Jazz, Monster Collector in: Down with the Clowns (Season 1, Episode 15)
Page 5
circuit and a battlery.”
“Battery,” I corrected.
“So what is it?” Boss Clown said garnishing his words with rasp to let me know his patience was failing.
I set the tiny circuit between my finger and thumb and held it up like I was displaying a precious jewel. Bits of Pete’s green skin still clung to the jagged little copper ‘claws’ on the bottom of the chip. “It’s an electronic circuit, a kind of device that uses electricity instead of magic for power.”
The big Clown leader took the chip, held it up to his nose and stiffed it, then stuck out his black tongue and licked it. Then he shrugged his big shoulders. “So what’s it do?”
“Not positive,” I said watching a glob of black spit drip off the circuit. “But I think that it controls monsters…you lot.”
Boss Clown raised a lip in offence, but let my slur slide—not that I cared. “So you think what? Someone’s controlling us, making us do what…” His protruding brow sunk down, then flew back up, his eyes widening. “You think someone made Pete hit his own?”
“What?” Pete said, still pressing a hand to the back of his neck. “No, never, not old Pete.”
“That’s what I’m starting to think,” I said.
Someone punched Pete in his back, forcing him to shuffle forward. “Hey! I didn’t!”
A goblin behind me raised a pointed stick. “Stick ya Pete, I’ll stick ya good.”
Boss Clown grabbed me by the scruff of my jacket and yanked me off the ground. “You’re gonna find out who and when you do you’re gonna bring him to me, understand?”
I glanced over my nose at his hand, then up into his eyes. His face lost its anger and became worried. He set me down and smoothed over the wrinkles on my jacket with his hand. “Please?”
Pete, his head hanging low, tried to slip into the crowd. “Pete,” I said and pointed at him.
“No! Please, no!” Pete shouted and covered his head with his arms.
I felt confusion tighten my features. I stared at my finger searching for the threat.
Boss Clown sucked on his cigar and shrugged.
I lowered my finger and Pete straightened up. Then I raised it again. He squeaked and cowered. This was fun but I was well spent and needed to get out of Clowntown. “Alright Pete, I’ll stop pointing at you if you answer my questions, and don’t dare lie, I’ll know if you do and then I’ll point with my lethal tortuous death finger.”
Pete straightened up but kept his eyes fixed on his bare feet. He removed the colander from his head and turned it in his hands. “No. No, ma’am, old Pete wouldn’t lie, not to you, milady.”
“Jazz will do,” I said. “The first attack you remember, you saw something, didn’t you, something terrible. What was it?”
“No, no, I didn’t sees nothing, nothing is all I ever sees,” Pete said, eyes still cast down.
I extended my finger.
Pete jammed the colander back on his head and covered his face. “Okay, okay! I’ll tells ya.”
“Last warning,” I said.
Pete straightened up, his eyes took on a distant look and the skin around them bunched with wrinkles exaggerated by the greasepaint. “It were monsters in armor, not like nothing I’d ever seen—metal, polished, so shiny it were blinding. They had long snouts that ended in vents like a sky sweeper. Their breath hissed in and out and…in and…” Pete’s voice trailed off and his lips quivered. The gathered Clowns leaned in closer; a couple of them looked around at the shadows. “But the worst was their eyes, big, empty, soulless eyes.” Pete stopped talking and stared ahead.
Monsters in armor, long snouts, hissing breath, big empty eyes—these were all things that Mickey had described to me. “What were their weapons like?”
The Clowns, including their boss, leaned in closer. Pete stared.
“Pete,” I said.
Pete stared.
“Pete!” I shouted and clapped my gloved hands together.
Everyone jumped back, a dozen or so shrieked. Boss Clown banged into a goblin standing behind him. Boss Clown spun on the goblin and nailed him hard in the chest with a fist. “Quit being so jumpy!”
I spun Pete around so he had to look into my eyes. I hoped I be able to get the smell out of my gloves. “What were their weapons, Pete?”
“Bad,” Pete said. “Gun of some kind, loud, so loud, and nasty. Nothing we had was for them. They tore us up.”
“Except for you,” I said.
“Yeah,” Pete said, then his eyes snapped into focus, his hunch returned, and the squeak reappeared in his voice. “But not for trying, old Pete fought as hard as any, harder than many.” He glanced timidly at his Boss, who’s reaction I couldn’t see as he stood behind me. “But someone hits me hard in the back of the head, hits me right unconscious, he did. When I wakes up the lot of us was in pieces, like they’d been shredded.”
Shredded, Mickey used that word too.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Boss Clown said with a growl.
“Yeah, why not, ya letch?” a goblin asked with accusation in his tone. Other Clowns grumbled and groaned with anger. These monsters had been running scared a long time, and that meant a lot of building anger and pent up violence. It was time to go.
“My guess is,” I said as I took Mother Goose from DJ and rested it across my shoulders, “that’s when they stuck the circuit on him.”
“Who?” the Boss Clown asked, no, demanded.
I let his bad attitude slide do to the fact that I was nearing the edge total collapse. “That’s what I aim to find out.”
Boss Clown balled up both his big fists. “When you find them, I want first crack at them,”
“When I’m finished with whoever, you’re welcome to whatever’s left of them,” I said and walked back to my street cycle. Seeing how their big nasty boss treated me, the Clowns created a clear path. DJ kept close to my heels. I slid the shotgun in its sheath and my leather flight cap on my head, and then stepped over and sat on the bike. DJ practically leapt on behind me. I wasn’t ready and the bike nearly toppled over, but somehow I kept it together.
Boss Clown walked over. “So what do we do in the meantime?”
I wanted to tell him to go jump in an active volcano, but I had taken his money. Technically he was a client, and, like it or not, I had to treat him as such. Besides, his retainer would run out soon enough. “Check everyone on the back of the neck, remove any chips you find. Don’t trust any deferred species, from here on out everyone’s the enemy.” I gave the bike a hard kick and it roared to life.
Boss Clown took another look at the little circuit. “How come we never found these before?”
I pulled in the clutch and dropped the bike into gear. “Because you jerks don’t bathe.”
Boss Clown shot me another sneer. I revved the engine and let the clutch fly. The back tire broke and, with a squeal of spinning rubber-equivalent, shot through the crowd of Clowns, many of whom were forced to scramble out of our way.
I zipped around the block and wove our way back toward the between lands, avoiding the brickside as it might not be as easy to evade a second time.
DJ hung on until we crossed the border onto the concrete pad of the old rail yard. “So where to now?” she shouted over the engine.
“Back to Uncle’s, I need food and about a week’s sleep,” I said as loudly as my recovering throat would allow.
“But the enforcer corps are looking for you.”
“I know,” I said, searching for the culvert back to Nitsburg with my shadow sight. “Uncle’s is far enough off the beaten track, and the dark will help; we’ll make it there.”
“And what after that?”
I huffed out a wave of tension. I was desperate for answers, desperate enough to turn to the one person I hated, and feared, most in all of the twin planets. “Then,” I said and felt a great well open in my belly and fill with dread. “Then we’re going to see my father.”
…to be continued
-N
ext Time-
Believing she was living her last day, Jazz went on a madcap rampage of revenge, taking out her enemies with the brash reckoning of a Monster Collector with nothing to lose. But the one thing she was certain could never happen did, she lived. Now she’s wanted by the enforcer corps, her office has been blown up, and Ship wandered off to gods know where. So what’s a disjointed, disoriented, and discombobulated Jazz to do? She goes to see the one being she hates and fears most off all, her father.
Jazz, Monster Collector, Episode 16, Man Behind the Curtain
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