They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded

by James Alan Gardner

  Reaper advances with his nosebleedy scythe knocking Wrecking Ball’s attacks aside. Reaper goes slow, not trying to close in. He must be hoping to drive Wrecking Ball away without a full-on fight. I don’t blame him—once the gloves come off, you can’t predict how combat will go. One fluke of luck, good or bad, may turn the tide.

  Besides, even if Reaper’s scythe is megaintimidating, who knows if it’ll pierce Wrecking Ball’s skin? Maybe the blade will bounce off. Maybe it’ll slice her like a hard-boiled egg. When Dark powers crash into Light, the results are a crapshoot until you test them for real. Neither Reaper nor Wrecking Ball wants to risk finding out who’s impervious to whom.

  « Why are they fighting? » Zircon asks inside my head.

  That’s an excellent question. But since Robin Hood’s MO is stealing big-ticket items, I can put two and two together. I say, « There’s a honkin’ huge bazooka sitting right in front of me, ostensibly built by our BFF Diamond. Wrecking Ball likely wants to steal it. Reaper demurs. »

  « Demurs? » Aria repeats. « Did you just say, ‘demurs’? And ‘ostensibly’? »

  « You betcha,» I say. « I got the OED on the tip of my tongue, and Merriam-Webster up my ass. »

  Zircon says, « Do we want either of these kumquats getting their hands on a Diamond weapon? Robin Hood is no saint, and this Reaper guy … he’s running with your fake Mounties, right? »

  « They aren’t Mounties,» I say, «but they’re probably government issue. Your point still stands—I wouldn’t want these wanks to get their hands on Diamond’s tech. »

  « Then let’s take away their chew toy. »

  A figure in white appears inside the vault. It wears a white top hat and tails, with a blindfold covering the eyes—like a cross between Fred Astaire and blind Lady Justice. That’s actually pretty appropriate: Zircon aims to straddle the line between male and female. Then again, Zirc contends that no such line exists, and to hell with your confabulated gender binaries.

  Seeing Zirc, I couldn’t argue even if I wanted to. I’m too overwhelmed by Zircon’s Halo. All Sparks emit an aura, akin to a Darkling’s Shadow; but Darkling auras are scary, whereas Sparks have a wider emotional range. Zirc in particular smacks my brain like an ancient force of nature, something more primal than a god and more punch-in-the-face awesome.

  It’s a good thing Zircon spends most of the time shrunk to the size of an insect or even smaller. At human height, Zirc takes my breath away. I’m not affected when I’m in costume, too—well, okay, I’m affected a bit—but at times like this, when I’m ordinary Jools, seeing Zircon reminds me how small and trivial I am compared to the vastness of the universe.

  Think of staring at the Grand Canyon. Or a volcano. That’s Zircon. Shaped like a human, but projecting the feel of primordial stone. It’s daunting as hell. And actually Zirc is made of stone: from a distance, Zircon’s skin looks like standard-issue flesh, but up close you can see that it’s finely faceted rock, carved and colored to resemble a person. I don’t know what kind of rock it is, but it’s tough enough to take a serious pounding without getting damaged.

  Zircon would be awe-inspiring even without the Halo.

  Zirc stands inside the vault, out of sight from everybody but me. She picks up the bazooka, clearly struggling with its weight. Like all of us, Zirc has acquired lean, mean muscles since becoming a Spark, but the bazooka was built by a dude who wears superpowered armor. Diamond can sling five hundred kilos as easy as juggling eggs. Zirc, on the other hand, may be able to bench-press a year’s worth of textbooks, but hoisting the bazooka is a whole ’nother thing. Zirc can barely stay upright while holding the weight … but after a moment, she and the bazooka both disappear, shrinking too small to be seen.

  « Omnimorphic field for the win! » Zircon says.

  « You just say that to make me crazy,» Aria mutters.

  Aria has a point. She’s a physics major, and anally obsessive when it comes to the (finger-quote) “laws of nature.” She hates that Zircon can shrink at all, but Zirc makes it worse by claiming to have an “omnimorphic field”—a pseudo-science surrounding that will shrink down anything Zirc is holding. It makes no rational sense, but it’s hella convenient at times like this.

  My attitude is let’s not look a gift field in the mouth. Aria, on the other hand, gets all hung up about “logical consistency.” As if anything in the world has ever been logical. Magic and superpowers are the universe’s way of saying, “Chill.”

  « So, Zircon,» I say, «whatcha gonna do with the big-ass gun? »

  « Would you let me take it home and hang it on my bedroom wall? I feel like redecorating. »

  « Yeah, no,» I answer. « Swag made by Diamond has a habit of blowing up. Of course, if you let me examine it, I could probably shut off its defenses. »

  « No way,» Aria says. « You do NOT get to analyze Mad Genius inventions. »

  « Come on, Mom, I’ll be careful. »

  « No. It might give you ideas. BAD ideas. You’re already too— »

  Kablammo.

  * * *

  I WISH I HAD Zircon’s fancy vision powers. Zirc can see at a distance, without even looking in the appropriate direction. Me, I’ve only got the eyes in my head, and they have an unobstructed view of the flames that have suddenly started spewing through the hole in the wall. A wave of fire sweeps across the room so gorram fast I don’t have time to duck.

  In the nanosecond before I’m hit, I can’t help thinking of those Hollywood explosions that people can outrun on foot. Yeah, right. I sprint the hundred-meter as fast as Usain Bolt, but the flame tsunami doesn’t care as it bursts my eardrums and ignites my face.

  My eyes burn out of their sockets. The experience sucks.

  I mean it really, really sucks. Like for serious.

  As I’m finally going unconscious, I think, Why couldn’t I shut down sooner? I’ve taken a shitload of crap since becoming a Spark, but getting set on fire is grade-A the worst.

  I guess that’s the price of being human max in everything. Someone somewhere holds the record for suffering the most. I get to match that record. Joy.

  But I regenerate. So there’s that.

  * * *

  I WAKE UP WITH the worst hangover of my life. That’s saying a lot—on many mornings after nights before, I’ve had brain-splitting headaches, sometimes with the added fun of groin aches, ass aches, and whisker burn. But after having my face literally burned off, I apologize to whiskers everywhere. I also apologize to alcohol for all the unkind words I’ve muttered. In the days to come, I promise nothing but respectful adulation. I sure as fuck could use some booze for the purpose of self-medication.

  Let’s take stock, shall we?

  Vision: a blur. But my eyes must have mostly grown back or I wouldn’t be seeing a thing.

  Inhalation: each breath feels like knives cutting ragged chunks from my nostrils, but breathing through my mouth is worse. I’m not sure I have actual lips at the moment … just pan-seared tatters of flesh draped across my teeth. I don’t want to picture what that looks like, but I’m thinking Reaper’s ugly stepsister.

  General skin tone: flaky. Crispy Flakes of Jools, your favorite new breakfast! I wonder whether I’m sunburned red or charred all the way to black. But I’m like some annelid worm who only has eyespots rather than actual eyes. I can tell light from dark, but beyond that, all bets are off.

  Anyway, I couldn’t see my baked flesh even if my eyes were functional. I was crouching behind that baggage cart when the fireball tore through the room. Only my head and shoulders were exposed to the flames. I don’t feel too bad from my boobs on down—no doubt I got scorched, but the sheer screaming agony of everything above my collarbones drowns out any owws from below.

  I wait. After plenty more ungodly pain, my sight deblurs, my eardrums reskin, and my lips reconstitute from ash.

  I feel like it takes forever. However, WikiJools checks with some ultra-accurate timekeeping website and tells me that, start to finish, it�
�s only been six minutes since I got flambéed.

  I sure hope no one has been watching. It’s hard to pretend you don’t have superpowers when your eyes regrow from nothing in the time it takes Miranda to brush her hair.

  I stay on my back even after I’m healed, just to gather my wits and strength. Fire alarms blare loudly off in the distance, but the world is more hushed nearby. I’ll take that to mean I’m not in immediate danger of catching fire again. Awesome.

  Finally, I sit up. My shirt and ski jacket immediately fall to my waist. Well, shit: the tops of my clothes got incinerated, too, and my wardrobe doesn’t do super-healing. Too bad I wasn’t wearing my Spark costume—it magically repairs itself, thanks to a deal Zircon arranged with a goblin. But no, I was only wearing my day-to-day. The fabric wasn’t all that flammable, but still, neither the jacket nor the shirt has shoulders anymore. I’ll have to use my hands to hold up what’s left if I don’t want to go flashing the airport.

  No, let’s rephrase: what’s left of the airport. Cuz I’m sure I’m not the only thing that caught fire.

  I force my aching eyes open. I’m not in the baggage area. I’m in a corridor, sprawled beside a thick metal door with a sign saying FIRE DOOR, DO NOT PROP OPEN. Obediently, the door is closed.

  I wonder if I staggered here after getting blasted by the fire. My body may have a previously undiscovered superpower that makes it stumble away from danger if my brain goes unconscious. More likely, Zircon or Aria carried me here so I’d have a safe place to regenerate. Then they went off to help other people. I’m still not sure what happened, but the fireball I swallowed was likely part of a whole big thing that set the airport ablaze. In which case, hundreds of people may need to be evacuated.

  I could check in by mentally calling Zirc and Aria. But I re fuse. I don’t want to hear them fuss over me. Poor nonsuper Jools, always getting smacked down! Well, I’m fine now, aren’t I? Apart from the ongoing sting of having my eyes and cheeks set on fire. I’ll just rest a tad longer, till I feel fit enough to start rescuing people myself.

  Footsteps coming down the hall. Oh, look, it’s the witchy woman I saw in the lounge. The one as pale as a vampire, but who used an Indonesian swear.

  She stops in front of me. “You’re alive.”

  “Apparently so.” Since my hands are busy holding up my clothes, I plant my feet on the floor and use leverage to shove myself upward. My partly bare back slides up the wall. “What the frak happened?”

  “An airplane exploded,” the woman says. “I don’t know why.”

  “There was a fight,” I say. “Between those people who dragged me into your lounge, and a woman made out of metal.” Should I admit I know who the woman was? Why not? Robin Hood and his gang are pretty famous, so it wouldn’t be odd if I recognized one of them. “I think the woman was Wrecking Ball. A friend of Robin Hood’s. She and Reaper and those gun-happy Renfields decided to go aggro right next to a plane. I didn’t see exactly what happened, but I can connect the dots.”

  “And you survived,” the woman says. “How remarkable.”

  “Actually,” I improvise, “I was saved by a local Spark. Called herself Ninety-Nine. She picked me up and carried me to safety. Heroic as fuck.”

  The Darkling woman looks at me keenly, like she’s examining a slime mold under a microscope. “You aren’t afraid of me, are you?”

  I hesitate. Given the strength of this woman’s Shadow, a normal person should have drenched her delicates. But it’s too late to pretend I’m shaking in my boots. “You’re scary,” I say, “but I had a lot to drink on the plane.”

  “So I’ve heard. After you left the lounge, your friends Karthik, Maria, and Iza dropped by. They told me you hung out with them for at least an hour.” She continues to stare at me hard. “You have a surprising tolerance for the presence of Darklings.”

  “Matches my tolerance for alcohol.”

  Tolerance for Darklings or not, I’m beginning to get nervous. The woman and I are alone in a corridor that apparently doesn’t get much traffic. She’s eyeing me like a chef picking out meat for dinner.

  But then the woman says the magic words: “Would you like a drink?”

  I say, “Uhh…”

  “I don’t mean that swill they serve on airplanes,” the woman says. “Something good. Something sippable.” She gestures down the hall. “Our lounge isn’t far.” When I hesitate still, she adds, “It will actually be safer in there than out here. The lounge is protected by numerous charms. The rest of the airport could burn to the ground, but in the lounge, we wouldn’t even feel the heat.”

  She gestures again. For a moment, the superhero in me wants to say, “No can do, I must hie myself hence to rescue innocents!” But playing the hero card in front of a Darkling would jeopardize my secret identity, and my “surprising tolerance for Darklings” is already mucho suspicious. Besides, Aria and Zircon have surely been pulling people from the flames since the fire started. Can’t be many folks left to save.

  And this woman has promised me booze. Sippable booze. “Sounds good to me,” I tell her. “I’ll enter freely and of my own will.”

  * * *

  THE WOMAN WASN’T LYING —the lounge is just around the corner. My Darkling host opens the door and ushers me inside, placing her hand lightly against my back as she does. She actually touches my bare skin (exposed where my clothes burned away). The woman’s hand is warm. Without thinking, I say, “You aren’t a vampire. You may be pale, but you aren’t cold.”

  The woman smiles. Her teeth are as white as a dentistry ad, but there’s no extra length to her canines. “In the pigeonholes of this modern world, I’m classified as a demon.” She rolls her eyes. “A useless label. I’m Calon Arang. But I doubt that you’ve ever heard of me.”

  It’s true I’ve never heard the name before, but WikiJools fills in the gap. Calon Arang: a legendary witch-devil from the island of Bali. Tradition says she was evil, and the Balinese hold festivals to celebrate her defeat by the hero Empu Baradah. But some scholars think her story is classic patriarchy bullshit. Once upon a time, there might have been a real Calon Arang who was probably a strong tribal leader. Empu was a warrior from some other clan who butchered Calon and her people, then made up stories for why she deserved it. Wicked bitch got what was coming.

  But the details don’t matter. The big question is whether this is the real Calon Arang or just a Darkling who’s stolen the name. The real Calon (if such a woman actually existed) would be at least eight centuries old: in other words, an Elder of the Dark. Undoubtedly crazy strong.

  I’m hoping she’s only a pretender—someone who bought the Dark Conversion at some point in the last thirty-five years. That would put her in the same class as Reaper: a glorified cosplayer, trading on an unearned reputation.

  But the woman I’m with doesn’t feel like she’s bluffing. Even if she’s not the original witch-devil, she still seems like a powerhouse of the Dark. Either that, or her Shadow is spoofing my brain to hell, and she’s just a silly wannabe like Reaper but with a better Charisma roll.

  One way or another, does it make a difference? Monstrous is as monstrous does. So I hold out my hand and say, “I’m Jools.” Calon hesitates, then takes my hand and gives it a shake. Once again, I can’t help noticing how warm she is: several degrees above my own body heat, and definitely not vampirically chill.

  “Pleased to meet you, Jools,” says Calon Arang. It sounds like she means it—weird, considering how hostile she was the first time I entered the lounge. She treated Stevens & Stephens like ick on her shoes, and me like sick on the ick.

  So I ask straight out, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

  Calon chuckles. “You interest me, Jools. Your mental resilience. And…” She waves her hand at my burned clothes. “Your physical resilience, too. You clearly had a close brush with the fire, yet you seem uninjured.”

  “I got saved by Ninety-Nine,” I say. I’m proud I remembered my cover story. “Maybe she healed me, too.
But I don’t know what all her powers are. She showed up in Waterloo just before Christmas and nobody knows much about her.”

  “Interesting.” Calon’s dark eyes grow distant for a moment, then refocus. “Well, I promised you a drink, didn’t I? Let’s not keep you waiting.”

  Calon heads toward the bar. She moves so gracefully, it’s almost as if she’s gliding. Vampires are the same: no quirks in their movements. Living humans are subject to tiny glitches in their muscles and nerves—biology just isn’t perfect. But vampires slide along with unnatural smoothness down the middle of the uncanny valley.

  Apparently, Calon Arang has a similar deal. And hey, she’s wearing that dress that hides everything from the waist down. For all I know, she could be gliding cuz she’s got wheels.

  “Scotch?” she asks from behind the bar. “Or brandy?” As if those are the only conceivable options, even though I recognize many old friends winking at me from the racks—the highest-end labels from Tanqueray, Stolichnaya, Angostura. And when I say old friends, I mean like Ryan Gosling and Chris Pine: friends I’ve never met but whom I’m sure would be my devoted pals if we ever bumped into each other.

  “Scotch,” I say, because I’m not stupid. Now that I think of it, I am (of course) an Olympic-class expert on artisanal beverages from the Glens. I’m your girl for rhyming off deadpan, “Peaty with overtones of pepper, pears, and privilege, leading to a finish of oak and bagpipe spit.”

  So bring on the sixty-four-year-old Macallan Lalique. I will drink the shit out of that brew.

  All Calon can find is a 1938 Glenfiddich. Tsk. But I’ll rough it.

  Calon pours two snifters and hands me one. I prove my classiness by not tossing it back in a single gulp. In fact, I do the swirly sniffy crap that proves I’m queen of the cognoscenti. Then I sip (without slurping) and say with superlative suavity, “So why the fuck are you buttering me up?”

  Calon smiles. “Why do you think?”

  “It can’t just be cuz you want to drink my blood. I’d let you have that for a shot of ouzo.”