by John Ringo
“Marquez! How you doin’?”
“I’m going to apply to the See for a pay raise after this one!” Marquez yelled. “How do you kill these things? Oh, good Lord Jesus…”
Barb looked across the clearing as one of the Opus Dei team surged back to his feet and began lurching towards Marquez.
“Go with God, Brother Sutphin,” Marquez said, taking off his head with the machete.
“God damn you all!” Barb screamed, suddenly losing all technique. She began wading through the group, katana slashing in a butterfly. The blazing sword, finally carrying the full weight of God’s fury, was no longer simply “hurting” the Stepfords. At its touch they were dropping in severed and quite dead bits.
Technique dropped away, thought dropped away, time dropped away. At that moment, it became simply the dance of the sword. Blood and limbs flew through the air like fleshy butterflies as Barbara Everette, Warrior of God, brought His judgment down upon the coven.
Reamer finally ran, and Barb paused in her slaughter just long enough to draw another tanto and put it squarely in his back. He apparently didn’t have the same resistance as the Stepfords; the tanto sank into his back and straight into his heart.
With Barb’s berserker charge, the Stepfords all started to flee, scattering in every direction. They were, however, on an island, and Barb wasn’t done by any stretch of the imagination. It took the group of God Warriors, with able help from a tracking cat, about twenty minutes to finally clear the island.
Barb found Vartouhi and Dr. Downing boarding one of the boats on the eastern end.
“I don’t think so,” she said, leaping aboard.
“You can’t do this,” Dr. Downing said, holding his arms over his head as if they were going to stop a sword. “You can’t just go around killing people! There are laws!”
“More like guidelines,” Barb said, tiredly. “And there’s no such thing as angels, demons, supernatural, zombies, and the Vatican doesn’t have special-operations troops. You can, at this point, surrender. You’ll be given a very quick and very unfair trial and incarcerated in a very special holding facility.”
“What about me?” Vartouhi asked. Her arm was completely healed.
“Stepfords are classified as a special form of undead,” Barb said. “Executive termination, absent retention for examination, which means dissection, by the way, is authorized. In other words,” Barb continued, bringing the katana across and taking off the thing’s head, “kill first, ask questions never.”
“You, on the other hand, doctor,” she said, “are going to be asked a great many questions…”
“I suppose the real question is, what do we do with this?” Barb asked, holding up a tablet. She’d tried wiping some of the blood off her face, but her arm was even more coated.
The center of the ritual had been a rough stone altar. Really nothing but some river rocks piled up in a makeshift fashion. On them, however, had been an obviously ancient clay tablet. The tablet felt absolutely malevolent and actually seemed to be sucking in the blood off her hand. “Take it to the Foundation?”
“You put it in the bag,” a man’s voice said from behind her.
She spun in place, katana at the ready, and paused. There were two people who had somehow gotten behind her, a short man with dark curly hair in a frumpy overcoat carrying an old-fashioned sample case, and an equally short redhead who looked a bit like a younger, punkier version of Janea. Given that Barb was keyed to the max, nobody should have been able to sneak up behind her, but she checked the impulse to behead both of them. Despite the fact that the redhead was carrying what looked like…a ray gun?
“Whoa, sister!” the redhead said, holding up her unweaponed hand. “Friends! Friends! Nice job on the slice and dice, by the way. Best use for prep girls I can imagine.”
“You put it in the bag,” Brother Marquez said, walking over. “Hello, Artie. Long time.”
“Karol,” Artie said, putting on a pair of purple rubber gloves and pulling a Mylar bag out of the sample case. “Cairo…right? Cairo? Just put it in the bag.”
“Why?” Barb asked.
“You’re holding that with your bare hands?” the redhead asked. “Your bare hands. Seriously?”
“Mrs. Everette could probably hold anything in the Dark Sector,” Artie said. “In her bare hands. Just put…put it in the bag.”
“Why not?” Barb said. “And why am I putting it in the bag, and, more to the point, who are you people?”
“So what’s so special about her?” the girl asked.
“We’re the people telling you to put the artifact in the bag,” Artie said.
“We’re the people that handle artifacts,” the redhead said. “And what’s so special about her?”
“Artifacts?” Barb asked, still unsure if she should just give up a symbol of evil to rather odd people she’d never even heard of.
“Secret Service,” Karol said. “They handle static items. Artifacts. Power symbols. That sort of thing. FBI, well, we handle nonstatic items.”
“What are non static items?” the redhead asked. “If it’s chopping up oh-my-gods, I’m your girl!”
“You don’t want to know,” Artie said. “Now put it in the bag.”
“You aren’t, in fact, our sort,” Karol said, smiling to relieve the blow. “You, Claudia, are much more a Warehouse type. Trust me on this.”
“But what’s the other type?” Claudia asked.
“People who can deal with nonstatic items,” Artie said. “In. The. BAG!”
“Alright already,” Barb said, dropping the “artifact” into the bag. There was a brief flash of purple light and the feeling of malevolence dropped to nearly nothing. “What is that?”
“None of your concern,” Artie said, putting the bag in the sample case. “We really ought to take that sword as well.”
Barb went to immediate two-handed cat stance.
“Whoa, whoa, sister!” Claudia said. “Friends! Friends! I’m sure he was just kidding, right? Kidding. Right, Artie?”
“I’m sure we’ll end up with it eventually,” Artie said with a sigh. “Although where we’ll find the room…”
“See you next time,” Karol said.
“Drinks?”
“Murphy’s?”
“Friday?”
“Rome. There’s going to be sooo many reports about this one.”
“Have your people call my people. We really need to get together more often.”
“Ciao.”
“But what are nonstatic items…?”
“What warehouse…?”
“Ask Germaine,” Karol said, looking around at the mess. “He’s a Regent. And we really should check on your cohort.”
“Janea!” Barb said. “Just let me…take a dive in the river, I guess.”
The Maiden’s Tale
CHAPTER ONE
Doris shook her head and looked around the room. For a moment it was like she’d just woken up from a nightmare. There had been pain, so much pain. Then she was here. Wherever “here” was.
It was a large room with medium-height ceilings, brightly lit. It clearly was in a big structure, maybe a hotel. There were various exits and signs, none of which were really penetrating right away. People were entering from a door behind her and going past her in twos and threes, most of them talking excitedly. From somewhere in the room a song was booming an electronic beat.
Today is your birthday
But it might be the last day of your life
What will you do if tomorrow it’s all gone?
You won’t be young forever
It’s only a fraction to the sum
You won’t be young forever
Nor will anyone
She had to think. It was like her brain was filled with cotton wool. She was…
She had a plastic bag in one hand and a backpack over her shoulder. Looking at the bag, it said “Dragon*Con” on the front, with some sort of a symbol. It had…some books and papers in it. The
re was a sign across the room Hyatt Hotels Welcomes Dragon*Con!”
So…Sure, she was at Dragon*Con. Of course. Bob had told her she could find “people like her” there. People who didn’t think she was weird or ugly or strange.
Come to think of it, some of the people did look sort of strange. The music-she could finally find its source-was coming from over by some tables halfway down the room. The people gathered around them, setting up some sort of booth, certainly fit the bill of “strange.” Uber-Goths with bright-colored hair and black clothes. The girls’ hair was mostly an almost-fluorescent red that bordered on purple, while most of the guys had black. One of the guys had a skater cut with dreadlocks, black eyeliner and a weird, slumped look. Strange. Stranger than her. Not…her sort. Not that there was her sort anywhere.
“Miss, people are trying to walk here,” a heavy-set man said as he dodged around her. He wasn’t impolite about it, just sort of informative.
“Sorry, sorry…” she answered and moved to the side. He’d almost bumped her.
She hugged the wall and looked around. There was a sign that said “Women” down the same wall about halfway across the room. She stayed by the wall and carefully crept into the ladies’, trying not to be noticed.
She finally found the refuge of a stall, slid the bolt and sat on the toilet, trying not to panic. There were just too many people, too much chaos even though the large room had had barely thirty people in it. It was just like school. People meant bullies, boys and girls. The cheerleaders and the football players. The Names and the In-Crowd. The people that made sure she Knew Her Place every single day. And her place was right square at the bottom.
Doris…She knew that much. And Bob had said to go to Dragon*Con. That there were people “like her” there. But most of the rest of it was a blur.
Okay, take stock. She was apparently at Dragon*Con. That was in Atlanta. She had a badge pinned to her shirt. It said “Doris Grisham.”
That was better. Okay, sure. Doris Grisham. She’d grown up in Mt. Union, Alabama. Her dad was a lumber cutter, worked for Weyerhaeuser ’til he got hurt, then mostly just sat in the trailer and drank. Which was what momma did all the time.
She’d gone to Hill Crest High. She knew that much. She’d learned her place fer sure in Hill Crest. The only place she was safe was the library. She’d lived in the library as much as she could.
Nearsighted, too ugly to get a date, too dumb to pass a class. That was Dumb-ass Doris. She was a total loser. A nobody. She Knew Her Place. It was to marry some redneck as dumb-ass as her and push out another passel of useless kids that’d cut wood ’til they got hurt and lived the rest of their life on assistance.
But that was then. Whenever then was. Who was she now? And why couldn’t she remember, when Hill Crest was clear as day?
She opened up the backpack and rummaged through it. Some cheap T-shirts, mostly thin as paper from much washing. Granny underwear that wasn’t much better. The baggy jeans she was wearing had holes, and they weren’t stylish holes at all. Worn running shoes in “guy” colors. A T-shirt three times too large for her. Most of the ones in the bag were XXXL, for that matter.
There was a toothbrush in the bag, and a tube of lipstick. Rolling it out, Doris knew instinctively it would make her look like she had some sort of lip disease. It was completely the wrong color. So was the dusty, dry, and unused-looking pack of cheap eyeliner. Contacts. Contact solution.
All the way at the bottom of the bag was the one thing that wasn’t totally generic. It was a brooch or a barrette, it could probably be used for either. Made of steel, it had a figure carved out in relief of a woman in armor driving a chariot drawn by cats. It was remarkably intricate work. Doris suspected if she had a magnifying glass, she could pick out the details of the woman’s face. But it really didn’t tell her much about who she was or why she was sitting in the stall, so she carefully put it away.
She checked the pockets of the jeans. A crumpled twenty and a couple of ones in her front pocket. In the back pocket, though, was a driver’s license! Hallelujah!
Doris Grisham. Female. Check.
Birthday: 9/3/1984. Okay. So it really was just about her birthday.
5'9" tall. ’Bout right.
110 lbs. Huh. Liar.
Eyes: Green. Have to check a mirror.
Hair: Red. Yep.
Address: 200 River Road, Chattanooga, TN 37405.
Okay. That was something. She now knew she lived in Chattanooga, TN, although it really didn’t ring a bell at all.
“Okay,” she said, definitely. “I’m Doris Grisham. I’m from Chattanooga. I’m at Dragon*Con. I’m here to find people like me or something. How the hell, though, do I get home?”
“Honey, if you’re practicing a secret identity, you might want to keep it down,” said a voice in the stall next to her. “And if you’re talking to your voices, take it from me, it’s a bad idea. That way they’ll never shut up.”
“Sorry,” Doris said meekly, as there was a flushing sound from the next stall.
“So which one was it?” asked the voice as the door to the next stall opened. “And if you’re not gonna use the john you might as well come out. I don’t bite. Mostly.”
Doris cracked the stall door and looked out.
A short, darkly tanned woman was leaning up against the sinks. She was wearing a bolero jacket, a black button-down shirt, jeans, black cowboy boots and a fedora. She probably would have been pretty, if not beautiful, if a teenage case of acne hadn’t left scars to shame a smallpox survivor. But button-black eyes glittering with humor somehow drew the eye away from the skin.
“I’m Mandy,” the woman said, holding out her hand. “You’re Doris. Or at least that’s your secret identity.”
“No, I really am,” Doris said, desperately holding out her license. “I’ve got ID. I’m from…I live in Chattanooga.”
“So you were just grounding,” Mandy said, handing the license back unlooked at and taking Doris’s unresisting hand to shake it. “I get it. Been there, done that, burnt the shirt. Sometimes you just got to make sure it’s you talking and not the chorus. Let me tell you, Aripiprazole helps. You wouldn’t want to know me if I hadn’t gotten on the prescription drug wagon.”
“Okay,” Doris said, eyes wide.
“Not that I’m on aripiprazole,” Mandy continued, turning around to wash her hands. “I finally convinced the county shrink that I was ADHD with PTSD, and not bipolar, which is what it looks like. Been a wonderful world lately being almost normal. I can enjoy a con and not drive everybody around me nuts. Con virgin?”
“Huh?” Doris asked, confused by the rapid changes in subject.
“Is this your first convention?” Mandy said slowly. It was clear that she wasn’t doing it to make Doris sound stupid, just slowing her own patter down for the benefit of the listener.
“Uh…yes,” Doris said, almost certainly.
“So who’s your con-buddy?”
“Uh…?”
Doris sighed.
“Con virgin and no con-buddy? And twenty-something hot female? Honey, you could get away with that at some place like Liberty or ConStellation, but Dragon’s a bit much. Let me guess. You heard about it from somebody and just drove down.”
“Something like that,” Doris said. Did she have a car?
“I’ve got a fair share of human charity, but,” Mandy said. “The but being that I’m here to enjoy myself, I’m already riding herd on Traxa, and there are places you’re not going to want to go that I’m headed. Not from the look of you. But if you got some decent clothes and makeup, I’d say you’d not only fit in, nobody would look at me, so you’re definitely not going.”
“Okay,” Doris said, ducking her head.
“But that’s later, and Traxa is trying to find the dealers, so I’ll take you under my wing for a bit. Come on.”
Doris obediently followed the woman out of the bathroom and back into the large room.
“Registration, which you j
ust went through,” Mandy said, waving to the left. “They moved all the band stalls down here since it was getting crowded upstairs. That’s the Cruxshadows booth.”
“Crue-shadows?” Doris said. “The Shadow of the Cross?”
“Got it in one, not bad,” Mandy said. “Not a Christian myself, but doesn’t mean I don’t like the music.”
“I like what’s playing,” Doris said, timidly.
“Their single, “Birthday.” Kind of repetitive, but it’s got some interesting lyrics.”
“ Then tell me what really matters. Is it the money and the fame? Or how many people might eventually know your name? But maybe you touch one life, and the world becomes a better place to be. Maybe you give their dreams another day, another chance to be free,” Doris whispered along with the song.
“Rogue kind of strikes at the heart of things,” Mandy said as they passed the booth with the Goths still setting up. “Like, you are what you do. Now, me? I’ve got enough on my plate just trying to keep my shit together. Most I can do is maybe help a con virgin get her feet on the ground.”
“Thank you,” Doris said quietly as she sidled to the side to avoid being bumped again. There were a bunch of people around the escalator, and she parked in a corner by the booth, waiting for a hole to open.
“Hey, Doris,” Mandy said, waving. “I’ve been there, like I said. But you’re not going to get beat up for getting on the escalator. And if you think you can wait until it’s clear, well, it will be for about twenty minutes at five AM. And you’re gonna be pretty hungry and thirsty by then.”
Doris still waited until there was a little gap, then darted onto the escalator. She was nearly touching a very heavyset guy wearing an Avenged Sevenfold T-shirt. His look automatically made her think of bikers, and that triggered something unhappy. But she managed to avoid being noticed and got off the escalator at the next floor.
It was much the same as the lower level but there was natural light coming in from somewhere behind the escalator, and a restaurant, currently closed, on the left wall. She realized she was in traffic and looked for a corner to get into.