The others collapsed to their knees or onto chairs. Eastwood splayed out on the ground, his chest heaving.
“Well, that could have gone better,” Ree said between gasps. She stood up and went to the bar to draw a pitcher of water. The pitcher went on a tray, along with several glasses. Ree balanced the tray against her hip and brought the water back to the group. This was something she could control, a chance to do something useful and distract herself from the totally-not-ominous-please-make-it-stop pounding at the door.
Grognard took the mug with a nod, then poured glasses and handed them out. “The wards will hold. Not forever, but long enough to put together some heavier weaponry and take that thing out. With preparation and this arsenal”—he gestured to the room—“we should be able to take on pretty much anything.”
Several heads nodded, muttering agreement. Eastwood just kept breathing. Ree had never tried to use a lantern power ring, but if their rules applied, it would be a herculean task to make and maintain a construct like he’d done. It just might have saved their lives.
Ree took a glass of water and went over to the scruffy man. She leaned over to get his attention.
“You okay?”
Eastwood lifted his head and opened bloodshot eyes, then set his head back down and lifted himself up to a sitting position. He took the water and chugged the whole thing in one go. When it was all done, he sighed and said, “Thanks. You?”
“Didn’t get touched. That’s a hell of a feat you just pulled off.”
“Had to be done.” He turned to the group. “Don’t think I could do it again anytime soon, though.”
Drake set his rifle down against the table. “Perhaps we should reexamine the office exit, then flank the creature.”
“No. The wards work best when I’m in the shop,” Grognard knocked on his chest. “Proximal resonance. We’ll have to take it head-on. Joe, you’re the artillery here. What can you do?”
Uncle Joe was wrapped tight around his binder, shaking. He didn’t respond.
“Joe?” Grognard said.
“Nope. No. Not me. I’m no hero,” he said.
Chandra knelt down next to Joe and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Joe, we’re all in this. We all get out or no one gets out.”
Joe was shaking, his hands wringing, eyes downcast. “I’ve already lost too much. I just spent five hundred dollars in singles, and for what? We’re still screwed. We should just reinforce the door and wait until they give up.”
Grognard shook his head. “Turtling might work in V:TES, but I’m not going to just sit on my ass and buff the door all night.”
Wickham said, “If there’s such an arsenal in here, why do we need to worry about the door? We hit it with everything when it comes inside, then we dust our hands off and walk away. It’s not complicated, people.”
“By all means, then, give us your plan, Lieutenant,” Drake said. Ree could hear the hint of anger in his voice, though he hid it with all the skill of a nineteenth-century-esque gentleman. Ree still wasn’t 100 percent sure whether his home world was an alternate Earth, a parallel Earth, a subcreated Earth, or just an Earth specifically designed to be confusing.
Wickham crossed her arms, striking a cover-ready pose as she thought. “It shouldn’t be hard to create a field of cross fire, then lay down wards to channel it into a kill zone.”
“Why even let it inside? Can’t we put the wards on the threshold, open the door, and take pot shots from in here?” Ree asked.
“We could,” Drake said, walking back into the group. His head was bandaged up, making an odd sight with his goggles over a covered eye. “But the ward lines will disrupt any magical offensive, even with monodirectional wards.”
“So what will work?” Ree asked. “It’s not like we don’t have options,” she said, gesturing to the store side of the room.
“I’m not letting those things in my store, Ree. Discussion over,” Grognard said.
Talon continued, “Anything associated with Theseus will give us a boost, or barring that, something Greek will work a bit better than normal.” She went to the sword wall and pulled down a simple one-handed sword. “This Greek or Babylonian?”
Grognard shook his head. “Phoenician. Don’t have any Greek in stock.”
“I have a whole Greek kit set up . . . in my shop,” she said, setting the sword back on its hanger.
Talon said her magic was still Geekomancy, but from where Ree stood, it was a whole different animal. Where Ree connected with characters for superpowers or skills with her magic, across her full range of fandom, Talon’s Geekomancy drew directly on the fighting styles and weapons. If Ree was a Geekomantic Bard, Talon was All-Fighter, All-The-Time. Talon could match weapons and the armor to a movie or show to min-max her way to godly Fighter status. But she was more than dangerous enough with any weapon that she could tie to a film.
“So, barring that, just heavy-duty magic,” Ree said, trying to keep the conversation rolling in the get-shit-done direction, since the pounding on the door wasn’t letting up, though she noted that the zot sounds were a lot softer and the gaps between thuds shorter.
“The combined efforts of a half-dozen blasts and blows rolled off of that creature like it was an afternoon drizzle. Merely repeating our previous folly stands little chance of success. We must think smarter, not bigger,” Drake said, adjusting a gauge on his rifle.
“So why are you talking?” Wickham said.
Something inside Ree snapped. That’s it.
“You know what? Fuck you, you worthless piece of shit. You belittle my friends, you can’t be bothered to pick a real weapon for a fight, and you’ve got your head stuck so far up your own ass that you can use your boobs for goggles.”
Wickham’s head snapped back like she’d been slapped. Another minute, and Ree might just do that anyway. Fuck with me is one thing. Fuck with my people and you can bleed out in a cold alley right in front of me while I keep sipping my cappuccino.
Ree had raised the rage stakes, and Wickham was calling. “You arrogant, foul-mouthed imbecile! I could have left you all in the dust during that fight, but no! I was a team player. I may not be a Hogwarts nerd, but I got in there and did my part. If that’s not enough for you morons, that’s not my problem. But if you insist on shooting down every single one of my ideas . . .” Wickham tore at the harness, struggling and twisting in place.
She abandoned the effort and continued her rant. “Ideas that will actually solve the problem instead of just creating more chances for your merry band of pathetic losers and shut-ins to try to capture a sliver of the hope of echoing the glory of impossible-bodied heroes from facile excuses for literature and film!”
Ree let the ridiculous offensiveness of the statement roll over her, then cracked her head to the side. No one else was interjecting, and Ree was perfectly happy to take on this fight herself.
“I get that you’re afraid of getting your designer gear even the tiniest bit dirty while the rest of us do the hero-ing, but why do you even come here, if you think so little of us? Grognard’s booze is great, but if you have to soil your designer faux-vintage frock just sitting on the bar stool, why not grace more refined establishments with your beatificness?”
Ree took another step toward Wickham. “Or maybe you’ve gotten your finely toned condescending ass kicked out of all of the chichi places, and this is the closest you can get to a scene bar? Worst of all, do you just come to mock us, to sip your scotch and laugh at all the freaks? Please tell me there’s more to you than tearing people down, because right now, all I see is everything that’s wrong with entitled high-culture bougieness.”
Wickham stepped forward like she was going to escalate, but she didn’t raise a hand. She got up into Ree’s face, and said in a slow, measured, but obviously furious tone, “I don’t have to justify myself to you, you self-righteous, infantile fangirl. Instead of hard work, you have DVD boxed sets. Instead of making your own artifacts, you buy them off of eBay. Every
thing special about you was made by someone else.”
Against all odds, Ree managed to pass her Willpower check and did not lay Wickham out on the floor with a punch. Instead, the two women stared at each other with dagger eyes.
An interminable moment later, Grognard interposed himself between the women, his powerful frame forcing them apart.
“Cut it out. We have bigger fish to fry. Wickham, if you think that little of my shop and my patrons, you can consider yourself un-invited. Don’t ever set foot in here again, effective as soon as we get ourselves out of this situation.”
Wickham backed off a step, turning her back on Ree.
Ree cracked her back, then turned to face the group. She let the rage seep out in one long breath. “So. Firepower.” She walked to the collected geeks licking their wounds. “I’m guessing piercing weapons will be best. Maybe we can pin the thing into the sewer if we stick it enough times. The bugger is almost too big for the tunnel in the first place.”
Talon picked up on Ree’s thread. “We can make a crosshatch of weapons, do the pike square right. Add that to some piercing ranged weapons, maybe a few explosions . . .”
Eastwood shook his head. “Still won’t be enough. I’ll bet the Dorkcave that it has a supernatural resistance. If we don’t find the thing’s vulnerability, it won’t matter how much abuse we heap on the thing. Before anything else, we need a Detect Weakness effect.”
“On it.” Ree went to the comic aisle, her mind already giving her a solution. She ran her fingers over the place cards until she reached F, then started scanning issues of Fantastic Four. The Inhumans character Karnak could find the weakness in any person, object, or plan—just what the doctor ordered. His oddly precise power meant he was never a major-league threat, but he made an excellent secondary foil or, in this case, the ally who offered the key to the puzzle.
She flipped back to some of the earliest Fantastic Four comics, since using a first appearance would give her the biggest dose of the character’s power. She might be able to use the Ultimate-verse version or a recent issue, but if the creature had magical protections, she might need to overcome that protection even when it came to finding a weakness.
The folks at the bar kept chatting while Ree flipped through bagged and boarded comics—#48, #47, #46 . . .
“Here!” Ree said, pulling out a comic that proclaimed AMONG US HIDE THE INHUMANS! in typical Stan Lee/Jack Kirby bombasticity. This was the only copy on hand, and if Ree’s suspicion about needing its primacy was right, they’d get only one shot.
Ree brought the comic over to the group. “So here’s the next question. Do we try to hedge our bets and pick a variety of things we think could work, then try to use one as soon as Karnak here helps us out, or do we risk a quick peek just to do the scouting on horny and persistent out there?”
The group considered. Chin in hand like a standing Thinker, Drake tapped his cheek with a finger, then said, “It would be unwise to trust that we will be both wise enough and fortunate enough to have preselected the right solution. I believe we should separate the two steps.”
Eastwood shook his head, arms crossed. “There’s no guarantee we can contain that thing even once more. When that door opens, we have to leave abso-frakking-lutely everything on the table.”
Chandra clicked her tongue ring against her teeth, pondering.
Uncle Joe calmed his shaking for a moment, saying, “We can’t let that thing in here. No way.” Joe looked like the movie version of shell-shocked. Ree didn’t know if she’d ever seen PTSD firsthand in an identifiable way; it’s not like people wore hats advertising their mental health challenges. But one way or another, she wasn’t betting on him making it through another skirmish.
Wickham had adjourned to the bar. Beside her sat a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, two hundred-dollar bills out next to it. Whatever else Ree could say about Wickham, the woman wasn’t a thief.
“We have to split it up,” Grognard said. Ree looked back to the group, leaving Wickham to her top-shelf moping.
The barkeep continued, “There are too many possibilities. We can’t guarantee we’ll be ready with the solution. I’ll open the door, and I want Talon and Eastwood with me to hold it off. Ree, you use the comic and get the intel. When you’ve got it, tell us and we close the door. Then we make the rest of the plan. All right?”
The group nodded. Talon swapped her longsword out for a naginata, and Eastwood added a blue lantern ring next to his green.
“I don’t know whether to hate Geoff Johns or call him a genius,” Ree said, gesturing to the rings.
Eastwood shrugged. “It works. Darkest Night’s the best thing DC’s done in years.”
“I was always more of a Jack Kirby cosmic girl,” Ree said.
The other geeks gathered themselves up, each preparing in their own eccentric ways. Uncle Joe wobbled to his feet, muttering under his breath as he rearranged several cards into the first page of sleeves. Chandra hauled a shield approximately the size of Grognard across the room. Ree met the punk halfway, and they walked the scutum together, leaving it against the interior wall next to the door. Shade was still out for the count. Grognard had produced a blanket from somewhere and had it draped over the unconscious techie. Drake attached a bayonet to the end of his rifle, and had a black crystal loaded in the chamber.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one. Do I want to know what it does?” she asked as the group made themselves ready by the door.
“No,” said Drake and Grognard, in chorus.
“Roger that,” Ree said. She had her lightsaber strapped to her belt, phaser tucked into her apron, and had retrieved the issue of Fantastic Four #45, removing it from its case. It’d been a while since she handled a comic this old with her bare hands. As an undergrad she’d held an Amazing Fantasy #1 at the Rollins Rare Books Library, but that was with gloves. Now even touching the issue gave her a charge.
Ree flashed back to something Eastwood had told her, about a friend of his tearing up an Action Comics #1 to fight off a tornado, and lost herself for a moment in the fantasy of how insanely cool that would be.
The sound of splintering brought her back to reality. The zot! of Grognard’s wards had vanished completely.
“That’s our cue,” Grognard said, releasing the locks in record time.
“Have fun!” Wickham said from the bar, waving with her middle finger. Ree’s ears burned, but she didn’t have time to be snippy back.
The brewmaster counted in a hurried voice, “One.”
Ree held the comic over her head, in both hands. I didn’t even get to read it, she realized. She’d probably read the issue some time in the past, but never the original glossy, with its faded colors and smell of history.
“Two.” Drake exhaled, his rifle held vertically beside Grognard, Eastwood at his side.
“Three.”
Chapter Five
Karnak Knows Best
All at once, Grognard threw open the door, Eastwood tossed a fresh flare into the darkness, Talon and Chandra set the road-block-pike formation, and Ree tore the comic.
A flash of magic washed up her hands, arms, and then to her eyes.
The Minotaur loomed large in her vision, its fur burnt and horns partially melted by Grognard’s wards. But it kept coming, rushing forward at the opened door.
And as it moved, Ree saw the Minotaur in a combination of a first-person shooter HUD and a Terminator’s threat assessment screen. Circles popped up over the Minotaur’s horns, hide, axe, and the ring through its nose.
Minotaur—Huge Size
Axe—Huge
Hide—Hardened against magic, piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning
Horns—Deals damage to magical wards
Nose ring—Vulnerable only to grappling. If removed, will remove magical protection on hide.
“Got it!” Ree shouted.
The Minotaur dove forward, leading with its horns, trying to force its way inside the door while Grognard and the others pulle
d on the heavy iron ring to close the door again.
“Watch out!” Ree shouted as the horn broke the threshold of the door, catching Eastwood across the right shoulder. The older geek snarled in pain, but held on with his left arm. The Minotaur got its head inside the door. From there, Ree knew it could pull the door open and then they’d all be hosed. She reached down and grabbed at the nose ring.
“Grab the ring!” she shouted, hauling on the metallic ring with all her might. Sadly, that wasn’t much. The ring didn’t budge, didn’t even seem to get the creature’s attention.
The world moved in slow-mo around her as Drake fired into the creature’s face, Talon and Grognard hacked at its nose, and the door started to wrench open.
“Help!” Ree shouted as the Minotaur shook its head, worming its way inside. She ducked under the mangled horns, trying to keep her grip.
She kept hauling on the ring, pushing against the creature’s snout with one foot. Nothing doing.
Another pair of hands joined hers on the ring—large, gnarled, bloodied: Grognard’s. The pair of them pulled, but still it didn’t budge.
“Get this thing out of my bar!” Grognard shouted. The Minotaur had the door half-open, and Ree saw the axe glimmering in the light of the flares. As she felt rank-smelling Huge-Axe-Decapitation-Doom growing undeniably closer, she composed a letter in her brain.
Dear Dad,
If you’re reading this, then somehow my telepathic last message has been imprinted on something and reached you in Indianapolis.
Turns out that when I said, “It’s a bartending job, it’s not going to kill me,” I was a dirty liar. I’ve been hacked, dismembered, or otherwise murderated by a huge Minotaur alongside several of my closest secret-life friends and a snotty brat of a model (don’t mind her).
Tell the Rhyming Ladies I love them, and I’m sorry.
And mostly, I have to say I’m sorry to you, because I’ve been holding out.
Attack the Geek: A Ree Reyes Side-Quest Page 4