Bride of Death (Marla Mason)
Page 5
“That’s sensible.”
“I can’t trust you, Nicolette. My old teacher Artie Mann, back when I was an apprentice, he warned me about entropic witches – warned me not to become one. He said you can’t trust that kind of chaos witch to do anything, not even to act in her own best interests. When a chaos witch has a plan, and it works out exactly the way she wants, she gets weaker. When a chaos witch’s plans falls apart, she gets stronger. He told me that kind of mindset makes practitioners of entropic magic a little bit crazy. I can’t say I’ve seen anything to make me believe otherwise. That’s why I never studied the kind of magic you do – I value the integrity of my mind too much.”
“Also you’re a control freak,” Nicolette said. “And you’re predictable. And a fascist. So that works against you.”
I shook her head. Like, picked up the cage and shook it until she fell over and her face got smushed up against the bars. That shut her up. For about a second.
“How’d you get the juice to bring me back to life anyway?” she demanded, after I put the cage back down.
“I told you, I didn’t bring you back. Someone did it for me, so you could help me with my work. You might say I’m on a mission from god.”
“Okay, Elwood. Whatever you say.”
I was kind of annoyed that she’d caught the Blues Brothers reference. I don’t like to think of us having similar tastes in anything. I snorted anyway. “Please. You’re Elwood. I’m Joliet Jake.”
“Bullshit.”
“Elwood was practically a sidekick. Joliet Jake was the heart of the film.”
Nicolette rolled her eyes. It was one of the only ways she had to express disdain, and I suspected she was going to be using it a lot. “Doesn’t matter. I’m still Jake. You don’t think John Belushi was an avatar of chaos?”
I didn’t answer for a moment. Then I said, “Touché.”
ROAD FOOD
I shook off Pelham and Rondeau before they could turn everything into some kind of heinous long-goodbye type situation with hugs and parting advice and declarations of affection. I got into the freight elevator with Nicolette’s birdcage dangling from my hand – with a black cloth cover on top, of course, and strict instructions to only make noises that could be attributable to a bird – and a leather messenger bag slung across my back.
In the elevator, Nicolette said, “Squawk. Polly wants a shotgun.”
“Shush.”
The garage was empty that morning – I guess Vegas isn’t really a town for early risers, except for the slot-machine zombies, who would already be at their stations. My boots clicked pleasantly on the concrete as I walked toward my bike, which was all gassed-up and waiting courtesy of Rondeau’s minions.
I settled Nicolette’s birdcage onto the rear of the bike, lifting the cloth a bit and lashing the cage into place with bungee cords threaded through the bars and hooked to solid bits of motorcycle. “Don’t I get a helmet?” she said. “I need to protect my head. It’s all I’ve got. Squawk.”
“The cage is enchanted.” I tapped the bars with the wedding ring on my left hand, making them clink. “You’re safe as long as you stay in there. Besides, the motorcycle is so wrapped in magics I doubt I could crash it if I wanted to.” I didn’t know exactly what kind of charms Death had put on my pale horse, but even my rudimentary psychic senses tingled in its presence, so I knew it was serious stuff.
I packed most of the contents of my bag – a few minor charms, along with ordinary odds and ends and spare clothes – into the motorcycle’s saddlebags. After some thought, I put the silver hatchet in one of the bags, too. Since I wasn’t sure what the weapon did, exactly, I didn’t want to keep it in my coat, so close to my body. For all I know it had the power to give you bone cancer. I wasn’t worried about dying, particularly, but I’m no big fan of pain. I shoved my dagger down in a boot sheath, tied the flapping ends of my coat around my ankles, and put on my helmet, with the smoked visor flipped up, for the moment. I was ready to go.
“So. You’re my monster-detector, Nicolette. Where are we going?”
Nicolette, muffled by the dropcloth, said, “Out of the city would be good. I sniff out disorder and disaster and chaos, and in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in Vegas. I’m like a bloodhound in an aromatherapy factory right now. There’s nothing but random chance and bad decisions and malice aforethought in the air, plus lots of gambling and shifting probabilities muddying up the signal, so I can’t find anything useful. Get us out on the open road and I’ll try to find something for you to murder for no good reason.”
I settled myself on the motorcycle, taking a moment to sit and hold the handlebars and get a sense of my balance. Riding a motorcycle’s not exactly like riding a bicycle, and I hadn’t been on one in ages. I turned the key and twisted the throttle, easing the bike forward, and the rumbling purr of the engine felt good. Powerful.
I rode slowly through the garage, spiraling up the ramp and out into the glaring sunlight of a desert morning, then proceeded down a side street, away from the casino, heading for the highway. I was thinking south, toward Arizona, for no particular reason at all, except I’d never been there, and Death had once told me the painted desert was beautiful.
Riding the motorcycle was.... actually pleasant. Maybe that old exposed-nerve feeling had more to do with my state of mind at the time than the actual experience. I’ve never much liked driving cars. I always feel isolated, like I’m gliding around in a box, insulated from the wider world. But riding a motorcycle is so much more like being in the world. You can feel the wind, the motion, the friction of tires on asphalt, and the bike eventually starts to feel like an extension of yourself, as opposed to an unwieldy machine.
My boots were comfy, my coat was warm, the wind whipping by was loud enough that I couldn’t have heard Nicolette talk even if she’d screamed, my belly was full, my bladder was empty, and all felt right with the world. I began to relax, feeling tensions I’d hadn’t even realized I was holding melt away.
Freedom. The open road. Had I ever really experienced that? Oh, I’d been homeless on the road before, as a teen runaway, but that was different. Now I had power. I had resources. I wasn’t afraid. I was going looking for trouble, not trying to avoid it. There were no meetings to take, no allies to reassure, no enemies to outmaneuver. No politics, no assassins – ha, I’d been assassinated, I didn’t have to worry about that anymore – no sacred place that I had to protect.
I had no responsibilities, except to myself. A month – well, thirty days, now – of walking the Earth, trying to do good. Or, at least, to do better.
Soon I left the city behind. It doesn’t take long to go from the outskirts of Vegas to big empty. I realized later that I could have taken a slightly alternate route and gone along the shoreline of Las Vegas Bay, and gotten a last glimpse of big – well, biggish – water before delving deep into the land of dust and sand, but I didn’t think about it at the time. I took highway 93 southeast for a while, and soon there was nothing on either side but dusty hills and rocks and power line pylons. Big open spaces, and nature in general, have a tendency to unnerve me. I consider myself a creature of urban spaces, and I find the press of people and buildings more comforting than claustrophobic. The American Southwest is a big place, and apart from flying over it a few times, it’s not a landscape where I’ve spent much time. I’d looked over some maps, though, and was thinking maybe I’d cut over toward Texas, pick up I-40 East, head toward the more tightly-packed population centers of the East Coast, see what kind of trouble I could find –
Somebody was screaming behind me, so I pulled the bike over to the shoulder and turned off the rumbling engine. “What are you yelling about, Nicolette?”
“How t else am I supposed to get your attention? You could at least stick a bluetooth headset on me so I could call you.”
I grunted. She had a point. It wasn’t like I was in a camper van with her head on the passenger seat, where we could chat. It’s hard to hear anything but the
wind in your ears and the hum of the road on a motorcycle at highway speed. “I’m new to this traveling-avenger thing. I didn’t think about it. I’ll come up with something when we stop for the night, to let us communicate.”
“None of that telepathy shit,” came the muffled voice beneath the cage cover. “I don’t want you in my head, and I don’t want to be in yours.”
“Likewise. I’d rather stick my head in a septic tank than take a dip in your stream of consciousness. Now what were you screaming about?”
“I got a sense of something. A twinge of a twinge. There’s a lot of big empty up here, but there’s a thread of chaos twisting not far ahead. Look for human habitation, and I bet we’ll find something.”
I pulled out the smartphone Pelham had given me and fiddled with it for a moment, looking for local landmarks, such as they were. “There’s a truck stop a few miles ahead, with a diner.”
“I could use a bite to eat.”
“You don’t eat food.”
“No, but I eat chaos, and there’s definitely a scent in the air.”
“All right, then. Can you be a little more specific about what I’m getting into?”
Nicolette tittered. “Afraid it’ll be something you can’t handle? You’ve got a dagger forged in Hell – that’s the rumor, anyway – and an axe with a blade made of some kind of supernatural moonlight, and thirty years of experience as a mercenary sorcerer –”
“Thirty years? How the hell old do you think I am? It’s only sixteen or seventeen years since I became an apprentice!”
“– so I imagine you can cope. And if you can’t, lady, you’re in the wrong business.”
I started the bike again, mostly because I wanted to drown Nicolette out if she kept talking. The motorcycle ate miles as quickly as Rondeau downs drinks, so before long I signaled and swooped down a freeway exit and pulled into an oasis of concrete, diesel fumes, and big rigs. I parked my bike in one of the spaces away from the gas pumps, next to the diner itself, where I could see my ride from the windows. Not that anyone would have much luck if they tried to steal it or rifle through my saddlebags – I’d made sure the bike was enchanted with some nice anti-theft spells in addition to whatever Death had done to it – but because it was pretty much the only thing I had in the world, and I wanted to keep my eye on it.
I stood up from the bike and stretched, my spine crackling. The seat was comfy, but I wasn’t used to sitting for hours at a time, and my ass was numb. I started toward the diner door.
“You’re leaving me here?” Nicolette said.
I sighed. “I was. But okay. You can come, if you behave. Not a word out of you in there.”
“Squawk. Polly wants a patty melt.”
I unhooked the bungees that held the cage to the bike. I really needed to rig up some kind of quick-release attachment, or maybe just a sticky spell I could turn on and off, or something with magnets. The handle of the birdcage protruded through a slit in the cloth, so I picked up the cage that way and carried it into the diner with me. I chose a booth along the windows and set the birdcage down on one side before sitting on the other, where I had a view of the door. I scanned the room, but didn’t see much to worry me – certainly no obvious impending vectors for chaos. Just a few truckers at the counter, putting away slabs of pie and buckets of coffee, and a family, clearly on a road trip, with a mom and dad looking exhausted, and two disturbingly well-behaved children, one little girl and one little boy, aged somewhere between four and eight (I’m not great with kids), noshing on burgers and fries.
A waitress of the take-no-shit veteran variety came over and gave my covered birdcage the eye. “Is there a bird in there?”
“No,” I said truthfully.
“Because birds aren’t allowed. No pets, except service animals. Health regulations.”
“No bird, I promise.” I wondered what health regulations had to say about bringing severed human heads into a restaurant. Probably didn’t come up often, and likely covered by other existing laws.
The waitress cocked her head at me. “You travel around with an empty birdcage?”
I wanted to say “I keep my guns and drugs in there,” but instead I just nodded. “Some people like briefcases. Not me. I’m an eccentric. But I tip well.”
She rolled her eyes and pointed her pencil at me. “If I hear any chirps or squawks, you’ll have to take it outside, all right?”
“Understood.”
“Water? Coffee?”
“Yes,” I said.
The waitress slid a menu across the table and walked back around the counter. I flipped the menu open, and my stomach grumbled. Nicolette wanted to come here to eat chaos, but I could go for a plate of eggs and sausage.
The little boy in the booth next to mine was standing on the seat, staring at the birdcage. “Did you know parrots can live for a hundred years?”
“In captivity, maybe,” I said. “If you call that living. “
“Sea turtles can live even longer,” the boy said. He had ketchup on his face. Cute? Disgusting? Who am I to judge?
I wondered how we’d gotten onto the topic of sea turtles. I figured I’d roll with it, though. I’d been off the surface of the earth for a month, so I could use some conversational practice. “I used to live in Hawaii. I saw lots of sea turtles there.” I even met a turtle god, but I figured maybe I shouldn’t mention that.
“Leave the lady alone,” the mom said, and tugged the child back down to his seat.
So much for human interaction. Who needs it? My mission was inhuman interaction anyway.
The waitress came back with the drinks and took my order, and I warmed my hands on the porcelain coffee mug. I didn’t get any sense of impending chaos, but then, if I had a good sense for that kind of thing, I could have avoided a lot of problems in the past, and I wouldn’t have needed Nicolette.
A few minutes later, the waitress brought over a big plate of fluffy yellow scrambled eggs and crisped-black sausage and a little plate of light brown toast. I took a couple of bites as she refilled my coffee mug, right to the brim with scalding rocket fuel. All good stuff, but I couldn’t enjoy my meal, because I couldn’t relax. Was anything even going to happen here? Had Nicolette actually sensed impending chaos, or was she just messing with me, asserting her independence, wasting my time?
I slid the wedding ring off my finger. I’d given Death a plain old ordinary gold band, but his ring for me was a little fancier. I held it up to my eyeball and looked through the hole, peering around the diner. Doing so doubtless made me look like a weirdo, but I was already the chick in a leather coat who brought a birdcage into a diner, so that ship had pretty much sailed.
Peering through the ring can give me a glimpse of the future. The immediate future of the immediate area, and, if I focused on an individual, a deeper look at their personal future. Unfortunately – or maybe fortunately – the future isn’t fixed, so the ring just shows me the most likely futures, and the view is more-or-less blurry depending on just how likely, or unlikely, a given future is. The layout of the diner itself didn’t change much, which meant that, shockingly, it would still be standing for the next ten minutes or half hour. I caught a glimpse of flashing lights outside, implying police cars or fire trucks in the future. Okay, that was something. I focused on a couple of the truckers, and saw nothing unremarkable – them, driving trucks, eating beef jerky, watching TV in motels. The little boy popped up and stared at me again, so I gave him a long look, and was surprised – mostly I saw haze and blurs and school corridors and beaches, but I did get a brief, sharp image of him much older, probably in his twenties, in a jungle, his face and bare chest smeared with blood, his hair decorated with bright feathers, a halo of bluish magic crackling around his upraised hands. The kid had at least a chance of stumbling into the world of magic and becoming a sorcerer at some point. The future holds all kinds of weird possibilities.
His mom tugged him down again, so I swept my vision toward the approaching waitress –
There we go.
The bell over the door rang as someone entered, and I slid the ring back onto my finger and watched as a twitchy, scruffy-looking guy in his thirties shuffled in. He wore a dirty red flannel jacket, and he kept wiping his nose with his crusty sleeves. The guy was on some kind of drugs, obviously, and from the look of him, I didn’t want any of what he was having. “Lucille!” he shouted. “Lucille, I need to talk to you!”
The waitress who’d served me crossed her arms and scowled. “Lucy ain’t here, Gary. Why don’t you just go on home and wait for her.”
“She worked today!” he shouted. “She works every Friday! Don’t you lie to me, Arlene!”
“It’s Thursday,” Arlene said. “You look like a mess. Maybe you shouldn’t be driving. You have a seat and let me get you a cup of coffee –”
“I don’t need coffee, I need Lucille, it’s payday and she needs to sign her check over so I can get my medicine, I can’t wait no more –”
“It’s not payday until tomorrow, anyway, and you can’t be shouting like that, you’ll scare the customers –”
“Don’t you tell me what to do!” he shouted – screamed, really. “Lucille, get out here right now!”
“She told you Lucille ain’t here, son,” one of the truckers said. He was a big guy, probably ran two-eighty and only some of it fat, and he put his hand on Gary’s arm, not even in a threatening way, more conciliatory.
Gary came out with a hunting knife and slashed at the trucker, who fell back, shouting. He slid off his stool, blood welling through a long tear in his sleeve. Gary had slashed his bicep, which probably hurt like hell, but he wasn’t likely to die from it.