by Tim Waggoner
Nathaniel had gotten word from one of his informants that a shuteye dealer named Ocho frequented Blood in Your Eye, and we were here to, as Nathaniel put it, “Have a deep, meaningful discussion” with him. What I couldn’t figure out was why we were all standing around in the alley when Ocho was probably inside the bar tossing back cold beer, one after another. I made another attempt to express my reservations.
“What if someone spots us out here and goes inside to warn Ocho? What if he sneaks out the back? What if–”
Unlike Nathaniel, Mordacity wasn’t given to enigmatic comments. When he spoke, he told it like he saw it.
“Ocho is a small-time dealer. We’re interested in finding out who his supplier is.”
Mordacity’s voice wasn’t what you’d expect to hear coming from a skeletal knight. It wasn’t hollow or sepulchral. It didn’t sound like a wind blowing through a graveyard at midnight. It was full, deep, and rich. Once, Nathaniel had confided in me that he’d seen the original Star Wars as a kid and that “Vader scared the crap out of me.” Whenever Mordacity started to creep me out too much, I imagined him saying, “This is CNN.” It helped – a little.
“But how is standing in an alley going to help us find the supplier?” I was starting to get frustrated now, and my voice rose to near-normal volume.
Before either Nathaniel or Mordacity could answer, Jinx spoke.
“The supplier won’t talk to Ocho inside the bar. They’ll meet outside, probably in this alley. If we’re patient, they’ll come to us.”
I was surprised. Jinx wasn’t normally one for strategy and tactics, and he certainly wasn’t one for waiting.
Nathaniel nodded approvingly. “Exactly.”
Jinx looked at me then, his grin growing wider and a dangerous gleam coming into his eyes.
“But where’s the fun in that?” he said.
He pulled Cuthbert out of his pocket, took a two-handed grip on the handle, and swung the head of the hammer toward Blood in Your Eye’s wall before any of us could do anything to stop him.
Five
The wall imploded in a shower of shattered brick, creating an opening large enough for Jinx to leap through. I started after him reflexively, but Nathaniel grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back.
“Stay here,” he ordered, scowling, and then, without another word, he drew his trancer and climbed through Jinx’s makeshift door. Already sounds of fighting came from inside – shouts, cursing, bestial roars, splintering wood, shattering glass, and trancer fire. It didn’t take much to set off violence in the Cesspit, and the residents were always ready to give worse than they got.
Mordacity turned to me, and the crimson fires burning within the hollows of his skull blazed brighter.
“Listen to him this time.”
And then he drew his bone sword and followed after Nathaniel, leaving me standing in the alley and seething. They’d acted as if I’d done something wrong, but Jinx had been the one who – in typically psychotic fashion – had broken through the wall. Maybe I’d dreamed Jinx into existence, but he was a separate being from me. I had no control over him, so why had Nathaniel and Mordacity acted like Jinx’s latest act of insanity was my fault?
I drew my trancer just to feel as if I was doing something, and positioned myself in front of the jagged opening in the wall. Nathaniel might have told me to stay outside, but he hadn’t said I couldn’t help out from where I stood.
Because of its proximity to Lethe, Blood in Your Eye caters to water-based Incubi, and the bar’s clientele that day were no exception. Through the hole in the wall I caught glimpses of creatures covered in fish scales, with webbing between the fingers of their clawed hands, and rows of sharp teeth filling lipless mouths. I saw a man with piranha fish in place of his hands, a reverse mermaid – fish on top, naked woman on the bottom – a man with a ringed lamprey’s maw where his face should’ve been, and a humanoid crocodile with blue-white tendrils of electricity sparking from its teeth.
Jinx stood in the middle of the room, swinging Cuthbert in wide arcs around him and shouting, “Which one of you waterlogged freaks is named Ocho?”
The smart Incubi removed themselves from the path of Jinx’s hammer, while the stupid ones ran forward to attack, only to be rewarded with pulped faces and crushed skulls. Nathaniel and Mordacity stood back to back not far from Jinx. Nathaniel fired his trancer in short, precise bursts, each blast striking an Incubus directly between the eyes and causing them to collapse to the floor, stunned. I envied my mentor’s aim. Even with all the practicing I’d done, I still mostly just squeezed the trigger and hoped for the best when I fired. Mordacity, as usual, went old school, wielding his long sword with graceful ease, as if it were as light and maneuverable as a fencing foil. For an extra touch of class, he used only the flat of his blade against his opponents to avoid injuring them.
I raised my trancer and took aim at an Incubus who looked like a bloated drowned corpse, covered with tiny crabs nibbling at his discolored flesh. He held a chair above his head and was moving toward Nathaniel, shaking off mini-crabs with each step he took. He obviously intended to brain Nathaniel with the chair, but my mentor was so busy dealing with other opponents that so far he hadn’t noticed the Incubus approaching.
“Hey, Crab-Cakes!” I shouted, not knowing whether he’d be able to hear me over the din of the fighting around him. He must have, though, for he turned to face me – I can’t say he looked at me since the crabs had devoured his eyes – and hesitated.
I fired.
A beam of swirling multicolored power streaked through the air, hit the chair, and reduced it to kindling.
Nathaniel noticed Crab-Cakes then, and dropped him with a quick blast between the man’s ravaged eyes sockets. He then spared a second to glance my way.
“Admirable restraint!” he called out, grinning.
I grinned back. No need to tell him that I’d been aiming for Crab-Cakes’ chest.
I looked around for another target, but, before I could select one, a slender limb that resembled an octopus tentacle emerged through the gap in the wall and sealed tight to the outer stone. It was quickly followed by several more, and, an instant later, they pulled the rest of the creature’s body upward.
“I’ve seen ugly in this town,” I said, “but you’re way up there on the ick scale.”
The Incubus had eight octopus tentacles growing from the neck of a human male’s bald head. At least, I thought it was supposed to be human. The features were overlarge and distorted: a jutting brow, one big watery eye (the other was concealed by a squint), a bulbous nose, sharp cheek bones, and a bulging chin with a pronounced cleft that made it look like he had a butt on the lower half of his face. The Incubus glared at me with his one good eye, but, instead of responding to my witty observation, he slid down the wall with moist, mucusy sounds, plopped into the alley’s foul muck, and then headed toward the street, pulling and pushing with his tentacles, moving with surprising speed. I figured that, while he wasn’t much in the looks department, he was no dummy and wanted to get the hell out of there while the getting was good. I forgot about him and turned my attention back to the bar, just in time to hear Nathaniel shout, “That was Ocho! Stop him!”
Nathaniel, Mordacity, and Jinx had done a good job clearing out the bar. Half of the remaining patrons were lying on the floor in various states of semi- or unconsciousness, and in dire need of immediate medical attention. But the tougher half remained on their feet and fighting, keeping my companions busy. There was no one else who could chase after Ocho but me. Thrilled to have a chance to go into action solo and show Nathaniel and Mordacity what I could do, I turned and hauled ass after Ocho.
By the time I reached the mouth of the alley, he was already halfway across the street. His tentacles allowed him to slide through the gray-green street goo as if it were water.
“Stop in the name of the Watch!” I shouted, and then felt like a complete asshole for doing so. Like the less-than-commanding tone of my voice was
going to frighten him into giving up.
I ran into the street after Ocho, my shoes splashing in the muck. If anything, it was worse out here than in the alley, and I had to be careful to avoid slipping. If I fell in this shit, who knew how many lethal infections I’d contract?
As I ran, an Incubus came roaring down the street toward me, sending up glop-spray as it came. It was a mechanical creature that resembled a robotic centaur, except, instead of half its body being a horse, it was a motorcycle. The humanoid part rose from where the handle bars would’ve been on a regular bike. When the Moto-Centaur saw me, he opened his mouth and a shrieking sound like a rotary saw blade scratching across sheet metal emerged. The Incubus kept coming straight toward me, and I knew it wouldn’t bother trying to miss me. Incubi aren’t much on the whole sanctity of human life thing. So I aimed my trancer in his general direction and fired. I didn’t come close to hitting him, but the energy beam passed near enough to his face to startle him, causing him to swerve. He slid past me – spraying me with muck in the process – then slammed into the front of a business called Savage Salvage. Immediately a pair of Incubi resembling giant Day-Glo lobsters scuttled out of the building and began disassembling the Motor-Centaur, wielding their claws like high-speed precision tools. The Incubus shrieked once more in his sheet-metal voice, but he didn’t shriek for long.
“Sucks to be you,” I said, and continued running after Ocho.
He slipped into another alley and shot down it like a tentacled, human-headed rocket. I followed, half-running, half-sliding through the glop. The sheer amount of trash, body parts, and bone fragments in this alley slowed him down a bit, which allowed me to close the distance. As we emerged from the alley, I saw Lethe. Its banks were lined with rusted iron rods atop which were fixed large deep-water fish with mouthfuls of long curving needle teeth, huge blind eyes, and narrow tendrils of flesh protruding from their heads which terminated in bioluminescent nubs. The fish illuminated the rippling surface of the river, and the dark silhouettes of whatever large creatures swam within. Water Incubi use Lethe to travel through Nod – or to lay in wait for prey. Nathaniel’s theory was that the shuteye manufacturers, whoever they were, used the river to distribute the drug throughout the city. It was a good theory, but one we might not be able to prove if Ocho escaped.
I knew that, if Ocho managed to reach the water, there was no way I’d be able to catch him. So I stopped running, slid to a halt, raised my trancer in a two-handed grip, took my time to aim, and fired. The beam struck Ocho on the back of his bald head, and his tentacles spasmed as his nervous system struggled to cope with the energy surge. I ran toward him, hoping to get close enough to grab hold of him, but white light exploded behind my eyes and I felt suddenly weightless as the world spun around me. The sensation of motion abruptly ended with a painful jolt, and I thought, What the hell just hit me?
I blinked several times, trying to force my blurry vision to clear. When I could more or less see again, I saw Ocho on the bank of the river. His body was no longer twitching, and he was looking at me with a dark smile on his shipwreck of a face. Standing next to him was a massive figure at least eight feet tall. It wore a yellow rain slicker and black knee-high rubber boots. Its head, arms, and legs were thick, bloated lengths of earthworm, and fish hooks the size of small anchors pierced his arms and neck, their metal slick with blood and mucus. Water dripped from his body, and I realized he’d just emerged from Lethe, probably on his way to meet Ocho in Blood in Your Eye.
“Let me… guess.” Every time I breathed, it felt like someone jabbed a knife into my lungs, but I kept talking. “You’re Ocho’s supplier.”
“He’s called the Angler,” Ocho said, in a rough, raspy voice. “And you’re going to be his catch of the day!”
The worm-thing had no discernible facial features – no eyes, nose, or mouth – but its head rippled in a way that I took to be assent. The Angler started toward me, walking with an odd, quivering gait on his boneless legs. I wasn’t about to let him get hold of me. Being touched by slimy worm-arms would be bad enough, but I didn’t relish the thought of those fish-hook barbs penetrating my flesh. I started to raise my trancer to fire, intending to hold down the trigger and use up the rest of the weapon’s charge if I had to, when I realized I was no longer holding the gun. I’d dropped it when the Angler had struck me, and I saw that Ocho now gripped it in one of his tentacles. Fantastic. I’d lost my weapon in the middle of a fight. Nathaniel was so going to yell at me. Although, if I didn’t do something fast, he’d have to yell at my corpse.
I rose to my feet, my mind racing as I tried to think of some way to fight the Angler. Running away wasn’t an option. Not only wasn’t it in my nature, I didn’t think I’d get very far. I didn’t have any weapons beside my trancer, and I certainly didn’t have anything specifically designed to deal with worms. No salt to dehydrate him or pesticide to poison him. I made a mental note to encourage Jinx to fill his bottomless pockets with a variety of different and unorthodox weapons. I was beginning to understand that, when fighting Incubi, you never knew what you might need.
I decided that I was going to have to fight barehanded and wondered what it would feel like to punch a guy whose body was made out of giant earthworms. I wondered if I’d get a chance to hit him before he slashed the pointed end of one of those hooks across my throat.
“Stay where you are!”
Nathaniel came charging out of the alley, and, while I wasn’t thrilled that my mentor saw me disarmed and barely able to remain standing, I’d be lying if I said I also wasn’t relieved as hell to see him.
The Angler turned toward Nathaniel and swung one of his arms like a whip. The hook embedded in that arm tore free and whirled through the air like a shuriken. Nathaniel attempted to dodge it, but it caught him on the right shoulder and sank deep. He cried out in pain, and dropped his trancer. He fell to one knee and gritted his teeth as he fought to shut out the pain.
I looked to the alley, hoping to see Jinx, Mordacity or ,better yet, both appear. But there was no sign of them. I’d later learn that Jinx was so caught up in the frenzy of destruction that he’d had no idea what was happening with Nathaniel and me. As for Mordacity, he did manage to extricate himself from the bar brawl and was on his way. But he wouldn’t reach us in time.
The Angler walked past me as if I no longer existed and headed for Nathaniel. I made a grab for him as he went by, but I missed. I’d forgotten that I’d hit my head when I’d fallen, and a wave of dizziness combined with nausea hit me. I fought to retain my balance, and I managed to keep from falling over, if only barely. I did my best to run toward Nathaniel, but all I could manage was a shuffling walk. I wanted to tackle the Angler from behind, but, before I could do more than take a few awkward steps, I felt a warm, tingling sensation wash over me, and my legs suddenly felt as boneless as the Angler’s. I fell to the ground again, unable to move, and I knew that Ocho had shot me with my own trancer. On the right setting, trancers can put humans to sleep, but, as an Ideator, a single burst on that setting won’t work on me. But the energy could render me immobile, and that’s what had happened.
I lay in the muck, unable to do more than watch as the Angler reached Nathaniel. Despite his shoulder wound, Nathaniel rose to his feet and lunged at the Incubus, but the Angler slapped him across the face with one of his boneless arms, and Nathaniel went back down. The Angler wrapped a squirming arm around the hook embedded in Nathaniel’s shoulder and tore it free with a single powerful yank. Blood streamed from Nathaniel’s wound, and, although I thought he was unconscious, he screamed. I thought the Angler was going to finish off Nathaniel with the hook, but instead he stuck it back into his own arm. Then he reached into one of his slicker’s pockets and brought out a plastic container. He pried it open and removed a pill. He closed the container, put it back in his pocket, and then, with the speed of a striking snake, he thrust the tip of his wormy hand into Nathaniel’s mouth. Nathaniel gagged as the Angler continued shoving his arm d
eeper, and I realized that he intended to deposit the pill directly into Nathaniel’s stomach.
“Get away from him!”
Mordacity came barreling out of the alley, bone sword held high, the crimson lights in his eye sockets blazing with fury.
Ocho started firing my trancer again, but the beams mostly missed Mordacity, and those that did strike him ricocheted off his bone armor. Ocho dropped my trancer and made for the river, and the Angler withdrew his arm from Nathaniel’s throat – minus the pill – and started after his tentacled associate. I wanted to try and grab hold of the Angler as he went past, but I couldn’t so much as twitch a finger.
I expected Mordacity to go after the two drug dealers, but Nathaniel’s eyes went wide and the cords on his neck strained as he let out a sound like nothing I’d ever heard before. To call it a howl of despair would only be beginning to describe it. It was the cry of a man whose mind and soul had been torn to shreds, and, as I heard it, I felt something break inside me too, and I cried for both of us.
Mordacity forgot about the Angler and Ocho, dropped his sword, knelt in the muck next to his partner, wrapped his bone-encased arms around him and pulled him close. But Nathaniel continued crying out, eyes wild but unseeing, an expression of profound anguish on his face. For an instant, his features seemed to ripple and blur, but I told myself it was due to the tears in my eyes, and nothing more.
I heard a pair of splashes as the Angler and Ocho made good their escape, but I no longer cared about them. All I could do was look at Nathaniel, tears streaming down my face, and think, My fault. All my fault.