I shook Phil's hand as he came over. His grip, a bit dry from the flour coating it, was strong nonetheless. "Afternoon, Mr. Ingold, Mrs. Ingold. How are you?"
Phil mumbled something I didn't quite catch as Blanche distracted me. Staring at her daughter as only a mother can when trying to remind her to do something, Blanche's gaze flitted to me, then back to Lynn. I frowned. "What's going on?"
Lynn glared at her mother as only a daughter can do, then looked up at me and sighed. "My parents are celebrating their thirtieth anniversary next week and they wanted to make sure I invited you to the party,which I would have done a bit later. They also want you to extend the invitation to Dr. Raven and your compatriots."
Blanche unconsciously clasped her hands together in an attitude of prayer and crushed them to her ample bosom. "That Dr. Raven, such a nice, ah, man."
I suppressed a laugh. Raven is a rare commodity-a Native American elf who's physically big enough to bench press the tower. He's also devilishly handsome- a fact that had not been lost on Blanche Ingold or many of the other women he's met. That was one of the reasons I'd studiously avoided having Lynn renew her acquaintance with him.
Phil looked over at his wife and sighed. "I hope you get that Kid Stealth to come. I've still not thanked him for saving my little girl."
I felt the shiver run through Lynn. Her father put it down to memories of her ordeal, but I knew it came at the mention of the Kid's name. Lynn's very much a pacifist, and Stealth, well, I think he considers violence some sort of performance art. His openings are a splash, and only close after the coroner uses a lot of sutures.
I gave Lynn a reassuring squeeze, then addressed her parents. "I'll see what I can do. Raven and the others are out of town for a while. I hope they'll be back in time for your party. We'll let you know if they can make it."
Lynn's father laughed. "They can come even if they don't call ahead-Blanche, she always makes too much food for parties. I can remember a time…"
Lynn slapped me playfully on the stomach. "That's our cue to leave." She kissed her father on the cheek, then grabbed a jeans jacket and brown paper bag from her mother. She kissed Blanche and made her promise not to wait up.
Blanche gave her an extra little hug, then let her go. "Be careful. I worry even though I know you're in good hands."
I slipped my left arm around Lynn's slender waist and guided her through the lobby. "I take it from your outfit you want to go to that saloon you like?"
She gave me an impish smile. "You're not much of a detective for all the work you've done with Dr. Raven."
I shrugged easily. "He just keeps me around for heavy lifting and comforting damsels in distress." I narrowed my eyes and tried to figure out what nefarious plan she had brewing in her mind. "If there's a mystery here, I can't solve it. Don't tell me you've been hired by the Yamaguchi-gumi to square dance me to death!"
Lynn shivered eloquently. "You know, my love, that / know how much you hate Oklahoma." She glanced back over her shoulder at her parents. "However,they don't know that. I thought perhaps we might catch a bite to eat, then just retire to your place…"
"Well, my back does need washing…"
"My specialty."
"Maybeyou think so…" Lynn blushed and smacked me playfully on the arm.
The awkwardness of her sharing living quarters with her parents had been dealt with before through similar subterfuges. Because her parents had been employed by Fuchi for all of their adult lives, they got a sizable apartment in the employee tower, and it came with cleaning services and child care that made it possible for employees to devote themselves fully to serving the company. The Bakery and other company shops provided anything and everything else the employees might need, and children were encouraged to remain at home-especially if they decided to work for the company as Lynn had.
For a moment my mind drifted back to my younger days on the streets. Born in a tenement with no state or corporate official there to register me, I started early in life as a shadowrunner. No official records existed of Wolfgang Kies, which meant I was free of harassment by the city unless I attracted their attention. It also meant I could never integrate myself with numbered society-like the Fuchi folks-because I didn't officially exist. Whereas legitimate and tracked citizens had a myriad of safety nets built into the system to keep them alive, shadowrunners had to slip through the cracks.
Heading down to pier 59 and the Aquarium park with my arm around a beautiful woman, I looked at the city in an entirely new way. Sure, it was the same, dreary gray sinkhole of concrete. Yeah, street toughs with more chrome than your average kitchen still lurked on street corners and in shadows. They still had the hollow, haunted look of despair in their eyes that they would die with-and that I had worn until not so long ago- but it just didn't seem to matter to me anymore.
Shadowrunning is fine when your life is a dead end, but when you can see a future, it just seems like a childish game.
The Wolf spirit inside me spoke in a harsh whisper.A warrior who views war as a game is a warrior who will not see death when it comes for him.
We reached the park and walked to the benches beyond the area where the local wireheads had jacked into the public access systems. Those with datajacks installed, like Lynn or Valerie Valkyrie, just plugged themselves directly into the game tables. Others rented electrode rigs from a ramshackle kiosk to do the same.
Two kids were playing some variant of chess in which holographic pieces battled each other-they attracted a small crowd that cheered when a piece died a particularly grisly death. Others did their own things, oblivious to spectators. One guy who wore his purple hair in a spiked mohawk with piglet curls fore and aft seemed familiar, but I couldn't place him immediately. He amused himself by projecting images of city officials and hapless sheep into diagrams from an on-line edition of theKama Sutra. I recognized what he was doing as I had once similarly amused myself on summer days of my misspent youth.
Lynn sat on the bench and opened her bag. She took out an old crust of bread and broke it into small bits. She tossed them out in a haphazard pattern at first. Then, as birds congregated she sowed her crumbs in a way that kept the bigger birds back from where the smaller ones came to feed. She gave me a hunk of bread and frowned disapprovingly as I tossed a large piece halfway between two monster blackbirds.
"Wolf! You're supposed to break it up into smaller portions!" Her pronouncement came as if it were one of the laws of the universe that I'd missed somewhere in my meager schooling.
"You want to run that by me again, with the help files active this time?"
She rested her hands in her lap, which prompted one bold sparrow to light on her knee and pick at the crust she was still holding. She laughed, then composed her face and turned to lecture me. "You have to use small bits because, as my mother taught me, birds that fly away with your food in their mouths take your prayers to heaven with them." She nodded once as if that answer explained everything, then started scattering crumbs again.
I opened my mouth to ask a question, then stopped. Over the years I'd been with Dr. Raven I'd had the gaps in my knowledge of the world filled in, for the most part. Ever since the Awakening-when magic again appeared in the world-the God Lynn and her family worshipped had lost lots of ground. Still, with all the things I'd seen in Raven's company, and even though I seriously doubted her God existed at all, I couldn't discount the possibility she was right. Weirder things had happened.
"Sorry," I muttered. "I just can't resist watching two dinosaurs fighting over bread."
Lynn rolled her eyes to heaven and tossed a little novena to a wren. "You're not going to try to convince me that birds were once dinosaurs again, are you?"
I quick-scattered a rosary's worth of crumbs in a wide arc, then brushed my hands clean on my thighs. "I double-checked all that stuff I mentioned last time. Deinonychus is the name of the dinosaur that had a wrist joint that looks the same as the wing joint in the Archeopteryx, and the Archeopteryx has feathers and
wings, hence is seen as the first bird. See, dinosaurs and proto-birds had this common ancestor in the Jurassic period…"
She frowned. "Why would I remember deinonychus as a word?"
I shrugged. "It was a particularly bloodthirsty carnosaur. It ran fast and had this nasty, sickle-shaped claw on each of its feet that it used to disembowel…" As I hooked my right hand over to represent the claw, I saw her pale just a bit, and suddenly I realized why she knew the word.
I reached out and hugged her to me. "I'm sorry. Forgive me."
She kissed the side of my neck. "Nothing to forgive- you didn't mean it."
But I did it anyway.Lynn had first heard the word deinonychus when I clarified why Kid Stealth ran with such an odd gait. During her rescue she'd seen only glimpses of him and never got a good look at his titanium legs. She'd actually seen more than she knew, and put the weirdness down to the dope in her system. When I explained how Stealth had chosen legs styled after those of a deinonychus, she asked me to stop, but she still dreamed of him for the next couple of nights.
She pulled away from me and set about feeding the dinosaurs again. Her smile returned and she passed me another piece of bread, but I shook my head. "Lynn, there's something I have to tell you about me." I faltered. After seeing how she reacted to the mention of Kid Stealth or anything that might remind her of violence, there seemed no easy way to tell her about the true Wolfgang Kies.
She brushed her hands off and cupped my jaw in them. "Wolf, I know you've been forced to do things you're not proud of. I know you've killed people and things while working for Dr. Raven, but I also know you did that to help others, like me. I cannot and will not let that drive a wedge between us-that's a decision I made the first time I agreed to go out with you."
She pressed her fingertips to my lips to stop me from saying anything. "I know you, perhaps better than you know yourself. I know you're a good man, a strong man, and I know I love you. There is nothing you could say that would change that or make me think any less of you."
I sat there stunned for a moment or two as I realized the true depth of her feelings for me. Somehow I'd assumed there was no way she could feel the same way about me as I felt about her, but that proved to be a fallacy that exploded with the greatest of ease. Still, she didn't know about my lunar mood swings, and that revelation would sorely test the strength of her convictions.
I started to speak, but something caught my attention above and beyond Lynn's head. Two hollow-eyed kids came around the corner of the trode kiosk, then ducked back when they saw me. Alarm bells immediately went off in my head because even though they'd washed off most of the jack o' lantern makeup the Hallo-weeners affected, their jackets were black and orange- Halloweener colors.
"Are you done feeding the birds?"
Lynn immediately caught the concern in my voice. "What is it?"
I looked around and saw more potential Weenies loitering in the background. "Gangers. I don't like it."
She sighed with exasperation to cover her nervousness. "Wolf, thisis a public park. They have the right to use it."
I nodded. "True enough, but this just doesn't feel right."
Again she tried to play it light. "I think you just want to get me back to your place…"
I stood and held my hand out to help her up. "No denying that. Why don't you scatter the rest of the bread in one huge papal audience, and let's get out of here. We'll keep it natural, as if nothing's wrong…"
"Wolf, you're scaring me." She crushed the bag, then up-ended it and let the crumbs spill out. "Let's go, if we must."
The fear in her voice gave way to anger. I knew it wasn't directed at me exactly, and I immediately focused my reaction to it on the Weenies who had started to follow us. At the same time I wanted to kick myself for having left my Viper behind3. The situation that appeared to be shaping up was not one in which I wanted to be unarmed.
The Wolf spirit's voice echoed through my head.You need not be weaponless, Longtooth. Embrace me and I will deal with your enemies.
"No!"
Lynn looked back at me. "What?" Despite her fear, I saw her concern for me reflected in her green eyes.
3See, I wasn't kidding, was I?
I shook my head. "Nothing important." I glanced at the forest of gray buildings at the landward end of the pier. "I'm not sure if we're being followed or not, but there's a quick way for us to find out."
She hesitated for only a second. "Lead on."
I guided her toward the crosswalk as if nothing unusual was happening at all. The Weenies stayed with us, but lurked at the back of the crowd gathering to cross the street. I worked us toward the curb, then pulled her into the street. "Run!"
The irate honking of horns and the squeal of brakes drowned out any shouting from the other pedestrians as we dashed into traffic. Lynn let her fear run riot and the adrenaline made her nimble and oh so quick. She cut around the front of a Ford Americar and between two Honda minivans while I vaulted a silver Porsche Mako. The driver shook his fist at me through the windscreen, then went white as a bullet shattered the safety glass.
The next two silenced shots went high, but I saw them hit the Sumitomo Bank building. Adrenaline lending wings to my feet, I caught up with Lynn and grabbed her right hand in my left. Without warning I stopped and swung her around into the alley behind the bank, then I paused and made yet another in a long line of mistakes. I turned back to see who was pursuing us.
The lead grunge snapped two shots off with his silenced Ingram Mk. 22 before another Mako-this one white and sporting a dorsal fin telephone antenna-took him like its namesake would take a swimmer on an Australian beach. The lower portions of his legs whipping around like nylons on a clothesline, the ganger bounced from the hood to windscreen, then up over the top of the car. I'm not sure where the antenna caught him, but it looked crimson to me as the car continued through the intersection.
One of the two bullets peppered me with concrete shards and lead splatter as it hit the wall near my head. The other one hit me square in the ribs and spun me back into the alley. I ricocheted off the opposite wall, then sprawled unceremoniously on stinking bags of garbage.
Lynn dropped to her knees and reached out to me, then her hands recoiled in horror to cover her mouth as she saw the bullet hole in my jacket. "Oh, God, you're shot!" The blood drained from her face and I sensed she wanted to run, but refused to give in to her panic. "I have to get help…"
I held a hand up as my body once again let me breathe. "Wait… I'm battered but not bloodied." Gingerly I opened my coat and the.45 caliber slid across my t-shirt and to the ground. "See, no blood, no foul."
It heartened me to see the relief in her eyes. I saw no reason to mention that the bullet had broken at least one of my ribs and mat if the Weenies got any closer with their guns, my t-shirt wouldn't stop their evil intentions, much less another bullet.
I took her hands in mine and gave them a squeeze. "Go further along the alley. Duck down behind that big dumpster there. I'll be along in a second. There's something I have to do."
"I don't want to leave you here all…"
"Just a second, babe, then I'll be with you. Trust me."
As she headed back down the alley, I worked past the pain and reached inside myself. Deep in my heart I touched the Wolf spirit. The Old One hauled himself up into a sitting position and looked at me disapprovingly. The red rebuke in his eyes found allies in the scarlet shadows rippling over his black form.
Even before the Old One had a chance to speak, I cut him off. "I need your strength and your speed and your senses, and I need them now! I have no time to debate you. Now!" Without waiting for his acquiescence, I pulled myself out of the self-imposed trance and smiled as the world reordered itself in accordance with my new perspective.
Despite the fetid garbage surrounding me, I could still smell the lingering trace of Lynn's perfume and the fear it helped mask. I heard the sounds she made as she ducked to safety, and the sounds of the rats in the dump-ster
behind which she hid. More important, though, I heard the asthmatic wheezing of a Weenie running toward where he'd seen me fall.
In an instant-the broken rib a twinge of pain to be ignored-I was on my feet and had flattened myself against the opposite wall of the alley. The acrid scent of gunsmoke burned into my nostrils as the silenced snout of another Ingram Mk. 22 poked around the corner. Without hesitation I grabbed the gun and yanked, pulling the startled Weenie into the shadowed byway. I tore the gun free of his feeble grasp, then smashed its blocky butt against his head. He collapsed without so much as a moan.
Following him came a gillette who'd learned to move almost silently. My first warning of his presence came when the forty-centimeter-long claws built into his right hand telescoped out with a click, then whistled as he swung them at me. His cut came waist-high and should have sliced my belly open, but I'd already begun to twist away from him before his attack began. The trio of polished steel blades shredded the right flank of my jacket and razored through the t-shirt and some flesh, but they didn't get enough to put me down.
Before he could turn his wrist around and try to backhand me with the blades, my right hand locked on his hand. I bent his hand inward toward his own chest. Anticipating my move, he retracted the claws and relaxed in preparation for using some esoteric martial art to turn my attack against me. That's why it surprised him when I jammed his fist against his own chest, then smacked the gun in my left hand against his funny bone.
The blow numbed his forearm and released the claws.
I stepped over his dying body and out onto the street again. The half-dozen gangers and razorboys racing down the sidewalk collided abruptly as their lead elements tried to stop. I stroked the Ingram's trigger twice, sending two three-shot bursts in their direction. Fortunately for them, and whoever does the workman's compensation filing for the Halloweeners, a heavy-set ork up front absorbed most of the damage. One bullet lanced sparks from a gillette's left-arm assembly and another folded an ork over as it drove his navel out through his spine, but otherwise it left the band unscathed.
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