached the stage.
Ree opened the bag, and Eastwood produced his bids. First, the beat-to-hell D&D box, cardboard worn through at the corners. He held it for a moment, sighed, then handed it to one of the attendants. He pulled out a small clear plastic box filled with shredded paper, the confetti Chaos Orb. He handed that over as well, then reached into the bag and pulled out the lightsaber. This was a different model from the one he’d used to save Ree from the troll, but even from a few feet away, she felt the energy contained in the prop.
It called out to her, and she had to restrain herself from reaching out for a touch. Eastwood held the prop like a baby, and Ree saw a tear bead up in the corner of his eye before he handed the lightsaber to the auctioneer directly, stepping past the assistants.
“Remember the legacy she left. I hope you will honor her memory as I have,” Eastwood said.
The auctioneer took the lightsaber and admired it, running her hands over the handle. “I will do with it as I see fit, Eastwood, but I will remember your words. Branwen was well known to me.” More support for Ree’s not-just-a-friend suspicions.
The auctioneer produced a small velvet-covered jewelry box and popped it open to reveal the ring, gilt and gorgeous. Eastwood exhaled upon seeing the ring and accepted it like it was as delicate as a Fabergé egg.
He slipped the box into a pocket of his coat and shook the auctioneer’s hand. Ree failed her save vs. curiosity and looked into the bag. There wasn’t much light, but she saw a cast-iron teakettle, a sheathed tanto knife, and the real culprit of weight, a white half-longbox, which would explain the boxy chunk o’ heavy she’d felt digging into her back.
“So, what now?” Ree asked.
“Now it’s time for a drink.” Eastwood looped around the stalls and made straight for Grognard’s stall, moving at a “walking crosstown in Manhattan” clip. Ree kept pace as best she could with the sack.
Eastwood already had a drink in hand when Ree caught up to the stall. He downed it in a single go.
“Okay, let’s go. I’ve had my fill of this place,” he said, tossing the empty cup into the nearby trash can.
Without so much as a glance in Ree’s direction, Eastwood delved into the crowd, geeks parting to make way as he passed.
• • •
They were deep in the tunnels and halfway back to Grognard’s proper when Eastwood stopped to sniff the air. “We’re being followed.”
Ree looked over her shoulder, trying to listen. “How do you smell anything down here?”
“Experience. I need you to get the tanto and the blaster.”
Ree set down the bag and rummaged through it, trying to identify things by touch.
“Faster. They’re closing.”
“Who’s closing? Can’t we run?” Ree asked, panicking.
“No good. They’re cutting us off at this juncture. If we go back now, we get trapped into a set of downward paths toward bad-nasty’s territory. Get that sword ready, it’s time to test your steel.”
Ree found the tanto’s hilt and kept feeling for the blaster. She found something vaguely gun-shaped and pulled it out. Eastwood took both weapons, stuffing the tanto into his belt and drawing the lightsaber she’d seen earlier. Ree drew her rapier and scanned the darkness for movement.
She heard the laughter first, a throaty laugh in a deep but feminine register. Lady Lucretia stepped out of the shadows, followed shortly by Sven Carlssen, his hair brushing the ceiling of the sewer passageway. He hefted a bat’leth in both hands, the Klingon weapon that seemed a whole hell of a lot scarier in person than on TV.
Lucretia smiled, locking them in her gaze. “I’ve come for the ring, Eastwood.”
Chapter Eight
With This Ring, I Thee Pwn
“Frak off.” Eastwood held the lightsaber in a low guard out and to his right, not yet activated.
Lucretia’s painted lips drew up into a terse smile. “This is not a negotiation. This is a trade. I take the ring, and you keep your life and that of your apprentice.”
Sven curled his hands around the bat’leth, a caged tiger waiting to be released to the hunt.
Ree started to protest, “I’m not his—”
“She’s not my apprentice.” Eastwood cut her off, his voice raised and laced with anger and frustration.
“Whoever she is, she dies unless you give me the ring. You can fend off one of us, but do you think you’re Geek enough to take us both?” Lucretia looked straight into Eastwood’s eyes, smirking. “You’re no Branwen.” She spat the woman’s name at him like a weapon.
Eastwood raised the blaster, pointing it at Lucretia. “How about you leave, and I refrain from disintegrating you and cutting off Swedish Chef’s balls to serve to his wailing children?”
Sven shifted his weight side-to-side, clearly antsy. Lucretia was photo-still, her breathing imperceptible. Eastwood, Sven, and Lucretia maintained a stare-down for most of a minute, while Ree did her best to seem intimidating. She grabbed on to the magical energy in her mind with white-hot mental knuckles.
All right, William Goldman, don’t fail me now.
Sven broke first, lunging forward with a huge pace. He moved far faster than anyone his size had a right to, cutting up toward Eastwood’s neck with a swipe of the bat’leth. As Eastwood’s lightsaber fired up, the tunnel filled with green light. Eastwood faded back and under the cut, dodging by inches and counter-attacking with his own upward slash. Sven reversed the blade and parried the lightsaber with the back side of his blade.
Inconcievable! Ree thought. Or not. She focused, using the Princess Bride brain to try to predict what would happen next in the fight.
Lucretia raised a hand and said something under her breath. A jagged pattern flashed in front of her hand, and the hair on Ree’s arms stood straight up. Something cracked in the air, and Eastwood lost grip of his lightsaber. The blade reverted to prop form as it dropped into the sludge at the center of the tunnel.
“Frell!” Eastwood said in a panicked voice, ducking under Sven’s horizontal cut and firing a point-blank shot with the blaster. When it went wide, he dived to the sludge, trying to fish out the saber.
Sven carried his cut through, on track to take Ree’s torso off at the rib cage. She responded automatically, pushing off one foot to jump back and parry into the cut. Her blade was pushed out of the way by Sven’s powerful strike, but the blow was deflected enough to miss her by inches.
Ree moved with the rapier’s momentum from the parry, circled it over her head to cut at Sven’s shoulder. The blond man backed off, raising the bat’leth at an angle to stop the cut. The tip of his blade bounced off the ceiling, but the parry held.
Oh, this is awesome, Ree thought as she let the magic guide her though the fight. She skipped back another pace, watching Eastwood sweep a hand through the muck while rapid-firing at Lucretia, who somehow danced around the shots, dodging them time and time again.
Eastwood pulled the lightsaber out of the muck and fired it up again, the iridescent green blade lighting up the tunnel once more. He fired a couple of shots at Sven as the blond man turned away from Ree. Sven took the blasts, which singed his coat but seemed to do little to stop him as he charged.
Ree pushed her weight off her back foot and launched forward, leaning into the lunge to
align her whole body with the strike. The shot landed around the side of Sven’s rib cage, but the blade skipped off his coat.
She cursed at his somehow-armored coat, but instead of “Fucker!” it came out as “Cowardly sod!”
Eastwood took a wide stance in the muck, meeting Sven’s downward cut. Sven pushed Eastwood back, trying to tangle the lightsaber up with the blaster. Ree slashed at the back of Sven’s head, figuring that it’d be harder to armorize one’s neck. Without looking, Sven leaned forward, dodging the cut. Ree felt her feet slip on the muck-covered concrete and had to flail to keep from falling into a forward split.
Ree felt the magical energy fading as she fought, the buzz dimming. Not just yet, she pleaded with herself. Keep going . . .
As Ree recovered from the slip, she saw Lucretia backing up, the woman’s long fingers dancing in a pattern. The air in the tunnel crackled with energy again, and the next time Eastwood’s blaster fired, it made a pathetic wooom sound of powering down. Sven pressed the attack, pushing Eastwood’s blade aside and clocking him across the temple with an elbow.
Eastwood collapsed into the several-inches-thick sewage, and Ree leaped to intervene, her blade whirling in a tornado of slashes and thrusts.
Sven parried each attack, taking one, two, then three steps back. As she pushed forward with a double-disengage thrust to the shoulder, Sven leaned into her attack, knocking the sword out of her hand and slamming her into a sidewall.
Red and black covered her vision, and the world faded away.
• • •
Upon waking, Ree’s first thought was: What a hangover. Except she hadn’t been drinking.
Her next: Where am I?
Right. In a sewer, fighting Bitchy McStrega and the Swedish Cuisinart.
She opened her eyes, regretting it when the light came into her eyes like hot-blasted sand. She closed them, trying to feel out her surroundings.
The ground below her was something squishy, and the room smelled like old paper, the air stiff. Her neck was cramped like she’d slept upright. She tried rolling her neck, feeling more than hearing the cracking and popping.
She brought a hand up to her face and tried opening her eyes again. The light still stung, but she managed to take in the room. She was flanked by bookshelves and a desk with stacks of old computer equipment. The squishy floor turned out to be a smelly futon. Ree looked around the room and heard someone whinging just before she spotted Eastwood behind the top of a shelf. His shirt was off, and he was wrapping a bandage around his chest, covering a nasty wound in his side.
She lurched up to a sitting position, and her head lagged several seconds behind. “Eastwood?”
He managed a weak smile. “Good. Can you give me a hand?”
“Why aren’t we dead?”
“Nightcrawler trading card in my pocket. Instant BAMF.”
Ree gave him the stink-eye. “So why didn’t you do that when they showed up?”
Eastwood looked down. “I thought we could take them. Plus, Lucretia was loaded for bear, and she’d have been able to stop the effect at the start of the fight, but I thought maybe I could wind her first . . . Anyhow, she got the ring before I could get to you and teleport out, and Sven left me with this.” He indicated the wound in his side. Blood was already seeping through the bandage.
Ree wobbled over to Eastwood, her head still tracking behind her body, and held the roll of gauze while Eastwood spun, wrapping himself in.
“I’m no doctor, and I think you need one,” she said.
Eastwood shook his head. “I have no interest in explaining myself to the police. I’ve been around the block, and hospitals lead to complications. That concussion of yours, however, you can take care of without too much trouble.”
That explained the wobbling and the lag. Great, just what my weekend needed.
“What do we do now? Try to get the ring back?”
“Right now, you go home and I convalesce for a while until my healing potion finishes brewing.”
Ree quirked an eyebrow at healing potion but let it go. “Is there something else you can use to predict the potential suicides?”
“That’s what I get to figure out today. It’s 3 AM, so be careful on your way home. If I saved your life twice just to have you get shanked by a meth-head for spare change, it’d be a gorram shame.”
Ree put her hands over her heart. “I’m touched. You’ll call when you have something?”
Eastwood nodded. “Go have a life, and see if you can take the next couple of days off so you don’t get fired when things heat up again and you have to start pulling all-nighters.”
Lovely.
Ree looked around, seeing the rapier propped up against a shelf along with the bag-o’-stuff. She took a minute to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything, and when her head had cleared a little more, she started home, leaving Eastwood to his wincing and whinging.
There was a chill in the air, and the moon was bright in the sky. She kept her hands out of her jacket pockets, ready to respond to muggers or monsters or whatever might come along applying for the job of Fail Cherry on top of the Sundae of Suck that was her night.
Thankfully, there were no takers, and she spent the walk home alone with her thoughts, somewhat jumbled by the continuing ache in her head and neck.
She slinked up the stairs as quietly as she could, unlocked the four locks slowly, then crept inside, since she was supposed to be “asleep.” She tiptoed to the bathroom to take some naproxen and then escaped to her room, tossing her coat on the floor and collapsing onto her bed. She stared at the ceiling until the drugs dulled her pain and she drifted off into long-overdue sleep.
• • •
This time Ree woke without questions, to the sounds of Sandra rattling around the kitchen. She heard Darren’s voice as well, the couple’s talking cutting through the paper-thin walls. She ambled out to the living room and then the kitchen, seeing Sandra and Darren in their Saturday-morning domestic bliss. Darren was supposed to be buried in work. Apparently, he’d made time. Ree smiled to herself.
The two slid past each other in the small kitchen, whisking batter in bowls, cracking eggs into a pan, and generally being disgustingly cute. A memory flashed across her vision for a second—Ree and Jay in the same kitchen, making dinner several months ago, when they still saw each other regularly.
“Good morning,” Sandra said, an I got laid last night grin plastered on her face.
“Coffee?” was all that Ree could manage, her voice gravelly.
Sandra spun in place and placed a half-full French press on the table next to Ree. Darren handed her a mug, and Ree inhaled deeply as she poured, savoring the smell of Bryan’s Morning Maniac blend. She took a sip, ignoring the scalding heat. She was still, savoring the smell until the first kick of caffeine hit her system and life filtered back into her limbs. She sipped again, popping her neck. Her head ached, but clarity rode in on the heroic tide of java.
This, this is my real life. Not that crazy shit, she said to herself, forcing down the memories of the last couple of days.
“And now she’s rebooted.” Sandra dolloped some batter onto a pan, which sizzled immediately. Darren layered several strips of bacon onto another pan.
This is why I put up with the cute. Ree leaned against the wall, wrapping herself in the comfort of normalcy and familiarity.
A few minutes later, there was a feast—blueberry pancakes, bacon, fresh fruit, and coffee. Ree set the table and happily played third wheel while the couple chatted over breakfast. Her downtime would end soon enough, but she had the closing shift today, so she didn’t need to be there until two.
“How’s your head?” Sandra asked.
Conveniently, Ree had acquired a real reason for a headache. Small blessings. “A bit fuzzy, but doing better. I’ll be fine.”
Darren shook his head. “Just as long as you aren’t getting sick. I can’t handle another end-of-semester with the flu. That nearly killed me last year.”
Ree shrugged. “Hey, if you’re dead, no term paper.”
“I’d have a problem with that, even if he doesn’t.” Sandra ran her hand over Darren’s short hair, a familiar caress.
“Just for you, I’ll soldier on. After this, it’s back to the mines.” Darren picked up a strip of bacon and ate it a centimeter at a time, making happy grunts.
Ree believed that even the most refined of men would be reduced to caveman sounds when being fed bacon, and she had borne up that belief with more than a little experiential data (aka anecdotes).
“What have you got on for today?” Ree asked Sandra, who was chewing a bite of pancake.
Her roommate wiped her mouth with a napkin and said, “Laundry, groceries, and then downtown for a cooking class. Beef bourguignon.”
“Save me some?” Ree asked.
“Of course.”
Ree would probably be twenty pounds heavier if not for Sandra. On her own, Ree could subsist on café leftovers and whatever she could barter with pastries from her network of restaurateur friends. Sandra made real, fresh food, specifically for herself and Ree, not repurposed or traded away because it was marred or about to expire. Ree had taken a while to get used to the idea, but she wouldn’t give it up for the world now.
How am I going to keep this life while living a crazy-ass Urban Fantasy existence? Those chicks are always single and lonely.
But she was a badass, she could make it work.
Ree helped herself to another serving of fruit, munching on slices of honeydew while Darren polished off a third giant pancake. “If I fall asleep and miss my train stop, I’m blaming you.” Darren leveled his fork at Sandra, who demurred.
“You could always blow off the paper until next week and come with me to the cla-ass . . .”
Darren leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. “Lord, give me strength to resist this gorgeous woman.”
Sandra frowned.
“. . . long enough to finish my papers,” he added with a smile.
Geekomancy Page 10
