“Jack Be Nimble”, 2/4

[aadler]

Second installment.

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Part 1 here

Part II

The truth is, I wasn’t even really surprised. I’ve got to know Merl pretty well, at least enough to detect the difference between him being pissed off and being pissed off at me, and there had been just a whiff of that from him the last few minutes. Even if he didn’t believe I’d arranged it, he knew he was being crowded into a corner and knew it might give me something I wanted — without him getting any profit out of the deal — and that was more than enough to make him extra-grumpy. “Cholk,” I said to him, smiling. “You’re telling me Cholk is who Katie’s trying to find.”

And the full-on Merl sneer was back. “I’m tellin’ you a little job I did, I won’t say when, had Cholk’s fingerprints all over it, and it was on an old platform rig made over to pass for parts of a cruise ship to some schmuck walkin’ around with a big ol’ whammy in his brain.”

Sometimes my luck is so fantastic, it’s like I really did make a deal with the devil. (Except, no, the actual Lord of Hell — or about as close as you can get — has a grudge against me that I’m doing my best to outrun, that being the point of most of my current activities.) Still smiling, I laid a hand on his shoulder, at once reassuring him and reinforcing the dominance I had to maintain. “Come on, Merl,” I said. “This is gonna be a good one, trust me here —”

I’ve developed fairly keen instincts for survival over the last few years, but this time it was the sudden alarm in Merl’s eyes that tipped me off. I grabbed his other shoulder and muscled him two-handed into the nearest alcove, swiveling to take in the threat while ready to swing him around as a shield between me and any unannounced peril. Not necessary, the pertinent events had started a moment before and well away from the both of us.

I faced back around at the exact instant the green woman at the bar clotheslined a Filinbanc demon as he started past her. He was moving hard and forceful, but her forearm across his throat was powerful enough to slam his upper body back and downward, so that his feet came up off the floor from his own momentum and he crashed down flat with an impact that shook the rafters. Katie was in motion, too, moving to meet either the Filinbanc or his adversary, and Green Girl jerked around, let out a screech, and swung her broadsword in a vicious arc; Katie ducked, and the blade opened the chest of a Torusch who’d been coming up behind her. Katie snatched up a table and heaved it at the swordswoman, who likewise skipped out of the way, and the table bowled over three Groeltisch who had been crowding toward the action; the flaming drinks the Groeltisch had been carrying splashed blobs of fire on the patrons around them, and as instantly as if someone had flipped a switch, the entire place exploded into an all-out brawl.

Now, here’s the biggest difference between me and Merl: I’m as big on self-preservation as he is, staying alive is genuinely my most favorite thing ever, but I don’t keep it front-and-center in my thinking every single moment, it serves as a foundation while I focus on other imperatives. So, while Merl jittered in my grip, clearly yearning to make a dash for the nearest exit, I was looking around for opportunity rather than escape. “Stick with me,” I told him. “I think I can make us a nice score out of this situation.”

“No frickin’ way, man!” He wasn’t quite fighting me, he knew better than that, but he was about to explode with the need to get far away from here. “Let me go!”

“Okay, then, wait for me right outside,” I urged him, already in motion as the play I had been contemplating came together in my mind.

Demons are dangerous, no two ways about it, but they’re a great deal less dangerous to people who 1) know they exist and 2) never forget that they’re demons, not just funny-shaped people with unusual behaviors. There’s already a self-selection process in place, the types that come to a demon bar are naturally more sociable and less volatile than most others, and I truly do know quite a bit about one-on-one combat, so jumping out into the middle of the fray really wasn’t as crazy or as brave as it might have seemed. I could make it look that way, though, and set out to do exactly that.

I had a few small items on me that could be useful in an individual scrap, but the current rumble went beyond that, so I did the same. There were a half-dozen stanchions set back against one wall, for what purpose I couldn’t guess (sectioning off semi-private parties of species that needed to be kept separate, maybe), and I grabbed up one of those, unclipped it from the velvet rope that connected it to the others, and then waded into the scuffle. As an impromptu melee weapon, the stanchion had its advantages; the broad base could be used as a shield, the pole for close-in blocks and jabs, and the whole thing was heavy enough to swing as a makeshift bludgeon if need be. I wasn’t really concerned with beating anybody, though, just protecting myself and looking manly and daring while I did it. Not that I was faking anything, this was serious business, and it took a solid measure of my speed and skill and craft, I was just focused on not-losing instead of on winning. I worked my way through the brawling forms around me, moving fast and keeping my moves economical and tight, maneuvering over toward where I could see Katie fighting.

I wouldn’t have thought that filmy scarf-vest of hers capable of concealing anything larger than a hatpin, but she had produced a pair of butterfly swords from somewhere and wielded them with a flat, matter-of-fact finesse considerably more alarming than any flashy show-off display would have been. She was moving so quickly and dealing out so much damage that it took me a few seconds to see that there was little if any killing; she used the foreguards of the short swords to punch as if with brass knuckles, the crossguards for trapping along the unsharpened back half of the blades, the heavy hilts for side-hand strikes, and the blades themselves only against anyone who thought grappling with her might be a good idea (it truly wasn’t). This was not someone scared of a fight, nor spoiling for one; no, if a fight came along she saw it as a job, and set herself to do it right.

I picked my moment, came in at just the right angle, yelled “Look out!”, and smacked the base of the stanchion against the head of a Qart‘araf who was trying to edge around the fracas and get to the front door for a strategic departure. Qart‘araf are fairly brawny, and somewhat more intelligent than most, but not exceptionally tough, plus I’d caught him from behind. He went tumbling past Katie, I’d picked one who wasn’t in her direct vision so as far as she knew he might have been trying to come in on her blind side, and then I was beside her, doing a complicated sweep-and-guide to take the legs out from under a Lei-ach pair who had been hanging back and watching for an opportunity. “Hey,” I called to her, sweaty and grinning, projecting what should be the perfect balance of reckless, devil-may-care bravery. “Come here often?”

There’s always a chance to learn something new, and now I learned that a Slayer could roll her eyes without actually taking them off everything going on around her. “Give me a break,” she said, used a foreguard punch to shatter the teeth of a Carnyss demon, then yelled, “Break and exfil! Chop-chop, stat, now!”

I was fine with that, I’d been about to suggest it myself (fighting at her side was less about fighting than about being seen doing so, and I’d accomplished that), so we smashed our way through the chittering, bellowing, snarling mob around us, with me laying about more extravagantly now that I had a Slayer next to me. We were already near the door — Katie must have been moving that way already — and in seconds we were to it, and I was about to do a cheesy After you, milady quip when Katie stopped, and I looked around to see why, and —

— and Green Girl was coming our way. Her sword was up and smeared with various hues of blood and ichor, she’d lost the yellow glasses and her hair was wild and her eyes wilder, and she gave every appearance of being several long steps past totally pissed off. Though my reaction was immediate, it was also deliberate choice, stepping forward instead of back and leveling the shielding base of the stanchion … but it was a forward angle, putting me a bit to one side of Katie even as I appeared to be moving up to protect her, and with my off-hand I reached under my jacket for the taser in the inside pocket.

(No, I wasn’t sacrificing Katie to save myself, not that I was past doing that if I’d needed to; she was unquestionably better qualified to face a demonic warrioress than I would ever be. As at every moment since the first blow was struck, I was still looking to make myself appear an ally worth standing by, and the taser would be a handy surprise if Katie did have any trouble. I’m not a bad guy, not even heartless, I just always make sure to put myself first. If people get snippy about that kind of thing, well, that’s just further proof that they’re not willing to face reality.)

Katie did a complex double-hand whirl of the butterfly swords, but instead of bringing them up to guard she slotted them into hip-level sheaths that angled behind her back, the scarf-vest more opaque at that section than it had appeared to be. “About time,” she declared. “Watch Wonder Boy here, I’m scouting ahead to make sure nobody got out ahead of us and decided to wait in ambush.” And she wheeled and was out the door while I was still gaping.

“Go on, get moving,” Green Girl ordered me. “I’m her rear-guard, too, not just yours.” She shot a quick glance behind her, then back to me with a sudden fierceness on a face that was, I realized, a lot more delicately pretty than it had appeared under the fuzzy light around the bar. “Move it, I said!”

So I moved, feeling out of my depth for the first time in a very long time.

Yeah. Slayers have that kind of effect. Even on me.

Always have.

*               *               *

We were half a block from the front entrance to Del’s, just as a safety buffer, before Katie stopped. “So,” she said, turning to Green Girl. “Did he give any signals when my back was to him?”

“I didn’t see anything,” GG answered. “In fact, he was mostly turned away from you, I guess hoping that little extra would keep you from hearing him. And it looked like he really was surprised when a fight kicked off.” She glanced at me, those unsettling eyes — solid black, no iris or pupil — still projecting alien! even though her voice was pure suburban teenage girl. “He reacted really quick, though, so maybe he knew it was coming, but I don’t think so.” She shrugged disdainfully. “Which doesn’t mean I’m saying we can trust him.”

“And it doesn’t sound like she does,” I threw in genially. (Not a big fan of being talked about like I’m not there.) “Which is smart, but could cost us time right now. It turns out I actually might be able to help with that little item you were asking about, only it’s not something that can wait till next week.”

Katie gave me a hard look, and I was finally able to clarify what I’d been picking up from the beginning. This wasn’t professional skepticism, she was reacting to me personally. Which meant she’d dealt with somebody like me before — probably not at my level, but someone who knew how to use charm to best effect — and now responded to those cues with reflexive cynicism. Not because I dealt with demons: because I was ME.

Still, she spoke evenly enough. “Okay, so what’ve you got?”

I laughed, turned toward what I figured was the most likely patch of concealing shadow. “Hey, MBart,” I called (whoops, almost slipped there), “you in earshot?”

I’d judged it pretty close, he emerged from the second most likely dark spot, casting nervous glances back toward Del’s. “Yeah, yeah,” he groused as he came up close to us. “Just can’t figure why you want to hang around with the Wrecking Crew here.”

He actually had a point, though he’d been characteristically surly about it. I was about to chide him for manners, but Katie looked over at the other Slayer and said, “Ari, what did set off all that ruckus?”

‘Ari’ nodded like she’d been expecting the question. “The Filinbanc,” she said. “You couldn’t spot it from where you were, but before I moved up so he’d have to go past me, I could see his dorsal spines starting to tighten out. Then, about the time I got into position, he muttered something about blood debt and set himself to go for you, so I cut him right off.”

Katie thought about it. “Don’t remember tangling with any Filinbanc before,” she mused. “I guess it was just against Slayers in general.” Then she gave Ari a sharp look. “Wait: you speak their language?”

Ari shook her head. “No, but —” She spread her hands in a low shrug, like YOU know.

“Oh, yeah,” Katie said, nodding. “Right.”

“It didn’t stop with the Filinbanc, though,” I noted. “What about the others?”

Katie waved it away. “They were all keyed up, I could see that myself. Anything could’ve set ’em off, and something did.” Then, to Ari, “How’s your night vision in those things?”

“Maybe eighty per cent,” Ari reported. “Take ’em out?”

Katie nodded. “Time to be moving on anyway.” Then she turned back to me. “So you say you may have something to offer us?”

“It’s a possibility,” I began … then broke off, because Ari had inserted a thumbnail into the corner of each eye and peeled away the black outer layer, an unexpectedly disturbing sight. “What the hell?”

Katie glanced back at Ari, grinned at me. “Sclera lenses, soft contacts,” she explained, obviously enjoying my startlement. “Handy for costumes.”

And for allowing a Slayer some unsuspected backup. “Fine,” I said. “Well, Bart and I compared notes, and the setup you described sounds a lot like a guy we know about. At least enough to be worth checking out.” I gave a regretful sigh. “Thing is, he doesn’t like us very much, and I’d bet he isn’t crazy about Slayers, either, so he’s probably not too open to a friendly approach.”

Katie was giving me that look again, the one that told me she automatically distrusted whatever came out of my mouth. “So, basically, you don’t really have anything to offer us.” She took an oh-so-casual stance. “Except maybe a name. I’d kind of like to hear the name.”

I laughed a little. “I’m fine with giving you the name, but Bart and I might be able to get you a look at some of his private files.”

Still unimpressed, suspicious. “And why would you do that?”

“Two reasons,” I told her. “First, it could be useful to have a Slayer owe me a favor, or to have all the Slayers know I’m a guy who can deliver on a deal.” I shrugged. “Second, I’ve tried a few times to negotiate with this guy Cholk — that’s the name you wanted — and he was too snooty to deal with the likes of me, so I don’t mind the idea of seeing him take a small loss, even if it’s one he never knows about.”

“And that’s it?” Katie studied me, shook her head. “No, guys like you always have an angle.” She looked to Ari. “Cholk. We can check that out, assuming it’s the truth. We’re done here.”

She started to turn away, and I stepped forward. “No, think about it, some of this stuff has an expiration date.” She was still turning, and I reached for her …

I just meant to touch her on the shoulder, I know better than to grab a Slayer. Ari was right there, though, taking a grip on my wrist that clearly could have crushed it with just a minor expenditure of extra effort, and saying, “Hold it right there, fella —”

And then something happened. I saw it happen, saw her face go still and felt her body do the same. Not just my own impression, Katie heard/felt it too and swung back around, the butterfly swords out, and Merl hissed and backed away and Ari held up a hand to forestall her sister Slayer. We stayed like that for a moment, Ari staring at me with an expression I couldn’t begin to interpret … then she let go of my wrist and said to Katie, “We need to talk.” Katie’s eyebrows went up, and Ari said, “Now.”

Katie put away the swords again, but her body language was still wary. With a quick glance my way, she said briskly, “Stay.” Then she and Ari crossed to a spot out about eighty feet away, just past the beginning of a medium-sized plaza, and the two Slayers settled in for a quick conference.

Merl was practically vibrating. “Oh, man,” he moaned. “This is bad, this is bad. She’s actin’ just like Tiffi always did when she got a hit, and the whole prophecy bit is never good. I don’t want to be here.”

I didn’t entirely agree with him, but I couldn’t really argue, either. Something was going on here, and I didn’t know quite what it was but I knew I didn’t like it … or, maybe, didn’t like not-knowing. ‘Tiffi’ had to mean Madame Tiphaine (mark that one down, I hadn’t known Merl had ever met her), and this was indeed the way she reacted when something manifested big enough that she didn’t have time to hide the signs. All the same, there was no way he could be right about what he was thinking. The Slayer package came with a kind of built-in quasi-prophecy, but it wasn’t of the same quality as what a genuine seer could get, and didn’t operate the same way. The kind of touch-flash it looked like Ari had just caught, Slayers didn’t do that, so it had to be something else. That much was plain fact, but knowing what it wasn’t didn’t mean I had any idea what it was.

I needed to find out what was going on. And there was a way I might be able to do that quickly, but it was going to cost me.

“Keep still and keep quiet,” I told Merl, pretty much the same way Katie had ordered me to stay where I was. If I was going to do this, I needed to avoid any distractions that might turn the cost into a waste. Merl’s eyes went hooded but also flat; so many of his mannerisms were so similar to those of a certain human type, I kept reminding myself he wasn’t human, and likewise kept forgetting and being startled a bit when I was reminded again. Still, it appeared he was going to follow instructions, so I settled my breathing, hooked a thumb into my left pants pocket to brush against the irregular stone there, internally vocalized the activation cthoon, and split/floated to where the two girls were maybe a minute into their private confab.

It was something like those drones the Army was using in Afghanistan and Iraq, only mystical instead of mechanical (or even physical), and theoretically undetectable, and maybe using just a smidge of my life-energy but I was accustomed to making these small trade-offs. It wasn’t like a spy-platform, either, a part of me was actually there, seeing and hearing and (if I tuned in on that aspect) even smelling what I wasn’t corporeally present to sense. A year ago I’d picked up a dozen iterations of this particular projection type, and had gone through four of them already — this made five — and I didn’t want to expend them all without proper reward but sometimes you just have to take a chance.

I arrived in time to catch Katie in mid-sentence. “–son Dubois,” she said. “I know what kind of juice she carries, and I know you got some of the same from her. I’m not waving that off, believe me. But —” She looked back to where my half-occupied body was standing with Merl. “That guy? Seriously?”

“Look, I know what he is —” Ari began.

Katie cut her off. “Do you? I doubt it. I’ve seen his kind before, and you can’t know unless you’ve lived through it. Mix that personality type with demons …” She grimaced, shook her head. “You ever hear any of the stories about somebody named Ethan Rayne? or Warren Mears? ’Cause I’m telling you, this character is halfway to being another just like that.”

“I know,” Ari said. “He could go either way, and now is when it happens. Please, if you’ll just believe me in this —”

Merl sneezed, hard, and the explosive reverberations between realhearingthere and ghosthearinghere rattled me like dice in a cup. Damn it, I should have had at least a couple of minutes, I couldn’t leave now! I held on with a stubborn effort of will, squandering psychic energy already in short supply; pulled myself away from the disruption, steadied, and wrenched myself back into focus.

“–ther Robin or Mateo,” Ari was saying. “Maybe even another Xan–…” I lost it again, an aftershock, hugely less severe than the first blast but enough to un-tune me for a few seconds, and then I was in again. “— have to leave it to me,” Ari said. “I can feel this, I can follow the line and guide it right, and there’s just no way I can tell you how important this all could be!”

Katie sighed heavily. “You’d better know what you’re doing, Ariel.” Even my fading parasenses could hear the unwilling surrender. “If you think I’m about to go clear back to Phoenix to deliver any bad news to that mother of yours, you’re nuts.”

(Phoenix. Okay. So, Katie from Cali and Ari from Arizona.)

“Thank you,” Ari said. “Thank you. I’ll make it work, I promise.”

“You’d better,” Katie groused. “Because you’re asking for a crap-load of trust here —” And then I was done, yanked back into my body as abruptly as a tennis ball bulleted across the net.

I’d picked up some of what I needed, maybe enough, but I still gave Merl a slit-eyed glare. “What part of ‘still and quiet’ did you not understand?”

He scowled, not remotely as intimidated as I preferred; might have to give that some attention. “Friggin’ gnat flew straight up my nose,” he said without apology. “ ’Sides, what d’you care? You were so zoned out, I expected you to start drooling.”

There was no time to work him back into the shape that suited me, but I’d have to find the time soon if I wanted to preserve our normal working relationship. I had to settle for “Don’t think what you see is all there is,” because the two girls were making their way back over to us. I turned away from Merl, waited.

“No margin,” Katie said to Ari as they came to where we were standing. “No chances. I mean it.” She stopped in front of us, that ridiculously perky Barbie’s-kid-sister face set in a warning glower. “Okay, Ari thinks this is something that needs to be followed out. Me, still not convinced. I’m gonna let her run with it, see how she does solo on something low-level.” She stepped closer, her face a half-inch from mine, voice barely above a whisper. “Anything happens to her, it won’t be just me coming for you. There’ll be a dozen of us, and you’ll be hoping I’m the one who finds you first.”

I smiled, but it was a Don’t worry smile, not anything that might come across as smart-ass. “I’m not looking to hurt her,” I reassured Katie, “and I’m definitely not wanting to be on any Slayer most-wanted list. I’ll behave; even if you don’t trust my good nature, believe in my dedication to staying alive.” I gave her a quizzical side-glance. “Solo … you’re not going to be in on this? It started out as your issue, as I recall.”

“She asked very nicely,” Katie told me, clipped and flat. Then she sighed. “Yeah, the thing matters to me. Some. Ari matters more. She wants a chance to operate on her own, I’ll give it to her.” She looked back to the other girl, and told her, “You’ve got your cell. Call me if you need anything. Anything.”

“I will,” Ari said to her. “I promise.”
 

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