by L. E. Price
“Remember our original plan? Using your channel to get a lot of eyes on Tim and keep him safe?”
Woody’s eyes lit up. He snapped his fingers and dropped into his chair, shoving it against the far corner of the tavern wall.
“Leave it to me,” he said.
His fat dwarven fingers dug into a belt pouch. He set three baubles on the table, little half-spheres of hammered brass, and arranged them in a triangle. One by one they took on a soft, shimmering glow, projecting faint streams of light across Woody’s face. When he spoke again, his voice was somewhere between a rough Scotsman and a pirate.
“It’s yer mate Gnarl Grimguts here, comin’ at ye with an unscheduled broadcast from the village o’ Dutton. I thought we’d have ourselves a little contest today. Course, a contest ain’t nothin’ without a suitable prize…”
He held a fat leather pouch beside his face, flashing a tombstone slab of a golden tooth as he gave it a jangle.
“Somewhere in the realm is me good friend Rolen the Blue. Where? Well, that’s the contest in question. Help me find him, and this pouch of gold is yours to keep. Now, that Rolen’s a slippery rascal, so he won’t make it easy. Ye might just have to slap him in irons until I show up to deliver your prize. Or sit on him, if you’re a minotaur. Don’t worry, he likes it.”
Prentise shimmered back into the room, right where she’d been standing. Jake took her by the arm and pulled her a step back, away from Woody’s broadcast. She leaned in and pitched her voice low, breathless.
“I talked to Reynolds. Philly PD is coordinating with WertherComm’s emergency-services department, trying to activate the tracker on your implant. What’s Woody doing?”
Jake glanced over his shoulder. “Putting a bounty on Tim. We’ll see if anybody bites.”
* * * *
The answer came in a flurry of wings. Pigeons, dappled and gray, swarmed in from the northern horizon. With them came a few stray owls and a fat, beady-eyed crow. Each one had a message bound to its leg, aiming to claim the bounty. Some were obvious pranks, invitations to wild-goose chases, but most shared the same news.
“It’s not good,” Woody said. “The kid’s on an airship bound for Vangelis City.”
Jake shook his head. “What’s not good? He’s stuck until he lands; he’s not going anywhere.”
Woody spread his hands wide, gesturing to the dark azure sky.
“You see a private ship in my backpack? I’m rich, but I’m not that rich. He’ll be long gone by the time we catch up with him.”
Jake’s gaze drifted to the distant wooden pylon, at the far edge of the village on a windswept, grassy knoll. Another sky-galleon was coming in, sails pulling back as it prepared to dock and take on passengers.
“So, let’s take that one.”
“You can’t just ‘take’ a passenger ship,” Prentise said. Jake was already moving, heading across the field with long, determined strides.
“The Lollers did it last night,” he said.
“With a full, experienced raid team. And then they crashed it.”
He glanced back at her. “You got a better idea?”
Her silence was her answer. She and Woody followed in his wake as he took the pylon stairs two at a time, bounding toward the top. Above their heads, the elven ticket-taker was already bellowing for last call; sailors scurried across the deck hauling ropes and lashing down cargo crates, preparing for departure.
“Is there a plan?” Woody asked.
There was a sparse crowd, a handful of stray adventurers on their late-night ventures. Jake shouldered through them, headed for the front of the line. The long-faced elf glowered at him.
“Come, come,” he snapped. “We’ve got a schedule to keep—”
Jake grabbed the ticket-taker’s forearm and yanked hard, hauling him off balance. Jake’s other hand whipped a tonfa from its sheath and slammed it across the small of his back. Momentum carried the elf forward, off his feet and straight over the platform’s edge. He screamed until he hit the ground.
“Violence.” Jake unsheathed his other tonfa and spun the batons by their grips. “The plan is violence.”
A sailor came at him, howling with a cutlass high above his head in a two-hand grip. Jake fired both batons into his gut point-first, doubling him over, then cracked his skull and dropped him to the deck. Woody charged into the fray with a battle-roar, spinning like a dervish, the mammoth head of his war-hammer clearing the deck. Prentise was behind them, calculating, shrewd. She side-stepped along the railing and launched a stream of hissing arrows as her falcon squalled and circled, pointing out targets.
More targets than Jake counted on. They were everywhere, sailors boiling from hatches and storming from the cabins all around them. He ducked under the slice of a cutlass, then caught another in mid-sweep and twisted his grip, ripping the weapon from its owner’s hands. The blade clattered to the deck. A second later, so did its owner, clutching his shattered nose and curling in a fetal ball. Jake was already moving past him, still fighting, parrying a blade with one tonfa then dropping low, slamming the other across the sailor’s kneecap to the brutal crunch of broken bone.
And still more came. Too many. Jake fell back, panting for breath, bumping into Woody. Prentise was close, the third side of their triangle, nocking one of her last arrows. The sailors formed a ring around them, all bared steel and bloodthirsty leers.
It was over. In a minute they’d be dead, cut down or pitched over the side. Of course, in Paradise Clash, death was an inconvenience. They’d be reborn in the circle of stone outside the village, good as new.
Reborn and left behind, with no way to catch up to Tim or the bottle of wine that held Jake trapped in the game. By the time they made it to Vangelis, Jake’s real body would be dead and buried.
“Sorry,” Woody told him, deflated.
“Don’t give up yet,” Prentise said.
The sailors began to close in, cutlasses gleaming in the light of the ship’s lanterns.
“C’mon,” Woody said. “We can’t win this, we’re good as dead—”
Prentise pulled back her bowstring. She answered between gritted teeth.
“Not yet.”
She took aim — and then a shadow plunged from the darkness, plummeting like a bird of prey from the top of the mainsail. Steel flashed and the shadow — a leather-clad dusk elf with two wickedly curved blades — cut down the closest sailors like stalks of wheat. More phantoms erupted from the dark, swinging from the rigging. A heartbeat later, a shockwave erupted at the edge of the deck and tossed screaming sailors over the railing like rag dolls.
As the blurry violet eruption rippled and faded, Merisaude stood tall at the heart of the chaos, brandishing her ram-skull staff.
“Saw your bounty on Rolen the Blue,” she said. “Finding him would be easy enough, with enough people hunting. I suspected you might need a hand getting to him, though.”
“How’d you know?” Woody asked.
“Two things you should know about the dus’korei, puppy. One, we’re stronger than you.”
A sailor charged at her, cutlass slashing down. Lightning crackled from the gemmed eye-sockets of the ram skull. He ignited, going up like a Roman candle, and tumbled screaming over the rail like a falling, burning star.
“Two, we’re smarter than you.” She twirled her staff into a fighting stance. “You can bow before my superiority later; we have an airship to steal.”
Jake’s second wind hit him with a rush of fresh adrenaline. It propelled him like a cannon, straight into the fight, tonfas swinging and his heart pounding a war-drum beat. Merisaude and her followers had bought him a slim fighting chance.
That was all he needed to win.
36.
The galleon’s sails billowed beneath a canopy of stars. Jake steadied himself and leaned with the roll of the corpse-littered deck, stepping over the fallen bodies of the crew on his way to the prow. The captured ship was unsteady but keeping air, as the dusk elves hauled ropes
and turned the wings to catch the hot night wind. Another held the ship’s wheel in a firm grip, under Merisaude’s scarlet-eyed supervision.
“There!” Prentise shouted, pointing to the horizon. Brandy squawked, launching from her shoulder in a flurry of wings and spearing off to scout ahead.
Jake could see it. Another galleon dead ahead, circling the woolly gray crags of a mountain range. Merisaude shouted to her men, ordering them to pour on speed.
“That’s the one,” Woody said. “Has to be, only airship on this route and it’s aimed straight for Vangelis City. He’s got to be on board.”
“How long do we have?” Jake asked.
Woody glanced up, reckoning time by the moon.
“Fifteen minutes, maybe? What’s the plan?”
“Corner the little bastard. Make him give up the bottle.” Jake patted the rope of the bolas, dangling over his shoulder. “Use Dutton’s patch, and smash it.”
“And then?” Woody asked.
Good question. It depended on where his real body was and what his kidnappers were doing to it.
“Stay alive,” he said.
“Coming up on the starboard side,” shouted a dusk elf, clinging high in the rigging. “Ready the boarding ropes!”
They were close enough for passengers on the other galleon to notice. There were figures on the deck pointing, incredulous as the stolen airship closed in. Jake joined the other boarders; he hefted a heavy coil of stiff, scratchy rope, one end tied off around a tarnished grappling hook.
They slid up alongside the airship, pinning it between the stolen galleon and the deadly stone face of the mountain. As one, the boarders heaved. Grappling hooks glinted, catching moonlight as they sailed in graceful arcs. A few fell short, the others reaching their targets, rattling hard on the opposite deck and then catching hold of the rails as their owners yanked them taut.
Jake took a deep breath as the airships slid closer, looming dangerously close to a collision as the gap between them shrank on tethers of hemp. One false move now, one slip, and it would all be over for him.
The gap kept shrinking. Ten feet, then five. “Can’t get any closer,” shouted the elf at the captain’s wheel. “I’ll wreck us both on the rocks and I can barely hold her steady as it is. You have to jump!”
Jake tried not to look down. All the same, the dizzying drop made his balance reel as he clambered up on the ship’s rail. He took one last breath, steadied himself, and jumped for it.
He was weightless for a moment, watching the far side come up too hard, too fast, thinking I’m not going to make it — and then he slammed down on the opposite deck, hitting the rough wooden planks and rolling free. He came up fast, drawing his tonfas as he rose. Prentise landed at his side.
Tim was running, shoving his way through the gathered and wide-eyed passengers, heading for the stern of the ship like the devil was on his heels. Jake snarled and chased after him.
They ran out of deck. Tim reached the stern and juked left. Then he skidded to a stop as a barbed arrow chewed into the wood at his feet, spitting splinters. He turned. Prentise was already drawing another arrow, lining up a shot, as Jake moved to bracket him from the other side. Tim clutched the wine bottle tight, like it was made of solid gold, and inched backward until he bumped against the railing.
“Nowhere to go,” Jake told him. “Give it up.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Tim said.
The kid was shaking, scared stupid. Jake crept closer. More careful now, every footstep slow and deliberate.
“Just give me the bottle,” Jake said.
“It was you or me.”
Tim held the bottle out in one outstretched hand. Not to Jake. Over the railing, one open hand from letting it drop.
“Don’t,” Jake said.
“It was you or me. That’s what they told me. I’m sorry.”
Jake holstered his tonfas, slowly closing in, eyes on the bottle.
“So am I,” Jake said. “So am I. Because I know who you are and I know where you live, kid. And you’d better believe I’m coming for you.”
“Not if you die tonight,” he said.
Then he let the bottle drop.
Jake reacted on raw instinct. Three quick running steps, a single leap up and over the rail — and then he was plummeting, in free-fall with the wind howling in his ears and his stomach lurching, the bottle an inch from his clutching fingertips. He swiped at it, missed and went tumbling in the air, out of control as the ground roared up to meet him.
Seconds to go. One shot left. He grabbed the rope on his shoulder and somersaulted as he twirled the bolas, struggling not to lose sight of the bottle as he plummeted. Then he snapped the weighted leather balls out and they hit the bottle with a whip-crack of sound and the tinkle of shattering glass.
“Logging out,” said the calm voice in his inner ear. Jake’s body plowed into the earth at terminal velocity and everything went black.
* * * *
Jake’s eyelids snapped open.
A shock of pain, hard and frozen steel against his bare back, welcomed him to reality. That and the dentist-drill whine of a bone saw.
He had a split second to take it all in. He was naked on a slab, the room lined with plastic sheeting, smears of old and dried blood like rust clinging to the slimy white tarp. The odor of rot and viscera almost made him choke. His captors hadn’t bothered restraining him. No need, when the game-deck cable magnetically clamped to his implant worked better than titanium handcuffs. The man in the surgical mask, looming over him with the whining saw, hadn’t dreamed Jake might actually wake up in the middle of his own murder.
Mistake. He had one second to realize it, his eyes going wide. Then Jake’s hand shot up and grabbed his wrist as his other hand yanked the cable loose.
Jake rolled off the slab and into the surgeon, pulling them both to the floor. They wrestled for the saw, the scarlet-streaked tile beneath them slick and glistening from a recent hose-down. Jake bore down with all his weight, pressing against the surgeon’s wrist.
Then the blade bit into the man’s plastic coveralls and the skin and bone beneath, filling the air with hot coppery-red mist as he screeched louder than the saw. Jake kept pushing down. The bone saw carved the surgeon open one ragged inch at a time as he bucked and thrashed, spitting up gouts of blood to darken the inside of his paper mask.
He gave one last shuddering heave. Jake pried the whirring saw from his dead fingers and rose on wobbly, aching legs. Plastic coolers stood stacked along one wall of the gory makeshift operating room. Jake recognized them by their biohazard labels. Organ storage. This is a chop-shop for human beings.
No sign of his clothes. No time to think or plan. Footsteps were coming in fast, pounding along a corridor just outside the only door, drawn by the screams. Jake pressed his back to the blood-soaked plastic tarp and waited.
The door burst open. Another man rushed in, this one dressed for business, not surgery, with a tailored black suit and a gun in his hand. The saw whined as Jake raised it high and slashed downward, carving the new arrival open from eyeball to chin. More steaming blood spattered across Jake’s face, painting him for battle. The gunman went down, shrieking, and Jake snatched the chunky black pistol from his hand.
He didn’t waste a bullet. He stepped over the shooter, leaving him howling and thrashing on the floor, and went hunting.
The corridor opened onto a garage. Cars on lifts, most of them half-disassembled, trolleys cradling stripped-down engine parts and wheel rims. Whoever ran this place traded in stolen steel and flesh alike. An arc-welder spat sparks across the oil-stained concrete. Another worker, in smeared overalls, spotted Jake and raised a shout.
Jake threw himself back behind the open doorway as a gunshot sparked off the wall, missing him by inches. He fired back blind, not hoping he’d land a hit so much as letting these guys know he had a weapon of his own. He’d spotted four, maybe five men working in the garage before they forced him back; if they all rushed h
im at once, he was good as dead, but nobody was going to volunteer to be the first to take a bullet.
He chanced a peek. On the far side of the garage, wide rolling doors stood open to the rain and yellow smog. He ducked back into cover as another fusillade of shots rang out, steel pinging off steel, louder than the dying gunman screeching behind his back.
Then another kind of scream, electric, rising and falling, echoed beyond the open bay doors. Tires squealed as yellow-and-black squad cars rolled up and skidded to a stop, their flashers flooding the garage bay with strobing light. As cops in tactical armor flooded from the cars, looking like armored hornets clutching rifles, a bullhorn crackled.
“Surrender and stand down. We are authorized to use lethal force. I repeat, we are authorized to use lethal force. Drop your weapons, kneel, and lace your fingers behind your heads.”
The guns went down. Jake followed their lead; he didn’t want to look like another target, not until the cops had sorted friend from foe. He waited, kneeling on the cold concrete, hands behind his head, and waited.
A figure loomed over him, tall and thin in an armored brown coat. It was an old familiar face Jake hadn’t seen in years, with sallow skin, bright eyes, and a bristly gray beard on his long cheeks.
“Son,” Captain Reynolds said, “you are stark goddamn naked.”
“It’s a long story,” Jake said.
“Figure it is. Lady called us up, said you’d been kidnapped. GPS on your implant led us here. Funny thing is, we’ve been watching this place for a while, just couldn’t get a warrant to go in and check things out. You saved us some trouble.”
“I aim to please,” Jake said.
“Aim to find your clothes,” Reynolds said. “Needless to say, you’re coming back to the station. We need to have a chat.”
37.
“I’m letting you watch for old times’ sake,” Reynolds had told him.
Standing outside the one-way glass of the interrogation room, Jake wasn’t sure that was entirely true. He and the captain had history; a few of those memories were good ones, but there was a lot of bad road between the shining spots and a big ambiguous question mark at the end. He suspected Reynolds thought he might be lying — which he wasn’t — or that he was holding back a big chunk of what he knew — which he was — and that if he got Jake to linger around the station a while longer, some more clues might rattle loose.
