Lore vs. The Summoning

by Anya Breton

  "What did you do with the girls?"

  My eyebrows lifted at the surprisingly feminine voice that had asked the question. Chet wasn't a small guy but he sounded like Mickey Mouse. I had to bite my tongue to keep from smirking or laughing. No wonder he traveled with a pack of Rhinos. No one could take threats uttered in that voice seriously.

  "I ate them," I answered with an irreverent wiggle of my right eyebrow.

  Chet responded by shouting in high-pitched outrage and kicking Tracksuit. I suspected that was a metaphor for their entire relationship. Maybe I'd done the badly dressed doofus a favor.

  "Get her out of there," Chet ordered one of his goons.

  Now I knew without a glimmer of a doubt that Chet wasn't the brains behind the demon summoning. Anyone who could see two dead bodies on the floor, note the release of their other prisoners and then free the remaining person could not be running a secret crime ring. His foolishness was good for me. I'd let them remove me from the cage before killing any of them because I suspected someone here had information I needed. I just hoped one of them was sniveling enough to give it to me.

  The Rhino faction had one saving grace: they preferred hand-to-hand combat to guns. With hands as big as melons it kind of figured. I mean what gun could they wield anyway? I just had to make sure I disabled them all before they could get those meaty fists on me.

  A goon with cornrow black hair started forward with a set of keys he'd produced from his pocket. He got the lock undone in record time, unlatched the handle and swung the metal bars aside without blinking. Obviously Chet kept his smarter muscle with him. I'd have to take that into account when figuring how to handle this now that I had no plan.

  The goon grabbed hold of my ankle, the ankle that was still smarting from the last Rhino, and tore me from my box. Again I spilled onto the ground, nearly losing the gun wedged into my waistband onto the floor. I attempted to shove it back down without them noticing.

  Chet gave the goon a gesture that apparently meant: grab her by the collar and choke her to her feet -- because that's exactly what he did. I'd managed to fix the gun so it was snug and frickin' freezing against my backside by the time the goon had followed the order. Seconds later I hung dangling and choking from the melon fist.

  "Who killed them?" Chet demanded in his mouse-like voice.

  "My head is a little fuzzy," I replied truthfully. If Chet were a pure shapeshifter he'd be able to sense a lie so I couldn't tell one. I thought it was obvious who had killed his men but apparently the idea of a woman coming in and causing this kind of mayhem was unthinkable to him.

  Oh, right, shapeshifter.

  I should have remembered most of them were misogynist bastards. Hell, the majority of the Underground was. Aside from the Covens, females were a painful minority. And the witches were evenly spread across both sexes since they'd stopped breeding for absolute purity. The decided majority of males meant they still behaved like it was the dark ages and women were property.

  Another gesture had the goon shaking me with a teeth rattling gesture. My concussion did not approve. I saw spots, huge polka dotted spots, and pain spiked through my skull to the tune of their dancing.

  "Ung," I grit out and instantly felt less-than because of it.

  "Who killed them?" Chetey Mouse repeated.

  "Shaking me isn't helping to clear my head, brainchild," I replied derisively.

  "You need your head cleared?" Chet's hand did something more complicated. I had a feeling I wasn't going to like this.

  The Rhino bashed my head into the metal bars on the cage beside me. It hurt, but all things considered it wasn't actually too bad. I pretended to howl in pain and hoped the shapeshifter couldn't sense untruthful agonized outbursts.

  "Who. Killed. Them?"

  "I have a concussion. I'm not slow or special," I shot back and for it earned another bash into the metal bars. One slammed directly against the spot Michael had no doubt whacked earlier. This time my agonized outburst was genuine.

  "Who are you protecting, fatty?"

  The cracks about my weight were really starting to get to me. While I wasn't waif-like, I was a respectable size twelve. Well, maybe not respectable, but c'mon, in today's obese world a size twelve wasn't too shabby. I couldn't help that I had a serious weakness for cheesecake and double cheese pizza. Besides, they wouldn't be worrying about my weight when they were fighting to suck in their last breath.

  Another slam against the metal was applied when I didn't immediately answer. It was just as well. I'd have said something snarky anyway.

  They were going to move on to something worse soon. They had to. I mean it would be insane to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result. Now was the time to act. I couldn't risk that they'd find my gun and relieve me of it.

  I reached forward to dig the nails on my left hand into the cornrowed Rhino's leathery skin. Wishing him ill was all I needed to do to start this game. Once I'd seen the black snake up his arm, I reached my right hand back for the gun. Before they could process what was happening, I'd aimed it at the farthest Rhino's right eye and squeezed the trigger.

  Apollo's Warning slowed the scene down to a crawl. Surprisingly there was a bullet headed for my head. My head! Not only was it unheard of for a Rhino to carry a gun, my brain was the one thing I wasn't certain I could heal. And these guys weren't supposed to be smart enough to go for the brain!

  I slid down out of Cornrow's hands before time resumed its normal flow. The shot rang out, bullet narrowly missing my skull. The heat of it fluffed my hair on its forward trajectory. I followed their attack up with one of my own, aiming at the next farthest Rhino's right eye. They were getting closer. I was screwed if they all jumped me at once because I doubted that even though they looked like professional wrestlers we'd be pretend-fighting.

  My warning system kicked in with a low moan. Another bullet was hurdling through the air toward my chest. I wasn't going to be able to slide down out of that one's path. So I stepped aside, back where Cornrow could get me. I was taking a chance that he wasn't too incapacitated to hurt me.

  Thankfully he was too busy clutching his chest to bother with me even as his boss waved his hands frantically while squeaking out orders. Let me tell you, Mickey Mouse screaming "annihilate her, you dumb fucks!" is funny enough to distract a girl from her purpose. Temporarily at least.

  The next slow down in time proved a bit of a mess. There were three bullets. They weren't fucking around anymore. One was headed toward my skull. The other two must have come from Rhinos missing eyeballs because one bullet sailed toward Cornrow and the other would hit the empty cage to our right.

  I ducked down then hopped out of the way of Cornrow's protective bulk. Time resumed its rapid pace. Three more shots rang out and time, of course, slowed to a crawl. This was getting to be ridiculous. I couldn't keep fighting fires. I had to stop them before they started.

  I moved just enough to avoid most of the bullets, aimed my gun while I did so and shot the right eye out on the only Rhino with both peepers left. A searing pain hit my abdomen where a bullet sliced through it. I did my utmost to ignore the throb while aiming at the left eye of the farthest goon.

  The screaming in the room was music to my ears. It gave me enough time to shoot out the other eye on the second farthest goon. Now I had one near-corpse to my right and two blind Rhinos howling in pain as well as one half-blind goon who was advancing on me. Oh, and Chetey Mouse.

  My hands couldn't get the gun aimed on the half-blind guy fast enough before he'd gotten hold of me. He brandished me like a person-shaped club into the cinderblock wall. The gun in my right hand hit first. My fingers bent back with a snap. I yelped as my piece fell from my limp digits.

  Now was a good time to experiment with sending the plague through places other than my hands. I'd done it earlier. I was confident I could do it again. The Rhino's hand brushed the skin of my neck. I hoped that was enough. But just in case, I flailed my left arm out in an
attempt to grab him elsewhere.

  He choked from my diseased attack on the upswing. The plague had hit him hard enough that his strength already sapped. I slipped out of his fingers, once again slamming into the wall at full speed. This time I could almost feel my brain bashing against the inside of my skull. If I never saw another cinderblock wall I'd be a happy camper.

  I lay limp until the telltale tingling of my senses forced me to act. It took most of the energy left in me to flip over to get a view of what I was in for. The bullet was headed for my head. I shimmied down the wall while bending forward and hoped it was enough to avoid the projectile.

  Between healing Michael's gunshot wounds earlier at the brownstone, plaguing four goons, and healing my own scrapes, I was running dangerously low on steam. There were still three guys standing. One of them wasn't so much as scratched. And even though Chet sounded like a cartoon rodent I had to remember he could still shift into something vicious. In fact, I was shocked that he hadn't already done so.

  The reminder was what I'd needed to focus. My gun was a foot away. I threw my body at it then maneuvered it into my left hand. A shot rang out behind me. Since Apollo's Warning hadn't slowed things down I suspected it had been one of the blind guys that had pulled the trigger.

  I rolled onto my side enough to aim the gun at Chet's right eye. He ducked before I pulled the trigger, which gave me ample time to adjust for the movement he'd inevitably make. My shot nicked his ear. Not good.

  His hands transformed into razor sharp claws before my eyes. Then in a blurring movement he came at me with a savage roar his larynx couldn't possibly have made. I did my best to roll out of the way but landed directly in front of a Rhino's foot.

  The massive bastard correctly assumed it was my body pressed against his ankle and kicked me in the chest for my pains. Just for that I locked my arms around his clown-shoed combat boots so that if he kicked, I'd move with him rather than be on the receiving end. My fingers slid up his pant leg in search of bare skin. The idiot giggled above me while doing what looked suspiciously like a tickle dance. Skin touched leathery skin a half second later.

  Time slowed. Someone with decent aim had shot at me. There wasn't going to be any way to avoid this one. I could only minimize the damage. I curled around the Rhino's legs, earning a shot in the back. It was far better than the head wound he'd been trying for. But damn. It burned.

  The last Rhino flailed blindly around the room, shooting crazily. If I were lucky, he'd shoot Chet. More than likely I'd be the one shot.

  I attempted to crawl in the direction of the sightless goon but the latest plague victim and my steadily healing wounds had nearly drained me of energy. A scream tore from my throat upon feeling four knives slice through my ankle. The Achilles' tendon is severed, my brain told me helpfully. I rolled over to find Chet sporting some serious fangs now. So I shot him in the face. Somehow, I supposed because he'd been gloating at the damage he'd wrought on my leg, he hadn't ducked the bullet.

  I knew my gun was either empty or one bullet from empty. There were clips in my left pocket but the gun was in my left hand because most of the fingers on my right limb were broken. Chet's shrieks weren't going to last for long. I set the gun down. Getting the clip out hadn't been hard but ejecting the old one and replacing it with the new one one-handed, the left hand, was going to be tricky.

  I'd been fumbling with it when time slowed. Damn it. This was getting old. I hadn't gotten any information out of the bastard yet. And I was on a deadline! I didn't have time to muck around.

  An infusion of frustration pushed me up onto my good leg and out of the path of the bullet. I stumbled onto the Rhino and shoved a hand to his neck to plague him. While I ducked a gunshot from Chet I shoved the clip into my gun, aimed sideways and shot the shifter in the eye. He'd been too busy dealing with recoil to think about defensive movements. Now he had a missing eye and a torn up left cheek.

  The wounds on my leg were rapidly knitting themselves together. I knew I had to apply some pressure to my Achilles' tendon so that it would heal properly fused. The movement of setting my foot flat on the ground made me nearly scream. Now I just had to start forward.

  Sliding along the ground on my broken foot was one of the most painful things I'd ever had to do. But it got me to Chet. I used my fatty momentum to shove his flailing body over and then sat on his back with my tortured foot still placed firmly on the ground.

  "I can kill you with a touch, Chet," I informed him with a hand pressed firmly against the bare skin of his neck. His claws slashed toward me but he couldn't seem to bend his arms back far enough to get close. "You are going to tell me who you work for."

  "Kill me, bitch. I'll never talk."

  "Have you ever heard of the Bubonic Plague?" I grit out in pain and hoped it sounded menacing. He didn't answer but his flailing slowed. "That's what I gave to your goons. But for you, I'll infect you and Heal you so I can do it all over again. How does that sound?"

  At this point I was bluffing because I was pretty sure I didn't have enough power left in me to Heal him fast enough.

  "You're the Black Death?" Chet asked in an unreadable voice.

  "The who?" I said in faux confusion I hoped he wouldn't catch. I was the Black Death but I didn't want anyone to know about it. It wasn't a name I'd given myself. It was what the Underground had termed the mysterious person that had killed one of the more dangerous players in the city.

  He bucked powerfully enough that I was knocked back. All of the healing my poor tendon had done instantly snapped like an aging rubber band. I bit down on the pain to keep from crying out. Chet took advantage of my pause to roll over, hop onto four limbs and in the process shift into a great orange tiger faster than anything I'd ever seen. It had seemed like he'd imploded and then bam he'd been a tiger!

  I mouthed the words, "Oh shit," just as he pounced across the distance to me. Apollo's warning gave me a moment to summersault out of the way. I knew a tiger couldn't speak and that I had no way to get Chet back into human form. It was either kill or be killed.

  This was not supposed to happen. Chet was supposed to rat his boss out like a good little torture victim. Shapeshifters sucked.

  With my left hand I aimed the gun at his head and got off a single shot before he pounced atop me. The bullet slammed into his feline brain, which was a bit smaller than his usual brain, maybe. Less mass meant more damage. Though he was as good as dead when he'd landed on me, he'd still managed to slash gashes into either side of me just from the continuing momentum.

  I lay there on the laminate floor bleeding with a few hundred pounds of cat on me. The problem with this situation was that even though the shifter was good and dead, I hadn't killed him with my plague. He wasn't going to decompose into primordial ooze. I didn't know enough about his kind to know if they remained in their animal form when they died or...

  Oh, there went some fur. They didn't remain in animal form after they died after all. Well, at least that much was good.

  Except now it meant I had nearly two hundred pounds of naked man atop me. I rolled him off with what was probably my last bit of energy then seriously contemplated falling asleep right where I was. The idea of slicing my Achilles' tendon again so that it could properly heal was enough of a deterrent to get me up. I shook from the pain of it for a half a minute before I could move again.

  The shreds of Chet's clothing were on the floor beside one of the puddles of primordial oozes. I shoved my hand in to pull out his wallet and anything else he might have of use. Later I'd go through it but right now I needed to look for signs of his boss because I had no intention of ever returning here.

  Shuffling out of the pound-for-women kept my broken foot flat against the ground. It hurt like hell but hopefully would allow for a clean heal. There didn't seem to be any papers with names, addresses, phone numbers or any sort of identifiers in the entire place. I combed for the brown paper packages that might contain desert rocks and even looked for anything that could tie Ch
et to the Covens. The only thing my search merited me was a nose full of dust.

  As the sun rose over Jamaican Plain I hobbled to the sidewalk, bloody, battered and bewildered.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The last person I wanted to see at my front door was the werewolf Alpha. Which meant he was the first person I saw through the peephole. I thought about turning around and going back to bed but knew if I didn't open the door to end his incessant banging someone was going to call the cops.

  I lived in an upscale row house in Back Bay that had been converted into apartments. My neighbors knew who I was, who I worked for and tolerated little tomfoolery. At least one of them had their fingers in the symphony pie because my business had been blabbed to my co-workers on more than one occasion.

  That was why I reached out, took hold of the Alpha's shirt and yanked him inside before too many neighbors got a good look at him.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing coming here?" I demanded in a hissing voice that sounded whiny even to my ears. I had a right to whine. Two minutes ago I'd been blissfully unconscious, drugged to the gills and surprisingly pain free. Now I was shockingly awake and felt like I'd been run over by an eighteen wheeler.

  "Laura Denham?" The bastard asked while looking me over with a crinkled brow.

  I gave him a dirty look in answer.

  "What the hell happened to you? You look like you got run over by a truck."

  I ignored him to head into the kitchen for an infusion of sugar. Once I'd gotten there and wrenched open the refrigerator door, I let out a grunt of displeasure. There was only one can of generic orange soda left in my refrigerator and little actual food to speak of. I was in serious need of a trip to the grocery store.

  "You sure you're Laura Denham?" The Alpha asked again.

  I'd already cracked the last can of soda open with the surprisingly pain-free fingers on my right hand and downed an eighth of it by the time he spoke. "Did you meet someone else last night claiming to be me?"