Feet of Clay_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by J. A. Cipriano

  Besides, I wasn’t sure where else to go? The smart move was to get the Enders to help me. After all, the best defense against a clan of wizards would be more wizards. Fight fire with fire, I always say.

  I made peace with that notion right as I turned the van into the aging industrial park containing the Pendleton Building. Seeing it coming up in the distance, my magical heart bumped hard in my chest.

  On the exterior, not much had changed from the last time I had been here. For being on the losing end of a war between sorcerers, the once-high class façade looked none the worse for wear. Maybe the Whites were less vindictive with their wizarding cousins than they were being with little old me? More likely they had just gotten wrapped up in their own massive ritual to fuck over the world.

  That said, a few things jumped out at me. Before the windows had been made from thick, swirly security glass, but now they looked mirrored.

  There was a definite whiff of magic to them and along the ugly concrete security posts you see around government buildings that exist only to make it hard to get a car (especially if it’s bomb-laden) too close without wrecking on them. A quick glance through la Corazon confirmed my suspicions. All this new stuff was laden with magic.

  I couldn’t blame the former Enders for being paranoid. Like us, folks were actually out to get them.

  “Is this where we’re stopping, hun?” Mom gave the place a long look as I drove slowly past the front entrance.

  “Hopefully,” I muttered, distracted by my own assessment of the place.

  “I dunno. I’ve got a bad vibe about it, and you know I’ve got a good feel for this sorta thing.”

  “I know.” I quirked a bit of a smile as I sped up, guiding us to an adjacent parking deck. Truth be told, Mom’s intuition was notoriously bad or, more accurately, totally schizoid random.

  “Okay, Mom, I think Gabriela might have gone here. She doesn’t have your keen insights.” I slid the van into a parking space. The deck was spookily deserted, especially for this part of town in midday. “So I need to go check it out, okay?”

  Her wrinkled face scrunched up and she stole a glance at Molly again. “Is that safe? I mean, honest to God, if somebody were to come messin’ around, we’d be in a shitload of trouble, Frankie.”

  She wasn’t wrong, and I was acutely aware of that fact. Still, what choice did we have? Lately, it seemed like every choice that came rolling down the way was between bad and worse, with the occasional extra-credit option of fucking suicidal.

  So what did I do? I dug through Mom’s floral print bag, now dubbed in my mind as “The Big Bag Of Guns” and fished out a Walther PPK one of the goons back at her place had tucked into his boot. Must’ve styled himself a modern day Bond or something.

  “We’re tucked in an out of the way spot so you two should be safe,” I comforted (lied might be more accurate), “but just in case, take this.” I handed her the Walther grip-first. “You still know how to shoot, right?”

  It was a stupid question. Betty Butcher had been pleased as punch to teach her boys how to handle a gun, after all.

  “Don’t teach your mother how to suck eggs," Mom said, taking the pistol and giving it a quick once-over. Her arms weren’t nearly as strong as they had been and she couldn’t walk without a cane and some help, but her fingers were still nimble. “I still don’t like this one bit, Frankie.”

  “You and me both, but we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.” I opened the door and slipped out. “Sometimes, you’ve got to throw the dice.”

  “Yeah, and maybe lose it all. The house always wins, ya know?” Mom rolled her eyes. “That reminds me of when I went with the Goldmans to them casinos in Atlantic City.…”

  I would honestly have preferred to be blown to my particulate atoms by the White than listen to the Atlantic City story again, so I closed the door, cutting Mom off.

  Trying not to second guess my every step and every sense tingling with paranoid intensity, I gave Mom a little wave and did my best to look totally natural in my bloodied clothes. The Beretta stuffed into my waistband like an ugly tumor probably didn’t help as I strolled up to the front doors of the Pendleton Building, but sometimes you work with what you’ve got.

  16

  I had dueling sensations of déjà vu and existential panic as I started up the stairs to the front doors of the Pendleton Building. Every security post and mirrored window felt like a pair of eyes staring at my every movement.

  At the same time, it felt terribly familiar. It was bullshit, of course, as everything of actual substance had changed since then.

  Standing before the glass double doors with their weather-beaten brass fixtures, I took a deep breath. I was more nervous than I should have been with the cold weight of the Beretta at the small of my back, but there wasn’t anything to do about that. I had to make this work, and to do that, I had to stop being a pussy. I opened the door.

  The good news was I wasn’t instantly gunned down by security guards. The well-worn marble floor was exactly as I remembered it, but the rest of the décor seemed just a bit more oppressive than it had been before.

  Maybe it was the feeling in the air, a sense of loss I couldn’t quite quantify, or maybe it was the replacement of the inviting oak receptionist’s desk with a heavy-duty security station that would have been less out of place in a top-secret military facility.

  It was a nasty piece of work, big, U-shaped, and set flush with the back wall. Completely enclosed with what I bet was bulletproof and magicked-up glass, its web of security included two steel arms that stretched out to the walls on either side, complete with locking turnstiles and metal detectors. The locked doors behind those barriers looked beefier too, brand-new state-of-the-art deals that could stand up to an angry gorilla or three.

  Speaking of angry gorillas, my old “friend,” no-necked Bluto, was manning the security post. Gone was the kindly receptionist, leaving him as the sole master of this domain. The weeks since I had last seen him sleeping off the doc’s magical sedatives had done little to change him outside of a new set of clothes and a strange, green-tinged burn around his left eye.

  To say he looked happy to see little old me would be the biggest lie I’d ever told, and I’ve told some whoppers. Before I could take three steps, his voice boomed through the speaker grill on the glass front, “You stay right there, Bearer. Don’t make a move!”

  I stopped in my tracks, and put my hands over my head. “Whoa, man, I come in peace. No funny business, I promise.”

  The big man let out a snort. “Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it.” Though the man had no neck, he managed to keep his sharp eyes focused on me while turning in his chair and mumbling low into an intercom.

  I played it cool as a cucumber while he did his back-and-forth. There was no need to agitate the guy. He was just doing his job after all. Besides, if they wanted me dead, we’d already be re-enacting the Matrix hotel lobby scene in here.

  I took advantage of the moment of quiet to complete my look around the lobby. Little hints that there had been big trouble since Marcus Drakos took his big dive were obvious despite the efforts to clean the place up.

  Fresh gouges in the walls looked suspiciously like bullet holes and blast points. Scrubbed-up scorch marks added dark stains to some of the wood fixtures, and the brass had hints of uncharacteristic corrosion. All the extra security made a hell of a lot more sense now. They’d been fighting a war. The only question was against whom.

  I turned my gold eyes back to Bullet Bill. The longer this took, the longer Mom and Molly were sitting ducks, Walther PPK or not. “Hey, buddy, I don’t mean to rush the process, but I really wish you’d take me to your leader and get this over with.”

  His beetle brow narrowed some, but the guy kept his cool. “If you haven’t noticed, things have gone to hell since you showed up. There’s a lot of folks in this place that’d prefer to see you strung up rather than welcomed, so be a little grateful the director wants you in here at all. Be
double grateful that I’m taking the time to make sure you get an escort so those other folks don’t get their Christmas presents early this year.”

  I took my chastisement like a man. “Touché. You do your thing with my gratitude.” He grunted and was about to go back to his business when I spoke up again, “There’s just one thing.…”

  To make his displeasure clear, Bluto deliberately laid the shotgun he must have been keeping under the desk up on top, in clear view of me. “Yes?”

  “Is Doctor Perez here?” To say I’d been worried about the doc was an understatement. Sure, it had been kept on the down low with the more critical and immediate problem of Mom’s safety, but it had always bubbled just below the surface.

  The concern must have carried through in my voice or my expression, no matter my best efforts to make it look like casual interest, because the big guy’s eyes softened the barest hint. “Yeah, you’ll see her soon enough. Faster if you’d leave me the fuck alone.”

  That was all I needed to sit still and be a good boy and wait.

  What came next was about as perfunctory as these things go. Bluto, whose actual name turned out to be Tyrone (I think Bluto might have been better), trundled out through the security station. Now hear me when I say this. He literally walked through the solid steel and glass, as in he phased through the material like it wasn’t there.

  Then he gave me the pat down of all pat downs, coming within inches of a full cavity search.

  “Man, I feel like we both need a cigarette after that,” I said, shaking my head as he shoved my Beretta, my scalpel, and all my other meager possessions into a steel box with various symbols etched into its surface and secured it with a pair of giant padlocks.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” he said, and part of me wondered if he’d missed the joke or if he was just fucking with me. He gave me one last look, and apparently satisfied I hadn’t hidden a bazooka in my left nostril, he buzzed us both through one of the security doors and into the building proper.

  At least he hadn’t felt the need to handcuff me. See, things were looking up.

  We were met in the hallway by a motley crew of people, some I recognized. There was Mr. Johnson, the positively ancient accountant I had almost put a bullet in (a threat I was feeling pretty bad about in retrospect), the big minotaur man that had been part of the attack on Gabriela’s clinic, as well as a few of the guards that had escorted me around this place in far less hospitable conditions.

  Not that things were all that much more hospitable now. There was a definite divide here, those closest to the door standing between me and the other, more volatile folks. As if to keep kicking my expectations while they were down, most of the actual guards here were among the rabble rousers, while the folks I’d done some real harm to, like Old Man Johnson and Tyrone were chief among my protectors. The world’s funny like that, ya know?

  “Did you have a friend at the final ritual, Johnson?” the overwhelmingly massive bull man snorted, looking like the head of the “Put Frank On A Pike” party. “‘Cause I did and the Bearer shot him square in the face.”

  “Twelfth Gate, Erkanos,” Mr. Johnson retorted, “that was during the war. It’s over now and by the gods, I’m old enough to know we’ve got bigger problems now than that.” To my surprise, though, while it was plainly obvious the minotaur could plow right through everyone and gore yours truly, Johnson kept him at bay with his words.

  Somehow, I kept my composure. Maybe it was the knowledge there was more riding on this than my own pride or appearance. Maybe I was finally growing up a bit. Anyway, there was a pretty good chance that Erkanos was right, and I had indeed blown the head off of one his buddies.

  You could try to argue I’d been justified and that it was war, but that wouldn’t make it all better because his friend would still be dead. The truth is war didn’t work like that, it was a hell of a lot different than a lot of movies make it out to be. If you’re in for a war movie, go for Platoon or Saving Private Ryan over your old time propaganda flicks. There isn’t anything fun about it and it doesn’t justify any amount of killing. I’d thought I was done with it after Afghanistan and done with it again after the whole Drakos business but, well, here I fucking was again.

  “Come on, Bearer,” Tyrone grunted into my ear. The carefully controlled anger in his voice was the equal to the curiously strong mint the guy munched on.

  I nodded and followed him toward one of the central staircases while my little cadre of watchdogs kept the more incensed tenants at arm’s (and tentacles’) length.

  By the time we were moving upstairs, things quieted down quite a bit. When I had come here the first time, I had thought the Pendleton Building was just a front, an innocent façade from which they could safely do their magic rituals. I had found out it had used to be a Peacekeeper prison (the magic folks who actually kept the balance of power until the Enders took them out, Gabriela’s husband John along with them).

  From the rather plain appearance of the folks I saw on these upper levels, the full truth was becoming more apparent now. Even the weird ones, the green-skinned goblins, the scaly lizard-folk, or the moving piles of Jell-O, had the clothes and stance of plain, old, everyday folks. While there had been all sorts of wicked chicanery going on here, this was also a home for the Enders who couldn’t go out into the normal world. It put everything into a much clearer perspective, and made me feel like a jackass.

  These normal folks weren’t quite as hostile as the protesters down below, sticking with sullen silence and suspicious looks. That was a little improvement at least.

  As we got near Tabitha’s office, a walk I did with guns trained on me last time, Mr. Johnson leaned a bit closer to me. “Mr. Butcher, I hope you don’t judge us any harder than some of us are judging you. It wasn’t easy on us losing the war and the Whites haven’t made things any easier since then.”

  “Christ,” I said, “I can’t blame you folks one bit. It’s not like I didn’t do those things or help the Whites win that war. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t do it for them, ya know?”

  “For someone who’s supposed to have such a big ego, you’ve got your head on straighter than I expected.” He smiled and I was surprised to see it reach his eyes. “Look, I fought in Vietnam. I know what war’s like, and it does matter why we do the things we do. The folks here, well, they’ll understand in time.”

  “Assuming we all make it out of this alive,” I shrugged. I hadn’t taken Mr. Johnson for being a vet, not after how fast he seemed to fold last time. Then again, maybe he’d had his fill of blood and guts then. Shit, he might have had a PTSD flashback from what I pulled. Sobering shit there. “I hope us coming here doesn’t make things harder for you.” Even if they had been trying to enact a potentially world ending ritual and sacrifice Max, I’d done more than enough to these folks to not want to hurt them anymore. I might be an asshole, but I’m not a monster.

  The old man clapped me on the back. “Son, we’re already in deep trouble as it is. Whatever comes next won’t be your fault.”

  Tyrone brought us to a halt. We were there at the office door. “Okay, enough with the sympathy party.” He nodded to the rest of my escort. “Thanks, folks. If we need you again, we’ll call. Just stay alert.”

  As they walked back to whatever business they had, I looked up at the big man. “Look, I never had the chance to–”

  He put up his two meaty paws to cut me off. “Save it, Butcher.” I arched an eyebrow as he carried on, “Look, I know you did what you had to do. I do the same thing. It’s my job and all. It doesn’t mean I have to roll over, accept your half-ass apology, and be done with it. What happened, that takes time to get over.”

  How could I really argue with that? “Fair enough, Tyrone.”

  “Don’t worry too much though. Like I said, I do my job. I’ll make sure you’re safe here as long as Tabitha says so.” With that, he turned and opened the door wide for me. “They’re waiting for you.”

  I wanted to say s
omething else, something smart to acknowledge what he was saying, but there wasn’t anything to say. Silence sometimes does a better job than words and, trust me, that’s a hard thing for Frank Butcher to admit to. With that thought in my head, I nodded and stepped into Tabitha’s office.

  17

  Director Tabitha Marlowe’s office had undergone a massive overhaul since the last time I'd visited. Her glass desk was the only piece of furniture I recognized. The bookshelves along with all their lore were gone. A stack of steel cases that bore the EnderTech logo now sat in their place. Drakos’s front had been in the “heavy industry” business (read arms tech!), so I could only imagine what goodies were in those things.

  The privacy windows looked out over the city were now extra double private, covered by the same silvery layer I had seen from the outside. Unfortunately, that made it impossible to see outside either, which seemed like a bad idea from an observational viewpoint, but then again, there was magic at play here.

  Only a few bits of personal decoration remained: a tasteful Japanese wall scroll, a framed diploma, and a Native American dreamcatcher.

  Aside from a leather-bound grimoire (a bit too old-fashioned considering the high-tech chic the Enders usually went for) and a simple looking glass cube on a small velvet cushion her desk was completely bare. Frankly, the cube seemed out of place because it looked like something you’d get from a knick-knack store. Knowing the Enders the way I did, that meant it was probably something really important.

  Tabitha sat behind the desk, eyeing me with an expression somewhere between amusement and “OMG I hope this puppy doesn’t shit on my floor again.” I wanted to be insulted, but I couldn’t entirely blame her attitude. I had done a sufficient amount of damage the last time I was here, after all. Her brown hair was starting to show some gray and the salon-perfect bob cut was starting to frazzle with stress. Those horn-rimmed glasses were the same, though the crow’s feet around her eyes showed more. The weeks had not been kind to her.