by Ian Hiatt
“Sorry about the clothes. Dad’s a bit old-fashioned and he insisted. Luckily you’re about my size.” She brushes some of my hair aside and grabs a cup off the night side table as the room comes into focus for me.
Stone walls surround me and, for a moment, I’m convinced I’ve died. The bed I’m propped up in is soft, but as large as my bedroom and twice as tall, the canopy above draping evergreen silk curtains. A fire crackles nearby, and I find the hearth, enormous and roaring fifteen or so feet from the bed, logs ablaze and putting off quite a bit of heat.
I take the cup from the girl and drink.
“Slow now. Slow. I don’t think surviving a gunshot to the chest would end nicely if you choked on a bit of water.” She chuckles at her own joke as she stands and walks across the room, her clothes the only thing that grounds me in reality. Because everything else seems to be from a time when men rode horseback. She’s wearing a sweatshirt, jeans, and Spider-Man socks. She shuffles across the room and picks up another log to toss on the fire.
“Who… Where am I?” I manage to croak as the water soothes my throat. All the while I’m fighting to suppress the anguish in my entire body, all radiating from what must be my gunshot wound the girl mentioned.
She comes back to the bed, satisfied that the fire is big enough. She’s only a few years younger than me, but graced with actual beauty that doesn’t shift about. She smiles and leans against the bedpost. “Well, I’m Ravyn.” She puts a hand to her chest like I’d be confused which person she’s talking about. “And you’re at my house because Uncle Bran brought you here yesterday.”
“Uncle…?” I blink a few times, her answers not helping.
“Yeah. Uncle Bran. Dad was none too happy about it. Says he doesn’t like your…”
I struggle to take a deep breath and find my body fighting every movement.
“Well, your kind.” She shrugs a little as though it’s unimportant.
I shake my ankle a little beneath the blankets.
No knife.
No gun.
“That doesn’t really ans―”
The door bursts open, and a man, looking suspiciously like Bran but with a gray beard and long, silver hair to match, strides in. “I still don’t like it!” he says, waving a hand. His garb, a thick fur-lined coat, doesn’t help me believe that I’m not losing my mind. He glares at me slightly as he enters, and Bran follows close behind him.
“Layla!” Bran says with a broad smile and a haughty laugh. He walks toward me and wraps his burly arms around me.
“Easy! The girl’s still got a bullet hole in her,” Ravyn says, moving toward her uncle to guide him off me.
“Right, right,” Bran says, stepping back. But I miss his hug already, and I smile back at him.
“Thanks,” I say softly.
“For the hug? I got another where that one come from.” He laughs again.
I shake my head. “I think you saved my life.”
Bran dons a look of consideration as his brother interrupts the moment.
“That he did. And I’m still curious as to why.”
“I told ya why! The Serpents were by my bar, shooting up the old fairground!” Bran says, swinging around to face the older man. “And this one is my friend, and your guest.” He jabs his brother in the chest with a beefy finger.
The old man rolls his eyes. “The things you bring home.” A thin crack of a smile parts his wooly beard.
“No worse than you’ve caught me with before.”
The old man ignores him and nudges past. “Is she healing, Ravyn?”
The girl, settled back in against her bedpost, nods. “You were right about that. Give her another few days, and she’ll be right as rain.”
I struggle to move, arcs of pain cutting through me as I do so. “I don’t have a few days. I’ve got to go find him.”
“Who?” Ravyn asks, excited by the new information.
“Ravyn. Leave,” the old man says, nodding to the door.
“But, Dad,” she groans. “This is my room, innit?”
“Go.”
Ravyn snarls and gets up, mumbling vague curses as she walks from the room, slamming the thick wooden door behind her.
Bran stands behind his brother and watches silently as the man sits down, barring my impossibly slow escape.
“Nothing would please me more than to get the likes of you out from under my roof. I’ll not have a witch sharing my daughter’s sleeping chambers, and you can be rest assured that bed will be tossed to the trash when you leave.”
“Jesus, Pete,” Bran grumbles. “She’s just a girl…”
“And I’m not a witch,” I mutter, the insult stinging just a little.
“Witch, harpy, siren, succubus. It doesn’t matter. Your kind is not welcome here, and if it weren’t for my brother dragging your bloody corpse to my door, I wouldn’t have saved you. So once you’re on the mend, it’ll be to the road with you and don’t you look back when you go.”
I stare at him, and I wonder if I could take him, him elder and me wounded. It’d be an interesting display.
His eyes burn with the same red that Han Tzu has, and I stuff my thought away, realizing I’m on borrowed time.
Dragons… the whole Dawson clan must be…
“Whatever your wiles are, she-demon, you can be sure they won’t do you any favors under my roof with my kin. Our blood runs too hot for you to have any hope of bewitching.”
I look past him to Bran. “So… you’re not gay?”
Bran bellows a laugh. “The only gun I handle is my own, Lay.” He gives a wink, and I fall back onto the downy pillows, defeated.
“So you’ll have three days. No more. If my brother is so fond of your inhumanity, he can sample it for himself under his roof.”
Bran punches his brother in the shoulder as the old man stands and walks to the door.
“You’re one to talk,” I mutter, feeling either brave or suicidal.
The old man manages an icy stare despite his affliction. “You’ll have two days. And don’t say Peter Dawson never did anything for you.”
The night has followed the day. The fire in the gaping fireplace has burned down to cinders in spite of Ravyn tossing on a few logs before she left, muttering about losing her room for the night. I don’t know what time is anymore, but I’ve managed to slide my legs to the edge of the bed, all the while gritting teeth as the stabbing pain in my chest continues. It’s dwindled a little since I awoke earlier, but not by much.
They wanted Thomas alive. So he’s still alive. But where?
Something to think about while I make my escape. When my feet hit the floor, I find it wooden, but warm. Every room in the house must have a roaring fireplace, and fire has a tendency to be a good heater. My legs ache and twinge with soreness, more from the exhaustion than any assault. It’s my chest that feels like it’s being tugged on by a string tied directly to my ribs. As I lift myself, it takes a moment for me to get my balance, and once I’ve found it, I already lose it, tumbling back onto the bed. I steady myself before I land sprawled on the great mattress.
“Shit.” In my first act of strength for the last twenty-four hours, I smack my hand onto the mattress. It takes me a few minutes to gather my strength and stand again, but this time I make it the handful of shambling steps it takes to reach the door. I put my hand to the latch and lean into the door.
Ka-chunk.
Locked.
I slam into the door again and again, more out of frustration than hope of it actually opening. I’m not human, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got some extreme strength or heat vision. At best it means the hole that went through me will heal up a few weeks earlier than it normally would.
Fucking Han Tzu.
With one last effort, I lean on the door and it creaks, my hand pressing the latch down as hard as I can.
Click.
The door flies open, and the hardwood floor rushes up, ready to punch me just as hard as the carousel floor did. I’m not h
aving a good week with floors.
Before the hardwood has its way with me, a thick arm snatches me and holds me like they might a bath towel.
“Y’know, I thought you might try somethin’,” Bran says in the flickering darkness. The hallway is as ornate and enormous as the bedroom, lit by stunted, thick candles every few feet.
I stare up at him as he loosens his grip, steadying me on my feet. He brushes off the arm of my borrowed nightgown like it was distressing me.
“You never told me you were a dragon.”
“You never asked,” Bran shoots back.
I had heard stories about dragons existing in Saint Roch, and more than rumors that they existed out in the East Passage. Vicious reptiles clinging to a human form for centuries. But I didn’t expect them here, or that I was friendly with one.
“So you knew what I was all along?”
He shrugs, looking out of place in medieval garb instead of the stained shirt and apron of his barkeep job. “Knew you couldn’t do me and mine no harm. ‘Sides, you seem like a good kid.”
With a grumble, I push his arm away, even though I’m not sure if my legs can support the rest of me. By some screwed-up luck, they do. “You have no idea what kind of person I am.” I start down the hallway. For all I know I’m going deeper into the Dawson house than I want. I’ve spent far too much time in other people’s enormous castles lately.
“That’s true. Good kids don’t usually get bounties put out on ‘em,” Bran says.
Much like the layout of the house, I have no idea what’s going on in the outside world. I turn and Bran lumbers toward me, passing the light of a few candles, the flames dancing in his wake.
“How much?”
“Two million. Give or take,” Bran says. “Most I’ve ever seen.”
I groan. It’s the most I’ve ever seen, too. And it makes no sense. “Who did I piss off?”
Bran considers. “It’s a big ticket to punch. If Petey wanted someone that dead, he’d get it done himself.”
“If your brother wanted me dead, he wouldn’t have patched me up.”
Bran grins and his teeth shine in the firelight. “S’true. My brother doesn’t have any love for your kind, but he’s not one to play the games these ones are playing.”
“The Serpents?” Han Tzu leads the gang of Asian enforcers out of the East Passage. “How the hell did I piss them off? I’ve never even set foot on their side of town.”
Bran shakes his head. “Wouldn’t be them. Word come from the draggers. Well, the ones that I managed to grab up and squeeze words from.” He chuckles grimly, and I count myself lucky to have fallen on his good side. “Fang Tzu isn’t happy with his boy.”
“Han said his father sent him to get us.”
Bran shakes his head. “Don’t know what to tell you. Either the wrinkled bastard didn’t tell the draggers to getcha or he’s not happy about how it all turned out.”
There are so many other things I want to know. How the Serpents knew where Thomas and I were. Who wants me dead and Thomas alive. But mostly…
“Where is he?”
Bran doesn’t need me to clarify. And his eyes tell me that what he knows isn’t going to make me get back to bed.
“Dead?”
Bran puts his hands on my shoulders. “You best get back to bed. You’ve got more healing to do.”
“Where is Thomas?”
Bran sighs. “Don’t know. The Serpents hightailed it when my boys showed up. We torched their dead before the police showed. Bodies were already ash on the wind.”
I know the cost he’s paid. A vague truce between the Westies and the Serpents of the East Passage exists. Two gangs have never had a bloodier history, and my little stone may set off an avalanche. The only hope I have is that Han’s trespass and the ensuing gun battle might be the only tit for tat.
“He wanted Thomas alive. Why would they want him alive? They paid me a million to kill him in the first place.”
Bran’s eyebrows arch at this news, but the impressiveness of the bounty before for two boys seems paltry next to the price on my head. The pride I feel at earning a higher price tag is, depressingly, nonexistent.
His eyes look up and down the darkened hallway.
“I don’t like having rats in my bar, Layla. But I loathe having draggers in my backyard. You want to find your boy? I can’t help you.” He points back the way he’s come from and motions down, left, left. “Now. Get yourself back to bed. Rest up. I’ll be by tomorrow to take you back to my bar.”
We stand in silence, the crackling of fires playing the role of cricket noises as we stare at each other. His eyebrows arch a few times, beating the dead horse. A debonair spy Bran Dawson is not, but I give him a brief nod and feel my face flush warm with relief. Another sensation for the scrapbook.
With that, he shoulders off his fur-lined jacket and wraps it around me. It fits me like a circus tent, but the warmth of it is so inviting that I don’t care. He kicks off his boots and leaves them on the floor before walking past me, muttering about finding new footwear.
I slip into the boots, and they, too, fit me terribly. I carefully kneel down, feeling the taut rope of my gunshot pulling tight as I adjust the laces to, at minimum, keep the boots on my feet.
It’s cold out in Saint Roch, and I don’t like my chances of getting out of this unscathed. But I’m paid to make people dead.
But this? This I’ll be doing for free.
he midnight air nips at me, and it feels like I’ve skipped over entire days, which I sort of have. As I trudge down the street, Bran’s coat weighing me down but keeping me warm enough that I sweat, I try to remember what day it is.
When was the Donahue engagement party? That’s when all of this went to hell, after all.
It’s another hour of walking before I make it back to the abandoned warehouses, ducking into alleys and tucking myself into doorways when the occasional person seems like they might cross my path. As frigid as the night is, it’s not enough to keep the denizens of Saint Roch from crawling about the corpse of the city at night. I’m just glad it’s not summer when every street walker and their leash holders would be out and about.
Bran’s bar is dark, but when I get to the big green door, I grip the knob, push, and the door swings open. Behind the bar, Bran stands looking over a map and drinking something murky looking.
“Took you long enough.”
I shake his coat as I walk in, bits of frost and dampness falling to the floor. “How’d you get here so fast?”
“Flew?” He winks and grins.
I roll my eyes.
“I drove, girl.”
I crawl onto the barstool in front of him and rest my legs, taking a breath from the warm bar. The cold air did no favors to my injured chest, but the heat of the Old Haunt isn’t making it feel all fuzzy, either. Bran pours me a cup and sets it in front of me. The faint scent of herbs and lemon reach my nose, and that soothes me much more than I thought anything could. I grip the warm cup.
“Might’ve offered a lady a ride,” I mutter in between heavenly inhales of tea fumes.
“A lady might’ve stuck to roads. But I imagine a siren might hoof it through the shadows?”
Steam licks my cheeks as I lift the mug and take a deep gulp of the flavorful tea and let it wash away the cold that I’ve brought in with me.
Bran jabs a finger down on the bar. “Here.”
I look down at the crude map to see the corner of an intersection deep in the East Passage. It doesn’t do much more than name the streets and show me how close the eastern docks are to the corner.
“There?”
“That, my lady, would be where Han will be licking his wounds, most like. Daddy gave him a club to run. He’s supposed to be keeping his nose clean, but he runs just about everything through the Garden.”
Bran slides a few pictures across the bar, neon-lit signs of a gaudy three-story corner building.
“Drugs, guns, women. Han buys and sells them all
. He’s not picky.”
I sip some tea and savor the warmth it spreads. “Most criminals aren’t.”
Bran growls. “Draggers ain’t criminals, Lay. They’re scum.”
Avoiding a pot versus kettle comment, I study the map. At the moment, the Westies don’t want me dead. The Serpents do. The friend of my enemy. “Security?”
“To the teeth,” Bran admits. “You want to get close to the head dragger, you’re going to have some trouble.”
“Couldn’t get much worse,” I say, wincing as a crack of pain tears through me and I straighten up on the stool.
Bran leans on the bar and looks me over. “Why you so keen on this boy, Lay?”
“They shot me,” I say, picking through the photos, hoping to find some invisible weakness.
He lowers his voice. “That’s reason enough to want revenge, sure. But this ain’t that. You want the boy, don’t you?”
“My picture out there?” I ask, ignoring his interrogation.
“How could it?” He laughs. “All we heard was to watch for a pretty little thing with a boy thinks he shits gold.”
“Thomas isn’t that―”
Bran smirks as he catches me in the trap. But I refuse to indulge him.
“So they won’t recognize me.” I look over the map and spread all of the pictures out.
“I ‘spose not,” Bran says, looking over the pictures just the same, but upside down.
“And I take it you can’t help me out anymore than you have?”
Bran makes an exasperated sigh before shaking his head. “Some people just take and take and take, don’t they? Petey ain’t going to be happy if he realizes I helped you get out from under his roof.”
“He wanted me out.”
“On his terms. Not yours. It’s a slight to the old bugger. He’s got enough trouble with my niece…”
The club looks impenetrable if only because I won’t look the part. But when a rat makes a nest, they have certain expectations. The outside world is supposed to check itself at the door. The best way to get in is to meet those expectations.
