The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes)

by Richard Raley

  Never.

  My jaw set. My hands curled up.

  You.

  Are.

  Going.

  To.

  Get.

  Fucked.

  Up.

  Whoever you are.

  [CLICK]

  Voyeurism is the ultimate entertainment source in this fine modern country of ours. Gossip websites, social networking, reality television . . . we even fight our wars with voyeurism now, drones up in the sky bombing down on the peepshow.

  Psychologists and sociologists and all the gist-fuckers like to come up with complicated theories behind it. Talk about taking part in the story, about forming a connection. We know that’s bullshit excuse theory, don’t we? Right we do.

  Power . . . that’s the reason. I see, you don’t know, so I own your ass. I can end our relationship with a remote click or an unfollow as quick as can be. Power . . . it’s all mine. I’m watching you and you don’t have a clue who I am. Don’t know nothing ‘bout me. I take everything from you but give nada in return.

  Power . . . don’t forget it.

  Not one of them noticed me at the backdoor, even though it was one of those French jobs with the big glass windows making up the majority. Three of them. Had to be more than that. Five if I guessed. Same five that shot up my shop. Maybe seven, if the drivers stuck around, maybe not. Probably not.

  Someone had to tell Vega about the screw up and the pledges probably drove the truck in the first place . . . means the pledges go tell bossman what up. Five . . . fitting number for a mancer to go up against.

  Tatter and Suit were missing, but Overcoat sat on the couch with an Xbox controller and sans the overcoat. He looked tall and skinny and younger than me without it. His hands and arms were crisscrossed in red heal marks, that just after the scab look you get for a couple days after a nice scrape. Nice scab still up on his forehead though, where he’d been bleeding bad. Someone sucked on those extra teeth JoJo talked about to heal, what you bet? Not enough juice to fix it all the way though . . . if I was lucky all of them would have fast healed and drained the reserves.

  A gigantic flatscreen LED on the wall, showing some warzone in sandy-land, fake machinegun blowing away terrorists. I might have missed seven years at the Asylum but terrorists never stopped being good for faceless enemies.

  No sign of the machineguns they’d shot up my shop with, those were probably stashed somewhere, maybe even abandoned now that the cops had all the lead and casings to trace. A shotgun on the table, laid out haphazard over gaming and porno magazines. Nothing like seeing a smiling Mario next to a pair of tits so large they need flying buttresses for support.

  The two others, we’ll call them Goonie and Backup for the sake of simple labels, bent over the edge of the table, each doing lines of coke. Wired werecoyotes . . . just what I wanted to find. No JoJo. No Horatio Vega. No clue where to find either of them.

  Goons . . . just goons. High goons. Goons playing video games. Goons that might not be responsible, but were the idiots who pulled the trigger . . .

  Good enough to keep the score close going into halftime.

  Standing there, looking in, it was frustrating.

  Why they got to have a gun?

  Gun means I blow my anima pool like some virgin getting felt up for the first time. Right up front, pants not even on the floor. Didn’t even get to cup a breast. Just . . . blam with the hair trigger release! Game over, anima pool gone. Not drawing these examples from personal experience or nothing. Promise.

  Ten-minute-pool and there’s a stupid shotgun that I need to take out the equation. I doubted it was loaded with pea-sized birdshot. Not buckshot either. Big ol’ metal slugs, I could feel them. Make a man shorter in no time. Make a man without a head or any body part it hit in no time too. Mean gun. Just across the glass door from me.

  The door . . . locked most likely. Cracking the shotgun wouldn’t take much, I’m good with metal. Means plenty of the pool left over to split; show off for T-Bone again. Complaining or not, he was at my back. A Stormcaller trained by Mordecai Root . . . good Ultra to have at your back. Few others would top it. Valentine maybe. Eva if it’s dark out. Not even my boys Jesus, Raj, or Pocket. I’d trust them but . . . lightning bolts beat trees.

  Door lock, the shotgun, and . . . what else? The stereo system. Shit blared some Mexican rap. Overcoat, white as he was, nodded his head and shoulders along to the beat as he blew away terrorists.

  Door lock, shotgun, stereo.

  Start pooling immediately. Start punching too.

  Get them down quick then search the house. JoJo could be in an upstairs room . . . the place was big enough to have at least two floors, maybe three.

  Why you planning, King Henry? Just smash in some faces.

  My pool released hard. Ten-minute-pool has itself some kickback. Think . . . shotgun? Move you back a step but not knock you over.

  Had to aim for the door lock first, get the metal, wood, and glass out of the way before I let loose the rest of it. Anima ain’t exactly a line of sight kind of thing . . . but it can get sidetracked, I guess you could say.

  “What are you—“ T-Bone started behind me just as I went for it.

  CRACK.

  No going back now.

  I didn’t just break the lock.

  I broke the handle and the glass with it.

  More than I’d expected, buffalo gun maybe.

  This is why planning is good and all . . . but sometimes what saves your life ain’t being a boy scout, it’s being able to improvise no matter how much shit is clogging up your fan. I picked me up a hose in the form of my foot, slamming it out into the door, smashing it inward and throwing glass all over the room in front of me.

  The rest of my pool wouldn’t wait. No holding on, remember? The shotgun snapped on the table, impact of the break so hard it flipped the barrel up into the air, end over end. I threw my hand up as I rushed forward, aiming what’s left of the anima at the stereo system just like I’d planned but again fucking it up.

  King Henry Price humbly presents: The Blitzkrieg as performed by the Three Stooges.

  What a fucking disaster.

  Shattered the crap out of the door, bashed the shotgun up good, and then I miss the stereo and nail the flatscreen instead. Sometimes anima gets sidetracked alright and the smaller the bunch of it, more sidetracked it can get. This bit went off like some curveball from hell. It kept turning and turning and like I could stop it. Right into the TV.

  CRACK the Second.

  Sixty inches of modern appliance went right off its fittings on the wall, crashed down four feet to the tile floor, and more glass and plastic joined the rubble. The only good part . . . no one else but me knew I’d aimed for the stereo in the first place. Always remember that. You’re going to fuck up in your life, but learn how to play it off as on purpose and sometimes you can look even more awesome.

  Cuz . . . TV worked as one of the best distractions ever. Even with glass flying all around from the door, even with the shotgun . . . thousand dollar TV getting thrashed draws a crowd of pupils. Watching million dollar racing cars blow up is a whole lot more fun than seeing T-Bone’s Nissan Leaf have at it with a street lamp.

  Unless you own the racing cars.

  People talk about the world slowing down when you’re on an adrenaline kick, and it’s true to some extent. Overcoat’s jaw took forever as it dropped open. I watched it out of the corner of my eye as I barreled towards Goonie. Boy had just finished his line. Few more of the lines left over got glass all up in them, but Goonie didn’t have a clue. He’d done that head toss you do whenever something feels better than great. Line of coke, shot of booze, blow job . . . flip that head on back, look on up to that bright sky.

  Wasn’t no bright sky waiting for him, just my hand. I ain’t tall but I got bulk, got muscle, and all my momentum was some nice stuff. I grabbed the back of his skull as I rushed by, tangling in greasy hair just long enough to push his head right back down into the glas
s contaminated coke lines and more importantly . . . into a nice bit of table.

  Thunk sounded behind me as I continued on, red dripping all over the place as it hurried on out of Goonie’s nose. Same hand that had smashed his face pulled back, my right hand, normally iron fist, but with not a bit of anima pooled back up it was all on me. On muscle and torque and all that good shit.

  Overcoat’s eyes flashed as I booked on past him. What a lucky bastard to have the table in the way like that. I went past him, gave him time to react. Stupid ass dove forward for the shotgun . . .

  Two more steps and Backup rose right in front of me, coming up out a chair just in time to take my fist in his throat. Another mistake. Been aiming for his jaw but he was another one of those tall bastards. Not that a throat punch doesn’t hurt. Stuns you good. Just . . . doesn’t put you out permanently.

  Which I think we can agree is the name of the game.

  Instead of having Backup go down with a straight up knockout, his hands wrapped against my geomancer’s coat, trying to grab onto me. Hard to say he succeeded but he kept me in place for a second too long. Overcoat came up behind me, putting shotgun into my kidney.

  “Move and I fucking kill you, mancer-bitch!”

  “You ain’t got no barrel, dumbass,” I reminded him.

  He glanced down, realizing at exactly the wrong time that he couldn’t chamber a round and even if he did have one in the barrel . . . explosion had the best odds if that trigger got pulled. Still had himself two feet a metal though, didn’t he?

  I ducked under his swing at my head. A punch went into Backup’s side to free me up, then I turned into Overcoat. Shotgun-turned-pipe slammed down on my shoulder with a not-so-nice thud. Tall bastard, I thought, pained and pissed off as I wrapped my own arms around his chest and pushed my legs out, throwing us forward.

  Shotgun-turned-pipe banged against my back again and again as we went over the couch and to the floor. I was on top of him, his legs flailing as I pushed down, letting my weight hold him. “Stupid mancer-bitch!” he said again and again.

  “Stupid mancer-bitch!”

  “Stupid mancer-bitch!”

  Each time the shotgun-turned-pipe came down but with less leverage as his arm tired out. My hands were in his face, on his shoulders, at his wrists, making him struggle for every breath, making every inch of movement a war.

  “Drop the gun or I end you,” I growled into his ear.

  Guess he knew I would end him either way . . . so he rolled the dice and let the odds have themselves some fun, trigger going click.

  Damned thing didn’t explode, can you believe that?

  Fired just fine. No accuracy on it, slug going wild, right into the damned stereo system. What a bummer, we’d lost our soundtrack.

  My body came up then my body came down, all my weight on my elbow as it went into Overcoat’s face. Didn’t break his nose—which is a shame, I’d been going for the daily double—but it knocked him out.

  I turned, expecting Backup to be recovered and ready to throw, but instead T-Bone raised a hand through the broken door and here comes a big ass bolt of lightning from across the room. Fucking showoff douchebag electromancers . . .

  It missed a direct hit on Backup, which is probably the only reason he didn’t immediately turn charbroiled. It grazed him on its way to what remained of the stereo system, frying speakers and electronics to the point of no return. Backup went down like he’d been shot with a taser, or had one of my SDRs used on him. Legs out straight, whole body ridged. Guess werecoyote resistance don’t measure up with lightning bolts.

  “What the bitch did we just do?” T-Bone gasped.

  Session 14

  Let’s start this one with another question: ever run for your life? Guessing not. First World . . . it’s probably possible for a person to get through life without ever running a single time. Sad truth but we’ve forgotten the caveman . . . where we’re worried about the saber-toothed cat gnawing on our young. Forgotten crawling up into the tree, screeching our furry little heads off and throwing our own crap at the velociraptor.

  I think that’s the key right there. Ask yourself again: could you imagine wanting to live so badly that you’d throw your own crap at a person? That you would swipe your pants down a few inches, push one out in the middle of public, grab on with a hand and let fly?

  People nowadays don’t even want to live badly enough that they’d buckle a stupid ass seatbelt.

  Running hand-in-hand with Miranda and Isabel? My ass wanted to live. I talked a big game about Samson screwing with us . . . but put into a situation where those howls went off a second time . . . my ass wanted to live and it wanted the rest of me to live as well.

  If throwing crap would have helped, I would’ve done it.

  Running. I blocked the rest out. The screams, the howls started up. Eyes forward, peering into the dark night. Full moon or near enough, some light, but not a whole lot.

  Pause . . . imagine it, close your eyes.

  Rushing forward into a place where you can barely see. Feet hitting things you can’t see. Dodging trees and bushes seeming to jump from nowhere. Terrifying, make your heart beat like it don’t got but a few beats left. Make those last few beats fucking count.

  I felt so little. My face was cold, steam passing over my shoulder as I burst forward step by step. Wasn’t smoking a fake cigarette now, I was a rolling locomotive, chugging along, breakneck speed. Funny how you don’t think about the origins of breakneck until it’s your neck, ain’t it?

  Face, chest, legs, all covered up in my geomancer browns. Nice and comfy. Didn’t feel but a little and that little was all hand. My hands grabbing to Miranda’s wrist and Isabel’s palm. Isabel looked like a joke, red and white, frizzy hair wildly dancing side to side. Least she kept up thought. Miranda ran with a hand on her glasses, her pure white colors even worse, shining in the moonlight. Her body wasn’t made for running; that butt and chest cushioning gyrated all over the place, her legs pumping but her steps short.

  “Come on,” I growled again, tugging harder at her wrist.

  “I . . . can’t . . . my . . . lungs . . .”

  “You want to die like Valentine?” I asked.

  Cruel, King Henry, cruel.

  But it sped her up.

  We kept running, not stopping until almost ten minutes of it. All of us were beat. We just crumbled down on the leaf-covered ground. The ground . . . I pushed leaves out of the way.

  WAIT.

  “Good thing, cuz we ain’t got more left in the tank,” I muttered.

  Talking didn’t matter since it wasn’t any louder than our breathing. Miranda sounded like a bagpipe. Too bad Jethro Smith already hit her up with a nickname . . . that would have been a good one for her . . . Bagpipes. Isabel, strangely, looked the best . . . well, condition-wise. Have I mentioned her ears? Yeah . . . sticking out from her head . . . just . . . ugly.

  “You discharge?” I asked, suspicious.

  She looked guilty and that was enough of an answer.

  “Next time,” I told her, raising my fist, “in your hand, punch the cocksuckers.”

  Isabel smiled. Well, it made her look happy at least. “It doesn’t work that way with corpusmancers,” she said. You know, another strange thing about Isabel . . . ugly yes, which you’re probably tired of hearing about, but she did have a lovely voice, soft and sultry with a South American accent.

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Makes you less tired. Makes you able to hold something you think you’re going to drop.”

  “Huh . . . what about you?” I asked Miranda.

  She still breathed heavy. It was distracting. “I haven’t ever discharged.”

  “You’re shitting me?”

  “No . . . never.”

  “Ever done it on purpose?”

  “You’ve had the same classes I have.”

  “Right . . .”

  In front of me, the word WAIT changed into STOP TRYING SO HARD. />
  I drew a question mark by it.

  YOU ARE OF THE EARTH.

  Isabel glanced over my shoulder to see what I was doing. “What does that mean?”

  “Uh . . .”

  Miranda joined her. “You are of the Earth . . . are you trying to improve your morale, King Henry? You are so big and strong, yes you are!”

  I’d have told her off but the dirt moving again shut her up as good as I’ve ever seen.

  I WARNED YOU ABOUT AIR.

  “What the freak is that?!?!” Miranda screeched.

  THEY HEARD HER. RUN.

  [CLICK]

  “This time . . . don’t . . . freak . . . out . . . and . . . don’t . . . be . . . so damned loud . . .” I gasped. Even I could barely talk after the last running burst away from our hiding spot.

  Isabel only nodded but Miranda whispered something I couldn’t hear. I figured I knew the question so I just answered. “A fairy, it’s a fairy. Yes, there are apparently fairies. It’s helping us get away for some reason and I ain’t knocking the help, got it?”

  “Fairy . . . can be dangerous,” she explained.

  Right . . . she’s old family like Welf, even if they didn’t get along, some feud or something. “Oh?”

  “It’s probably a small anima sprite enjoying the game of running from the wolves,” she decided the whole thing for herself.

  Small? That anima I’d felt hadn’t been small. That anima had been . . . well, you heard the dreams, what do you think it felt like? God is a good word for it. You sure as hell could have worshiped him and not felt out of place. “If you say so, but we haven’t been caught yet, and it warned me about the attack, so let’s listen to the crazy words in the dirt, all right?”

  “So it’s a geomancer fairy?” Isabel asked, frowning.

  “Yes,” Miranda confirmed, more know-it-all the more air she got in her lungs.

  “Are there corpusmancer fairies?”

  “Yes, they usually form in places where there are strenuous competitions or a lot of people together, like stadiums. They’re far rarer than the geo-types. Fairies work backwards from mancers.”