The Vanity Case (Sondra Blake Book 1)

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘We did it!’ Hendricks exulted. ‘Hot damn! I have never been involved in casting something that big before.’

  Morris patted his partner on the shoulder and grinned at Sondra. ‘She’s young.’

  ‘Aww, don’t knock the wonder out of her too fast, Daniel,’ Sondra said. ‘Not everyone in Arcane needs to be bitter and twisted.’

  ‘I’m amazed it worked too,’ Clarke said. ‘We put a park full of orcs to sleep.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Sondra replied, ‘but enough. Now we’re going to go in there and see whether one of them happens to be KonTash.’

  ‘We should be so lucky.’

  ‘More or less my feelings, but we need to go look.’

  ~~~

  ‘Maybe I should learn Orcish,’ Clarke commented as he watched a steadily massing crowd of orcs. There was a shield wall of riot-equipped cops between him and the crowd, but the crowd was growing bigger, and the shouted presumably-insults were getting louder and more frequent. ‘Do you think I should learn Orcish?’

  Sondra turned her head from her contemplation of the same crowd. ‘Well, education is always a good thing, but we have got a translator, and you’re usually with me.’ She paused, looking back toward the crowd, and then added, ‘Well, we have a translator for another month or so.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She’s leaving to have her first child. She’s actually Ortega’s wife. I’ve been pushing to try to get an orc in as a replacement, but it’s hard to find one with the necessary skills and who wants to work for the police. And that crowd is going to break any second.’

  Clarke returned his full attention to the orcs. The shouting was louder and there were obvious signs of gestures. The gestures were not especially nice. ‘What are they yelling?’

  ‘Gang names. Your standard orcish insults. There are a few shouts about equal rights, but I think it’s mostly psyching up for a fight.’

  ‘Standard orcish insults? There are standard orcish insults?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Mostly suggesting that our mothers slept with goblins and that none of us are brave enough to fight a… Well, it was a thing a bit like a rabbit. Orcs usually insult you by suggesting you’re a rubbish fighter.’ Sondra frowned. ‘There are at least five different gangs out there. He’s managed to get a fairly large number of the area’s street gangs to work together over this.’

  ‘It’s not like they’re wrong about the equal rights thing. Orctown’s been getting worse ever since it was renamed. The city doesn’t invest. The schools are crap. Hence not being able to find a translator, right?’

  ‘Yeah. Pretty much.’

  ‘So, uh, what do we do when they do charge.’

  Sondra gave a sigh. ‘Mostly, we stand back here and let the regular cops handle it.’

  They were facing off the crowd on 7th Avenue, just north of West 121st Street. As yet, the riots had not got much south of there and the police were trying to make sure it stayed that way. The southern part of Orctown, between Morningside Park and 5th Avenue, was a sort of buffer zone. More humans lived there, alongside the orcs, and there were businesses in that area which catered more to both species. If anywhere was, that area was an indication that orcs and humans could get along if they needed to, or wanted to. Keeping that area relatively safe was a priority.

  ‘Isn’t there something… Well, something more proactive we could do?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘Yes, but we’d need a lot of power and we’re spread too thin. We’re the backup in case something bad happens.’

  Light flared from the horde of orcs as the first Molotov cocktail flew. It was joined by three more before it hit the ground. The shield wall shifted, each man in it slamming his shield down onto the tarmac and locking it against his neighbours’. The four bottles hit home, flashed into flame, and then died in an instant.

  ‘Of course,’ Sondra said, ‘we’ve been planning for this for over a decade and we’ve had time to make some of our backup kind of proactive.’

  ‘Like fire control spells on the shields?’

  ‘Like fire control spells on the shields,’ Sondra replied, grinning.

  ~~~

  Sondra dropped into the shadow of a BearCat one of the SWAT teams had deployed to a situation on West 127th Street. It had taken several hours, but the riots had been pushed back that far. More or less: there were still running battles being fought through most of Orctown. It was still a matter of containment and damage reduction, except here.

  Bullets rattled against the big armoured transport’s hull as Clarke stepped into cover as well. ‘Are we safe here?’ he asked. ‘That sounds like a machine gun.’

  ‘A light one,’ the SWAT lieutenant they had come to meet replied. ‘It’s an M-sixty or something. That’s not getting through the armour on this thing. Now, if they’ve got an anti-tank rocket or something…’

  ‘I think they’d have used it when you turned up,’ Sondra said. ‘What’s the situation? Aside from being pinned down by a machine gun, obviously.’

  ‘We’ve got up to a dozen orcs with some heavy weaponry holed up in a pizzeria. It’s not a big place and they’re in the back. The angles are lousy for sniping and they’ve got our main point of entry covered with that LMG.’

  ‘Rear entrance?’

  ‘Is accessible, but we know they’ve got plenty of assault rifles and a guard on the door. We go that way, they’re going to know we’re coming and we’ll lose people. We’re ready to do it if there’s no choice, but we didn’t get into this job to run suicide missions.’

  Sondra nodded. ‘Quite right too. Do we have a time constraint?’

  ‘Not as such, but we’re needed just about everywhere and this could tie us up all night.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sondra took her revolver out from under her coat and flipped the cylinder out.

  ‘You still use a Model Thirty-six?’

  ‘That’s pretty much what I said,’ Clarke commented.

  ‘I do,’ Sondra replied, ‘and now you’ll find out why, Clarke.’ She pulled one of the rounds out of its chamber and tucked it away in a pocket before producing a different one and slotting it into place. ‘I mean, you could sort of do this with an automatic, but it’s a lot easier with a revolver. Lieutenant, get ready to storm the place. Tell me when you’re ready.’

  ‘That one bullet’s going to make a difference?’ the lieutenant asked.

  ‘Uh-huh. At the very least, it’s going to disorient them enough for you to have an advantage.’ Stepping around Clarke, Sondra stepped up to the rear of the BearCat and risked a quick look at the pizzeria. The frontage was largely gone and they had placed the machine gun on the counter. She could see the heavyset orc manning it through the shattered glass, illuminated by a neon sign which proclaimed ‘P ZZ’ in glowing red letters. ‘Okay, I can make that shot. Probably.’ Not that it really mattered if she hit the guy. She ducked back and looked around at the lieutenant.

  There was a pause while the man pressed his finger to his ear and listened, then he looked toward Sondra and nodded. Sondra nodded back and then moved around the rear of the BearCat, raising her pistol into a braced firing position. The gunner at the counter took a second to spot her, and had only begun to move his gun around to aim at her when she fired. The bullet crossed the distance between them before he had time to realise he had been shot, burying itself in his upper chest. Then… It was not exactly an explosion, but the sudden detonation of crushing pressure erupting from the triggered charm had the same sort of effect as one. The orc it had hit was torn apart: his right arm was entirely blown off and his ribcage opened up like a melon hit with a high-velocity rifle bullet. The counter was converted into shrapnel and blown out of the front of the shop along the ground, and the shockwave blasted outward, slamming into Sondra with relatively little force, but echoing around the interior of the shop to beat at the orcs left alive in the kitchen at the back.

  ‘Shit!’ came from the lieutenant, followed quickly by, ‘Go, go, go!’

  Sondra t
urned to find Clarke standing beside her. ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  She put a hand over her chest. ‘I’ll have a few bruises tomorrow, but nothing that won’t heal.’

  ‘So, concussion spell on the bullet?’

  There were shouts from inside the pizzeria as the SWAT officers rounded up any of the orcs who were still standing. Sondra looked their way and nodded. ‘Half the NYPD think of us as magic geeks, and half of them think of us as heavy artillery for when the shit really hits the fan. Honestly, we’re both, but I’m not sure which is better.’

  ‘I… have a hard time thinking of you as any kind of geek. I am, sure, but not you.’

  Sondra flashed Clarke a grin and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Flatterer. Let’s go find out what’s next.’

  24th February.

  Clarke knocked lightly on the apartment door, just in case its occupant was asleep. Apparently she was not since the door opened a second or two later, stopping against the chain. A brown eye peered through the gap, then the door was pushed to, there was a clatter, and the door opened fully.

  ‘Detective Delacroix, right?’ SetaGan said. ‘KonTash hasn’t come back.’ It was two in the morning, or just after, and she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt; she had not been to bed and Clarke could not really blame her. Leaning forward, she glanced up and down the corridor. ‘Uh, you’d better come in,’ she added.

  ‘I just– Okay. This won’t take long anyway.’ He stepped through into her lounge as she stepped back. The door closed behind him. ‘We figured he hadn’t been back, but we thought we should check. Uh, I thought we should check on you. No problems? Your son hasn’t tried to contact you?’

  SetaGan walked past him and settled back into her chair. ‘Everyone’s too busy with the riot to worry over me. KonTash is probably out there, right in the middle of it. Idiot. He doesn’t care about me, and he won’t be back.’

  ‘He, uh. He’s kind of leading the riot, Miss SetaGan.’

  The orc’s lips drew back in a disbelieving smile. ‘KonTash? KonTash is no kind of leader. Your information must be wrong.’

  ‘We’ve got fairly strong evidence that he’s been trafficking with a demon. He’s not your son any more, Miss–’

  ‘It’s just SetaGan,’ SetaGan snapped. ‘A demon? You think he…’ She trailed off and Clarke could almost see the thought processes work through as a man’s mother began to believe he might have done something really bad. ‘He’s been possessed?’

  ‘That’s what we think.’

  Her brow furrowed, or furrowed more deeply: orcs had something of a permanent frown thanks to their heavier brows, and SetaGan’s sharp features added to the effect. ‘Stupid…’ She looked up at Clarke. ‘Are you going to have to kill him?’

  Clarke’s eyes widened. He had not really considered what they were going to do about KonTash. ‘Uh, well… Um, there are ways of forcing a demon out of someone, if we can catch it while it’s still in someone. Detective Blake is very experienced and I’m sure she knows how to trap a demon.’

  ‘Yes, she probably can. If you have to kill him, it might be better. When it gets out, he’ll never be trusted again. I will never trust him again. Not that I do now.’

  ‘Uh, well, we’ll see. He may give us no choice. You aren’t sleeping? We’ve pushed most of the fighting up past West One Thirty-Second. You’re high up so the noise is minimal.’

  She managed a half-hearted grin. ‘I work nights. Normally. I’m a, uh, dancer. Work’s closed so I’m catching up on my…’ Her grin became more pensive. ‘My writing.’ She picked up one of her many notepads and then dropped it back onto the arm of her chair. ‘I want to be a writer.’

  ‘I hope you do well with that. I should get back to Detective Blake.’

  ‘You do that,’ SetaGan replied, her expression suggesting that she recognised ‘I don’t know what to say about an orc author’ platitude when she heard it. ‘Why didn’t she come up with you?’

  ‘She’s working on something on the third floor. I’m a little surprised we haven’t heard the explosions by now.’

  ~~~

  The situation was not exactly a great one. An orc who looked like he was barely eighteen had taken his ex-girlfriend hostage. The girl was living with her parents and the mother had managed to get a call through to the police after the boy had stabbed her husband with a fairly large knife. The husband was not going to die because orcs were tough bastards, but the girlfriend was probably not going to survive having her throat cut, which was what was going to happen if someone did not calm the boy down.

  ‘GeKanrin?’ Sondra called through the bedroom door. Boy and girl were inside. He had been bright enough to close the door, which stopped Sondra from aiming a spell at him, though she could have dropped something on the whole room. He probably had not thought of that, but he might have and arranged something to prevent it. ‘GeKanrin, this is Detective Sondra Blake. I’m here to talk to you.’

  ‘Leave us alone!’ A voice, presumably GeKanrin’s, yelled back. ‘We’re in love! Leave us alone!’ The statement was followed by a barely heard whimper in a higher pitch; the girlfriend, NishNara, did not seem to agree but was not saying it aloud.

  ‘I can’t do that, GeKanrin. You’ve hurt someone. You’re holding NishNara against her will.’

  ‘I have a grenade! The pin’s out. You try to stop me–’

  ‘You’ll blow yourself and your girlfriend to fragments. Is that what you want? Is that what you really want, GeKanrin?’

  There was a long pause and then, ‘Just leave us alone.’

  ‘Like I said, I can’t do that. Do you love NishNara?’

  ‘I said I did! You’re not listening to me.’

  ‘I am,’ Sondra said quickly. ‘I heard you. But then you say you want to blow her up. You know what that means in the afterlife, GeKanrin. If she’s lucky, she might be judged as having died a good death, but I doubt it. Either way, you’ll be a suicide. You won’t be seeing her in the Halls of VashTa Veron. It’ll be the Morass for you. Maybe both of you. Do you want that, GeKanrin?’ All she got was silence, which was maybe better than more yelling, but she needed to keep him talking. ‘Is that what you want, GeKanrin?’

  ‘KonTash says we should take what we want. I want NishNara.’

  ‘Think about that. Let go of that grenade, and you won’t ever get her. Anyway, you don’t want to listen to KonTash. He’s… not quite himself, and he doesn’t have your best interests at heart.’

  ‘He’s leading us to victory.’ The words were a little more muffled than GeKanrin’s previous statements; the boy was not so sure now.

  ‘We’ve got eighty-three of your brothers in lock-up. We got them when I put them all to sleep in the park. We’ve hauled in far more during the night. Does that sound like victory to you? Does anything he’s said or done really make you think he wants you to win? KonTash is no warlord, and he’s no kind of shaman either. You know it, don’t you, GeKanrin? You’re smart enough to realise this whole situation is messed up, and it’s KonTash’s fault.’

  ‘Shit! This is so messed up.’

  ‘Right. Why don’t you let me come in and we’ll take care of that grenade, and then we can work from there.’

  ‘I-is RockVarK okay?’

  Sondra rolled her eyes. ‘It takes more than a knife in the guts to stop an orc. You know that, GeKanrin. He’s angry, but he’ll live.’

  ‘Okay. Uh, you better come in. I’m not sure where the pin is.’

  With a soft sigh, Sondra turned the handle and pushed the door open. You had to wonder what someone was thinking when they yanked the pin from a grenade as a threat and then didn’t check where it had gone, but… ‘Don’t worry,’ she said to the scared-looking teenager sitting on the bed, ‘we’ll find it.’

  ~~~

  The sky was a cool blue though the sun was barely visible through the canyons of New York City. The gangs had taken longer to leave the streets to the cops this morning and there were still sporadic reports of violen
ce coming into the command centre, but the primary riot was over for another night.

  ‘You look tired,’ Clarke commented as he handed Sondra a plastic cup with a brown liquid in it. He refused to call the stuff coffee: it was coffee in the same sense that vinegar was a form of wine.

  ‘I resemble that remark,’ Sondra replied. ‘Though the pot doesn’t have much to talk to the kettle about.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m replacing adrenaline with caffeine and hoping it’ll keep me on my feet until they call it for the night.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be long. There hasn’t been anything major through for almost an hour.’

  As if prompted by the statement, the comms officer lifted his head. ‘We’re standing down. Day shift will be here in ten minutes.’

  ‘Right,’ Sondra said. ‘Time for us to pack up and leave. Get a full eight hours and a good breakfast. Or dinner maybe by that time. Whatever, meet me in the office when you’re fit to be there.’

  Clarke more or less grunted his reply. He felt like he had been wearing the same suit for a week. ‘Huh. See you next week then.’

  ~~~

  There was an orc in a business suit sitting in the foyer at Arcane’s HQ when Sondra walked in. He got to his feet when he saw her, and her heart sank a little as she recognised him: TinshoKa, master shaman and KonTash’s ex-mentor.

  For an orc, he was not especially tall, but that still put him a foot taller than Sondra when he held himself straight as now. Unlike many of his kind, TinshoKa had not gone prematurely bald – it seemed to be a thing with orc males – but he shaved his dark hair back aside from the braided tail he grew from the back of his head. It was probably a statement or a tradition thing since it was normal for orc women to braid their hair, but not for men. His eyes were a dark, dark green, which matched his skin. He was not as bulky as some orcs, but he was still an orc, and a proud one at that.

  ‘MenTaNin TinshoKa,’ Sondra said, mustering a smile. ‘It’s an honour to meet you again.’

  ‘Detective Blake,’ the orc replied, bowing his head. ‘I understand that you believe one of my ex-students has fallen prey to a demon.’