Between Cases (The City Between Book 7)

by W. R. Gingell

  Between Cases

  The City Between: Book Seven

  W.R. Gingell

  Copyright © 2020 by W.R. Gingell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Seedlings Design Studio

  Welp. This one nearly killed me.

  You lot better enjoy it.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter One

  It’s funny how perception changes stuff. I’ve been a pet to two fae and a vampire for more than a year now, and although my perception of their feelings toward me has run the gamut from an idea that they barely tolerate me to a feeling that they might actually care about me just enough to make a few changes about the place, it would never have occurred to me to think it would go any further than that.

  Behindkind don’t tend to care about humans that much—and when they do, it’s single humans. This human is better than the rest. That human is worthy of my notice. That sort of thing. I didn’t like that, but I could appreciate the fact that my psychos cared about me at all, even if I’d rather see them caring about everyone else, too. Or at least, caring enough to help people who needed help without it being just to appease me.

  Take Zero, for example: he’s fae. Not as obviously unsteady as JinYeong, the vampire; nor as obviously bloody. Not as tortuously clever and quietly bloodthirsty as Athelas, his fae steward. But there’s a kind of ruthlessness to him that’s nearly as frightening to the people he’s looking after as it is to the people he’s protecting them from.

  You know, the kind of feeling that he’s going to look after you no matter what happens; no matter what you want. Like a really over-protective big brother. At least, that’s what it looked like to me, and I hadn’t thought anything more of hugging him or leaning up against him on the couch than I had with Athelas. When your housemates are emotionally constipated, it takes a lot of aggressive cuddling to make them stop being stiff.

  All it took to give me a different perspective was a former friend’s certainty that Zero was sweet on me—just one tiny, weird idea planted in my mind—to make me start second-guessing everything.

  I hadn’t realised how often he touched my head as he passed me around the house these days. Even when he was reading a book and walked past the back of the couch as he paced with it, there was a light touch on the top of my head.

  Not significant. Not a lingering touch. Just the sorta thing you’d do if you were making sure something was still where you’d put it down. And it wasn’t as though it was something you’d do to someone you thought of as equal enough to actually like. Or did fae even think of relationships in terms of equality?

  That was a scary thought, and I didn’t want to think about it. I’m really good at not thinking about stuff when I don’t want to think about it, especially when it takes my life from weird to weird weird. The problem is, when your perception changes, you suddenly see everything from that new set of lenses.

  That’s the bit where it alters stuff. Or maybe stuff was already like that and now you see it properly. Beggared if I know which one it is. I told you: I’m good at not thinking about stuff I don’t want to think about.

  Anyway, it was the situation presently in front of me that seemed most pressing in terms of perspective and change.

  I’d walked out of the house that morning with a light step and a very nearly light heart, and when I’d started through a concrete tunnel that connected one side of the footpath to the other beneath a concrete bridge, the only person in front of me was a kid in a dark blue school uniform with a light blue collar, who looked to be about seven or eight.

  He was a cautious little nipper, too; stared around before entering the tunnel and gave me a suspicious look for good measure. He must have been satisfied with what he saw, because he started into the tunnel after he’d given me the once-over, and I followed him with my hands in my pockets, wondering what he was up to.

  It wasn’t a long tunnel: just long enough to span a double-carriageway with a bit of overhang at the ends. The other end was a circle of light that darkened suddenly with the entrance of another school-kid, walking toward us. This kid was a lot bigger than the first, and I was pretty sure the little one recognised him, because the skinny shoulders in front of me stiffened, and the steady, grim footsteps faltered for a second.

  It wasn’t until the bigger kid was well and truly into the tunnel that it occurred to me to wonder how he’d taken up so much light when the tunnel was a good three meters in diameter—or, for that matter, why it seemed as though he’d risen from the ground instead of turning into the tunnel from the footpath.

  Once I wondered that, I could see that the shadow didn’t look quite right. If you looked at it from the perspective that trolls didn’t exist and that it had to be a very large schoolboy, you could still fool yourself that the lumps on the sides of its head were just very prominent cauliflower ears. You could tell yourself that the squarish lump clutched in its right hand was just a lunch box and not a lump of wood for a club. You might even be able to persuade yourself that the incredible stench preceding the supposed schoolboy was the result of very bad hygiene.

  But as soon as I realised how much of the tunnel it was taking up, my perspective—which did include trolls, by the way—switched to allow me to see the real outline of the thing: big, ugly, and radiating threat.

  Ah great. It was a troll, segueing from the world between our world and the world Behind. I stepped up my speed a bit, and the kid in front of me stumbled to a stop. Whatever his perspective was, there was no doubt that he was terrified.

  “Hand it over, runt,” said the troll. Funnily enough, its voice still sounded like a high-schooler’s.

  The little kid tried. He said, “C-can’t eat lunch if I give it to you.”

  “Don’t care. Hand it over.”

  “Mum didn’t give it to me this morning,” said the kid. It was a stupid lie, but he was young and scared.

  I broke into a jog, worried about the way the distance had telescoped. Between shouldn’t be spreading things out this far; the troll must be doing that to make sure its prey couldn’t get away if it tried to run.

  Judging by the fact that it was shaking down a kid for his lunch money, I was pretty sure I knew what kind of a troll it was. I’d been studying, if only for a bit of rest between bouts of training with Zero and JinYeong, and cooking meals.

  This troll was a bridge troll. Unlike ninety percent of trolls, who were inclined to be people-pleasers, bridge trolls were vicious, territorial, and inclined to take toll in body parts if they couldn’t take it in coin.

  Heck. Now what was I supposed to do? The troll had the kid by the leg now, and the poor little thing wasn’t even screaming, just choking on terrified sobs with his arms wrapped around his head as he was shaken down for coins.

  I hadn’t come out to fight a bridge troll today. Didn’t even know if I could fight one, despite all my extra training lately—this thing was flamin’ big. Still, what else could I do when there was a kid choking on his own snot and about to lose his head?

  I skidded to a halt in front of the troll just as a couple of two-dollar
coins tinkled to the concrete, and panted, “Put the kid down.”

  The troll froze, a bit like a dog with something in its mouth it knows shouldn’t be there. “You can’t see me,” it said, in a voice as cold and grating as rocks in a crusher.

  “I’m not talking to myself, mate,” I pointed out, catching my breath. “Look, if you just want a toll, what about we have a talk and sort out some kind of—”

  It tossed the kid aside, crushing leaf-litter and aluminium cans beneath its feet as it started toward me. “You can’t see me,” it said again, and this time it was a threat, not a statement of disbelief.

  I had no weapon. I hadn’t come out to fight a troll today: I’d come out today to see a merman about a USB.

  Lucky for me, the same perspective that allowed me to realise a high-schooler was actually a bridge troll made it possible for me to find weapons in this environment—in any environment in which I could access the weird world between worlds. Between, we call it. Catchy, right?

  I’d already been looking around for a weapon; it’s instinct, these days. Without hesitation, I stooped for the tattered and holey umbrella half-buried beneath leaf-litter, feeling the organic slime of something hopefully moss-based on the handle. That handle firmed beneath my grip until I held a long blade with a braided leather grip that ought to have been too big and heavy for me.

  Only one, and I was used to two blades these days, but there was something special about this sword. I didn’t know exactly what that was, but I had pulled it from random umbrellas on two different occasions now and I was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to work that way. The Heirling Sword had once more made an appearance for me.

  I didn’t have time to wonder what the implications of having the Heirling Sword in my hands were—I didn’t even fully understand what the Heirling Sword was—because the bridge troll, already too close and ugly to boot, swung at me with its knobkerry.

  I blocked the hit without even thinking about my reaction, a two-handed slice upward to the left in a block that rattled the bones in my left arm. I followed the block and ducked under its arm in one movement, finishing with another slice across the leg closest to me as the troll stumbled forward, too committed to its strike to stop. It was a glancing hit that barely drew blood, but it gave me a good idea of the speed and strength I could expect from the troll.

  If I could move quicky enough, I’d be fine. If it managed to get in a hit, I was probably going to be very dead or very much in pain and then very dead.

  I put up my guard again, feeling the dragging weight of the sword on my shaken arms, and the troll turned.

  “Stay still, little flea,” it said.

  “Yeah, nah,” I said as it lumbered forward again.

  This time the troll tried to swat me back-hand and I ducked under the swing without guarding, circling to the right to confuse it. It didn’t hurt that this manoeuvre took me further away from the troll’s knobkerry, either. I hadn’t counted on its other arm being quite as close as it was, though, or quite as fast: the troll sent me flying across the tunnel with a flat palm.

  Somehow I managed to keep a grip on the sword, battering my knuckles as the weight of it slammed them into the concrete. Unfortunately, with the wind knocked out of me it was very hard to do anything but stare at the dark, curved ceiling of the tunnel, and I had to force myself up, slowly and painfully.

  The troll was slow, but so was I. By the time I dragged myself up, it was very nearly on top of me. I tried to move back to bring up a guard again, but the pommel of the sword hit the concrete wall at my back. I didn’t have time to pull away and try again, or even to adjust the angle of the sword, but that didn’t matter because the troll tripped on the broken concrete and lurched drunkenly at me.

  Luckily for me, that put the point of the sword at roughly stomach level for the bridge troll, its knobkerry hitting far too high on the wall as it tried to catch itself. It shish-kabobbed itself without any help from me, narrowly avoiding crushing me as its head hit the wall, and I stepped to the left as the body inevitably fell away to the right, drawing out the sword as I went.

  Blood, thick and jelly-like, gathered into globs and slowly slipped down the flat of the blade. The soft pat pat of them hitting the concrete punctuated the last gasping breath of the bridge troll, and I cleared my throat in the silence that followed.

  I said, “Sorry,” to the body and looked around for the kid as the troll began to moulder away into the appearance of a lumpy old mattress as the world Between sank back into itself and took on the appearance of the human world again. He was long gone, by the looks. Definitely not in the tunnel, anyway.

  That didn’t mean I was alone, though. I smelt him before I saw him: an almost blue waft of scent-laden breeze that hit nearly as hard as the bridge troll had done. A moment later he sauntered into the tunnel, picking his way fastidiously between the worst piles of garbage to save his pointy shoes.

  JinYeong: vampire, lover of strong perfume and garlic, once a part of the Korean army and now a permanent pain in my neck—sometimes literally—who refused to speak English and addressed the world, understanding or not, only in Korean.

  I huffed an irritated sigh as I cleaned troll blood off the sword. That was all I needed: a pointy-shoed little mosquito here to see me doing stuff I definitely shouldn’t be doing and report back to Zero. I’d already had enough of that from JinYeong. There had been a time, not so many weeks ago, when he had pretended to be my friend and had fought for me. And okay, he’d actually been hurt: nearly died, in fact. But he’d still been with me on Zero’s orders, had still been telling Zero stuff behind my back. That was hard to forget—or forgive—even though we’d fought together since.

  JinYeong sniffed fastidiously as he approached, and in Korean, the words shaping through Between to be understandable, said, “You made a smell.”

  “No, the troll made a smell,” I corrected him. “It’s probably dandruff season for it. Don’t reckon it’s snow at this time of year, anyway.”

  “If you had not killed it, it would be stinking elsewhere,” he said.

  “Only until we’d gone through. Then it would have come back again to rob the next school kid. Oi,” I added, scooping up the four dollars from the ground, “reckon you can find that kid again and slip this in his pockets?”

  JinYeong considered me for a few moments as if deliberating with himself about whether or not to request payment for his services, then said, “Kurol su isseo.”

  He disappeared while I was still cleaning myself up to make sure I was presentable to humans as opposed to vampires, and I let out a breath. No use trying to ask him not to tell Zero about this; I’d tell Zero myself. Better to get it over with and be scolded.

  Besides, the sword I’d pulled out of Between still leaned against the wall where I’d propped it after cleaning, glowing with a faint edge of yellow, and that was more of a worry than the troll. I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to be able to pull this particular sword out in the particular way I’d done it, because this sword was the Heirling Sword. Note the capital. It was a sword designed for a certain set of people—heirlings—and Zero and Athelas had been stubbornly sure for quite some time now that I was not an heirling. Right now, that wasn’t looking too certain, and maybe it’s just me, but the idea of having to fight to the death to claim a throne in fairyland has never really appealed to me. I was half convinced already that they were only so firm about me not being an heirling because they didn’t want me to be one and thought they could stop it happening by the sheer force of their disapproval.

  I actually expected the sword to flicker back into being an umbrella again, but it stayed there in its sword form for the entire time that I cleaned myself up, so I picked it up again and stared at it as if I could make it talk by the staring.

  “Yes, I’m curious about that, too,” said a cool, familiar voice. “What exactly are you doing with Lord Sero’s sword?”

  Ah heck.

  I turned in a swift scatter
ing of old juice-boxes and bottle caps, the sword lifting to guard position without me thinking about it, and there was another, more worrisome pain in the neck: the golden git. The fae commander from the enforcers who brought us jobs occasionally and was technically one of the king’s men but in practise—we suspected—reported directly to Zero’s dad.

  “Just trying not to die,” I said. “What about you? Why are you sneaking around random tunnels in North Hobart?”

  “I saw a stray pet,” he said, with a cold smile that matched the embossing of leaves and flowers on his golden armour: beautiful and soulless. “I decided to follow it to see what it was up to.”

  “Thanks for the help, then,” I told him, with a hefty amount of sarcasm.

  He ignored it, and I knew why. His eyes were still on the sword that I should not have been holding. That I should not have been able to hold.

  “We wondered,” he said, with a small, disbelieving shake of his head. “We wondered why he kept you around when you were only a liability. It seemed incredible that he should make the same mistake twice, but—”

  A small breath escaped me as I understood. “You’re the one who messed with the café the other day, aren’t you? You wanted to see what Zero would do if you trapped me in there.”

  “We were interested in knowing how far Lord Sero would go to protect you,” he said, shrugging. “We were also curious to know why he is doing so, but I believe I’m beginning to understand.”

  Maybe it was the idea that I couldn’t do anything about it that made me so bitter as I asked, “So who are you going to tell? Zero’s dad, or the king? ’Cos if we’re going to discuss stuff that makes us all wonder, that’s something we’re pretty curious about at home.”