My mother—my real mother, not Mama Rawlins or Sue Jacobsen—had always joked about my appetite. She would know something was wrong, she told people with a grin, the day I passed up seconds at lunch… and if I skipped dessert, well, she was paying for a Flyboy to rush us to the hospital, and to seven hells with the cost.
After the asshole killed her, dessert became a thing of the past—along with seconds and a whole host of other happy family bullshit—but the basic point remained; few things motivated little Damian like food.
I flopped my second arm onto the table, and used both limbs to push myself into a seated position. Hell if I was going to just lie there with lunch waiting.
“Welcome back to the land of the living.”
I looked up, mouth full of sandwich, to find Mr. Grey seated nearby, every bit as bland as the moment we’d met. We were back out in the front room of the testing facility.
“Whaddafugg habbnd?” I swallowed my food and tried again. “What happened?”
“An unfortunate blend of aging technology and poorly trained public servant.” Copper eyes glittered in the dim light. “What matters is that you survived.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what matters.”
“True enough.” The Finder gave me a respectful nod. “Eat your sandwich. It is a long trip still to the Academy.”
I felt the tension drain out of me in a rush. “You mean…?”
“Yes. Despite nearly killing you with his incompetence, Jeremy managed to complete your testing. Low-range Category Three. It appears this morning was not a waste of time after all.”
I barely even heard his words through the rush of relief. Cat Three was the bare minimum for the Academy, and Low-Three meant I was about as weak as a Three could get, but it was enough. Admission meant training and training meant my descent into madness might not be so inevitable after all.
With apologies to dead Alicia, that moment of realization was better than anything I’d felt since Mom’s murder.
•—•—•
I polished off my meal. “Where’s Jeremy?”
Mr. Grey nodded to the back room. “Filing the results of your testing. Having served his purpose, it is unlikely that the two of you will meet again.”
The words were innocuous, the tone even more so, but twelve years in an orphanage had left me a suspicious little shit, and Academy-bound or not, I wasn’t ready to take the Finder’s words at face value. I leveraged myself up onto still-wobbly legs. “I’m going to say goodbye.”
This is the part where I tell you that the back room was a horror show, right? That pieces of Jeremy were strewn from wall to wall, leaving nothing but carnage across grey tiles?
Sounds like we’ve seen the same sort of vids. That or you’ve got a seriously fucked up imagination. Wonder if that’s what got you killed?
The only sign of trouble I found was the small plume of smoke drifting lazily from the testing machine. In the chair next to it, Jeremy was bent over a net terminal, typing away, face downcast and pale except for two spots of color in his cheeks.
“You taking off?” All of the enthusiasm had drained from his voice, leaving it almost as flat as Mr. Grey’s.
“Looks like it.”
“Cool.” He kept typing away, eyes down. “Sorry about the testing.”
Maybe I should have held a grudge. Guy almost kills you, you don’t forgive that shit, right? But Jeremy had played his part in potentially saving my sanity. Magnanimous near-adult that I was, I decided to let it go. “It’s okay. Might want to get that thing fixed before the next kid comes through though.”
“Still trying to figure out what went wrong,” he mumbled, nodding in agreement.
“Well… thanks, I guess.”
“Later.” He still hadn’t looked at me.
Asshole was even less social than I was. I turned to leave, but paused, that same little voice of suspicion whispering in my ear.
“What did I test out as, anyway?”
This time, Jeremy did look up, his expression odd. “Low-Three. Didn’t the Finder tell you?”
“Right. Electrocution must be making me loopy.” I gave a shrug, like I was just a forgetful idiot instead of a suspicious bastard, and made my exit.
Out front, Mr. Grey was waiting for me.
And this time, he had company.
CHAPTER 7
She had a body made for vids—legs a mile long, tits high and proud—every inch of her displayed to perfection by tight black leather, from low-heeled boots to painted-on-pants to a jacket of slightly heavier construction. But from the neck up…
I blinked, frowned, and blinked again. Her face was round and bright yellow, with two large black dots for eyes and a curved black line forming a smile.
“What the hell…?” The words slipped out, barely audible even to myself, but the woman glanced over anyway, and the glint of interior lights off her head was enough to correct my initial assumption. She was wearing a motorcycle helmet. The smiley face I’d seen was a decal wrapped across the helmet’s visor.
“Meet your escort,” said the Finder. “She will be taking you the rest of the way to the Academy.”
My frown deepened. “You’re not coming?”
“You are not the only individual on my list.” His bland smile flickered into view then faded just as swiftly. He turned to look up at the woman at his side. “Deliver him to the Academy of Heroes no later than tomorrow evening. I leave the details to your discretion.”
And just like that, Mr. Grey walked out of my life forever.
Well… not quite forever.
Life couldn’t be that easy.
•—•—•
The wheeze of Mr. Grey’s death trap had faded away before Smiley finally spoke.
“Let’s go, kid.” The voice didn’t fit her body. It would barely have fit Mama Rawlins’ body. It was deep, rough, and weirdly discordant, like razor blades scraping against one another on every syllable.
She was smoking hot—from the neck down, at least—but I wasn’t a total fool. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are. Are you a Finder too?”
Her laughter was short and sharp, but it had actual humor in it in a way Mr. Grey hadn’t managed even once since I’d met him. “You think I’m a Finder? Where the hell did he dig you up?”
“Bakersfield.”
“My condolences.” Again, that flicker of humor. I couldn’t see a face beneath the decaled visor, but I could feel her studying me. “I’m a specialist, kid. Well-paid and well-armed, and that’s all you need to know.”
“Like hell it is.”
She regarded me for a moment, then shrugged. “Come with me or don’t.” Those mile-long legs took her out into the brightly lit lot. The door slammed shut behind her, leaving me in near-darkness once again.
If the day was teaching me anything, it was that playing the hardass only worked if you had some actual leverage. Or a reputation. Or, at the very least, an alternate fucking means of getting to the Academy.
I rushed outside, where the nameless woman was carrying the half-filled bag that contained my every possession over to…
“Holy shit. Is that a motorcycle?”
I know what you’re thinking: maybe the helmet should have been a clue? Thing is, in Bakersfield, bikes were almost as rare as cars. Less so by the coast, it turned out, but this was only the third or fourth one I’d ever seen.
Smiley paused in the act of shoving my belongings into the bike’s saddlebags, and spun that yellow face back in my direction.
“Are you slow or something, Bakersfield?”
I felt my cheeks flame—and when you’re as pale as I am, that sort of shit is visible from orbit—and tried to redeem myself. “What’s it run on? The grid?”
“Battery… but that gets its juice from the grid,” she acknowledged, turning back to the bike, and bending over to tie the saddlebags shut. “One charge can get me to the Bay and back.”
I nodded, almost as impressed by t
hat statistic as I was by the way the line of her legs led up to a truly spectacular ass. Before I could say something truly stupid, she spoke again.
“If you’re coming, get over here. And stop staring at my ass.”
Either Smiley had eyes in the back of her head or…
…or she knew how almost-eighteen-year-olds thought.
I’m guessing it was probably the latter. The flame in my cheeks now a bonfire, I joined her at the bike.
“It’s a thing of beauty,” I decided after a moment’s pause.
“You’d better be talking about the bike.”
I actually had been, but I bristled anyway. “And if I wasn’t?”
Her voice clashed and sparked. “Then you’re even dumber than I gave you credit for, Bakersfield. Boy like you…”
“I’ll be eighteen in two and a half days,” I corrected her, “and if you knew anything about my life—”
“Boy like you,” she repeated, “needs to learn manners before some woman a whole lot less patient than me teaches you some. With a welding torch.” She slid one leg over the bike and took her seat. “Now shut the fuck up and get on the bike.”
I hadn’t survived my early years in the orphanage by letting people push me around. But there was a time for defiance and a time for caution… and when people start talking welding torches, the time for defiance is well and truly over. I squashed down my anger, and tried for a more reasonable tone.
“Do I get a helmet?”
“Not unless you earn it, and the chances of that are lessening by the word.”
“This is bullshit,” I muttered to myself—one last pointless moment of defiance to salvage my pride—before climbing on behind her. “Do you at least have a name, or should I keep calling you Smiley?”
For a long while she was silent, the two of us frozen atop an immobile motorcycle, Mom’s ghost standing just off to the side. Then she shrugged. Once again, I could hear the laughter in her voice. “Call me Your Majesty.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I almost passed out.
It was enough to make me miss the Finder.
CHAPTER 8
Unlike Mr. Grey’s car, the bike was practically silent; just a low hum of a motor and the sound of rubber on asphalt, both buried beneath the wind rushing past us. It was slower than the car—if that death trap had gone twenty-five, we were doing fifteen at best—but the open air made it a shit-ton more exhilarating. I held on tight, ducked my head into Her Majesty’s shoulder to avoid bugs flying into my face, and concentrated on not falling off.
When we hit the incline, finally climbing into the mountains Mr. Grey had pointed out, our pace slowed further. We were still going faster than I could run—especially up a hill that steep—but it was a damn sight slower than the Finder’s car. The sun slid down the sky in front of us and the hours crept by.
Two people, neither of them small, inching up an otherwise deserted road towards the rapidly setting sun?
Guess we made a pretty good target.
The sound reached my ears right after Smiley stiffened in front of me—a dull, echoing crack, that was swiftly followed by our bike spinning onto the shoulder. Somehow, she kept her hold on the handlebars.
I didn’t keep my hold on her.
Guess it’s good we were going so slow by then. And that the roads had turned to shit, leaving the shoulder mostly overgrown. All I know is that I didn’t split my head open when I fell, even if the asphalt did chew right through my shirt and jeans to bite into the flesh beneath.
I landed on my side, which was probably the other reason my head didn’t go splat. It left me in perfect position to see the bike careening wildly up the shoulder, to hear another two cracks of what must have been gunshots, and to see Her Majesty knocked out of her seat. Bike spun one way, she went the other. Both lay still.
All those nice things I said about the road south of Bakersfield?
I’m taking them back.
•—•—•
I lay on my bruised and bleeding side for all of a minute before my brain kicked back into activity. Maybe it was the sight of Mom, standing nearby, totally unconcerned. Or maybe it was the silhouettes of figures picking their way down the hill as the sun embraced the tree line.
I staggered to my feet. Between my earlier electrocution and the crash, I was barely mobile, but nothing seemed to be broken—nothing I needed right then anyway. I cradled one arm against my chest and looked up to where Smiley and the bike had been swallowed by darkness.
That’s not some sort of fancy metaphor or anything, mind you; the sun was almost entirely gone, leaving the whole hill in deepening shadow. I couldn’t see more than ten or so feet in either direction. Even so, I wanted to believe she’d made it. Badass hottie in leather? No doubt she was already up and ready to kick ass.
After being shot three times?
Alright; maybe not.
I could have checked to be sure, but that would have meant going toward the people who’d just shot at us.
Sorry, Your Majesty. At some point, it’s every Crow for himself.
Not a Cape sort of thing to do, I guess, but I wasn’t a Cape just yet. Wouldn’t ever be one if I couldn’t survive the next few minutes.
Live to run away and fight another day, am I right?
I’d made it all of ten feet off the road when something struck me in the head. No white light, like there’d been at the testing center. Just darkness.
Hurt almost as much though.
•—•—•
“This him?”
I don’t how long I’d been out this time, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two, because night was still in the process of falling. Against a backdrop of grainy twilight and a handful of cold stars, I made out the darker shapes of two figures standing over me.
“Better hope it is,” answered the second guy, “since you shot the shit out of the other one.”
“I don’t got your special tricks, but my eyes work just fine. Boss man said get the boy, and that driver weren’t no boy.”
“Boss man also said to take the boy alive.”
A hard boot caught me in the side, driving all the wind out of me and provoking a gasp.
“And he’s alive. So why are you riding my ass?”
When the second man spoke, his voice had dropped to a low growl. “I’m riding your ass, Dale, because your dumb-fuck move could have cost us our cut. More importantly, I’m riding your ass because I’m the motherfucker in charge of this op. Unless this is you making a move?”
A bright light flared crimson and orange, illuminating the two men above me. Both unshaven, both dressed in layered clothing, both hard men with scarred faces and eyes that looked black as death in the night. One had a rifle in his hands, but he was the one backing away. And the other man… a snake of living fire was looping around his left hand, pulsing like a heartbeat.
“You’re in charge, man,” said Dale, still backing away. “All I was saying—”
We never got to find out what he was saying.
Smiley’s motorcycle was quieter than a car, but it still made some noise; the hum of its motor, the squeal of tires against asphalt, and a half dozen other things that kept it from being entirely silent.
Except when it came flying through the air like a five-hundred-pound missile.
It hit Dale square in the back, taking him right off his feet and into the darkness. Judging by the sounds both he and the bike made hitting the ground, I didn’t think either one was ever getting back up.
“What the fuck?” asked the other man, who had to be a Pyromancer. “Cole? Jackson? You guys up there?”
“Your men are dead, sweetling.” Smiley stopped just short of the fire’s light, glossy leather glistening amidst the greater darkness. “Time for you to join them.”
“Fuck that shit.” The Pyro crouched low, and a second snake ignited around his other hand. “Come and get it, puta.” With a flick of his wrists, both snakes spat a torrent of orange fire at th
e woman.
Flames crackled, spit and eventually died, leaving nothing behind but darkness.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he muttered.
Over the rush of blood in my ears, I heard something… the rasp of metal against metal, as if someone was running a crowbar over the teeth of a saw. Then I saw it.
It didn’t snow much in Bakersfield—and when it did, all we got were small, dirty flakes that melted almost before they hit the ground—but I’d seen blizzards on vid; cold air thick with snow and a howling wind that sent the whole mess horizontal.
I’d never seen a blizzard quite like this though.
What came at us wasn’t ice or snow or anything natural. It was shrapnel and steel and sharp, jagged edges, a cloud of gonna-fuck-you-up rocketing forward out of the windless dark. The Pyro’s scream cut off in mid-crescendo as three rods pierced his chest and a half-dozen metal shards perforated his skull. The long, sinuous strands of barbed wire that followed—enveloping his body and twisting to shred exposed flesh—were a particularly gruesome bit of overkill.
The Pyro’s flame died when he did, but the fires he’d set off on either side of the road gave enough light for me to watch the cyclone of shrapnel pull itself together, regaining the shape of a tall, leather-clad woman, a yellow smiley-face painted across her helmet’s visor.
“Fucking hill trash never learn,” growled Her Majesty.
CHAPTER 9
Our attackers were all very, very dead. That was the good news. The bad news was that the bike was a wreck, its frame bent out of shape, and its battery leaking something that smelled like farts and death.
Or maybe that last part was the corpses. Her Majesty had drafted me into moving the bodies into a pile down the hill, but I could still smell them on me; blood and piss and all the other foulness that comes spilling out of people at the end. With night well and truly fallen, I was now sitting by the road, trying hard not to smell myself, and watching Smiley stoke the dregs of the Pyro’s last fire into something that might keep us warm through the night.
See These Bones Page 3