by Charley Case
“Uh, yeah. It’s called Colorado Bobber Company. They’re near the 470 and 85 interchange, in the warehouses over there.”
Finn had a thought. “Do you know who the Dark Star is?”
Kevin stared at him, then looked around to see if anyone was listening, which was pointless since the walls were made of cloth. He frowned and said in a whisper, “Everyone knows about her. The idea of a magical nation sounds great and all, but we don’t approve of her methods to get it. A lot of Magicals do, though, and don’t care how bloody the war would be if they could have their own nation when it was all over. The orcs are eager to get on her good side; they talk about it openly with other gangs.”
“Thanks, Kevin.” Finn gave him a half-smile. “You’ve been a big help. When you’re feeling better, come to the market under the LODO district, and ask for Remmy the goblin. She’ll be able to find me. Maybe I can help you and your people out a little in exchange for some help from you.”
He nodded. “Thanks, I will.”
The curtain was pulled back, and two officers stood next to a nurse with a surprised look on her face.
“You can’t be in here!” the nurse said before seeing Danica step around Finn. “Oh, Dr. Meadows. I didn’t realize you were here.”
“It’s okay, we were just leaving.” Danica turned to Kevin. “I’ll talk to you after your surgery. Probably in the morning, okay?”
He smiled at her, then winced in pain.
Danica led Finn and Mila out of the curtained-off room as the cops stepped in and began taking Kevin’s statement. “I need to get back to my floor. Will you two be okay getting out of here?” she asked when they were back out in the hall.
“We’ll be fine,” Mila said, giving Danica a tight hug. “See you at home.”
“Okay.” She skipped backward a few steps while waving goodbye. “See ya.” She turned and disappeared around a corner.
Mila turned and gave Finn a frown. “What was that about the Dark Star? You think she has something to do with all this?”
They started making their way back out to the bridge to the parking garage, passing through the waiting area.
“I think she might be part of everything,” He half-joked. “It seems like every time we find something out, there are more questions. But the one question that keeps coming back to me is who has the hounds. I know that sounds dumb, it’s kind of the point of our job here. But I’m just thinking, who gains the most out of having a pack of hellhounds? Obviously, Peter was hired to steal the hounds for someone in particular, he never intended on taking the hounds then finding a buyer on the open market, that much is obvious from the texts on his phone with J. But what does this J have to gain from attacking a random group of people?”
“Not just a random group,” Mila pointed out as they stepped into the afternoon sun, squinting her eyes against the sudden change in light level. “A group of Magicals. From what I’m gathering, it’s rare to find large groups of Magicals out in the open without at least some nonmagicals around.”
Finn nodded. “That’s a really good point. But why care who you attack?”
Mila shrugged. “Probably because nonmagicals would freak out and tell everyone about the giant, stone-skinned, red-eyed dogs. But Magicals are used to keeping quiet when it comes to matters magical.”
“So, this was a test. A trial run. Maybe they needed to know how much control they had over the hounds.” Finn grinned as it all started to make sense. “Remember Kevin said the hounds attacked all of them at first, but then switched to only attacking his people? It sounds like someone was trying to control them and needed to know the limitations. It sounds like they haven’t bonded with the hounds but are using some sort of device to control them.”
Mila hit the fob for the Hellcat, and the headlights flashed as the doors unlocked. They were still an aisle over from the car, but she pressed the remote start, and it roared to life as they approached.
A car turned the corner, the tires squealing on the smooth concrete, making Finn spin and pull out Fragar automatically. He caught Mila doing the same out of the corner of his eye. The vehicle was a minivan, and it turned sharply into a spot, and a man jumped out of the driver’s door, not paying any attention to them, and pulled open the back door of the van. He picked up a little girl in a bicycle helmet who was crying and holding her arm.
Finn relaxed when the man ran across the bridge to the emergency room. He turned back to Mila, and stepped toward the car, right out of the path of a fast-moving bubble the size of his fist.
Time slowed down as he watched the bubble that had just missed him fly directly at Mila, her eyes growing wide at the incoming attack. He tried to run toward her, but the bubble exploded on her chest before he had taken a single step.
She let out a scream of pain and was blown over the hood of the car behind her in a tumbling roll.
Chapter Sixteen
“Penny, help Mila!” Finn roared, spinning to find the attacker.
Penny shot out from under his jacket, her wings flapping hard.
Finn whispered Fragar’s power word, unfolding the axe just in time to bat away a second fast-moving bubble. He spotted the caster charging from between two cars, his hands up and flowing with golden light as another bubble formed and shot out at Finn.
The attacker was concealed behind a black mask that covered the bottom half of his face and a hooded black shirt over black tactical pants. He reminded Finn of an assassin from a modern-day ninja movie.
Finn crouched before springing forward and to the side, dodging the third attack and closing the distance between them. He could feel the rage bubbling in his blood, and let it flow freely, giving himself an extra burst of speed as his vision went red at the edges.
The assassin formed a fourth bubble, dodging Finn’s charge, and let the attack fly at point-blank range, hitting Finn full in the chest, as he countered the assassin’s feint and came right at him.
The bubble exploded, ripping a hole in Finn’s shirt and tearing at his flesh, but he barely felt it in the berserker’s rage. He could feel the spittle flying from his mouth as he roared at the man in black, and swung Fragar, two-handed, at his head.
A clanging of metal rang out in the parking garage as the assassin got a two-foot blade up just in time to stop the axe before it scalped him. Finn had far more weight behind his weapon, though, and forced his way closer, making the man roll away to get some distance between them.
Finn didn’t even bother running after the man, he just bunched up his legs, and leaped across the distance, Fragar once again coming after him in a two-handed swing. This time, when the short sword met with the glowing axe, a large chip of the sword’s blade whizzed off to ricochet off a concrete column.
Again, the assassin had to roll back. This time, he was forming a magical attack before he was even back on his feet. A tight cluster of bubbles exploded out like a shotgun, making Finn roll to the side. The grouping of magical projectiles zipped across the garage and rocked a car, blasting holes in its steel fender.
“Gunna salainn!” Finn shouted, coming up on one knee.
A blast of rock salt shot from his hand and ripped into the assassin’s leg, spraying blood, and knocking him to the ground. Finn took his chance and leaped across the gap, swinging his axe down. It sparked, gouging a huge chunk from the smooth tarmac where the man had just rolled away.
Finn kicked out to the side, catching the attacker in the ribs as he rolled to his feet, eliciting a grunt and a satisfying crack of at least one rib.
They stared at one another, the attacker realizing he had miscalculated his target’s abilities, and Finn wondering if he should just throw Fragar at him.
The attacker held up a hand, snapping a large bubble around himself.
Finn growled and, sprinting forward, reached out for the assassin. He got his hand around something hard and pulled back with all his might. Just as his hand and whatever he held was outside of the forming bubble, the whole thing popped, and
the attacker was gone.
The rage was flowing fully through his blood, but the thought of Mila being hurt, and needing his help, forced his berserker’s desire to kill the enemy into submission and let his rational thinking start to come to the fore.
He stood breathing deep and ragged breaths for a minute until he was able to blink back the red haze from his eyes. Then he looked over to where Mila had been and saw her booted feet sticking out beyond the front bumper of the car beside the Hellcat. Running to her, Finn slid around the front of the car on his knees, ignoring the sting of concrete ripping through his jeans. He stopped himself from moving closer when he saw her sitting up with an empty healing potion in her hand.
“Fuck me, I thought you were dead,” he finally said through deep breaths.
“I was fine. I got the mithril armor up just in time. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but I was fine.” She hiked a thumb at Penny, who was glaring at her from her shoulder. “She made me drink this just to be sure.”
“Squee! Shi shirir, chi shi!” Penny insisted, smoke pouring out of her in her anger.
Mila just stared at the tirade, not commenting or needing translation. She turned back to Finn. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but the guy got away. Got this off him before he teleported, though.” He held up a pocket torn off the assassin’s pants.
“A piece of cloth?”
“Better.” He pulled a phone from the cloth. “Hopefully we can get into it and see who’s after us.” He looked around and checked that the garage was still clear, then held out a hand to Mila. “Come on, we should probably get out of here in case anyone saw us.”
She took his hand, and he helped her to her feet.
“You okay to drive?” he asked as she wobbled a little.
“Yeah, just a little rush of blood to the head. Let’s go.”
Two minutes later, Mila’s car squealed out of the parking garage and onto the main street. She changed lanes and hit the gas to get through a yellow light.
Finn pulled out the assassin’s phone and hit the power button. To his surprise, the phone had no security on it whatsoever and opened to the home page.
“I would have thought an assassin would have better security.” Finn showed the open phone to Mila, who glanced away from the road just long enough to see.
“I don’t think that’s his personal phone. It looks like a burner.” She changed lanes and slowed for the next light. “See how there’s only the one app besides the defaults? I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have at least one game on their phone. What is that app anyway? The one at the bottom right.”
Finn didn’t recognize the icon, but then, he didn’t recognize any of them; he only opened his phone when he needed to know the time. He held the phone down for Penny to take a look at.
She settled into his lap and took the phone with an eye roll. She punched the app with a talon, and it opened into an extremely basic messaging platform.
“It looks like a text conversation,” Finn explained as Mila tapped her finger on the steering wheel. “It’s from an unsaved number, asking the assassin to complete a contract. They agree on a price, and then...oh shit.”
“What?” Mila gunned it, barking the tires a little on takeoff as the light turned green.
“It’s a picture of you and me at the hospital. It looks like surveillance footage from the hospital’s security cameras. It was when we were walking down that hall to the morgue with Danica, but she’s been cropped out.”
Mila frowned, but didn’t say anything, just continued driving and tapping her finger on the wheel.
After a second, Finn glanced at her silence.
“What’s wrong?”
“How much did they say the contract was worth?” she asked.
He checked back through the messages. “A hundred grand each.”
She snorted with laughter. “Obviously, they had no idea how hard we were going to be to kill. I would have asked for at least a million apiece.”
He chuckled at her joke but saw it for what it was, a deflection.
“Look. They’re going to try again, but they know we’ll be on our guard for a while. This isn’t the first time I’ve had a price on my head. Technically, I think there still is one from the Priestesses of Granth, but I can’t remember if it had a time limit or not. Regardless, I think you need to keep your mithril on at all times while we’re out. I don't want a lucky shot taking you out.”
“I thought assassins went for headshots,” she said drolly.
He waved off the comment. “Nah, that’s only in the movies. A body shot is much easier and just as effective in most cases. Once you’re down, that’s when they take the headshot, just to be sure.”
“That’s not really filling me with confidence.” She smiled at him. “Have I ever told you you’re shit at motivational speeches?”
“You’ve mentioned it.” He smiled along with her, then looked around, trying to figure out where they were. “Where are you taking us, anyway?”
“To the orcs’ motorcycle shop. Figured it was the next logical step.” She flipped on her blinker and turned onto the 470 East entrance ramp.
He nodded. “Good thinking.”
She snorted, then mumbled, “Whatever we find, it can’t be worse than an exploding magical bubble to the chest.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mila turned down a side street into an older section of warehouses. The corrugated steel of many of the buildings had copious amounts of rust coming through the old paint, along with rusted stairs and scaffolding attached at slightly leaning angles, now that the buildings had settled over the years.
Despite the run-down quality of the buildings, it was obvious that the warehouses were still in use as the occasional truck backed into a loading dock, or a small group of workers smoked in a tight cluster against the chill of late autumn.
Finn scanned the area as they moved to the second row of warehouses, following the directions given by the GPS on Mila’s phone. It seemed like an odd place for a business that served customers, but maybe the custom motorcycle market was more willing to go to sketchy places to get the proper work done.
“There it is.” Mila pointed to a warehouse down the street. “It’s nicer than I thought it would be.”
Finn agreed. The corrugated siding had been painted a deep royal blue, with a red sign above the middle of the medium-sized building featuring a large ‘CBC’ drawn in a way that made it look like a bobber motorcycle.
They turned down the street and drove slowly.
“Huh, they have a parking lot. Must have torn down the building next to them or something,” Finn observed, looking at the way the buildings around them were packed in one next to the other. “I say just park in there but keep to the back of the lot.”
“Don’t we want to be close to the door, just in case this goes sideways?” Mila asked, pulling into the lot and slowly rumbling toward the back.
“No.” Finn and Penny shared a look, Penny giving a slight nod. “Look, I need you to stay in the car and keep an eye out.”
Mila frowned and stopped the car to look at him. There weren’t many other cars in the lot, so they stood out like a sore thumb. “I can be helpful inside. People like to see a pretty face when they’re getting grilled for info.”
“True, but these aren’t the kind of people you’re used to. These are Orcs. They think things like sharpened teeth and spiked clubs are sexy. You’re not their type.” He pointed to a spot that was closer to the main building but against the back fence. “Park there. I have a feeling this is going to go one of two ways. Either there’s going to be an all-out fight, or I’m not going to get any information, but my questions will make them nervous, and one of them might make a run for it. We need eyes outside.”
Finn didn’t exactly believe they needed a lookout, but after the attack in the garage, and Mila coming so close to death, he didn’t want to put her in danger again. Most Orcs were aggressive, but they weren’t as
dumb as people assumed. If a fight broke out, he would rather not have to look out for Mila while he was going hog wild.
Mila stared at him for a second but finally gave in. “Fine. I’ll go through the two phones and see if there’s anything of interest that we missed.”
She backed into the spot so she’d have a clear view of the main entrance and the back of the building at the same time and shut the car off.
“Thanks.” He patted her knee, then climbed out of the car, trying to ignore her disappointed looks.
Penny climbed up onto his shoulder and looked back at the car as she and Finn headed for the blue painted steel steps that led to the front door. “Chi she shi?”
Finn shrugged, making the dragon have to grab onto his collar to stay balanced. “She’s probably mad, but it’ll be better this way. I’m still pretty shaken up that she took a blast right to the chest. I thought for sure she was dead.”
Penny nodded, her face serious. It had obviously shaken her up as well.
They climbed the steps, and Finn took a second to look through the window in the top half of the steel door. He didn’t see anyone inside, but there was a small reception desk and a few chairs for waiting customers, along with a surprisingly healthy potted plant in the corner.
“Looks like a legit business. Let’s hope they at least hear me out before one of them throws a punch.”
He sucked in a breath and pulled the door open. To his relief, there was no door chime, letting them enter without being heard.
He wasn’t exactly sure what to expect with this gang. Traditionally, Orcs and dwarves got along even worse than trolls and dwarves, who were in the midst of a multi-thousand-year war. He was hoping the fact that the orcs on Earth had not seen a dwarf in over a thousand years would put a damper on their snap judgment, but he made sure Fragar was loose in its holster just in case.
The waiting room was fairly small, and he saw that there was a pod coffee maker in the corner with a nice selection of coffees in a metal rack. There was a doorbell button built into the reception desk with a note that said Ring for service, but he ignored it, heading instead to the door behind the desk that led to the shop.