Me . . . kind of impressed.
Stone cold shit from Welf.
Guess it’s easier to threaten that kind of thing when you can have a Construct do the deed and you don’t have to do the killing yourself. Have to do the killing yourself and it gets complicated, even if you’re as fucked up as I am. For a normal bastard like Welf . . . well, don’t think the guy could do it with his own hands.
Might get a callus like all the working folk.
Can’t have that.
“Who’s Autumn?” T-Bone asked, apparently having missed that info in his lovey dovey fugue.
“The Construct,” I said. “I’d have named mine Dino-bot, but what do I know?”
Vicky shook her head. We were all still watching Isabel for a reaction to Welf’s threat, but there had been none so far. Only the silent regard of the crazy pills. “Autumn isn’t Brother’s, it’s Mother’s.”
“I’m trying to be threatening,” Welf gritted out the side of his mouth at her.
Isabel giggled, but said nothing.
“So she just gave him a Construct?” I couldn’t help myself. “He couldn’t make his own? I thought he made one just before he graduated?”
“Oh . . . he made one,” Vicky said.
“And?”
“It was deemed unsatisfactory for ‘a Welf to display such pedestrian work in public,’” Vicky quoted. “She said his Construct was barely above average and would remain in storage, only to be used for emergencies. Until he could truly understand the art as Mother knew it, he’s to use her Autumn until further notice.”
Welf shook in rage. “Enough, Victoria.”
“I’m sorry, Brother” she said, “I’m nervous and I’m babbling. Also . . . Mr. Root did say that your Construct was the best Construct ever crafted by a graduate student. Most take two or three years after graduating and make them much worse. It’s not your fault that—”
“Enough!” Welf repeated.
Vicky shut her mouth finally.
Isabel giggled into the silence. “You’ll miss Jason’s fight if you all keep watching little me,” she warned us.
I turned the chair around next to hers and sat down in it. “Guess that’s just what is gonna happen, ain’t it?”
Wasn’t sure if I was with the totality of Welf’s plan. Having Constructs pop people’s heads off might be a step too far even for me. But the whole interrogation part? Finding out what was going on? All for that. Too many mysteries in my life already; don’t need to add any more to the pile.
I wasn’t taking my eyes off of Isabel for nothing. Even if she had gotten fat in the last fifteen minutes. I’ve fucked a fatty in my day and I’ll do it again if I have to! Without alcohol if that’s what it takes!
She seemed to recognize my gaze on her stomach. Still had on that blue dress that barely covered the important bits, now it covered them even less, folds of fat and thicker, heavier breasts pushing against the fabric comically. “You’ve made a mess of me, lover.”
Welf paced back and forth, one eye on the arena floor, one eye on Isabel. The wrestling was all over. They were prepping an octagon cage now. Jason Jackson versus a werebull, MMA-style. That would be something to see. Hopefully T-Bone still had his recording software going somewhere.
T-Bone supported Vicky for the moment. When Welf wasn’t eyeing the pair suspiciously. Vicky was always more passive around her brother than I ever liked. She’d outgrown it somewhat, but when stressed the old habits came back to her. Welf Rule Number One: Bros Before Hos. Follow the dick! It gives you special powers!
“I think I’ll change into something else,” Isabel said. “What should it be? What would you like, King Henry? Should I be Valentine for you again?”
I just stared at her. But my eyes promised that if she did, the Construct would be the least of her worries.
“Or maybe Victoria?” She scrutinized her target. “Do you think she’d be pretty in this little dress? Would you like that? I’ve been her before. She was much younger, but I think I should be able to do alterations on the fly.”
Vicky and T-Bone’s hushed whispers went quiet. Welf’s pacing stopped. I only stared at her, giving no reaction. What’s really fucked up is that it wasn’t like with Annie B, it wasn’t Isabel trying to get a reaction out of me. Isabel still—after all this time, after all the shit she’d thrown around—was trying in her own fucked up way to please me.
We’re the two most powerful people in the room.
Isabel smiled, leaning forward as best she could. “Not Victoria then. What about a person who might be pleasing to both you and Heinrich?”
This time she didn’t wait for an answer. Fat disappeared. The length of her body remained, but supermodel limbs turned more athletic, more solid. They became very pale, like they rarely saw the sun. Her chest shrunk, nothing much but nipples barely raised, rubbing softly against the blue fabric. Her eyes became crystals as pale as her skin, her hair a thick platinum worthy of an ice princess or a dragon queen. Her face was populated not by Asia, but by petite Nordic and Caucasian features that were almost perfect, almost hand crafted by a mad scientist.
Hope Hunting sat across from me now. Welf’s long time girlfriend . . . before I’d broken them up. Isabel dropped the smile. Hope rarely smiled. Her posture changed. Less lean, less mess, more confident. Her understanding of people when she took their shape almost bordered on Mentimancy.
But the key to the magic trick, the one that fooled me for so long, supposed to be an impossible skill—just like glass?—was the way she changed her voice to a perfect match. “Heinrich, have you missed me?” she asked in that cold ice queen voice. “You dumped me at some point, but you’ve never talked about it even though I’ve asked time and again these last two months, why?”
Welf’s mouth opened and shut. He swallowed, knuckles white as he almost snapped his cane in two. “That’s not yours, Isabel.”
“No, of course not. I’m odd and weird and crazy. Can’t be Veronica any more, can I? She’s as mad as the original now after you attacked her. Had to find someone else . . . someone very rational and cold and who else but Hope? She’s so very beautiful too, so very strong. Not as strong as Valentine or King Henry, but . . . I do like her smile, don’t you? She never shows it to many people, but it’s so lovely.”
Hope smiled at Welf. “Do you remember this smile, Heinrich? Remember before you threw me away? What was it? Another man? Another woman? Why won’t you talk about it? I want to know. Do you remember when we spent that night together skinny dipping? We knew each other then, didn’t we? Our little secret. We never talked about it, did we?”
Welf looked like he wanted to rush to the bathroom again as he understood what that meant. Instead, he stomped on over to the other side of the luxury box and took a seat, staring out at the arena trying to forget about it all.
“Brother’s right, you are disgusting,” Vicky snapped at her before she went over to comfort him.
T-Bone stood there, unsure what to do with himself. Like a boyfriend at a family reunion. “Where you want me?” he eventually asked.
“You pooled back up?”
He nodded.
“Then be someplace where you can hit another lightning bolt into her chest.”
He ended up over by the television, clicking it on.
I turned back to Isabel. “Just us for now.”
Her stolen, crystal eyes were alight. “For now,” she agreed.
[CLICK]
“You really should watch the fight, King Henry,” Isabel told me.
I ignored her just like I had for the last five minutes.
It was weird having Hope Hunting smile at me. Worse . . . have an expression like she wanted me to spread her legs and pump away, tied up as a prisoner or not. Hope would never be in my fan club. If only for me being the main reason she and Welf weren’t together. Although that was kind of a mixed batch. I could still remember the sound of tears and walking towards it.
“Go away!” she’d scream
ed at me when she saw who it was.
“Sorry, Hope, but the truth had to be told,” I had said.
“I’m not crying about that,” she screamed back in my face. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be now! So I’m crying! And I’m happy about it! I don’t want to be made! I don’t want to be a thing!”
.
.
.
Women, right?
Okay, okay. Stop picking up rotten vegetables, ladies.
Seeing Hope’s thighs. Weird. Only got to see those things when she had a bathing suit on and you never dared leer or watch her too long without moving along. If you did, you got your balls frozen stiff.
Not that this is Hope in the least, no matter what she looks like, no matter how she sounds.
“He’s coming out first!” Welf called just as some generic rap music hit and the crowd popped with cheers.
You could hear the announcer through the glass. “Coming to you from Memphis, Tennessee!”
I wanted to watch it all. But I couldn’t. Had to be vigilant. Had to be the paranoid one. Had to keep an eye on the Facechanger. “Working for the Vamps?” I asked her. “Divine Inanina maybe?”
“You should watch the fight, King Henry,” was the only response I got.
Didn’t really blame the others. Vicky can be tough when she needs to be, but this will never be her thing. T-Bone works best from a distance. Welf . . . guess he don’t need to be right there, long as his Construct is close by. Autumn. The season just before everything dies. Had to guess that there was a Spring, Summer, and Winter too. Moira von Welf was supposed to be a genius Bonegrinder only equaled by Mordecai Root. Maximus, if Vicky told the truth.
Why shouldn’t she have four of her own Constructs?
But could she do more? Or was the almost fifty Root had in Eresha’s lair the work of a team of Bonegrinders? Didn’t have any answers. More mysteries like all the rest and if you think Artificers are secretive, Bonegrinders are the worst. Treat their discipline like it’s religion.
Must have pissed Welf off for his mom to come down so hard on his first Construct. I remembered it from the Asylum. Seemed like a dead person with wide-black marks on his skin . . . like someone had taken a calligraphy brush to a corpse. Autumn’s markers were thinner and more spread out in a web. It also blinked and sort of faked breathing, plus occasionally changed its weight from one foot to the other.
Strong enough to pick up Isabel and the chair? Clamp its arms around Isabel’s waist and drag her up to Welf’s suite without letting go? Guess we’d see.
The crowd went sort of quiet as Jason’s opponent came out from backstage. Like they were impressed by the guy. Werebull . . . must be big. Big as Jason? That’s pretty fucking big. I itched to get a look. The crowd broke into cheers as I resisted the urge.
“I promise I won’t try to escape until after it’s all over,” Isabel told me. “Watch.”
Uhuh.
“He’s fighting that guy?” T-Bone asked in awe. “He’s huge!”
Welf waved it away. “He’s only a Were.”
“A werebull,” T-Bone said. “Or a rhino. Or a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Did they just say he’s seven feet tall?”
Okay . . . that’s more than pretty fucking big.
“Watch, watch, watch.”
The only thing I watched was her. “Who else can you turn into? The Lady?”
“Too old. I don’t like being old unless I have to. Saggy skin, failing organs, so much pain in the joints and muscles. I can do anyone else at the Asylum. Did you know Miranda has a birthmark on her bum that’s shaped like a biplane?”
I blinked. “Thank the Mancy that I do not.”
“Debra has poor eyesight, but doesn’t wear glasses out of pride. Eva has a scar on her leg where the bone came out, I don’t know how she got it. Quinn had a baby before she even came to the Asylum, so young! On the other side, Naomi is completely infertile, the poor thing . . .”
“That’s enough, Isabel,” I said, trying not to sound like Welf when he’d snapped at Vicky earlier.
She nodded at me. “I know it’s hard to know it all. It just builds up and it wants to push out. You have no one to tell. No one understands.”
The crazy chick gets my burden . . . just lovely.
The bell for the first round sounded. I sat back in my chair a little, crossing my arms. Determination kept me facing Isabel. “Don’t try anything, please. I’m sure I can talk Welf or even the Learning Council into not throwing you back in the Pit if you tell us everything you know about what’s going on. It’s not like you’ve killed anyone else. It wasn’t you who kidnapped Veronica Lee, was it?”
Isabel shook her head.
“See, you’re kind of reformed. You’re just pretending.”
I’m playing Good Cop and Welf gets to be Bad Cop? This is bullshit!
“I’m not pretending, King Henry. I am them when I’m them. Veronica was so shallow. Hope is much stronger for this kind of situation. She was always mean to me, but she always knew how to get her way and right now I need my way.”
“Goodness they’re fast!” Vicky yelled.
“You should watch King Henry,” Isabel told me. “It’s the last time you’ll ever see Jason alive.”
.
.
.
What?
A sly little smirk formed in front of me. A Hope smirk. A cold smirk. “Conan is about to make Jason’s head go pop just like Heinrich threatened to do to me. So watch, King Henry. Say goodbye.”
I got to my feet before I realized it.
“Pop,” she said again like it was a toy gun.
Wait, I thought, put it together before—
But I already turned away from her and banged up against the viewing glass. Down below us ten-thousand people cheered their heads off over the action in the cage.
“He’s taking too many punches!” T-Bone said.
“I don’t like this! It’s barbaric! Why would anyone sign up for this?” Vicky asked. “Why would anyone watch? Why would anyone cheer?”
“Sponsoring a contestant seemed prestigious and Jason wanted to show his strength off, that’s why I agreed,” was what Welf said, but his cane tapped more fiercely than ever against the floor.
I found the ring among the infield before I remembered the giant screen hanging above my head, there I saw a zoomed in professional view of the fight. Jason Jackson is already a huge guy. Brock Lesner or Alistar Overeem big, take your pick on the popular monster athlete to compare him against. Fast, powerful, can take a punch, everything you want in a fighter.
He’d shaved his head for the event, shaved his whole body. Besides his black ring shorts marked with the Welf Financial logo he was nothing but brown muscle. Brown muscle throwing punches UP at the other guy. Jason landed shot after shot that would’ve floored me. Shot after shot that would’ve killed dumbass Hector Vega without the need for an iron fist. Hard, thudding. Brutal.
The other guy took it and swung back.
Jason’s eye was bruised, his nose bled, and he had a cut on his cheek from the strikes. His opponent’s face was flawless in comparison.
And I knew him.
But it was all wrong.
Conan Sapa who had kidnapped Christmas Ward for Paine.
He wasn’t bigger than Jason the last time I saw him.
Sure, he was tough. He took a punch into the balls and hit me right back. But . . . he wasn’t that big, wasn’t even near as intimidating as Jason Jackson. But he was. More intimidating. Yet . . . same guy, right? Same wide nose surrounded by Polynesian features, same tan skin, same islander tribal tattoos on his arms that told a story I couldn’t read. Same fucker that worked for Obadiah Paine.
Except . . .
What did Paine do?
Conan Sapa was freak of nature big now. Only other person I’d ever seen bigger was Eresha’s battle shell, and that hadn’t been human. Not sure if Sapa was now either. Seven feet tall, four-hundred pounds of muscle. What, seven or eight m
onths since I had seen the guy? Eating nothing but protein burgers injected with testosterone and distilled essence of HGH for a sauce?
Yeah right.
What did Paine do?
Sapa laughed at Jason. Shouted at him. Egged Jason on to keep punching him. And Jason wailed on him. Coat me in geo-anima and I’d struggle under that onslaught. Sapa backed up under it, step by step, but still he stood.
Down came his fist into Jason’s chin and Jason stumbled backwards.
I glanced back at Isabel, my dirt eyes promising retribution, promising an earthquake.
“Pop,” she mouthed.
“Get him out of there!” I yelled. “Call Pocket! Call the Tsar! Pull the fight!”
Isabel started giggling, shaking her head with wide eyes about how impossible this all was.
Welf frowned up at me, cane stopped mid tap. Next to him, Vicky winced from another punch, too caught up in the mayhem in the steel-link octagon to hear me. “What?” Welf asked.
“That’s not a werebull!” I tried to explain quickly. “He’s a corpusmancer that works for the Curator, kidnapping failed Asylum recruits. The last time I saw him he was nine inches shorter and near two-hundred pounds lighter. He’s a walking fucking anima experiment and that match is a trap!”
T-Bone went for his phone, dialing.
Welf stared at me, tombstone eyes lost. “Is this all one conspiracy or two?”
Fuck me!
I flew back across the room, grabbed Isabel around the throat, and lifted her as far as the cuffs and her joints would allow. Yeah, it was violent, even for me. When you’re fighting Vamps or corpusmancers that can regrow their tongues you got to be a little violent. Especially when one of yours is in the shit and right now?
Jason was in the shit.
And the poor bastard didn’t know it.
“Pocket’s backstage, they wouldn’t let him ringside!” Tyson yelled. “He’s trying to find Mr. Black!”
Welf had his Construct throw his own phone across the room, catching it and dialing in one go.
“It’s too far a run to reach in time,” Vicky mumbled, “he’s too focused on the fight to ever see a spectro-sign I could paint, no matter how big . . .”
I ignored them, giving Isabel a hard shake.
The Foul Mouth and the Mancy Martial Artist (The King Henry Tapes Book 5) Page 32