by C L Walker
“I’ll get something to drink,” I spluttered, stepping away before… I didn’t know what I was running from, why I was so flustered. I wasn’t naïve, wasn’t new to the idea of a woman being interested in me or to returning that interest.
“Suit yourself,” Patty said as she spun away, latching onto her friend from the diner and repeating the same movements on her. Her hands sliding over the friend’s breasts as they had over my chest was almost enough to drag me back.
“There’s something weird going on here,” I said, turning away and heading back for the drinks table.
“You’re the only weird thing here,” Mouse said. “Let me guess, she got too close and freaked you out.”
“I’m not a prude, but that was too much.” The crowd had grown denser in the few moments I’d been gone, and I had to push my way through, guiding people to either side so I could make progress.
“Or maybe that was perfectly normal for someone her age. How would you know?” She sighed, as though I’d let her down, or she was just bored of it all now. “I say just go with it.”
I didn’t answer. She might be right, as she often was, but something felt off. It could be in my head, or elsewhere, but I didn’t think so.
I made it to the table and began hunting around for anything interesting. I’d just found the Coke when someone pushed me hard and knocked me forward. Bottles fell and the table tipped as others were slammed against it, as well. The background cacophony had changed tenor, turning from wanton abandon to something darker, angrier. I turned, forcing people out of my way to try to see what was happening.
Steve stood in the middle of an expanding empty bubble as people stepped back to give him room. He looked confused, his eyes hunting around for something. He looked scared, and a million miles from the confident manager of the local bank.
His gaze stopped on the other occupant of the open space, a man barely out of high school but a foot taller and built for violence. He held a half-empty glass in his hand and glared at Steve. The other half of his drink was on his tight black shirt. The crowd seemed to grow even louder as he raised his eyes from the offending wet patch.
“Sorry,” Steve said, stepping forward and gingerly extending his hand. “It sure is crazy here, right?”
“You’re a dead man,” the large guy said. He dropped his glass on the floor and glared at the offered handshake as though disgusted at the thought.
“Hey, come on now,” Steve said, his hand frozen in the space between them, as though he’d forgotten it existed. “I didn’t do it on purpose. It’s kind of crowded here.”
“Stomp him, Brick,” someone said from the crowd. Another voice, young and female, screamed, “Kick his ass.”
“Brick?” Steve said without thinking, smiling at the name. He realized his mistake a moment later when the owner of the name stepped forward and punched him in the face.
I watched Steve go down. I was determined not to get involved, but I’d made my way to the front of the crowd, anyway. All Steve had to do was stay down and this would be over. The drunken meathead would go back to whatever he’d been doing and the weedy banker could just go.
Steve stayed down, to his credit, but the crowd hadn’t had enough and Brick was more than happy to feed their rising bloodlust. He stepped forward, buoyed up by the catcalls and screeching, performing for his audience like a gladiator in an ancient arena.
He reached down and dragged Steve up by a handful of his expensive shirt before bashing him to the ground again with a cruel right hand to the face. I was out of the crowd, standing within the empty circle. Brick grinned at the screeching gallery, then kicked Steve hard enough to lift him off the ground.
“That’s enough,” I said. I walked calmly toward the combatants, not moving too quickly but not hesitating, either. This was all about posturing. It was social more than anything, a dance people felt they had to perform if they found themselves in the right set of circumstances. All I had to do was play my part and this would all stop by itself.
“Stay out of this,” Brick said. There was a growl to his voice that surprised me.
“He’s done. You’ve knocked him on his ass.”
Steve looked up to see who’d come to save him and tried to smile through the blood dribbling from his nose.
“He’s dead,” Brick replied. “I told him so, and you’re next if you don’t get lost.”
I took a moment to weigh the situation before deciding to take Steve’s place. There was a risk of exposure that I should be avoiding, but if I read the big guy’s intentions correctly I didn’t have a choice. Brick genuinely meant to kill Steve, and the crowd was behind him.
“Mouse, there’s something weird going on in this town.”
Brick threw a punch at me, but I was gone before it had a hope of connecting. I slipped behind the larger man and jabbed my straightened fingers into his exposed armpit, temporarily crippling the arm. Brick screamed and tried to back away so I stepped aside and swept his feet out from under him. The drunken bruiser went down and I stepped over to help Steve up.
“You need to go,” I told the bloodied bank manager.
“His friends,” Steve replied, staring wide-eyed at the crowd behind me.
“Like I said, leave.” I thought he might object so I slapped him, hard, and took hold of his arms. “Go. Now.” There was a flash of anger that faded in a moment, and then he was backing away, pushing into a crowd that no longer cared about his fate. They had something new to obsess with and screech about.
I turned and examined my new situation. Brick was getting to his feet, his useless arm hanging by his side. Three other men of similar builds were standing beside him, ready to help him if he needed it. The crowd was in a frenzy, seemingly cheering the concept of violence rather than any one side in the disagreement.
“Kill him,” Patty yelled from the sidelines, to nobody in particular.
“We’ve all had a little fun,” I said, backing away until I hit the edge of the crowd. They pushed back, forming a wall I couldn’t get past without turning away from my enemies. “Let’s go back to the party. What do you say?”
I could see it wasn’t going to happen. They were drunk and angry, pumped up by the crowd and sure of their victory. The four men advanced together, any concept of a fair fight lost in their anticipation of what they were going to do to me.
“I have two options,” I said, loud enough for Mouse to hear. “Seriously damage four locals, and however many more join in afterward, or get the shit kicked out of me and hope for the best. Thoughts?”
“You’re no good to me all beaten up,” she replied, a little of the crowd’s excitement in her voice. “Break them.”
It wasn’t the response I expected from her – all emotion and aggression – but I went with it. I dismantled the nearest attacker, taking his sloppy punch and twisting the offered arm out of its socket before tossing him into the arms of the crowd. The next nearest tried to kick, as though emulating a kung fu movie. I caught the kick and moved in close, sending a short jab to his crotch and taking him out of the fight. The third guy hadn’t had enough time to form a response to the counterattack yet, and hadn’t even raised his hands to defend himself. I drove the side of my hand into his throat and stopped him from breathing for the next few minutes.
Which left Brick, standing alone in a crowd gone suddenly silent. With his support gone and his arm useless, it was his turn to look scared. I stepped forward and the broken meathead stepped away until he hit that wall of people begging for blood. They were as effective at stopping him as they had been with me.
“Why?” I said, taking up a position just out of reach. “Why pick on him?”
“I…I don’t know.” He wasn’t just scared; he was terrified. All the power he’d put into his aggression now turned on itself. I could see tears forming in his eyes. “I just…I was so angry.”
And I got it. I understood the fight, and Mouse’s aggressive suggestions, and even the sexual advances from
Patty. They were being influenced, driven in this direction.
“Take him out,” Patty yelled from the edge of the crowd, her friend joining in a moment later. I spared them a glance and saw what I expected to see: they were pumped up on adrenaline, their pupils, posture, and even the way they held onto each other suggesting the storm of anger they were feeling.
I turned back to Brick, whose wave of rage had crashed, and found a pitiful, broken man, sobbing and terrified. I lowered my hands and stepped away. When I reached the edge of the circle I barely had to pause before people, suddenly no longer acting as a single crazy crowd, stepped out of my way.
I felt the shift in the crowd before I heard anything. The sharp intake of breath as a new rush threatened to explode inside. I turned in time to dodge Brick’s final, desperate attack. I twisted the man’s arm behind his back and pulled him to his knees before wrapping my arm around his throat and applying enough pressure to stop the blood flow to his brain.
Brick went out like one of the lights hung over the gathering, and I left him on the packed ground as I left the party.
“I’m coming out,” I said to Mouse. “Can you bring the van down to pick me up, please?” There was no answer. I checked the earpiece was still in place before trying again. “Mouse, can you hear me?”
Now I felt the adrenaline begin to flood my system the way it had the others. Mouse always answered, was always there. I ran from the party, shoving people out of the way until I hit the road and was able to run back the way I’d come.
The van was there but the door was open. Mouse was gone.
The Knight: Divine Detectives
Ehl and Ahn were already talking by the time the knight arrived. The chain went slack, clattering to the floor, but the gods paid neither it nor him any attention.
Ahn was in the body of a sickly man. Somewhere in his late thirties, the man had the pallor of a corpse and a raspy voice even Ahn’s power couldn’t entirely obscure. Ehl was a young girl, on the cusp of her teens, at most. The knight couldn’t see any family resemblance, nor any savory reason for the two – the actual humans who would soon be dead – to be walking down an alley in the city of Fairbridge together.
“What could we possibly hope to find by coming in person?” Ehl said, its voice a more confident, sarcastic version of what the knight imagined the girl actually sounded like. “I already know every atom in the building.”
“And yet we have no idea how the young assassin came into his power,” Ahn replied. A pink flush had sprung up in the vessel’s cheeks, a hint of health conferred by his divine passenger. “Nor who hired him and sent him to kill a priest.”
“A fair point.”
They walked slowly toward a door halfway down the alley. Yellow and black caution tape hung askew across the opening, and the bricks around were blackened, like those of a furnace. A bright sun, far brighter than a pre-warming world would expect Fairbridge to get this time of year, was obscured by the tall buildings all around. The knight didn’t like the cities of this time with their yearning for the sky. It seemed a waste, as though the species he nominally still belonged to was afraid of the ground and spent all their effort getting as far away from it as possible. They created wonders in order to show off, and then hated using them. Or so it seemed from his admittedly removed perspective.
Ahn entered first, the tape and the charred remains of a wooden door falling apart as it approached, allowing them access without having to dirty their hosts. The knight followed Ehl, who still hadn’t deigned to notice him.
Beyond the door was a short flight of stone stairs, out of place with the façade of the building, as though someone had built atop an older structure and left the original buried within. They descended to another door, this one entirely burned away. Though there was no evidence to show it, the knight knew this door had been old, heavy oak. A door carried over in the old sailing ships of the country’s teenage years and lovingly stored until the right location could be found for it.
The room within was all old world, with stone walls and four pillars to hold the roof aloft. A depression in the center that had once held a small pool of still holy water was now blackened and abandoned. Through his connection to Ahn, the knight could feel the attention the police had given this one spot, the pictures they’d taken and the forensic wizardry they’d turned loose. This was where they’d found the remains of several people, once the fire had allowed them entry.
“DeLacy believes the boy died here, in the fire?” Ehl said, moving to the right of the pool. It reached to put its hands in the girl’s pockets, but she was wearing a dress and it had to content itself with crossing it’s arms instead.
“Until I told him otherwise.”
“I can’t see him escape.” Ehl had closed its eyes, casting its gaze back through time to the night of the fire. “Or anything about him after this moment.”
“Then whatever happened must have happened here,” Ahn said. It moved to the left of the pool and leaned over as though its host’s eyes weren’t up to the task of examining the gloomy room.
“Cast further back,” Ehl said. “He intended to run before the altercation, but I can find nothing to say he had a plan.”
“No. This wasn’t intentional. I believe he came up with something in the moment, independent of whatever made him special.”
“He isn’t special,” Ehl replied, the girl’s voice somehow infused with the type of derision only a god could express. “He is an anomaly. A sign, perhaps, that we should end this all and begin again.”
Ahn looked over at the young girl and for a moment the knight thought it might smile. Of course, Ahn didn’t smile, but there was something there, nonetheless.
“Has the introduction of an uncontrolled variable rattled you?”
“I’m winning. Why would I care what this boy does?”
“Why, indeed.”
The knight felt a shiver pass up his spine, a manifestation of the tension he’d been feeling since he’d gotten an inkling of where they were headed and what they planned to do. His eyes shot to Ahn as the god glanced his way, but it had more important things to concern itself eith than what its pet was thinking.
One day though, the knight knew, it would pay attention. When that happened it would open him up and realize what he’d done, what he’d hoped to bring into the world, and whom he’d collaborated with. What it would do after that was unknowable, but it wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone involved.
“Perhaps we should unpack his life further,” Ehl said. It skipped away from the pool, emulating the girl it wore. The visual was eerie and the knight looked away. “We could create a simulacrum of him up to this point and interrogate it.”
“I’m not interested in the boy,” Ahn replied, as close to unguarded irritation as he’d ever seen in the god. “He couldn’t have done this on his own, and there are very few beings who could do anything without us knowing.”
Ehl giggled like the schoolgirl it inhabited. “I’ve just checked everyone else who was in the city at the time, going back to their births, and I can’t see anything.”
“More to the point, I can’t see anything missing.”
“Indeed.”
The knight pondered what they were saying, trying to see where they might land next. They’d examined every person in Fairbridge City, looking for something they couldn’t see. This was how they could track DeLacy’s assassins, and the few others who had been provided some level of protection from scrutiny: they could watch them through the eyes of others, observing their actions in a way they otherwise couldn’t without breaking ancient covenants.
And they hadn’t seen anything surprising or revelatory in their search. They hadn’t spotted the obvious.
The knight forced his mind to blank, to the stillness and emptiness of a winter graveyard. He’d thought too much. Ahn would know, if he wasn’t more careful.
“Who can hide from us?” Ehl said, skipping back to the pool. Blood was oozing from the girl’s nose
. “DeLacy and his lot. Our children, to an extent. The boy, now. Who else, I wonder?”
“It won’t be them.” Ahn’s words brooked no dissent.
“Not him, certainly. He’s lost his mind. But her…that’s another story entirely.”
“They aren’t involved.” Ahn was losing its patience, and Ehl knew it. The knight could see what it was doing, the interplay they were having, but Ahn remained oblivious. It simply believed Ehl to be an idiot.
“Fine, then we deconstruct our children and see what they’re up to.” Ehl sat on the edge of the pool and hung the girl’s legs over the edge. She wasn’t tall enough for her feet to touch the bottom.
“And will you allow me to deconstruct yours?”
Ehl giggled again, but there was a wetness to it now, a hint of the damage it was causing beneath the surface. “You don’t trust me?”
“Should I?”
“I have nothing to do with this,” Ehl said. It straightened the girls dress. “I don’t think it would be fair, though. I have nine children now, and you only have seven. I’d be allowing more access than you would be.”
“So we will examine our own children and swear that we find nothing, in the hope of discovering an advantage.” Ahn seemed tired in that moment, as though the endless back and forth was finally, after an eternity, wearing him down.
“I will make a deal,” Ehl said. The girl’s body rose into the air from her position seated on the edge of the pool, hanging above the stone floor for a moment before Ehl set her down again. There was a tremor in her limbs now. “Allow me to deconstruct your knight as well as your children, and we shall call it even.”
The knight stepped back involuntarily, as though he could run away from the idea. Forget keeping his meager secrets from discovery; if he were handed to Ehl there’d be nothing left of him afterward. Even millennia later, the knight had as little wish to die as he’d had back when he’d been part of a history that no longer existed.