“Are you sure you know how to drive?”
“Yes, pretty sure, Mickey,” Lysette said. After helping Mickey ease into the passenger seat, she walked around to the driver’s side and got in.
“Okay, but… how long has it been since you actually drove a car?”
“I was in prison for a couple of years. Don’t worry about it. I’ve done plenty of advanced tactical driving courses.”
“No, no, no,” Mickey said. “There will be no tactical driving. No tactical driving at all. This is a new car. Well, newish. I just got it.”
“Relax,” Lysette said. “Your car will be fine.”
Mickey groaned her way into the passenger seat. “Ugh. We’re going to get so stuck in traffic.”
“Relax,” Lysette said again, backing Mickey’s car up and then pulling out of the hospital’s parking lot and into traffic. “The hospital gave you extra pain meds in case we couldn’t get to Jolly right away. You should have plenty…”
“Oh, I already took those,” Mickey said.
“What?”
“It really hurts!” Mickey said. “Or, it did. It’s weird. My ribs still hurt, but it’s like I don’t care. I’m kind of…”
She trailed off, staring down into her lap. Her eyelids drooped, as if too heavy to hold up, and she seemed as if she might fall asleep mid-sentence.
“Mickey?”
“What?”
“Kind of what?” Lysette asked.
“What’s kind of what?”
“How many of those pills did you take?”
Mickey looked at her as if she were crazy. “All of them, duh.”
“Mickey! That was a triple dose of Oxycontin! You were supposed to wait to take those. You are high as a kite!”
“You’re high as a kite!” Mickey said. “Don’t judge me!”
Lysette shook her head and kept her eyes on the road, navigating smoothly along the street even though this was indeed the first time she’d driven a car in years. It took all of three minutes before Mickey broke the silence.
“Lys.”
Lysette sighed.
“Lys.”
“What is it, Mickey?”
“Talk to me.”
“Talk about what?”
“Anything.”
“Not a big talker, Mickey.”
“Come on. My ribs hurt and I need something to distract me.”
“I’m not your entertainment coordinator, Mickey.”
Mickey groaned and shifted in her seat. “Whatever. I probably wouldn’t remember what you said anyway. With all the drugs they gave me, this Oxycontin, the Attaboy…”
“Atavan.”
“Right. That. They said I’d probably get some damnesia.”
“Amnesia.”
“Right. So maybe we shouldn’t talk. No way I’d remember any of it.”
Something about what Mickey said reminded Lysette of her early days in prison. Several months into her sentence, a Catholic priest approached her and asked if she’d like to perform the sacrament of confession.
I’m not religious, she’d said to him.
That doesn’t matter, he’d said back. Confession is good for the soul.
She hadn’t taken him up on the offer, but the offer itself rattled around in her mind for quite a while afterwards. She found herself wondering what people got out of spewing out their secrets in a little room to a perfect stranger. Her feelings were her own business. Besides, revealing secrets was a liability; it could only be used against you. Loose lips sink ships.
Still, there had been so many strange thoughts rattling around inside of her mind lately, so many instances in which she’d acted against her old instincts, that Lysette began to wonder if she might be looking at an opportunity to help sort them out. Mickey was right; it was unlikely she would remember a single word of their conversation. Perhaps this was a chance to test the waters of confession and see if it was safe to swim.
Not to mention, it was only a matter of time before Mickey started filling the air with words. Lysette might as well direct the noise.
“Achilles,” she said.
“What?”
“Achilles,” Lysette repeated. “You asked about the book I’m always reading. The Iliad is the story of the Trojan War, but it’s really the story of Achilles.”
“Who’s A Chili?”
“Achilles,” Lysette said slowly. “He’s the main character. He’s the best of the Greeks; a warrior of extraordinary skill, practically invincible, has never been defeated.”
“Like you.”
Lysette was quiet for a second. “In a way.”
She began to fidget in her seat. Everything about this felt wrong. Too many words. Too many possibilities to let something slip, something dangerous. She felt like a wild animal exposing its belly for the first time.
“So what happens?” Mickey asked.
Can’t hurt to talk about the book, Lysette told herself, and then answered.
“The king who leads the army disrespects Achilles. So he refuses to fight. And the Greeks start losing. A lot.”
“So he’s a prima donna,” Mickey said.
Lysette looked over at her sharply, but settled back in her seat after a second. “The situation gets so bad, that the Greeks are about to lose the war, and Achilles’s best friend puts on his armor and pretends to be him in order to inspire the Greeks to fight.”
“Does it work?”
“Yes, but his best friend gets killed.”
“Yikes. A Chili makes bad choices. What does he do then?”
“He returns to the fight and basically wins the war for the Greeks.”
“So A Chili was a hero.”
“Not everyone thought so. I found some later stories of Achilles, ones that weren’t written by the Greeks. Most of those later stories make Achilles out to be nothing but a mindless butcher.”
Like me, almost came out as well, but she bit down on those words. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea, after all. Maybe she should tell Mickey to shut her mouth and ride in silence until they got to Jolly’s and he could keep Mickey entertained instead.
“Ugh. Sounds like an awful story. Why do you keep reading it?”
For all her reservations, Lysette found herself responding. “When you’re in prison, there’s… a lot of quiet. A lot of quiet.”
“You must’ve loved it.”
“Not really. Maybe at first. After a while, the quiet crowds in on you. It starts pushing in on your mind like a vice. And if you don’t find a way to break the quiet, that vice grip on your mind will keep squeezing until it crushes you.”
“Oh, that happens to me, Lys, all the time,” Mickey said, patting Lysette on the leg. “I always get a little crazy when it’s quiet. I think about all the things I’ve done wrong, or bad choices I’ve made, or things that I’ve said that maybe might’ve upset somebody. That’s why I have so many cats. I’m never alone.”
Lysette thought about that for a moment, twisting her hands around the steering wheel. This entire conversation made her skin feel uncomfortable and itchy, like she wanted to shake it off and leap out of the car and run away from it.
“Well,” she said, forcing herself to continue, “we didn’t have cats in the prison. Just our own thoughts, bouncing back in on us.”
“Penitentiary,” Mickey said.
“What?”
“The warden called the prison a penitentiary,” Mickey said. “He gave me a tour when I went there. Kind of a tour. Not really. Whatever. But he told me the prison was originally built as all solitary cells to make you think about what you did. Said it drove a lot of people crazy. Did it make you crazy?”
“No,” Lysette said. “But it did make me think about what I’d done. Things I…”
Things I came to hate myself for, almost came out. The second time she’d had to bite down on her words.
“The things you did to get put in prison?” Mickey asked.
“No. No, that was a set-up. I actually didn’t do
what they put me in prison for.”
“What?” Mickey said, wincing as she sat up straight. “Wha… that’s bullshit, Lys! We have to do something!”
“Doesn’t matter,” Lysette said.
“It does matter! You shouldn’t be in prison for… stuff. You’re a good person.”
“No,” Lysette said. “I’m not.”
This time, the words were out before she could bite them off. The words felt final, like she’d taken a step too far. There it was, out loud, the traitorous thought she’d been kicking around for years now, finally given form with words. Speak of the Devil and he will appear. Speak of your sins, and they will no longer remain buried.
It was a mistake, talking to Mickey like this. Foolish. Stupid. A waste of time and effort and focus. There wasn’t any time for it. Get back to the job at hand. Stop distracting yourself with this self-indulgent introspection. Lysette told herself all these things as she shook her head at her own folly, staring at the cars on the street in front of them.
“I don’t want to talk any more, Mickey,” she said.
“Okay,” Mickey said.
Lysette looked at her. “Really?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I get it, now. I get it. You’re just like Jason.”
“Jason? Who’s Jason? Your brother?”
“No, my cat, Jason.”
“Your cat?”
“One of them. He was the toughest one. He never wanted to be picked up; whenever I tried, he would hiss at me and try to bite me. It took forever for me to figure out that I needed to leave him alone and give him his space. Then, after a while, he came to me to cuddle. Now, he’s super happy when I pick him up.”
Leave it to Mickey to bring a serious conversation to a screeching halt by saying something ridiculous. “I am not like your damn… hold on a second, Mickey.”
She brought the conversation to a halt along with the vehicle. A long line of cars sat stagnant in front of them, as far ahead as Lysette could see.
“Told you,” Mickey said, mumbling her words now. “Traffic. Lotsa traffic. Always lotsa traffic at night.”
It was dark out, now. In fact, Lysette realized that it was too dark; that the only light around her was coming from the headlights and brake lights of the vehicles around her.
They were stopped on a two-lane street in the midst of the outskirts of the city. Two-story buildings lined either side of the street; mostly store fronts and small shopping centers. Just off of the main street, the side streets were lined with rowhomes and townhouses.
Lysette twisted around to see that cars were already piling up behind them, as well. She thought about trying to pull off onto a side street to get around the traffic, but they were stuck in the dead center of the block with nowhere to pull off.
“Power’s out,” she said, looking at the inert street light nearby. “I guess that explains the stand-still traffic. There must be a traffic light out up ahead.”
“Imma text Jolly,” Mickey slurred, fumbling at her phone. “Hmmm. No bars. You have bars? I have no bars.”
“No service?” Lysette said, glancing down at her own phone. “Either do I.”
“That’s weird.”
Lysette nodded slowly, gears turning in her mind. “Very weird. Cell towers have their own backups for power outages. This isn’t…”
Something far ahead in the line of traffic caught Lysette’s eye. It was difficult for her to see even with her magically enhanced vision, but it looked like some people were outside of their cars, moving around quickly, perhaps even running.
“Hang on,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt and opening the car door.
“No, come on, Lys, we’re finally having a girl talk…”
“Mickey, be quiet for a second. Something’s going on.”
Lysette slid out of the car and took a few steps further into traffic, craning her neck to try to catch a better glimpse of whatever commotion was up ahead. The next vehicle ahead of theirs was a large SUV, and she climbed onto the running board to get a little altitude, ignoring the protests of the SUV’s driver.
Immediately, her eyes narrowed and her hands clenched tight. She’d been right; a few blocks ahead, people were getting out of their cars and running.
Running away from ghouls.
She could see at least ten of them, chasing after pedestrians or slamming their fists against car windows in an attempt to get at the occupants. More joined the chaos from further down the main street or from the side streets nearby, and as she watched, she saw a body lying on the street rise up in the jerky, marionette-like fashion that told her it was being raised as a ghoul.
People flung open their car doors and fled the violence as best they could, some being dragged down by the ghouls, others making it clear of the trouble to form a stream of fleeing refugees pouring down the street towards her. As Lysette began to climb down from the SUV’s running boards, she saw quick-moving creatures, low and fast, chase down and leap onto some of the stragglers.
Hell hounds. It was hard to see precisely what was going on in nothing but the headlights and brake lights of the cars stuck in traffic, but the giant two-headed dogs were hard to miss as they dashed amongst the fleeing civilians. Lysette imagined she could see other, inhuman shapes moving in and out of the uncertain light cast by the headlights of the traffic jam, but nothing she could definitively identify.
Her old instincts began to kick in. Assess the situation tactically. She couldn’t hope to stand and fight; she was unarmed and couldn’t hope to take on this many enemies by herself.
Withdraw. Her vehicle was stuck in traffic in the middle of a city block. She could easily escape on foot; her magically enhanced speed would let her outpace any ghouls and if the hell hounds got close, it would be child’s play for her to climb up onto the higher floors of one of the buildings nearby, at least long enough for her to figure out her next move. She was in no immediate threat.
But there was Mickey, wounded in the car, practically immobile. She’d never be able to keep up and she certainly wouldn’t be able to defend herself.
Lysette nodded. Only one acceptable option, then.
She got down off the SUV’s running boards and checked how closely Mickey’s car was boxed in by the traffic jam. The vehicle behind theirs had crammed themselves in so closely that she couldn’t hope to try to maneuver, so she approached the car and rapped on the driver’s window.
“Back up your car,” she said.
The driver shrugged his shoulders at her. She repeated herself, more loudly this time, and again, the driver of the car shrugged and gestured all around to indicate the other vehicles behind him.
One of the fleeing refugees from the carnage up ahead now reached them, rushing past and further down the street, holding a bloody hand over a wound in his cheek. Time was running out.
Lysette opened Mickey’s car door and stuck her head inside. “Mickey. Do you still have your gun?”
“My gun? Oh, yeah. Sure. But I’m out of bullets.”
“Ammunition,” Lysette said. “Bullets are the pieces of lead that come flying out. Give me the gun.”
“Okay, but it’s not going to do you any good without any bull...munition,” Mickey slurred, handing over her pistol.
Lysette checked the chamber out of habit. Sure enough, the weapon was empty. Still, the driver stuck behind them in traffic didn’t know that.
“Back your car up,” she said again, approaching the car.
“Lady,” the driver said, rolling down his window, “I can’t. I’ve got no place to…”
His jaw went slack and his eyes went wide as Lysette leveled the pistol at his head and said to him, “Back your fucking car up, right now.”
“But there’s… a car there, I can’t…” he began to stammer.
“I don’t give a shit,” Lysette said. “Hit him.”
“Lady,” he began, but when Lysette pointed the gun at him again, he swore, put the car into reverse, and started backing up.
The next car back started blaring its horn, and there was a thump as their bumpers collided followed by angry shouting, but Lysette ignored all that. There now looked to be enough clearance for her to start to maneuver Mickey’s car around in the street.
“Did you just threaten that guy with my gun?” Mickey said as Lysette climbed back into the driver’s seat.
“Yes. Is your seat belt on?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Sorry about this.”
“Sorry? Sorry about what?”
“This,” Lysette said, and put the car into reverse.
She hit the gas and spun the wheel, turning the car in a tight arc as it backed up. There was a scraping sound as their bumper scraped along the bumper of the car behind them, but there was enough room for them to clear it and drive onto the shoulder.
“Lys, what are you… ow!” Mickey said, screaming in pain as the car hit the curb with the back wheels and mounted the sidewalk. “My ribs!”
“Yeah, I know, I’m sorry,” Lysette said, wincing a little when Mickey yelled a second time as the front tires hit the curb a moment later.
Now, they were on the sidewalk, reversing as quickly as Lysette dared to. With no street lights and only the headlights of the other cars stuck in traffic to navigate by, she couldn’t simply stomp on the gas and risk hitting an obstruction on the sidewalk.
Everyone on the street was fleeing from the ghouls, so she wasn’t too worried about pedestrians, but she hit the horn several times just to be sure. The car thumped and shuddered as the wheels passed over the bumps and cracks in the sidewalk, making Mickey wince and whimper from the pain jolting through her broken ribs.
There was a loud thump in front of her. Lysette glanced forward to see a ghoul had leapt onto the hood of the car, grabbing on the front edge with one hand and punching into the windshield with the other.
Its fist drove through the glass, shoving it through halfway past its forearm. Heedless of the deep lacerations gouged into its skin by the edges of the glass, the ghoul continued to push its arm forward, reaching with its black talons towards Lysette’s throat.
“Lys!” Mickey shouted.
Lysette caught the ghoul’s arm with her left hand while continuing to steer with the right. Now that she could keep track of where the ghoul was by the pressure on her hand, she turned and looked back again, pressing down on the gas and accelerating in reverse down the sidewalk.
Mage Hunters Box Set Page 63
