by J M Guillen
The Wind exploded around me. It blasted through my mental construct and caught those sigils aflame with brilliant azure radiance. The glow shone all around me and cast stark and sharp shadows through the early evening.
I saw the reflection in the eyes of dozens of the kenku, as their beady black eyes looked on in horror and dismay.
The Wind lanced into the creature, punching it squarely middle mass with the force of a hurricane.
It cried, loud and raucous, before it was launched over one of the townhouses into the next block.
“So cool,” Baxter breathed.
“Liz?” Alicia’s tone felt much harsher. “What have you done? What exactly have you done?”
“I’ve taken my birthright.” I gazed at her, calm certainty in my eyes. “I’ve done exactly as Simon intended.”
“Here?” She took a step forward, her voice a frantic hiss. “You know they’ll find you! It’ll make things ten times harder!”
“Alicia,” Rehl warned her. “Can Abriel confirm the identity of our company?”
I spun in my seat and glanced back the way I came.
The Facility Assets looked every bit a posse of cyber-cowboys as they marched into a modern boxcar canyon. They strode confidently, as if there weren’t a couple dozen murder birds lurking about with reaper sickles.
“Oh… fuck!” Alicia said.
“Hey!” I turned in my seat and stared at her. “Language!”
Then, all midnight feather and silver sickle, the kenku fell upon us.
“Dammit!” Baxter’s cry came from my left.
I turned.
One of the creatures had run up on him and caught him unawares. It swung its blade toward his sandy head.
He flung himself backward and almost fell.
It missed.
Once he righted himself, Bax stepped forward, and swung Simon’s cane, catching the monstrous raven-man squarely in the hip.
Its bone shattered from the force.
The bird screamed as it fell.
Baxter stared at the kenku then turned to me and grinned through his shock.
I gaped.
“Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!” he cried as he started to spin the cane again.
Alicia fumbled in her pocket and pulled out Simon’s old silver lighter.
Rehl stepped behind her and fired twice at two of the kenku,
driving them back.
“I have to turn the bike around!” I yelled. I pulled past the little alleyway where Fallen Leaves lay hidden, though I wanted to charge toward it. “Knock on the door!”
“Got it!” Rehl reloaded his Beretta and shot one of the birds out of the sky.
Before I’d even turned away from him, two more swooped down on me.
I whipped the Beretta toward them, but not before one of their sickles sliced through my leathers, just enough to scratch my left side.
“Mother—!” I snarled and shot wildly in their direction.
One of them flapped away into the swarm of raven-beasts, but the other took a bullet in its neck and went down with a frothy gurgle.
Too many. I threw down the hammer on the Valkyrie and charged forward. In the same moment, I called forth the Seal of Oeriim, channeling the Wind into a shape in front of me.
I’d done so many walls; they’d been one of the first things Simon taught me to do. He felt it important I be able protect myself from the occasional horror of the astral planes. Walls had come fairly naturally to me, even though the Wind didn’t seem to enjoy that kind of construct.
It didn’t like being held in one shape. Hated being static.
This time, as the tumult of infinity coursed through my mind and blazed through those sigils in cerulean wonder, I shaped my wall differently than I ever had in my long apprenticeship.
I put to use one of Baxter’s suggestions and imagined a wedge in front of the Valkyrie.
As the Wind capered and teased my hair around me, I charged forward, and held my focus so the construct moved with me.
The Wind didn’t love the shape. Not only did I force it to remain in a single form, but I forced it to move in the direction I wanted. Not an easy task.
Yet quite practical.
I hit an incoming knot of kenku like a locomotive and hurled
them off to either side with my impromptu cowcatcher.
Rehl fired at two more as I spun the bike around and got myself into position.
In that moment, the Ass-hats entered play.
When they’d rounded onto Chester Court, their crossbowman—I assumed the same guy—had set one of his warbling fire-portals parallel to the ground. He now strode confidently into the swarm of furious kenku and shot the crossbow at them with precision.
Each bird-man those silvery quarrels hit vanished, only to temporarily reappear through his portal.
So an avian nightmare might swoop down on him at something like mach three, only to get teleported approximately two inches above from the concrete. Then, as it died a mangled mess due to its own momentum, it bounced back to reappear in the spot it had gotten shot in only moments before.
It fell to the ground a bloody and broken heap every time.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. I felt fairly proud of my escape from them the other day, but now I wondered. This one Ass-hat, with little more than his magic crossbow, had slaughtered six of the kenku in less than a minute.
And that was just him.
Had they let me escape?
Even as I watched crossbow boy score critical hit after critical hit, a lumbering barbarian came up from the other side. He whirled that rivet gun and drew down on one of the kenku that hovered closer to the street. One hand typed madly on a crescent-shaped device hung at his hip.
WHUF!
The corbie flew back and gurgled a raucous scream as rivet-boy shot him square.
I thought the shot was the end of it, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
A burst of rippling emanations like heat over cobblestones came from the creature’s corpse, even as it flew.
Instantly, five other kenku fell toward that body, as if for a moment they had been snared by the gravity of the planet Jupiter.
Even from here, maybe fifty yards away, I felt a momentary pull in that direction, tiny but real.
“Ho-lee shit,” I swore as it faded.
A loud hiss filled the street as Alicia held up Simon’s silver lighter. She flicked the turn wheel, and it sparked to flame. The moment that flame burned, a shimmering dome appeared around my friends. It glistened like an oil slick on water, covering them completely.
The kenku closest to my friends charged the shimmering field from the air.
The moment the bird touched it, its descent slowed, as if pushing through a three-foot wall of honey.
Rehl shot the corbie squarely in the face.
It fell, a bloody mess on the pavement. Apparently, Simon’s lighter-shield allowed things to pass out easily enough.
“Liz!” Baxter turned to me. “The shop!”
“Got it!” I gave him a thumbs up.
My friends sprinted in a group toward the alleyway, Alicia holding the lighter high. Whenever one of the crow-men attacked, it found its way impeded by the barrier. After that, Rehl’s gun handled things.
I was so caught up in the cacophony that I completely missed the sucker punch.
One of the kenku cawed threateningly over me, its sickle held out wide.
“Screw you!” I pulled the Beretta and shot.
The rook seemed to expect that. It dove to the left, rolled to its clawed bird feet, and popped up to my left side.
A second kenku swung at me from the right.
The curved flat of that sickle blade made stars and red agony explode in my mind.
I fell off my bike, my muscles like jelly.
I tried to turn; I wanted to see them both at once, but the strike had been too fierce. I’d let myself get distracted, and they’d caught me completely unawares.
&n
bsp; As one of the creatures bent over me, everything went dark.
5
“Hey. Come on.” The deep voice echoed from what felt like a million miles away.
I shook my head slightly and wondered who had left all of the garbage fires in my skull.
A hand shook my shoulder.
“Tired,” I mumbled and skewed my face against the pounding pain.
“This will help.” I felt someone’s palm press against my chest, beneath my jacket and over my heart. I heard an ominous hiss and snick.
I scarcely had time to feel the tiny bite of the dart before adrenaline thundered into my body. Every muscle I owned contracted at once, and I cried out, eyes bulging.
I stared at the middle-aged man crouching over me.
He smiled and crinkling crow’s feet bloomed at the edges of his eyes.
“I think your little problem child is awake.” He stepped back, as I peered around to get my bearings. “No mecha, obviously. Only hormone.”
Somewhere behind me, I heard WHUF followed by a WHUF, WHUF, and a particularly savage WHUF!
“Evening, Liz.” Garret stepped over to where I lay and extended a hand. “Care to tell us what’s going on here?”
“What have you done?” My heart barreled along like a locomotive out of control, my breath quick and gasping.
“It’s adrenaline.” It shook its hand as if impatient for me to take it. “Get up. We’re still in the middle of things.”
I took its hand, and it pulled me to my feet. Staring blearily around, I tried to track what had happened.
How long had I been out?
Not long, it seemed. Quite a few of the flying murder sickles still lurked about, some perched on the edge of roofs, some in midair. All of them glared down at us, as they waited for a chance to strike.
“You got something you need to tell me?” Garret seemed out of breath and held what looked like a hand cannon. Its hair had been uncharacteristically mussed, and the right arm of its suit had been shredded.
Fuck.
“We need to hurry,” I babbled, my thoughts jumbled. “It’s more than the birds. They sent in a helicopter.”
“We’ve called off the cops. We have sweepers to deal with civilians.” Garret affixed me with one dark eye. “I’m more interested in why my favorite Irrat of Interest is rampaging through New York.”
“You really think it’s a rampage?” I shook my head. “I thought it was more like a spree.”
“Believe it or not, I don’t have much time for smartassery.” Its head ticked once, then again, like some kind of mechanical bird. It brought its weapon up abruptly and peered around for incoming crow monsters.
“Fine. Okay.” I shook my head to toss off the remnant jitters from the adrenaline. It didn’t work. “I figured you might not be bullshitting me, okay?”
“Is that so?” The tiniest grin pulled at the corner of its mouth.
“The ‘third-party’ you talked about is real. My father has gotten mixed up with them.” I spoke frantically and tried to remember everything. “Some woman named Patricia. She had skill with alchemy or transmutation or something.”
“Okay.” Garret’s tone sounded like I might be on track.
Around us, both the crossbow man and the giant, bearded barbarian laid down pain on the kenku. The battle raged furious, and every few moments Garret paused to shoot one of the murder-birds.
Each time, his shot exploded in the corbie’s body. Typically, it left a hole about the size of a dinner plate.
Kind of made my Beretta seem like small potatoes.
“What does that have to do with all of this?” Garret gestured around us. “With these aberrations?”
“Your third-party has my father.”
“Okay.” Garret shot another of the kenku. “Our intelligence isn’t quite that certain, but okay.”
“There is another man who can help me find my father,” I clarified as my mind raced. “If I find him, I can find your secretive little group.”
“We’re worried they’re not very ‘little’ at all.”
“Unfortunately, the man I need has been taken prisoner. The creature holding him sent these…” I gestured wildly in the air. “These things.”
“Who holds this man you need?”
Two of the kenku swooped down on us, behind Garret, where it couldn’t see them.
The Asset fired in a different direction, paying the monsters no heed.
Almost without thought, I gestured and released a typhoon at the corbies.
They spun backward, squawking raucously.
“Heh.” The barbarian riveter-Asset grinned wildly. “Good work.” He turned toward them to shoot.
“The Gaunt Man! Do you know who the Gaunt Man is?” I gesticulated wildly. “He’s close, and he has the man I need.” I stared at Garret. “Help me, and I’ll help you chase down your mysterious organization. If nothing else, I’ll do it to help find my dad. No foolin’. My word.”
“Did you say the Gaunt Man?” The whisper soft words came from the witch, who stood just behind Garret. Her long, blonde hair hung perfectly straight to frame her pixyish face as she stared at me. “Just now? Did you say Aberration 13563 is close?”
Simultaneously, the heads of every Asset twitched violently as if they had all suffered a nervous tic at the exact same time.
Shudder.
“Do you know where he is?” Garret turned to stare at me.
“I do!” I chuckled. “Want me to lead you right to him?”
“Well, yes.” Garret grunted as one of the kenku landed in front of it and swiped with a quarterstaff.
That’s odd. I peered at the corbie. Why not a sickle?
The kenku slammed the quarterstaff onto the concrete.
Force like thunder, like the blow of a sledgehammer, exploded out from the contact point, along with reddish-black light.
Garret and the other Ass-hats flew backward, tossed as if little more than pieces of paper.
Oh. And so did I.
However, less than two minutes ago I had been injected with what I suspected was something like a butt ton of adrenaline. As a result, even though the blast had been enough to completely rock my world, I sat up almost immediately afterward, perhaps a bit more aware than I would have been otherwise.
“Ow!” I rubbed my backside. I already felt covered in bruises.
The kenku did not appear at all sorry.
I gazed around and realized I sat three steps from my Valkyrie. Fast as I could think, I rolled to my left, pulled the bike up, and hurled myself on it.
Already, the Ass-hats engaged the staff-corbie.
“Follow me,” I half whispered, half thought to Garret as I revved the engine.
The words echoed around me. The Wind teased the edge of my flesh before it snatched my words and carried them to the Facility Asset.
“The red building. It’s false.” I glanced over to where he stood.
He glanced toward me as well. And nodded his head in acknowledgment.
I threw the hammer down and charged for the alleyway.
“Here I come,” I half whispered, half thought to Rehl. “Knock, knock.”
Monstrous Compendium
The dun brick shopfront seemed almost insubstantial under the dim light of the alleyway, but I favored it with a glare anyway. I knew full well the store wasn’t remotely what it seemed.
“It’s gonna take a lot more than hoodoo glamour bullshit to stop me tonight,” I snarled.
The alleyway seemed much longer than it had from Chester Court. It bent like a quavering whisper. My friends fought at the end, holding their own against several of the kenku.
“Not today!” Rehl fired his weapon at one that attempted their shield.
The avian asshole jerked as he shot it, screaming in its raucous, rough voice.
“Dammit!” I had hoped the Ass-hats would keep the creatures occupied. Now I paused, tempted to help them hold off the flying fucks, just to make sure my friends were
safe.
That wouldn’t work, though.
Sure, only a few of the monsters capered in the alleyway, but a mob of them still swarmed over Chester Court. If I waited until my friends were entirely safe before I assaulted Lorne’s shop, I’d never get it done.
“No, Liz.” I shook my head. “Stick with the plan.” But just in case one of the kenku got friendly, I drew the Beretta.
As if to further confirm my thoughts, Baxter lit one of the flares. It burned a brilliant, hellish red. He waved it twice, made certain he had my attention, and hurled it in front of the shop.
Come on already, I imagined him saying.
That settled it then. They were ready.
Every time we’d discussed this plan, Bax had teased that I was no Masked Brava because we had no dynamite.
However, Dad did have some grenades.
I hadn’t even made it halfway down the alleyway when Rehl broke off from Alicia and Baxter.
While he fired at one of the kenku, Rehl reached into the bag hung at his waist. Then he turned toward the store and threw, hurling the grenade through a glass window in a side pitch.
No sooner had he thrown than his hand dipped into the bag again and pulled out a second item. He mimicked the first motion, turned back toward our friends, and dived out of the way.
A few heartbeats ticked off before the pair of grenades detonated. The front of the store exploded and sent glass and bits of wood flying. The concussion thundered down the alleyway, and Alicia’s shield blinked out.
The kenku, stunned at the attack, pulled back from my friends. They thought it wise, apparently, to be nowhere near should the proprietor of the store step out to see what happened.
I revved the Valkyrie as I focused on the Seal of Oeriim, which unfurled into sapphire flames around me. Mentally, I shaped the Wind into a wedge in front of my bike.
“Come on, fucker.” I held the throttle down, fear and exultation burning in my adrenaline-enhanced body.
The thought that I might be about to die only whispered in my mind.
Before the explosion had even fully died down, I soared into the front of the shattered store, rocketing inside at something like seventy-five miles per hour.
The razor sharp Wind-wedge sheered into the structure and tore through the facade, shelving, and ten thousand different trinkets and doo-dads.