James shrugged. “She’s a lele. She asked me to kill a balaur in exchange for a diamond and tracking you down.”
“That actually makes a surprising amount of sense, considering where we are.” Shay blinked. “Wait, did you say diamond?”
James reached into his pocket and pulled out a huge diamond as the lele beamed at Shay.
Since when does his armor have pockets?
Shay laughed. “Damn, you’ve been a busy beaver. I feel like a slacker in comparison.” She nodded toward the lookout mound. “We’ve got a Zmeu fort over there, most likely with the cobza inside. I encountered a Zmeu earlier after we got separated. It wasn’t a pleasant meeting.”
“So did I.” James grunted. “Already killed a bunch of them.” He slapped a fist on his chest. “Fully adapted to their magic swords.”
So that implies they got at least one good hit in. Those dragon men are tougher than I thought.
“I killed one, but he was really fucking obnoxious, so he should count for more than one.” Shay shrugged.
“This situation no longer involves me,” the lele stated with an annoyed look.
James nodded. “Thanks for your help.”
“Thank you, James Brownstone, for clearing out the balaur.” The lele offered a polite nod to Shay before sashaying off.
It took Shay a few seconds to recognize that the grass and brush she stepped over and around were slowly turning bright red.
“So now we have to deal with our fort,” Shay commented. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “This shit has gotten complicated since the Zmeu decided they needed to show off their engineering skills. That’s cute. Wonder who they’re worried about, to make something like that. I doubt they just whipped up that thing in the last few hours because of you or me.”
“There’s a lot of angry and dangerous shit in this place.” James shrugged. “I think we haven’t seen half of it.”
“Probably.” Shay sighed. “You know, some days tomb raids don’t bother me, and some days I find myself asking, ‘What the hell is wrong with you, Shay? Why didn’t you take up bartending?’”
James shrugged. “I hunt dangerous criminals. Not like shit’s any better for me on most jobs. Even the low-level guys are mostly violent criminals.”
Shay snickered. “Yeah, we’ve made questionable career choices, for sure.” She shook her head. “But nothing we can do about that now. We need to get that cobza.” She nodded in the general direction of the fort. “Probably over a hundred of our fine cannibal dragon-men friends manning the walls of Fort Annoyance over there.”
“Are they technically cannibals? I mean, they eat people, but they aren’t human.” James furrowed his brow, thinking too much about the issue. “It’s like feeding chicken to a parrot or something.”
Shay pondered that for a few seconds before nodding. “Good point. Wait, does that mean if I ate an elf, I wouldn’t be a cannibal?”
James stared at her with a confused expression. “Are you planning to eat an elf?”
“No, I just was…” Shay groaned. “Never mind. We’ll worry about the nuances of cannibalism later. Let’s concentrate on the assholes we have to kill right now. My sword worked well on the one I killed, but I didn’t get a chance to test it on anyone else. You said you’re adapted to them, which means they have enough power in their swords that they might be able to get through my defenses with enough effort.”
James gestured to his chest. It took Shay a second to realize he was pointing to where his holster had once been.
Come to think of it, pretty much all his gear is gone, including his backpack. Did it all get destroyed?
Shay’s backpack sat on the ground a yard away. She’d wanted to be ready to move rapidly.
“I tried shooting them with regular bullets, and it did jack shit,” James explained. “Grenades also did shit.” He raised his blade. “This went through them like they were made of paper.”
Shay nodded. “So we’re going to have to go in there and carve lizards up to get the cobza. I don’t have enough anti-magic bullets on me to take out that many, so does a stabby-slashy plan sound good?”
“I don’t think they can do much to me at this point. It’ll just be a matter of how much fucking time it takes.”
“Why? Got some special plans?” Shay grinned. “This recovery assumes you’re not too busy running around with naked chicks. I didn’t realize this tomb raid was going to turn into Brownstone After Dark. Might have packed a few extras for you. Special oils and shit.”
James grunted. “It’s not my fault she’s naked. She’s some nymph thing. She did try to come onto me, and I told her to fuck off.”
“When you get engaged to a woman, you’re supposed to play the field less, not more.” Shay winked, but the mirth left her face. “Your loyalty to me is the one thing I’ll never question about you, James. Let me make that clear right now.”
They stared at each other for a long moment.
Shay’s face heated and she looked away. “Glad my plan worked, though.”
“Plan?” James eyed her with suspicion. “What plan?”
“When I lost you through the miracle of what I assume was random portal shit, I decided to just go directly to the cobza under the theory that you’d eventually catch up, but I didn’t expect you to become the Scourge of Zmeu and Saint Brownstone the Dragon Slayer in the meantime. You really did have a busy day, but at least now we know we have the resources we need to take down the little army gathered at Fort Annoyance.”
“Oh, by the way, Whispy’s figured how to feed the power to some of this shit off background magic.” James shrugged, his bland expression not matching the huge revelation.
Shay blinked. “That’s a pretty big damned deal. I was kind of wondering how you could be in advanced mode, because you don’t seem pissed off at all.”
“Not sure if it’s gonna work in a place other than this, but at least it’s let me stay in this form all day.” James raised a blade and give an evil grin. “I wonder about Oriceran. It’s a good thing to test at some point in case I have to go fight more Drow.”
Shay patted the hilt of her sword. “Maybe we can convince the Zmeu to surrender the cobza, considering all the noise you’ve been making. A victory by force of will rather than random slaughter might be nice.”
James marched toward the lookout.
“Where are you going?” Shay asked.
“To talk to them. Might as well get this shit over with.” James shrugged. “Not like I’m getting anything else out of fighting the fuckers at this point.”
“So much for even considering a surprise attack.” Shay jogged after him. “When I said maybe we could convince them, that was just a suggestion. I thought we were going to go through a few more options.”
“It’s a good plan, so why spend more time talking?” James jumped off the short lip of the hill. Screeches and hisses erupted from the Zmeu behind the fence, along with other noise from inside the stronghold. The enemy had eyes on them.
“I’m James Brownstone,” the bounty hunter bellowed, his voice carrying. “I’m here with a woman to get the cobza you’ve got in there.” He continued his advance. “If you’re thinking, ‘We’ll just fight this guy and eat him,’ you should know I’ve already killed a shitload of you, as well as a balaur. To be honest, I want to kill you scaly motherfuckers because you eat people, but I figure at some point they’re gonna figure out how to fix all the shit around here and then the Romanian government will probably bomb the fuck out of you anyway.” He shrugged. “Why waste my time? But let’s make this shit clear: If you fight us, you will die. If you leave right now, you won’t. Or if you give us the cobza, we walk away and you get to live for at least one more day, but any choice involving fighting us will end with you dead.”
“Nice intimidation,” Shay observed.
Angry screeches followed, along with so many hisses it sounded like a river for a moment. The Zmeu summoned their dark blades out of smoke, enough that
a billowing cloud spread above the fort. Faint hints of sulfur filtered from it.
Wonder if that means they’re demons? Or maybe something else. Who the fuck knows?
“It doesn’t seem like they’re getting scared,” Shay observed, lowering her hand to her sword. “And no one’s calling back in English. Looks like it’s going to be the hard way. Well, you gave them a chance to surrender. Not our fault they’re choosing to get sliced up.”
“This is what happens when you don’t pay attention to your local news.” James shrugged. He jogged toward the fence. “Let’s just clear them out and get this over with. I want to get the fuck out of this forest.”
Shay headed after her man, not yet drawing her tachi. She wanted to wait until she was closer so as not to waste energy.
I wonder what it would have been like to have James with me on all my longer tomb raids. Like that shit in Australia.
The Zmeu continued to screech and hiss while rhythmically banging their swords against the ground or fence. James continued toward the large wooden gate securing the front fence. Several of the dragon men rushed toward it, ready to intercept the armored bounty hunter and the tomb raider.
Shay and James closed to twenty yards.
“Ready?” James asked. “I’m gonna do this the direct way. No fancy shit, since they can’t hurt me.”
“You do what you need to,” Shay replied. “I’ll clean up afterward.”
With a grunt, James broke into a sprint and barreled toward the gate. Shay picked up her pace but didn’t match his. Even with the pendant and the ring, it made more sense to let James take the lead and bear the brunt of the enemy’s attention.
He smashed shoulder-first into the gate with an echoing crash. One of the wooden doors ripped off its hinges and collapsed on the Zmeu on the other side. A river of dark swords and green scales surged toward the opening and the invader.
Here we go.
James recovered quickly and swung his blade in a wide arc, and a whole line of the enemy fell to the ground in a bloody heap. Other Zmeu slashed at James or tried to bite or claw him, but their attacks accomplished nothing more than setting the creatures up for easy counterattacks from the armored bounty hunter.
The enemies bodies began to pile up as the writhing mass of reptilian monsters surrounded James, every individual creature desperately seeking a weak spot.
Their focus on James gave Shay her opening. She arrived at the entrance and started slashing with wild abandon. The tachi cut deep into the flesh of the Zmeu. Her initial victim lost his head, just as the first Zmeu she’d encountered had. The next several dropped as she pierced their chests or slashed at their legs.
With a roar, James threw several of the monsters off him. His follow-up thrusts came so quickly it was almost mechanical, with a new enemy dead every second. The Zmeu apparently refused to believe they couldn’t overwhelm their nemesis with sheer numbers as they continued to hack away at him, but even the lucky few who struck his non-armored neck or head were surprised that they netted only quickly healing scratches.
There’s brave, and then there’s stupid.
The initial dozens of foes dropped to a single dozen after a few minutes and were reduced to a half-dozen a minute later. The last Zmeu in the outer yard fell to Shay’s blade.
Shay took short, ragged breaths as she walked through the tangled pile of dead monsters toward James, who had been painted blue by the enemy’s blood. She pushed a body out of the way with her foot. “That was some old-fashioned ultra-violence.” She nodded toward the inner gate. “Maybe that convinced them of the wisdom of diplomatic solutions.”
James turned toward the inner gate and raised his blade. “Give us the cobza or die, assholes.”
“That’s pretty straightforward, but these things have come off so far as pretty stubborn. Here’s hoping.” Shay frowned and grabbed a rag out of her bag to wipe the Zmeu blood off her blade.
“If they’re smart enough to build a fort then they’re worried about survival,” James replied, his low voice reminding her of an avalanche. “That means we can reason with them, and they just saw half their guys get taken out. Not everyone is as dumb as the Harriken.”
The inner gates squeaked open. Zmeu were shoulder to shoulder inside, their swords at the ready. There was a commotion at the back and some sort of undulating movement through the crowd. They were passing a cloth sack to the front.
The sack finally reached the front Zmeu, and the monsters tossed it in front of the gate before several of them scrambled to pull the inner gate doors closed again. A loud, resounding thunk followed as they secured the door.
James could get through that. Hell, I could.
James jogged over and picked up the bag, then opened it and pulled out a musical instrument with a two-tone wooden body. Despite being hundreds of years old, the varnish gleamed like new under the sunlight streaming through the trees around them.
“What do you know?” Shay smiled. “Sometimes people learn their lesson, or at least dragon-men do.”
James tossed the instrument back in the bag. “There’s hope for the fucking world yet. You still have the tracker to get us back to the car, or will I need to cut more naked-chick deals?”
“I’ve got the tracker.” Shay sheathed her sword. “No more naked chicks today for you besides me.”
22
Trey parked his truck across the street from the huge gated mansion, his phone to his ear. “You got the address, Vic?”
“Yes,” Victoria responded. “I still think you should have let me come. You didn’t mention earlier that you were walking straight into Paul Esposito’s mansion. I was thinking this was going to be you meeting someone at a restaurant, not you going into a Mafia don’s house by yourself.”
“I don’t even know if this shit has anything to do with him or if this is just where they wanted me.”
Trey was suspicious of the entire situation, given that Paul’s son had tried to forge an alliance with the agency through him not all that long before, but pushing too hard the opposite direction risked causing trouble. He still wasn’t sure why he was there or who he was meeting, but he assumed this was just a flashier effort by Marco Esposito to convince Trey of the importance of a Brownstone-Esposito pact.
“I didn’t know where I was going until I checked the address.” Trey snorted. “Besides, sometimes it’s about making a statement, and the Families understand and respect statements.”
“And what statement are you making?”
Trey turned his engine off. “That the Brownstone Agency ain’t afraid of no one. Besides, if this was about wasting my ass, they would have already taken the chance. They had to know that even if I didn’t bring no one here, I’d be telling people. And with James’ rep, if I disappear inside some mobster’s mansion, he’d be kicking the door in the next day and demanding to know where the fuck I was.”
“That’s true,” Victoria replied. “But make sure you’re wearing your gloves in case this turns into a shitstorm. All you have to do is make it out of there if it turns into one.”
Trey glanced down at his already-gloved hands with a grin. “I’ll make sure to do that. If I don’t give you a call in an hour, come a-knockin’ with the boys.”
Victoria chuckled darkly. “Yeah, that will send a message. Talk to you soon.”
Trey ended the call. He slipped the phone back into his pocket, stepped out of his truck, and walked over to the gate. Bright lights lit up the vast lawn, and a single huge multi-tier fountain lay in the center.
I wonder if I’m being a dumb motherfucker about this. Maybe the Mafia wants to make a statement by taking me out.
Trey snorted. If they did, the Espositos, if not all the local Families, would end up joining the Harriken in hell.
He looked for a callbox, but the gate rumbled and opened.
“Looks like an invitation to me.” Trey adjusted his tie and smoothed his lapels, then slipped through the gate and onto the marble walkway. Small lights
lining the walkway on either side illuminated the path that led up to and around both sides of the fountain before ending at the front door.
The Espositos maintained a nice lawn and fountain. Trey would give them that, even if they seemed allergic to the idea of having any trees around.
He checked around for any obvious snipers but saw no one. When he’d passed the fountain, the front door opened. Marco, along with several other men, stepped outside with polite smiles on their faces. They might have guns on them, but they didn’t have them out.
Not like they’d cap my ass outside where some drone could take pictures of them. There are statements, and then there’s just being a dumb motherfucker.
Trey arrived at the porch and gave Marco a polite nod. “What’s up, Marco?”
Just me meeting a bunch of mobsters like it ain’t no thing.
“I’m glad you could join us, Trey,” Marco responded. “I wanted to personally deliver the invitation earlier, but I was taking care of some Family business.”
Trey gestured toward the house. “Why all the big mystery and shit? When I was asking earlier, your guys wouldn’t tell me.”
“That’s my father’s doing. He likes to mess with people’s heads.” Marco grinned. “I hope you’re not too pissed.”
So this is about Paul Esposito, huh?
Trey shrugged. “I’m here, ain’t I?”
Marco opened the door and motioned Trey inside. “You’ll be meeting with my father.” He held out his hand. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to give me your gun. That’s another rule of my father’s. Only Family can keep their guns around him.”
Trey pulled out his gun and handed it to Marco. The mobster’s gaze rested on Trey’s gloved hands for a moment and a questioning expression spread over his face.
“I gave you my gun,” Trey emphasized. “That don’t mean I’m gonna do whatever you ask. You asked me to show up, not the other damned way around.” He removed the gloves and slipped them into his pocket. “But it’s not cold inside.”
“No, it isn’t.” Marco handed the weapon to one of the others.
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