by C L Walker
“Aim lower.”
“I will. Where’s Patty?” She’d insisted on joining Claire at the diner. She wanted to see this through and get back to her life, and no amount of arguing was going to sway her adrenaline-fueled decision.
“Out back. She says she’ll keep quiet but I’ve warded the room and locked her inside.”
“Warded?”
“It would take too long to explain,” she said in her patronizing tone.
“I have to go. Don’t call me until after. Like, an hour after.”
“Good luck.” She hung up.
I plugged in the little USB camera I was going to use as a pre-shot spotter. The resolution was terrible and it introduced weird distortion in the picture, but it was enough to let me know when I had to move. I brought up the image of the street and double-checked I had everything memorized correctly.
There were a few cars parked on the street but the shops were all closed, as though the people of Midway had all gotten the memo and stayed home. The place was a ghost town, which was great for me. The only new thing was a dog roaming near the trash behind the diner, a lead dragging along behind it. I was pretty sure it was the one I’d seen being pulled down the street earlier that week.
I hadn’t been lying about being able to cut Foster’s hair from this distance. Even if the wind picked up, or he decided to run from his car to the diner, I could still hit him in my sleep. I had the layout memorized and I’d done the calculations. All I had to do now was wait.
I’d expected the evening to be ominous, a sign of the magic Foster had been working, but there was nothing. It was just another sunset in a small town. A light breeze brought me the scent of the purple flowers from the tree beneath the squash and racquet club, and the sound of the trucks on the highway was the loudest thing for miles. It was odd that there were so few people on the street, but it didn’t make things feel like they were about to explode into violence.
I was cautiously optimistic, if I were being honest. It looked like Foster had messed something up, or my chat with Littleton had gone well, or perhaps the people of Midway had reacted to being scared and angry by locking themselves indoors and watching Game of Thrones.
Foster’s car came to a stop outside the diner as the last light of the day faded from the horizon. The sky was still a bright purple and there was plenty of light for me to do what I’d come here to do.
He stayed in his car. Thanks to the terrible resolution of the camera, the darkened windows of his BMW were impenetrable. I could see Claire as a blur of pixels on the screen, standing behind the counter inside and waiting.
He wasn’t getting out and I was nervous. Did he suspect something, or perhaps sense it? Claire had warded the back room, whatever that meant, and it might be enough to tip him off that something was going on.
I get like this before a hit, turning into a bundle of nerves. Even so, this was different; perhaps because it was the first time I was doing this for myself instead of the clan, or perhaps because Foster had become a personal target as well as my first professional one. I was starting to feel sick. I needed him to get out and stroll slowly to the diner. Or run, or do cartwheels if he wanted to. But I needed him to move.
He didn’t. The car stayed parked with the engine running.
I wanted to take up my position, rest my rifle on the wall, and take my chances that they’d see me. I could probably take the shot before they pulled away, assuming he was in a position I could see from my vantage point. Assuming the glass wasn’t bulletproof. Assuming, assuming, assuming.
I stayed where I was, nervously watching the blurry image from the camera. Foster wasn’t getting out and neither were his men. They were waiting for something, as though they knew I was ready.
I looked up from the bright screen and waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. I had the unnerving thought that he’d sent one of his goons up to the roof and I was being watched, perhaps by a man with a gun pointed at my head as he laughed at my incompetence.
The roof was empty of anyone else. Because of course it was; I would have heard if someone came through the door from inside – the hinges needed oiling – or up the fire escape at the back. I’d come up that way and I’d set up a trip wire attached to some empty cans I collected on my walk from the car, to alert me if someone followed.
I checked the screen and the car was still there, the doors were still closed. Claire was on the move, though, walking slowly through the empty diner toward the front door.
What was she doing? Had he called her and told her to meet him outside?
That had to be what was happening. Perhaps he suspected something or, more likely, just wanted to prove his dominance over a god, but Foster had told her to meet him at the car.
She left the diner and stopped halfway to the BMW. It was impossible to know what she was thinking based on the collection of pixels on my screen, leaving my imagination to fill in the gaps.
She’d be scared and excited, hopeful while realizing that the situation had gone sideways.
I was wasting time visualizing things rather than taking action. That wasn’t what Mouse would do.
I crawled away from the wall, carefully keeping my rifle from touching the ground. I wasn’t afraid of making any noise; the thing was damn expensive, costing half the money we’d borrowed. I didn’t want to scuff it and get an earful from Mouse. If she came back.
The rear of the building was out of sight of the street and overlooked the hardware store twenty feet below, which is quite a drop, even for me. I carefully put the rifle into the custom leather holster on my back and climbed over the edge of the roof.
I dropped to the nearest window, catching myself with fingertips hardened through years of doing stupid things like this. There were many things to say about DeLacy’s assassin clan, but they were thorough.
I shimmied to the edge of the windowsill and judged the next drop. It was more than I was comfortable with, but not impossible. I dropped again.
My left hand slid right of the ledge and left me dangling above a darkening drop by the tips of two fingers on my right hand. Pain shot through my barely healed body as every muscle pulled at the same time in the wrong directions.
I couldn’t pull myself up so I dropped again, catching myself like a pro and not dying. I left the skin from the palms of my hands behind when I immediately dropped again to land on the roof. I paused for a moment to appreciate the descent I’d just pulled off. Sometimes you just have to be proud.
Claire was on her own with a crazy wizard. She was a god, so things could go either way, but however that went I wasn’t going to be there to see it if I didn’t run. I turned and ran.
The hardware store roof was a terrible vantage point with no cover, and it was too close to the ground. I dropped to the floor and removed my rifle, crawling to the edge as quickly as I could.
Claire was waiting where I’d left her, talking on the phone. Foster and his men were still in the car, but now I could see their outlines. Two in the front, one in the back. It was a safe bet that Foster was in the back. I lined up the shot, which was even easier from lower down, and waited for something to happen to help me decide when to fire.
The door nearest to the curb opened but Claire stayed where she was. She was blowing her lie out of the water, but it wouldn’t matter if the target didn’t get out of the car.
“What are you scared of?” I said to myself. “Come on out. Get some pie. It’s a lovely night.”
Foster didn’t oblige, but Claire moved around the far side of the car from the open door. She stopped outside the window closest to me and crossed her arms.
Foster opened his window and looked up at the waitress-god.
I took my shot.
The Knight: Heavenly Interference
The knight stood in the middle of the eerily empty street and watched Ahn and Ehl take up position on either side of Charity. Their glowing forms brightened the early evening and cast odd shadows that only he could see.
“This isn’t how your game works,” he said. They ignored him. They’d been doing that all day, interfering constantly. He knew that as long as they both agreed to a change, they could make it with no repercussions, but he hadn’t expected them to react to Trevor Foster’s actions so decisively. They were scared, as he’d guessed, and they were willing to put aside their disagreements to make sure things went according to their plan.
When he’d first spoken to Despair and come up with the plan, he’d counted on the two to distrust each other more. He expected them to bicker until it was too late. Instead, they’d sprung into action as they never had before.
Merikh was on the roof nearby and Foster hadn’t seen him. The gods, Ahn and Ehl and Beyahn, all had, though. Beyahn was setting up the assassin’s shot, and the knight could see the confidence on her face as she sneered at her tormentor.
The assassin fired, but the shot went wide. A patch of sidewalk behind the car exploded as the boom of the rifle reached Foster’s car.
He fired again without pausing and the shot again went wide again, hitting the back of the black car.
Foster yelled to his men and the tires on the car spun as the driver put his foot flat on the accelerator.
The assassin fired again, but the shot was too high and it shattered the diner window.
Foster’s car pulled away in a screech of tires and was gone without another shot going off. The assassin had failed, as the gods had intended.
Beyahn kept her eyes on the car until it slid around a corner and out of sight, then turned an accusing glare at Merikh. The knight turned to follow her gaze but the world faded before he could see the top of the building where the shots had come from.
They were outside of town and the gods had taken hosts.
Ahn was a fat man with tattoos up both arms and a dirty shirt covering his ample belly. “Now he will have to interrupt the summoning if he hopes to succeed.” The god was talking to him.
Ehl, in a woman wearing a flowery dress covered in dust, turned to face the knight, as well. “Your goal here seems to be slipping away from you, monkey.”
“If he had killed the priest of wrath then you would have had your way.” He gestured to the crowd of people around them advancing down the road. Nearly everyone in town was there, all angry and scared. And armed. “This wouldn’t have been necessary.”
“You’re mistaken,” Ahn said. “The summoning was started early, by stabbing the dagger into a true vessel. She will be on her way already.”
“You should have just killed her,” Ehl said. “Making her a true vessel was stupid.”
“I was unaware what was being planned here.”
The knight had known the gods couldn’t see what was happening with the dagger, but he hadn’t known a true vessel could speed the process. He hadn’t known what a true vessel was. The dagger that had killed the being the gods were so terrified of was the only thing he’d known was required.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ehl said. “If your monkey’s plan had worked out then this was still required. How do you feel about that, monkey? You were dooming these people to succeed at a task you don’t even understand. How does that fit with your morality?”
He couldn’t answer. The planning had taken so long, stolen moments when Ahn had left him alone adding up over decades. He hadn’t thought it through. Not really. He hadn’t had the time.
The crowd had passed them by, so intent on what they were planning that they hadn’t noticed two of their number stopping in the street to talk. They had bloody business ahead of them and they were not going to be distracted.
“The carnage that is about to be unleashed will feed the disciple of wrath and make him over-confident.” Ahn sniffed the air. “Your pet assassin will destroy him and end the summoning, and then we will destroy him in turn.”
“You can’t touch him,” the knight said quickly. “He is beyond your control.”
“Directly, sure,” Ehl answered. “But we will change the world so that he no longer exists. He will be like all the other remnants roaming around; just an echo of nothing.”
“And his woman?”
“What of her?” Ahn said. The knight could sense that they were getting ready to leave. They were bored with monitoring the burgeoning war and eager to get back to Foster’s side.
They vanished and their hosts fell to the ground twitching. That was for the knight’s benefit, as they hadn’t possessed the townspeople long enough to kill them.
The chain rattled and went tight, and the knight was dragged to watch his defiance crumble.
Chapter 19
I looked down on Claire and shook my head. The look she was giving would have scared me if she had any power over me.
I made my way back up the side of the squash and racquet club to fetch my gear, then down the fire escape at the back. Claire hadn’t moved and was waiting for me outside her diner.
“You missed,” she said matter-of-factly. “Three times.”
“I think someone is messing with me. Or something.”
“Or you aren’t as good as you think you are.”
“No, I am exactly as good as I think I am.” I put the laptop bag on the road and settled the harness for my rifle on my shoulder. “More to the point, you could have made that shot. That dog could have made the shot from there.” The stray dog I’d spotted before was nosing around the front of the diner, probably smelling the food waiting within.
“He made no move to stop your bullets. He didn’t know you were there.”
“Something did.” The being had told me not to complete my job this way, had told me to go into Foster’s “lair” and finish him off. “I think I’m supposed to go to his house and do it there.”
“The mysterious benefactor? I didn’t see it, whatever it is, anywhere. And there’s nothing that can hide from me.”
“I could.” She had no response and didn’t suffer from the usual human tendency to try to have the last word even if she was at a loss. “Where is everyone?” The street was empty before but I’d expected activity after I took the shot. The report of a powerful rifle tended to draw crowds.
“I’m watching them, and they’re still at home.” Claire had been using her gifts to keep an eye on anyone who might screw up the hit. She looked confused for a second. “They’re still at home, and in exactly the same positions they were earlier.”
“Still think you can see everything?”
“One sec,” she said as she closed her eyes. I went to say something else and she held up a finger to shush me.
The town was creepy without any people, like the opening scene in a zombie movie. Even the trucks on the highway seemed to have gone quiet. I heard a siren in the distance, but given how quiet the world was it could have been Greenridge.
“I have been fooled,” she said, her eyes snapping open, alarmed. “There is nobody in town anymore, and I can find no traces they ever were. It is like my sight is being…blocked somehow.”
“Like a mysterious being is trying to get us to do what it wants?”
She nodded slowly, looking down at the ground. “If that is true then we are in danger. Its intentions are unlikely to work in our favor.”
“Maybe, or maybe it’s trying to help and is going about it in the most annoying way possible.” I was going to have to assault Foster’s estate, a plan Mouse and I had decided early on was too risky.
“Perhaps.” She was lost in whatever thoughts bounce around in a god’s head. I didn’t have time to wait for her to focus.
“I’m going to find him. Keep an eye on Patty and don’t let her go wherever everyone else went.” I’d parked my borrowed hatchback around the corner and I turned to go to it.
“I know where they are,” Claire said softly.
“Who?”
“Everyone. They’re at Littleton. They’re fighting. Littleton is shooting back.” She shook her head slowly. “There are people dying.”
Whatever the being was, it wanted me to
face Foster directly, in his home. It wanted Foster’s plan to come to fruition before I killed him, and so it had made sure we wouldn’t be aware of what was happening.
“I have to go,” I said. “Keep an eye on things and let me know if you spot anything.”
I hurried to the car and dumped my stuff in the back seat. I was racing through the street of Midway a moment later, unconcerned with the speed limit. I could still hear the sirens in the distance, though they sounded closer now.
My Blackberry vibrated against my leg. I’d left it on silent.
“Got something already?” I left Midway behind and hit the back roads.
“You’ll probably be able to see it soon,” Claire said. She spoke softly, as though she was in shock. “Foster’s magic is working. Their anger is feeding him, empowering him. The police are on their way and when they get there, the process will accelerate.”
“So I should hurry.”
“People are dying, and their deaths are feeding him. Anyone with ambrosia in their systems…their deaths are feeding him, as well.”
I hit a main road and took the corner at speed. “How strong do you think he’ll be?” This was what I’d been trying to avoid, but the best laid plans of mice and men, and all that. It would be harder, but not impossible. He couldn’t use his magic on me except to physically pummel me, and I was ready for that. Or, at least, as ready as I could be.
“He’ll channel it into his spell.” She didn’t sound sure. “You’ll have to get past his men first, but he should be at his normal strength.”
I stopped listening. Sherriff’s department cars raced down a cross street before me and I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting them. There were loads of them, too; it looked like the sheriff had called in help again, in a big way. It took a while for the line of flashing vehicles to finish going past. They were heading for Littleton.
I accelerated away from the intersection and entered Foster’s road. When I was a short distance away, about where Mouse had been the last time I’d visited the place, I pulled over.