Mist and Magic

by Lindsay Buroker

  “And the meat.” She eyed my bag and the sausage I’d left artfully dangling out to entice.

  “How about you see if you can read my note first?”

  “Chicken first, then I read, and then you give me the rest of the meat.”

  “Right.” I sidled toward the cub. Even though we’d had a good relationship thus far, I wasn’t positive she wouldn’t try to eviscerate me—or more likely my feet—if I took her toy from her. If I thought she would eat the cold cuts, I would have traded her some salami for the maimed chicken.

  Careful not to get my hand close to her claws, I darted in when she wasn’t looking and grabbed the chicken. I hefted it up, only to find my twenty-pound cub attached to it, claws sunken in like fishhooks. I shook the chicken, hoping she would let go. She did not.

  It was a challenge to keep my firearm pointed toward the ogre while I did all this, but I didn’t dare let my guard down. Fortunately, Big Mama had crossed her meaty forearms over her chest and was waiting patiently.

  The male ogre creeping closer was another matter. Just as I managed to tug the chicken away from the cub, who screeched like an annoyed Siamese, he stepped out from behind a tree with a weapon raised.

  Without hesitating, I switched Fezzik to my other hand and pointed it between his eyes. At the same time, I scooted off to the side, so I could keep Big Mama in my peripheral vision.

  Normally, I would have also drawn Chopper, so I could keep weapons pointed at both of them, but instead, I stood with my gun in one hand and a mangled and plucked chicken in the other. The Ruin Bringer indeed.

  “My life has gotten weird since I met you, kid,” I muttered to the cub.

  Though I didn’t take my focus from the ogres, I was aware of her trying to jump high enough to retrieve her prize.

  Raising my voice, I said, “Stay put,” to the newcomer.

  I almost ordered him to drop his weapon, but it was a sling. Granted, an ogre sling held rocks the size of soccer balls and could take off my head, but I wasn’t that worried about it.

  “Big Mama is going to read something for me, and your clan is going to get a large and delicious dinner.”

  He looked at the mangled chicken and the cub trying to leap up and get it. Even though he didn’t speak, he effectively oozed skepticism.

  “She’s got sausage,” Big Mama said. “Give me the note, Ruin Bringer.”

  “Ruin Bringer!” the male blurted in their language. “You can’t help her. She’ll kill us all.”

  “She’s got sausage,” Big Mama repeated.

  I was glad I’d thought to bring a food bribe rather than relying on money. It wasn’t as if ogres could take wads of cash and walk into the delicatessen on their own. Magical refugees had to lie low and avoid humans, or they ended up being reported to people like me.

  A twinge of sympathy went through me at the thought, but I remembered that ogres were behind Michael’s disappearance and steeled myself toward these guys.

  It took some effort to walk to Big Mama without tripping over the cub, but her order of operations seemed logical, so I handed her the chicken, then showed her the note. The cub finally gave up and flopped down on her side in the mud.

  Big Mama stuck the chicken in an apron pocket large enough to hold half a pig and waved for me to hold the note higher. Her hands were grimy with guts and dirt.

  “It’s a human address,” she said.

  “Yes?” That sounded promising. If I hadn’t been busy pointing my gun at the sullen ogre with the slingshot, I would have taken my phone out to type in whatever she told me.

  “One Cave, Misty Loop Lane, Bellingham.”

  All roads led to Bellingham…

  “One Cave? Is that the equivalent to a house number?”

  “I can only say what is on the page, Ruin Bringer.”

  “Right.” Disappointed the note hadn’t contained more, I put it away and pulled out my phone to record the address, though I suspected I could remember that. “Did it say anything else?”

  “No.”

  I tapped Misty Loop Lane Bellingham into my map and was surprised when a road came up. It was southeast of town, in the forested hills between Lake Whatcom and Highway 9, a meandering road that covered several miles. I added in One Cave, but a specific address failed to come up.

  “The sausages,” Big Mama said.

  “Do you know if there’s a clan of ogres up in Bellingham?”

  “Ogres in lots of places.”

  I gave her the bag of meat in case that might help her remember specifics about Bellingham.

  The male shambled toward us. My finger tightened on the trigger, but he’d lowered the slingshot. His focus was on the bag. I scooted back as he approached it and opened it with his finger.

  “Smells goooood,” he said, nostrils twitching.

  Big Mama swatted his hand with the spoon when he tried to take off the sausage dangling on the outside.

  “Not until dinner,” she said, and stalked in the direction of their cave.

  The male lingered and looked at me. I prepared to spring away in case he decided he needed to drive me away from their territory—or flatten me with a rock.

  “Someone wanted to hire ogres a couple weeks back,” he volunteered. “Someone who said there was work up north.”

  “Up north as in Bellingham?”

  He rolled a broad shoulder. “Maybe. Human city names don’t mean much to ogres.”

  “Any chance you saw who was doing the hiring?”

  “I wasn’t there, just heard about it from Zogg.”

  “Did Zogg take the job?”

  “Nah. He said the guy was scary and dangerous and super powerful. Only a desperate fool would work for somebody like that.” He shook his head, shaggy hair flopping about his shoulders. “But some ogres are desperate, so maybe they went. Nobody from our clan though. You got that?” He frowned at me. “Our clan doesn’t make any trouble. Maybe you will forget this cave is here.”

  “Maybe I will,” I agreed.

  As he shambled away, I wondered what kind of being would be considered scary and dangerous to an ogre. They weren’t afraid of much. They might call me the Ruin Bringer and be wary around me, but that wasn’t the same as being scared.

  7

  My tiger cub had used up all of her energy stealing and mercilessly pummeling the chicken, and she wouldn’t be roused when I tried to coax her into walking back to the parking lot. I ended up carrying her to the trail and back down toward the tennis courts.

  “I don’t think this is normal,” I informed her.

  Her tired silver head flopped onto my shoulder. Her abrupt weariness surprised me, and I hoped it was because it was getting dark and she was naturally tired, not that something was wrong. It continued to concern me that she didn’t eat or drink—how long could a cub go without food and water? Was it possible that if she was from another world, our food and water weren’t sufficient for her needs?

  That seemed unlikely. After all, the ogres were from another world and they wouldn’t have any trouble hoovering those sausages.

  “I wish I knew more about you, kid.” I managed to shift her in my arms so I could open the Jeep door and put her on the seat. “You don’t eat, you don’t drink, and I haven’t even seen you pee. I get that you’re magical, but you’re also a warm-blooded, furred… cat critter.”

  A sleepy green eye opened to consider me. “Merow?”

  That sounded more wan than sleepy. I wanted to drive up to Bellingham to try to find this address, but I also wanted to find someone who knew what the cub was and could help her. Would a scary, dangerous guy who was hiring ogres be the answer?

  “Sounds like more trouble to me.” I closed the door, got in on the other side, and drove off, not toward Bellingham but toward the food truck that my weapons-making acquaintance ran in Pioneer Square.

  During lunch and dinner hours, the proprietor Nin made a Thai beef-and-rice dish that was popular with people who worked in the area. After hours, s
he made magical weapons out of a nook in the back. They were popular with people who wanted to defend themselves from magical beings. Shifters, in particular, were strong enough to survive regular gunfire and bladed weapons, and I hadn’t yet seen an ogre felled by a bullet that wasn’t magical.

  Nin had made Fezzik, and she replenished my ammo whenever I ran low. She also put together a mean magical grenade. I had a feeling I would need both up in Bellingham.

  Since Nin was well versed in the magical—she’d been taught by her grandfather, a gnome tinkerer—she might have ideas about the cub too. I hoped she did.

  My phone rang as I was cruising down I-5, the autumn rain pattering on the soft-top roof of the Jeep. There wasn’t anywhere to pull over, so I answered it on the speaker system and hoped for the best.

  “This is Val.” I didn’t recognize the number, but it was a local area code.

  “Valmeyjar Thorvald?” a man asked, surprising me by getting the pronunciation right. My Norwegian mother, who said we were descended from Vikings, had named me after an Old Norse term for the Valkyries. It meant death maiden. She claimed she’d been surprised when I became an assassin, but I wasn’t sure I believed her.

  “Just Val is fine. Who is this?”

  “Lieutenant Reynolds. Colonel Willard gave me your notes to translate.”

  “Oh?” I hadn’t expected to hear from anyone in her office, not after she’d snubbed me all through our meeting.

  “The one in ogrish is an address.”

  “One Cave Misty Loop Lane?” I was curious if Big Mama had been honest with me.

  “That’s right,” he said with surprise.

  If I had known he would call me, I wouldn’t have needed to spend eighty dollars on meat or tramp through the park this afternoon. At least I’d gotten an extra tip from the male ogre.

  “And the other note?”

  “I’ve confirmed that it’s written in one of the dragon languages. We have some notes in our linguistics library here with examples of their writing, and one of the symbols matches up.”

  “One? Does that mean you couldn’t translate it?”

  “We don’t have a dictionary for any of their languages. We’ve been trying to piece together our own Rosetta Stone from examples we’ve found in the language books from other species, but… we’re not there yet. May I ask where you found the note?”

  “In a sack with a glowing silver tiger cub.”

  Judging by the silence, that also surprised him. “Maybe it’s from a species that dragons originally found and named.”

  “Do dragons keep tigers as pets?”

  “I don’t know. I was kind of joking.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to be joked with, but I kept from saying something sarcastic. This guy was being a lot more helpful than his colonel.

  “We know very little about dragons,” he added, “except that they’re rulers on many of the other worlds in the portal network. They’re often the ones the refugees who flee here say that they were escaping.”

  “As long as they don’t come to Earth, I will go on pretending that they don’t exist. Is Willard still going up to Bellingham?”

  “She already left. We have an agent missing up there.”

  I took the James Street exit and headed west. “Did she go alone?”

  “She took Captain Rodriguez. Don’t worry about the colonel though. She’s armed and very capable. She studies martial arts, shoots Hawkeye at the range, and outruns most of the rest of us on any of the unit runs that go over five miles. She’s really fit for someone that old.”

  That old was probably only a few years past forty, but to a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant, that might be ancient. At least he believed Willard could still kick ass and didn’t need a walker and soft foods.

  “There’s someone up there who’s scary and dangerous by ogre standards, so tell her to watch out.”

  “Is that someone at that address?”

  “Might be.” I decided not to mention that my sources were two sausage-obsessed ogres.

  “I’ll let her know. I think she’s checking our agent’s hotel and investigating the murder sites today.”

  I almost told the lieutenant that I would drive up in the morning, but Willard hadn’t wanted my help and might not appreciate an assassin butting into her investigation. I would go on my own. Maybe entirely on my own if I could talk Nin into watching the cub. That encounter at the ogre cave could have turned into a disaster if one of them had caught her. I didn’t need her stealing chickens from Mr. Scary and Dangerous.

  “I have one more thing for you, Ms. Thorvald.”

  “What?”

  “The colonel said to look up Michael Kwon, formerly Sergeant Kwon.”

  My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Did you find something?”

  “I had one of our moles—a werewolf who works for us from time to time—go to Rupert’s and drop a few bucks here and there. One of the trolls pulled out a rumpled, poorly photocopied wanted poster with his face and name on it. Someone is offering five thousand dollars for his delivery. The poster says he has to be alive.”

  “Someone? Did he get a copy of the poster? Where’s he supposed to be delivered?”

  “The guy who had it wouldn’t give it up, but the werewolf took a photo. The person offering the bounty isn’t named. It says to bring Kwon to the castle in Bellingham for payment.”

  “A castle in Bellingham located at One Cave Misty Loop Lane by chance?” Could a castle be in a cave? Maybe something had been lost in the translation to ogrish.

  “There wasn’t an address, and we don’t know of anything up there that would constitute a castle. Our mole didn’t either, but he said he would try to find out. For a price.”

  “I’ve got money.” Not a lot of it, but if I could afford sausages for ogres, I could afford to pay a werewolf for information.

  “Willard said our office would cover the mole and his bribes because Kwon was former army.”

  “Oh.”

  I hadn’t truly expected Willard to help out, not after she’d made it clear she didn’t approve of me or my methods.

  “Thanks,” I made myself add, though the idea of being indebted to Willard was distasteful. I would swallow that distaste if the army helped me find Michael.

  “You’re welcome, ma’am.” The lieutenant hung up.

  A bounty poster that had been distributed among the magical community. Whatever had Michael gotten himself into?

  I glanced over at the tiger. “And how are you involved?”

  She appeared to be asleep. Had my treasure-hunting best friend stolen the tiger cub from someone? Someone who wanted her cub back?

  That didn’t make sense now for the same reason it hadn’t made sense before. If someone had been on Michael’s boat to kidnap him—and the dead ogre outside suggested it had happened right there in the marina—they couldn’t have missed the cub. Yes, she had been under the covers, but the ogres would have sensed her the same way I had.

  “Unless you hid yourself from them,” I mused, “and you didn’t hide yourself from me. Because you could tell I would be a friend? Or Michael told you about me, and you were able to understand him?”

  I didn’t know how much intelligence to ascribe to the cub, but I also wasn’t prepared to call it chance that she’d lured Big Mama out of her camp where I could talk to her one on one.

  The cub mewed plaintively. Her wrist and tail hung limply over the front of the seat.

  “I sure hope you’re just tired because you had a big day, and not because you’re waning away from lack of nourishment.” My throat tightened at the thought of the cub dying because I couldn’t figure out what to feed her.

  This gave me another reason to find Michael as quickly as possible. Whatever he’d gotten himself into, he ought to know what the cub was and how to take care of her. He had better.

  8

  Fog blanketed Pioneer Square, curling around the totem pole and trees near Nin’s food truck and
muting the streetlamps. This late, there was parking nearby, and the meters weren’t running. Since the cub was sleeping, I left her inside the Jeep.

  The Crying Tiger food truck was closed for the night, but I sensed Nin inside and rapped out the secret knock on the door. She was only one-quarter gnome, so her aura was much diminished compared to a full-blooded magical being, but I had no trouble detecting her from so close.

  Even though she could probably detect and recognize me, too, she slid open her peephole before opening the door. Every time I visited, her black hair was dyed a different color. Tonight, it was pale green and pulled back into a spunky ponytail wrapped by a forest-green Scrunchie. Her dark eyes were warm as our gazes met—when she stood in the truck and I stood on the bricks of the square, we were the same height.

  “Come in, Val,” she said in her clear, formal English, her accent barely noticeable. “Do you need ammunition?”

  “I do. And some of your special grenades too.” I stepped into the cubby in the back of the truck, counters, racks of tools, and boxes of parts and ammo to either side of the narrow aisle. Completed weapons hung on pegboards, everything from wavy kris daggers to purse-sized pistols to automatic rifles, all of them altered from their originals or made from scratch. She’d built my own Fezzik based loosely on the Heckler & Koch MP7.

  “You will go into battle?”

  “That seems more and more likely with each passing hour, yes.” I laid a couple of hundred-dollar bills on the counter and tried not to think about my dwindling reserves.

  “Excellent. I always keep ammunition for you in stock. You are one of my most frequent customers.”

  “Does that mean I get a discount?”

  “No.” She swept the hundreds into a cash envelope. “But I will throw in extra grenades.”

  “That seems fair. I’ve got something in the Jeep that I’d like you to take a look at, too, if you don’t mind.”

  “Certainly. It is dark out there, yes?” She pulled a compact flashlight out of a drawer stuffed to the brim with tools.

  “Yeah, but its fur glows.”