Dragonsword

by Chloe Garner

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Samantha smiled.

  “I’m glad to see you’ve got some spirit.”

  Maryann turned her face away and glitched, reappearing behind the bed. Kelly was still vibrating with anger.

  “You know you two are going to end up together, right?” Jason asked. Sam snorted.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Kelly said. Samantha heard Maryann squeak.

  “No, seriously. Look at you two. Angel, demon, drawn together in a common fight? If that isn’t star-crossed, I don’t know what is.”

  “Did you just make a Shakespeare reference?” Sam asked.

  “No.”

  “You so did.”

  “Shut up.”

  Sam grinned and Samantha finished her toast as the smell of bacon filled the apartment.

  <><><>

  Maryann came with them. Kelly did not.

  Samantha explained that he wouldn’t be able to get in, not as a true angel, and he would just make targets out of them. Kelly had argued in his strange, earnest way, but Jason thought that even Kelly knew it was pointless. Sam and Samantha looked at Nuri’s club as something of a second home, and she wasn’t going to let the angel convince her it was a dangerous place. Jason was exasperated that it had taken him this long to talk her into letting him try to get in.

  It did, sincerely, bother Jason that there was an establishment of ill repute that Sam could get in that he couldn’t.

  Maryann skated past the bouncer, maybe unseen, maybe ignored, and Samantha barely gave the man a glance. Sam paused at the door and made eye contact, and the demon took half a step back, turning his attention to Jason.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

  “With them,” Jason answered. The demon gave him a long, approving look, then turned to see if Samantha and Sam had waited. They hadn’t. Jason wished he knew what Sam had done to get in the first time. There was an impulse to draw Anadidd’na, just to emphasize that he had her, but he resented using her as a passcard.

  “And who do you think you are?” the demon asked.

  “Anadidd’na kha’shing,” Jason answered. He paused. It wasn’t half bad. “The dragon sword.”

  The demon smirked.

  “One of us,” he said. Jason raised an eyebrow.

  “That your brother, then?” the demon asked. Jason nodded.

  “They’re good,” the demon said, nodding. He scratched his chin and looked after the two of them, face creasing in contemplation. “They’re very good, but they aren’t like us.”

  “Like us how?” Jason asked.

  “Warriors.”

  Jason shrugged. It was true. The demon clapped him on the back.

  “If I see you at the bar, I’ll buy you a drink. No one will stop you again.”

  “Thanks man,” Jason said, grinning despite himself. And Samantha had made such a big deal out of it. It was just a bar.

  He went through the solid metal door and found himself in a dark hallway. Somewhere ahead of him, there was music, but not the kind that the Rangers drank to. The only person he knew who would dance to it was Samantha.

  Red light spilled out across the black hallway from curtained doorways, and Jason stuck his head in the first one, looking for Sam and Samantha.

  His jovial mood stopped short, and he remembered what Samantha had said about the things she had seen as a teenager.

  There was a long, pain-drenched scream from another room, and Jason straightened, walking forward.

  “Everyone else can go,” he heard Samantha say. He sped up as a half-dozen demons came pouring through a closed curtain. “Hello, Ozy,” Samantha purred. “Long time.”

  “What do you want, Renouch? I’m busy.”

  Jason pushed the curtain aside and went into the room. Sam pulled it back closed behind him. Maryann was sitting on a bar stool at a short counter in the back corner of the room, sipping something out of a black glass. When she glanced up at Jason, her eyes spoke terror. Ozy sat on a pile of pillows against a wall.

  “Information,” Samantha said.

  There was a wide table pushed against the wall, what could have been a medical gurney or a bed, at need, and a pool of blood was dripping down one leg of it as Samantha walked over to it. She grimaced at the blood, running a hand above the surface of the table and then snapping. The blood ashed and she blew it away, turning to hop up onto the table and crossing her legs.

  “And what do you expect to pay with?” Ozy asked. Samantha smiled her terrifying smile. Ozy read it and stood.

  “Hey, now,” he said. “This is Nuri’s place.”

  “And you’re in here. With me,” Samantha said. He started for the door, and she flicked her hand, bringing a wall of white flame out of the floor. He growled and changed direction, headed for Sam.

  “Oh, that’s a mistake,” Jason muttered, drawing Anadidd’na. Samantha didn’t move. Sam pulled the little dagger Samantha had given him out of his belt and waited. Jason checked up, confused. He bent time, just to give himself more time to react, finding Samantha hadn’t shifted at all, but was watching Sam and Ozy with a bemused expression. Sam was loose and easy over his feet, waiting with just a dagger between himself and an angry demon.

  Ozy stopped short.

  Sam cocked his head to the side, mockingly, and Ozy turned again, looking at Jason as if evaluating him as a target.

  He turned to Samantha.

  “You don’t know the magic in these rooms as well as I do,” he said.

  “Maybe not,” Samantha said, dropping her hand to extinguish the angelfire. “But how many executions have you been forced to watch?”

  Ozy swallowed.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Silly demon,” she answered. “We both know you lie as easily as you breathe. And I’m not going to waste the teaching moment we have here.”

  “Teaching?” Ozy asked. Samantha drew Lahn and pointed at Jason.

  “He wants to learn the art,” she said. Ozy looked at Jason again, fear dawning on his face for the first time. Samantha smiled again. “Yes. He’s going to be better at it than me, someday. Anyone could see that.”

  Ozy backed into a wall, rattling the manacles hanging there.

  “You can make me,” he said. “I remember the collar. You can make me tell you the truth.”

  Samantha hopped off the table and walked over to the demon, hands empty. Jason wanted to step forward protectively, but Sam didn’t move. Jason stayed put.

  “You’re about the slipperiest of the demons I’ve known, Ozy,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he answered.

  “I get the sense at all that you’re being evasive, I’ll show him how to dissect you. You get it?”

  Ozy nodded. He was a tall, handsome Italian man with slicked hair and olive skin. He had the kind of dark eyes that always looked like they were in charge. It was startling to see him stare down at Samantha with his back pressed against the wall, and swallow hard, nodding again.

  “Okay.”

  Samantha went to her backpack and took out something that looked like a bubble wand, blowing through it, then shoving it into Ozy’s throat where it met his chin.

  “Tell me what I want to know,” she said. Ozy gagged once.

  “I don’t know what you want to know,” he answered.

  She tipped her head back and looked at him down her nose.

  “Seriously. I don’t know what you’re here for. Kind of busy around here, these days. What do you know?”

  She glowered at him.

  “Pretend like I know everything.”

  He stuck his tongue out, making a croaking noise. Samantha didn’t lift the pressure of the wand.

  “Carmen is renegotiating leadership of the Velvet Daggers with Manny. They’ve dropped a few bodies - everyone consenting players as far as I know - and a bunch of them have gotten ashed…”

  Jason scratched his nose and went to stand next to Sam.

  “Any of this mean
anything to you?” he asked. Sam shook his head.

  “She likes knowing it, anyway,” he answered. Jason put Anadidd’na back away and looked around the room. There were eyebolts in the floor and hooks in the walls and the ceiling that matched chains piled in the corners and under the shelf where Maryann was still sipping her drink. The floor was red carpet, the texture of broken-down astroturf, and the ceiling was painted black. Red light bulbs sat in dropped light fixtures. It reminded him for reasons he couldn’t pinpoint of Carter’s apartment. All of the demon blood in the room had ashed by now, but there were additional stains on the walls that looked like dried blood. Jason nudged Sam and pointed.

  “Don’t want to know,” Sam said, looking away. “Some of the rooms have kitchens or lounge furniture.”

  They stood and listened as Ozy spilled his guts for about twenty minutes, then Sam did something to signal Samantha’s attention. She looked over.

  “It’s her club,” he said. She sighed.

  “You’re right.” She turned back to Ozy. “That’s not what I want to know, yet.”

  “There’s always a lot going on. You know that. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

  She grunted.

  “You really don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.”

  “If you wanted gossip, you could have just asked,” he said. “I’d have lied, but… They say that doesn’t bother you that much.”

  “Do they,” she said flatly. He shrugged.

  “Tell me you don’t know what I want.”

  “I don’t know what you want.”

  She looked perturbed.

  “Tell me your name on the other side.”

  Ozy looked pained, but he spoke after only a brief pause.

  “Chank-nisht,” he answered. Dark knife. Assassin. Jason raised an eyebrow. Clearly Ozy was not an assassin, in his nice clothes and gaudy social habits. Or his fear of Samantha. Ozy glared at him.

  “Hey, man. I’ve been here a long time.”

  “Whatever,” Jason answered.

  “It’s working,” Samantha said, looking at the wand. “Tell me about Carter.”

  “You don’t know?” Ozy asked. “I guess you wouldn’t. That’s just been… life for us. For a while. Weird to think people don’t know.”

  “Enlighten me,” she said.

  “Um,” he said, swallowing hard. “Oh.”

  Jason drew Anadidd’na again, liking that he could see the demon’s pulse under his jaw as metal slid against metal. He waited.

  “He’s the prize,” Ozy said, clenching his hands and unclenching them.

  “That might be the nicest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about him,” Samantha said. A quick grin flashed across Ozy’s face, then he stretched his jaw again. “Go on.”

  “You really don’t know.” He scratched his face and edged his head to one side.

  “I’m getting bored,” she said.

  “It’s like a giant game of musical chairs. When the music stops, who’s got Carter?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Everyone’s wrestling to have the fastest access to him. I mean, I guess that’s why there’s so much going on…” He eyed the ceiling for a moment. “Yup. That’s definitely where most of the chaos is coming from. The instant someone knows how to take him, there’s going to be a race to be the first one to snatch him, because then the one who’s got him is going to be negotiating with the one who knows how to take him, and how much is he worth…” He waved his hand, palm down. “Like that.”

  “Why not just take him now?” Jason asked.

  Ozy grinned again.

  “No one wants to hold him.”

  Jason shrugged. Made sense. Jason wouldn’t want to spend unnecessary time with him, either.

  “What are they waiting for, specifically?” Samantha asked.

  “Information,” Ozy said. He grew serious for a moment. “If you think the hunt you’re leading is serious, you should see theirs.”

  Sam stiffened and Jason looked at him. Sam shook his head.

  “You believe the stuff about dragons?” Samantha asked. Ozy tipped his head back and forth.

  “There are enough that do to make it a great seller’s market,” he said. Samantha pushed the wand harder against his throat and he croaked again. “C’mon lady. I’m doing what you said.”

  “Doesn’t mean you don’t annoy me,” she said. “What else do I need to know?”

  “How fast will they sell?” Jason asked.

  “Demons take their time with deals,” Ozy said. “As much as they don’t want to hold him, this is the biggest deal of all time. They’ll have multiple demons on both sides doing contract work. Demons are going to die, negotiating this.”

  “You going to be involved?” Samantha asked. His nose twitched.

  “Maybe. Lotta power to walk away from. I might want a taste.”

  “Who knows how to take Carter?” she asked.

  “That’s the billion dollar question,” Ozy said.

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know. And if I did, I’d let you kill me rather than tell you. You’re mortal.”

  Samantha paused.

  “Who are the players?” Jason asked.

  “Today?” Ozy answered. “They change daily. I’m not kidding.” He smirked. “But I have heard that the lady of the house is putting her feelers out. I don’t know if she wants to buy or sell, but your bosom buddy is gonna be in on the deal if she can.”

  “That’s not true,” Samantha said. She let the wand drop. “Stay away from my friends. If one of them dies, whether you even knew they were my friend, I’m going to bring him back and give him his lesson,” she said, motioning to Jason.

  Ozy rubbed his throat.

  “Ten-four.”

  She picked up her backpack and Maryann skittered behind her. Jason kept forgetting she was there.

  Jason followed everyone else out of the room, glancing back at Ozy. The demon gave him a baleful look, then straightened and smiled.

  “See you around, kid.”

  Jason smiled back.

  “Not if I see you first.”

  Ozy grinned, and Jason left.

  “Would she do that?” he heard Sam ask.

  “I don’t think so,” Samantha answered. “They’re demons, Sam. You have to remember that.”

  “I thought they were your friends,” Sam said.

  “They are,” Samantha asked. “But I’m mortal. If they can make a move to increase their own power and position for the long term… Yeah, most of them would probably do it.”

  “Kjarr?”

  Jason caught up in time to see Samantha grin.

  “He was a Viking for too long. He prefers not to know when Nuri double-crosses someone they’re close to.”

  “I don’t get to meet them?” Jason asked.

  “Not this trip,” Samantha said. “If I hang out after that, it’s just going to cause trouble.”

  “The guy at the door said he’d buy me a beer,” Jason said.

  “He’ll remember you next time,” Samantha said. “They don’t forget.”

  “That figures,” Sam said.

  “What figures?” Jason asked.

  “You. You show up and they don’t torture you for fun. Did he even threaten you?”

  Jason paused.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Sam shook his head.

  “They all like you.”

  Jason grinned.

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  Sam shook his head and turned back around. They hit the front door to find the city waking outside. The sky was lit gray under thick clouds, and the streetlights hadn’t given up for the night, yet, but it was unmistakably day.

  “What’s the play?” Jason asked.

  Samantha waited until they were further from the club to answer.

  “Keep trying to find the demon leading the project. I want to find the human who opened this side of the gate. In the meantime, we
just keep hunting them, like we have been.”

  “What about…” Sam asked. She glanced at him, chewing her lip.

  “There’s a little I can do to help, and then we just have to be prepared.”

  “What if I told you to stay at the apartment with Kelly, and we’ll do the hunting?” Jason asked. She gave him a strange look. Amused and sad.

  “Like I did to Carter?” she asked. “He’s a lot more afraid than he’s letting on, that he let me bully him into that. No. I’m going with you and I’m going to finish training you. If they can possess dragons, I need to stay with you, anyway, to shake them out if they get a hold of you, so we’d be sending Sam off by himself.”

  “No way in hell I’m staying,” Jason said. She smiled and turned away again.

  “See? That’s the right answer.”

  She flicked her nails against her thumb and Jason grinned. She was tough.

  “So which way do I point the car?”

  She looked at Sam. He put a hand out and she took it, leading him as if he were blind for half a dozen steps.

  “I can’t track the ones who attacked us,” Sam said.

  “Why are you trying?” Samantha asked.

  “Because I want to find them before they find us,” Sam answered. Jason turned his head to grin. They were a bunch of fools, but it was just his style of foolishness. Samantha sighed.

  “Ow,” Sam said.

  “Find the ones I want,” she said.

  “I will, but just so you know, you can’t make me.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  Sam stuck his tongue out, his eyes still sightless.

  “Got it,” he said. Samantha pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and waited. He gave her an address and she looked it up.

  “Buffalo or Chicago,” she said, lifting her head. “North is that way… Of course they’re in Chicago.”

  “Why are they always in Chicago?” Jason asked as Sam blinked, took his phone back, and let go of Samantha’s hand.

  “Tactics,” Samantha said.

  “I meant it rhetorically,” Jason said. “You mean there’s a real reason?”

  “Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, New Orleans. It’s a corridor,” she said. “Part of it is that they’re on the boundaries between major regions. Argo gets as far north and east as Denver, and the boundary between Mitch and Bane goes up to Chicago and then splits with Lindsay’s region. Threepoint intersections. They’re the points of weakest control, because the boundaries are always shifting back and forth across them. Recently, Argo has pushed his region up into Denver pretty hard, and Mitch has handed Chicago off to Bane. New Orleans is special, and the boundaries there shift in and out from the city based on what’s going on there.” She paused, glancing back to see if Jason was still listening. He nodded to her. “Mostly those are mutual causation, though. The boundaries are there because of the geographic and historical splits. Like tectonic plates. Along the seams you get kind of a seeping of power, and the demons are attracted to it.”