by Leod D. Fitz
All told, it would probably take me a week to get everything squared away. Less if I could guilt Simon into helping out.
In the meantime, it looked awful, and that was what I needed at the moment.
I stripped out of my clothes and pulled on an extra shirt and a pair of pants I kept in a cabinet. I tucked the knives, brass knuckles and photographs back into one of the desk drawers, made sure I didn’t have anything illicit lying around, and then grabbed a broom and dustpan from the closet.
Then I paused, thinking. I retrieved my mangled jacket and hung it on my chair.
When Maria and Tom showed up I had halfway filled a trashcan with debris.
I looked up, pretending not to enjoy their stunned silence as they scanned the room.
“Hi. Um, I understand you wanted to talk to me about the alarm? I’m so sorry that happened during your viewing.”
“What… happened in here?” Tom asked.
“I think the preferred term is ‘technical difficulties,’” I quipped with a sad smile. “It happens when you have to buy your equipment second hand. Damned thing just went berserk on me. Honestly, I’m just happy I was able to pull the plug before it hit me. I don’t mind telling you, of all the ways to go, dying while you’re prepping somebody else’s funeral is not the end I had in mind.” I nodded towards the savaged jacket. “An inch closer and I’d be on the slab.” I looked between them. “How did the viewing go? Besides the alarm, I mean. I had some trouble getting her into that dress you requested.”
“Oh, no, that was… that was fine.” Tom gave his wife an uncomfortable look.
Maria cleared her throat, apparently undeterred. “We wanted to talk to you about your price. Seeing as how the viewing was interrupted, like it was— “
“Oh, of course, of course.” I cut her off. “There’s no way we possibly accept more than cost. Absolutely no way. I was just talking to my new assistant about that. It’s unprofessional, and it’s embarrassing, equipment malfunctioning like that.”
“Well, yes, exactly. In fact, we were thinking— “
“It’s just a shame the unit broke down tonight.” I continued, “I was using it all yesterday without any problem. It’s just like that story you told me about Nana and the daycare. Like you said, always and only at the worst possible moment, am I right?”
I would have felt bad about manipulating their emotions, but there was no way I was letting them get the entire viewing free. Not with all of the expenses that had been added to my plate already. Honestly, I shouldn’t have offered them at cost to start with. I should’ve offered a ten percent discount then negotiated it to cost. That way they could have left feeling all clever.
We talked for about fifteen more minutes before Maria decided that it wasn’t worth the fight.
I listened to them head back up to the viewing, dropping the broom and dustpan as soon as the door to the stairwell closed.
Trish came down about a minute later. “You okay? They didn’t look happy.”
“Of course they didn’t look happy. They’re at a funeral.”
“I meant— “
“I know what you meant. Look.” I pulled the keys out of my pocket and tossed them to the girl. “Make sure nobody comes in who isn’t here for the viewing, and once everyone leaves, lock up and come get me.”
“Okay, Mr. Walter. When should I tell my boyfriend to pick me up?”
I gave her a look. “You should tell your boyfriend that he’s a sneaky, manipulative asshole who doesn’t deserve you and you never want to see him again.”
Tricia flushed.
I needed to eat, and rest. And with a freezer full of bodies just feet away, I could get both without much trouble.
The snack had to be quick and clean, just in case Maria and Tom decided to make a second run at a free funeral, but after I was done, I curled up in the refrigerated room and shut my eyes.
“Mr. Walter?”
If it hadn’t been for the pool of drool underneath my relaxed maw, I would have thought that Tricia’s arrival occurred simultaneously with me closing my eyes. I sure as fuck didn’t feel like I’d gotten any actual rest.
I sighed, pulled myself upright and headed into the prep room.
“Oh! There you are!”
“Yes, here I am. And there you are. Is there something I can do for you?”
“Uh, well, everyone is gone. I locked up and finished cleaning the viewing room when this guy showed up.”
“Guy? What guy?”
“A short guy. Kind of regular looking. He says his name is Orrin and he needs to talk to you. If you’re still alive.”
I grimaced. “Fantastic. Okay, let him in. I’ll be right up.”
I grabbed Orrin’s photographs out of my desk, tucking them back into the manila envelope I’d found them in and turned to leave. Halfway to the door, I stopped, returned to the desk, and grabbed the brass knuckles. I couldn’t care less about the knives. It wasn’t as though they were more dangerous than the kind that could be picked up at any of a dozen stores around town. But the knuckles were magic. Having those in my possession was, if nothing else, an embarrassment for the chimeras. Anything that hurt them in any way was just fine by me.
Upstairs I found Orrin waiting in the lobby, watched hawkeyed by Trish.
Orrin smiled in relief when he saw the envelope in my hand. “Decided to return my diary, I’m hoping?”
“Oh, right, that. Sorry, I don’t have it back yet. Which is actually a good thing. If it had been with me, the bug guy would have gotten it.”
Orrin winced. “I need it back as soon as possible. Please.”
I offered the envelope to him and he opened it up to peak in. Orrin’s expression tightened and he looked up at me. “Does your brother have my coin as well?”
“Uh, no. The bug guy did manage to get those.”
Orrin’s face fell. “Oh dear.”
“Oh, that actually matters? What are those things, anyway?”
“Charon’s Obol.”
I blinked. “Who does what, now?”
“Charon’s Obol. It’s part of our funeral rite. We… it’s a long story, but after we were changed, we counted ourselves as dead. We went through a funeral rite, each of us, including having an obol placed in our mouth to pay Charon when we reached the river Styx. It’s how we get to our version of paradise.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So you’re afraid you won’t get to heaven if you don’t get it back from them?”
Orrin pursed his lips in annoyance. “No, you don’t understand. Andres may not be a wizard, but over the course of a millennia he’s learned a few tricks. He can form a connection to me through the obol.”
“Oh! Shit! Are you… do you need a warding circle or something? I know some people—“
Orrin shook his head. “It isn’t a killing curse that worries me. My connection to the coin shouldn’t be strong enough for that. But as long as he has that, he can make my life difficult. He’ll be able to track me, and weaken me.”
If Orrin had spent all of these centuries following his brothers, harassing them, showing up at the most inopportune time, suddenly being tracked would throw a major wrench in his work.
“Sorry. I was pretty preoccupied at the time. If you’d come with me, we might have been able to save your coin. And possibly even kill off one of your brothers.”
“If I’d known what was at risk, I likely would have. Instead I used the time to find out where my brothers are staying.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Then what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you and the army of maries be tearing down their door?”
“The dryads are at their strongest in their groves. Every step they take away from their place of power costs them. If they’re more than a mile away from their trees, they are no more powerful than a human, and my brothers have long since learned to avoid forests. I was planning on watching them from a distance, waiting until a few were out looking for you, then ambushing whoever was left behind, hopefully wit
h your help. But Andres will waste no time putting his tracking spell in place. He’ll see me coming.”
I pondered that for a moment. “You know, seeing you coming might not be the advantage they anticipate it being.”
It’s funny how an idea that seems so good at a distance quickly becomes absurd when you’re standing right next to it.
It was the part of town where you could buy a house so cheap you could almost make a profit stripping it down and selling it for parts. The street in question looked like a setting for a zombie apocalypse movie, one fifteen years after the fall of civilization, when nature was starting to reclaim the land.
The house felt like a living thing, watching me as I drove down the block and parked on the street, with the front end of the car pointed back the way I’d come, for a rapid exodus.
I grabbed the two large red containers filled with gasoline and carried them up the front steps with me. The searing blade hung at my waist. There was no point trying to hide it around here, even if I was willing to buy a new jacket to cover it up.
My approach felt too brazen. Too stupid. All it would take was a quick glance out the front window to spoil everything. We should have done this the other way. Orrin should have found a nice spot in front of the house to draw their attention while I snuck in the back way.
Except that they’d never believe Orrin would make a frontal assault. He’d spent centuries hounding them from the shadows, assaulting them when they were weak and alone. If he charged the front door now, they’d know that something was wrong.
Orrin pointed out that if he hadn’t spoken to me when he did, he wouldn’t know that they had the coin, and if that had been the case, he might, theoretically, be stalking them, trying to learn their plans, or hoping to catch one of them leaving the safety of the group.
So, he was out there, trying to draw their attention, while I did something that, in normal circumstances, would have been completely suicidal.
The chimeras, or whoever had squatted here before them, had broken the lock on the front door to get in.
I set the gasoline just inside the front entrance, drew my sword and moved quietly towards the back of the house, sticking to the shadows as best I could.
The place was quite dark. Apparently the chimeras didn’t feel the need to light up their temporary residence. That worked for me.
The smell of corrupted magic permeated the place.
A whisper of motion to my left was all the warning I got, or needed, before Jayr the jumbo jaguar man passed through the air where I had been and slammed into the wall.
I swung the blade after him, and his howl of pain filled the house.
So much for the element of surprise. Hisses, growls, the thrumming of Talus’s wings, a cacophony of bestial noises erupted and all of it was moving towards me.
Damn. I’d hoped I’d be able to shove the blade through someone’s heart before they realized I was there.
My next thrust at Jayr’s midsection accomplished precisely nothing as he tore entirely through the wall and out the other side in order to avoid being skewered.
Behind me, I could hear Eryx, the lizard man’s hiss and someone else’s footsteps. I swung in a wide arc, aiming less to kill than to force my enemies back a step or two.
Eryx obeyed my unspoken request, but Abydos moved closer, catching my arm with two of his own and using my momentum to toss me, spinning, across the room.
I managed to land on my feet, grabbing on to one of the walls with my empty hand while my mind was preoccupied with keeping track of everyone at once.
Talus appeared around a corner, pulling his bracers on over his middle limbs. Abydos slid the necrotic dagger from under his jacket and planted himself in a firm four footed stance in the middle of the room. Eryx wielded a metal club, the power of which caused the lizard man to shiver as it came over him. Jayr re-entered the room through the hole he’d made in the wall.
I looked the four of them over. “Well, shit. Maybe we should have waited for one or two of you to leave the house.”
Eryx grinned evilly at that. The other three didn’t acknowledge my statement at all.
“Oops, sorry. I miscounted. Andres must be making the beer run.”
“Andres is busy,” Talus assured me as he began moving along the far wall from me, trying to force my attention across as wide of a space as possible. “And be grateful for that. He’d have you tied to a table with your entrails hanging out by now.”
“What’s with Andres and my entrails?” I replied. “Does he have some kind of fetish? Is that the only way he can get off, playing with people’s intestines? Because I’m seriously considering starting a support group, if he needs a place to talk about these things.”
Jayr’s hacked out a yowl of rage.
Abydos sneered at me. “You’d best run, shiteater. If you’re still here after Andres finished cursing our wayward brother, your chance for escape will be gone.”
A curse on Orrin. That wasn’t good. Hopefully whatever he was doing wouldn’t paralyze my ally. From what my brother had told me about curses, there were a number of factors which determined what could be accomplished. Since I wasn’t sure how powerful Andres was, or how closely Orrin was linked to his coin, there was no way to know what kind of curse could be in the works.
I needed to disrupt whatever he was working on. But disrupting him involved finding him, and from the looks of things I wasn’t going to be allowed to search the place. Next best thing? If I could make enough of a ruckus, maybe big brother would take a break to see what’s going on.
Reaching into my pockets I pulled out Jayr’s oversized brass knuckles. His growl grew louder at the sight of them.
“I think you’ll find those of limited use in here,” Talus informed me mildly.
I slipped them around my wrists like bracelets, braced myself against the wall behind me, and pushed forward as hard as I could.
Eryx and Jayr both got out of the way, but Abydos, probably feeling especially god-like and undefeatable, elected to trade blows with me as I flew past him. An unnatural pain shot down my side. I howled my agony in harmony with Abydos, who clutched at one of his arms that now ended just past the elbow.
My flight took me entirely through the hole Jayr had made in the wall, and into the kitchen.
The necrotic blade had left a long gash down my right side. I knew now that until the affected tissue was removed, my healing would be stymied.
I scanned the room and spotted a butcher knife on the counter. I grabbed it and sliced into my flesh, hard and fast.
It wasn’t pleasant, but it was a lot better than the dull blade I’d used the first time.
Unfortunately, the chimeras weren’t planning on giving me enough time to perform emergency surgery on myself.
Jayr followed me through the hole while Talus buzzed around the corner. Eryx simply smashed through the wall, leaving a new hole. The way the boards and drywall seemed to explode into shrapnel as he struck them answered the question of what power his magical metal rod had. Apparently, it enhanced his strength.
Fantastic.
I’d only scraped away a few inches of the debilitating injury, but I dropped the knife, tore cabinets off the wall and threw them at Talus to slow him down, then sprang, assisted by the knuckles, across the room to slam into Eryx.
His strength might have been augmented, but nearly two hundred pounds of ghoul hurtling at the speed of a fastball was more than he could stop.
He did manage to avoid my blade and catch my arm, throwing us off course and into the already damaged wall at an angle that bounced us back into the kitchen, instead of through to the living room, as I’d hoped.
Chunks of plaster rained down on top of us as we hit the ground.
Locking the lizard man in a strangling embrace I pushed off the ground like I had back in the bar and spun, slamming him into the ceiling hard enough to crack rafters.
We fell back to the ground, Eryx on top of me. He raised his hand to strike
me, but I pushed us off again, and this time we broke away a chunk of the ceiling, knocking the lizard man hard enough to set his head spinning.
We hit the ground again and I was about to repeat the trick when oversized hands grabbed me by the collar and swung me in an arc that ended with me slamming, head first, through the kitchen counter.
Splinters pierced my skin everywhere, bones were broken, and my nose appeared to be at a complete right angle. Oh, and my left eye was swollen shut.
The damned necrotic blade had rendered me practically human. If I could just take care of that cut, I could at least put up a real fight.
On the plus side, I still had the searing blade in my hand.
Before I could start to make any plans based on that, a hand locked around one of my ankles and I was pulled bodily from the rubble.
Talus buzzed upwards, through the hole Eryx and I had put in the ceiling, hanging onto my ankle.
I spotted a pair of knees about a foot in front of me as I was lifted through the air, and, lacking a better target, I swung hard.
Abydos cried out, clutching at the stump of his knee with two of his three remaining hands. His last hand stuck the necrotic dagger in my thigh, up to the hilt. And left it there.
My cry of pain swallowed his, like a whale consuming brine shrimp, and my free hand clutched at the hilt of the weapon sticking out of me.
Jayr caught both of my hands, and he pulled me tight.
Again, my enemies had forgotten that they were not dealing with a human, I pulled myself towards the giant, opened my maw and bit hard into his side.
The monster let out a howl of pain, but hung on tight, even as my teeth tore into his flesh.
Eryx let out a cold laugh as he stepped forward, brought the metal rod back, and swung for the fences.
If it had landed, the blow would doubtless have shattered any number of bones and likely destroyed several of my organs. Bad enough under normal circumstances, but with the damage being done by the magic of the necrotic blade, which was in fact still sticking out of my flesh, it might have been enough to do me in completely.
Thankfully the blow never landed.