by Ari Marmell
“It didn’t have to go down this way, Mick,” he said. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Ah, sure it did. You weren’t gonna walk outta here even if I had promised to leave you alone, anyway.”
Well, he might have, if I’d actually taken a true oath to that effect; but we’d both known that wasn’t gonna happen.
He slipped what I took, at first, to be a Colt .32 Police Positive from his coat pocket (and where the hell had that been while he was changing shape?). “You’ll make a lotta noise with that,” I warned. “You sure you wanna attract that kinda… Aw, crap.”
Because it was then that I noticed the barrel was blackened brass, the cylinder bronze. And once I’d recognized the weapon as Elphame-make, I caught just a whiff of its power on the air. Damn thing wasn’t just a roscoe, but a wand as well.
Probably not as good as the Luchtaine & Goodfellow—most hybrid models ain’t—but also probably good enough.
For a few heartbeats we locked stares, wands at hand, a peculiar echo of Old West gunslingers. And simultaneously, we both leaped aside in opposite directions, throwing magic as we dove.
I heard Goswythe crash painfully into the filing cabinet with bone-bruising force, his feet having got tangled in the same sheets that’d tripped Celia up earlier. But I wasn’t in any position to gloat over it, since the pocket on my coat had snagged on the bathroom doorknob, yanking me to a halt as I moved and slamming me back into the wall—to say nothing of ripping an ugly, ragged hole in my favorite coat!
Wincing at the sharp twinge shooting through my shoulder blade—I shouldn’t have hit the wall hard enough to hurt, but that’s misfortune for you—I dropped to the carpet and crawled for the desk, L&G clenched in my teeth. I heard Goswythe scrabbling across the floor on the opposite side; this office really ain’t big enough for a showdown…
A rat, big and brown and ugly, shot past the desk like a bullet in a fur stole, making a beeline for the bathroom. I wasn’t entirely sure if the critter could squeeze through the gap under the door, but I was pretty sure I didn’t wanna wait and find out.
Fucking shapeshifters.
Already on the floor, I grabbed my chair by the supports, right by two of the wheels, and threw myself forward, slamming it down. My rapier, which had been lying flat across the seat, went bouncing and sliding off across the carpet.
The rat skittered aside at the last second, chattering obscenely, but I’d driven it away from the bathroom. Since the chair had swiveled as it hit the floor, pivoting so it was lying back down, I shoved it forward, driving the edge under the door. If nothing else, maybe it’d block the rat from squeezing through.
Except it wasn’t a rat anymore. Once more an old man, Goswythe stood over me, wand leveled. I tried to roll aside, but there wasn’t much of anywhere to go. I could literally feel shreds of luck unraveling from around me as I struggled to dodge the worst of the blast. I slammed my knee painfully into the leg of the desk, froze for just a heartbeat at the flash of pain…
Goswythe stepped to the side and gave the desk a vicious shove. And thanks to the ugly things he’d just done to my fortunes, the screws holding that leg in place broke loose. It teetered, creaking and groaning, and then the entire dingus came crashing down across my legs, pinning me nice and tight.
And friggin’ painful. Did I mention painful?
My heavy steel typewriter came sliding off the surface to slam into the carpet, and I just yanked my head far enough aside that I didn’t wind up with a letter written across my face.
I heard the hammer click back on the phouka’s .32, and realized, now that he had me dead to rights, he was willing to risk the noise. It’d only take a single shot, too; sure, the slug itself probably wouldn’t kill me, but it’d put me down long enough for him to finish the job in a dozen different ways.
Turns out that the fear of death makes for a pretty good motivator to focus past the pain in your legs and back, no matter how severe.
I clutched my wand in what I tried hard not to think of as a deathgrip, and sat up quick, my empty hand reaching for the fallen furniture. Goswythe came round the desk, heater raised, and his blinkers went comically wide as he saw me yanking a sawed-off double-barrel from the bottom drawer. He actually went pinwheeling off to one side as the shotgun roared, sending two loads of buckshot and a thick cloud of smoke into the office.
All this in spite of the fact that I don’t keep a shotgun in my desk.
Goswythe probably recognized the illusion for what it was, sensing the magic and the deception before he’d finished his leap—and if he hadn’t, the complete lack of damage to the wall behind him would sure have given the game away. But it bought me the extra time I needed to yank myself free and lift myself into a crouch. My knee screamed under me, but I ignored it.
The place was quiet, the banging from inside the bathroom long stopped. Again we paused, one of us on either side of what was rapidly becoming an ex-desk, each waiting for the other to make a move. And here I had the advantage; this was my place, familiar to me as the inside of my own eyelids. I listened, really listened, for any squeak, any clatter, anything that wasn’t part and parcel of the office’s normal chorus.
The faintest muffled creak of floorboard beneath carpet, and I had him. I knew precisely where he was.
Taking the wand in my teeth again, I lifted that typewriter in both hands and chucked it over the desk.
I heard a nasty thump, a cry of pain, and a loud bang! as the .32 went off. A chunk of plaster exploded from the far wall, and I was up and running long before the bits of powdery white began settling into the carpet. I dove across the floor, sliding a little, one hand outstretched toward the rapier that’d gone flying earlier, the other once again wrapped around my L&G.
Goswythe rose from behind the desk, one hand pressed to his bleeding scalp, the other aiming his weapon right for me. His finger was curled tight on the trigger, and I was pretty sure he was about to start squirting lead, not magic.
Which was fine, since it was about what I’d expected. I raised my own wand and threw everything I had through it.
Not at him, but at the gat.
It ain’t nearly as easy to gum up the works on an Elphame gun as one of yours. We been over it already: ours may look more or less the same, but they work on magic, not springs and catches and whatnot. Nevertheless, there’s a balance of power and forces inside that, with the right mystical nudge and more’n a little touch of bad luck, can be unbalanced.
He pulled the trigger, and the gun made a satisfying click. He’d barely gotten the first of what was undoubtedly a whole caravan of curses through his yap when I was up and lunging. My knee almost gave out from under me, but I made it across the room.
I felt the tip of the rapier slow as it punched through something solid. Blood—a lot more thin and watery than human, or aes sidhe for that matter—splattered across the office, my coat, my face. It wasn’t a fatal hit, not on a phouka; just ’cause some of ’em learn to look human don’t mean they keep their organs in the same place inside. But I knew it had to hurt.
He spun away from me, toppling, his roscoe falling at my feet. I saw him reaching out his arms to catch himself and moved in behind, ready to finish him—or at least make sure he stayed down for a good long while.
Except Goswythe had other plans. And I’ll tell you square, he suckered me. I thought I’d hurt him worse’n I had, thought I’d knocked the fight from him.
When he started to fall, what he’d stretched out were hands; by the time they hit the carpet, they were hooves. I had just about an eyeblink to comprehend that I was staring right at the ass end of a sorrel-spotted Clydesdale that had to weigh over a ton…
Before the friggin’ thing bent forward and kicked me square in the chest with both back legs.
Ribs cracked and I completely left the floor, sailing in a disturbingly graceful arc across the room. The whole world seemed to slow down, and I actually had the time to marvel (albeit grudgingly) at Goswythe’s creat
ivity, and to note sourly that I was gonna owe Soucek a thick roll of lettuce to pay for the repairs, before I slammed into and through the office door. Slivered wood, shattered glass, and a bent brass hinge rained down around me as I crashed down awkwardly in the hall.
I actually bounced right back to my feet and managed a few stumbling steps before the deep bruises, the cracked bones, and the thousand-and-one splinters and lacerations all punched through the adrenaline and proceeded to stomp up and down on my brain. Only about a pace or so back into the office, I dropped to my knees like I was about to lay my head on the block. I had the L&G in one hand, a random shard of wood that I didn’t even remember grabbing in the other, and it actually took me a few ticks to tell which was which.
Guess it coulda been worse, though. At least Goswythe couldn’t create horseshoes.
And the phouka wasn’t doing too much better’n me. He didn’t even have room to turn around with his current bulk—hell, his transformation alone had shoved the broken desk even further across the room—so he shifted yet again back to his old-man shape, twisting toward me in the process. One step, one more, and then he also collapsed, hand clutching the uneven, bleeding wound where I’d run him through.
Both of us on the floor, neither quite ready or able to tap into whatever reserves we had left, we settled briefly for trying to stare each other to a pulp.
Then his gaze shifted, and we recognized right about the same time that he was now a lot closer to the bathroom than I was. He grinned at me through blood-slick teeth.
“Just let her go,” I wheezed—begged?—as he started to crawl. “Let her make her own choice.”
“She’s mine,” he gasped back, barely audible. “And you know what she’d pick.”
“Only ’cause she believes that bunk you shoveled. Why don’tcha see what she decides when you tell her what really happened?”
His steady slither hitched to the side as he shrugged. “Don’t know what really happened. Don’t care how they got her. They gave her to me; that’s all that matters.” He pulled up short, then, peering first at the bathroom door, then back at me, a growing suspicion furrowing his brow.
“Ah, c’mon,” I said, starting to drag myself further into the room. “The acoustics in this place? I mean, what’re the odds she actually heard every word you just said through that door?”
Pretty damn slim, in fact; almost impossible.
And you know by now how much I love playing with “almost.” Such as, for instance, that little extra twist of luck I wove when I gummed up the lock. Sometimes I’m so clever I could just shake my own hand, if it wouldn’t look so awkward.
His whole body shaking, now—with pain, worry, anger, who knows?—Goswythe wrapped all ten fingers around the doorknob and hauled himself upright. He kept his grip briefly, probably struggling to focus long enough to make the lock’s tumblers slip back into place, and then yanked the door open. He staggered, nearly fell…
Then he did fall, his watery blood gushing from a brand-new scalp wound as a red-faced Celia brained him with the shower-curtain rod.
“You fucking bastard!” Tears enough to hold a baptism rolled down cheeks already growing puffy, and her sobs racked her whole body until I thought for sure she’d just collapse. She didn’t look like a young woman anymore, but a lost little girl—except for the tin rod, already bent and mangled, she was using to bludgeon the foster father who’d duped her.
“Celia, dollface…” Goswythe shoulda known better than to even try talking, since it just bought him a rap across the mouth rather than the head. Again she hit him, and again, until the curtain rod fell from her shaking fingers—and then she just switched to pounding him with her fists.
“Enough!” The phouka actually roared, his jaw and his yap distending to produce the sound, startling her back a step. He clambered to his feet once more and slapped her hard across the face. “You don’t ever raise a hand to me, kitten! I—”
“Hands off, pal!” I was standing myself, now, and that long sliver of wood I’d picked up was gone, replaced by the rapier I’d recovered from the wreckage. It, and my wand, were both pointing right at him. I’m impressed with myself, too; I managed to keep both of ’em from trembling.
“We’re finishing this, are we?” he asked softly.
“Imagine we’d better,” I said, hoping against hope that he’d run outta steam before I did. “We—”
At which point, Celia—who I guess didn’t precisely need rescuing—produced a shard of broken mirror, one end wrapped in a hand towel, and shivved Goswythe in the side.
He screamed and lashed out with a brutal backhand, but this time she’d seen it coming and jumped aside. I think he really wanted to go after her, but that woulda meant turning his back on me.
I decided about that point to rethink my methods of interacting with the girl; maybe I oughta be a little more careful about getting her angry. Though I did wish she coulda come up with a way of arming herself that didn’t involve dismantling my bathroom.
(She had to have been really furious to risk breaking the mirror to arm herself. I mean, she was human, so it wasn’t the same kinda bad luck to her that it woulda been to us—but still, she’d been raised by Fae. It couldn’t have come easy.)
The three of us stood ready, each of us nerving ourselves up for whatever was coming next—except that not a one of us was prepared for what did come next.
An ear-smashing crack sounded from the hallway outside, making everybody jump. I took the risk of looking away from Goswythe long enough to lean back, craning my head to see out. As though in solidarity with my office door, the one to the stairway had blown open with matching force, splitting at the latch and sending chunks of plaster sifting down from the wall where it hit. Footsteps and voices echoed from the stairwell, and a half-dozen guys came pouring into the hall. Every one of ’em was dressed in a snazzy three-piece, and every one of ’em was packing a goddamn Tommy gun.
And standing in the lead, veins bulging in his head and teeth gritted hard enough to grind concrete, was Fino “the Shark” Ottati. Archie Echoes followed right behind him, and if he wasn’t looking as hot under the collar, well, he seemed ready enough to do whatever it was they’d come to do.
You ever stare down the pipe of one Chicago typewriter, let alone six of ’em? It’s fucking scary. I may not kick off as easy as most of you fellas, but getting chewed up by one of those bastards ain’t something I’m eager to try. It might not finish me off, but I’m pretty sure I’d never be pretty again. So you better believe I made like a snowman. Across the office, Goswythe did the same, while Celia…
Actually, I didn’t see Celia anymore. Apparently, soon as the commotion started, she’d ducked back into the bathroom.
Smart girl. Right now, I kinda wished I was in there with her.
“You fucking bastard!” her father shrieked at me. (I decided now wasn’t the time to chuckle over the “like father, like daughter” cursing.) “You stupid, fucking leccacazzi! What the fuck have you done?!”
“I—” Which is about as far as I got before I figured out that Fino Ottati wasn’t expecting much of an answer. His face went red; Archie’s lips and left shoulder twitched in what mighta been an apologetic shrug, or just a nervous tic.
Three of the choppers opened up, and I had a lot more to repair than just the door and the desk.
I hurled myself aside, but not quite fast enough. A .45 slug punched through my left hip, spinning me completely around in the air as I was toppling and spraying blood and bits of muscle in a wake behind me. I slammed hard to the floor, crying out, and felt my tongue bleeding from where I’d bit down. Pieces of my desk pretty much just ceased to exist, and my sheets and mattress turned into cheap fishing nets. Smoke choked the room in an early indoor sunset; my ears rang with the rapid tak-tak-tak of the Tommies, the thump of slugs setting up shop in the walls, and a constant gong that I realized only later had been the sound of more slugs ricocheting off my steel filing cabinet.
&nbs
p; Huddled as small as I could get, hands over my head, I glanced across the office, through the disintegrating desk, and saw that Goswythe was down. I couldn’t tell exactly where he’d been clipped, but I saw the blood pool seeping into and spreading out through the carpet around him. He was alive—I saw him moving—but even if he was feeling inclined to help me out against a common enemy, he wasn’t in much shape to do it.
After about sixteen or seventeen years that probably weren’t actually too much more’n that many seconds, the gats quit coughing long enough for Fino and a couple of his boys to step into the room and take stock. The Shark was ranting and spitting so much that I was floored he hadn’t just keeled over for lack of air, but he’d switched over to Italian, and I wasn’t much in a state of mind to focus on what he was saying. Instead, I gathered my good leg up under me so I could move, tried to steady the L&G long enough to get off a few shots at the Tommies, peeped down at my busted hip, which was still bleeding and…
Smoking? The wound was smoking?
No, not the wound. The pocket of my overcoat. Something inside was burning. I racked my brain, wondering what could possibly…
Oh. Yeah, that actually kinda made sense.
I heard a couple of bolts yanked back, knew the choppers were about to open up again—and then I heard, instead of shots, a pair of gasps, one from the door, the other from the bathroom.
Drawn by the sudden pause in the lead thunderstorm, Celia had poked her head out for a quick peek—and her father had seen her. Ottati’s peepers shimmered like he was about to cry, and for a couple heartbeats, everyone and everything froze.
And that gave me those heartbeats to think.
Orsola. It’d been Bianca’s lock of hair that’d spontaneously combusted in my pocket, and it wasn’t too hard to tumble why. The witch musta used it to divine where I was, maybe even that I’d found the girl; no wonder she’d finally been willing to give it up. Probably shoulda seen it coming, if I wasn’t so friggin’ worn out and looking nineteen directions at once. So now she’d sent her son, and she wanted to make sure I couldn’t use the hair in my own magics. But could she really have done that from—?