They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded

by James Alan Gardner

  But vampires don’t bleed like humans. Some experts think vampires have conscious control over every drop of blood in their bodies. Like cars that use gasoline judiciously, vampires use blood to fuel their many abilities.

  Case in point: Elaine now faces a Spark named Multiplier, one of Robin Hood’s merry outlaws. WikiJools tells me he’s a low-grade speedster with the added trick of making multiple copies of himself. He can’t move so fast that he turns to a blur, but when you’re facing three guys zipping around ten times quicker than normal human beings, you’ve got trouble.

  The only upside for Elaine is that the copies share a single consciousness. Basically, Multiplier has a single brain running the whole show. The more duplicates he produces, the less he can manage them well. If he made, like, a hundred copies of himself, most would just stand around like dummies because he can’t split his concentration between them all.

  So the three Multipliers don’t triple-team Elaine as effectively as three separate people might. They aren’t as inventive or tricky. On the other hand, Multiplier’s single brain is superfast, so his three-man attacks are quick and well coordinated. One guy swoops in from the left, another comes from the right, and the third guy goes up the middle. If any of the three gets close enough, a punch at super-speed is very ½mv2. *

  But Elaine is a wiz at wizardry. Three bolts of crimson magic shoot from her fingertips, targeting each of the attackers. Two Multipliers dodge, but the third doesn’t react fast enough. Hiss-boom. The Multiplier clone collapses in a smoking heap. The other two Multipliers say, “Fuck!” in unison. They race off to a far corner for a breather; they need time to recover before they can make a new duplicate and try the same tactics again.

  So it seems like Elaine won the bout. However.

  Each magical smackdown she delivers consumes a portion of the blood in her veins. Sooner or later, she’ll run out; then she’s pooched. Vampire sorcerers are wicked-ass threats, but they don’t have unlimited ammo. This is the trade-off that keeps them on an equal footing with were-beasts: were-beasts aren’t nearly so adept at casting magic, but they never run out of juice when they do.

  Elaine is living on borrowed time. But she has an ace in the hole: her mom.

  Lee stands atop the gun case, looking like Old Lady Winter personified. Hell, she might actually be Old Lady Winter: some Arctic goddess, unspeakably old and mad as hell.

  Lee is the source of the ice on the stairs. Her braids have come undone, and her long silver hair whips up a fierce freezing breeze. Her kaftan billows around her body; the turquoise beads that speckle her skin burn like stars in a frigid northern sky. Snowy gusts stream off her with a vengeance. Even Wrecking Ball, with all her super-strength, can’t prevail against the wind. Wrecking Ball looks like a cartoon character trying to push forward into a blizzard. Her eyes have iced up and she’s white with frost, like a window on the coldest day of winter.

  As if holding off Wrecking Ball isn’t enough, Mama Vandermeer has plenty of strength left over. She’s surrounded herself with a shell of ice that repels every attack aimed toward her. But the ice shell only works one way: it stops incoming assaults, but not the outgoing blasts that Lee shoots at anyone who threatens her children. Even as I watch, Lee hurls a barrage of hail at the two Multipliers. They go down under the volley, battered by hundreds of hailstones flying almost as fast as bullets.

  But Multiplier is a side dish. The entree is the greatest threat of all: Robin Hood.

  He’s a dark-skinned dude in Lincoln green, exactly like the selfies he posts several times a day on Facebook. He wears a green eye mask, which doesn’t cover up his cheekbones or his perfectly kissable jawline. He has a trim beard and mustache I’d love to nuzzle into. The next time the Royal Shakespeare Company needs a smoking-hot Othello, they should speed-dial this guy’s agent. Because yes, Robin Hood is a hunk, built like a tennis pro, lean and lithe and lovely.

  He moves like a tennis pro, too. Robin romps around the room like he’s playing at Wimbledon. Every time Lee shoots an icicle at his head, Robin ducks it. He laughs as ice spikes past him. Amidst the chaos of wasps, black magic, scythes, and winter gales, Robin Hood is having fun.

  He’s a swashbuckling rogue who never breaks a sweat: that’s why the public loves him. Or at least that’s one reason. WikiJools informs me that Robin’s lovability is also a superpower. It’s not as extreme as with Spark mind-masters who turn people into adoring slaves, but Robin Hood has a shine that makes you like him. I find myself cheering him on as he skips around the barroom, shooting multicolored arrows.

  According to WikiJools, Robin Hood’s bow is nothing special. I can see that it doesn’t have any of the attachments used in modern archery: no sights, no stabilizers, no pulleys. It’s a simple recurve bow that unscrews into three separate pieces so it’s easier to sneak into venues like this. And it’s probably homemade to make it more untraceable.

  But it’s just a prop. If an enemy breaks the bow, it doesn’t slow Robin at all. He uses the bow for the sake of appearance but can fire his arrows barehanded.

  The arrows emerge directly from Robin’s hands. Fire arrows. Explosive arrows. Arrows with lassos. Even a ridiculous arrow with a boxing glove on the end, for punching enemies in the nose. The public loves that one. When Robin is pulling a caper against the Dark, he always tries to end the fight with a Muhammad Ali knockout.

  Unless Robin goes with a pie-fight arrow; he has those, too. Nothing dampens a Darkling’s dignity like a coconut cream in the face.

  There’s every chance this fight will end with the Vandermeers wiping off pie. That’s another of Robin Hood’s powers: controlling the media narrative. Somewhere in the room, there’ll be a flying camera drone that’s filming this whole encounter. Footage will go up on YouTube within minutes … and it won’t show Ninja Jane going apeshit with her blades or Wrecking Ball screaming obscenities. You won’t see Darklings dying of wasp stings, or Lee bludgeoning Multiplier with hail. The reality of the fight is NC-17, but Robin will edit it to PG, with himself as the only star.

  « Jools! » says a voice in my head. « Is that you on the stairway? »

  It’s K. No doubt, ze’s Zircon now, shrunken too small to see.

  « Yep, I’m on the stairs,» I reply. « Where are you? »

  « Stuck on Lee’s head,» Zircon says. « When the wasps showed up, I shrank and hid in her hair. It seemed safe—she turned so cold, the wasps couldn’t touch her. But then Robin Hood showed up and she encased herself in ice. Now I can’t get out. I can’t even see much outside. »

  « You mean the ice blocks your Spark-o-Vision? »

  « Don’t know if it’s the ice,» Zirc replies, «but I’m getting interference from something. I can only see with my actual eyes, and it sucks. My comm ring is having trouble, too—I’ve been trying to call you and the others, but the signal doesn’t carry. »

  Zirc is right. I try quick calls to Dakini and Aria, but no response. I say, « Maybe Robin Hood can jam transmissions. Impose silence so no one can call for help. »

  « And it affects Spark-o-Vision, too? » Zircon asks.

  « Maybe. »

  But I can’t help thinking there might be a different reason why Zirc’s Spark-o-Vision is messed up: Elaine Vandermeer and her blood bond. I don’t know shit about blood bonds, but Elaine’s very presence might cause distortion—like a strong magnetic field messing with the picture on an old TV screen.

  I don’t mention this over the comm ring. If Zircon is compromised, best not to let on I suspect. Instead, I grab a chunk of debris lying near me on the floor: the leg of a wooden chair, likely broken by Wrecking Ball. I wait for an opening, then hurl the heavy leg directly at the side of Elaine’s head.

  * * *

  I’VE PICKED MY MOMENT well. Elaine’s mother is looking in the opposite direction, so she doesn’t notice what I’m doing. Elaine doesn’t notice, either—she’s fighting another outlaw, a guy named Sinquisitor, whose schtick is pretending to be a priest in the Spanish
Inquisition. He’s waving a crucifix and yelling stuff in Latin, the sort of nonsense that captures a vampire’s complete attention. So Elaine doesn’t see the chair leg coming.

  It helps that the leg is wooden; vampire magic has trouble with wood. WikiJools tells me ash and rowan are best. The chair leg is only oak, but it’s good enough. When it reaches Elaine’s magic ramparts, it slows down a little but still gets through.

  The chair leg hits Elaine like Colonel Mustard with the candlestick. She staggers—she’s low on blood and not as resilient as when the fight began. It provides an opening for Sinquisitor; he runs up to Elaine’s ramparts and heaves a handful of small silver crosses at her face.

  The crosses are like shuriken: those sharp-edged throwing stars you see in kung-fu movies. They gouge Elaine and burn her undead skin. She screams for a fraction of a second, then falls to the floor.

  The crosses keep smoldering where they’re embedded. They aren’t enough to kill her—once they’ve destroyed the surrounding flesh, the crosses slip out of the holes they’ve made and drop like sated leeches—but Elaine is definitely down for the count. She’ll be a mess of cross-shaped scorch marks till someone pours a bucket of blood down her unconscious throat.

  Lee howls. Sinquisitor runs like hell for the stairway. He takes several ice spikes in the back before he vanishes through the blinder wall. He has Kevlar hidden under his surplice and I think it’s thick enough to prevent him getting skewered, but he’d better stay out of Lee’s way from now on, or he’ll end up with icicles stabbed through his eyeballs.

  Lucky for me, Lee didn’t notice that I was the one who threw the chair leg. She likely blames her daughter’s defeat entirely on Sinquisitor. In fact, if Lee ever notices me at all, she might be inclined to protect me. I’m K’s roommate, and if sparks are flying between K and Lee …

  No. Let’s not go there. I don’t want to think about it.

  I don’t want to think about this whole damned thing. Why the hell are we fighting over Diamond’s bazooka? I don’t care if Robin Hood steals it. Diamond himself doesn’t care! He took a look then walked away, leaving the wasps as a parting gift.

  The wasps are what we should care about. Lee could freeze every wasp in the building. She could rescue Dakini and Aria, no sweat. That’s what ought to be happening. Not this squabble over a dumb hunk of metal.

  I’m tempted to turn into Ninety-Nine and bust heads, whack everyone in the face and yell, “Smarten up!” That’s the superhero way. It’s also the way of the hockey enforcer. I could bust loose and keep stomping ass till everyone listened.

  But that’s crazy. Apart from Stevens & Stephens, no one here will be easy for me to beat. All of them combined will be impossible. I’d get pounded into a pulp, and for what?

  So I stay plain old Jools … if I can call myself that when I’m wearing a fortune in diamonds. And when I’m super-augmented with every skill known to Wikipedia. And enough Mad Genius intelligence to create underwear from slime.

  Basically, I’m nothing like the Jools I was. Except for the rash stupidity of what I’m about to do.

  I put my fingers in my mouth and whistle. I don’t have Aria’s supersonic volume, but I can whistle as loud as any human ever.

  It’s louder than a referee’s whistle. It pierces the air like a knife. In its wake it leaves silence: everyone in the room stops and ducks, for fear of some new attack.

  I stand so everyone can see me. “Ladies, gentlemen, and bold independents! Might I have a moment of your time?”

  I can yell almost as loud as I can whistle. And I set my charisma on max, whatever that means. Earlier in the day, K pointed out I can be as good as the best persuader ever. It’s a terrifying thought, but what the hell, let’s take my winning ways out for a spin.

  In the pin-drop silence, I say, “This fight: can we all agree it’s a crock of shit? Yes. I think we can. While people in the rest of the club are dying of wasp stings, we’re fighting over a popgun.” I start walking toward the bazooka. “Is this a sensible use of our time? Is it respectful toward the dead folks we’re here to remember? Will it accomplish anything except wrecking this building? And in the end, what will decide who gets the gun? Random luck. You know I’m right. Someone will fumble or get a critical hit, and whoosh, the fight is over.”

  I pause. Nobody speaks. They don’t try to kill me, either.

  “So let’s stop playing with our peepees and cut to the chase. Anybody got a coin?”

  Wrecking Ball gapes. “You want a coin toss?”

  “Capital idea!” Robin Hood cries. “Brilliant!”

  “No way in hell,” Reaper snaps.

  “Oh, why not?” Lee says. “Makes more sense than fighting.”

  She lets her ice shell melt into rain. Well then, I’ve done at least one good thing. Zircon isn’t trapped in the shell anymore. But before I can call Zirc on the comm ring, Calon Arang says, “A coin toss. Interesting.”

  Finally, she puts in an appearance. I’d wondered where Calon got to. She emerges from a pool of unnatural shadows in the back of the club. I don’t know why she stayed out of the fight; maybe because she also realized it was pointless.

  Calon produces a coin from her purse. She tosses it to me across the barroom’s whole length. The throw is bang on; I catch the coin without having to reach.

  Naturally, the coin is gold. WikiJools tells me it’s a Krugerrand: a currency of choice for drug barons and others who need untraceable bullion. What does it say that Calon carries Krugerrands on her person? Probably just that she’s a Darkling.

  I say, “And the coin is fair? No magic that makes it come up heads every time?”

  “Please, Jools,” Calon says. “Don’t be insulting.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Calon glares at me. “It’s fair. One hundred percent.”

  I don’t know if I believe her, but I also don’t know how I’d tell one way or the other. I look around the room with a glare almost as steely as Calon’s. “No magic from anyone, right? And no superpowers. No telekinesis, no tinkering with Fate, no nudging the gravitational constant to make the coin spin the way you want. Everybody clear?”

  Surly mumbles all around.

  “Okay,” I say. “Winner gets the gun.” I point at Robin Hood. “Call it in the air.”

  I balance the coin on my thumbnail, and flip.

  * * *

  I WATCH THE COIN carefully as it spins. I’m so focused, I barely hear Robin yell, “Heads! I pick heads!” (As if he’d pick anything else.) I’m watching for the slightest wobble suggesting unnatural interference.

  I see nothing suspicious. I catch the coin on the back of my wrist and slap my other hand to cover it.

  Everyone in the room leans in toward me.

  I look. I say, “Tails. Sorry, Robin.”

  * * *

  I REALLY DON’T KNOW if the coin toss was clean. I didn’t see any hanky-panky, but that don’t prove squat. Still, it looks like Robin and his gang just lost fair and square.

  Whispers explode behind me, the mind-fucking apophenia of Ninja Jane when she fights. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, but who needs them? I can guess crazy Jane is displeased by the coin-toss results.

  So I throw myself to the floor. My reflexes are as fast as an Olympic fencer’s, but I still feel the wind from a dagger as it whips a millimeter above my head. If my hair were as long as Miranda’s, the knife would have cut off my updo.

  An instant later, the knife takes on a mind of its own. I don’t know who’s responsible, but the blade does a U-turn just after it misses me and flies off toward Wrecking Ball. Wrecking Ball is too slow to get out of the way. She only just manages to twist her head away, so that the dagger slams into her cheek instead of her eye.

  Wrecking Ball’s cheek is iron. A normal blade would surely bounce off. But Ninja Jane’s knife stabs deep into Wrecking Ball’s face, spilling rusty orange blood from the wound.

  Wrecking Ball goes ballistic. She roars as she ri
ps the dagger from her flesh, then charges straight for the bazooka.

  Oh, well. I tried. For one glorious moment, it looked like this would all end peacefully. I thought I could be the hero: as Grandfather put it, one of Waterloo’s official babysitters who’d tuck everyone safely in for the night.

  Stupid Jools. You can be best in the world, and still be a fuckup. Not even superpowers can make a silk purse from a drunken sow’s asshole.

  Abruptly, things turn just as bad as before. Maybe worse. Lee hurls ice at Wrecking Ball. Robin shoots arrows at Lee. Wraith casts hexes at Robin. Reaper and Jane go at it again, cuz lame don’t change its game.

  Fucktastic.

  Once again, I’m tempted to bury my foot in some crotches. That would be the easy way. Turn into Ninety-Nine and burn off frustration. I could grab Reaper with one hand, Robin Hood with the other, and hold them face-to-face as I said, “You two work this out, or I will work it out for you.”

  Yeah. That’ll work. I’m an Olympic-class diplomat, Olympic-class fighter, and Olympic-class peacekeeper. No problem at all knowing when to be which.

  « Screw this,» I say mentally to Zircon, «I’m leaving. Call me at home when it’s over. »

  Zirc doesn’t reply. Maybe there’s too much interference on the comms. Or maybe ze doesn’t have anything to say.

  I take a disgusted step toward the stairs. Calon Arang snaps her fingers and says a word.

  * * *

  IT’S NOT A HUMAN word—WikiJools knows every human language, but draws a blank. Besides, no human vocal apparatus could produce the sounds Calon makes. Some syllables are like blades scraping on bone. Others are hisses or just jumbles of noise. Even the parts of the word that a human could pronounce are guttural agglomerations. But somehow I know that it’s still a single word, although it takes several seconds to say.

  I also know it’s an awful word. The sort that opens doors that ought to stay closed.

  When the word is finished, I turn back from the stairs. At least my body does. There’s still a me inside who sees and thinks clearly, but Jools isn’t the driver anymore. I’m strapped in the passenger seat, or maybe locked in the trunk.