by Charley Case
He took a look through the window in the door, seeing at least a dozen orcs sitting in a circle around a half-constructed motorcycle. They sat on seats ranging from rolling chairs to milk crates, and it looked like they were halfway through lunch, most of them holding half a footlong from Subway in their dirty hands. He could hear laughter and loud voices.
Each of the orcs had a low-level concealment spell over them, but it wasn’t strong enough to keep him from seeing their true forms underneath. Their natural skin was just a greener version of what the concealment spell showed as every color from pale white to dark brown, but the tattoos that covered their arms and necks were real enough. He didn’t recognize most of the symbols, but he had to assume that at least a few of them were unwholesome in one way or another. Unlike trolls, who had long, pointed noses and wide-set mouths, orcs looked relatively human except for the small tusks that jutted from their lower jaws. They all had hair and wide, normal-shaped noses. But like trolls, they were tall, at least as tall as Finn. Most of them even had an inch or two on his six-five.
They all wore jeans, t-shirts, and black leather covered in grease spots from engine work, but the designs on the t-shirts were all over the place. Some were old rock band logos, while others featured American eagles holding guns or flags. One even had a My Little Pony character in a lewd pose with rainbows shooting from its butt.
A lot of the orcs had bandages on their limbs, with spots of blood coming through from fresh wounds. Finn guessed that was the work of the hounds.
As he reached for the door handle, Penny tapped his cheek and pointed to the far corner of the shop. Finn squinted, trying to pick out what she had seen, but all he could see were racks of parts and machinery, along with rows of motorcycles. He was about to ask what she was pointing at when he saw them.
Behind a tall rack filled with tires were two people standing close and talking. The taller of the two was an orc, but the other wore a long jacket with a hood up, concealing his face. He was larger than the normal Peabrain, and the length of his arms said he was either another orc or a troll, but the rack of tires was concealing too much of him for Finn to tell which.
“Good catch,” he praised Penny. “See if you can keep an eye on the one in the hood.” Finn set his jaw and walked through the door.
As soon as the door opened, the entire group turned his way. One of the orcs in an AC/DC t-shirt broke away and jogged over as Finn walked down a small set of steps to the shop’s ground level.
“Hey, sorry, we’re closed for lunch. You can come back in half an hour,” he said, a smile on his face.
As soon as the orc got a good look at Finn, and Penny on his shoulder, his smile dropped, and he stopped a few paces away.
“Who the fuck are you?” His light, friendly manner had vanished.
Finn gave a bright smile. “Hey, guys. I’m Finnegan Dragonbender, but you all can call me Finn. I just had a few questions about what happened with you and the Selkies today.”
“You a cop or something?” the one in the pony shirt asked, nearly spitting when he said “cop.”
“No,” a deep voice from behind the group rumbled. “He’s a fucking dwarf.”
The figure came around the group, and Finn could see it was the orc that had been talking to the hooded figure, which was now nowhere to be seen. This orc was obviously in charge and stood a good head taller than Finn. He wore a leather jacket covered in silver zippers and studs.
“My race really has nothing to do with it. I’m looking for information on the hellhounds that attacked you earlier, that’s all.” Finn held out his hands to show he had no intention of attacking.
“I’ve heard about you, dwarf.” The leader sneered down at Finn as he stepped close, his hands in his jacket pockets. “Newcomer making waves and throwing money around like it fucking grows on trees. Word is you’re in bed with that fucking cow, Meriwether.”
“I’m doing a job for him, but I wouldn’t say we’re in bed together. The guy hasn’t even bought me dinner yet.” Finn gave a half-smile. “You seem to know a lot about me. Can’t say I have the pleasure of knowing you.” He held out a hand to the orc. “The name’s Finn. And you are?”
The orc slowly looked down at his offered hand, then back up at his face. “Not interested in helping you. I suggest you get the fuck out of here before you outstay your welcome.”
At that, the rest of the orcs put their lunches down and stood up, flexing hands and necks in a show of strength.
Finn slowly put his hand down. “Okay. What’s it going to take to get a little info? Just trying to keep the hounds off the street, not trying to bust your balls or anything. People are getting hurt, and it’s only going to get worse. I already know that the hounds attacked you.” He pointed to an orc with his forearm wrapped in bandages. “I also know that they stopped attacking you after the initial swarm. I just need to know if you saw anything out of the ordinary after the attack. Maybe where the hounds went? Who was giving them orders? Anything would help.”
The leader stepped close enough for Finn to smell his musky body odor and hot breath. “Are you fucking deaf? We don’t have anything to talk to you about. You’re just like my great pa told me you people are— stubborn and entitled. I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here and finally have a place where we don’t have to put up with your fucking kind.”
Finn frowned in confusion. “My kind? I’m pretty sure I’m the only one left. Do you mean people who follow the law? People who care about others? I’m confused.”
The leader ground his teeth, his tusks moving from side to side as he glared at Finn, but he didn’t say anything.
Finn knew they weren’t going to volunteer anything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get something out of them. He had a feeling they knew who the dogs belonged to, or at least had a good idea. He decided to try something that didn’t usually work for him. He was going to bluff.
“Look.” He gave them all a winning smile, holding up his hands, and using a reasonable voice. “I can appreciate you guys wanting to keep to yourselves, but my boss isn’t the kind to suffer fools lightly. She wants the hounds, and she sent me to find them. If you help me out, I can put in a good word for you. I hear you want to get in the organization, right? Well, here’s your chance.”
The leader frowned, looking him up and down, then raised an eye ridge. “You’re telling me you work for the Dark Star?”
Finn gave him a “you said it, not me” shrug, but nodded.
The key to bluffing was to only lie about the small things, and let your opponent assume the rest. Finn usually wasn’t very good at that, but he had bluffed his way out of a few situations over the years, and it seemed the orcs here on Earth were just as dense as the ones everywhere else.
The orc smiled, showing a row of yellow teeth behind his tusks. “That’s interesting, considering I just talked to her contact a few minutes ago, and he told me she was sorry that her hounds had attacked my men. Said they were testing out the capabilities of their control, and it got away from them. Even gave me some compensation.” He pulled out an envelope stuffed with cash and waved it in Finn’s face before stuffing it back into his pocket. “We got a job if we want it, too.”
Finn kept his smile on the outside, but inside, he cursed.
The orcs on Earth were brighter or luckier than he was used to. Probably luckier, considering the one in the My Little Pony shirt had one finger a good knuckle-and-a-half deep in his nose. It looked like he was trying to scratch his brain and succeeding.
Finn took the exchange as a win, though. Even if his bluff didn’t work, he’d gotten the info he was after: the Dark Star was behind this.
Now he just needed to figure out what she was planning to do with the hounds.
He sniffed indignantly. “How do you know he worked for the Dark Star? He could have just been some guy trying to cover his tracks.”
The leader laughed, looking at his men, who started laughing along with him. Finn decided he shou
ld probably stay on their good side, so he started laughing too.
That was when the leader slammed his fist into Finn’s face so hard that Finn saw stars and ended up on his ass. Penny fluttered up into the air and looked down at him, waiting for the signal.
Finn wiped blood from his nose and mustache, looking at the bright red smeared across the back of his hand. “That wasn’t very nice.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be, asshole.” The leader laughed down at him.
Finn smiled up at him, blood on his teeth. “And here I thought this was going to be a friendly chat.”
“Fuck friendly chats. I leave that shit to Oprah.”
Finn frowned. “Damn, dude. That was a hell of a comeback. It’s not as good as mine’s going to be, though.”
The orc stepped over Finn and leaned down, his face full of murder. “Oh yeah? And what eloquent comeback do you have for me, little man?”
Finn’s eyes turned snowy gray, and he smiled.
“Gunna salainn.”
Chapter Eighteen
Mila watched Finn peek through the window at the front entrance before opening the door and slipping inside.
“Be careful, you two,” she whispered to herself, picking up the phone Finn had taken from the assassin, and hitting the power button.
She subconsciously rubbed her chest where the assassin’s magic had blasted her, sending her ass over teakettle. The hit had hurt like a son of a bitch, and she knew it would have left a hell of a bruise, even with the mithril chainmail protecting her from harm, if Penny hadn’t forced the healing potion down her throat.
If she had been honest with Finn, she would have told him that it had scared the shit out of her. She had spoken her power word for the armor only a fraction of a second before the magic hit her, and only then because Finn had seemed so sure they were going to be attacked. He had some sixth sense when it came to people trying to kill him, and she was a little jealous of that. Whenever she was alone, she felt like she was vulnerable, even though she had always been okay in the past.
However, the past hadn’t involved a secret world of magic. Then again, her lifelong connection with insects wasn’t exactly normal. Maybe she had some magic in her family, like a great-uncle who was a wizard or something.
She chuckled at the thought of Harry being her long-lost relative, then pursed her lips, remembering something that she, Danica, and Finn had talked about a few weeks before.
They had told her the history of the people on Earth, as well as they knew it. Finn informed her that Earth was a giant spaceship that had gotten lost. He had a lot of details about what was on it, what it was for, etc. But while that was interesting, it was kind of irrelevant to her current situation. At this point, Earth was a planet, and it wasn’t going anywhere, so aside from understanding that natural disasters were mostly just ship malfunctions, and what and who the Huldu were, she didn’t really care all that much.
What Danica had to say was a lot more informative to Mila’s particular place in the world. She’d told her about how thousands of years ago, for some unknown reason, the Peabrains had all forgotten about magic, and their collective magical brain had gone to sleep.
As an anthropologist, the idea of an entire civilization forgetting about magic fascinated her. How could such an event happen? Was it a choice? An accident? No one knew the truth. But they did know that, sometimes, on a rare occasion, a Peabrain would “wake up,” suddenly able to touch and control their magic.
Mila hoped that she was one of the lucky ones. She loved fantasy stories, and if she were to become a magic user, it would be a literal dream come true. The idea that she could one day do the things she’d seen Magicals do was one of the reasons she’d decided to take a year off from work and focus on helping Finn and Penny.
Well, it was one of the reasons, anyway.
Mila blinked and shook her head, coming out of her thoughtful state. She noticed that the phone she was holding had timed out and the screen had gone blank again.
“Come on, Mila, you’re the lookout,” she scolded herself. “Stop daydreaming.”
She rolled her eyes and glanced at the building, scanning to see if anything had changed. Everything looked the same, so she reactivated the assassin’s phone.
Now that she had a chance to look at it while not driving, she saw that there had actually been two apps installed. The messaging app didn’t show any new notifications when she checked, so she moved on to the second app.
Its icon was a little cartoon ghost with crossbones behind it, a little like a pirate flag. She expected some kind of game, but when she loaded it up, it was a fairly crude message board. It looked like a primitive Wikipedia, but after reading the titles of the threads, she realized it was much darker than its little icon had led her to believe. It was a job site for people of questionable intent. There were listings like, “need wife taken out,” and “business partner’s insurance yours for action.”
She scrolled through and was shocked there were so many people who not only knew how to get to the site but were using it. There were thousands of requests for hitmen and thieves and even calls to join terrorist organizations.
The site made her skin crawl, and she closed the app with a shaking finger.
When this was all over, she was going to have to give the phone to the police, or maybe the FBI.
She opened the other app again and read through the messages about her and Finn’s assassination contract. The content was exactly what Finn had said it was, but just before closing the app, she noticed that the user’s name doing the hiring was K. She couldn’t find any number associated with the username, but she pulled out Peter’s phone and scrolled through the contacts. Sure enough, K was one of the four saved.
The sound of a steel door opening made her look up. The front door at the side of the building was clear, and she frowned until movement caught her eye, and she glanced over to see a large, hooded figure in a long coat coming out from a shipping dock at the back of the building.
She scrunched down a little in her seat so she wouldn’t be spotted, but not so low that she couldn’t watch him.
He was big, maybe even Finn’s size, but with very long arms, almost like an ape. A long, dark brown, hooded trench coat covered him completely, and a pair of black leather gloves with the fingers cut out concealed everything but his fingertips, but she was too far away to see if the fingers were human or orcish. The man pulled out a phone and scrolled through it for a second before putting it to his ear, then started walking toward a sedan parked against the building, right in front and to the left of where Mila sat in the Hellcat.
The man kept looking over his shoulder and was talking animatedly into the phone. His big, sweeping gestures reminded her of someone, but she drove the thought from her mind, not wanting to get distracted the way she had earlier.
Mila frowned, not sure what to do. Ideally, she would like to follow this guy. He was obviously upset that Finn was inside since he had come out soon after Finn went in, but she couldn’t leave without Finn. Besides, her black Hellcat wasn’t the most inconspicuous car to follow someone in; the rumbling engine alone would get her noticed.
She glanced down at the two phones in her hands, and an idea came to her.
The battery on the assassin’s phone was nearly full compared to Peter’s, which only had a twenty percent charge. She chose the assassin’s phone and pulled up the app store, quickly typing what she was looking for in the search bar. She hit the download button, then did the same for her own phone. Luckily, the warehouse was located close to a cell tower that didn’t see much use, so the app downloaded and installed quickly.
Glancing over the steering wheel, she saw that the figure was standing beside his driver’s side door, looking through his pockets for keys with one hand while holding the phone with the other.
Her phone dinged, and she immediately opened the app on both phones, pairing them with each other. It took a few seconds, punctuated by her mumbling for t
hem to hurry. After what felt like an eternity, both phones dinged. She dropped hers on the passenger seat and opened the glove box, pulling out a roll of duct tape, mentally thanking Finn for making her keep some in the car just in case they needed to tie anyone up.
She ripped off a strip about a foot long and stuck it to the phone’s back, so there were a good four inches hanging off each side.
She opened her door as quietly as she could, watching to see if the man had heard her, but he was just then hitting the unlock button on his keys. She was behind him slightly, and off to the side, so she took a chance and timed her dash to when he opened his door and turned to get in.
She moved as quickly and quietly as she could, but every crunch of stone, every footfall, sounded like a marching band to her ears.
The man didn’t seem to notice her crouching and running behind his car, due to him shouting something she didn’t quite catch in her focused state.
She slid to a stop just as he slammed his door shut, and she flopped onto her back, quickly trying to tape the phone to the underside of the bumper, but what could have been years of road dust was making the job all but impossible.
The car roared to life, and she saw the reverse lights come on above her. She was still trying to clean the road dust off the car’s undercarriage so the tape would stick better when the car started to roll backward.
Her heart stopped as she saw herself getting backed over while trying to tape a phone to a car, but luckily, the man abruptly stepped on the brakes.
Mila could hear the man shouting into the phone as she quickly pressed the tape to the now relatively clean underside of the bumper, and the vehicle began rolling back once again.
Tucking her arms in, Mila rolled to the side as fast as she could. She let out a yelp as the car backed over her hair and pinned her to the ground for a second. She could feel the tire continue to move, raking against her shoulders, and she whispered the power word for her armor just as the tire began to gather up the leather at the back of her jacket. The leather, now being sandwiched between the ground and the inexorable rolling rubber, was starting to tighten around her midsection. A cool, flowing feeling that accompanied her armor forming from out of her skin made her nearly gasp in relief as it took most of the building pressure from her ribs.