A cold look entered Tim’s eyes. “And you don’t care how I get it done? You do understand what I’m saying, right?”
“Ruthless men have to be handled through ruthless means, especially when the fate of the world is at stake.”
“And you’re not worried that makes us like them?”
Senator Johnston shook his head. “They signed up for the game, and they know that if they lose, they could end up dead. That’s different than them killing innocent Americans who didn’t do anything other than be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Brutal destruction and mindless hoarding of alien tech isn’t the way to prepare the country or the planet for danger. You would have thought we had learned our lesson when we hid magic.”
“Fair enough,” Tim replied. “I’ll get my best people to run interference for you, but I can’t guarantee they’ll be able to stop everything. You need to make sure whoever you’re using on your end can handle themselves.”
“Don’t worry. Your people just need to stop enough. The people I’m going to have move on this will be able to deal with whatever else trickles through.”
Tim squeezed his stress ball again, a nervous look on his face. “And who might that be?”
Senator Johnston grinned. “Shay Carson and James Brownstone.”
10
James lifted his knife, ready to dice his enemy into pieces. It was nothing personal. He just needed to chop his target into finer chunks. With a few quick movements, he reduced the large onion to smaller squares. He grabbed another onion, ready to repeat the process.
This sauce is gonna be fucking great. I should have made it a while ago.
Thomas sat by James’ feet, looking up at James with wide, pleading eyes. He whimpered.
“You can’t have onions,” James rumbled. “Go eat some of your dog food. You like that shit. You eat tons of it, anyway, so go eat some more.”
Thomas whined and shuffled off to his bowl, his tail drooping.
Tough to be a dog. A lot of high-quality barbeque-related shit you can’t have. It’s not fair.
James shook his head, his heart filled with pity for the poor, suffering animal denied the full breadth of the glories of human food.
We don’t dominate this planet because we make sure no one else gets above us on the food chain. We dominate this planet because we can eat almost anything.
Like fugu. Some guy in Japan in the past actually had to sit down and say, ‘Hey, everyone keeps dying from that poison fish, but I’m sure there’s a part that’s not poisonous and still tastes good.’
Pain shot through James’ finger. His lack of concentration had led to his knife slicing his finger. He lifted his hand and shook it before wiping off the blood with a paper towel and taking a look. Considering how many times he’d been shot, stabbed or electrocuted, even without the amulet, a little slice of the finger was almost nothing. He could have taken the entire tip off and not been too concerned.
“Huh. Deep, but not worth wasting much time on.” James grabbed some electrical tape out of a nearby drawer and taped the throbbing wound. He could put on Whispy later and regenerate.
A simple cut wouldn’t get in the way of his sauce preparation. He wanted to try out this new sauce and get feedback as soon as possible so he could be ready for the spring contests.
James continued his preparation, ignoring the mild throbbing in his finger.
This shit is gonna be some of the best I’ve ever made.
Shay wandered into the kitchen a few minutes later, and she stopped and stared at his hand. James had already moved on to sautéing the diced onions in bacon grease and nodding to himself in satisfaction, the wound a distant thought in the back of his mind.
“Why do you have electrical tape on your finger?” Shay asked. “Is that some weird artifact thing I don’t know about?”
“I cut my finger with the knife,” James replied. “And I needed to stop the bleeding. It’s deep and shit, but I’ll use Whispy later and have him fix it.” He nodded to his pan. “I’m doing this right now.”
“And, like, putting a bandage on didn’t occur to you?” Shay stared at him, disbelief on her face. “You’re using electrical tape instead? Why?”
“The tape was closer, and I didn’t want to fuck up my rhythm on sauce prep.” James shrugged.
“Okay. Your finger—if it falls off later, don’t blame me.” Shay chuckled and headed to the dining room table. “So, let’s talk about music. I assume you can do that while watching your blood-soaked onions.”
James glanced down to make sure he hadn’t leaked any blood onto his diced onions before shaking his pan slightly. “Music? What about it?”
“We need to decide on music for the wedding and reception. You barely listen to music unless you’re counting the first few seconds of podcasts, so it’s hard to know what will annoy you. I’ve collected samples of all sorts of types of music I like, instrumental and otherwise.”
James furrowed his brow. “Not only do I not listen to music much, I don’t really care much about music, either.”
The pan sizzled.
Shay smirked. “Is that because you can’t put sauce on it and eat it?”
James grunted. “I’m not saying that’s the reason, but that is true.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Shay sighed and scrolled on her phone with her thumb. “You don’t have any strong preferences then, pro or con? Just something to narrow the choices?”
“Yeah, no strong preferences. You do what you want.”
“You should never say that. It gives me ideas.” Shay gave him an evil grin.
“Ideas?” James replied. “Like what?
“Kilomea mariachi band. That would be different. Maybe even epic.”
James shook his onions again before blinking and turning back toward Shay. It’d taken him a moment to parse what his fiancée had said. “Kilomea mariachi band?”
Shay nodded. “Those were the words that came out of my mouth, yes.”
“Do they even have Kilomea mariachi bands? I don’t think I’ve seen one ever, either in southern California or Mexico. Not saying they don’t exist, but, shit…”
“I don’t know.” Shay looked uncertain, the evil gleam fading from her eyes. “Maybe? Stranger things have happened. I don’t remember having seen any, but elf pitmasters used to not be a thing either. Shit, there are elves in heavy metal bands, so why not Kilomea in mariachi bands?”
“True enough.” James furrowed his brow. “I kind of like the idea. At least it wouldn’t be boring.”
Shay laughed. “Okay, you called my bluff. We’re not gonna have a Kilomea mariachi band, even if such a thing exists.”
“What are we going to have then?”
Shay shrugged. “Still figuring that out since you’re not being helpful at all. It’s November, and we’re not getting married until the summer. We’ve got plenty of time to figure this out. It’s not like the world’s going to end before then.”
James grunted. “If it did, it’d make things simpler.”
“Don’t go cheering for the end of the world because you want to get out of wedding planning.”
The next morning, James finished brushing his teeth and stepped out of the bathroom. After a little fun with Shay, he’d gone to bed early, so he felt extra-refreshed.
Maybe another level four will pop up this afternoon and I can beat their ass down.
Shay sat up in bed and stretched. “You got somewhere you need to run off to early today?”
“I figured I’d take Thomas for a walk.” James headed to his closet to pull out some jeans and a t-shirt. He tossed them on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know if he’s getting enough exercise, especially with all that food he’s been eating. I’ve been thinking about installing an auto-launching frisbee system in the back so he can entertain himself when I’m inside. Or maybe some sort of pop-up bounty he can tackle.”
“Oh, he’s fine.” Shay furrowed her brow and pointed to his finger. “You still
have that tape on your finger? I thought you told me you were going to use Whispy to take care of that before you went to bed last night.”
“I had other shit to handle, and I didn’t want to deal with him bitching before I went to sleep and putting me in a bad mood.” James held up his finger. No blood had seeped out from underneath the tape.
“It doesn’t hurt at all?” Shay asked. “It’s not like you wore Whispy yesterday.”
James stared at his finger. The digit had been a little sore the previous night, but now there was no pain. “Nope. It doesn’t hurt at all.”
“Huh.” When James started pulling the tape off, there was still no pain. When he finally yanked the last piece off, the underlying skin was pale, but there was no sign he’d ever been injured. Not even a scratch. “I didn’t expect that shit.”
Shay crawled toward him on the bed, her eyes narrowing. “I thought you said it was a pretty deep cut?”
“It was.” James peered at his unwounded finger. “If I didn’t use Whispy, I’d need stitches or a potion.”
“And you were more obsessed with your sauce preparation than first aid?”
“Got to have priorities in life.”
Shay hopped off the bed and walked over to James, grabbing his hand and turning it back and forth. “Fuck. It’s completely healed. I mean, it’s one thing when you’re wearing Whispy, even when he’s in his rest mode shit, but you didn’t even use him this time.”
“It’s no big deal.” James grunted. “People heal even without alien amulets.”
“They don’t nearly slice off their fingers and heal overnight without one of those or magic.” Shay released his hand. “Did he tell you he was going to do this kind of thing to you?”
“You have to understand: he tells me shit, but it’s not always clear what he means.” James shrugged and dropped his hand. “And talking to him is like talking to a bitchy computer with a fucking mind of its own. He only cares about me getting tougher and the primary directives.”
“The mutually conflicting ones?”
“Yeah.”
Shay frowned. “But he’s told you about alterations he’s going to do. You’d think he would have mentioned that you could heal a lot quicker even without him.”
James nodded. “I think he can only do so much if I don’t want it. That’s probably why he needed to be able to talk to me. To get a lot of this shit working to begin with.”
Shay sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs, the bottom of her nightgown riding up slightly. “He didn’t ask for permission when he basically turned you from a Vax to a human. I mean, you’re human enough for basic human DNA tests to work on you. That’s a pretty fucking major change.”
“I was a little kid, and he had just been turned on.” James grabbed his jeans and started pulling them on. “As far as he was concerned, it was an emergency, but I’m older now, and he doesn’t have control over me even though he’s supposed to. I’m supposed to just be his meat puppet where he’s doing all the shot-calling, but that shit didn’t work out for him. I know it pisses him off that he’s not in charge, but he gets that if he doesn’t do what I say, he’ll be shit out of luck.”
“But if he’s changed you to the point that you have accelerated healing even without wearing him, I wonder how far he can push you now that you’re more in sync.”
“A lot fucking further.” James buttoned his jeans. “If I’m supposed to be able to hold on out a planet by myself for a while before reinforcements show up, that means shit like near-complete regeneration without magical potions and not needing magic.”
Shay’s face twitched. “But that thing’s powered normally by hate and anger.”
“Yeah. So? That’s not a big mystery.”
“And the whole magic-powering-it thing we figured out, and from what the Alliance assholes have said, magic isn’t common in the galaxy.” Shay frowned.
James nodded. “Not following you.”
“Does that mean that if Whispy was in control, he’d keep you on a rage drip all the time?”
James frowned and thought it over. “But he can’t directly piss me off. He tells me to do shit, but it’s not like he floods my mind with anger and hatred or whatever.”
“Maybe he could have when you were younger,” Shay replied. “Did you ever use it when you were a kid? After you got to Earth?”
James shook his head. “Nope. I didn’t even have it for the longest time, and when the priests finally gave it back to me, I didn’t want to wear it. I couldn’t remember everything from when I was younger, but I knew I didn’t trust that fucking amulet for some reason. For a long time, I thought it was cursed. I even talked to Father McCartney about that, but he told me it was just a piece of jewelry. He didn’t force me to wear it.”
“And the first time you wore it? What happened then?”
“I freaked the fuck out, but I also realized what it did: made me tougher and stronger.” James stared at the amulet sitting on his nightstand. “I understood what I could do with it, but I still thought it was cursed. I wondered if I should go talk to Father McCartney about it, but I decided against it.”
Shay gave him a shallow nod. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t want him to kick me out. I started thinking that if I have this cursed amulet, maybe it’s not just that I have it because I’m a bad person, but what if I were demonic or some shit like that?”
Shay winced. “Geeze.”
“After a while, I figured it didn’t matter.” James shrugged. “I figured if I did enough good and only used it when I had to deal with evil assholes, it wouldn’t matter. Even if it was a little evil, God would forgive me.” He let out a dark chuckle. “Not sure if it’s evil or not because it’s alien and not demonic, but if I can use it to beat down psycho assholes, I’m gonna continue using it.”
“I’m not one to say anything about people being good or evil,” Shay replied quietly. “I spent most of my adult life as a cold-blooded killer, but I will tell you, the one thing I learned during that time is that any weapon, no matter how fancy, is just a tool in the end, and good or evil usually has a lot more to do with who is on the receiving end.”
James grunted and slipped on the t-shirt. “I know. I don’t let this shit worry me much. Whispy’s gonna do his thing, and he hasn’t done anything that makes my life more complicated than it was before. Everyone else has done that.” He grabbed some socks from his dresser and started rolling them on. “And sometimes you just need to kick some fucking ass to make your point.”
Shay chuckled. “I don’t disagree, James. I think even without the Whispy stuff, between your barbeque crap, my teaching, and the wedding, we’ve got plenty to keep us busy. It might just be that the amulet ends up changing you and it accomplishes nothing more than you being able to party for a few more hours during our reception.”
James stared at Shay, an idea percolating in his head.
Shay looked back at him, confused. “What?”
“We should invite the top local mobsters to our wedding.”
Shay blinked. “What did you just say? It sounded like you said we should invite the top mobsters to our wedding?”
“Yeah,” James responded. “The more I think about it, the better the idea sounds.”
“Why the fuck would you want to do that?”
“My wedding’s gonna take all our guys off the streets. I don’t want people getting ideas.”
Shay sighed. “It’s just a wedding, and the cops will still be around.”
James grunted. “I don’t want them to have to deal with shit while we’re getting married. If we have the top local pieces of shit around, they’ll tell their boys to keep an eye on things because they don’t want to risk pissing me off on what’s supposed to be the happiest day of my fucking life.”
Shay snort-laughed. “Are you basically saying you want to invite the heads of the local mobs to effectively hold them hostage at our wedding?”
“Yeah. Why the fuck no
t?” James grinned. “That shit will be funny.”
11
Shay pulled out of the college parking in her new Porsche, humming under her breath. She preferred her Fiat Spider, but it was nice to mix up her rides every now and again. She snickered as she remembered the old days and how she needed to explain away driving expensive sports cars on a part-time professor’s salary.
Now it was easy. Anytime she had anything expensive, she just attributed it to a gift from James. Everyone in the world knew how rich he was, and they just assumed he was a very generous fiancé.
Her phone rang. She glanced down at her console display; her phone was already interfaced with her car.
“Smite-Williams?” Shay muttered. She hadn’t been expecting contact from him, but she answered the call on speakerphone. “What’s up, Professor?”
“Good evening, Miz Carson,” he responded, his voice full of cheer, as always. “I’d like you to stop by as soon as possible so we could discuss a big job. It’s rather time-sensitive, so I’d really appreciate it if you could stop by tonight to discuss it.”
Shay sighed. “I appreciate the call, but the timing is shit on this. You know I’m teaching this semester. I can’t just drop everything and go on a raid. Maybe something during winter vacation?”
Smite-Williams laughed. “Aye, I understand your new schedule, but you forget: you might be a professor, but I’m the Professor.”
Shay frowned as she turned onto the street and joined the dense flow of rush-hour traffic. “And what the hell does that mean in this particular context? I don’t have time for this Father O’Banion shit.”
The Professor’s laughter faded to a chuckle. “It means, Miz Carson, that I share the same day job as you, and I also understand the relevant schedule. The job I have in mind shouldn’t be a lengthy one, provided you see to it quickly, and you have a nice Thanksgiving vacation coming up in mere days.”
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