by DD Barant
“And the instigator of bad poetry,” I mutter. I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve got the virally induced instincts of two predator species thrashing around in my bloodstream, after all. The harsh truth is that right now, me committing murder is going to be like a lion mainlining catnip.
Good. That might just be what it takes to survive this.
“Shish kebab times two,” Tair whispers in my ear. He doesn’t try to disguise his glee; he came to terms with his darker urges a long time ago.
I don’t bother to reply, focusing on the conversation I’m hearing between the congressman and the Don. I’m positioned in the trees edging the gardens at the back of the house, with a good view of the study through a large window. I can see the congressman—a tall, thin thrope wearing a yellow sweater—enter the room with the Don and his escort. Then he draws the curtains, and all I have is the audio feed:
BROADSTONE: I’m surprised to see you here. It doesn’t seem very …
FALZO: Rational? I assure you, I know exactly what I’m doing. The only one here who’s deluded is you.
BROADSTONE: Oh?
FALZO: Ensuring that the Golem Bill won’t pass is a mistake. Both personally and politically.
BROADSTONE: I don’t see how. It will ensure certain businesses remain in business. And that they remain profitable.
FALZO: You refer to your arrangement with Ignacio Prinzini. Yes, I’m sure the immediate consequences will be favorable for both of you, especially financially. But it is not a situation that can last indefinitely. Now that the lems have their own country, lem rights will continue to expand. Allying yourself with anti-lem forces dooms your political future. Or are you so blinded by greed you can’t see which way the wind is blowing?
BROADSTONE: There’s nothing wrong with my vision or my political instincts. For instance, I see exactly what the future of the Gray Wolves holds: a change in leadership. Or am I mistaken?
FALZO: (chuckling) You may be. Right now you’re wondering, Why is this old man here? Either I’m out of my mind … or I’m here with a counter-offer. And you’re listening very carefully because—if I’m not crazy—then I must have something very, very enticing. Something so good I’m willing to walk into a house filled with dangerous people—people whose sole reason for being in the country is to kill me—based on it. Would you say that’s accurate?
BROADSTONE: That sums it up nicely.
FALZO: Very well. Then here is my offer.
He pauses. “Charlie, go,” I say. I unclip my safety harness and drop to the ground.
So try to imagine this: You’re a thrope soldier, doing guard duty at a gate. A big steel gate, set into stone pillars sunk deep into the ground. Stone walls nine feet tall on either side. You’re on higher alert than normal, because the guy your unit was sent to kill just walked up to that gate and surrendered himself, which is all kinds of wrong and stinks of a setup.
And then you see the Cadillac roaring up the street straight at you.
First thing you do is put several razor-tipped arrows through the windshield. The windshield is heavily tinted so you can’t actually see the driver, but you have plenty of time. And you—and your partner—are both excellent shots.
Except the arrows do no good. The Caddy—a huge monstrous thing, painted a bright purple and with enough chrome on it to blind a showgirl—keeps coming. As it gets closer, you see through the arrow-damaged windshield that it doesn’t appear to have a driver. What it has is some sort of pole lashed horizontally to the steering wheel, the ends sticking out of the open windows on either side of the car, with ropes leading from the pole’s tips toward the rear of the vehicle. They remind you, absurdly, of reins.
You realize that the Caddy is going to smash directly into the gate. You don’t have time to alert anyone—all you can do is dive out of the way in the last second before impact, still peppering the car with arrows in hopes that you’ll hit something vital.
The car smashes into the steel bars. Amazingly, the gate holds, bringing the Caddy to an abrupt halt.
A large shape flies through the air, over the car’s roof.
In a flash of uncharacteristic inspiration, you realize that someone was crouched on the Caddy’s trunk, guiding it with the ropes. They probably put a brick on the accelerator first, then popped the car into gear with another rope attached to the shifter once they were in position. The Caddy’s sudden stop has catapulted this mysterious rider through the air and inside your perimeter.
All of this bursts into your consciousness with the brilliance of sudden revelation, in the fleeting instant before the shape lands a few feet away and resolves itself into the outline of a large, well-armed golem.
And those are the last thoughts you—and your partner—ever have.
I can hear these events occurring in stereo, coming through clearly via Charlie’s audio channel and—more faintly—live in the distance. At the same time, I’m still listening to Broadstone and Falzo’s conversation as I sprint toward the rear of the house.
FALZO: I will let you live. In return, you will vote against the Golem Bill, and urge as many of your peers as you can to do the same.
BROADSTONE: Excuse me?
FALZO: Your career, in the aftermath, will be uncertain. If it were up to me, I would proffer the hand of friendship—even though I find many of your actions to be without honor—in the spirit of continued cooperation and mutual benefit.
BROADSTONE: I don’t—what was that?
It’s funny how often our first instinct is to actually look for a potential threat, even if doing so isn’t the wisest move. The thrope soldiers inside the study know that; Broadstone doesn’t. Even though the sound of Charlie’s arrival comes from the other side of the house, Broadstone still pulls aside the drapes and looks out, just as I trip the motion sensors and the security lights come on.
I put three bullets into the window. Not into the congressman—I’m aiming high and at an angle, just trying to shatter the glass.
Turns out I needn’t have bothered; a snarling thrope comes sailing through a second later, all tangled up in the heavy drapes. He slashes them to pieces in seconds, but that’s all the time I need to see that he’s not the Don. I put him down with a single shot. Assuming Charlie took out his two, that leaves fourteen, with five more right in front of me—two of whom I can see, now that one of the drapes is gone.
I shoot one, slamming him into the far wall. The other dives for cover. I can’t see the congressman or Falzo, but I can hear plenty of snarling and smashing going on. A second later another thrope flies through the window, doing pretty much what the first one did; I repeat myself, too.
I’ve got a good view of the whole study now, and from the open door into the hall I’d say the good congressman has fled. The Don is in half-were mode, a gray-furred monster seven feet tall locked in combat with two other thropes. He’s got a silver blade jutting from one shoulder and his left ear is gone, but other than that he appears to be winning; I say that because there’s one headless thrope corpse already at his feet, and a second later he uses his jaws to add another.
I vault over the sill to help him out, but he doesn’t need it. He yanks the knife out of his shoulder while dodging a swipe from a silver-edged sword, and takes out the last one with a thrust to the heart.
“Only three of them?” I say. “Geez, you are getting old.”
He leaves the blade buried in the thrope’s chest and signs, In my youth they would not have touched me, let alone drawn blood.
I hear the unmistakable sound of a heavy door being smashed in. For a second I wonder where Charlie found a battering ram, then mentally shrug. He’s resourceful that way.
Nine left.
“Hey, Charlie?” I say into my headset.
“Hang on,” he snaps.
Sounds of mayhem ensue. “Yeah?” he says a moment later.
“Try throwing them out the windows. Works like a charm.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Tair?”
&nbs
p; “Present.”
“Working my way upstairs. Be ready.”
I nod at the Don. “Come on, let’s try to find a back staircase. I want to get up there ASAP.”
I doubt your friend needs help.
“Help? I just want to show up while there’s still a few left.”
I believe I’ll try to find the congressman and finish our discussion. I have a feeling he’ll be in a much more reasonable frame of mind. He springs out the door and down a corridor.
Charlie’s voice: “Tair. Second floor. Two windows to the west of the one over the main entrance.” Crash!
“Got him.”
I find the back stairs. The rest of the unit must be quartered in the guest bedrooms, that light I saw on in the east corner. I orient myself, figure out which direction I need to go.
“Second floor, fourth window,” Charlie growls. Crash!
“Nailed him,” says Tair. “Lot of windows in that room.”
“It’s a hall.”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
I creep up the stairs. When I reach the top, I find myself in a long, dark corridor, with green light spilling around a corner at the very end of it. I advance slowly.
“Hey,” says Tair. “Think you’ll make it to the third floor?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“If I had a little more lead time, I could take them out before they hit the ground.”
“You want me to look for a skylight while I’m at it? Pitch ’em straight up, make sure they’re framed by the moon?”
“Could you? That’d be swell.”
I make it to the end of the hall, peer around the corner cautiously. The light’s coming from an open doorway. I can hear a low muttering from inside the room: the congressman’s voice.
“This is getting boring,” Tair says. “I think I’ll let the next one run a little.”
“You let one get away and I’ll make you eat that bow.”
I approach the doorway. Inside, Broadstone is kneeling beside a small stone altar. The green light is coming from an object on the altar, though I can’t tell what it is—the congressman’s body is in the way. His muttering resolves into a low-pitched chant, words in a language I don’t know—but one that sounds horribly familiar.
High Power Level Craft is a type of magic only governments have access to. It’s Thropirelem’s equivalent of atomic weapons, a way to contact other dimensions—dimensions a lot scarier than this one. It’s what was used at the end of World War II to give vampires the ability to have children, what Aristotle Stoker used to raise the continent of Mu and get the attention of an Elder God. It’s as dangerous as a dozen high-yield nukes but a lot less stable, and the last thing you want in the hands of a corrupt politician whose back is against the wall.
“Stop right there,” I bark in my best cop voice. “Utter one more syllable and I’ll kill you where you kneel.”
He falls silent. Something hangs in the air, heavy and oppressive. Something’s watching me from every direction, like there are eyes just below the surface of the walls, the floor, the ceiling, studying me through a thin veil of reality.
Not just eyes. Mouths, too.
“Turn around!”
He does, shuffling awkwardly on his knees. He’s holding something in his hands: an oddly shaped black rock, its outline almost organic, like an amoeba frozen between seconds. There are runes carved into it, and they’re pulsing with a mucus-tinted glow that’s hard to look at. So I look at Broadstone’s face instead—and wish I hadn’t.
He’s in half-were form, his head that of a wolf’s. But with every pulse of light his flesh becomes almost completely transparent, and the fanged skull underneath is the jet black of obsidian instead of bone.
“Put the rock down.”
When he sees my gun, he gives a bark of laughter. A half-were can’t speak; its mouth isn’t shaped right for it. But I guess the language the congressman was chanting a second ago wasn’t designed for a human mouth, either, because he goes back to snarling and grunting whatever incantation he’s started.
I can’t just shoot a congressman, dirty or not; the paperwork would be hell. So I shoot the rock instead.
It drives the thing into his belly—a Ruger Super Redhawk packs a big kinetic wallop—and he goes backward, knocking over the shrine.
But he doesn’t shut up. And he doesn’t drop the rock.
Something rips its way into the world.
It’s long and black and serpentine and has eyes all over it. Mouths, too, round toothy ones like a leech’s. It’s not entirely here, though; its outline shifts and blurs like smoke or a movie moving in and out of focus. I try putting a bullet into the thing, but the round goes right through it without any effect.
I drop the gun, draw my scythes, and snap them open.
I know, I know. If this interdimensional snake monstrosity can ignore a big-ass silver-tipped round, what good is a silver blade going to do against it? Probably nothing at all.
Which is why I go after the congressman instead.
He’s flat on his back, holding the rock up and away from his body, still chanting. I pincer him with the scythes, impaling the backs of his hands. The tip of each blade stops dead against the rock itself.
Silver interferes with most magic, but HPLC is in a class by itself. Whatever eldritch energy is flowing through the rock, it channels itself straight through the blades, along the shafts, and up my arms. I see my own skeletal hands, the bones a charred black, through my translucent skin—and then the two streams of energy come together, somewhere in the middle of my chest. I’m pretty sure I heard somewhere that crossing the streams was bad …
It’s a horrible sensation. Something foul and black is filling me up, not my lungs or stomach but my skeleton, like all my bones have been hollowed out and now someone is injecting tar into them, tar filled with the ashes of a thousand corpses. I scream.
And Broadstone drops the rock.
I don’t know if it was me diverting his mojo or just the pain of having silver embedded in his flesh, but the rock thumps onto his chest and then slides off onto the floor. The green light dies. The snake-thing howls in frustration and folds itself back into whatever Hell-realm it calls home, not so much fading as getting farther away while staying in the same place, until it vanishes into the nonexistent distance.
And me? I manage the extremely badass maneuver of not passing out. I stumble backward a step, pulling my scythes out of the congressman’s hands, and say shakily, “So there.”
And then I sit down, kind of suddenly. Yep, they’re definitely going to make me the star of an action movie, with me doing cool stuff and spouting clever one-liners immediately afterward. Maybe there’ll even be explosions behind me I can walk away from without looking at. In slow-mo.
Broadstone sits up, slowly. He’s reverted to human, and looks about as drained as I feel.
“Touch that rock again,” I say, with as much authority as I can muster, “and both your hands are coming off at the wrist.”
He stares at me, despair and frustration warring in his eyes. Despair wins. He slumps back against the ruins of the altar, cradling his bleeding hands against his chest. The energy surge seems to have shorted out my headset, because I can’t hear Charlie or Tair anymore.
It doesn’t matter, though. The congressman and I just sit there and glare at each other until Charlie finds us, a few minutes later.
“All clear,” he rumbles. “Tair just took out the last one. Radio not working?”
“Fried,” I say. “Where’s the Don?”
“Haven’t seen him. Tair, have you—” He stops and listens. “Sure. What a surprise. I’ll let her know.”
He gives me a hand standing up. “The Don’s with Tair. Seems they think it’s time to leave—in fact, they already have.”
“Leaving us to clean up. Lovely.”
“You—you are in enormous trouble,” Broadstone says. He seems to have regained a little of his composure and thinks he can bluff
his way out of this. He’s a politician, after all—I would have been disappointed if he hadn’t at least tried.
“No, we’re in the presence of someone who’s in enormous trouble,” I say. “And that would be you, you slave-trading, demon-summoning pimp wannabe. I am going to find the deepest, darkest off-the-books cell and bury you until you’re putting in your fangs with Polident .”
“We’ll see,” he says. “It’s my word against yours, after all. You have no evidence, and your allies have fled.”
“Yeah,” I say, pulling out my phone. “How entirely unexpected. My, my, whatever shall I do.” I hit the second number on my speed dial. “Cassius? You have them, right?”
The congressman’s face gets a little paler. I snap the phone shut and smile down at him. “What, you really think I’d put my trust in those two? In an operation like this? The NSA has been backing us up all the way, so far back in the shadows that even Don Falzo couldn’t smell them.”
I shake my head. “Thropes don’t have the market cornered on being sneaky, you know. But after a few thousand years of being a professional spook, I’m pretty sure my boss does—and I’m a fast learner.”
TWENTY-THREE
The NSA cleanup team arrives and we leave. The congressman goes into custody for “debriefing”; that means he vanishes with a plausible cover story for a few days while Cassius decides what to do with him. The NSA crew will disappear the bodies of the death squad and make sure nothing gets into the papers. All neat and clean and tidy—but going in we had no such guarantees. The one brief phone conversation I’d managed to have with Cassius—after ditching the thropes for all of two minutes—was barely enough to convince him to let me run this op from the inside, without his active participation. There was no time for details, just his promise that he’d hang back as long as he could. Everything after that had been thrown together on instinct and luck.
