“At one time there was a strong movement here on Earth Prime to marginalize preternaturals and paranormals, to legislate them into second-class citizens, to actually force them to register themselves with the government so their movements and activities could be tracked.
“I threw my not-inconsiderable resources into opposing this, at least here in what used to be the United States as well as in Europe. There were places where I had very little influence, and for a while, those places were hellholes for anyone who wasn’t ‘normal.’
“Some regimes were afraid of them because they couldn’t control them the way they could ordinary humans. Others saw them as inherently evil, a direct result of ancient Cen social engineering, as it turns out. People back then didn’t know how much of your religious doctrine had been crafted by the Cen to keep you weak and fractured. Hell, we didn’t even know it.
“Of course,” he admitted with a shrug, “most of us were too damn self-involved to pay attention to anything beyond our own personal diversions. I have to tell you, I was quite disappointed in my kind when I called upon them to help us oppose the Cen’s invasion plans and the vast majority of them couldn’t be bothered. That’s one of the reasons I backed Loki’s play. Crazy as it was, it might well have been the only thing that could have saved us from the Cen.”
“So basically you’re not saying ‘no,’ you’re saying ‘not right now.’”
He nodded somberly. “Precisely. Go out and find yourself an anchor, Dylan, and come back to see me when you think you’re ready.”
I finished off the beer in a single gulp, vanished the bottle, and stood. “I’ll think about it, sir.”
“Sir? A little late to be kissing my ass, don’t you think?” He grinned up at me.
“It’s never too late,” I told him and transported myself back to San Francisco.
I didn’t go straight to the Lounge, instead finding a relatively secluded spot in Golden Gate Park and sprawling out on the forest floor. I didn’t need to sleep anymore, but I found moments of deep meditation to be quite useful for sorting through the myriad of life’s little details.
I needed an anchor, Shea had said. I needed something to tie me to the mortal world. Something to remind me I was once human, and reason to believe part of me still was.
I laughed aloud when I realized what should have been obvious from the beginning. I already had something that fit the bill, though I hadn’t really thought of it at the time. I was falling in love with Jack. And I was growing damn fond of Anya too, in a maternal sort of way.
Now that was a weird thing to realize. I’d never thought of myself as the maternal type. But there was something about that kid that got under my skin.
Of course, she wasn’t really a kid, was she?
I leaned back, folded my arms behind my head, and stared up at the blue sky through the shifting emerald canopy of the eucalyptus trees towering above me.
Maybe I should have revealed all of this to Deryk Shea, and maybe, if I had, I would have walked out of his office a shiny new Adjuster’s Office agent. But, then again, I was still uncertain myself what it all meant. Was I entering a relationship with Jack, or was I just fooling myself? It wasn’t as though we’d even kissed yet.
What did he feel for me? I experienced a brief moment of longing for empathic abilities to go along with my magical ones, but, thankfully it passed quickly enough. I didn’t really want to be empathic, though I wouldn’t mind being enough of a psi to be able to track down Montague and stop the bastard from ‘porting out again.
I stood, threw out a transit tube, and stepped through to the Lounge.
I knew something was wrong even before I exited the other side. I can’t even say why. They say transition is instantaneous, but I think it’s just slightly slower than that. There was time for something to impinge on my awareness in that split second before I stepped out onto the dance floor.
Something large and furry barreled past me, venting a roar of rage and pain. A crimson blossom of flame spread across its back as it thundered down the ramp and through the front door. I spun away from it to see Montague and several other ordinary-looking humans standing by the stage, armed with hand blasters and nearly identical expressions of icy disdain.
Jack lay unmoving at their feet and Anya struggled in another’s grasp, her face twisted into an expression of shock, fear, and pain. Her eyes were clenched shut and I detected the bitter fragrance of mace in the air.
A mage’s greatest weakness is his or her eyes. If they’d come upon her by surprise and sprayed her in the face, effectively blinding her, she would’ve been easy prey. Most mages would have been. I felt anger rise in me like a radiant tide as I stepped forward.
Montague took a long step sideways and laid the barrel of the blaster against the side of her head. She stopped fighting and took a long, shuddering breath.
He smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant expression, even had his face been whole and unscarred. The scar simply made it uglier. “The question here is whether you can act fast enough to stop me from pulling the trigger,” he said. “I’m betting you can’t.”
I spoke through clenched teeth. “What the hell do you want, Jerry?”
“Your cooperation,” was all he said in reply.
My gaze flicked down to Jack and I wondered whether he was dead or simply unconscious. I couldn’t tell from here without sending out a probe. And if there was a mage among them, that might be perceived as a prelude to an attack. “My cooperation with what?”
“We want another mageship. And you’re going to help us get one.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind. Even if I was willing, there is no way I could pull that off.”
He reached into a breast pocket of his suit and tossed something to me with his free hand. I caught it and glanced down. It was a sliver of crystal, about as large as my pinky, octagonal in shape. A data sleeve. “This carries the same virus with which we infected Ranger. I want you to get aboard a mageship and place it in its primary receiving port.” He paused at my look of disbelief. “Or maybe you’d rather I kill the girl.”
“I don’t think you’re that crazy, Montague. If you did that, there isn’t a force in this universe or any other that could protect you from me.”
“We’d have to see about that, wouldn’t we?” None of his madness showed in his gaze, I noticed. We might as well have been discussing the weather for all that it showed in his eyes. Not even the slightest glimmer of fear revealed itself in him. And he should have been afraid. There was no way he could guess what I could do to him.
Possible scenarios were flying through my brain even at that very moment. I could make him very, very sorry.
They were all staring at me and missed the slow, deliberate movements of the man at their feet. Jack twitched, then edged himself farther onto his side. “Lady of Blades!” he cried suddenly and the men jerked as one.
Montague shifted the weapon in his hand from Anya’s head to point it at Jack. “You’re tougher than I expected,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I’ll have to shoot you again.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “You don’t really believe an urban legend is going to save you, do you?”
Behind them, at the back of the stage, there stood a full-length mirror. The surface seemed to ripple and two women stepped out of it, one after the other. The first one through was tall and almost too beautiful for words, with a cascade of raven hair tumbling around her broad shoulders. She held a gentle curving katana in one hand, the length of its amethyst blade glittering like spun glass. She was clad in what looked to be a green karate gi.
The second woman was smaller, but no less striking. She looked Hispanic and she wore a black body-suit marked with a distinct pattern of what looked like spider webs. On her hips hung two short, sharply curved swords and the butt of a pistol hung in a holster under her arm.
Their arrival had been completely silent.
I felt a chill. The taller woman’s pale green eyes flicked down to take in the
scene and narrowed when they caught sight of Anya in the minion’s grasp. She shook her head almost imperceptibly and moved forward, that shimmering blade describing a tight horizontal arc.
The minion’s eyes widened and his arms flew away from Anya, who stumbled forward. His hands came up as if reaching for his face and his weapon tumbled to the floor. Then slowly, his head slid from his neck and fell into his reaching hands.
The Hispanic woman leaped high into the air, tucking into a double somersault, and came down on another one of the men’s shoulders. In one of her hands was one of the curved swords, its broad surface black as pitch. She drove the blade downward, through the top of the man’s skull.
Blood poured from his mouth as he slumped to his knees.
I was abruptly reminded of an old expression—like a fox in a hen-house. Though they were outnumbered five to one, the two women moved among the men like veritable whirlwinds of carnage.
Jack rolled away, pushing himself to his feet and snatching the stumbling Anya along with him as they retreated to where I stood. I surrounded them both with a web of mana and watched in growing horror while the women performed an almost obscene rite of devastation on Montague’s men.
It was like watching a ballet with blood and swords. They didn’t have a chance against the two women, and within ten or fifteen seconds, only Montague still stood. He’d been disarmed, the blaster thrown across the room by a single sweep of the taller woman’s katana, torn from his grasp and sliced in two.
She leveled the point of the weapon at him and spoke in a husky contralto. “Anyone who enters this place with murder on their mind will face the same fate as these,” she said, gesturing toward the corpses littering the floor with her free hand. “I am not an urban legend.”
I took a moment to scan Jack. He’d taken a blaster bolt to the shoulder, leaving a scorched, ragged hole through which I could see blackened muscle and tendons. It oozed fluid, but the bolt had cauterized the wound and prevented him from bleeding out.
It had to hurt like hell.
Montague looked around at his minions, his face ghostly white. “I…I had no idea.”
“Now you do,” the woman replied humorlessly. She stepped back and to the side so she could look over at us without losing sight of Montague. “Is the girl all right?”
Once I’d done a quick inspection of Jack, I’d moved to Anya. Her eyes were still screwed shut, but other than the damage inflicted by the mace, she seemed mostly unharmed. I nodded.
“Good. What do you want to do with this guy?” she asked me. Not Jack. Me.
Before I could formulate an answer, the other woman gestured and the bodies disappeared, taking along any trace they were ever here, blood and other bodily fluids included. The room still held the stench of sudden, violent death, but I knew that could be fixed easily enough.
All the things I’d thought about doing to Montague flashed through my mind once again, but I rejected them all. I wanted him rendered harmless, but I no longer thought flaying the skin from his bones would be all that satisfying. In fact, after what I’d just witnessed, the thought of inflicting anything like that kind of damage sat in my stomach like a lump of molten ice.
Okay, so I’m more squeamish than I’d realized. Blood and gore just isn’t my thing. “I just want him neutralized,” I told her finally. “I thought I wanted revenge, but what good will that do?”
“Personal satisfaction,” said the smaller woman with a wry grin. Her voice was even deeper than her taller companion’s. I hid an amused smile at Jack’s seemingly involuntary shiver. He was in serious pain yet something about those tones had a libidinous effect on him.
Men are weird.
I simply shrugged. “Do what you will with him. Just get him out of our hair.”
“We’ll give him to Deryk,” said the taller of the two, with an evil grin. “He’ll know what to do with him.”
The other woman snickered.
I frowned. “You know Deryk Shea?”
She laughed at that. “I used to work for him, a long time ago.” She cocked her head and peered at me curiously. “I’ll be damned. You’re not human.” She strode forward and reached out the hand not still holding the katana. “I’m Jasmine Tashae.”
Now I realized who she was. She was a legend. More than one legend, apparently, if she was indeed the Lady of Blades. “Dylan Shepherd.”
“Well,” she said, in an odd tone, her emerald eyes scraping across me in a most disconcerting manner, “aren’t you interesting?”
“He’s a psi,” I told her with a glance toward Montague, trying desperately to send her unsettling gaze elsewhere.
“We know. Nyx has already taken care of that. She paralyzed the psychic centers of his brain. It should last long enough. Believe me, he’s not going anywhere unless we take him. Unless he wants to try to run.” She flashed a brief, feral smile. “That’s actually the scenario I like the best. I’ve been on vacation and my other swords are clamoring for a good work-out. They’ve been terribly bored.”
This woman was truly scary, I decided. She and her friend had just slaughtered nine men and neither of them seemed to think it anything out of the ordinary. I suppressed a shudder. She might misinterpret it. Or, rather, interpret it all too correctly.
She scared me. Hell, they both did.
“I’ve been trying to get Deryk Shea to hire me,” I told her. “I just recently resigned my commission in Fleet, and would love a position at the Adjuster’s Office.”
She frowned. “So what’s the problem?”
“Ask him,” I told her.
“Okay. I will. Nyx? You ready?”
The other woman nodded and shoved Montague toward her friend. “Time to pay the piper,” she told him.
They all winked out at once, leaving us behind to pick up the pieces. I began by healing Jack’s injury, then took Anya into the restroom to rinse the nasty stuff off her face and out of her eyes.
By the time I’d finished with her, Jack had apparently gotten in touch with all the Lounge regulars who were able to move around in the daylight. Nearly all of those who’d accompanied him on his trip into the past were present. Much to my surprise. But that wasn’t near as much as a surprise as what he was saying.
“I’d like to talk to you all about something,” he said. “I’m going to invite Dylan to live with us,” he said slowly, lifting his gaze to mine as I stood outside the restroom door with my arm thrown around Anya. She was wiping at her face with a towel and stopped abruptly when she heard these words. “I think I’ve fallen for her,” he continued. “I know some of you have had problems with her since what happened, but I’m asking you to put all that aside now.”
“Have you talked to her about this?” asked Hades, leaning against one of the support columns and grinning broadly. “She looks as though you hit her with a club.”
Jack shrugged. “Yeah, maybe I’m doing this all backwards. I was just shot with a blaster—give me a break.”
This prompted a round of laughter, which faded as he raised his gaze to me. “I want you in my life, Dylan. I want you in our lives.”
“Well,” I said, raising my voice to be heard throughout the Lounge, “when you put it that way, how can I resist?”
This was met with an embarrassing round of cheers. I looked down into Anya’s face and saw her grinning. “I was wondering when you two would stop dancing around and actually get around to doing something about your feelings.”
Great. Save me from ancient children and their wisdom. I sighed mentally. “Keep in mind,” I told them as I weaved my way through the crowd, “that I’m trying to get a job with the Adjuster’s Office. That means if any of you step out of line, it’ll probably be me who’s sent out to get you back on the straight and narrow.”
“I don’t care how powerful you are, Dylan,” said Hydra in his booming voice. “There are some of us who’ve never even seen the straight and narrow.”
This pronouncement engendered another round of la
ughter and some hoots of derision as well.
“Be that as it may,” I told them, reaching Jack’s side and looping one arm around his waist, “I plan on keeping you guys in line. Anyone have any problems with that, take it up with Anya here.”
I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. Even if I didn’t manage to get hired on at the AO, I thought my new life looked like it been worth all the sacrifices. Maybe I was right and maybe I was wrong.
I was just happy to have the opportunity to find out.
Epilogue: The Lady of Blades
We leaped into Deryk’s office and tossed the man at his feet.
Sighing, he set his golf club aside. “I’m not going to get any practice today, am I?” he asked rhetorically.
“I think you’re looking for this fuck,” I said, planting a boot in the guy’s ass by way of illustration.
He grimaced. “Well, it’s nice to see you too, Jaz. And you, Nyx.”
“Same here, Deryk,” Nyx answered back, not much sounding as if she meant it. She didn’t have anything against Deryk, of course, but she was feeling a bit out of sorts at the moment. That summons had interrupted at exactly the wrong moment and she was feeling a bit cranky. The real object of her ire was sprawled on the floor in front of her, but she’d turn it on anyone in a heartbeat if given an excuse.
I grinned at him. “Was I misinformed?”
Deryk shook his head. “Nope. I was looking for him, but I actually expected someone else to deliver him.”
“Yeah. She’s busy. She asked us to do it for her.”
He shot a suspicious look in my direction. “Uh-huh. And you’re doing it out of the goodness of your heart?”
I chuckled a little at that. “Hell, Deryk…you more than anyone should know I don’t have any goodness in my heart.”
He shrugged, dialing a lopsided grin. “So what’s the story?”
“She wants to work for you, but it sounds like you have something against her.”
“I don’t. In fact, she reminds me a lot of someone else I once took under my wing—a youngster with a lot more power than she knew what to do with. Dylan has less of a fondness for violence, thankfully, but still…”
Tales from the Magitech Lounge Page 23