Windslinger

by JM Guillen

  My own damn fault.

  I turned quickly and sprinted across the busy street. Once there, I broke into a full-on run, not even pausing to look behind me.

  I needed to buy time. I needed to think.

  When I came to the end of the block I nearly fell over myself just trying to stop in place.

  Across the street sat a sleek black sedan, all midnight and chrome. The passenger side window had been rolled down, and a young blonde woman regarded me through it, her eyes focused intently.

  I’ve seen her before. This woman had ridden with Garret when I saw him at the no-tell motel, all those weeks ago.

  A witch. She’s one of their witches!

  I could only see her left hand, but it twitched oddly, as if she wove invisible threads in her fingers.

  A low, warning buzz snarled in my mind, feeling like my skull just fell asleep. I jerked back, as if from an electric shock.

  What? I blinked, staggered, and shook my head a touch.

  “Afternoon, Liz,” Garret called from behind me. “Care to go for a quick ride?”

  I turned, shocked to see that he stood less than five steps behind me. My eyes widened. How could he have possibly—?

  “I know it’s sudden.” He smiled as he stepped forward, his hand in his jacket pocket. “But it’s been a few days. I hoped we could talk.”

  “That sounds like a mistake,” I blurted. Yet the thing that truly caught my attention was Garret’s stance.

  His hand remained within his pocket, just like in my hotel room. That was exactly how he’d stood before he used his… his quiescence; before he took my gift from me.

  Because…

  Because something rested within that pocket, something the Gentlemen used to still the knacks of the clever.

  Fuck that! My eyes wide, I shook my head, and stepped back. I turned to the woman, whose hands plucked more quickly, and felt another wave of buzzing dizziness.

  “Um, no.”

  Without waiting for a response, I turned to my left and sprinted. I practically bowled over a woman carrying shopping bags, dodged, and leapt over a man sleeping on the sidewalk.

  I ran.

  I ran like the wind itself.

  3

  I talk often about being built to run or brag about how most of my character points got placed into movement. Truth is, with my clever ‘talent’ I typically don’t have to out-and-out sprint away from something. Oftentimes, I can find other solutions.

  Today didn’t seem like an ‘other solutions’ kind of day.

  I didn’t so much as glance behind me, instead I simply ran as if hell itself followed.

  “Hey!” A woman sputtered and almost spilled her coffee as I blazed past. People stared at me and more than one cuss word floated by as I forced them to move aside.

  I paid them little mind. They weren’t even real to me.

  All that mattered was my next step.

  When I made the end of the block, I cut right and crossed the street before running down a block of small shops and food carts.

  “Look out!” A skinny man adjusted his Thai cart as I plowed toward him, and I ducked left.

  “Sorry!” I called as I swerved into an alleyway. Only then did I pause and dare to peer behind me.

  “Fuck,” I muttered quietly, panting.

  Garret still came on.

  “It would be nice if he were at least winded.” It didn’t seem as if he ran preternaturally fast, but he didn’t exactly seem tired either.

  “Alright then.” I could see down the alleyway to another street beyond, complete with traffic and all sorts of human obstacles. It looked to be busier than the street I had just hurtled along, and perhaps that was a good thing.

  Would Garret take me in from a public place like this? My idea of the Silent Gentlemen suggested they didn’t like to be seen. If that held true, hiding on a city bus might be just what I needed.

  On the other hand, for all I knew the Gentlemen had Federal ID. No one wanted to mess with anything that looked like “an ongoing investigation,” especially with uncanny men in black.

  “All they’d have to do is claim I’m a terrorist,” I grumbled. It’d be all too easy for New Yorkers to turn the other way.

  Therefore I chose to keep running.

  Once on the busy street, I dodged left and hoped that any pursuer wouldn’t be able to track me once I left the alleyway. There was a city bus at a stop just down the street, ironically enough, as well as a veritable army of yellow and black taxis all up and down the boulevard.

  That might be an idea. I easily had the money for a cab, and it might be nice to have a ride just now. After all, in the movies, a charming young lady can catch a taxi and demand to be driven away, fast.

  But… I deflated a bit. I couldn’t trust any of them.

  I sighed. “With my luck, another Silent Gentleman would be in the driver’s seat.”

  It sounded crazy, but Simon had told me some crazy stories.

  In the end, I had to rely on myself.

  “Sorry!” I waved at a dark-skinned taxi driver as I sprinted across the street and slid across the hood of his car.

  I’d always wanted to do that. It cheered me that I could run and check off an item on the old bucket list at the same time.

  I wove through three sets of cars stalled in traffic and the vaulted to the far side of the street—without even a glance behind me.

  Reaching deep, I poured on the speed.

  Catch me if you can, assholes! Grinning triumphantly, I fled, turning down a second street where the traffic wasn’t nearly as congested.

  Then I stopped in my tracks, my eyes wide.

  “Dammit.” The midnight black sedan cruised down the street, straight toward me, like a great predatory fish.

  “No fucking fair!” I scanned the area to gage my options. I didn’t want to run back the way I had come, for sure. Yet, going forward meant toward the sedan.

  The moment I paused, the first twinges of prickling electricity burrowed into my head. I couldn’t see the witch through the darkened windows, but I didn’t need to see her to know she was there.

  “Not what I wanted. Fuck!” I squinted against the sensation, and panic began to overtake me.

  On my wrist, the bracelet Simon had given me tingled in a different way, a pleasurable susurrus of sensation. Gusts of sharpened the wind began to course, scattering street trash and detritus all around me.

  Breathe. I relaxed, pushing the fear from my mind. I easily remembered what happened the last time I lost control of my emotions.

  But what to do?

  Traffic moved ever forward. While I stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, (apparently botching my initiative roll), the sedan continued forward. Every foot closer increased the intense buzz in my mind.

  I didn’t want to run back the way I had come; for all I knew, I’d smash headfirst into Garret. If I kept going forward I would only get closer to the witch in her car.

  I strongly suspected that whatever hoodoo it was that she was throwing at me would only get stronger as she got closer.

  “But…” An idea occurred to me. What if I could get past her? Logically, her creepy witchery would fade the further I got away, right?

  I just had to push through it.

  “Damnit. Fine.” I took a deep breath and ran up the street toward the sedan.

  Like an idiot.

  Well, it’s not as if they can turn around in the middle of a New York Street…

  A sharp moment came when the sensation became brutal; painful and cold in my head. It fell across me heavy and dark as a deathshroud and urged me to fall into blissful unconsciousness.

  No. I grit my teeth and ignored the sensation as much as possible. I took a deep breath—as much as I could while running—and relaxed into the tempest in my mind. I focused on the feel of my shoes hitting the pavement, one after the other.

  “Fuck. Fuckity, fuckity, fuck.” The static felt like I’d stuck my tongue to a battery, ye
t all through my mind. I bit my lip as I moved, knowing I ran faster than it seemed.

  The tingling burned like elemental ice in my mind, my limbs felt numb and slow.

  Until…

  I was through.

  “Oh God,” I gasped and stumbled. I leaned my hands on my knees and panted. For a moment, I’d thought she had me. Yet I had learned something, now that I considered it.

  “She has an ‘area of effect,’” I mused. “That’s good to know.”

  “Liz!” Garret’s voice barked from behind me, down the street. “I just want to talk!”

  Shit. I glanced over one shoulder, where I saw Garret run toward me.

  No rest for the wicked.

  “You do not!” I spat petulantly, and ran. I wanted to say more, to tell him how people who wanted to ‘just talk’ didn’t show up with the means to take what they wanted by force.

  That was who he was, after all. He didn’t want to ask me for anything—he wanted to take.

  “You must accept that I’m going to get what I want.”

  Blurred buzzes crackled in my mind, and my vision trembled. I gasped and slid down the wall.

  “That’s a fact, whether you like it or not.”

  “No,” I muttered through gritted teeth and pumped my legs even faster. “This time the facts are different.”

  This time, the ass-hat wouldn’t catch me so easily. I wasn’t some helpless little girl he could frighten.

  Not that I wasn’t frightened.

  Pouring on the speed, I sprinted down the street. This kept me in sight of Mr. Garret, but also allowed me to push harder and run in a straight line.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw him again. Garret appeared to be almost three blocks behind.

  “Slowing?” I scarcely had the breath to chuckle, yet I did so. “That was the moment Liz realized she would escape,” I pant-narrated.

  Time to vanish.

  I darted into an alleyway and scrunched my nose against the smell of raw sewage and New York filth.

  “Fucking wow.” I tried not to cough and covered my mouth with my shirt. Three homeless people were draped over the sidewalk, passed out from drink or drugs or both.

  “’Scuse me.” I didn’t even glance down as I leapt over them, focused solely on getting to the far side of the alleyway. As I hurled myself along the pavement at top speed, I noticed two branches sprouted off from the alley, one to the left and one to the right. I glanced back over my shoulder; Garret and his witchy woman were both out of sight.

  “Here’s where I get lost.” I trotted over to the slender alleyway that branched off to the right. It wound between two older buildings, and smelled of wet and rot. Several nooks and crannies hid within, large enough for a slender me to slip within.

  “Perfect.” I smiled grimly as I stepped closer. Perhaps Garret would sprint right past. If I cut through here, I could double back—

  Except that a freaking crossbow quarrel buried itself in the solid concrete, right in front of me.

  “Um.” I stared stupidly at the silvery bolt, stunned at the way it had just been buried in solid concrete. “That’s not possible.”

  The small hairs on the back of my neck tingled. Eyes regarded me from somewhere unseen, I could feel it.

  Of course there’s a shooter. I turned my face upward.

  The shadowed man stood on a nearby roof and regarded me coldly. He apparently shopped at the same store Garret did, although he’d added a pair of mirrored glasses. Something else wrapped around the back of his head, too, something silver with bright blue lights.

  “Hi,” I offered lamely.

  The Gentleman did not respond.

  “Damnit.” I frowned. If this one knew my location, I hadn’t made away at all. He’d have already radioed Garret and the witch, I felt certain.

  I hesitated, contemplating my options, when an odd crackle bubbled in the air next to me. I whirled and noticed a tiny mote of furious fire that now hung improbably in the air.

  “Oh.” I took a step backward. “I bet this is good news.”

  Just above the quarrel, a scarlet flame exploded into existence. It warbled in space and sang a haunted, eldritch melody. As I backed away from it, it the flame grew wider, burning on nothingness. It easily stretched taller than I stood.

  “What. The. Fuck.” I turned from the man to the fire and remembered Simon’s stories of the lodge in Washington D.C. Prickles danced on the back on my neck as I put together what that meant.

  Silent Gentlemen had appeared in crimson fire, according to Simon.

  It was like the assholes could Gate each other in.

  “Not good.” I backed up, my eyes wide. There, in the center of the fire, I saw an image. Garret strode toward me, not even hurried now.

  I wanted to punch that smile off his face.

  “Liz,” his voice warbled in an odd sideward manner that somehow harmonized with the echoing song from the fire. “We really need to talk.”

  “Nope.” I turned from the singing fire and hurled myself down the alleyway.

  “You can’t run forever!” His words no longer boiled and warbled, which made me glance over my shoulder. Garret had stepped through that flame. He now stood in the alleyway with me.

  Damnit.

  I started to yell, “Try me,” but he acted first. Before I formed the first syllable of snark, Garret pulled something from the pocket he favored. While I couldn’t see it well, it looked to be small, round, and dark.

  It’s the… the thing! My mind might have been babbling, but my intuition told me exactly what I looked at.

  It could only be what he had counterspelled me with— the thing that caused the Silent Gentleman’s quiescence.

  With the acumen of a college frat boy a bit too proud of his baseball skills, he hurled the thing toward me, as if pitching a fastball.

  “NO!” I whirled and held a hand up. The bracelet thundered on my wrist, and every hair on my body stood up.

  “Your control will have to be impeccable while you wear the Sign, Elizabeth,” Serin’s warning mumbled behind my mind.

  A burst of angry turbulence gathered around me, and for the briefest moment, everything held still.

  Then, an explosion.

  A tornado’s worth of force pummeled the alleyway, all directed toward the cockiest Silent Gentleman I knew. It caught his little toy in mid-throw, and shot it back toward Garret, like a bullet fired from the world’s most improbable gun.

  Whatever it was pulsed as it hurtled backward.

  The wind caught Garret and knocked him flat with an “ooph” that I heard from the opposite end of the alleyway. He fell flat on his ass.

  Maturely, I did not laugh.

  The fall actually seemed fortunate for him, as the pulsing thing he had thrown shot straight over his head. I had little doubt that, Silent Gentleman or no, being struck with something at that speed might be quite terminal.

  When the thing burst, soundless thunder and trembles in reality cascaded around it. Oddly, the scarlet flame that Garret had stepped through winked out of existence.

  “What the hell is that?” I breathed. The effects looked just the same as when Simon and I had witnessed the Gentlemen summon quiescence all those years ago, to silence Simon’s clever little trick behind the dumpster.

  Like rainbow ripples, waves in space.

  Swiiip. This time, I heard the quarrel slice through the air and dove to one side. I landed, rolled, and faced the spook I had forgotten.

  “Missed, asshole,” I snarled.

  The quarrel sliced into the concrete of the alleyway and improbably buried itself in the hardened surface.

  “Fuck you guys,” I muttered. Turning away from Garret, I decided I needed to get while the getting was good.

  After all, a whole troop of Silent Gentlemen might be about to step through a warbling portal of flame, for all I knew.

  That sounded unhealthy.

  Again, I ran.

  4

  I pushed thr
ough the wet and dirty alleyway and did not glance back. I had no doubt Mr. Garret would be after me as soon as he got up off his ass, and the thought of having a black bag over my head fueled my legs.

  Again, I came out on a busy, traffic filled street.

  “Okay,” I panted, certain I must look a bit deranged. “Okay, okay, okay.” I stepped sideways, so Garret wouldn’t be able to see me from the slender passage. “Where? Where do I go?”

  My words sounded panicky, even to me. I needed to hide, I felt certain. I might be able to outrun Mr. Otherworldly Abercrombie and Fitch, but the crossbow/portal monkey changed the game.

  My eyes fell on the doors of a music store.

  “Fair enough.” I charged toward the glass doors, which had been plastered with fliers for concerts and bands. Bright red headlines like ‘SEE THE RAGEDDY ANDY’S’ competed with poorly photocopied images of wanna-be rock gods with too much makeup. Before I actually plunged inside, I glanced at the rooftops, searching for the Asset with the crossbow, and peered down the streets for the sedan.

  Nothing.

  The bells tinkled as I pushed my way inside.

  “Welcome to Spin-Again.” A somewhat grungy young man stood behind the counter, sorting a stack of records that looked as if they came from 1973.

  “Hey there.” I glanced over my shoulder as I stepped inside.

  “Let me know if I can help you find your groove.” His voice sounded like he had a two pack a day habit.

  “Sure.” I glanced around quickly to mark all possible exits in the considerably sized store. I stared, torn between an EXIT sign over a door in the back and a stairway up to a second floor.

  In the end, I opted for the stairs. I didn’t feel ready to step back outside yet.

  “That’s mostly older stuff,” the young man called as I made my way to the concrete stairwell. “Have you shopped with us before?”

  “I have.” I gave him a grin that I hoped was just cute enough to distract him. “I know exactly what I want.”

  “Cool.” He gave me a too eager smile. “You come talk to ol’ Saul if you need anything.”