Love for the Cold-Blooded. Or

by Alex Gabriel

  Long story short: Everything was off, and it made him grumpy. Pat hated feeling grumpy. It was the worst.

  When Princess and Paladin were trying to puzzle out a series of clues that were mostly incredibly annoying to Pat, he’d had enough.

  “Ay, save the game,” Pat called, and tossed down his datapad. “I don’t know, I’m kinda off. Maybe I’m tired or something. We’re just gonna get killed like this.”

  They watched a movie instead. Strangely enough, it was Nick’s idea, and he didn’t even put up a fight when Pat insisted on a recent action blockbuster he’d missed. The movie was awesome — chock-full of lengthy chase scenes, fights on top of moving vehicles, attractive people in skimpy clothing, and all manner of other cool things. The screens made it look amazing, like they were right in the middle of the action, and Nick’s critical commentary (“helicopters cannot fly through tunnels of this size, Patrick”; “it is impossible to remain active for this long when fully immersed in water of near-freezing temperature, Patrick, and no, being a total badass has no influence on the matter”; “the likelihood of not being hit when out in the open and fired on by five opponents with machine guns is practically the same as that of walking through a wall because of a fortuitous alignment of atoms, Patrick”) just added to the fun. Nick cheered right up too, perhaps bolstered by the joy of catching others in bad science, or else by being so utterly right.

  Pat had no idea when he’d fallen asleep, or even how — the movie wasn’t exactly soothing, what with the constant explosions and firefights. He’d managed somehow, though, because he woke up slumped against Nick, face half-smushed against his shoulder, nose warmed by the side of his neck. Nick was dead to the world, face slack and mouth open, looking totally stupid with his head lolling back on the sofa’s backrest.

  He was going to get a wicked crick in the neck if he slept like that for long. Pat extricated himself carefully and then pushed and prodded at Nick until he shifted; another moment of prodding, and he succeeded in getting the man’s legs up so he could stretch out lengthwise. Nick promptly rolled over and snuggled in against the sofa’s backrest, giving a sleepy grumble.

  The AI had dimmed the lights and thrown a pleasant nighttime view of an artfully overgrown garden pavilion on the screens. It made this corner of the lab almost cozy.

  Halfway out the door, Pat hesitated and changed directions. The door to Nick’s bedroom was closed and locked, but…

  “Ay, he’s going to get cold,” Pat said softly. “I’m getting him a blanket. Unlock the door, will you.”

  A second passed; then, the lock clicked and the door swung open soundlessly.

  He was already back in the kitchen by the time the other thing occurred to him. He turned right around and went back up into the entrance hall, cavernous and almost eery-looking in the dim automatic lights the AI put on for him.

  “Please note, Ay: Tonight’s visit by Padraig Ouest was free of charge.” Pat put his head back to look at the tiny, black optical pick-up in the corner by the stairs. “Not official. Just, you know. Don’t transfer any payment, okay.”

  He half expected he was going to have to wrangle the system for that one, but when he got back to his post, shed the metaphorical cloak of Padraig the Hooker and reassumed the identity of Patrick the Night Manager, the AI had already flagged the evening’s companionship as ‘complimentary (promotional offer / customer service)’. It had also bumped Padraig’s agency up a little more in the overall rankings. Looked like good customer service was rewarded in the Andersen household.

  Promotional offer? Yeah, sure. Close enough, Pat guessed.

  ~~~~~

  “Patrick! It’s wonderful to meet you at last. I have heard so much about you. We all expect great things of you, my boy.”

  Sir Toby was shorter than he looked on TV, and somewhat more plump. He was considerably more imposing in person, however, which should have been impossible, considering his cheeks were ruddy with good cheer and he was beaming benevolently in a manner never seen in any of the highlight reels or showdown battles.

  Personal magnetism, Pat decided — the kind you could never achieve if you didn’t have it from the start. Sir Toby had it in spades, enough to make even the mustache work. Every other mustache Pat had seen in his life had looked hopelessly douchey, but on Sir Toby, it was distinguished. The salt-and-pepper thing he had going helped too, of course.

  Pat squeezed a little too tightly as he shook the man’s hand. He was slightly flustered, although he didn’t know why. He had no idea what kind of great things Toby had been led to expect from him, though. It seemed unlikely they were connected to urban planning, so it was probably better not to inquire.

  Sir Toby wore a tailored afternoon suit of the highest quality, jacket open over a tastefully striped waistcoat. An emerald-colored silk scarf was slung around his neck with a seeming negligence that spoke of impeccable good breeding. As he turned to welcome the next minion to arrive, Pat noted the scarf was a perfect match for his flawlessly tucked pocket square.

  “Catalina, my dear, I’m so glad you could make it. I assure you the experience will be well worth the trip you undertook to get here.”

  Pat drifted off to mingle, and to look around a little. Sir Toby was holding the meeting in a conference center downtown, the sign outside proclaiming the room was booked for the “Workshop: Youth in Municipal Politics”. Sir Toby had probably chosen this cover because it sounded so boring that nobody was likely to try listening in.

  Several bite-sized canapés and a tiny bottle of apple juice later, Pat had caught up with everyone he knew and chatted a bit with a bunch of the others, and was feeling somewhat better about the entire thing. There was the usual mix of challengers’ kids of suitable age to start out on minion duty, with the youngest being Cassiopeia’s fifteen-year-old daughter Klytemnestra (“call me Nessa”). There was also a decent-sized contingent of Sir Toby’s loyal lower-level employees, and — as Pat was relieved to note — no mercenaries.

  Good. The presence of mercenaries inevitably announced a rather more brutally militaristic plot than Pat was comfortable with. Pat hadn’t considered it likely Sir Toby would go that route, but it was good to know for sure.

  Once everyone had arrived and been personally welcomed by Sir Toby, they found seats among the rows that had been set up facing the podium. Pat sat next to the tall girl who’d come in after him — Catalina, Toby had said.

  “Yo,” he greeted her, and held out a friendly fist. She obligingly bumped it with her own, giggling. “I’m Patrick, Serpentissima’s son. Call me Pat, everyone does.”

  The girl’s eyes widened a little at the mention of Pat’s mom. “Wow, nice. I’m Catalina — Cat. My dad’s Jaguar.”

  She giggled again as she extended and retracted her claws for him. Pat made appropriately awed noises while inwardly struggling a bit with the weird disconnect of the super hot, built guy he’d lusted after since puberty — the guy he’d, not to put too fine a point on it, jerked off to more often than he could count — being a father with a kid almost as old as Pat. A kid who was, at this very moment, giggling helplessly over having inadvertently sliced open the cushion of the chair in front of her.

  “So what has your dad been up to? Is he okay?” Pat’s sisters were always exhorting him to network, and that’s what this was, making contacts and picking up any and all info he could get. What else?

  “Oh yeah, he’s great! I have two brothers and a sister, and we live near my mom’s home town in the rain forest. I’m not supposed to say where, but it’s a really cool place. Dad’s retired, except for his rain forest activist thing, and recently he’s gotten really passionate about bird watching.” Cat giggled, for no particular reason that Pat could make out. “Did you know there are more species of parrots in the world than —”

  But Pat didn’t hear the rest, distracted by the mental image of Jaguar as a staid bird-watching family man. That was just… bizarre. Yes, that was the word. Bizarre.

  He was
grateful when Sir Toby took the podium and the lights were dimmed for his presentation. If Jaguar had put on fifty kilos, grown a shaggy beard and taken to wearing sweatpants at all hours, then Pat emphatically did not want to know.

  After the usual introductory slides (‘welcome, my minions’, ‘serve me faithfully and the rewards will be immeasurable’ and ‘fail me and your torment will never cease’), Sir Toby got right to the point.

  “This is the Crystal of Power,” he said, the capitalization clearly audible. The picture of a large, oval-cut gemstone flicked onto the screen behind him. In the next slide, Sir Toby was dramatically holding the Crystal aloft; it wasn’t much smaller than his head. “It is a focus of great occult power, recently retrieved by an expedition from the eldritch tomb of an ancient god.”

  Nobody reacted overtly, but Pat saw a few nodding heads in the rows ahead of him.

  “As a power source, it is without equal. It is a key component of my scheme, powering my new invention…” The next picture showed Sir Toby standing in an underground lair next to a tall metal apparatus with a crystal canon mounted on top. Sir Toby was wearing an old-fashioned but entirely elegant cape lined with dove-gray satin, and was presenting the apparatus with the flair of a stage magician unveiling his most astonishing trick. “The Mind Control Ray!”

  Pat was not ashamed to say he was one of the minions who gasped. Next to Pat, Cat punctured her notebook with her claws (judging by the way the thing looked, it was far from the first time this had happened).

  Seriously, a mind control ray? Wicked cool.

  “Under the influence of my Mind Control Ray, every citizen in the entire city will be friendly, polite and non-aggressive, not to mention inclined to regard my wishes as tantamount. Building on this foundation…” And so forth. It wasn’t a hugely original scheme, except perhaps for the part where Sir Toby’s dominion would include a tribute of all high-quality imported teas and biscuits. But Pat liked the way Sir Toby looked when he explained how he planned to eject the entire top level of the present municipal government, remove corrupt structures on all levels, and instate proper regulations. He looked… not angry, but determined. Firm. Competent.

  So, yeah. Pat wasn’t gonna lie, he was kinda disappointed at the lack of android dolphins, but he consoled himself with the mind control ray and the prospect of reasonable zoning policies.

  Sir Toby wrapped up his presentation by introducing the official minion uniforms. They were simple, but tasteful — a choice between charcoal three-piece suits with emerald waistcoats and emerald sleeve dresses with charcoal jackets (“anyone with no documented experience of running, climbing and fighting in a dress will please note they are required to choose the suit, regardless of personal fashion preferences”). All tailored, of course; measurements would be taken immediately. The outfits came complete with tasteful green masks that Sir Toby assured them would not impede their vision in the slightest, and would hold fast during even the most rigorous physical exertion.

  Pat very carefully kept a straight face all through the uniform intro. He was an adult, after all, and when Toby spoke of rigorous physical exertion, obviously Pat was not imagining anything other than rousing fights with superheroes, daring chases across rooftops, and wild scrambles through secret lairs and abandoned industrial facilities. Of course not.

  “Lastly,” Sir Toby said, “I want you to meet my right hand, the woman who is going to be coordinating my activities and holding all the strings. You will afford her all the cowering fear and mindless obedience she is due as my second-in-command. Please welcome — the Lady Helena!”

  Fortunately, the storm of applause and whistles entirely drowned out the sound of Pat saying “fuck me”.

  Hell entered from the side, striding to the podium to take a gracious bow. She was wearing an emerald floor-length dress Pat had never seen before, complete with satin gloves and green jewels gleaming at her throat. No more time on the minion rotation for Hell… she’d graduated to trusted lieutenant.

  Briskly, Hell sketched out the timeline of the operation, put down the principles for organizing everyone’s schedules, divided the minions into task-forces, and had lists of equipment handed out that every minion was to carry at all times. Practical to the end; Pat approved. He wasn’t sure why a toothbrush was on the list, but he could definitely vouch for the usefulness of a satellite phone, an emergency beacon, a fire blanket and some trail bars.

  “She’s awesome,” Cat breathed, when the thunderous applause was dying down. She didn’t even giggle.

  Pat beamed at her. He couldn’t claim to have had a direct hand in Helena’s awesomeness, but he still felt a not insignificant measure of proprietary pride. “Want me to introduce you?”

  “Are you kidding me? Hell yes!”

  Hell yes indeed.

  “Patrick,” Hell said, and grinned wickedly before pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. He oofed a little as he returned it, and then tried not to smile too obviously as Cat fawned all over his big sister, the light of challenger worship kindling in her eyes.

  “If you end up with Jaguar’s kit as your right hand, I’m taking all the credit — fair warning,” Pat told her later, when the meeting had wrapped up.

  “Catalina does appear quite enthusiastic,” Hell replied, hardly looking up from a list of something or other she’d been handed by one of the senior minions. “As for you, Patpat, I’m making sure you have weeknights off. You may have to take some vacation days when things heat up, but you won’t need to give up your promising night job. However, you will have to take a hiatus from university. Neither Sir Toby nor I plan on folding early.”

  Actually, hell no, and Hell no too.

  Pat knew better than to protest openly, but no way was he taking a hiatus. He was a student, preparing to be an urban planner; that was his priority. That was who he was. The minion thing was just a family obligation. Of course Hell didn’t get it — she’d always lived and breathed the family business. But Pat wasn’t going to put his life on hold because of Sir Toby and his plans to take over the city, mind control ray or no.

  This would work just fine without radical measures. Pat would make it work. He’d started his term papers ahead of time to guard against being thrown off schedule by an occurrence exactly like this, and had already begun to study for the end-of-term exams. Pat might have to retake a course or two, depending on how things went, but he wouldn’t lose the entire semester.

  Pat was quite happy with the way things were going in his life, thank you very much. He was going to keep them running right along.

  Chapter Eight

  Lying is not for amateurs. Get plenty of practice.

  Don’t count your chicks before they’re devoured — wasn’t that what the proverb said? Pat should have listened. He should have known better. He’d been so sure he had everything under control, could keep it running right along, getting more and more awesome… and instead, it all went to hell the very next night.

  In retrospect, it wasn’t even a surprise how it went down. Pat should have know to expect it; should have had some kind of contingency plan tucked away in the back of his mind. But he wasn’t expecting it. And he didn’t have a contingency plan. And so it all came crashing down around Pat’s ears in a huge, truffled clusterfuck of horrible. Because the next evening, at around two o’clock in the morning, Nick ordered a pizza with truffles, smoked pheasant and quail eggs, and then walked in on Pat while he was distributing the toppings along the virtual grid laid out in the Nicholas Andersen Pizza Topping Manual.

  “Dan-ger-ous, watch out watch out,” Pat sang, innocently bopping along to the not-so-dulcet tones of BadMadRad. Twenty-four hard-boiled little eggs in two neat circles made three eggs for each slice. Three orderly circles of truffle shavings laid down carefully in relation to the eggs so everything was nice and symmetrical. And three circles of smoked pheasant slices, uniformly cut, all angled in exactly the same —

  “Patrick?” said Nick, disbelieving.

 
Pat spun around so fast he nearly swept the pizza straight off the counter, bumping his hip hard into the table’s edge. He hardly felt it, because that was Nick, Nick where he absolutely wasn’t meant to be: standing in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at Pat.

  “Patrick,” Nick said again, but now his voice was dark, heavy with accusation. It was the exact tone superheroes used when they’d run to ground their most hatred adversaries.

  It didn’t compute at all. Pat’s brain spun helplessly, trying to reconcile Nick with the kitchen doorway, a place where he simply did not belong; trying to break through the numbing fog of ice-cold terror to grasp the situation and come up with something to say, something to do.

  “Uh,” Pat got out, fighting the sudden constriction around his chest to draw in a gasp of air. “I — I can explain.”

  Oh gods, seriously, that’s what he was going with — he could explain? That was only marginally better than “it’s not what it looks like”.

  Pat gulped down another shallow breath of air. He was dizzy, and in another moment he would start hyperventilating, and oh gods, how had he not seen this coming? Of course Nick would follow up on the pizza mystery. Of course Nick would want to see for himself just where his so-called delivery service assembled his gourmet dinner. It was Nick, for god’s sake, he was a scientist, he always wanted to know exactly how things worked —

  Nick did not move. He was so still he didn’t even seem to be breathing, posed in the doorway like a statue. He was wearing his faded work jeans and a sweatshirt with four dark streaks of grease along the front, where he must have wiped his hand in the middle of fiddling with something. His jaw was set and hard, his expression chiseled from granite.

  Explain. Explain, right, he was waiting for Pat to explain as he’d promised, but the thing was, Pat couldn’t. There was no explanation. Padraig Ouest the Hooker had absolutely no business in the mansion’s kitchen, making Nicholas Andersen’s pizza, and they both knew it.

  Maybe if Pat had been more like Helena, or like Boadicea or Zenobia. Maybe if Pat had been better at evasion and lying and — but no. He didn’t even want to, was the thing. He didn’t want to lie to Nick. He’d never wanted to, and now… now the mere thought was enough to make him nauseous.