Black Box Inc.

by Jake Bible

  Lassa threw the empty bottle over his shoulder, expertly hitting Aspen between the eyes, then belched.

  “You should have said something sooner,” Lassa said. “Yetis don’t sip.”

  Lassa held his wounded hand out, and we watched the skin heal instantly. The process was so fast that if I had blinked twice, I would have missed it.

  However, there was one side effect.

  White hair began to grow from every follicle on Lassa’s body, and he was a full-on, hairy-as-he-was-meant-to-be yeti in three seconds.

  “Dammit,” he muttered.

  “That should work to our advantage,” Teresa said. “Your fur coat should give you some more protection. We can use any advantage we can get.”

  “Fur coat?” Lassa snapped. “I’m not a society wife, thank you.”

  “And this isn’t the 1960s,” I said. “Society wife? Really, pal?”

  “Hey, don’t criticize me,” Lassa said. “I’m not part of the race that skins animals and wears those skins for prestige.”

  “That storm’s not looking good,” Harper interrupted, staring out the windshield.

  I could tell she was concerned about the storm, but she was also doing what Harper does, which is change the subject when Lassa and I are about to get tangentially stupid.

  “Not a storm,” Aspen said. “That’s the border with Ekron.” He moved to the divider and leaned forward. “Get us as close to that as possible, but don’t drive through the clouds. The dimension’s defenses will strip this limo down to the hubcaps.”

  “Then how are we getting in?” Teresa asked. “Certainly we aren’t going to walk.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Aspen said.

  “Through that?” I asked at the massive wall of black clouds that was getting closer. “If that’ll strip the limo down to the hubcaps, then what in the goddamn hell is it going to do to us?”

  “Not Hell,” Aspen said.

  “That’s not what I meant!” I shouted.

  He grinned. His turn to needle. Well played. Asshole.

  “Don’t worry. Anyone can come and go from Ekron on foot.”

  “What is Ekron like?” Harper asked. She’d gotten out a ten-inch knife and was sharpening the blade on a piece of stone. She didn’t look up from her task. “Bubbling pits of fire? Screaming, tormented souls?”

  “Detroit,” Aspen said.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Teresa said and sighed. “Detroit is not that bad. I’ve been there recently and the city is quite vibrant when you take into consideration what the place has been through.”

  “Right,” Aspen said and pointed at the massive cloud wall. “That’s what I mean. This dimension is like Detroit. I wasn’t kidding when I said that. I like Detroit.”

  Everyone turned and looked at him.

  “What?” he asked. “I’m not always a dick.”

  Lassa snorted and drove us a little closer, then pulled off to the side of the road and stopped the limo. We sat there for a minute and stared at the black cloud that served as Ekron’s border. The defense swirled and undulated, but other than that, it didn’t seem too menacing once we were up close. There were no hidden tentacled figures moving about or far-off cries of pain and agony. Simply a big cloud colored black.

  “No time like the present,” Aspen said and scooted past me to get out of the limo.

  He was gone, and we heard the trunk pop open. Harper got out and followed him. I looked at Teresa, then at Lassa, who had turned to lean over the divider.

  “This here,” I said, pointing at Lassa and Teresa, then at myself. “This is the trust circle.”

  “Triangle,” Lassa said and shrugged. “But whatever.”

  “I swear I’ll take a picture of you like this and change your Tinder profile.”

  “Chill, dude.”

  “Your point is taken, Mr. Lawter,” Teresa said. “The faerie and the one complicit with the Fae will turn on us at some point.”

  “Harper already has,” Lassa said. “She keeps turning and she’ll be back where she started.”

  “She can’t get back there,” I said.

  “You can never go home again,” Lassa responded.

  “No.” I held up a finger. He liked to start quoting Thomas Wolfe when he got maudlin. I didn’t need that shit right then. “Game face, pal.”

  “I wasn’t going to start,” he said, knowing exactly why I had cut him off.

  Teresa eyed us, then reached inside her gown and pulled out two glowing rocks. They had the same blue tint that she had. She held one out to each of us.

  “Only use these if you have no other choice,” she said. “I mean that. This is the nuclear option, understood?”

  Lassa and I shared a look. We both shook our heads.

  “No,” I said. “Explain.”

  “They’re calling stones,” Teresa said. “Sacred to the banshees. If you have no way out, and I mean that you are about to die, then you hold the rock to your lips and you ask for vengeance. That is what you will get.”

  “But will we still be alive?” Lassa asked. “Because vengeance usually comes after someone dies and you are, well, avenging their death.”

  “If you use them in time, then you will have almost every banshee from my firm appear to save you,” Teresa said. “One or two have to stay behind because business is business, but other than them, you will have the might of Mulkahey, Delaney, and Sullivan—Attorneys at Law coming to your rescue.”

  “Wow,” Lassa said. “That’s some serious saving.”

  “And billable,” I said, looking Lassa in the eye. “Do not use that stone unless you are dying. Otherwise, you’ll be explaining the invoice to Sharon and she will kill you, which would make using the stone pointless.”

  “Right,” Lassa said. He tucked the stone away. “Ready?”

  “Yeah,” I tucked my own stone away before getting out of the limo.

  Harper walked up to me, a duffel bag over her shoulder. She slid something into my hand, and I nearly jerked away, but I controlled myself as I felt the hard steel of a small revolver. I didn’t have to look down to know she handed me a snub-nosed .38. Not exactly a massive amount of firepower, but the gun would do in a pinch.

  I was confused by the gesture, but sure as shit wasn’t going to argue. Looked like the ladies were looking out for me.

  I slid the revolver into my pocket without a nod of thanks or any acknowledgment.

  “This way,” Aspen said and started walking toward the border.

  He didn’t have a duffel bag or any type of pack on him. I wondered then why he’d needed to get to the trunk before we proceeded. That bugged me, and I tucked the thought away for later.

  We followed him, and after a few minutes we were within arm’s reach of the huge cloud. Aspen kept walking, but we all paused. He disappeared, then stuck his head back out and glared at us.

  “Come on,” he said. “Ticktock.”

  I hurried to follow him, then we were through the cloud.

  Aspen was right. The dimension did look like Detroit.

  There wasn’t even a lag of swirling smoke as we crossed the border. One step, and we were in Ekron. The resemblance to the Motor City was uncanny. What was even weirder was the fact that the streets were filled with vintage cars. Fords, Chevys, Dodges, you name a model of car, and there was a representation.

  The drivers were a little different, though.

  “This way,” Aspen said. “Before we draw too much attention. The inhabitants of this dimension are used to strangers, but we give off a gonna-cause-trouble vibe. We pretty much stink of it. Come on.”

  The drivers of the cars looked almost exactly like horned devils. Thick red skin. Short black horns protruding from their foreheads. I even s
aw a pointed tail whipping back and forth next to one driver as she sang to some Motown girl group oldie. Totally fascinating. At least until a couple of the drivers did notice us, and their thick penciled-on eyebrows rose in suspicion.

  Aspen led us to a side alley, and we walked that way for a long while before he stopped us by a rusted-out dumpster. I wasn’t sure why he stopped us, then I noticed he was constantly clearing his throat. He coughed a few times into his hand, looked at his palm, then grimaced.

  “And this is why Daphne needed us to help,” I said, nodding at Aspen as he wiped faerie blood on his pants. We took a step back. “It all makes sense. This dimension makes you sick.”

  “Stay here long enough and it’ll make you sick too,” he said and pointed back the way we came. “This isn’t a dimension you stay in for long no matter your race.”

  “But you are being affected more than any of us. Why?” Teresa asked. Aspen didn’t answer. “Fine. How long do you have?”

  “I’ll be all right,” Aspen said. “If we stay on schedule and get this job done, then I’ll be fine. The ride home will be uncomfortable since someone drank all of my healing elixir.” He glared at Lassa. “But I’ll make the trip back to my dimension without the extra help.”

  Teresa’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything.

  Harper produced a small map from her pocket and unfolded the plastic-coated paper.

  “We’re here,” she said and pointed to an alley on the map.

  “You have a map of the dimension?” I asked.

  “Yes, obviously. We go this way,” Harper said, tracing a route on the map with the tip of her finger. “We’re only about six blocks from the palace. We can take alleys for most of the way, but the last two blocks we’ll be out in the open. If our walk is going to go wrong, that’s where it will happen.”

  “Perhaps we should have Lawter make his little hidey box now?” Aspen said. “Then the dimension’s citizens will only see a moron walking along the street and not our entire group.”

  “Not yet,” Harper said. “Too much ground to cover. None of this works if Chase doesn’t survive the walk to Lord Beelzebub’s palace. We’ll be approaching from the rear. Everyone in this dimension steers clear of Lord Beelzebub’s palace, unless they have business there. So once we’re close, we can have Chase make the Dim box for us to hide in. Until then he’s still my responsibility.”

  “That’s so sweet,” Aspen said.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Harper replied, then looked at the rest of us. “There’s not much to this plan to remember except that when the time comes to move, we move fast. And we don’t stop moving until we’re back in the limo and driving home.”

  Harper waited for us to agree. We did. She folded the map, then took off at a brisk jog. We followed.

  18

  THERE WAS ONE other similarity shared by Ekron drivers; each of them looked like gangsters. Pure and simple. Goddamn gangsters.

  Now, depending on the cars they drove, the style of gangster varied. They were tied to their era.

  A guy driving a big 1920s Packard drove past us as we emerged from the last alley. He had on a fedora and pinstripe suit with a demon dame sitting next to him. She was all dolled up and ready to hit the closest speakeasy for some jazz.

  A ’63 Cadillac convertible was coming from the other direction. The woman driving wore huge sunglasses and had covered her head in a printed scarf. Her black blouse was sleeveless, and she clamped a cigarette between her teeth. She pulled over half a block away from us and honked the horn. A guy in chinos and a black-and-turquoise bowling shirt came out of the apartment building she’d stopped in front of.

  He had a large chrome revolver in his hands, and he was busy placing cartridges into the chamber. Then he snapped the chamber shut and tucked the gun into his waistband. As he lit a cigarette, she leaned over and pushed the passenger’s door open. He slid into the dark red leather seat as she gave him a kiss on the cheek. They sped off without a glance in our direction.

  More evidence of the theme appeared, from a group of tracksuit-wearing toughs in an Escalade to a group of guys bouncing down the road in a low rider dressed in 1980s LA gang garb, complete with bandanas around their heads. Those guys did check us out, and one of them flashed a gold-plated .45 with a pearl-handled grip.

  “Nice place,” Lassa said. “Reminds me of home.”

  “Huh?” I asked. “Yetis dress like gangsters at home?”

  “What are you talking about?” Lassa asked. “They’re dressed in their winter best like before the holiday festivals.”

  I stared and scratched my head.

  “Tactical armor,” Harper said. “I see tactical armor. Special Forces style.”

  “This place pulls from your mind,” Aspen said. “You see what you think you should see.”

  “Gangsters? Really, dude?” Lassa asked me.

  “Hell if I know,” I replied.

  “Not Hell,” Aspen grumbled.

  “Teresa? What do you see?” I asked.

  “I’m immune to the visions,” Teresa said. “They simply look like horned demons going about their business.”

  “But you see the cars, right?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Teresa said. “Another similarity to Detroit. The exhaust is a bit overwhelming.”

  “Horned demons in cars. Driving around—”

  “Do not say the word, Lawter,” Aspen snapped. “None of you say the word. Not Hell.”

  He gave us all a quick glare, then tried not to cough and hack, which only caused him to cough and hack even harder. Harper slapped him on the back, which made us all grimace and glare. Her sympathy for Aspen had deepened since we’d walked into the city. There was almost a protective quality to how she stayed near him and had stopped giving him shit.

  That behavior was not helping her case.

  When Aspen had finished hawking up a lung, Harper led us down the block and we tried to act casual, but there’s really no way to do that in a place where everyone has a similar look, despite whatever their perceived styles may have been. We were a group made up of three human-looking beings (me being the for sure full-blooded human), a shaggy yeti, and a glowing blue banshee. We were obviously not red-skinned devils. Incognito was not in the cards for us.

  I glanced up at the sky as I heard a far-off sound of thunder. There was no sky, only a blanket of the same type of cloud that had designated the border. Here and there a flash of lightning could be seen, but the streaks were deep inside the cloud, and I never actually saw a bolt in the sky.

  “Do the clouds ever rain?” I asked, noticing that the streets could use a good cleaning. The buildings could too, for that matter. All that car exhaust had stained the brick and concrete, giving the city a dingy look. Even with the economic downturn, real Detroit looked better than this place did. At least that’s what I saw.

  “Almost never,” Aspen replied. “I think that’s by design. Lord Beelzebub doesn’t like the rain. He likes the filth.”

  “Huh,” I replied. “Ekron’s his dimension, so I guess he gets to choose.”

  “That’s how total dominion works,” Aspen said.

  The tone of his voice had changed since we’d entered the dimension. He was still snippy with me, but that horse load of contempt was turned down too low. I chalked it up to him being focused on us getting to Lord Beelzebub’s palace, but that didn’t quite fit with Harper’s change too. Something was up, and my gut, on top of the continual turmoil, was saying to watch out.

  You tend to grow eyes in the back of your head in my business. I deal with a lot of the more unsavory element, despite Sharon’s objections otherwise. She’d love to believe that I make boxes for only fine, upstanding citizens, but who am I kidding? The folks that need something hidden so bad that it has to be put between dimensions are not
the folks that dutifully claim every ounce of their income on their tax returns. Half of them probably haven’t ever filed a tax return.

  We crossed the street once the way was completely clear of cars in both directions. There was a row of apartment buildings ahead of us, but they were only ten stories tall each. Certainly not the thirty stories that Lord Beelzebub’s palace was.

  Except I was no longer visualizing a palace. Not in the middle of faux Detroit.