James just stood there for a moment, then shrugged. Cockbite One scowled, pissed that the mere mention of his organization didn’t send this guy running.
“We’re taking this girl,” Cockbite One told him. “I won’t warn you again.” He stepped back and crossed his arms.
Alison scrambled away from between the guys and ran behind James.
“You idiots aren’t kidnapping me,” she yelled. “You can kiss my butt.”
James chuckled. “You heard the kid.”
Every cell in James’ body burned for him to humble the assholes, but he knew that antagonizing the Harriken wasn’t smart, even by his standards. He pulled out his phone.
“Why shouldn’t I just call the cops?” James asked, waving his phone.
Cockbite One grinned and held up his arm. “No police will save you here.”
James couldn’t identify the band on his arm, but assumed it was some sort of jammer. He rolled his eyes.
More lazy tech-obsessed criminals.
He had expected more from the Harriken. They were supposed to be an old-school Japanese clan with some weird-ass warrior honor.
He slid the phone back in his pocket. “Whatever. More fun for me.”
Cockbite One’s face darkened. “Enough of this foolishness. This is Harriken territory, and you have been disrespectful. You will be made into an example, for those who dare oppose our power. If you beg,” he smirked, “we’ll kill you quickly.”
James sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Did anyone in your little group ever tell you about the Granite Ghost?”
He removed his leather jacket and dropped it to the ground, not caring that it revealed his holster and sheaths. He wouldn’t even bother to use the weapons for this pathetic level of foe. He was mostly concerned they might damage his jacket.
He really loved that jacket.
Cockbite One snorted. “A child’s story.” He whipped out his sword. “You’re going to die today, and become a real ghost.”
Alison laughed. “Oh, you guys don’t even see it, do you? He’s so gonna kick your asses. Too much testosteronie, boys. It’s bad for decision-making.”
“It’s ‘testosterone,’” James looked at her, “and who is teaching you these words?”
Cockbite One snarled. “After I kill this man in front of you, little girl, you’ll be coming with me.” He pointed at Allison. “And I will tape that smart mouth of yours shut.”
James sighed. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” He put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her toward a wooden box by the wall. “Just step back.”
Cockbite Two readied his blade.
Maybe there was still a way to salvage the situation that didn’t involve copious amounts of ultra-violence. James hoped so, at least.
Well, not exactly.
It wasn’t that he cared about hurting these assholes—he didn’t mind taking down people who deserved it—but killing people, even scum, complicated his life…and that violated KISS.
“Okay, guys,” James began, cracking his knuckles. “Here’s my rules. You stay with swords and knives and I’ll smack you around, but you get to leave alive, if broken. You go any higher than that, and you might not be breathing at the end. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You die now!” Cockbite One yelled. He charged right toward James, his sword slicing downward.
James brought up his arm. The ring of metal meeting metal echoed through the alley.
Cockbite One leapt back, and Cockbite Two moved forward.
“Armor?” Cockbite One said with a sneer. “That’s why you’re so disrespectful?” He spat. “We’ll just take your head off, then.”
James heaved another sigh, looking at the clean slice in his gray shirt. He’d just gotten the thing, and the asshole had already carved it up.
Both Harriken charged him this time. For a few seconds they all traded blows, blocks, and parries. James smirked as their swords struck him again and again, not doing much more than making the alley sound like some drunken blacksmith’s shop.
James’ shirt was in tatters at this point, but there wasn’t a single drop of blood in sight.
One of the men tossed his sword into his other hand and reached inside his jacket to pull out a Glock. It took James a second to realize it was Cockbite Two.
James groaned; some idiots never learned. He concentrated for a second.
The pistol sailed out of the man’s hand and into James’. A little telekinesis could go a long way toward stopping a bloodbath, but today the situation was going in the opposite direction.
“I told you that you could walk out of here,” James rumbled, “if you didn’t go there.” He slowly bent the gun in half and tossed it to the ground.
The man’s eyes widened. “What are you, an oni?”
James shrugged. “Is that some kind of half-ogre?”
Cockbite One swung his sword, hoping to take advantage of his opponent’s distraction, and James caught the blade with his bare hand. Not even a scratch.
“Alison is here,” James said, “so I’m concerned about shedding too much of your blood. You know, ‘kids are impressionable’ and all that shit.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she called from behind James. “You know how many violent movies and VR sims the average kid sees? Last time I checked, it was something like twenty thousand simulated murders and hundreds of thousands of acts of violence by the age of eighteen. Maybe it’ll be educational to see the difference between real and fake.” She smirked. “Or maybe I’m just willing to take the chance that I won’t be horribly traumatized by the deaths of you two buttholes right in front of me.”
“Shut your mouth, baka shi youjo!” Cockbite One screamed, in fury both because James had caught his weapon and the girl wasn’t afraid.
James had no idea what “baka shi youjo” meant, but he doubted it was a compliment. He casually backhanded Cockbite One, and the Japanese mobster sailed through the air to slam into a wall twelve feet away. The crunch of bone echoed through the alley.
“And I didn’t even hit him as hard as I wanted to,” James commented. He glared at the other man. “Do you wanna keep going? I mean, shit, man, I think I’ve proven you can’t do crap to me.”
“Fucking oni,” Cockbite Two snarled, trembling with rage. He pointed his sword toward James as he backed up. “You have signed your death warrant. The Harriken will hunt you down, kill your family, and slice your dick off and feed it to you.”
“Get the fuck out of here before I punt you through a wall,” James replied. “Besides, if I kill your ass here, who is going to tell the Harriken to go cut my dick off and feed it to me? You have to think these things through, motherfucker.”
The Harriken moved toward the wall and grabbed his buddy, then dragged him out of the alley.
James exhaled and shook his head. He’d stepped in it for sure, but sometimes the best way to KISS was to go all-in.
No nuances meant no misunderstandings.
James grabbed his jacket and slipped it back on. He glanced at Alison, who was looking around, eyes slightly unfocused.
“You’ve got a mouth on you, kid,” James said. “Not that those assholes didn’t have it coming.” He nodded toward the entrance to the alley. “Let’s get out of here, in case they bring back some friends who might actually cause me to break a sweat.”
2
They drove in silence several minutes. James wasn’t angry with Alison, but he was pissed at the Ishidas for destroying his new shirt. Maybe he could bill the Harriken somehow.
He chuckled at the thought.
“What’s your address?” he asked. “I should get you home.”
Alison rattled it off. “Thanks for saving me.”
He turned right on La Cienega. “Be smarter next time, kid.”
She looked toward him. “I brought you, didn’t I?”
As he shrugged, the remnants of his shirt knotted up inside his jacket. “Good point.”
James revved
his engine to take a corner aggressively. Nothing calmed him like that sound.
“And what’s with all the stats?” he said. “Is that the kind of shit they teach in school nowadays?” He didn’t remember any of the nuns at his school throwing those kinds of numbers at him.
Maybe if they had, I wouldn’t have ended up such a violent man.
“I don’t have a teacher, Mr. Brownstone,” Alison replied.
He spared a glance her way. “Why don’t you have a teacher?”
“I don’t go to school.”
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t go to school?”
“Nope.”
James shrugged. “Huh. You don’t seem like an idiot, though.”
“I’m kind of home-schooled. My mom helped, but I do a lot of it myself.”
As he turned another corner, he checked his mirrors for suspicious vehicles, drones, or shimmering spots of air. It was hard to guess anymore what kind of tools an individual criminal group might utilize, mystical or otherwise.
Satisfied that he wasn’t about to be tac-nuked by a zombie dragon, James returned his attention to Alison. “Why don’t you go to school?”
“Mom didn’t really want me to, and they don’t have good resources for people with issues like mine.”
He snorted. “What, smart-ass syndrome?”
Alison let out a quiet sigh. “Uh, no. Haven’t you figured it out, Mr. Brownstone?” She paused for a moment. “I’m blind.”
James glanced at her. Now that she mentioned it, the slightly unfocused look in her eyes did remind him of a blind person’s, and when he’d helped her into the truck earlier she’d patted around as if she were making sure the truck was there. But a lot of things still didn’t make sense.
“You can’t be blind,” James argued. “I’ve seen you walk and respond to shit.”
“I do when it has energy, Mr. Brownstone. I see the energy, and understand what it is. I didn’t find your dog because he ran up to me, I found your dog because he was scared and I saw his energy flare. It’s kind of like seeing his fear.”
“Shit, really?” James shook his head. In his line of work he ran into the unusual all the time, so he had no reason to doubt the girl. Hell, he himself was pretty damned unusual for a human.
“Yeah, really.” Alison smiled and shrugged. “I can read braille as well. I have a cool haptic reader Mom got me.”
“Haptic?” James asked.
“It means ‘touch feedback.’ The surface changes, so I can load an ebook and read it in braille. Or I can listen, but I read faster than narrators speak.”
James chuckled a little at the teenage girl knowing fancier words than he did. This little side trip had already become way more involved than he’d planned, though. He needed to get the girl back to her father.
He frowned. “Before we go anywhere else, we need to talk about your dad. I figure he knew you were looking into this, and I’m a pretty shitty adult to let you meet shady fucks in an alley, but here goes nothing: does your father have a clue where you are?”
“He has a clue, in the sense that he knows I’m looking for Mom,” Alison admitted. “Not that he cares, because he hasn’t looked for Mom in the three weeks since she mysteriously disappeared and the cops left.”
“Wait, is that what you meant by ‘he’s doing his thing?’”
Alison’s slender hands curled into fists. “I don’t even know where he is. He took off last week. Left some money for food and told me he had to take care of some business stuff.” She snorted. “Business stuff? That loser can barely count.”
“Is he even your dad?”
“Only because he’s married to Mom. Otherwise, he’s a sperm donor,” she replied caustically.
James grunted. He didn’t have much to say about that. Growing up in an orphanage meant he didn’t know crap about fathers who weren’t the Catholic priest kind.
Alison was obviously a capable young woman, but the timing with the dad screamed “suspicious.”
“Do you think your dad did something to your Mom?”
Alison turned to face him. It was still hard for him to wrap his mind around the fact that she was technically blind. “Oh, I know he did something. Let me guess, you want to know how I know?”
James pulled to a stop at a red light, nodding. It was like Alison could read his mind.
“It’s the energy, Mr. Brownstone. People give off tons of it. When Mom disappeared, his energy turned black.”
“Maybe he was just worried,” James replied.
“Wrong color for that,” Alison told him, looking down. She lifted her head. “It’s also how I know you’re a good guy.”
He snorted. “It’s because you can’t see my ugly-ass face.”
“You’re right, I can’t. I see the true you. If there’s any blessing that comes from my special sight, it’s that I see the purity of everyone’s heart.”
“Then my heart must be stone-cold black.”
Alison furiously shook her head. “No, Mr. Brownstone, it is the most beautiful color I’ve ever seen.”
What the fuck? The kid really was blind.
What does that mean anyway? How the hell do I have a beautiful heart?
Alison’s revelation shut James right up until he arrived in front of her house, a modest white one-story with peeling paint. Weeds were waging war with the grass in the lawn, and James figured they were going to overcome the last vestiges by next month.
“Are you gonna be all right here by yourself?” he asked.
“I’ve been all right for a week. Why wouldn’t I continue to be?”
James frowned, but didn’t say anything. He’d already gotten far more involved than he should have—and a girl like her might end up in trouble if they punted her into the social services system, especially since her abilities were unusual. More than a few corrupt assholes inside and outside the government might want to sell a girl who could see into people’s hearts.
James pulled out his wallet and handed her a business card. Raised sigils lined the border of the card.
“It’s a one-use card,” he explained. “It’ll get to me no matter what, and I’ll know exactly where you are when you use it. But you can only use it once, so use it wisely. Otherwise, just call me on the number you used to tell me about Leeroy. I might answer the phone, or I might not.” He scratched the side of his head. “I… Well, shit! I guess you might need help using it. I didn’t think to make a braille version.”
Alison smirked and slipped the card into her pocket. “I’ll figure something out. Thanks again for everything, Mr. Brownstone.” She reached into the back to pat the sleeping Leeroy. While his master had been busy fighting Japanese mobsters, the loyal dog had fallen asleep.
Hardly the stuff that epic Hachi-style canine legends were made of.
The girl opened the door and carefully hopped down from the truck. James watched as she made her way toward her door, amazed that she could navigate so well with her odd combination of blindness and energy-sensing. Still, if what she had said wasn’t bullshit, she possessed truer sight than most people.
Just who was that girl?
The whole revelation made him wonder. He didn’t even understand where his abilities came from, and he was human. Oriceran had changed everything. The old world order was dead.
Just, no one wanted to admit it yet.
Taking a deep breath, James threw his F-350 into gear to head back to his own place. He hoped the girl would be okay, but he’d already done more than enough to help her.
He pulled away from the curb and rolled down the road.
He revved his engine.
There was one thing he could always count on, and that was the wonderful feeling of power he got when he revved his old Ford. Los Angeles was infested with electric cars, and he wondered how long it would take before people started puttering around on magic carpets woven with Oriceran magic or using wings.
Fifteen minutes brought him to his house, an older wood-frame place. Plent
y of space for him, and a nice upstairs loft he used for storage.
James picked up the sleeping Leeroy and headed toward his front door. He wondered how his dog had gotten out, and so far away from his property.
“You better not secretly be a shifter, Leeroy,” he muttered. “And if you are, you better damn well explain why you’ve shit or pissed inside so many times instead of using the bathroom.”
He set the snoozing dog down. Leeroy woke up and stretched for a moment before letting out a happy bark.
James fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked his door. Most people on his block had gone to smart locks—more tech to hack and fail. Extender drones could even do it remotely.
At least with a physical lock, you had to kick it open. Or blow it open. Both made noise, though—and noise would alert him that someone was there to kill him.
He opened the door, and Leeroy ran in.
“Stick around this time, dog,” James called after him.
He took off his boots. A closet stood right next to the front door, and shoes and boots sat in a neat line on a multi-tiered shoe rack inside. He set his boots in an obvious hole in the line.
James glanced around as he walked farther into the house. Every pile of papers was where it should be. He ran his hand along the wall…no dust.
He chuckled to himself. A stupidly clean house was what happened when you didn’t have any other real hobbies. Plus, it gave him something to do when he was watching cooking shows on television, or listening to barbeque podcasts.
James stepped into his living room and pulled a painting of Saint Jerome to the side. There was a sealed weapons locker with a palm sensor in an alcove behind the painting. Violating KISS annoyed him, but some things he wouldn’t risk. He placed his hand on the sensor, and the locker clicked open.
He put his knife and gun inside, then slipped off his necklace, eyeing it for a moment. He put it in the locker and closed it. He didn’t want to wear that thing unless he had to.
James headed to a black leather recliner in his living room and dropped into it, then pulled out his phone and brought up the LAPD Bounty Hunter Outreach Department app.
Feared By Hell: The Revelations of Oriceran (The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Book 1) Page 2