by Joey Ruff
Synder
A story of the Midnight Defenders
by Joey Ruff
I fastened the end of the rope to the rear bumper of the El Camino and tightened the noose around Seven’s neck. “Last chance,” I told him.
He wasn’t fucking listening. He was whimpering and sobbing like a bitch, blubbering all this bullshit like, “Jono…wait,” “Jono, please,” “I don’t know anything, Swyftt, I swear to fucking Zeus….”
I stared down at him a moment and then shook my head with a sigh. “I didn’t want to have to do this. I thought – maybe – just this once, we could do that little tit-for-tat shit we did back in the day. I throw you a little cash, you give me a few answers, and we go about like civilized fucking people, Seven.”
He didn’t answer, not coherently. He just spat more of the same gibberish. Something like, “If I knew anything, I’d tell you. You know me, Swyftt. Come on, just take this thing off, we can just talk…” I wasn’t really listening.
I opened the driver-side door and turned back to him. The engine was already idling. “Which hospital, Seven?”
“I got no fucking idea what you’re talking about,” he said in a mousey, falsetto whine.
With a roll of my eyes, I got in the car, popped her into gear and tore off down the alley. Nobody could hear him scream. Nobody was around to see him floundering around like an amateur water skier who didn’t know how to let go of the tow line. And even if someone did see, did hear, they wouldn’t help. Not in this neighborhood. It would look gang-related. Nobody dared get mixed up in that shit.
An old Zeppelin track played on the stereo as the car broke from the alley and fishtailed on to the main drag, charging onto the darkened avenue, narrowly missing the lamp post and the row of old, metal garbage cans. From the noise, Seven wasn’t as lucky.
In the rearview mirror, I could see his dark, tattered denim pants as his legs flapped awkwardly, twisting and turning like a bed sheet in the wind. I turned the radio down and could just make out Seven’s sad fucking sobs over the roar of the engine. I couldn’t help but smile. The fucking bastard had this coming.
Okay, maybe it was a bit extreme, but I was stressed. Being pressed for time will do that to a person.
After three blocks, I made a hard turn into the parking lot of a True Value, managing to slow to 75 as I bounced over the curb. The sun wouldn’t be up for another two hours, and the lot was empty except for the quiet, still figure that I pulled up beside.
As I got out, the figure approached, and I heard the voice of my partner, Ape, say, “This is a bit intense, Jono. Even for you.”
Ape’s real name was Terry Towers. The nickname he earned due to the inordinate amount of thick, coarse reddish-brown hair on his body and the fact he could bench press a small foreign car. The change happened at puberty; nobody really knew why.
“Fuck that,” I said as I moved past him to the rear of the vehicle. “Synder’s going to hit a hospital somewhere in this city in…oh, four hours. Desperate times, Ape.”
As I came around to the back end, I saw Seven wadded in a heap, lying on his side, his back to me, his fingers somehow woven between the rope and the raw flesh at his neck, his body quivering like one of those battery-operated back massagers.
“Are you ready to talk?” I asked. There was no emotion in my voice.
“Fuck you,” he said weakly, his voice barely more than a raspy whisper.
“Look. I know Synder’s your poker buddy or some bullshit, but he’s bringing war on a hospital, and somebody’s paying me a lot of money to make sure that doesn’t happen. I need to know which one he’s going for. Start talking.”
Silence.
I sighed deeply and said, “Right. Well, once more around the block then, shall we?”
As I moved to the cab, Ape touched my shoulder and his eyes looked earnestly into mine.
I took a step back.
Ape knelt next to Seven, and in a much gentler voice than I was probably capable of, he said, “Seven, please. You know what he will do to you if you don’t. He’s a loose cannon; I can’t control him, and I’d really rather not see you suffer any more of this…”
His words cut off as Seven rolled over to look at him. His ragged, scraped face was a patchwork of wet, red splotches and road gravel. I could have played checkers across his forehead. One eye was puffy, swollen, and nearly closed, the white of the other was a deep rouge. Patches of his hair were missing, including one of his eyebrows. Fuck. This was a guy who, on a good day, looked a bit like that actor Steve Buscemi, instead now he looked a little more like Leatherface in those Texas Chainsaw films.
Yeah, fine. Maybe I felt a bit guilty. Maybe I had gone a bit far. But what other choice did I have? It was him or a building full of sick innocents. Maybe I felt bad, but I wasn’t sorry.
Ape glanced back at me, and he started to say something, but he stopped. The look in his eye said it all: “Jono, what the fuck did you do?”
“Don’t look at me that way,” I said. “It’s just a flesh wound. He’s part goblin. The fucker will heal in a matter of hours.”
Ape stood and moved to the El Camino, reaching inside and grabbing one of the clean, black t-shirts I kept in there as spares – in my line of work, I tended to get dirty, what can I say. He produced a bottle of spring water – from where, I don’t know – and he dampened the shirt. Then he began to apply it to Seven’s wounds, dabbing it against his forehead. He looked up at me with a knowing look.
“This is fucking mental,” I said. “We don’t have time for this bollocks. If he doesn’t start talking soon, I’m going to….” I let the words trail off as I wandered over to the bed of the car and the large, black tool trunk that sat against the back of the cab –the kind you usually see in the bed of a pick-up. I opened one of the doors and I pulled out Glory.
Glory was an SG 550, a Swiss-made 5.6 mm assault rifle, over 3-and-a-half feet from toes to titties, that I kept on hand for when you absolutely, positively had to pump 700 rounds a minute into some sick, twisted sonuvabitch that won’t stay down on the first hit. She wasn’t loaded, but flashing her around like I was a fucking GI Joe doll was an intimidation tactic that worked more often than it didn’t.
I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve shunned frumious Bandersnatch. I’ve root out infestations of Lamia for squirts and giggles. I put the squeeze on troops of Orcs. And I drag half-goblins flailing and screaming through the darkened streets of Seattle by a noose from my bumper. I don’t have magical abilities to stop time or throw fire around like a cowboy lasso. I have Glory and her sisters and a few cases of ammo. I have my wits, savvy, and a truck full of luck.
Seven saw Glory, squealed, and then he must have pissed himself, because Ape stood suddenly, backing away and staring at the ground, a grotesque look of annoyance flashing across his face.
“Jono!!” Ape yelled, and fury took over as he leapt over Seven’s body to stand between us. “Put the gun down. Are you insane?”
“I need answers Ape. I need them fucking now, and I’m going to get them. I’d quite like you to step aside, mate, as I’d hate to have to go through you. But I will if you don’t back away.”
“Seven,” Ape said, not turning to look. “Seven, you’d better tell him. I’ve never seen him this way before. He’s serious. I’m sure I can talk him down if you just tell him what he wants to know. If you don’t tell him…he’s likely to kill us both.”
“Fuck it,” I said and stepped forward, elbowing Ape out of the way and pushed the end of Glory’s barrel in to Seven’s ear. “One,” I said forcefully.
Seven didn’t hesitate: “It’s Seattle Children’s Hospital. Oh my fucking gods…Let me go. Just fucking let me go now, Swyftt!!
You have to let me go. Seattle Children’s Hospital. Synder’s going after a doctor there, the one that bitch was running around with. That’s all I know, I swear to fucking Zeus…!”
The bitch he was talking about was my client, Esper. I’d only just met her a few hours before. She was paying me to stop Synder from turning some random hospital into ground zero.
My office was downtown, a small, one-room loft I rented from the building’s owner, Abe the Jew. Abe operated a Kosher deli and baked goods shop on the ground floor, called the place The Bagelry, and it was the perfect place to work if you liked smelling fresh bread all day.
That’s where she found me. She strolled in at ten minutes to five. Esper, the dame. Damsel in distress. Just shy of the five foot mark, she looked childlike and fragile.
Her black hair was cut in pixie fashion, and her ears stuck out prominently, slightly pointed and pierced with enough silver to lay out a pack of werewolves. She would have passed for a child, except for the hard edge in her painted, dark eyes. She even had the body of an eleven year old, save for the 36” bustline, as evidenced by the cleavage displayed from under the crisp, white button-up shirt that was part of the Catholic school girl ensemble she wore, complete with black tights under a plaid skirt.
I could tell she wasn’t human. There was just a glow to her, a haunting enchantment that followed her like perfume.
“If you were trying to find an outfit that wouldn’t draw attention,” I told her, “I think you missed the mark. That outfit actually invites men to stare at you.”
“You are Mister Swyftt?” she asked, ignoring me.
I nodded.
“My name is Esper. I…I need your help.”
“Well, you just caught me. It’s almost quitting time.”
“Quitting time?” The words sounded foreign on her tongue.
“Time for me to go home and stop working today.”
“I see,” she said. There was a far-away look in her eyes. “This is important, and I have come so far. You must hear what I have to say.”
I shuffled the papers on my desk, a couple of invoices I had been working on, and set them to the side. I took a long, healthy look at her. She was hauntingly beautiful. “You’re Seelie?” I asked.
She nodded.
I took a deep breath and said, “What the fuck…” She arched an eyebrow curiously at me. “But it’s after hours, so I’m getting a beer.” I crossed to the small refrigerator and pulled out a frosty long-neck. “You’ve, uh, come a long way. Would you like a drink?”
“Thank you, no,” she said. She was staring at me, focusing on me, watching me. It was like one of those old paintings where the eyes seemed to track your movement, except she actually was following me. It was creepy. “I would like to sit.”
“Go ahead,” I told her, cracking open the bottle. I turned away from her, throwing the cap into the trash, and as I turned back I said, “There’s a stool in the corner over…”
She was behind my desk, sitting in my chair. I sighed. I took a drag from the beer and said, “So…Esper. What seems to be the trouble?”
“Synder,” she said simply.
“Alright. But this isn’t therapy. I need more than a one-word answer.”
“Until recently, Mr. Swyftt, Synder was my lover.”
“I’m listening.” At the mention of the word “lover” I found my eyes wandering over the low neckline of the white shirt. I felt dirty as hell.
I didn’t normally feel dirty. I lived my life in the darkness. But when you start mentally undressing a creature that most in the western hemisphere would call a former Angel…well. Naughty.
Esper was a Seelie. She was one of the fair folk, the Fay, whom the ancient Celts termed the Sidhe. More popularly, she was known as a fairy. And here’s the part where I tell you, “Forget what you know about fairies. It’s all bullshit.”
The real story goes like this: at the dawn of time, there was a war in heaven between the gods. Depending on how you heard it, the war was between God and Lucifer, Uranus and Cronus, Marduk and Tiamut, Coatlique and Huitzilopochtli, or any number of others. Sides were drawn, and those who remained neutral were cast out of both camps, “demoted.” These were the Fay.
Having refused sides before, they tended to polarize these days, preparing to enlist with their favorite team come Armageddon. The Seelie, also known as Sprites, sided with the good, taking a name that meant “holy,” whereas the Korrigan were their darker counterparts, the ones that tended to prey upon humanity.
I didn’t much like Korrigan. But hunting them is what paid my bills.
“I have taken a new lover,” she said. “Now Synder is jealous.”
I saw where this was going. It wasn’t exactly my first domestic disturbance where the Fay were concerned. They were insatiably sex-starved. Most of the characters in Greek myth were Korrigan or something similar. “And so now you need me to stop the old boyfriend from making a chew toy of the new one?”
“Yes.”
“Ain’t that just great.” I took a drag of beer. “I take it that Synder is Korrigan?”
She nodded. “He is a centaur.”
“Of course he is. I don’t see the attraction, love. What does that make you?”
She stood, came around the desk, and pulled down her tights.
“I guess the carpet matches the drapes,” I said with a smirk. The same thick, silken, raven-colored hair on her head covered both legs, leaving not a trace of skin. And I thought Ape was hairy. “So then, you’re one of those European girls?”
“I am a Faun, Mr. Swyftt.” Which is to say, a half-goat forest spirit.
Much to my chagrin, she pulled the tights back up and slipped back into my chair like nothing strange had just happened. Sure, I’d seen weirder, but looking at her, those eyes, those…very large eyes. If I hadn’t just seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. Hell, even after seeing, I still had a hard time believing.
“Alright,” I said, forcing my head to stay in the game. “Centaur Synder is going after…who?”
“His name is Kevin Hastings. He is half-elf.”
“Right,” I said. “And the two of you met online?”
“We met at an art exhibit downtown. He is a doctor, and I fear that Synder has learned which hospital he works at. He is planning an attack. It will happen tomorrow. 8 a.m.”
“Alright. Fine. Which hospital does your boyfriend work at?”
“I do not know.”
“You don’t know?” I said, a bit skeptical. “That’s just fucking great. How long have you been seeing Kevin?”
“Three weeks.”
“And it never came up?”
“We talk little about work, Mr. Swyftt. Our relationship is almost purely physical.”
There were about a million things that went through my head with that comment, and none of those involved work either. At least a few involved a Tijuana donkey show. I understood her point.
“Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll take care of Synder. But I’m not running a bloody charity.”
“I understand. I am prepared to pay you. I have ten thousand dollars.”
I took a swig of beer and nearly spat it out. After choking a little, I managed to swallow it. “That’s umm...that should cover it.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Swyftt. I am worried about Kevin. I did not know how to contact him. I feel better now, knowing that you are on the case.”
“Rest easy,” I told her, finishing the beer. “I got a guy who gives me answers.”
Typically, those answers didn’t require so much effort, but once I got the location from Seven, the rest seemed like it would be downhill. I mean, fuck. One centaur? Please.
We pulled onto Sand Point Way and approached Seattle Children’s Hospital just after seven. The sun hadn’t quite risen, and the lights in the parking lot shone with a mystical quality.
“You’re sure the attack’s at 8 a.m.?” Ape asked.
I nodded. “That’s what Esper said.”
“Because you’re a paranoid arse.”
“We shouldn’t have stopped for breakfast.”
“Hospital food is shit.” I turned into the drive and approached the Giraffe entrance, the metal framework necks peeking over the lip of the roof and from the center bushes almost cryptically.
“Slow down,” Ape said.
“There’s nothing fucking there; we’re early.”
He grabbed my arm and pointed to the shadows surrounding the front door. I slowed down.
On either side of the entrance, a pair of eyes glimmered in the dim light. Nothing else could be seen.
“What is it?” I asked quietly.
Ape shrugged. “Shades, maybe,” he said. “Or Tengu. Either way, we’re late.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Why?” Ape asked. “Because the faun told you differently? Maybe she had bad information.”
I continued down the short drive and looped around the fountain, trying to ignore the pairs of eyes and instead to appear lost. “Maybe Synder’s on Mountain time?” I mused. As I drove away from the building, I looked into the rearview, noticing the eyes still fixed in place, unblinking.
“So now what? Parking garage?” I offered.
“The Whale Entrance will be guarded, too,” he said. “And Emergency.”
“You’re starting to annoy the shit out of me. How do we get in?” I hit the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. “Pisses me off. We were supposed to beat him here.”
“You’re making ten thousand dollars for this, Swyftt. How easy does it have to be?”
I sneered at him.
Suddenly, he said, “Let me out here.”
“Gladly,” I said and stopped the car.
“Find a spot to park and approach quietly.” I nodded. “Jono,” he said. “Quietly.”
He was out of the car and I drove past the first parking ramp towards the entrance to Emergency. I stole a glance in the mirror and noticed Ape had already disappeared from sight.
It didn’t take me long to find a spot, and I parked the car, got out of it slowly, quietly, holstered my Glocks on my belt, and strapped Grace to my leg.