Darkening Skies

by eden Hudson

  “Fight it,” I said. “Think of your unborn children.”

  “Out the door, Van Zandt,” Carina said. She stood up and thumbed off the knuckgun’s saw, removing the danger from Tattoo-Face’s balls the second before he sneezed so hard his brain would’ve exploded out his ears if he’d had one.

  I grabbed my helmet and ventilator off the table and stepped over Dogfight. His face was nearly purple. Didn’t look like he’d reached the point yet where you can finally take a breath after getting the wind knocked out of you. Tattoo-Face wasn’t faring much better. Blood dripped off the fingertips of his left hand, and from his elbow down, his arm was white and shaking.

  As Carina and I backed away, she stuck the knife in her belt and picked up the stunclub. Neither Tattoo-Face nor Dogfight looked to be in any shape to go after their weapons, but I can appreciate the better-safe-than-sorry attitude. Especially when it’s saving my skin.

  OUTSIDE, CARINA TOSSED the knife and stunclub into the rushing water of the gutter.

  “You should’ve said something cool,” I told her as we crossed the street.

  Her eyebrows came together in confusion. “Something cool?”

  We turned into the alley where I’d stashed the ’Shan. The downpour had died off a little, but I still had to raise my voice so Carina could hear me over the hiss and tick of the droplets on the rusty awning.

  “Yeah, after you kicked their asses,” I said. “Like, ‘Maybe you can turn in what’s left of your dignity for the bounty.’ That’s not a great example, but you get the idea.”

  “That’s gloating,” she said. “It’s bad form.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I bet you’re gallons of fun to hang out with. You know what? For the duration of this job, I’ll take care of the saying cool shit. I won’t even charge extra. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  “I already learned that mouth-gonorrhea is a very real health concern.” She said it with a straight face, but her tone lilted upward just enough to give her away.

  “Mildew, too,” I said, slinging one leg over the Mangshan and popping up the kickstand. “You really ought to wear a ventilator in the city.”

  Carina nodded, but not as if she was conceding that I was right. “That’s what people tell me. What’s our next step?”

  “Next I put out the ol’ whiskers and catfish around,” I said. “I’ll call you when I’ve got a bite.”

  In reality, the process wasn’t that catch-all-and-sift. I had some ideas on where I would start, but it was best to keep the preparation stage sounding mysterious. Clients don’t want to think they’re paying to see whether my hunches will pay off, they want to think they’re paying for time-consuming legwork and research.

  “Now,” I said, leaning on the handlebars, “Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty—money. You’ll need to set up an incidentals account in my name with...oh, eight or ten thousand should cover my dailies for the duration of the job. My fee is a separate figure, and it will need to be transferred directly into my personal account. Then we’ll get this showboat on the river.”

  Her eyebrow cocked, redirecting a raindrop from her widow’s peak, down her forehead toward her straight, dark nose. “You haven’t done anything yet.”

  “I don’t use the Guild’s honor system,” I said. “My motto is ass, grass, or cash up front—and you’ll want to keep in mind that I don’t accept those first two as valid forms of payment. The minute the transfer goes through to my bank account, I start looking for leads on your aguas brujahs. Not before.”

  “How much?”

  “For anybody else, seven hundred thousand.” I shot her with a finger gun. “For you, nine.”

  “I’ll pay you half up front, half upon completion.”

  “That’s not how this works, sister. You want off-the-books work, you pay off-the-books payment plans.”

  I thought she was going to push the issue, but she didn’t. That made me nervous.

  “Give me your number,” she said.

  I did.

  She messed around on her wristpiece for a few seconds, then looked up. “Nine hundred thousand will be in your account when they start the automated transfers in the morning.”

  “Soon as it is, we’re in business,” I said.

  She stretched her hand out and I shook. I was about to pull my hand back, but she didn’t let go.

  “Van Zandt?” She looked into my pupils like she was trying to catalogue the rods and cones along the back of my eyes. “There’s a dead man’s switch on the transfer.”

  Which meant the Guild had more in their files on me than just what they suspected me of having stolen. I grinned.

  “Better do your best not to die, then,” I said, squeezing her hand tighter. “If that money gets repoed, I’m going after the next closest person to you. I don’t work for free.”

  The Bloodslinger didn’t say anything to that, just held my hand a moment longer, then let it go.

  Chapter 2

  Since I was already in the neighborhood—figuratively speaking—I drove up to the City at the Pass and checked into the Sharp Right Turn under my standing reservation as the esteemed J.D. Vance. The storm hadn’t totally moved on, and I didn’t want to make the whole run back to Taern in a downpour. Besides, I could do my hunch-checking tomorrow while enjoying the Sharp Right Turn’s five-star breakfast as easily as I could anywhere else.

  The entirety of the City at the Pass had been carved into the rock of the mountainside back when the Revived Earth was still reviving, so the single entry point into and through was a narrow two-lane. Easily defensible, terrible for traffic. I was still eight miles out when the stop-and-go started stopping and going. I took my feet off the pegs and skated my sneaks along the pavement to support the ’Shan.

  Some fishshit-stupid adrenaddict on a much cheaper crotchrocket shot past me toward the city’s entry, weaving in and out of traffic like a goon. Long dark hair streaked with bright blue whipped around the back of her helmet like a fly-fishing lure. My thumb traced the throttle and my bones hummed inside my body, but I had the self-control to stay put. I watched her disappear into the gridlock and wished her roadrash to match the brain damage she was going to have when someone in a much larger vehicle scraped her across the asphalt.

  As I was watching, the adrenaddict reared up onto her fat back tire and wheelied down the slick center stripe. Crying shame, wasting a body that looked that good in leather on a brain like that.

  “This is why you can’t have nice things,” I told her. “Or live to see old age.”

  Imagine my not-surprise when I pulled through the carved mountain-rock pillars of the Sharp Right Turn’s parking garage an hour later and found her cheap-ass Jasper parked in the moto section. I knew it was hers because there was a wide swipe of skidrash across the tank and the peg on that side had been ground down from sliding.

  I’d been planning to go straight up to J.D. Vance’s penthouse and order some room service, but once I saw the Jasper sitting there, I knew where its driver would be. She’d made it to the hotel alive, so she needed to celebrate. The minibar in her room wouldn’t be loud and annoying enough for someone like her, so she would be at the nightclub on the Sharp Right Turn’s balcony.

  So I checked in, almost sent the only baggage I’d brought with me—my helmet and ventilator—up to the rooms with a bellhop, then changed my mind. She wouldn’t have taken the time or consideration to send her gear up to her room. She would’ve headed straight for the club.

  I headed straight for the club, too, helmet and ventilator in hand, grinning like an addict on an adrenaline high.

  It took all of two seconds to spot her blue-streaked hair. Her helmet and ventilator were lying on the bar, forgotten, while she did flaming scall shots at the center of half a dozen hooping and hollering admirers. She was probably going to nail all of them at one point or another tonight.

  I ordered a coffee—the great thing about the Sharp Right Turn is that it stocks only real coffee straight from the O
ld Castle, none of that fake chicory stuff, so you don’t even have to specify when you order—and watched her from a table at the railing. I could’ve looked out into the growing darkness and watched the streetlights pop on down in the city below, illuminating little bulbs of nearly-rain mist, but if you’ve seen night falling on one city carved into a mountainside, you’ve seen night falling on them all.

  The adrenaddict wouldn’t come to me, not while she had a captive audience, so I decided to get some practice before I went after her.

  There are all sorts of books and articles out there that anyone with a reader or a reader app can—and frequently do—access to learn how to pick up women. Those books are all targeted at the same sort of gullible loser who also buys unfiltered water because the hippies say it’s good for their immune system. The truth is, picking up women is a numbers game. No matter how handsome, charming, or rich you are, for every nine women you start a conversation with, one will agree to go to your room. In fact, one is waiting for somebody to ask her to go to their room. The thing those losers reading the How-To books are so scared of—the thing they buy those damn books to learn how to avoid—is getting rejected by the other eight.

  I got the first rejection out of the way fast. Leaned toward the redhead at the table across from mine and said, “Hey, babe, want to go upstairs and blow me?”

  The redhead giggled like she couldn’t believe she’d heard me right, then went back to talking with her friends.

  “What about you?” I pointed at her fat friend. “You look like you’ve got something super-antibiotics can’t cure. Want to sexually transmit it to me?”

  “Och, fuck off.”

  I turned to the quiet blonde with them. She didn’t look comfortable at all in this crowd, probably insecure because of her big honkin’ nose.

  “All right, ugly duckling,” I said. “I guess it’s me and you.”

  The blonde sucked into herself like a mouse hiding in its hole, but the fat chick stepped up again.

  “Ah said fuck off,” she snapped. “Ah’ll go get the security guy.”

  I had to set my coffee down so I wouldn’t spill it from laughing too hard.

  Instead of going for SRT Security, they found a table on the other side of the room, away from the open air.

  Three rejections down. Time to get serious.

  I picked up my coffee and approached a standing table near the center of the club. The woman there was alone, scanning the faces.

  “You weren’t looking for me, were you?” I asked, turning on the shy-but-trying-to-come-out-of-my-shell expression.

  Like most people, her instinct was to make the introvert feel safe and welcome. She gave me a smile. “Maybe I was.”

  I laughed in a self-deprecating way and turned my chin down a little to communicate that I was incapable of thinking of myself as any better than the common ass-ugly mutie.

  “He’s tall, dark, and handsome, isn’t he? The guy you were actually looking for,” I said. For the record, I am all of those things and more. I shrugged. “It’s okay, you can admit it.”

  She smiled wider and bobbed her head back and forth in a gesture of Okay, you got me. “Well, maybe. But then I met this other good-looking fellow who seemed like he might be fun to hang out with.”

  Hang out with was code for Never have sex with. Rejection disguised as a compliment.

  I talked to her for a while longer just to see what kinds of conversational holes I could back her into. When my coffee ran out, I told her I’d be right back and headed for the bar. I wasn’t coming back.

  Honestly, I was growing bored with the whole enterprise—people are way too easy to manipulate—but I still had to rack up four more losses and a win, so I pressed on.

  I got rejections five and six out of the way while I was waiting for the bartender to brew me some fresh coffee, by first propositioning a woman who was obviously on a date, then by propositioning the man who had been whispering in her ear. Then I tried to talk up a guy who was trying desperately to pick up any woman at all. I don’t actually swing that way, but allowing yourself to fall into patterns based on your preferences is the fastest way to lead authorities straight to your front door. It’s best to mix things up now and then, keep people guessing.

  The adrenaddict was still at the bar, surrounded by her posse of overly loud admirers. Even after all the time and booze they’d wasted, none of those goons had gotten up the courage to seal the deal. I pushed through to where one was doing a belly shot off of her exposed midriff.

  I took her hand and pulled her up to sitting, scattering salt crystals onto her lap.

  “Hey!” yelled the goon who’d just finished his shot.

  “You’re the one who rode in on the algae-green Jasper?” I asked the adrenaddict. This close, her face looked soft and ethereal against her hair.

  Her perfect eyebrows crinkled. “Yeah. Is something wrong? I stuck my parking ticket to the tank when I parked. It should still be there. I’ve got the stub.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” I held up my helmet and ventilator. “I parked beside you and noticed your skidrash. Take a bad slide?”

  She grinned. Nothing adrenaddicts like more than telling war stories. “Some slug in a hot rod wasn’t looking where he was going, knocked me right between the wheels of a cargo carrier. I was in traction for a month, but my Jassie barely had a mark on her.”

  Sure, if you didn’t count those gigantic screaming scratches down the side.

  I rolled my eyes like the wreck wasn’t entirely her fault for being a fishshit moron and fucking around in the first place. She’d probably been driving with her eyes shut or something equally stupid.

  “Siltbrains think because they’re in a car or truck they own the road,” I said. “I had a close call the other day with my ’Shan.”

  “’Shan?” she asked, hazel eyes turning dark and hungry. “As in Mangshan?”

  I nodded. “Seven series.”

  “Seven? I’ve never seen a seven series in person.” She slid off the bar and grabbed her gear. “Can we?”

  It would be way too easy to be a serial killer.

  THE ADRENADDICT CIRCLED the ’Shan like she actually knew what she was looking at. “This thing is so virgin. Are you sure you rode it in?”

  “Yeah,” I said. This is what a bike looks like when you don’t fuck it up showboating. “I keep its regular detailing appointments.”

  “Man, so would I if I had something this nice.”

  She wouldn’t.

  The adrenaddict trailed her fingers across the ’Shan’s grips. Disgust bloomed in my stomach, but I kept the self-satisfied smirk she would expect to see from another member of her species on my face.

  She turned back to me, a quirk in her full lips. “Can we take it out?”

  “Nah, it’s still misting. I don’t take it out in the acid rain if I can help it.”

  She smiled and leaned back on the ’Shan’s seat, one hand on the handlebars, one on the rear fender in a practiced pose that pushed up her breasts while making her creamy stomach look flat and inviting. I admired the slice of heaven peeking out at the bottom of her shirt. I’ve got a thing for women’s tummies, and hers was exquisite—velvety café au lait skin, with one dark freckle just below her navel.

  “Maybe it won’t be raining in an hour or two,” she said. “We could go upstairs for a while.”

  That skin, those curves, that face—all absolutely wasted on that cream cheese she called a brain.

  I shook my head. “Nah, I don’t nail fat chicks.”

  The sultry smile faded away as what I’d said sank through her thick skull. “Fat? Fuck you, I’m not fat. I’m a size one!”

  “In Soam, maybe. Get off my ride before you bend the kickstand.”

  The adrenaddict screeched at me. She didn’t have the mental capacity to come up with a real response. Probably one too many concussions.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “Get off. Mangshans are custom built, and I don’t want to spend
a couple thousand bucks replacing parts because you’re too dumb to follow simple instructions.”

  “Asshole!” she squawked, coming off the seat like she’d been ejected. “I was on the cover of the last Motogirls!”

  “And I bet the fat-fondlers thought you were very sexy.”

  She gave another high-octave shriek, then turned on the ground-down heel of her motorcycle boot. Her leather-clad ass had just the right amount of jiggle when she stomped. I grinned as I watched it go.

  Halfway to the hotel’s parking garage entrance, she turned back and yelled, “Like you’re such a fucking catch! You’re the blubber-ass!”

  “Sour grapes,” I called.

  She screeched again and slammed her helmet against a mountain-rock pillar as she passed.

  I giggled. Once she got into the elevator headed upstairs, I fired up the ’Shan and moved it down a couple levels in the garage, then took the slipcover off of another bike and slid it onto mine. Wouldn’t want some crazy adrenaddict coming back later with a screwdriver and taking revenge, now would we?

  I checked my wristpiece on my way to the elevators.

  “Would you look at the time.” I chuckled and shook my head. “And me with work tomorrow!”

  THE BLOODSLINGER’S money popped up in my account at exactly one minute past seven the next morning. My wristpiece beeped with the notification the second it came through. I got up, showered, and had a leisurely breakfast in J.D. Vance’s penthouse while I did some cursory research and called around. My hunch was right on. All in all, it took me nineteen minutes to find a contact and set up a meeting, but I let Carina stew the rest of the day so she would feel like she was getting her money’s worth. I took the scenic drive back to Taern so I would be closer to her beloved Guild, then messaged her just before I went to sleep.

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