by Ian Hiatt
“Any chance you fetched my―”
Bran lifts his hands from beneath the bar and drops my sheathed knife and pistol with a thud.
“Did you the courtesy of filling you up, too.” He sets a few magazines topped off with 9mm rounds beside my gun. “Just try not to lose this like you did that rifle you bought.”
I don’t have any favors to call in, and apart from lending me some clothes that fit me better than his coat and gargantuan boots, Bran’s done more than enough for me. Which is why I wander into the suicidal plan thought process.
I thumb a picture as I casually explain the idea to Bran.
“Lay, that’s insane. You can’t trust him. He’ll sooner put another few holes through you than help you.”
The spear of pain in my chest reminds me of the likelihood of that. “I don’t really have another choice.”
“You do. Just walk away, girl. Hell, I got a back room here. You can live there until you get back on your feet.”
I shake my head. “Any idea where I can find him?”
Bran shakes his head and waves his hands. “No. Nope. I’m not helping you kill yourself for a little whelp like that boy.”
“It’s not for―”
He slams a fist down on the bar, shaking my mug and cracking his. “Don’t lie to me. And don’t lie to yourself. You’re doing this to get back the boy.”
His tea seeps out of the crack in his mug, soaking the map. I meet his eyes. “I can’t let him die.” The admission tastes foul in my mouth, but I let it out all the same.
Bran sighs, a growl of a sound passing through the tendrils of red beard. He flexes his hand. “Never seen a beast like you, Layla.”
My chest twinges at his words, unsure of whether it’s an attack or just a curiosity.
“All the killing power of a siren. Probably the best’ve ever heard of. Maybe the best there’s ever been. And here you are, rescuing a lost pup. You don’t make a bit of sense, y’know that?”
His doubt feels like an echo of my own, as though my ability to bend most men to my will has him voicing my thoughts.
Your kiss didn’t kill Thomas. If you don’t have the siren’s kiss, then what other siren qualities are you lacking?
“I don’t really know what I am at this point, Bran,” I say, staring down at the trickle of tea leaking from his mug.
“You’re a stubborn bitch, is what you are.” Even though he doesn’t want me to go through with my insane plan, I can see the trouble he’s going through to keep from smiling his approval of my mind-set if not my reasons. “We are who we choose to be, and damnit if you didn’t choose to be a pain in the ass.”
The sentiment doesn’t cure what ails me. But it quiets it, for the moment. I may not know what I am, if my mother lied to me all those years. I can’t change either of those things, though. Siren or not, daughter to an even fouler mother than I ever knew, these were set in stone long ago.
But who I am. That I change right fucking now.
Bran’s fugitive tea has begun to spread over the table when he picks up the broken mug and throws it in the nearby waste bin.
“I’ve spent my adult life ending the lives of thieves, dealers, enforcers, scum, and even other hitmen,” I say when he turns back. “Thomas isn’t any of those things. He doesn’t deserve what’s happened to him. So you’re either going to tell me where I can find this guy, or I’m going to have to do it on my own.”
Bran grumbles, and looking away like he can keep the secret from himself, he points to a place on the map, quickly soaking up the red tea that’s moving across the bar.
And that’s how, an hour later, I find myself lying in an abandoned train yard on the South End, at the bottom of a storage container that’s been buried beneath the ground as one of the most extreme deadfalls ever. My head is aching after I fell headfirst into the rusted container, sure, but I’m more concerned with the twenty-something standing over the container, peering down at me. I’m not so worried about the German shepherd at his side as I am with the tactical crossbow he’s pointing at me, the laser sight drifting up and down my face.
“What brings you here, she-devil?” he calls down to me. He’s never met me, but rumor has it he can spot us pretty quickly. The inhumanity we carry.
It takes me a few moments to recover from the wind being knocked out of me, and even more to overcome the pain of my wound. “I came with a proposition for you… Tim.”
The dog growls at me, but Tim reaches down and pats its head. She promptly sits, but keeps glaring at me through opaque bursts of air from her huffing and puffing.
The man, done up in more tactical gear than the entire Saint Roch Police Department owns, lowers his crossbow slowly. I breathe a sigh of relief as I try to sit up. But I relax too soon. Tim pulls out a pistol instead and a second laser sight traces its way up my thick jacket to find my bare neck before he pulls the trigger and everything goes black.
’ve never been shot. In my line of work, that’s a badge of honor. I’ve killed 126 people. Twenty-seven with Andrew Donahue, actually. And none of those got me shot.
And here it is, Thomas Donahue. Supposed to be my 128th, and I’ve been shot. Twice. Bran’s summation of him being a whelp crosses my mind as being incredibly accurate as I come to. The smelling salt beneath my nose burns up into my eyes, making them water as they snap open. My cuffs rattle against the pipe as Tim sits back, cross-legged just out of my reach.
Tim. The one person in Saint Roch City I was certain I’d never cross paths with if it were my choice. The word traded in hushed breaths on the street or in ethanol soaked conversations in the bars is that Tim is a deranged psychopath. The kind of fellow high school kids joke will catch you and kill you if you try to get laid on one of the back roads on the city’s fringe. An urban legend.
A bit of my own work dug up that he ran through the same foster system I did before he snapped and murdered the family that had taken him in. Burned their apartment building to the ground at the age of eight. He turned up again some ten years later and is always blamed when one of us wound up dead.
Inhumans. He’s got a thing about us. And it’s not a good thing.
“I wouldn’t bother with any of your tricks. Those cuffs are bio-keyed. Only I can unlock them,” he says off-handedly in a thick, motorized voice. He touches the pair of goggles and a breathing device over his mouth. “And there’s not much you can do to entice me when I’m wearing these. You are a siren, right?”
I duck my head to my shoulder, my jacket gone but the gray undershirt Bran stole from his brother’s house still there. The thin shoulder strap helps me clear my eyes as I try to respond.
“Yeah, I gave you a decent dose, too.” Tim holds up a feathered dart. “It can put down a full grown lion. I figured that’d be enough for the likes of you.”
“Came to… make an offer.” I manage, blinking at him through bleary eyes. The dog growls, and I can only just make out the blur of it sitting on the far side of whatever dimly lit room we’re in.
Tim laughs, grim. “A deal with an Inhuman. Yeah. That sounds great.” He stands and walks across the room before returning with his crossbow. “You’ve got thirty seconds.”
I cough, my body very unhappy with what I’ve been putting it through. “My name’s Layla.”
“Twenty-eight.” He loads an arrow, pulling back the mechanism that I assume will make me die.
“I need your help. There’s… I have… a friend. In trouble with the Serpents.”
Tim leans forward a little. And in a moment, “Twenty… three.” He sounds doubtful of his countdown.
“He’s a human?” I offer. He doesn’t respond. “Han Tzu snatched him up yesterday… morning? I think they’ll keep him alive, and I need to find him. He’s… important… to me.”
Tim sits back, my hesitation likely looking more like lying to him. He raises the crossbow and points it at my face.
“You’re a killer. I know your species. They’ve caused me enough pain. I s
hould’ve just put this bolt through your eye the moment you stepped into my domain.” His finger rests on the trigger, and it clicks just enough.
Don’t hold back. Let it go. Let it out. Forget everything you’ve been taught. Think about what you feel.
“No! No, wait. Please. It’s my fault. His name’s Thomas! He’s in trouble because of me. I’m trying to get him out of there. Please.”
“Trying to finish the job, you mean? Five seconds.”
“Please! I… I love him!” The lie is a strong one. But I feel a twinge in my throat that it’s not as strong a lie as I would’ve thought.
Tim looks down the barrel of the crossbow. Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
“Well, I’ll be.” He lowers the weapon and sets it down. He moves toward me and pulls something out of one of the pockets on his vest. His hand whips out, grabs me by my hair, and tugs hard, scalding my scalp as he does. I resist the urge to struggle, knowing that any movement on my part would solidify my death.
He holds up his new weapon. A pen flashlight. He flicks it over my eyes. One then, the other. His thumb reaches up and pulls at my cheek, examining me closely. He leans back and grins.
“You kissed him, huh?”
Now I’m blinking away tears from his light. “How did you―”
Tim sets down his crossbow and moves toward me. He grabs my wrists roughly and unlatches the cuffs before tucking them into his vest. With a curt grin he pulls out a rag and tosses it to me. “Clean yourself up. But I want you to remember this, okay? I’m not going to kill this guy, whoever he is. Repeat that back to me.”
I grab the rag, put it to my eyes, and try to clear them. “What the hell does―”
“Say it. Tell me you know I won’t hurt this guy.” He stands, putting his hand on the gun at his side.
My eyes now seeing considerably better, I can tell the gun isn’t the tranquilizer firing kind. It’s more of the hand cannon kind. I’m not looking forward to getting shot a third time. “You won’t hurt Thomas.”
He holds a hand out to me. “Good. So what’s your plan?”
Tim listens as I push a few of the pictures across the table, which is covered with spare crossbow arrows, and many, many, many boxes of ammunition. As I explain, he’s flicking a butterfly knife back and forth, thoughtfully nodding. His face, which might’ve once been quite attractive, is not so much now. Lined with scars and deep wrinkles, he probably only has a few years on me, but looks like he might have decades.
“I figured, you hate our kind more than anyone in the city…”
“The world,” he corrects. “Your kind of scum ruined my life.” He keeps flicking the knife about. Perfectly timed, perfectly moving, never once risking a cut to himself.
“Well, I thought if anyone would be willing to take down a few dragons, it’d be you.”
He grins like a kid in a toy store and nods. “Oh, I’ve been dying to put a few of those scaly freaks in the ground. Even had your boy Han in my crosshairs before. But it will be tricky. If we don’t move fast enough, they could shift to their less-than-friendly bodies.”
I’ve never seen it happen, but I’ve heard about it in idle chitchat at the various bars. A good portion of the truce between the Westies and the East Passage people is to keep the secret. The hidden fact that dragons were a very real thing in centuries past, but through some twisted series of events, they managed to hide in human skin.
I wonder if Bran still has his fuzzy red beard when he’s a dragon…
“Yeah, that’s the other problem. I don’t know how to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Tim leans forward, jabbing his knife into the table and resting his chin on his hand in the same motion. His mouth tweaks to one of contemplation. His fingertips scrape across the bristles of days-old stubble, and in the sharp desk-lamp light, I see a patch of his cropped black hair that doesn’t look like it’s grown right for a while. His free hand wanders over the pictures and maps littering the table.
“Your plan will definitely get us in the door. Han has no idea what I look like, and we can do our best to make sure he has no idea who you are. But there is likely going to be more than a few draggers in the room. And even if they’re not, best-case scenario they’ll be armed-to-the-teeth humans.”
“Is that a problem for you?”
Tim laughs and leans back, lacing his fingers behind his head and grinning like a Halloween decoration. “Not really. I’ll put down a human if they’re working with an Inhuman.”
“Umm… but you’re―”
Tim glares. “Yes. I realize the irony. Let’s move on.”
The dog, warming up to me surprisingly quickly, sits beside me and puts her face in my lap, staring up at me and panting.
“That stuff you shot me up with. You said it can take down a lion?”
Tim nods and smirks. “Oh, you’d be shocked to find out the selection of chemicals I have.”
“Are you a fast shot?”
“Fast enough that I got you.” He barks a laugh and the dog follows. Tim stands and starts walking around the old train car, gathering up supplies. He tosses my knife and gun back to me. “Let’s do it.”
I’m bouncing around in the back of the van, trying to get dressed for my role as Tim drives down the streets of Saint Roch. After breaking into a store on a high-class avenue to get some clothing for our disguises, we’ve set out for the East Passage and Han Tzu’s club. Tim insisted on leaving several thousand dollars in cash at the store to pay for the merchandise and the damage.
“Didn’t realize vigilantes made so much,” I call from the back of the van, my bare skin freezing on the cold metal floor as I struggle to fit into the tight clothing that’s nothing new for me.
“Family money. All the way back to my great-grandfather Abraham in the 1800s.” I’m well aware of his psychosis. “Not to mention the cash I get from your kind,” Tim calls from the front, cutting the wheel to get there faster and fit the part. “You’d be surprised how much money you freaks carry on your person.”
A spasm of cold cuts through me. I’m certainly missing the warm fire of the Dawson castle and the thick mass of Bran’s coat now. But I need to look the part.
“Light?” I ask. Tim slams on the breaks at the next stop sign and turns back to toss me his penlight. I use my legs to pin myself between the side door of the rickety van and the built-in shelving unit on the opposite side. I slip out the mirror I stole from the store and the batch of makeup, hastily using it to cover up what my shape shifting can’t seem to handle. The scarred cross-stitch hole peering out above my left breast stares up at me, easily giving away that I’m not just some street trash. I put the flashlight between my teeth, but with the bouncing van and my ineptitude with covering wounds with makeup, I start to pray that the club has incredibly poor lighting.
“Just so we’re clear, as much as I want to help you, my main goal is to gut as many draggers as I can and get the hell out,” Tim explains casually. “You get yourself into a situation, I’m not here to bail your ass out.”
“Gee, thanks.” I click off the flashlight and toss it back up to him. He doesn’t need to turn around to reach out and snag it out of midair before slipping it into his vest. “You remember the deal. You don’t get to pop Han until he gives up the person who put the bounty out on me and Thomas.”
“I’m a man of my word, Layla. If you make it out of this alive, maybe you’ll get to see that.”
The van takes a sharp turn before, wheels squealing on the pavement, it comes to a full stop. Tim turns off the engine and hops in the back with me. He uses his flashlight to look me over.
“Well?” I ask, feeling all the teenage insecurity I never had to endure rushing over me.
He shrugs. “Eh. It’s not terrible. You don’t look like you did before. At least not really.” He picks at my inky hair, inspired by Ravyn’s, and tugs at it a bit. “And the outfit definitely doesn’t look much like what he would’
ve seen you in, I’m sure.”
I grumble and look down at the menagerie we stole, making me look like a high school dropout. Black miniskirt, black tights with matching boots―housing my knife―and nothing but a bra on top. Tim examines my bullet wound and sighs.
“Well… I suppose it’s okay. You’re supposed to look like you’ve been roughed up. Stolen girl and all. Speaking of which…” He puts the flashlight in his mouth just as I had, before he leans back and sucker punches me to the side of the face.
The stars take over as I spit out blood. “You mother―what the hell was that for?” I scream and jab him in the shoulder hard.
“You have to look the part!” Just as the stars are clearing, he gives me another punch, and my eye explodes with pain. I’m seeing red now, and it takes everything in me to keep from going for my blade to kill him. Or at least attempt to.
“Could’ve warned me,” I mutter, blinking a few times, already feeling my face puffing and swelling in painful throbs of my heartbeat. I spit a wad of coppery-tasting spit on his shoes for appearances, but more for spite.
He either doesn’t care or doesn’t notice. “You would’ve braced yourself. Wouldn’t have looked real.” Even being partially blind on my left side, I can see the bright burn of the flashlight as he looks over my face. “Nice. That’s going to bruise up good.” He takes off his vest and tosses it onto the front seat.
“How exactly do you plan to disarm a room full of potential dragons when you’re completely unarmed yourself?”
“Who says I’m unarmed?” He winks.
A few minutes later, we’re walking out of the back of the van, him in semi-tactical garb hidden beneath a ratty coat. He has me walk in front of him, always looking the part.
He jabs his gun into my lower back. “You could cry a little. Sob. Something.”
I give a sniffle and wipe at my eye.
“Scratch that. No wonder you’re an assassin. You’d be dead broke as an actress. Quiet acceptance.” He jabs the gun again and I stumble. “Get the hell up!” he shouts, grabbing me by the hair and yanking me down an alleyway.
