Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  Witcomb nodded. “That’s right. Now that we’re here, first person to concede, or who falls and can’t continue, loses. At any time, you can call out I give, or tap the ground three times. When you do that, you lose. I’m a surgeon, so I’m ready to stitch up cuts, but don’t wait too long—if you bleed out, nothing I can do for you.”

  Lisa swallowed hard. Butterflies in her stomach. She really had to pee.

  “Concede now,” Pete said. “Just walk away, girl. You know this ain’t your fight.”

  She thought of Jimmy on the stone slab. She thought of the things reaching out to her from the shadows, the things that flinched away from the light.

  “I’ll throw,” she said.

  Lisa didn’t want this, not any of it. She didn’t want to fight this man. She had to make him see that, make him want to walk away.

  Not everyone in these parts had heard of the Victims . . . maybe this man had.

  She held up her right hand, palm out.

  “Not drawing,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

  Pete’s smile faded. He wondered what was going on.

  The judge nodded.

  Slowly, so slowly, Lisa reached a hand inside her shirt collar. She gently pulled on the cord around her neck, lifting her necklace free. She let the rattlesnake skull and tail drop to her chest, the combined weight of both not quite enough to pull the cord taut.

  The man—Pete—stared at her chest.

  Recognition in those eyes.

  He knew. He knew what the necklace was, knew what she was.

  Walk away, walk away, please walk away . . .

  Pete held his hand up, palm out.

  “Not throwing,” he said.

  Slowly, so slowly, he reached for his collar.

  Lisa’s soul sank.

  Pete pulled at a cord around his neck. Slowly, deliberately, he let the rattlesnake skull drop, dangle against his chest.

  “Aw, fuck,” Duran said.

  Lisa glanced over at him, saw him throw his kerchief to the ground.

  He didn’t think she could win. Because she was a girl. He thought a girl Victim could beat anyone . . . except a male Victim.

  She looked at Fish, who crossed his arms and nodded at her.

  “Kick his ass,” Fish said.

  Fish believed she could win?

  Lisa looked back to Pete.

  “Sorry,” he said. “If you thought that talisman of yours might scare me, I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

  He had the skull and the tail. He’d completed the training, just like she had, only he was a grown man. Bigger. Stronger.

  But was he faster?

  “I left eleven years ago,” Pete said. “I got bored. You?”

  Lisa started to speak; her dry tongue ran around her dry mouth. She licked her lips, trying to work up some spit. She swallowed, a scratchy, parched feeling.

  “Two months ago,” she said. “Wanted to see the New Year in a city.”

  Pete nodded slowly.

  “I can understand that,” he said. “Here’s the thing, girl. You still can. Say I give. Yield. Walk away, under my protection.”

  It had never occurred to her that her foe had thrown a hundred thousand throws, then another hundred thousand, honing his abilities up in the mountains just as she had.

  In two months away from the Hovel, she’d already killed one man.

  Pete had been gone for eleven years; how many men had he killed?

  Lisa looked at Duran again, her eyes pleading.

  He stared at her, hard, shook his head.

  “We have a deal,” he said. “Don’t you back out on it.”

  Jimmy. He’d been pulled into this mess because of her, because she’d killed the Laughing Man. Jimmy could have run, abandoned her and gone his own way, but he hadn’t. He’d stuck by her. A complete stranger, and he’d stuck by her.

  “Enough talking,” Lady Falma called out. “You two going to throw, or are you going to stand there flapping your mouths?”

  Pete never took his eyes off Lisa as he held up one finger toward Lady Falma—a warning to back off.

  “You’ll win the day, Lady,” he said. “How you win it ain’t your call. You be quiet, now, and let me do my work.”

  Lisa didn’t dare look away from Pete to see Lady Falma’s reaction, but the woman didn’t say anything in answer.

  “It’s hot as donkey balls out here,” Judge Witcomb said. “Throwers, turn back to back.”

  Lisa turned, the movement automatic, drilled into her by thousands of duel repetitions in the Hovel.

  “On my command,” the judge said, “take ten paces forward in a straight line, each step matching my count. If you turn early, you hang, and I’m the one who makes that call. Duran? Falma? In front of these witnesses, do you validate my authority to punish any cheater in this duel by an immediate sentencing?”

  “We do,” they both called out.

  Lisa hadn’t faced consequences like that before. When she’d trained, part of the game had been seeing if you could anticipate the step-count, turn just a smidge early. If she did that here, even by accident, would she hang?

  This wasn’t the same. It was a duel, but not the same. She should have asked more questions.

  She wanted to go home.

  She had to pee so bad.

  “By the power invested in me by the Queen of the Redwood Empire,” the judge called out, “I hereby begin this duel in the name of settling the land-ownership grievance between Rancher Gary Duran and Lady Patricia Falma. Champions, on my command. One . . . two . . .”

  Lisa’s feet carried her forward, as if they remembered the training better than she did.

  “Five . . . six . . .”

  What if she stepped on a rock and slipped? Twisted her ankle? The ground was so uneven. She watched it, shook off the thought; she had only seconds to live.

  “Eight . . . nine . . .”

  If she lost, Jimmy lost.

  Kill a stranger to save a stranger.

  Lisa’s hands slid into her sleeves. The sliver handles . . . so familiar, so comforting.

  Thoughts drained away.

  It was time to throw.

  “Ten!”

  Lisa turned to her right, drew and threw all in the same motion, stepping far off the line she’d walked. As she did, she saw Pete—twenty paces away—stepping to his right.

  Her throw had been a hair faster: her sliver hit the empty air where he’d been an instant before she felt a sting on her right ear as his sliver drew blood. There wasn’t time to think about how close she’d come to death, only momentary realization that Pete had anticipated her step, had known what she would do.

  Instinct and training told her to step left again, but she planted her left foot and stepped backward instead, slightly changing the angle of his attack—his next sliver sailed past to her left.

  Lisa flicked both hands. She was a faster throw than Pete, she knew that instantly, but the way he moved. He twisted left and her first throw hit empty air. Her second sliver grazed his thigh. Lisa saw a flash of white flesh through the cut in his pants, a flash with a thin red streak down the middle, then Pete’s hands became a blur, reaching to his belt and flicking faster than she could follow.

  Lisa dove right, rolled, flaring her robe as she came up, giving Pete a bigger target that might draw his aim. She drew two more slivers from her sleeves as she felt sudden tugs on her robe—his slivers slicing through fabric as if it were paper.

  A sting in her left thigh.

  Lisa rolled to a crouch, already throwing, Pete already moving to dodge the strike. Lisa’s left hand let go its sliver; she flicked her right a fraction of a second later, but didn’t release. Pete’s move took him clear of the first sliver; he’d already committed to dodging the second before he realized her right-hand strike was a feint. He planted a foot to change direction—his boot sole skidded on dirt.

  He wobbled, so slightly, trying to fight his momentum, to regain control, but it was t
oo late. In the instant it took him to recover, Lisa’s sliver closed the distance, slid into the scarf tied around his throat.

  The handle stuck out, worn wood jutting from black silk.

  Pete stopped moving. He stood there, stock-still, staring at her, slivers held limply in his fingers.

  Lisa’s fast hands moved on their own, grabbing the handles of two more slivers from her sleeves.

  But she didn’t throw.

  A single spurt of blood arced away from his neck, fell to the dirt, kicked up a tiny puff of dust. He turned his head, slightly, maybe to look to Lady Falma, maybe to look to the horizon, Lisa would never know, because when he turned, blood jetted from his neck, spraying out from behind the suddenly soaked black scarf.

  He dropped his slivers. One stuck in the dirt blade-first, as if he’d meant to kill the ground itself. The second one fell from his hand—the glass blade hit a rock, chipped into three pieces with a musical tink.

  His neck sprayed a third time. Then, a fourth. His knees sagged. He fell to his butt. A fifth pumping spray, not as strong as the earlier ones. A sixth, weaker still.

  Pete reached a hand to the ground, slowly patted it three times.

  He gave up.

  But it was too late.

  Lisa looked to the judge, who was standing with Lady Falma. The judge shook his head; there was nothing he could do.

  Her throw had been perfect—Pete could not be saved.

  As if he were lying down for the night in a comfortable bed, Pete laid on his side, knees up. Another jet of blood, a burble more than a spray, one that landed on his cheek. His hand reached for his hip holsters. He weakly drew a sliver. With a limp flick of his wrist, he tossed the sliver in front of him, perhaps aiming at a foe that only he could see.

  His hand fell to the dirt.

  He did not move.

  Fish’s whoop of joy split the ar.

  “Sheeee-it, you put that tall bastard down, Lady Lisa!”

  Duran’s men cheered.

  The distant sound of Lady Falma cursing, then the judge arguing with her, but none of the words made sense.

  Lisa’s legs wouldn’t hold her. She fell to her butt, the move as graceless as when dying Pete had done the same. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  Had she thought about her first throw? Maybe. Maybe. But after that, after that she hadn’t thought at all—she’d just moved, ten years of training controlling her like a puppet.

  She’d saved Jimmy, but at what cost?

  She’d killed . . . again.

  What had she become?

  Lisa had trained hard so that she would never again be a victim, never again be preyed upon. Pete hadn’t attacked her—he’d offered to let Lisa walk away. Pete had been a tool of Lady Falma’s, just as Lisa had been a tool of Duran’s.

  Someone lifted her, set her on a man’s shoulder. People were cheering for her, calling out Lady Lisa! Lady Lisa!

  Each step the man took, the shoulder dug into a butt still sore from yesterday’s long ride.

  Her ass hurt.

  But . . . she hadn’t peed herself.

  Wasn’t that worth something?

  Was it worth a man’s life?

  No.

  As the men carried her back to Duran’s carriage, Lisa realized she didn’t want to go home at all.

  She had no home to go to.

  The Hovel had turned her into a killer.

  She’d trained relentlessly, religiously, so that she would never again be a victim, but that’s exactly what she was—a victim of Duran’s manipulations.

  Lisa touched her necklace, felt the rattlesnake skull and tail that she’d worked so, so hard to earn. She lifted the necklace free of her head.

  She let it fall to the dirt.

  Whatever came next, she didn’t want the thing anymore.

  With or without a capital V, she would never again be a victim.

  Never again.

  CARRIE VAUGHN

  I LOVE SUPERHERO STORIES. ALL KINDS OF SUPERHERO STORIES. BUT I think most of all I love the unexpected superhero stories, about what it must be like to live in a superhero city as a side character. It’s not about the powers so much as it’s about how do you deal with it all? Also, I worked as an administrative assistant in an accounting office for eight years, and it seems a much richer environment for stories than most people give it credit for. And yes, I do have a master’s in English lit, but I have not read Finnegans Wake. Just in case you were thinking this narrator really is me.

  Carrie Vaughn

  Sidekick

  Carrie Vaughn

  I was not sick before I came here.

  The room is quiet except for the soft buzz of electronics—a ticking clock, a beeping monitor. The bed is soft, the linens comfortable, if thin. The opposite wall has a chart on a whiteboard that I can’t quite read from where I lie. I wake up and instantly know this is a hospital room, but I don’t remember how I got here. I try to be calm. Someone will explain all this.

  Sure enough, a nurse comes in and bustles around the bed, checking monitors just outside my line of sight. I don’t have any tubes or wires connected to me. No needles, no sensors. I brush both my arms and feel all around my head to be sure. None of this has anything to do with me.

  I ask her why I’m here.

  The nurse is a short woman, auburn hair primly tied back in a bun. Her scrubs have tiny cartoon rabbits on them. “You fell, don’t you remember?”

  Of course I don’t. She knows I don’t.

  “You don’t remember anything about the accident? Falling off the horse?”

  I don’t even remember going riding.

  “You weren’t wearing your helmet,” she adds. “Why weren’t you wearing your helmet?”

  “But I always wear my helmet.” I wouldn’t ride without wearing my helmet; I never don’t wear my helmet.

  “Well, never mind, loss of memory is common with head injuries,” she says and bustles back out of the room without explaining anything.

  I don’t even have a headache. I feel fine.

  A doctor comes in next, a man in a white lab coat wearing a serious expression. I must have fallen asleep because I wake up when the door opens. I don’t remember falling asleep.

  “How are we doing?” he says, wearing a condescending smile. We? He’s on his feet, I’m in bed, apparently with a head injury. There isn’t any we here.

  “I’m fine. I think I feel fine. Can I get up, walk around a little bit?”

  “Not so fast,” he says. “We’re still making sure you’re stable. For now I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Okay.” My voice sounds small. I’m not sure I can sound anything but small, lying in this bed.

  “What do you remember about the accident?”

  “I don’t remember anything,” I say, even though I know that’s the wrong answer, an answer that will keep me here, in bed.

  He tsks, shaking his head. Consults a clipboard sitting on a side table. “What’s the first thing you remember, then?”

  “I woke up when the nurse came in. I . . . was that a few hours ago? This morning? I’m not sure.”

  “So you’re having trouble keeping track of time.”

  “Maybe if you could put a clock in here—”

  “Has your boss been in to see you yet?”

  My boss? “I’m not even sure he knows I’m in the hospital.”

  “Oh, he’s been alerted. His information was listed as your emergency contact.”

  That doesn’t sound right—my mother is my emergency contact, and why hasn’t she been in to see me yet? I really want to see her. To see any familiar face.

  “Do you have my phone?” I ask. “I’d like my phone. I could call him. And my mother. I’d really like to talk to my mom.”

  His smile is a kind mask. “We don’t want you to get too excited, not yet.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “Never mind that for now. With a head injury like yours, we don’t like yo
u to read anything or strain your eyes too much.”

  It sort of makes sense. Sort of.

  He takes out a light pen and shines it in each of my eyes, clicking his tongue as if he’s found something there he doesn’t like.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “How are you feeling?”

  I’m starting to get a headache. “I’m okay. I think I’m okay.”

  “But you weren’t wearing your helmet.”

  I hadn’t been riding, I know I hadn’t. My horse died ten years ago. I still miss her.

  The doctor holds my wrist, taking my pulse. I assume he’s taking my pulse. “What do you remember from before the accident? What was the last thing you remember doing before you woke up?”

  “I think I was going to work . . .”

  “What kind of work is it you do?” he asks conversationally, that fake smile still in place.

  “I’m an administrative assistant.”

  “Oh? For what kind of business?”

  “An accounting firm.”

  “You must get a lot of questions at tax time.”

  “Not really. I’m not an accountant myself, I just run the office.”

  “So you pass folks along to your boss?”

  “He isn’t really that kind of accountant,” I say. Darren is an auditor and forensic accountant. Tax time isn’t really a thing—he goes out on jobs year-round. “It’s all pretty dull.”

  “Oh, I imagine not. If you’re his assistant—”

  “I just answer phones, stuff like that. Keep the office running.”

  “It would all fall apart without you, hmm?” He makes it sound like a joke but also sort of not.

  The blandness of the questions and intensity of his stare make me nervous. I don’t want to talk anymore.

  “Your pulse is a little elevated,” the doctor says seriously.

  I look for a name tag. I don’t find one. I don’t know what to call him. “I might be a little nervous,” I admit.

  “I think we’d better keep you sedated for the next few days.”

  “But I’m feeling better.” In fact, my new headache is getting worse.

  The doctor pushes a button, and a nurse comes in with an IV stand and bag. I don’t argue, because what if they’re right?