“It’s eating me!” she screeched. “It’s eating me! Pull it out! PULL IT OUT! PLEASE, PLEASE!”
I pulled.
The knife fought me.
It wasn’t done yet.
It still had vampire to kill.
I brought my foot down on her side and pulled harder. It still wouldn’t come.
“KING HENRY, PLEASE! NOT LIKE THIS!”
I slammed my remaining geo-anima into the knife in frustration, even though I knew it was impervious.
Only . . . it finally came free.
When I pulled the knife out, it wasn’t translucent but pink.
Annie B shuddered, whole body going limp.
I dropped the knife beside her. Felt for a pulse.
There was a pulse.
Barely.
Not even a good human pulse, much less a hyper vampire one, but there was a pulse.
I slapped gently at her face until her eyes opened.
She immediately started crying.
“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing I looked and sounded like an asshole.
“I know, you’re too stupid to kill me on purpose,” she managed to whisper before her eyes closed again.
Another bit of fear overtook me, but again I found a pulse.
She wasn’t dead.
Just unconscious.
My eyes found the knife, pink slowly fading back to clear glass. “What the fuck happened thousands of years ago?” I asked the empty room.
No one answered.
I checked Annie B’s pulse a third time, finding it rising. She was okay. She’d be okay . . .
I always think I don’t care about her and then shit like this happens and I feel like I’ve almost lost Pocket or Val or . . . Ceinwyn.
Or T-Bone?
“We need to get out of here before she wakes up . . .”
I glanced around the room, realized where I was.
Right . . . should probably find the stairs first.
Session 48
I woke up at 5:40AM
After the first few days of freedom without the humming alarm of the Asylum, I’d reverted to form. Can’t beat conditioning. Especially four years of conditioning. Four whole years, 5:40AM every morning that thing went off. Even during winter and summer break. Even on our free Sundays.
Hum.
Huuuummmmmmm.
Slowly growing in intensity.
Every day, like clockwork.
Part of me wondered if maybe they hadn’t forgotten how to change the time it activated on and if it wasn’t just stuck that way for the rest of eternity.
Even without the alarm now: 5:40AM.
Head popping right up. Need to race into the showers, get ready for the day. I paused the moment my head came up. No classmates around me. A dark room. No privacy curtains. No snores from Jason Jackson down the hall. No sight of Valentine right near me, waking up with a yawn and stretching her arms out, smiling at a brand new day. No sunshine hair tussled from sleep. No eyes without iris. No star.
I missed her.
Pocket too, Raj, Jesus, even Welf.
I always missed every single one of them during the summer. I always got bored and moody and felt like there was nothing to do but wait. The world stuck in place. Clockwork refusing to move, just the hum.
But . . . not today.
Thanks to Ceinwyn.
She saved my ass, taking me on this trip.
Might not have been the frolicking and sexual conquest I’d been hoping for, but every day so far had been a different challenge, be it farmer girls with too many brothers or Project Cassandra or the ghetto or fairies or Maxwell Lamont.
Every day there was something to do.
Something new to see.
Something new for Ceinwyn to teach me.
As long as it wasn’t teaching me how to drive the damn car that was.
But . . . useful stuff, right? Recruiting might be my future one day if I was lucky or desperate or a fall back when I inevitably got kicked out of the Guild for making an earthquake machine or something.
Or a lightsaber.
Whatever.
About time I stop causing her problems and start helping her out, ain’t it?
I woke up, already moving to get ready for the day.
I had things to do.
[CLICK]
I showered, shaved, and had on my road clothes by the time Ceinwyn dragged herself out of bed. Good news: no suit in sight. I think the chlorine from the pool ruined it. Also, I was ready to answer the hotel room’s door and let in a couple bellhops with a tray of breakfast. I handed out a twenty dollar tip to each of them. Wasn’t like it was my money. Was either the Asylum’s money or Ceinwyn’s money. One was the government and one was rich. This made it okay to waste.
“Do I want to know where you got that?” Ceinwyn mumbled.
Over the last weeks I’d gotten used to experiencing Auntie Badass’ lack of perfection in the morning. Just made me like her more really. Badass by day, grump by sunrise. Unlike Val, Ceinwyn Dale didn’t wake up smiling. She woke up with matted hair and in need of two cups of coffee.
Minimum.
No refunds.
I poured her a cup of brown wonder fluid from a pitcher on the breakfast tray, adding about twenty sugar cubes just like she preferred and a dollop of half-an-half. I put the cup down on a table, pulling out a chair for her to sit in like I was a manservant.
“Who are you and what have you done with my rebellious student?” she asked as she sat, but she gave her first smile of the day at the change of pace. “Putting one over on Alf put you in that good of a mood? Or was it the look on little Maxwell’s face when you broke his diving platform?”
I took a plate and put it down in front of her, revealing a mix of sweet pastries. “I figured I owed you a thank you of some sort,” I explained, “for the whole trip . . . not for letting me be the one to use the Mancy in front of him. Although, that was fun too.”
Her smile brightened. “You’ve been very helpful when you haven’t been a hindrance.”
My own plate of sausage, bacon, and eggs went across from her, along with my own cup of coffee, dark as sin with not a hint of sweetness. Pepper flew as I seasoned everything to a geomancer’s taste preference. “Still, thank you for the distraction.”
She sipped at her coffee. “I remember summers at the Asylum. I always hated them.”
I stopped chewing bacon long enough to get out, “I didn’t know you stayed.”
“Mother was gone by then. The Lady tried to keep me company, so did a few of the other teachers, but it was very lonely. Classes were smaller in those days and the Recruiters weren’t as international as they are now, so it was just me. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but there’s a stairwell in the Administration building that will let you go up to the roof. I used to spend all day up there with a boombox playing cassette tapes. I’d build up anima and then hover over the edge of the building and on back before it wore out. Until the Lady caught me doing it at least . . . she locked me in my room for a week . . .”
I was so shocked by the outpouring that I couldn’t speak.
Ceinwyn continued, “Usually you have Jason and Jesus to keep you company, but this year, I heard about the dispensations and the Lady’s lack of one for you. You have to admit it would send the wrong kind of signal about troublemaking to reward you. But still . . . it was very unfair to let you not have some outlet. So . . . I thought why not save King Henry from the same boredom I suffered by bringing him with me?”
“Could’ve just said ‘you’re welcome’ instead of trying to make me cry, Miss Dale,” I managed to choke out at my plate.
“What would be the fun in that?” she teased, sipping more coffee. “You’ve been a good assistant this last week, King Henry, and you managed to find a new recruit that might’ve slipped through our fingers . . . I’m proud of you.”
I grumbled something about needing to brush my teeth and ran into the bathroom before I could get eve
n the least bit emotional.
Ceinwyn just sat there grinning like a cat, finally picking at the pastries I’d ordered for her. “Try to get past my guard with sentimentality, will he?” she whispered smugly.
[CLICK]
“You’re sure this is safe?” I asked Ceinwyn, standing on the bank of the Mississippi in the same place that Sipponnii had dragged me in. Sally Two was sadly absent. Almost had her! Nerd pussy!
“Perfectly safe as long as you don’t touch the water itself.”
It was hotter than the last time. Big thick humidity hitting me in places I didn’t know could get so soggy. Fresno gets hot as fuck in the summer, but it’s always dry heat. People that say ‘dry heat’ like it’s no big deal are full of shit, because a dry heat of one-hundred and ten degrees will wipe your ass out pretty quick, but at least said ass doesn’t feel like it’s got a handful of water stuck between its cheeks.
The Mississippi itself was unchanged. Big river. River of eternity. Sipponnii.
“Right,” I said, “and she’ll hear me?”
“Likely even now.”
“Right,” I said again, stepping up towards the water, but being very careful about not stepping in it. “We found the kid you were talking about. His name is Maxwell. Seems okay for being born rich. Only just turned twelve, so I’m not so sure your omniscience is as good as you think it is, but, we found him early, better than finding him late, so that’s cool.
“Uh,” I stopped as a few early rising tourists stared at me like I was insane, “thanks anyway. Ceinwyn says thanks too. Maxwell probably would, but I didn’t want him to get any ideas about swimming across the river, so . . . he doesn’t know about you. One day I’ll tell him though. He’ll be a Single when I’m a Hep so . . . he could probably use the advice.”
I stepped back away from the water.
“That diplomacy was stunning,” Ceinwyn teased me.
“You do it next time then.”
“No, no, you did fine. Rule One of Teaching: don’t redo what your student has just finished, no matter how messy their bed.”
“That sounds like a rule for five-year-olds.”
“Works for conversations with anima concentrations too.”
We started walking back to the car.
“At least no one called the cops to come pick up the crazy guy.”
“I suppose that’s a plus in any situation King Henry Price is involved in.”
[CLICK]
Our business in St. Louis finished, we hit up another ShopsMart. Ceinwyn finally took her morning phone calls outside by the gas pump while I was given a new hundred dollar bill and again I went around attacking the shelves with the mind of a six-year-old on a shopping spree.
I’d gotten kind of used to it by now.
First trip: candies and chips for Ceinwyn and peppered beef jerky for yours truly.
Second trip: Dr. Pepper for me, a mix of energy drinks for her.
Third trip: a last minute pair of slushies for the two of us.
I thought about stealing some cigarettes or at least some magazines, but decided against it. I always think about doing it. Old time’s sake. Like when I was a kid. Nostalgia. Even to this day I think about breaking a shelf and stealing a cig and lighting up.
But I don’t.
Is that considered growing up?
I don’t know.
Maybe the idea just bores me now. It seemed like a real tough game when I was a kid. After the Winter War and the Asylum and meeting someone like Ceinwyn Dale . . . not such a challenge. Artificing, there was a challenge. I kept counting down the days. September and it would be back to the Asylum and meeting Plutarch for the first time. It would be time to learn what being an Ultra was all about.
I was a graduate, a summer intern, an Artificer-in-training. Shelves? Cigs? Fucking child’s play.
Bring on the tough challenges.
King Henry Price don’t play any game on the easiest mode.
Except Dark Souls, cuz fuck that shit.
I exited the ShopsMart and put Ceinwyn’s slushie on the car, right next to her. Still on the phone, she took a sip of it and made a funny face.
“What?” I asked.
“Green apple?” she mouthed at me, the voice of Alfred Pemberton coming through the speaking phone.
“What you got against apples?”
“I have to go, Alf,” Ceinwyn said before hanging up on the poor sap. “Alf says ‘good job and goodbye’ King Henry.”
“How’d you meet him?” I finally asked.
“We were junior Recruiters together, International Office. I was a field agent and he was in clerical.”
“So . . . nothing’s changed?”
“Older, wiser, more understanding of idiotic teenagers,” she said with a wink, throwing something at me.
I caught it, palmed it.
Car keys.
“Really?” I asked, excited.
“A trade on my payment for you jumping in the pool. I teach you to drive instead of letting you ravish the female population of the eastern United States.”
“Fucking deal!”
“Besides . . . we’re out of the city, you shouldn’t be able to cause too much destruction.”
“Badass!” I shouted, jumping into the driver’s seat.
Then I realized I had no fucking clue what to do.
Ceinwyn slid into the passenger seat, triple-checking her seatbelt. “Key in the ignition.”
“Right!”
The engine started.
“Uh . . . where are we going?”
“West Virginia.”
I scowled. “How ‘bout Vegas?”
“West Virginia,” she repeated. “Twelve-year-old girl by the name of Gabriella. Corpusmancer, Ultra we think. She’ll be in the same class as Maxwell.”
I managed to move the car to the road without killing anyone or breaking anything.
We stayed there for almost a minute.
“Problem?” Ceinwyn prompted.
“Yeah . . . I don’t actually know the direction . . .”
She pointed haphazardly out the window as she pushed her seat all the way back and threw a pair of long legs up on the dash. “That-a-way, driver.”
I smiled, playing along. “Sure thing, Miss Dale.”
Session 144
T-Bone dropped me off at my shop.
What was left of it.
“Want me to come in?” he asked.
I just shook my head.
“Call me if you need my help,” he said, before adding, “No vampires next round, please.”
This time I nodded.
I’d slept a little on the car ride, but it hadn’t been restful, just exhausted and full of nightmares. Kept seeing Hector Vega’s werecoyote skull pop. Kept hearing Annie B’s screech of pain. Kept seeing Root kneeling before Inanina. I’d known the guy was calculating and I’d known the guy didn’t like me, I wasn’t aware he wanted me dead.
Probably had something to do with knocking Ceinwyn off her game. I was just a piece for most of them, even for Ceinwyn. A piece that didn’t know the rules, that wasn’t supposed to know the rules until he was much older and more respectable, had kids to worry about, more easy to manipulate into following them rules. As I was, the only good I brought to the world was in how tightly they could tie strings to me and in how my pain would affect a real player.
Hard to say Ceinwyn wasn’t a player now. Not after everything I’d learned.
I fought so hard to escape the Guild of Artificers and now where was I?
Everywhere I looked, it was just lies and strings and . . .
I’m a cynic and a pessimist most of the time; I think we’ve established that pretty well over the last year. But I also believe in one person being able to fix the world’s problems . . . so maybe King Henry Price, deep down, is just a broken optimist. Broken, just like Paine. Not broken as badly as Paine, but not right neither. Just broken enough so when I get a peek at how fucked up the world is . . . it breaks me a
little more.
I never thought the Asylum was filled with good guys. I’m not a believer in my betters, not like Val or Eva or . . . so many of the others I look up to. To me, the Asylum is just filled with people. People with problems and quirks and imperfections. Same as all the other big institutions in civilization. Problem with government? Made of people. Problem with corporations? Made of people. People can be anything, usually a mess, so civilization itself is a mess. Asylum was the same to me. Just people with the Mancy, fighting back against madness however they can, imperfect but struggling.
But now?
Meteyos stuck in a cave? Divines as gods? An imprisoned realm? A dagger that eats vampires?
I’m starting to wonder if once upon a time we were the bad guys. Or at least sided with the bad guys. Or stepped aside so the bad guys could win . . .
It’s just been so long we’ve forgotten.
Or have we?
That another lie?
Or maybe we don’t know. Maybe we don’t remember. Maybe we’re just useful tools and handy meals for the real bad guys.
Only a fool steals some truth and then gives it away for free.
I fingered the stolen flashdrive in my pocket.
Time to buy some certainty in my life.
One way or the other.
[CLICK]
The on-demand printing portion of my shop was intact, so there’s that. The shop itself had been rummaged through by about a hundred cops, before ESLED reminded them of the lie I was a CIA asset probably. A good chunk of my floor was missing where the explosion went off. Fire damage on the ceiling above it. The safe cover blasted off into a corner.
The Vamps ransacking the place had attacked all the usual spots before they found the floor safe. Every drawer was open and thrown on the floor, no care for the half-finished artifacts or schematics inside. A dangerous amount of anima vials were on the floor, left unattended. I went about picking them up, putting them back in their slots along a wall.
Finished in a minute.
Room was still a mess.
Life was still a mess.
People-Who-Want-to-Kill-Me count was rising at an alarming rate.
People-Who-Have-My-Back count was dropping at an equally alarming rate.
The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny (The King Henry Tapes) Page 37