For his part, the Cutter merely picked up the pace and led them to the opposite side of the warehouse, weaving past boxes that carried no visible markings. A new set of doors was there, this one closed.
“Yo, King Cutter,” the thug called out. “Cops. They said they got biz.”
A thin man with a hawklike nose and a long knife sheathed at his left hip stepped out from behind a crate. He looked at Max with a dismissive glance, but Drake made him take notice. The massive, clawed feet, the tiger-stripe patterned BDU trousers, the huge pistols holstered beneath each heavily muscled arm, and the elongated triangular head that appeared to be simply there as a carrier for the shining fangs and pointed teeth, all tended to attract more than the lions share of attention wherever he went, and the warehouse was no different.
“Yup. I’m a dragon. What do you want? An autograph?” Drake asked.
“I don’t see one like you every day,” King Cutter said. He walked with slow, measured steps, looking Drake up and down as he moved.
“Weird,” Drake answered. “I see me every day in the mirror. You know, when I shave,” he added, dragging a claw along the line of his chin. The sound it made was not pleasant.
King Cutter wheeled on his subordinate. “You bring cops in here?” he demanded. “You just let them walk right in?”
“I tried to stop them, King, I—”
“Get out of my face, Barry. Go find Jet and Star. Bring them here to me. Get it right or . . . Yeah. I think you know what happens.” His hand trailed across the sheath of the knife at his hip in an obscene caress.
“Got it,” the thug replied with a rapid nodding of his head. He took off for the door through which Drake and Max had entered.
King Cutter turned back to Drake and Max. “What brings you here today . . .without a warrant?” he asked, smiling in a manner not entirely unlike that in which Drake frequently did. The expression might have generated fear in his subordinates, but it certainly had no effect of Drake.
“Looking for the booster that ganked Shake the other day,” Drake said.
“You waste no time with small talk, huh?” responded the Cutter. “Direct. I like that. Could use to see a little more of that in my boys sometimes.”
“Well, seeing as how I’m not here to educate you on group harmonics and personal growth, how about you answer my question?”
The Cutter laughed, shaking his head back and forth. He stepped away from the two cops, moving further into the warehouse and then seating himself in a leather recliner beside a miniature refrigerator. An end table with a bottle of Hennessey and an ashtray marked this as his personal chamber for the area, a portable throne from which he could hold court. Sitting in the chair gave him a psychological boost of power.
“What if I don’t want to?” he asked. “It ain’t like you’re gonna shoot me or nothing. The two of you are cops. That ain’t how it works.”
Drake sucked at a tooth and then nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “We ain’t gonna shoot you unless it’s necessary. That being said, maybe I should let you see the sights. From altitude. I mean, I see a citizen asking me for help on looking over his distribution routes. It would only be too kind for me to take him into the air and let him get a look.”
He flexed his wings for emphasis and the Cutter paled for a second, and then regained his composure.
“So we hired some muscle. So what?”
“Who’s hiring out?”
“The Brotherhood,” King Cutter answered, his tone implying that he had never heard a less intelligent question in his life. “Seems like you oughta know about ’em, being a booster and all. Hell, maybe you could get a real job with them and stop being a rat-ass cop!”
“A job with them? To do what? Knock off Jolt slingers? Make fifty bucks working for your scrawny ass?”
King laughed. “I wish it had been fifty! The Brotherhood ain’t cheap.”
“Well, you put me in touch with them, and I’ll get you a Patriot coloring book. That should about even the score. I’ve seen them things on eBay, slick, and they ain’t cheap either.”
“Look, man, I ain’t saying shit no more. I don’t care about you being a cop coming up in here,” he said, pointing a finger at Max. “And some big-ass dragon looking bitch of a genebooster? You ain’t scaring nobody.”
He pushed back in the chair, unfolding it and elevating his feet. As he did so, the door behind Drake opened. More than a dozen laughing, jeering voices washed over him and he looked over his shoulder to see a group of raggedly dressed young men, most in their late teens, but a few older. They carried an astounding variety of weapons and handled them with a casual ease. Rifles and shotguns seemed to be the preference, though handguns abounded and one particularly large ganger had a massive sledgehammer.
“Meet the Six-Three Cutters, cops,” the gang boss said with a guttural laugh. He held up his cell phone, showing off the fact that it was on. In the group another phone was lifted by Barry, the thug who had escorted them into the sanctum, and Drake knew how they had been caught. Worse than that, he could see that the Cutters had a clear line of fire without jeopardizing their leader.
“Take big boy back there,” Drake told Max, jerking a clawed thumb at King Cutter. “I’ll deal with the rest.”
In response to his words, the rest of the gang brought their weapons to bear. Drake felt his lips peel back, exposing rows of glistening fangs. A deep, bass rumbling sound built deep in his chest and erupted as laughter with a demonic cast to its tone. His tongue flicked out as if to taste the air and a second later a thick stream of golden and red flame shot from his mouth to splash onto the floor in front of the men. He swept it from left to right, building a wall of fire between them. He pushed Max back with his right hand, essentially throwing him at the gang leader and interposing his own bulk for a moment as gunfire erupted.
Rather than drop to the floor as the group might have expected from their prey, Drake leaped into the air, his wings pumping. Another fiery blast spat from his throat, this one close enough to spatter flame onto the feet of the front ranks. They jumped back and many of them dropped their weapons and ran for the door. Others adjusted their point of aim and continued to fire, and Drake felt a few bullets get past his armored hide. Roaring in pain, he flew into the shadows of the ceiling, banking hard and then diving to engage his attackers once more from a different angle.
Max Lahey landed atop the gang boss, his sudden arrival tipping the recliner and sending them both sprawling. He rolled twice, losing his grip on his weapon and hearing it skitter away. With a curse, he made one final roll and came up in a crouch. King Cutter was slowly staggering to his feet, a long-bladed knife in his hand. Max remembered all through the years being shown videos of knife defense and the difficulties of it being done without serious harm. He flashed back to the Tueller drill, where he was taught that twenty-one feet could be covered and a stabbing occur before he could even get his weapon out of the holster and on target. His sidearm was gone, so even an attempt at a quick draw was out of the question. The derringer he carried in an ankle holster might as well have been at home.
“Gonna cut ya,” the ganger said. Max braced himself for the fight.
Another blast of fire, this time from above and on an oblique that shattered their ranks, and the gang broke. Weapons fell unheeded as escape overpowered the desire to avenge their leaders honor. Those with burning patches on their clothing slapped at them to extinguish the flames even as they ran. Above them, Drake wheeled about once more, avoiding the random gunshots thrown up by those attempting to flee. He roared loud and long as he dived for the ground, adding an additional measure of terror to any who dared remain behind.
For his own part, he could feel at least three rifle bullets inside him and knew that he bled from a few more that had torn holes in him. He was covered in impact spots that would be bruises by morning. His wings had several small holes in them from the gunfire, and ruptured capillaries leaked blood to streak the deep green flesh of t
he appendages.
He flared those wings wide as he neared the floor, lifting his head and driving his feet onto the concrete. His talons threw a shower of sparks that were masked by the flames into which he confidently strode, grabbing the last few Cutters and hurling them toward the doorway, where they struck the backs of their comrades and added to the general confusion.
“Run!” Drake thundered, raising his arms and standing to his full height. Backlit by the sulfurous flames, he appeared no less than a denizen of Hell to more than one member of the gang.
King Cutter waved the shining blade around, reflecting the firelight from Drake’s breath weapon as he stalked the detective. His face was a maniacal grin and he flipped the knife from one hand to another in a dexterous display that spoke volumes to the cop. He opened his mouth to taunt the man, but his words were drowned by the gunfire from the other side of the warehouse.
Max ignored the speech and moved in, trusting that his years of training would pay off against a foe that he hoped had simply threatened with the knife to get what he wanted. King came in low and left, throwing the blade up and catching it with his right hand at the last moment to change his attack angle. Max jumped forward, getting inside the arc of the knife and grabbing King’s wrist in his own hand. He drove a vicious upward elbow strike into the gang leaders chin, following with a knee to the groin. As the younger man began to slump downward, Max added his own body weight and pulled them to the floor, using the inertia of the fall to plant a second elbow into King’s head. He took advantage of the stunned state into which King had been plunged to wrench the knife hand up behind King’s back and disarm him, followed within seconds by the ratcheting of handcuffs. With a whoop of exhilaration, he sat up atop the downed gang boss and threw his hands into the air, an urban rodeo star completing his hogtie.
“And you’re the King?” he asked with a grin. “No wonder the Angels are taking over.”
Drake forced the last of the Cutters out of the warehouse door and glanced over his shoulder to check on Max. He could see the cop starting to stand, his prey prone and restrained, and Drake gave him a thumbs-up gesture before turning back to the door.
His vision blurred and everything before him took on a grey, misty appearance. On his back he could still feel the comforting warmth of the fires he had generated, but the entirety of his ventral side was in agony as whatever he had walked into was turning his scales to ice. Shimmering crystals became thicker and thicker as Drake let out a muffled roar. His lips were going numb, and protective membranes had flashed into place across his eyes. Wings had wrapped tightly around him like a coat to try and hold the warmth in, but they, too, had been coated in the frigid spray. What had started as a freezing mist was now fast becoming a solid sheath of ice across his body. His pulse rate slowed and a dreamy feeling surpassed even the cold. He felt dragged down, like a weight pulling him under water, and his consciousness began to slip away from him.
Drake fought to flex his arms against the ice, to shatter the coating that held him fast, but the most he could manage from them was a wiggle. Realizing he had gotten himself into a situation from which he might easily never recover, he squatted low to the ground in hopes of being able to jump clear. In the process, a fresh coat of the ice sealed his nose and mouth and panic set in. He pushed up and back with his legs, throwing his body into the area behind himself and landing in the flame that still burned on the ground. The jolt of adrenaline from realizing he was working with only the air in his lungs had pushed aside the lethargy that had taken over as his blood slowed, but that wouldn’t last long, he knew. He rolled back and forth in the fire, feeling the ice begin to give way as he thrashed his muscles against it. Spots began to appear in the grey field that was his vision. He felt his chest tighten and flex inward against itself as he struggled to breathe.
His left arm broke through the coat of ice with a crunching sound and he began batting himself in the face with all the strength he could manage. He cracked the icy shell and a section fell away, the heat of the fire melting enough to keep pieces sloughing off. Most importantly for Drake, he managed to open a small space along his jawline through which he could suck in air. It was boiling hot and oxygen-deprived from the flame but he gulped it in as hard and fast as he could get it while still slamming himself in the face. His efforts paid off as the rest of the ice shattered away from his face, although it cost him a tooth. His vision cleared as the nictitating membranes retracted. Sucking in a lungful of what air there was, he exhaled a blast of flame down along his right arm and then onto his abdomen, reveling in the warmth.
“So you are the mighty Firedrake, eh?” called a voice from behind him. It reminded Drake of the voices he had heard from Ivy League graduates, a particular feel that some might call ’cultured’.
Ignoring the tingling feeling that spread through him as blood flowed into his extremities once more, Drake ducked and threw himself into a shoulder roll away from the voice. He came up facing the doorway to see the man who had frozen him standing there, pointing and laughing at Drake. He wore what looked to be a wetsuit of some variety, painted in a light blue color, that covered him from his feet to his neck. His hair was a shaggy mess of white, and sapphire-hued eyes watched Drake.
“Who the hell are you, slick?”
The man bowed from the waist in a classic, elegant manner. “I have no name to supply, so you may call me simply . . .Frost.”
Drake nodded slowly. “Well, okay, then, Frost. Nice to meet you. I’m Drake, Metahuman Affairs. Oh, and by the way? You’re under arrest.”
Frost giggled then, a high-pitched tinkling like glass. “Do you honestly think you are in any shape to stop me, Firedrake? Only a minute ago, you were writhing on this very floor, my ice nearly ending you. You are no threat to me.”
Wagging a finger like a parent scolding a child, Drake shook his head. “You’ve got ice, slick, and I’ve got fire . . .but you forgot these,” he said, drawing both of the pistols from under his arms. He aimed carefully, distinguishing his target despite the waves of heat rising that caused a shimmering effect.
Frost patted his chest and giggled yet again. “Bulletproof!” he declared.
It was Drake’s turn to laugh. He pointed one of the massive slab-sided iron beasts and squeezed the trigger. A hole nearly half an inch in diameter appeared in one of the steel girders that supported the roof.
“Armor piercing,” he replied.
“What? Who carries those? You just walk around with armor-piercing bullets?”
“I hunt boosters for a living, slick. You know how many of us have armor?”
“If you come after me, then the Brotherhood will hunt you.”
“Yeah, I hear y’all are some kinda fraternity or something. Y’all get together and swallow goldfish? Spank each other with paddles?” Drake asked. Behind him, Max Lahey was strolling toward the two boosters, his pistol forgotten and one of the gang’s AK-47 rifles clutched in his hands.
There was a pause for a moment as the mercenary judged his odds. He looked at the detective for a moment, and then dismissed him with a sneer as being no threat. A thick fog formed around his feet, slowly billowing outward and thickening.
Drake readied himself to jump aside but the fog remained in place. Instead, Frost thrust his hands forward in a sudden movement. Foot-long shards of ice filled the air, two from each hand. They shattered against Drake’s chest rather than penetrate, but the force was akin to a shotgun blast at close range, and the reptilian booster was knocked backward. That was the cue for the fog to climb skyward in a grey cloud, becoming a wall of ice that filled the doorway. In a second it was an inch thick and growing fast.
Drake triggered the pistol, punching a perfect hole through the ice and being rewarded with a yelp of pain from behind the shield. He could make out the figure of Frost limping away from the doorway at a speed faster than he should have with a hole in his leg.
Drake raised and fired the other pistol. The micro-explosive in the tip of th
e round shattered the icy barricade into fragments. Those that fell beyond the door skipped and skittered across the pavement, while those that bounced inward melted quickly in contact with the heat of a floor that, in places, still bore bits of flame left over from Drake’s breath attack.
“You got him?” Max asked, coughing in the thick, smoky air.
“Winged him,” Drake said, holstering his pistols. He could already see Frost lifting from the ground on a frozen cloud and flying away, and after the ice cloud incident, Drake knew there was no chance that chasing him would end well. His body was still wracked with pain, and the cold that had sapped his strength was exactly the thing against which he knew he was weakest. Flying into that in midair would be a death sentence.
“Sumbitch didn’t even have the decency to flip me off,” he complained with a sad shake of his head. “Go get your prisoner and let’s get outta here. I need a couple gallons of coffee soonest.”
As Max nodded and walked away, Drake pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He hoped that the ice and fire routine had not damaged it too badly, and for once he was rewarded when the screen lit up. He pushed a speed dial setting and waited for the rings. Clicking sounds told him he was being routed through several hubs.
“Director,” Hart answered. Her voice was deeper than usual, and Drake thought she sounded fatigued.
“Hart? It’s Drake. We’ve got a problem. Looks like there’s a team of boosters setting themselves up as a rent-a-crook firm.”
“Expand.”
“Local gang here in Arizona hired a booster to knock off one of their competitors. He’s working with others. They call themselves the Brotherhood.”
Hart sighed. “Why must they all choose names like this? It makes me want to buy them matching football jerseys.”
“Turns out, the guy they sent was just the one that got sent. It wasn’t a case of analyzing the opponent and sending the best guy for the job. My money says they’ll save that for big-time prey. Oh, and for me.”
The Good Fight Page 14