Moonshine

by Jasmine Gower

  Wei had jumped after her and grabbed her by the leg.

  What happened next dizzied and disoriented her enough that it took several seconds for her mind to piece together what was going on. Gravity seemed to settle, but without the painful crash of landing on the polished dance floor. Light burst all around her – not the candles she had lit, but something pale with a glowing blue undertone that swirled around her, wisping about her waist and legs and hair, a cloud of semisolid light that slowed her fall. She could feel those tendrils not just as they supported her – their gentle brush against her skin left her feeling jittery and alert. They were made of pure magic. She had never actually consumed mana before, but the sensation matched the symptoms that all those concerned mothers’ groups described in their scare campaigns. Not that Daisy was afraid of the ribbons wrapping around her and slowing her fall, or at least not as much as she feared the armed woman who was cradled in their embrace with her.

  Wei didn’t try to swipe at Daisy with the knife again as they loftily descended, but her eyes still gleamed with determination. Daisy had seen that look on athletes at sporting events in her college days – a runner with the finish line in sight. She could see that Wei was only waiting for them to be on steady ground again before she tried to take a killing blow.

  Daisy decided to beat her to it.

  They couldn’t have been more than four feet off the ground when Daisy lifted her hand with the onyx ring and shot another lash of fire directly at Wei. The hitwoman screamed and tried to thrash away without releasing her grip on Daisy’s calf. She mostly succeeded, as the flame only singed a bit of her hair without catching anything ablaze, but the whip of fire tore through Angel’s magic ribbons. Daisy hadn’t expected that, and as she watched the blue become engulfed by orange heat and felt the cradling support weaken, she braced herself.

  Angel’s ribbons unraveled, and Daisy and Wei were dropped full weight the rest of the distance.

  Daisy was able to curl forward when she hit so as not to smack her head against the hardwood floor, instead taking all the impact on her shoulder blades and ass in a singular, fierce jolt. She heard footsteps scramble, but Wei was on top of her before any of the Stripes could rush up to retrieve her. Daisy saw the knife, and alarm drove her into throwing a punch at Wei. Much to Daisy’s astonishment, it hit. As Wei’s head whipped to the side under the impact, the momentum carried her body halfway off of Daisy and loosened her grip on the knife. It dropped, and rather than scramble after it, Wei just righted herself and punched Daisy back.

  The pain that blossomed in Daisy’s left cheek hurt, but not enough to stop her from kicking one leg hard enough to knock Wei off and rolling to pin her to the floor. Wei responded by reaching up to try to claw at Daisy’s throat and face, and from there, the battle between the determined, blood-stained hitwoman and clever, educated young magician devolved into a frantic scramble of violence and pained grunting that was below even common alley cats. As Daisy tried to keep Wei wrestled to the ground while enduring scratches from her nails and kicks from her knees, it occurred to her that either these sorts of shoot-outs were not as glamorous as the cinema made them seem, or she was very awkward as far as gangsters went.

  Eventually, a pair of hands hooked under Daisy’s arms and lifted her into the air. Wei began to scramble after her, trying to catch her again by the leg, but Frisk appeared with a gun pointed directly at her.

  Wei shrunk back, lifting both hands in surrender.

  Daisy was settled on her bare feet by her interloper, and she turned to see that it was Jonas. “Are you OK?” he asked. She nodded, even though her shins were bleeding, her left cheek was swollen, and her shoulder blades and hips blazed in furious misery.

  “Boss, what you want me to do with this?” Daisy’s attention was pulled back to Frisk, who kept her gun trained on Wei as she shouted over at Andre or Angel a few yards off.

  “Not now, Frisk.” Daisy looked over to see Angel kneeling on the ground, hand pressed over her heart again. Her eyelids fluttered, and Andre crouched next to her with a vial of mana in hand. Cyan hovered just behind him, his dark eyes shifting rapidly between Andre and Daisy. Even through her concern for Angel, Daisy was glad to see Cyan had come through all that unharmed.

  “Where’s Vinnie?” Jonas asked. Daisy pulled her eyes away to catch him examining the balconies, and she remembered seeing another of Wei’s toughs knocking him out. That man was still conscious and armed.

  “Oh, shit. He’s in the hallway up there, and one of Wei’s people is with him.” Without thought – maybe her reasoning had been knocked loose by Wei’s strike to her face – she turned to go charging back upstairs to defend her friend, but Jonas caught her by the arm as she spun.

  “Whoa, whoa! You stay put! If Vinnie’s in danger, someone else can–”

  “Don’t think so, big fella,” Frisk interrupted. “I think we’re the only ones still standing, and I’m not letting this one scamper off. Lia and Vicks can’t walk, Swarz can but only barely, Gina went to go find Rudolph, and Angel’s damn near having a heart attack right now.”

  “Jonas, go help Vinnie,” Andre’s voice called out. “Daisy, will you please come here?” Jonas released Daisy’s arm with a nod and took off through the last fading wisps of smoke to charge upstairs, having to duck and turn himself sideways to navigate the stairwell. Daisy, meanwhile, jogged over to Andre and Angel. The latter was gulping down the vial that Andre offered her like it was water in a desert, and Daisy noticed another vial lying empty nearby.

  “How much of that do you have?” Daisy asked, and Andre shook his head.

  “Not enough. She really spent herself slowing your fall, and she was drained already by that point.” Andre’s dark eyes were locked on Angel even as he responded to Daisy.

  Daisy wished with all her might that she could just run out to a payphone and call for an ambulance to help Angel and everyone else who had been hurt. For all that Wei had done to her – in the past few weeks and even the past ten minutes – Daisy felt a pulse of anger only toward Ashland’s laws that now put her friends in a position where they had to choose between medical attention and imprisonment. And that thought only reminded her of the ruckus they had made – if any neighbors or passersby had overheard it, they could expect the police to show up soon. The same situation as the first assault on the Gin Fountain. She really did pity the owners of the establishment, wherever they were now.

  “What do you need?”

  “You didn’t happen to see any mana left behind the bar, did you?” Daisy shook her head. Scoffing to himself, Andre placed a hand reassuringly on Angel’s leg as she panted and winced. She didn’t seem to notice the gesture.

  “We need to get her somewhere that she can replenish. Daisy, will you take over Frisk’s position? Pasternack! I need you to drive Angel somewhere that has mana.”

  Frisk cocked an eyebrow. “Where?”

  “Anywhere! Just make sure you are not followed.” Andre glanced over where Amelia and Vicks sat slumped against each other. Amelia had one leg awkwardly stretched out in front of her but otherwise appeared fine; Vicks, on the other hand, was conscious but slack-faced and vacant-eyed. A makeshift bandage wrapped around his abdomen outside of his clothes was stained with one, large dark red circle. “Take them with you. Rudolph, too, if Regina has located him.” Frisk grunted and waved Daisy over, handing her the gun as she approached. Wei remained as she was, all the predatory drive gone from her eyes. She almost looked like she was about to fall asleep there on the floor, except for her hands still raised in submission.

  “What about you, Andre?” Angel wheezed as Frisk came over to help her to her feet.

  The man’s eyes flickered between her and Daisy, the indecision plain on his face. He was worried about both, and not particularly fit to help either. Frisk provided an observation that settled the matter for him. “I can’t carry everyone out to the car on my own, ’specially not if there are still mercs crawling around.”

  An
dre blinked, looking lost. Daisy guessed he was also in need of mana replenishment. “How many are left?”

  “Fuck, I don’t know! Ask her.” Frisk tilted her jaw toward Wei.

  Daisy nudged Wei in the shoulder with her foot to urge the woman to sit up. She did so, staring at the bodies of her comrades strewn around her. Although Rudolph and Vinnie’s fates were still unknown, all of the other Stripes were alive for certain. Wei’s people had not fared as well.

  “One of your goons charged out of here a short while ago,” Andre said to her, each word clipped with a sharp bite. He seemed to find clarity in his anger. “Our faerie clawed another to death across the room, and one is shot dead in the foyer. How many does that leave?”

  Wei’s gaze rolled up to the balcony from which she and Daisy had leapt. There had been no further sounds of gunshots from above since Jonas charged up there, Daisy realized. “Bruno followed me up there – he was still alive when we jumped.” Her attention returned to the five sprawled around the center of the dance floor. Her stare lingered longest on a lanky man with a bloodied neck lying next to a reverb cannon. “That’s it. The rest are dead here.”

  “This Bruno might have fled,” Daisy said to Andre, “going through the fire exit that Regina told me about. I think we would have heard him try to shoot Jonas, otherwise.”

  Andre nodded and turned back to Frisk. “I’ll help you carry them to the car and do what I can to watch your back for the two who escaped. Cyan can come with us.” As if hearing the exhaustion in his voice, the faerie crouched down to grab Andre’s cane where he had settled it on the floor, handing it to the magician as he helped him up. “Daisy, I’ll return soon for the rest of you. If anything happens, shout out for Jonas. Until then, please just hold this woman here.” Daisy wondered if he had already puzzled out that the woman in question was Ming Wei herself.

  Daisy nodded, and everyone left whole in the center of the hall began working to help the rest to their feet and shamble collectively toward the foyer. Once they were gone, Daisy couldn’t hear anything from Jonas, Vinnie, or the man Wei had called Bruno. She was alone with Wei in the silence.

  Wei just kept staring at the dead lanky man slopped in his own blood.

  “I know this might seem a silly thing to ask,” Daisy said, keeping the gun trained on Wei, “but why in the blazing embers did you try to kill me?”

  Wei’s expression was unwavering. Without the drive to complete her kill, she just looked haggard – as worn as Daisy had been feeling ever since Wei’s pursuit of her and the Stripes began. “Some sleazy politician paid me for it.”

  Daisy flexed her fingers on the handle of the pistol. “Care to name them, so I know who not to vote for next election cycle?”

  The other woman only shrugged. “I’m paid for my silence. It’s part of my service.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Not that I’m likely to get paid at all if I don’t bring your head back.”

  “Why my head?”

  “It didn’t have to be yours – I just needed one magician to make an example of. I thought that because your magic isn’t the mainstream sort, the other magicians wouldn’t have your back if I went after you.” She huffed, seeming to try to blow loose strands of hair out of her eyes, but sweat on her forehead kept it plastered in place. “And what a brilliant thought that turned out to be.”

  “That’s really what this was all about? You were just taking a politician’s money in exchange for some random person’s life? Why?”

  The glare Wei fired at her burned into her skin. “Why do people always ask that? What do you think I intend to do with that kind of money? Buy fancy watches and imported silverware? I need to keep a roof over my head and put food on the table, same as anyone else. I have a grandmother alone and sick up north, plus a shit-brained brother who keeps getting his ass kicked by other hooligans and cops alike. And I have my own bones and guts to worry about, or do you not know what the price tag of a hospital visit looks like? A factory job’s not going to set me up for when age and illness sets in.

  “I’m not doing this because I’m greedy, and I’m sure as shit not doing it for fun. I am good at this work, and I don’t have the luxury of an upper crust education or important family friends to get me better. What I have instead is politicians grabbing at my lease and threatening to sell my house off to developers if I don’t do their dirty business. So if you’re not going to spare me your judgments, then just fucking shoot me. It would be more tolerable, I’m sure.”

  Daisy lowered the gun – not so much that she couldn’t pull it back up to fire if she needed to, but no longer aimed directly at Wei’s forehead. Wei scowled in nervous uncertainty and disbelief.

  Frisk and Vicks might have been howling to destroy these mage-hunters, and Angel apparently had a sadistic streak a mile wide, and even Andre was ready to eliminate any threats at all cost with little thought to them as fellow human beings, but Daisy supposed she wasn’t like that. Maybe she wasn’t yet hardened enough, as Frisk had insinuated, or maybe she just didn’t have it in her soul to begin with. Regardless, whatever Wei’s intentions for her, Daisy had no desire to kill this woman or to hold her in place until Andre came back to do it for her.

  She glanced toward the stairs leading up, where Jonas was. Daisy knew there was an exit on the ground floor somewhere, and Jonas would never be able to get down those stairs in time to block it.

  “Look, just get out of here. Before my friends come back.”

  Wei didn’t move. “Why?”

  Daisy huffed out a breath, the gun tilting further toward the floor as her shoulders sagged. “I had a grandma, too. She also did what she had to in order to get by in this world, even though it hurt some people. I know what it’s like to have unpaid bills and costs that keep piling up. We aren’t so different, are we?”

  Wei looked Daisy up and down. “You think so? ’Cause from where I’m at, you look like you’re sitting pretty cushy.”

  Daisy rolled her eyes. Wei must have never discovered the location of her trash heap of an apartment, after all, if she thought that. “Oh, please. I found this dress in a bargain bin.” She gestured with the gun toward the back corner of the building. “If you don’t want to run into my boss again, you’d better go now. You can stay if you want, but it’ll be easier to keep all your blood inside your body if you get out of here.”

  Staring at Daisy with a flat, disbelieving brow, Wei pushed herself up to her feet. They both knew that if Daisy wanted Wei dead, she would have pulled the trigger several minutes ago. Without looking away from Daisy, Wei took off in quick, backward steps to the kitchen. Once she had disappeared into the dark opening, Daisy groaned and lowered herself to the ground, dropping too heavy on her already-bruised behind and stretching her legs in such a way that the cuts on her shins opened wider, trickling thin trails of blood that circled around the girth of her calves.

  “Ah, damn.”

  Without the immediate threat of Wei’s knife, the pain that covered Daisy’s body in flaring patches was no longer muffled by the presence of crushing fear.

  She heard heavy footfalls not long after she settled on the floor, and although she knew it had to be Jonas coming back down the stairs, she tightened her grip on Frisk’s pistol all the same. The ogre ducked and sidestepped through the opening to the stairwell while awkwardly herding a limping Vinnie behind him. Vinnie carried his rifle in one arm while Jonas steadied him by the other, and the glow to his eyes was gone. In its place, he had a purple shiner on his left cheekbone (Daisy probably had a similar one to match, she realized, as she noticed her vision blurred in her left eye) which his eyeglasses sat askew over. He otherwise appeared sound, and Jonas’ attention shifted from him to Daisy when he saw her sitting alone on the floor.

  “Daisy, are you hurt?” As Jonas jogged over to her, she noticed black bruises along his grey-toned arms and neck. Like Daisy, Jonas didn’t seem to have the teeth that some of the other Stripes did, but he had endured quite the battle for his gang. A def
ender more than a warrior, Daisy thought.

  “Bit battered, but nothing major.”

  “Where is the woman?”

  “She escaped.” Jonas frowned, probably aware that she was lying. She didn’t care. “Can you do anything about my legs?”

  He winced and wiped a few budding droplets of sweat from his forehead. “I don’t know. I’ve been… been working it pretty hard, with Vicks and Vinnie. I gave some of the mana I brought to Angel and used all the rest already, so…”

  Daisy shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. Nothing I won’t survive.” But Jonas approached the cleanest corpse and removed its coat to begin tearing into strips, returning to kneel beside Daisy and bandage her leg. Vinnie hovered over them while Jonas worked, scanning the perimeter in case Wei or any of her few surviving people returned. As Jonas finished tending one of Daisy’s legs and began on the other, Andre returned, trailed by Cyan and Regina.

  “Daisy! Where is she?” Daisy could hear a fleck of accusation in Andre’s question, but Jonas covered for her.

  “Got away. So did the guy who gave Vinnie that attractive black eye.”

  “Did you find Rudolph?” Daisy asked, more to change the subject than from actual concern, although it did occur to her with a heart-sinking jolt that it was entirely possible that the worst had become of him.

  Regina nodded, looking half-asleep where she stood. “Yes. He was knocked out, but I think he’ll be fine.”

  “Frisk took off with all of them,” Andre added. “I trust she’ll get them the help they need.”

  “And the rest of us?” Vinnie asked.

  Andre glanced toward Cyan, whose elegant claws were still stained with human blood. “We should vacate the premises before anyone comes to investigate the noise and smoke. Though if Ming Wei is still about–”

  “She won’t be a bother.” Andre glared at Daisy’s declaration. She felt small and silly under his stare, but she pressed on. “She won’t. I’ll make sure of it.”