Killing Rocks

by DD Barant

  Azura smiles back. “Your mission never had a chance.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because this was more than a simple weapons deal. It was a summit—a meeting to discuss political power sharing. There were more players involved than either of us knew.”

  “The lems.”

  “Yes. Asher’s behind this revolt—and it was your lems who tipped him to my assassination attempt.”

  “So we were hooped from the beginning,” I say. “The question is, now that Asher has Las Vegas, what’s he going to do with it?”

  “I have at least a partial answer to that,” says Cassius. “Several buildings—casinos, mainly—seem to have been transformed into other structures. It’s happening all over the city—”

  “Not transformed,” says Azura. “Exchanged. They’re being swapped for buildings from another city in another dimension. A city called Night’s Shining Jewel.”

  “I thought you said it was called Nightshadow?” I say.

  “Nightshadow is the country it’s located in. Night’s Shining Jewel is the capital—and, in many ways, it’s like Vegas itself. It’s surrounded by mountains, it’s full of theaters and casinos, and it thrives when the sun is down.”

  “We’ve been to one of the switched sites,” I say, and give him a brief rundown on the myth we encountered. It takes a considerable amount of willpower to not repeat the whole thing verbatim.

  “Mythic magic,” says Cassius, frowning. “Powerful stuff. With a natural predilection for cross-universe effects.”

  “Yes,” says Azura. “But he’s up to more than just juggling real estate.”

  “What else?”

  “Can’t say yet.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Hey,” I interject. “We’ve got a lem revolt and someone playing Trading Spaces with cities from two different realities. I think that’s enough for now—”

  A roar from overhead interrupts my interruption. I recognize the sound: fighter jets.

  “Is that a good sound or a bad one?” I ask.

  “It’s not that sound we have to worry about,” says Cassius. “It’s the one that comes after it.”

  He goes outside and we both follow. This world doesn’t have guns or bombs, so I’ve always been a little unclear on how they use aircraft for combat—guess I’m about to find out.

  We stand on the front lawn and scan the sky. Three contrails to the north, over Nellis Air Force Base. The jets are visible in the distance, circling back around for another flyover.

  “Those are N-17 Hellbats,” says Cassius. “I don’t think Nellis has any stationed there—they must have been scrambled from out of state.”

  “What do you think they’ll do?” I ask.

  “Hellbats carry Banshee missiles—they can scream for up to forty-eight hours after impact. Not fatal, but intensely painful. They’ll probably use them to soften the lem forces up—”

  Something arcs from the horizon into the sky, and suddenly one of the jets is a tumbling ball of fire. We can’t see where it hits, but a moment after it falls out of sight a plume of dark, oily smoke rises to the east.

  “What was that?” asks Azura.

  “Anti-aircraft lem,” says Cassius. “Probably a Grizzly 110. Nellis has a number of them in hibernation, but it’s obvious they’ve been woken up.”

  I’ve seen Charlie throw an iron-cored, silver ball bearing hard enough to punch through armor plate—and he’s just a cop. I shouldn’t be surprised that a golem designed and built by the military would be capable of taking down a jet.

  “They’ve taken the base, then,” says Azura. “Which means they have a fair chance of holding the city.”

  “Not indefinitely,” Cassius says.

  “But probably long enough for what Asher’s planning,” says Azura. “And I think I know what that is. He’s trying to create a permanent link between this world and mine.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure,” she admits. “I need to visit another of these sites, see if I can learn the specifics of the enchantment being created.”

  “They’re being guarded.”

  “I know. But the lems are going to have their hands full just defending their borders. Jace and I have infiltrated one already; we can do it again.”

  “Hold on!” I protest. “About the only thing we accomplished last time was having a bedtime story permanently engraved on our frontal lobes. You think repeating the experience is going to tell us anything useful?”

  “We should discuss this further indoors,” says Cassius, turning around and heading back to the house. Azura’s right behind him. Glaring at their backs isn’t going to get me anywhere, so after a moment I follow them inside.

  We spend the next hour arguing. I want to go after Asher directly; he’s not going to expect another attempt so soon after the first one, not when he’s surrounded by an army. Okay, maybe it sounds a little foolhardy—but I can take out just about any lem from a distance with the Ruger, Azura can use her skills to get close, and Cassius can probably call in an airstrike as a diversion. As far as insane plans go, I think we have a pretty good shot at catching him unawares.

  “And then what?” Cassius says. “We need to capture him, not kill him. How are we supposed to escape the city afterward?”

  “Helicopter?” I suggest.

  “We’d never get one inside city limits before it was shot down.”

  “So we steal one that’s already here.”

  “Sure,” says Azura. “We’re already going to attack the most powerful shaman within a thousand miles. Let’s break into an air force base full of renegade golems and steal one of their choppers, too.”

  I hate to admit it, but they’re right. In the end, I can’t come up with a plan to take Asher alive and get us out of the city in one piece. Azura, however, is pretty sure we can sneak into one of the swapped sites—there are four of them so far—and whether that turns out to be useful or not, at least it’s doable.

  I’m a little envious of how at ease she seems to be. I guess for an Astonisher this is all in a day’s work—travel to another dimension, get caught in the middle of a war among three supernatural races, attempt the assassination of a powerful shaman. I didn’t take things nearly so well when I first got here—but then, the only exposure I’d ever had to craziness was criminal psychosis, as opposed to an entire reality that seemed schizophrenic.

  And to be honest, it bugs me a little how well she and Cassius are getting along. The first time I ever met Cassius, I shot him. Twice. Azura just bats her big Tinker Bell eyes and tells him how happy she is to finally have an ally in this world. One that hasn’t gotten her drugged or beaten up yet, anyway.

  I finally give up and try to find some coffee while they discuss which site we should choose and the best route to take to get there.

  The cell phone I found earlier is lying on the kitchen counter. I pick it up. What I want to do right now, more than anything, is call Charlie. I need him here, I need him to watch my back; that’s what a partner is for, after all. Cassius is my boss and I know he sticks by his people, but being in command brings with it a whole different set of priorities. If he has to sacrifice one mere human for the greater good, he’ll do it—he’s done it before. A few million times, in fact.

  I stare at the phone for a long time. I think about the conversation Charlie and I had in the jail—and I think about Wilson, dying at my feet with a fist-size hole in his chest.

  I put the phone down.

  * * *

  We head out at 3:00 AM. The site we’ve chosen was once the Sands, but now it appears to be a gaming house called the Singing Fortune Casino. Azura, it seems, knows the place well. “Spent more than one evening—and more than a few days’ wages—playing Spear-and-Shield there. They used to have a great house band.”

  “I’m sure,” I say. We’re creeping along a side street, keeping an ear out for lem patrols. Cassius has stayed behind, our fallback in case we’re captured; I’v
e got his number on speed dial on the phone I lifted. “I’m surprised they’d let someone like you within sight of the place.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t an Astonisher in those days—well, not a full-fledged one, anyway; the guild hadn’t accepted me yet. All the gaming houses had very strict rules and magic detectors to keep us honest, in any case. If I’d ever done anything but lost money, they would have had my head cut off and mounted on the wall.”

  “If you weren’t allowed to win, why’d you even bother?”

  She flashes me a wicked grin. “Any number of reasons. Maybe that cute were jackal at the card table; maybe that fat diplomat drinking a little too heavily with important documents in his back pocket. Or maybe just the rush of playing, the thrill of watching your fortunes rise and fall with the tides of chance. Gambling’s not called a vice because it’s bad for you; it’s because it feels so right to be doing something so wrong.”

  “Being bad feels pretty good?” I say. “Yeah, I saw The Breakfast Club, too. But I still have no desire to date Judd Nelson or dance to eighties music in a school library.” I pause. “Well, mostly.”

  We both hear it at the same time: a heavy, muted impact from the cross-street ahead of us. We fade back behind a low fence and crouch, ready to run if we have to.

  Another impact, and another. It sounds kind of like a pile driver set on low, steady thuds evenly paced a few seconds apart. And getting closer.

  And then it comes into view at the intersection, and I realize that what I’m hearing are footsteps.

  It’s a lem. I’ve been told that the first really effective military lems were built by the Chinese during the Song dynasty, made out of fired pottery filled with pebbles and standing around fifteen feet high. Those early models are to this monstrosity what a bicycle is to a Harley.

  It stands at least thirty feet high, its metal skin painted in desert camouflage, sandy browns and tans in uneven streaks. Even though its face is covered by a metal grille, it reminds me more of a giant medieval knight than a robot. It’s wearing an armored backpack, and has twin spotlights mounted on its shoulders. A bandolier of six-foot-long javelins is slung across its chest, and what looks like a belt made of bowling balls around its waist.

  It stops in the middle of the intersection. The twin spotlights flare to life and swing our way.

  EIGHT

  We crouch, holding our breaths, field mice hiding from an owl.

  The searchlights pass over us without pausing, and after a moment the lem continues on its way. It has to duck to get under the traffic light.

  “Okay,” I whisper. “That is obviously not someone we want to run into again. Unless you can turn yourself into—”

  “Are you kidding?” She gives me an unbelieving look. “If I could do that, we could just stroll down Las Vegas Boulevard with you on my shoulder like a sarcastic parrot.”

  “Well, I don’t know what your limits are.”

  “No, you don’t. And we don’t have time to discuss them, either.” She straightens up and resumes walking.

  We’re lucky and don’t run into any more patrols on our way to the Sands. Vegas is eerily deserted; garbage blows through the streets, but there are no vehicles moving, no drunken tourists stumbling down the sidewalk. The hotel and casino signs flash and flicker with the same Technicolor intensity, but there’s nobody there to appreciate it but birds.

  And us.

  The spot where the Sands is supposed to be is now occupied by a large structure that resembles nothing so much as a mansion made of bamboo. It stands at least five stories high, and has an immense sign over the front door in a language I don’t recognize. The sign seems to be made of vines that glow with bright yellow bioluminescence. It’s being guarded by two gray-colored lems holding large battle-axes; the only clothes they’re wearing are white armbands with some sort of chevrons on them.

  We stay out of sight behind the corner of a building. “Those are members of the Mantle,” I say in a low voice. “Why is it that every radical faction in this world feels the need to get naked as their first political act?”

  “Clothing’s a human invention. Rejecting it symbolizes a rejection of human culture and values.”

  Says the stripper. “So what does that make you?”

  “Popular.”

  “I’ll bet. How do you want to do this?”

  “Without getting our heads cut off, preferably.”

  I glance around the corner, cautiously. “You say you’re familiar with this place. There a back entrance?”

  “Not as such—but as I recall, there is a fairly easy way up to the second floor.”

  We circle to the back. What looks like a smooth, high wall of vertical poles glued tightly together turns out to have a series of almost imperceptible handholds conveniently spaced all the way to the top. I let Azura go first, paying close attention to where she puts her feet and fingers, then follow her up. In a minute or two we’re on a narrow ledge, just outside a shuttered, glassless window. Azura’s already got the lock picked by the time I join her. She pushes the shutters inward, revealing a room that looks like it’s used for storage; I see a broom, shelves lined with hollowed-out gourds, and more of the glowing vines strung along the ceiling—these give off more of a greenish light.

  “Ready?” Azura says, already perched on the windowsill. “There’s no telling what we’ll encounter inside, but it could be another story.”

  “In that case, there’ll be a lot of telling, won’t there?”

  I vault over the sill without waiting for her reply.

  * * *

  And find myself falling.

  There’s a split second of sheer panic, ending abruptly with me landing on something soft and springy. I didn’t fall that far; it’s like the building vanished and I dropped one story back to the ground.

  But the ground is a lot spongier than a Nevada alley. In fact, I seem to be sprawled on a carpet of thick green moss—and a moment later Azura lands right beside me, with even less grace. She sits up and spits out a mouthful of moss.

  “Well, this is an improvement,” I say, looking around. “This must be the show part of show-and-tell.”

  We’re at the edge of some kind of tropical jungle, the air warm and humid. The moss beneath us is part of a broad swath that extends in either direction, looking more or less like a green road. It’s either twilight or predawn, judging by the quality of light, but the mist that hangs over us obscures the horizon; I can’t even tell which way is east.

  “Nightshadow,” says Azura. She tilts her head back and takes a long, deep breath through her nose, her smile getting wider and wider. “Somewhere in the Edenheart Jungle, I’d say. But I know of no thoroughfare this wide outside the city—”

  She breaks off, staring. I look in that direction and see a figure walking toward us out of the mist, down the mossy road. It’s hooded, wearing a long, brown cloak, and holds a spear in one hand.

  I tense up, but Azura puts a restraining hand on my shoulder.

  “Wait. He may not be able to perceive us.”

  The figure gets closer. I can hear birds calling to one another, and the sound of rushing water somewhere nearby—there must be a river not too far off.

  The figure stops about twenty feet away. I can’t see its face.

  “Hello?” says Azura. “Can you see us?”

  “Of course I can see you,” a male voice answers. “I’m standing right in front of you, aren’t I?”

  “I’m sorry, I just thought—”

  “It’s a bloody stereotype, you know that? ‘Blind as a bat.’ Just because they’re nocturnal predators doesn’t mean they don’t have eyes, does it?”

  “Well, no—”

  “You don’t see people saying ‘blind as a cat,’ or ‘blind as an owl,’ do you? Of course not. But they’re both night hunters, too.”

  “I’m sorry if we offended you—”

  The man throws back his hood. He’s got a long, narrow face, jet-black hair that reaches to his shou
lders, and very pale skin. A pire, I’d say—except pires’ ears aren’t usually that pointed.

  “I’m not offended, merely disappointed,” the pire says. “It’s my belief that weres, trues, the Lyrastoi, and even the underdead should all be able to live together in peace and understanding. And possibly condos.”

  I frown at Azura. “Condos?”

  “Ah, yes, of course,” she says quickly. “We didn’t mean to interrupt your—whatever you were doing. Just pretend we’re not here.”

  The man studies us. “I am Baron Greystar. And you are?”

  “Jacinda Valchek and Azura Splintertree, Your Lordship.”

  “Two trues, and lovely ones at that. Sourcelings?”

  “Sadly, no,” Azura says. “Humble performers, no more.”

  “Performers?” Greystar glances around him. “There’s no one to perform for, out here. More’s the pity—I could do with a good show. Something with a song, and maybe puppets. Do you do puppets?”

  “I’m afraid not, my lord.”

  “Well, that’s just a damn shame. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was someplace you could go for a spot of entertainment now and then, instead of just waiting for minstrels to show up on your doorstep? See a play, have a nice meal, maybe enjoy a little gambling … all they do at the Keep is go hunting. That, and sit around talking about all the wild boar hunts they’ve been on, and how good that roast wild boar was, and the best weapon to use when you’re chasing down a wild boar. Bit tedious after a while, believe me.”

  He almost seems to be talking to himself now, looking down and shaking his head. Azura takes a slow, careful step to the side, catches my eye, and puts a finger to her lips. She takes another step, and another, motioning me to follow her, until both of us are at the edge of the wide, mossy path. As soon as we step off it altogether, Baron Greystar flips his hood back up, as if to dismiss us.

  “What’s going on here?” I whisper.