A number of them banged bare hands on the robo-taxi’s windows as we pulled up to the curb, yelling at us before it opened its doors.
I hadn’t bothered to check out the news feeds that morning, so I looked at my brother Jon, quirking an eyebrow, when I saw more hands banging on the taxi as we passed, faces staring blankly, as if trying to see us through the one-way glass.
I’d talked him and Cass into coming with me to New York.
“What’s this all about?” I said, when Jon didn’t respond to my look. “Any idea?”
“What’s this all about? Are you serious, Al?” He grunted, giving me an incredulous look. “They’re Third Mythers. Seer’s rights groups. There’s probably some Christian-fanatic types in the mix, too… the ones who want to send all seers to a desert island somewhere so they can blow it up. Jesus. Do you ever watch the news feeds anymore?”
“Sometimes,” I said, a little defensively.
Next to me, Cass laughed, a little too loud. She was watching and listening to something on her headset, so probably only got the high-level gist of what we were saying.
I looked at Jon. “So? What happened? What are they pissed about this time?”
Still scowling, my brother shrugged, staring out the window, his hazel eyes flickering back and forth as he took in faces and signs as we passed along the curb.
“They’re talking about lifting regs for import of seers for business purposes,” he said. “They want to open up the number of permits issued for corporate ownership. Get rid of all the caps, essentially. The argument is that California businesses are losing a competitive edge by limiting the number of seers in tech.”
My brother’s jaw firmed as he continued to stare out the robo-taxi windows, enough that I knew he wasn’t in favor of the law change, either.
Jon definitely fell more into the “seer’s rights” camp than any of the others he’d listed––and he stood diametrically opposed to those groups that wanted seers exterminated, or even those who wanted them barred from entering the country.
At the same time, he wouldn’t be thrilled with corporations bringing more of them in as “slaves,” as he termed it––even if it might help the California economy.
I couldn’t really disagree with him on any of it, but I got exhausted trying to follow all of that stuff on the media, whereas Jon had a tendency to get a bit obsessive.
He shrugged, still staring out at the crowd.
“They just voted for removing all import restrictions yesterday. Apparently it was a huge majority in the California State Legislature who voted for it,” he added, glancing at me. “Some are accusing them of being bought off by Black Arrow and some of the other big defense contractors. A bunch of previously pro-population control types flipped at the last minute. It looked pretty iffy, honestly.”
He glanced at me a second time, his mouth grim.
“They’re mostly worried about China. They use seers for everything over there. Most of the tech companies are competing directly with Asia now, and there’s a shit-ton of corporate espionage against our companies here.”
I nodded, but now I was looking out the window too, tensing as more hands hit the glass. I saw the sign for our airline’s drop-off point rapidly approaching. Angry faces contorted as they chanted, a lot of them yelling loudly enough I could make out their words.
“THREE RACES! THREE FACES OF GOD!”
“CHILDREN OF THE NEPHILIM BELONG NOT WITH MEN!”
“NO MORE SLAVES FOR WALL STREET!”
One problem with driverless taxis––their doors open when they get to their destination, regardless of what’s waiting for you on the other side. To the robo, the people outside our taxi could have been helpful airline porters, I guess, waiting to take our luggage.
Instead, it was an angry mob of Third Myth and racial purity fanatics, holding signs attached to metal pipes, chanting about the world ending and sending all seers back to Asia.
“Well, this is awesome,” my brother Jon muttered, as the door slid open automatically in front of him. Glancing over his shoulder at me, he quirked his lips in a frown, raising his voice as the crowd’s shouts and chants filled the back of the taxi. “Thanks for this, Al. Looking like this trip’s going to be just a barrel of fucking monkey laughs already.”
I snorted a laugh; I couldn’t help it.
“You’re just pissed Troy wouldn’t come,” I accused, grinning.
“Of course,” he grunted. “It has nothing at all to do with New York being a oligarchical, fascist stronghold filled with slaveowners, corporate criminals and rich assholes.”
That time, it was Cass who burst out in a laugh. Giving Jon a mock-reproachful look, she pursed red-lipsticked lips, rolling her eyes.
“You’re not going to go all political-conspiracy guy this weekend, are you, brother Jonathan? ‘Cause that’s going to seriously grate on my happy.” Making a mock pouty face, she widened her eyes into her affected doe-eyed look. “How can someone so hot be gay and angry at the same time? Does God hate me?”
That time, I broke out in a real laugh.
Ignoring Cass, Jon gave me a flat look.
“You owe me for this, little sis,” he grunted. “Big time.”
He didn’t wait for my reply, but grabbed the edges of the open door with muscular hands and yanked himself up and out of the cab, straightening to his full height and squaring his shoulders as he glanced around at the crowd.
The nearest crush of protesters grew instantly quieter.
I smiled ruefully, shaking my head as I saw some of the more aggressive of the bunch backing off once they got a good look at my brother. Glancing at Cass, who was sitting next to me on the robo-taxi’s seat, I grinned when she broke into another laugh.
She nudged my arm, pushing me to get out after him.
“Grab our luggage,” she urged. “You know how these robo-assholes are. It might take off before we can empty it out.”
I knew she was right. Sighing a bit, I followed Jon out the door.
A few of the protesters were still glaring up at Jon resentfully as Cass and I climbed out, but most of them had already moved on, giving him the ground without making a lot of eye contact.
I walked to the back of our taxi, hitting the button to open the trunk. As I yanked out the first piece of luggage I saw, which happened to be Jon’s, most of the people holding signs were gathering around the doors of two human-driven cars pulling up behind us.
My brother, Jon, isn’t all that big really.
He’s not someone who looks “scary” in the conventional sense, either.
He’s tall, and muscular, but not super buffed out––more lean and mean, with broad shoulders and an erect, confident stance. He’s also got a presence, I guess you could say. Almost two decades of hard-core martial arts training can do that to a person. I’d lost track of how many black belts Jon had earned at that point, but I knew it was a lot.
Moreover, he knew how to wield the psychological side of his training––not so much by being threatening, but by exuding a kind of calm, no-bullshit thing that most people looking for a fight instinctively side-stepped.
I wish some of his angry-mob-control mojo would rub off on me.
I flinched when a bottle exploded against the side of the limousine directly behind us. Jon, who’d been helping me empty out the robo-taxi’s trunk, turned his head, frowning as he saw airline security rush the line of protesters, wearing anti-riot gear and holding shields.
“This is going to get ugly,” he muttered. “We need to get inside.”
Nodding, I threw a bag over my shoulder by its canvas strap, then reached down to grab one of Cass’s six bags and the handle of my roller bag. My beat-up suitcase was so old the wheels were practically square. It had faded from green to a kind of mottled, diseased gray.
Jon grabbed two more of Cass’s bags and she managed the rest.
“I’m not even going to ask what’s in all of these,” I said to her, rolling my eyes.
“What exactly are you preparing for, Cassandra?” Jon grunted. “An apocalypse that wipes out women’s shoe stores, and vaporizes multi-colored glitter hair spray?”
Laughing in spite of myself, I felt strangely cheered––and more than a little grateful I’d invited my friends along for this trip. Jon might be my adoptive brother, but he was also one of my two closest friends, Cass being the other. Cass was basically family, too, given that we’d known one another more or less since we were in diapers.
Watching her stand there, hip jutted in her silver-sparkly miniskirt and thigh-high red vinyl boots, I also couldn’t help but grin.
Cass was Cass. I loved her for being so unapologetically who she was, and not giving a damn what anyone else thought of her. It was something I envied in her, truthfully, among other things––not the least of which being that she was drop-dead gorgeous.
As if reading my mind, she sucked in her cheeks in a mock-kissy face. Jutting her hip more, she lifted one arm in a graceful arc.
“You want to be me, don’t you?” she said, throwing out the arm in dramatic flair.
I laughed. “Not if it means I have to sleep with Jack.”
“You wish you could be so lucky!”
I grimaced, only half in jest. “No, really. I don’t.”
She rolled her eyes, but I saw the grin teasing the edge of her bright red lips. Her lipstick exactly matched the dyed scarlet tips of her jet-black hair, which she had half up and half down, wrapped in a series of complicated light-sticks that had a virtual component. They lit up her hair in multi-colored pulses, shimmering like waves on an ocean.
Cass always joked she was a mutt, but she mostly looked Thai.
Her mom looked white with some Thai, and her dad looked Thai but supposedly had some other ethnicity in him, too, from some part of Africa. Whatever precise mixture made her up, Cass’s genes managed to take all of that and turn it into something that made heads turn to look at her, no matter where we went.
I kind of hated her for it.
I also kind of felt sorry for her because of it.
Since we’d known one another for forever, I knew that her being that hot was a mixed blessing, to say the least.
Even as I thought it, I saw a guy in a dark blue business suit staring openly at her breasts, which were currently straining a bright pink shirt emblazoned with a space ship and, ironically, the words, “THIS ISN’T MY FACE, DIPSHIT.”
Like I said––mixed blessing.
I felt eyes on me suddenly.
I turned, looking for the source.
Three men stood at the edge of the crush of protesters, but they weren’t shouting. They weren’t screaming or holding pipes or flashing virtual signs at the curb or at people trying to get inside the terminal. They also weren’t dressed like airport employees.
They were staring at me.
Motionless, they stood all in a line, wearing dark colors.
The one in front had a slicked-back blonde ponytail and strangely blocky face, almost like he wore implants that hadn’t taken right. The shape of his jaw and cheeks left him looking like an ex-boxer who got his face seriously messed up in one too many fights.
Apart from that, his whole demeanor exuded wealth, and a kind of easy comfort with his physical presence, which bordered on intimidating. I guessed him at late forties, maybe early fifties. His small blue eyes stared at me, lips pursed as if he were trying to figure me out––or maybe like he knew me, like he’d seen me somewhere before. His black suit looked expensive, as did the silk shirt and tie he wore underneath.
He wore a high-end headset that shone a faint green color, like the type I only ever saw on guys who worked downtown.
Still staring at me, he folded his large hands in front of him, almost in a prayer position. His fingers flashed as he did, drawing my eyes to the rings he wore. I noted the wraparound monitor he wore on his wrist, also high-end and blinking with pale blue lights.
He definitely had money.
I was still staring at him when he bowed to me.
That’s what it looked like––like an Asian-style bow.
His prayer hands came apart when the bow finished.
Feeling my jaw harden, I looked at his two friends.
Each of them wore black, long-sleeved T-shirts and black jeans. One wore a dark green vinyl jacket, the other, what looked like real leather. The one in the green vinyl had a shaved head and a long, braided beard. His black T-shirt had a virtual symbol on the front that kept changing colors, some kind of spiral pattern I recognized from a few of the Third Myther signs being waved over the crowd.
His friend had long, reddish-brown, curly hair and a face so covered with freckles his complexion looked ruddy. Despite the antique-looking jacket, which had to be worth a few thousand dollars at least, he looked like someone you’d run into in a biker bar.
Neither of those two bowed to me.
I stared between the three of them, trying to decide what unnerved me about them. They looked strangely uniform, yet on the surface, nothing about them fit. They didn’t fit with one another. They didn’t fit with the other protesters.
They didn’t fit with the scene going on at the curb.
That bow from the blonde guy in front definitely didn’t fit.
He looked like he belonged in the board room of some tech company. The bald guy looked European to me––something about the cut of his jacket and his beard, as well as the tattoos I saw on his neck, which weren’t in English. Next to all that writing, a black and green dragon climbed up one side of his neck.
The red-haired, biker-ish guy looked like––well, a biker.
There was something off with all three of them, together and individually.
Reflexively, I looked over my shoulder, sure they must be staring at something or someone other than me. All I saw was the robo-taxi pulling away from the curb, presumably after Jon used his headset and barcode to pay and release it.
When I looked back at the three men, they were still staring at me.
Ponytail guy in front was smiling now.
Jon nudged me while I was still looking at them.
“Come on. Let’s get inside.”
Without following my eyes to the men, he jerked his head sideways, indicating towards the glass terminal doors. Cass followed behind him, hips swaying over the four-inch heels of her boots as her head bobbed to something she was listening to through her headset.
I looked away from the three men long enough to glance at my friends, then to hike the canvas strap of the bag I carried higher up on my shoulder.
When I looked back at the space where they’d been, they were gone.
I saw another man standing there now.
WANT TO READ MORE?
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NEW YORK
(A Bridge & Sword Novel)
Books in the Alien Apocalypse Series
(Recommended Reading Order)
THE CULLING (Part I)
THE ROYALS (Part II)
THE NEW ORDER (Part III)
THE REBELLION (Part IV)
THE RINGS FIGHTER
Books in the Vampire Detective Midnight Series
(Recommended Reading Order)
VAMPIRE DETECTIVE MIDNIGHT (Book #1)
EYES OF ICE (Book #2)
THE PRESCIENT (Book #3)
FANG & METAL (Book #4)
THE WHITE DEATH (Book #5)
Books in the Quentin Black Mystery Series
(Recommended Reading Order)
BLACK IN WHITE (Book #1)
Kirev’s Door (Book #0.5)
BLACK AS NIGHT (Book #2)
Black Christmas (Book #2.5)
BLACK ON BLACK (Book #3)
Black Supper (Book #3.5)
BLACK IS BACK (Book #4)
BLACK AND BLUE (Book #5)
Black Blood (Book
#5.5)
BLACK OF MOOD (Book #6)
BLACK TO DUST (Book #7)
IN BLACK WE TRUST (Book #8)
BLACK THE SUN (Book #9)
TO BLACK WITH LOVE (Book #10)
BLACK DREAMS (Book #11)
BLACK OF HEARTS (Book #12)
BLACK HAWAII (Book #13)
Books in the Bridge & Sword Series
(Recommended Reading Order)
New York (Bridge & Sword Prequel Novel #0.5)
ROOK (Bridge & Sword #1)
SHIELD (Bridge & Sword #2)
SWORD (Bridge & Sword #3)
Revik (Bridge & Sword Prequel Novel #0.1)
SHADOW (Bridge & Sword #4)
KNIGHT (Bridge & Sword #5)
WAR (Bridge & Sword #6)
BRIDGE (Bridge & Sword #7)
Trickster (Bridge & Sword Prequel Novel #0.2)
The Defector (Bridge & Sword Prequel Novel #0.3)
PROPHET (Bridge & Sword #8)
A Glint of Light (Bridge & Sword #8.5)
DRAGON (Bridge & Sword #9)
The Guardian (Bridge & Sword #0.4)
SUN (Bridge & Sword #10)
Other books by JC AndriJeski
Angels in L.A.
I, ANGEL (Book #1)
BAD ANGEL (Book #2)
FURY OF ANGELS (Book #3)
ANGEL ON FIRE (Book #4)
Gods on Earth
THOR (Book #1)
LOKI (Book #2)
TYR (Book #3)
JC Andrijeski is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author who urban fantasy, paranormal romance and mysteries, and apocalyptic science fiction, often with a sexy and metaphysical bent.
JC has a background in journalism, history and politics, and has a tendency to traipse around the globe, eat odd foods, and read whatever she can get her hands on. She grew up in the Bay Area of California, but has lived abroad in Europe, Australia and Asia, and from coast to coast in the continental United States.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 105