by Phil Gabriel
John’s rope seemed to stretch slightly. I asked John, “Will the bindings hold?”
“They’re strong enough to hold a bull elephant,” he said. “Against her? I don’t know.”
“Can you move?” I asked.
“Not without help,” he replied. Despite the enormous pain he must have been feeling, his voice was calm. “You can leave me behind. It will fulfill my end of the bargain.” He paused for a second, then said, “Watch over Jane for me.”
“You can do that yourself. We’re not leaving anybody behind.” I sheathed Princess, leaned down, and grunted as I lifted him so that he could stand on his one good leg. His smashed leg hung limply, more sausage than leg.
“Kitty-Sue,” I said, “can you help John?”
From spitting anger at the yaksha, to a smiling face in an instant, Kitty-Sue said, “After he was courteous enough to carry me through the jungle? I’ll be happy to return the favor.” She moved over and took my place under John’s left arm. Her Pam-sized body fit perfectly.
John had kept the rope in his hand. The monster saw this and grabbed the line, hoping to pull John and Kitty-Sue back within range of her hands. The line tightened, stretched slightly, then was parted by Kitty-Sue’s thrown blade. The knife returned to her hand with a satisfying thwack.
“Now, Fiona,” I said in my most calming Shrek voice, “that wasn’t very nice.” I waved at Kitty-Sue and John to head towards the exit.
“But her name isn’t Fiona,” said Daeng in a puzzled voice.
I had a choice, try to kill her so she couldn’t chase us, or try to make peace. Could you even make peace with an enraged yaksha?
“Fiona, dear,” I said. “I’d like to propose a deal. You promise to stop attacking us, never to seek us out, to forget we were ever here, and I will let you go. Do you like that?”
“Never,” she spat through her teeth and redoubled her efforts to break the rope. Her green face turned a darker color as she pulled her ankles away from her head.
“Boss,” shouted Kitty-Sue, “we’re at the door. Leave her to choke to death and let’s get out of here.”
I started backing up, with Daeng at my side. Remembering the multiple doors, I shouted to Kitty-Sue, “Get John out of here and back to the jungle. Leave the right door propped open. We’re right behind you.”
We were very close to the exit when the section of rope tying the yaksha’s neck to her ankles parted with a snapping sound, and the monster scrambled to her still bound feet. Over twenty feet separated us from the monster.
The taste of freedom was on my lips; that lumbering bitch couldn’t catch us.
Then she threw the damn staff. I clawed at time, slowing the passage enough to allow me to dodge. The staff zipped past me, but I wasn’t the target.
The sound it made as it struck Daeng in the back was a sickening thunk. Daeng dropped face down on the floor. Her purse flew open, all the contents and her new iPhone slid across the floor. Her legs had that floppy look that denoted spinal damage, her breathing was wet sounding, and blood was coming out of her mouth. She was dying in front of my eyes. I couldn’t help her with the yaksha attacking.
The yaksha was tearing at the ropes binding her ankles. In a few seconds, she would be free to pursue. She tilted her head up and snarled, “I will never stop hunting you. As long as I’m alive, you will be my prey.”
I glanced at the broken rag doll body that had been Daeng, then back at the leering face of her assailant. A calm came over me, and I took a deep breath. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the monster’s staff start to roll, heading back to its mistress.
As I stroked a glyph on my satchel to open it, I saw heads sticking out of the doors down the hallway. Opportunistic monsters were waiting to pick over our bones after the yaksha finished.
The staff rolled close enough for the monster to grab. Having it in her hand seemed to increase her strength as she shredded the final strands of rope binding her ankles with her other hand. She stood, unencumbered by ropes, feet wide apart, and snarled. One hand went to her throat to rub at the marks left by John’s rope.
I pulled my .45 automatic from the satchel and aimed at the monster. I automatically took the stance that had been drilled into me by endless repetition: feet shoulder width apart, left hand palm up to cradle the butt, right hand snug against the rear safety, finger on the trigger, just barely taking up the slack.
She smiled at my weapon and licked her lips as if contemplating how I would taste. She said in a voice harsh from her near strangling, “Oh, the human has a gun! I’m so scared.” She slapped her staff into her open palm, making a sound like a thunderclap.
Without looking around, I said, “Kitty-Sue, get John and yourself as far away as possible. This will be LOUD.” I had no idea what effect the weapon would have on supernatural bystanders.
For the first time, I could hear the sound of John and Kitty-Sue’s steps as they limped away.
I pulled the trigger, and the first round left the barrel of the gun.
The magic staff jerked but wasn’t fast enough to deflect the bullet. At least she wasn’t as well protected as Wonder Woman. However, the round did no damage. It ricocheted off her elephant-thick hide.
“Is that all you’ve got, magician?” she asked. The smile with those enormous fangs was disturbing.
Instead of answering, I sent the second round her way. This round also bounced off, but it left a tiny mark. The third round left an even larger mark. With the fourth round, which had bounced off her chest, she brought her meaty paw up to rub the spot where the round had landed.
The fifth round made her jerk as if stung by a bee. She finally understood that the rounds were getting more and more potent. She leaned forward and made to charge me before I could fire any more rounds, but she was too slow.
The sixth round hit her damned staff, shattering it and sending shards flying. Some of the shards hit her hard enough to cut into her skin. Green blood welled up from her cuts.
Now she was backing up, hands held in front of herself. “No, no,” she said. “I’ll leave you alone. I’ll never bother you again.”
Even under this duress, I could see she was lying. The anger in her eyes assured me she would never stop.
I poured energy into my automatic, beefing up the air baffle spells that kept the noise of the shots from deafening me. I squeezed the trigger on my seventh, most powerful, round. The round I had spent months preparing, pouring energy into the glyphs that were carved into the bullet. The round I called a god-killer.
BOOOOOM.
The flash blinded me, despite the fact I had closed my eyes. Not good shooting practice, but this round was self-guided. I could only hear a high-pitched whine. The damn sound baffling spell hadn’t been enough to save my ears.
I blinked and poured healing energy into my eyes and ears. There was no way to tell if any of the other monsters were getting near.
In seconds, my vision and hearing were coming back, but there was still buzzing in my ears. It would take a long time to get back to normal.
A look down the hallway showed immense devastation. The only thing left of the yaksha was two standing legs. Her torso from crotch to head had been obliterated. Green blood and gore coated the hallway walls for at least twenty feet back from where she had stood.
As I looked, the two legs fell, one forward and one backward.
At the far end of the hallway, there was a gaping hole in the wall. Hell, it looked like the entire end of the building had been torn away. Unsurprisingly, all the lurkers had pulled back. The fae prince was long gone.
I reversed the sound spell; now it amplified my voice. “Nobody fucks with the magician,” I roared, shaking the walls. “Or his friends.”
As my echoes faded away, I heard many creatures running away.
I looked down at my .45, my most powerful long-range weapon, representing years of spell-crafting. The barrel was split like a half-peeled banana, with a stench of burned metal wafting from it.
I also smelled burned flesh, which I assumed was the yaksha. Then I realized the .45 was still red-hot and the stench was my hand burning where it touched the metal. I forced my hand open, and the .45 dropped to the floor.
“That’s no way to treat a weapon,” Kitty-Sue said from the door.
“It’s not a weapon anymore,” I said. I concentrated and sent healing energy into my hand. Daeng had stopped breathing. I listened for her heartbeat and heard nothing. Poor human. She should have never been mixed up in magician business.
“Why aren’t you far away?” I asked. “Wait, was it the stone dogs?”
“Oh no,” she said, “when they heard that sonic boom, they ran away with their concrete tails between their legs. Hell, every supernatural within one hundred kilometers felt that.”
“So why are you here?” I insisted.
“‘We never leave anyone behind,’” she quoted.
“Only the dead,” I said, pointing at Daeng on the ground. Yeah, if she had seen me point, she would have been offended. I blinked back tears at the sight of her lifeless body. Her iPhone clicked on by itself, and the Guns N’ Roses cover of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” started playing.
“Well, we won’t leave until she’s dead,” said Kitty-Sue. “It’s not much, but at least she won’t die alone.”
27
The Great Escape
It took a few seconds to process Kitty-Sue’s statement. “She’s not dead?”
Holding thumb and forefinger about one-half inch apart, Kitty-Sue said, “She’s very close. She only has minutes left.”
I dropped to my knees beside Daeng and reached out to touch her throat. It was true; she had a thready pulse that was growing weaker by the second. My damaged ears hadn’t been able to hear her heartbeat.
“Even if she lives,” said Kitty-Sue, “her human body is beyond repair.”
I was ready to rebuke Kitty-Sue but held my tongue. She was kitsune. Maybe she thought I was as sensitive as her, knew how close Daeng was to death, and wanted her to die peacefully; maybe she thought Daeng wanted to die, unable to face a lifetime as an invalid; maybe she didn’t know just how great a fucking healer I was.
I sent a trickle of energy into Daeng, strengthening her pulse while searching for ways to patch her injuries.
“Boss,” said Kitty-Sue, “isn’t she beyond your help? Didn’t the dragon’s prophecy—”
“Fuck the dragon and fuck her prophecy,” I said. “Prophecy can be twisted; twisted by a powerful magician. I’m not leaving Daeng behind.”
Kitty-Sue was silent a few moments while I worked. Then she said, “OK, boss. All the monsters here were scared off. I’ll go out and help John set his leg. He said something about Air splints.” She stepped back through the door.
I forced enough energy into Daeng to bring her to consciousness. I flipped her over onto her back and rested her head on my lap. I needed permission to make the extensive repairs she needed. Even though she was my student, the rules still applied.
“Pe-Daeng,” I said as her eyes fluttered open. “You’ve been injured badly. I can fix you, fix you like I fixed your eyes. But you have to ask for it.”
“It hurt to fix my eyes,” she said in a breathy whisper. “Will this hurt more?”
“Not if I put you to sleep,” I said.
“OK,” she said. “You fix. Fix good.”
“Thank you, Pe-Daeng,” I said. “Now go to sleep.” I made the gestures and whispered the spell to put her into a deep sleep.
It wasn’t until after the spell had taken effect that I realized she had finally trusted me enough to succumb to the sleep spell.
The iPhone shifted to a low-key background tune I didn’t recognize. “Euterpe,” I said, “this will take a lot of concentration. Please watch my back.” Yes, the insane magician was asking his invisible girlfriend to watch his back.
Over the next hours, I poured all my stored energy and all of my skills into repairing the damage done to Daeng’s body. Once the danger of her dying was past, I worked on upgrades. She would never gain weight, never get gray hair, never need to fear some goddamn kidnapper being able to overpower her.
Hell, maybe I could make her tough enough to survive hanging around a target like me. Could I give her anything more? I looked around and saw her Buddha amulet. The chain had broken, and it had been cast aside. I stretched, grabbed it, and examined the damage. The tiniest touch of Fire repaired the broken link.
Akiko and I had discussed ways to augment this amulet, make it even more powerful. The good luck and health spells were good but not as good as they could be, and the amulet was only a temporary repository. It could only do so much, as the energy drained away almost as fast as it could be gathered. The charms I had created for Toy and Jack were more powerful.
I reached into my satchel and pulled out one of my enchanted solid gold guinea coins. I only had a few left, but Daeng deserved every advantage. A word of power, so potent that Daeng shuddered in her sleep to hear it, energized the coin. A whisper of spirit and fire melded the coin to the back of her Buddha amulet. I plucked a strand of her long black hair and wove it into a tiny garland while whispering spells. Finally, I merged the garland with the coin and amulet, keying the spells to her alone.
I placed the amulet around her neck, using that peculiar S-shaped Thai clasp that required the user to bend the soft gold open, then close it again. She seemed to breathe easier with her grandmother’s amulet around her neck.
A few words of power and her face and hair were cleaned of blood. Hell, I even cleaned her clothes; the stains and wrinkles faded away from her white silk blouse, gray jacket, and black skirt. Her businesswoman outfit, which she had been so proud to buy.
I was exhausted. The energy used on healing Daeng and upgrading her amulet had used up all of the life force I had taken from the bookie’s murderous crew.
Through the open door, I could see dawn breaking. Then I realized that something was wrong. No way we could have spent a full day and night in this house. Even counting the hours spent working on Daeng, it should have only been early afternoon.
Unless the house had one of those fae time-warping spells embedded in the walls.
My thoughts were interrupted by the iPhone changing to an old Jimi Hendrix tune, “Foxy Lady.”
Kitty-Sue came back on silent feet and stood in the doorway. She had shifted back to her almost-human kitsune form. Her expression was unreadable. Then I realized that Daeng’s head was resting in my lap and I was stroking her hair.
“Her heart sounds stronger.” Kitty-Sue tilted her head, then said. “Much stronger. What did you do?”
“I healed her,” I said. At Kitty-Sue’s gaze, I added, “I also gave her some upgrades. She’s got to be tough to hang with us.”
“Yes,” said Kitty-Sue, “she’ll have to be tough to hang with you.”
It took a second to process. “You want to abandon me?” I asked. “Why would you want to do that?”
“You have someone,” she said, nodding at Daeng, “someone human.”
“You’re jealous of Daeng?” I said. “You know she’s my student. I’ll never have a relationship with her as long as I’m her teacher.”
The look on her face was strange. There was something I was missing. I was getting better at reading her inhuman expression.
“There’s something else,” I said. “It’s not jealousy. You’ve never been jealous before.” There was a tiny tremor in her hands. If I didn’t know better, I would say she was scared.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked sharply.
She didn’t answer, just pointed with her nose at my destroyed .45, abandoned on the floor.
“It’s just a gun.” A gun with more firepower than a WWII battleship. “Anyway, it’s useless now.”
“But you can make another, right?” she asked. At my nod, she continued, “You will make another. If you used that weapon in Tokyo, I am sure my queen would order your death.”
“That weap
on saved all of our lives,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, “and it can kill yaksha, and dragons, maybe even a nine-tailed kitsune.” She stroked the scar on her chest where my phantom dagger had pierced her heart. “I already took this wound from your last weapon, to save your life.”
I nodded, acknowledging her sacrifice. “I have to protect myself. Without weapons, I would end up enslaved.”
“My queen would never countenance someone with that much power causing trouble in Tokyo.”
“She don’t start none,” I said, “there won’t be none.”
Kitty-Sue licked her lips as she thought. I wished I could fathom what went through her head.
“Can you pledge not to use a weapon like that in Tokyo?”
“No,” I said flatly. “I have to be able to protect myself.”
She slid backward on silent feet while shaking her head.
Before she could exit the building, and exit my life, I said, “I can swear not to use it unless attacked.”
She stopped, tilted her head, and frowned. She had that “weighing options” look. Finally, she nodded. “OK,” she said, “I think I can convince the queen that that’s a safe option.”
I realized I had been holding my breath, and let out a sigh. “So, you’re not leaving?”
“Not yet,” she said, taking a step closer. “But what about the prophecy?” She nodded at Daeng, still asleep on my lap. “The women in red who will cause your death?”
“I don’t believe in prophecy,” I said. “Anyway, that could mean Daeng; it could mean Ms. Cappuccetto; it could even mean my favorite red-haired fox girl.”
She giggled, a comforting sound, then said, “You do seem to have a lot of redheaded women in your life.”
Nodding at Daeng, she continued, “Even if she almost caused your death, you managed to survive.”
Daeng opened her eyes, looked up at me, and licked her lips. “I’m alive?”
“Yes,” I said. “I healed you.”
“I will need to go shopping,” she said.