He struck an arrow against the altar, expecting sparks and flash of heat as the power transferred. He got nothing at all.
That didn’t seem likely, so he tried it again and got nothing again. He swore.
And then he saw the markings. They were small and had been scratched with a nail or a sharp rock’s edge. They weren’t Celtic runes. They were nothing a druid would use. They were wizard’s symbols, Hermetic tradition. Not Owen Ren Leng. Victor. Victor had already claimed the power here. Austin had almost forgotten about the wizard entirely. Victor would be with JT and Buzz, all the power of a druid’s circle at the wizard’s disposal.
Austin smiled, imagining the look on Owen Ren Leng’s nonexistent face when Victor unloaded. Down below him all hell finally broke loose. He sprinted down the path, feeling terribly smug in his decision to bring the wizard along, and afraid he would miss the whole glorious thing.
They were herding JT with tear gas back outside. There would be soldiers waiting for him there. Drone One was his only chance. The pneumatics on one of Drone One’s legs was shot to hell, and it lurched as JT ran it through hallways to join him. They burst back into the lounge that opened out onto the lakeside deck at the same time: Drone One from the hallway in one corner; JT from another.
The wall of glass doors shattered—all of it—and through it came a raving horde of . . . what? People, once, but what were they now? Not zombies, but something even more feral, crazed, and ruined. And goddamn they were fast.
He unloaded with Drone One, but all that did was push them back a bit. He kept firing and firing. He swept the drone’s guns across the swarm of fiends, back and forth. Gore splattered everywhere and still, impossibly, they inched forward, pushing against the hailstorm of bullets like they were walking into a wind.
JT turned to run back. Even tear gas was better than this. But through the gas he saw the flames of blurred runeswords advancing, soldiers wearing gas masks. He was trapped. Outside, a Nightshrike descended to the deck, its rotors loud as a freight train.
“Please tell me that’s yours,” JT said to Buzz, still cradled in his arms and deep in his hacker’s trance.
It wasn’t Buzz’s. The Nightshrike opened fire with its forward-mounted machine gun. Its large-caliber bullets smashed Drone One to scrap.
Then the Nightshrike’s glass cockpit went white with spider-web cracks and burst. The Nightshrike spun crazy, yawing upward and back as if it were being sucked away. Its rotors clipped the deck and snapped, and the whole thing spun out into the lake.
A second Nightshrike took its place.
In all the din, Buzz’s voice was almost too quiet. “Duck.”
JT dropped to the floor, and the air filled with bullets and zombie gore. JT drew tight over Buzz’s body and glass and plaster and blood and bone and other things JT even didn’t want to know rained down on him. The noise of it was deafening. The silence when it was over even more.
Dust settled.
Buzz opened his big brown eyes. “You’re really heavy.”
JT shifted. “Sorry.”
“Did we win?”
Here’s a half-formed tableau: JT and Buzz in a Greentown pizzeria. JT would talk about his work. Buzz would talk about his. They would laugh and have a beer or two and maybe they’d kiss over the table or hold hands under it. He supposed it was a date he was almost dreaming of, the kind of everyday date you had with everyday guys: nice, quiet guys. Buzz wasn’t everyday anymore, was he? And he was never going to give up the thrill of what he’d just done. Not for pizza. So JT smiled, but only a little. “Yeah. Yeah, we won.”
“So kiss me, then.”
But before JT could decide what to do, Victor said, “How romantic,” and dropped the ceiling on them both.
There was so much dust and debris in the air, Austin couldn’t see a thing. He coughed and tried to breathe through a sleeve. He tried drawing power for a spell, but he was on wooden decking and not touching ground. As he had raced down the path toward the lodge, he’d seen one Nightshrike open fire on the other, then half the lodge had caved in. He shouted through the dust, “JT? Victor?” And through the dust he saw a form. He nocked an arrow, unable to tell who it was.
“Austin?” It was Victor.
Austin called back, “What happened? Where’s—” and a breeze kicked up and swept the dust away, and there was Victor the Wizard framed by the gaping wound in the side of the lodge that had once been its lakeside facing. Victor’s left eye was dark as a lunar eclipse; his right blazed like the heart of a sun with stolen druidic power. And suspended in the air to either side of Victor, limp as stringless puppets, hung JT and Buzz. Only endless optimism told Austin they were still alive.
And the way Victor stood there—his smug look and his lack of care for the two unconscious men he held in the air—Austin finally figured it out: Victor had betrayed them.
“Come out where I can see you, Austin.”
And for one split second Austin was confused. He was standing right there in broad daylight, a deer in headlights. Victor should have killed him ten times over by now. Austin had forgotten his camouflage: his body flickered with the blue of the lake and the sky, white/gray striated wood planking, and Victor couldn’t see Austin at all.
Owen Ren Leng rounded the corner of the lodge. “I see you. Your life is like a pestilence to me. Surrender. Lay down your bow. You have no magic left. Your arrows are useless. The fight is done.”
“It ain’t done till I’m dead.” He shifted his aim from one wizard to the other, knowing the necromancer was right and one arrow wasn’t enough.
“Lay down your bow, and you can have your friend.”
“No, he can’t!” Victor said. “Buzz and the ghost are yours, JT and Austin are mine, that was the agreement.” He cackled and called out to the air as if Austin were some wind spirit, “Do you have any idea the bounty on your head, Austin? All those years pissing on every crime lord and corporation on the West Coast has left you with few friends.” He glanced at JT. “Even your partner doesn’t want you around.”
JT was bloody and battered to hell. His ruined clothes were caked with layers of filth. And all that was covered in white dust from the collapse. It was Austin’s fault JT had left him. And now it was Austin’s fault JT had been hurt. Austin ground his teeth. Victor the Wizard’s one eye seemed to brighten with madness, all that power bound up in one silver orb.
“Nebraska, get me that rock, boy. Fetch me that rock.”
Austin’s familiar streaked in like a golden-furred comet. His claws skittered rapid-fire on the deck, scraped as he slid around corners. Then Nebraska leapt, and with his tiny claws and teeth tore the argent-fired Eye of Horus from Victor’s eye socket and, quick as a blink, dropped it into Austin’s open hand.
Austin struck the broadhead against it like striking a match. It flared white and then orange as Austin let fly. The arrow cut the binding thread of Owen Ren Leng’s jade necklace and drove high into the paper necromancer’s chest. One brief moment of stunned silence, the clatter of jade beads on the decking, Austin’s grim smile . . .
Then a whole lotta fire.
Flaming confetti fell everywhere, ash before it touched the ground. Austin’s ears rang. Everything smelled like fireworks. Austin pushed himself up from the wooden deck and blinked, vision dancing with spots. There was no sign anywhere of the Necromancer Owen Ren Leng. There never would be again.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I do!” Victor screeched. He dragged himself kneeling from where the blast had thrown him. His hands clawed before his eyes. His right eye socket gaped empty. He pleaded, “Give it back, Austin. Give it back. You don’t know . . . I’ll fucking kill you!”
“You mean this?” Austin held the eye aloft. It was black as a collapsed star. Victor’s head snapped toward it like a compass needle on a lodestone. “Fetch.” He flung the blackened orb as far as he could, so damn far he couldn’t even see the splash it made when it hit the lake.
&nbs
p; Victor the Wizard howled and bolted after it, so mindlessly desperate that he threw himself over the deck’s edge, bathrobe whipping behind him, and crashed into the water. Austin never saw him surface.
Austin ran to where JT had been thrown. He took the orc in his arms and felt for a pulse. He felt for breathing. He slapped JT’s cheeks. He prayed to whatever stupid spirit ruled this place. When JT coughed, Austin went so lightheaded with relief he nearly passed out.
The Unicorn. Austin pulled the data block free from Buzz’s shirt pocket (and Buzz weakly fought him, so yeah, he was all right) and held it up to the blue sky and sunlight. It rainbowed spectacularly, like it was the Hope Diamond. And as if that had been some kind of signal, the lake began to boil. Austin turned toward the sound, thinking it was Victor again, like the second ending of a bad horror sim.
It wasn’t Victor. From the lake rose a giant blue bubble. It rose and kept rising until it floated in the air, a sphere of sapphire-blue water twice the size of JT’s truck and emblazoned with three crossed scimitars. 3djinn had arrived, stylishly late.
Someone was messing with JT’s face. He slapped weakly in front of him and said, “Quit it,” with as much threatening, slurred force as he could muster. He had a splitting headache like someone had dropped a house on him, and his eyes wouldn’t focus.
Someone was saying, “Can you hear me? Hey, JT, say something.”
JT’s vision cleared. He was lying on a wide black leather seat that wrapped the circumference of a spherical room. The walls seemed to be made of translucent blue glass that rippled like water in a breeze. Sometimes the ripples were strong enough that a section of the walls would go clear. There wasn’t a hard edge anywhere in the room. Everything was curves. There was a gap in the wall, and through it he could see the ruined face of the lodge. A ramp ran from the gap down to the deck.
“How many fingers?” Austin waved his middle finger at JT.
“Fuck you too. What happened?”
Austin held up the Blue Unicorn’s data block. “I saved the day. As usual. While you sat around sleeping. As usual.”
Buzz stood at a round table of black glass in the center of the room. It shimmered with aerial images and interface controls. Buzz was covered in dust and splinters and blood. He looked awful.
“Are you okay?” JT asked Buzz.
“I’m fine.” Buzz came over and knelt next to JT. “You took the majority of it, I think.”
“What is this place?”
“The Marid.”
“3djinn has a magical bubble ship,” Austin said.
“It’s not magical.”
“I don’t know why they didn’t just send this to San Francisco to get you.”
“Maybe because it’s a secret? And UFO sightings get a lot more credit these days than they used to.”
JT struggled upright. He reached out to touch one of the walls. It felt like warm glass. “How does it work?”
“See, I told you he’d ask that,” Austin said to Buzz. “You can’t show him things like this. It gets him worked up. And then he bites.”
Buzz flashed him a dirty look.
JT scanned the place closer. “I don’t see any engines; how does it fly? Am I actually looking through the walls or is it a projection?”
Austin shook his head and rolled his eyes. “We probably shouldn’t stick around here. Buzz, get this thing off the ground.”
“No, my truck!” JT tried to stand.
Austin held him down. “JT—”
Buzz said, “Your truck is trashed, JT. Victor turned it into a pile of junk.”
“I ain’t leaving my truck.” He pushed at Austin, but he was still a bit woozy and Austin and Buzz held him down easily.
“You can print yourself a new truck,” Buzz said.
“I don’t want a new truck. I want that truck.”
“Hey, hey!” Austin took JT by the shoulders and turned him away from Buzz. “Hey, you know we can’t stick around here long enough for you to fix it, right? We’ve got nothing left. We’ve shot our load. Wham bam, there’s a good boy. And now we gotta go? Right?”
“Yeah, yeah, right.” Then JT shook his head. “But maybe if I can just get it running . . . extra parts somewhere . . .” He tried once more to stand up, but Austin pushed him back down again.
“JT, your truck isn’t important right now,” Buzz said.
JT snarled at him, and Buzz yelped and leapt back, eyes wide.
“You’re not helping!” Austin snapped at Buzz. He rubbed JT’s shoulders to calm him. “I’ll come back and get it for you.”
“You can’t even drive it.”
“I’ll get implants,” Austin said, cheerily.
“You will not.”
“I will. I’ll give up magic so you can get your truck back. Fair trade, innit?”
“Shut up.” Austin was just being stupid.
“Nope, it’s done. No arguments. I’m getting implants.” Austin sat back and looked away, feigning the end of the conversation.
JT tried to glare at Austin. He couldn’t. He was filthy with zombie guts and things he didn’t even want to think about. He was all battered. His drones were gone. His truck was gone. And yet, somehow, he didn’t feel nearly as shitty as he should have. Austin was there beside him making stupid promises that would never come true, like old times. And JT couldn’t get mad at him.
“All right. Let’s go. But let’s go now before I change my mind.”
The Blue Unicorn’s data block was heavier than it looked. A galaxy of rainbows caused by light refracting through a few million oxide monolayers danced inside it like a captured soul. JT had seen an artist who’d made window mosaics from the broken pieces of data blocks: tiny rainbows made by crystals carefully rotated and offset. It had been so beautiful, it had hurt to look at it.
It hurt to look at this block also, and JT couldn’t do it anymore. He handed it to Buzz. There were no sockets on the black glass table, no data jacks, nothing. Buzz just laid the block down on it. Apparently that was enough.
“We’re linked up to the 3djinn satellite. From there she can go anywhere she wants.”
“3djinn has a satellite?”
Buzz shrugged. “Someone may have lost one.”
Buzz wasn’t an impressive-looking guy—cute, but not handsome, not striking, not scary—so it was easy to forget that he was one of the most talented hackers on the planet. Maybe he even forgot it himself. But here on this bizarre aircraft, it was hard for JT to look at Buzz and not think of all the shadows and secrets that lay behind him.
“It’s starting.”
JT expected to see lights or a mist or something emerge from the block and drift upward. There was nothing like that. Buzz hadn’t invited JT into the Marid’s cyberspace to witness the transfer, so JT was as blind to what was happening as Austin. It was invisible, memory erasing itself, methodically shifting to zero-potential. To them it was just a data block on a table.
Buzz watched critically, eyes cyberspace-glazed. Austin smiled faintly, celebrating the rescue of some small part of his sister from slavery and dissection.
Austin wouldn’t see this as an ending, would he? This ghost had already set a fire under him and reignited his obsession with his sister’s death. People like Austin and JT never got closure. Bodies were rarely recovered when an illegal job went bad. Sometimes you didn’t even know whether a person was dead or captured or just decided to say fuck it and run off. Funerals were a drink and a smoke and a toast. JT should have counted himself lucky—this was the funeral they’d never been able to give her. This wasn’t a semisentient program released into the world’s networks, but a soul released into whatever infinity there was.
“Goddess, I’m ready to be home,” he said.
“Aaand . . . she’s gone.” Buzz smiled victoriously.
It was a shame that closure was just something some marketing guru had thought up to sell pop-psychology vids. It would have felt good.
Beneath them swept the Painted Des
ert. Mottled red and browns in the distance became sharp bands beneath them, as if they were passing over a color-coded elevation map and not real geography. The walls of the Marid never remained transparent for long; ripples of black and blue passed over the view.
Buzz and JT sat together and watched everything roll past. JT said, “You aren’t going to stay with me, are you? You’d be safe there.”
“Seeing you and Austin talking again, I thought that meant you were putting together a new team and maybe you wanted me along, you know, like you needed Roan, someone net-side doing that part of the job. And in my head I was thinking all this was like an interview or a test run or something. And you and I, we could kind of be like how you and—” He broke off talking with a nervous glance at Austin because Austin was right there. But Austin pretended he hadn’t heard any of it, so Buzz went on, “But you ain’t putting together a team are you?”
“No. I’m going home. And Austin’s going back to wherever Austin goes.”
“Those years Roan and I roomed together, I knew what she did when she ran with you guys and you all left on your jobs and I stayed home by myself and did my thing. I was an accountant. I moved numbers from one column to another until they told the story I wanted them to tell. I was good at it. But nobody knew who I was. And, meanwhile, you all were fucking superheroes. I know I’d be safe with you.” He looked away from JT, through the rippling walls to the world outside. “I don’t want to be safe.”
The Glamour Thieves Page 12