“No, no. Game on.”
Drake lit the directional light he’d re-created off a snake light design, Steampunk-ifying it with gears and copper. “Pardon my presumption, but does this mean that we are courting now?”
They reached a T-junction, bearing left after Ree checked both directions. If she was remembering right, Dr. Wells’s new location was just down on the right.
“That’s the idea. Though maybe it’s not the smartest thing to sort out our relationship status in a sewer. How will we update Facebook from down here? ‘Ree Reyes and Drake Winters are in a relationship and it’s complicated by the fact that they’re constantly in mortal danger’ is strangely not an option.”
“Unfortunate. That would encompass the situation rather effectively. I remember your friend Charlie saying something about the importance of Facebook officiality at one point or another.”
“Charlie’s very much a pics-or-it-didn’t-happen kind of guy. Validity through confirmation and public knowledge and all that.”
“Is that your preference as well?” Drake stopped for a moment, focusing as if listening for a distant sound.
Ree pointed back down the hall past where they’d turned, asking the question with her facial expression.
Drake shrugged as if to say Uncertain, but I heard something.
They’d spent a lot of time in sewers together.
Is that what their relationship was going to be? It better not. It’d just take a concerted effort to not make it all about the work. She had plenty of ideas of other aspects she’d like to see involved, and not just the ones that involved beds and no clothes.
After waiting for a minute, they continued onward, moving slowly.
Ree’s mapping app showed the beacon right on top of their position. She pointed her lightsaber at the various doors and holes, trying to remember Wells’s new clinic location from the one time she’d visited. Blunt force trauma didn’t tend to help this part of her memory, strangely enough.
She waved the blade at one of the doors, and they moved, almost shoulder-to-shoulder. Almost, though, so it wasn’t quite as distracting.
Ree gave Dr. Wells’s code knock, which was the Morse for S.O.S.
Something moved in the distance, back where Drake had stopped.
Yep, something’s out there. Let’s just hope it decides to bugger off by the time we’re done.
A few moments later, the sound of metal on metal, and then the door swung open, revealing Dr. Wells, Pearson’s resident Aesclepiomancer.
Dr. Wells was a short woman, constantly wearing a lab coat as a badge of office. The space was lit, framing her from the back and in blue-scale from the front.
She kept her hair long, dreads tied back.
“There you are. Come in,” she said, voice flat.
Ree shut off her lighstsaber, saving its nostalgia battery for their trip out, if needed. Drake stepped inside, still covering them, and then Dr. Wells closed and relocked the door. She pressed a palm to the door and spoke some Latin, and Ree felt something intangible slide into place.
Magic senses tingling. She couldn’t always feel magic, but when she knew to expect the working, it was much easier.
Dr. Wells’s new location lacked the painting of the derby girl on the roof, but this one had its own mural, a graffiti-as-art-history of medicine. “The real history of medicine” as Wells said.
The mural started with the original followers of Aesclepius and Thoth, the keepers of sacred medicine in antiquity in Saqqara and Thebes. Next were several pictures of Aesclepiomancers through the ages, passing down the mundane aspects of their art across the western world with pictures of traders on the Silk Road, mixing and trading secrets with other traditions, and then going into hiding during the Enlightenment with the rise of Technomancers.
And now, Dr. Wells: A Geekomancer’s best friend after nine rounds with the monsters (human and magical) of Pearson.
“He said you’d be coming.” Dr. Wells strode at Resident-on-Rounds speed back to one of her rooms. The new locale was much bigger than her older digs, big enough for a dozen beds in the front room, plus three private rooms.
The doctor opened the door onto an ICU room, tubes and wires, the whole nine yards. And at its center, a beaten and broken Eastwood.
“Holy shit,” Ree said, hand going to her mouth.
The bearded geek was wrapped up from head to toe, one eye and his mouth uncovered.
“You made it,” Eastwood croaked.
“How are you awake? And what the hell happened to you?”
“Strega Number Two. Turns out she wasn’t satisfied with just bleeding me dry. I stepped out of the Dorkcave tonight right into some art deco mousetrap. Pressure plate at the base of the stairs. As soon as it clicked down, a grate wrapped with barbed wire dropped down on the stairs, putting a roof on top of me. I couldn’t move the mesh, so I tried to get back inside, but she’d installed a super-magnet, which must have been activated by the pressure plate. I saw the marbles make their way down and around, gears and levers dancing together.”
A coughing fit stopped him, shaking the full-body rig. Dr. Wells glided straight by to the display instruments.
“Gently, Anthony. Shallow breaths.”
He took a slow, wheezing breath, and continued. “Then the grate came up and steel bowling balls started falling on me like monster-size hail. I tried to make a run for it, but all that got me was a face-first introduction to the concrete of the steps.”
“My goodness,” Drake said, his face gone white. Well, whiter.
“I couldn’t get out. There must have been eight or ten of the things on me, crushing my ribs, legs. One hand was already in my pocket, so I pulled out the sideboard. I couldn’t even see the cards, so I just started tearing. I knew the Nightcrawler was in there somewhere. But first I managed to half suffocate myself with a circle of protection, and then make my problem even worse by casting giant growth and shredding my back with the barbed wire. But I made it, and the Doc can pick up from there.”
“He had a shattered patella, ulna, and radius, a cracked jaw, broken ribs, and severe trauma pretty much everywhere else.
“If this weren’t the solstice, he would have died. But while the Strega’s powers are at their height now, so are mine. But it took every bit of skill to keep him from death’s door. The rest, he has to do on his own.”
“So you can’t heal him anymore?” Ree asked.
“Not with magic. The rest is up to mundane medicine and luck.”
“Shiiit. You get a good look at her?”
“That’s the good thing. She stood at the top of the stairs and gloated for a while. Couldn’t see the cards in time to stop me, which is why I managed to get away. Gotta love monologuers.”
“Takes one to know one,” Ree said, the tide of her anger rising again now that she knew Eastwood wasn’t in immediate likelihood of kicking off. Drake’s cough was quite clearly a tut of disapproval.
“You want to know what she looks like or what?”
“Yeah. Can’t let her walk around like she owns the town.”
“That’s what I thought. I’d peg her at five-six, Scandinavian.”
“A little short for a Scandinavian,” Ree said.
“They’re not all giants.”
“Says you,” Ree said, remembering her school trip to Amsterdam, where she’d felt like a ten-year-old at a basketball game.
Eastwood carried on. “Athletic figure. Runner’s gear, but designer, silvers and golds, with a big-ass art deco hairpiece, all silver triumphalist architecture-like.”
“So we went from gothic lolita to derby to art deco?” Ree asked.
“Everyone’s got a hobby.”
“Did she give a name?” Drake asked.
“Lachesis,” Eastwood said.
“They do like their flashy names, don�
��t they?”
“You get anything from her we can use to backtrack her?”
Eastood tried to nod, then winced and slumped back into the bed. “Wells has it. Just a bit of one of the levers of her traps. You’ll need to use magical methods, I figure. But if you set the sting right, you should be able to snare her. If she’s going to try to finish the job.”
“She would be making her way here,” Drake said.
“Nope. Wells made sure of that.”
The doctor nodded. “I’ve never met anyone who could find me that I didn’t want to. I moved because clients couldn’t get to me, not because the gnomes could.”
“So we go after Lachesis, then what? You want me to Incredible Nullifier her powers away, too? Then you try to convalesce and outpace the next season so we can do this whole thing again?”
“I’m in no condition to do it myself, kid. And you’re the one who declared yourself Pearson’s personal superhero.”
“Damn my heroic code,” Ree said, fully aware of how ridiculous she sounded. It was one thing to let Eastwood fend for himself when he was capable. Letting an attempted murderer run free and continue to endanger people in the city was something very different.
“You up for a game of cat and mouse?” Ree asked Drake.
“As long as this does not count as our first date. I’d rather preferred the notion of your traditional dinner and a movie.”
“Done.”
“Oh, good. That took long enough,” Eastwood said.
Dr. Wells smiled.
“You, shut up,” Ree said, pointing at Eastwood. “And you, back to bedside manner,” she said, pointing at Dr. Wells. “The lever?”
Dr. Wells handed over a mangled lever covered with runes
She checked her phone. It was getting late. That was good for a break-and-enter, but less so for a stakeout. And she really wanted to get back to the smooching part of the evening.
But first, they’d need to get out of the sewer, which she guessed might prove to be tricky.
“Okay. I’m on it.”
“The oracles are in the Dorkcave, if you can get back in. I remember you getting out easily enough last time you needed to.”
“Got it,” she said, not convinced in the least that the power-snuffing idea was remotely the best option. But she could cross that bridge when she came to it. Or just light it on fire, maybe.
“Thanks, Doc,” Ree said.
“Do your best with Eastwood. I rather believe that Ree is not nearly done being angry with him,” Drake said.
Dr. Wells nodded. “Try not to let whatever’s banging around outside in when you open the door, will you?”
Ree sighed as she walked back into the main room.
“I was hoping I was wrong about that,”
Sure enough, the sounds of splashing and stomping outside signaled that something not-at-all tiny was lurking in the sewer passage.
Ree plopped down onto one of the cots and pulled out her phone.
“Time for a power-up. What did you bring in terms of firepower?”
Drake took the cot opposite, scooting it forward so he could put his boots on either side of hers. They were all disgusting, but she appreciated the touch even through the stink and the thick leather.
“My rifle, a bayonet for same, my kukri, and the handgun. What were you thinking for this situation?”
Ree thumbed back at the wall and the unknown beastie outside. “That sounds like something big. Which makes me think I’m going to want the brick power suite. Or I could do Spider-Man again and go three-dimensional.”
“If that thing is truly as large as we’re thinking, should we not merely use one of your teleportation cards to make a quick escape?”
“I’m fresh out of cards that could move us both. This year’s been rough on my stash.”
“So be it. I can provide fire support, but it seems prudent that you once again take point, dangerous though that may be.”
“Just because there can be smooching after the Shake of Victory doesn’t mean we do this any different. You start getting all white knight self-sacrifice-y, and we’re going to have problems.”
“I know that now. But that will not prevent me from worrying.”
“Free country,” she said with a wink. “I’m feeling Buffy on this one. You good to watch the door while I power up?”
“Certainly.” Drake shifted around to face the door, rifle leveled. His left foot still pressed up against hers.
Ree cued up “Chosen,” her go-to empowerment episode for the show, with Buffy at the height of her chops, the show at its most overt and potent with its girl-power message. Sure it was on the nose, but she hadn’t met a Buffy fan who failed to shiver when they saw the beaten girl put her hand up and stop her abuser, who hadn’t gotten a smile when they saw the little leaguer’s look of Oh, I got this.
Diving into the episode, Ree imagined herself among them, remembering the scrawny, awkward girl she’d been, desperate to be one of those Chosen.
Twenty minutes later, a charge of badass sisterhood put spring in her step, and she hopped up, moving to the door.
“Ready?” she asked Drake. He joined her by the door, a hand on the thick metallic ring that stood in as the door handle. She was point; he was mark.
“This is still not a date, by the way,” she said, flashing a hungry smile. “So we both have to get through this so there can be more smooching.”
“Agreed. Lead on, my dear.”
She nodded, and Drake hauled the door open. Ree thumbed on her lightsaber, and they bounded out into the sewer.
Oh, it’s just a crocodile, Ree thought ironically.
A crocodile twenty feet long, with glowing green eyes and four-inch-tall demon birds with onyx wings and mad red eyes swarming around it.
No biggie, she thought, gulping.
Chapter Fifteen
Still Not a First Date
The crocodile’s maw was a good five feet long and two feet wide. More than big enough to swallow her whole down to the calves.
Ree considered her plan, mental voice taking on a Buffy-esque patter:
Step one: Avoid getting eaten.
Step two: Take out a limb or two.
Step three: Wrasslin’.
Ree slid to the side, giving Drake room to open fire. Rifle-fire vaporized a few of the demon birds, sending the rest to the air in a cloud that was equal parts Hitchcock and Pitch Black.
The crocodile ran-swam forward, too big to just glide through the water, but getting a boost as it went, the winter melt leaving yard-deep water to work with.
“Stay up out of the water,” Ree said, lightsaber dancing around in a defensive pattern, working like a bug zapper as the demon birds swarmed her. A couple of birds winged through her defenses, coming all at once. Beaks and claws carved through her coat and bit into her buff jacket, the best present Drake had ever given her.
“You could just turn around and go the other way, you know,” Ree called out to the crocodile, which seemed to not be in the mood to respond.
This was the problem with nonsapient monsters. They didn’t appreciate good banter. Peter Parker didn’t have this problem, and Buffy’s rank-and-file mooks could at least grunt aggressively in response.
But this time, she was wrong.
The crocodile spoke with a voice like an avalanche. “This is our kingdom, morsel. We are Scale, sovereign of the sewer.” The crocodile bound forward, snapping at Ree.
“The fuck?” Ree cut at the croc’s face, jumping back, training saving her ass despite the talking-monster surprise.
“This is quite unusual,” Drake declared, still picking off the demon birds with deft, controlled shots. The swarm diminished, retreating to form a halo above the croc’s head.
“These sewers are ours now, mortals. The price for tresspas
sing is death.”
“Dude, I’ve spent more time down here than just about anybody. I’m the Duchess of Pearson’s sewers. Just ask Yelp.”
Scale growled, “Yield, and we will do you the favor of killing you before we consume you.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Ree said, drawing her phaser and zapping the croc at the left shoulder.
The creature roared, anger muting out language. And then it charged.
Ree slashed at the creature’s face, and the blade glanced off, raising sparks.
Ummm, that’s not supposed to do that, Ree thought. The thing about lightsabers was that they were fucking lighstabers, and they cut through everything that wasn’t another lightsaber or Cortosis-weaved thing-a-ma-whats-it.
And who the hell ever heard of Cortosis-weaved crocodile scales?
Plowing right through her attack, the crocodile bit down on Ree’s arm. Jagged teeth eviscerated the arm of her coat, and pierced the enchanted buff jacket, drawing blood.
Ree dropped the lightsaber, pain blue-screening her vision.
Scale worried at her, shaking its snout back and forth, teeth tearing into her arm. Without the Buffy magic, the bite would have snapped her bones like twigs.
Screaming seemed like the thing to do.
Blue bolts soared over her shoulder, searing wounds into Scale’s back. Drake dove past her with a kukri in one hand and his Hellboy gun in the other, rage in his eyes.
He landed hard on the creature’s back, sliding the kukri between two clumps of armored scales at its neck. With purchase, he started unloading the über-revolver, the gun’s report filling the sewer.
Thinking of Buffy and the Chosen, and maybe a little of smooches, Ree pushed through the pain, “Drake, get out of there!” She pulled her pocketknife out and chucked it at Scale’s eye, grateful for the hours of throwing practice at every range, including “close enough that maybe you should just hold on to the knife and stab,” which is what she would be doing save for the Cortosis-weave scales and the Ow-fuck-ow death grip on her other arm.
Thanks to Buffy magic, the blade struck true, burying itself to the hilt in Scale’s right eye.
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