by JM Guillen
“What?” Rehl sounded like he could spit nails.
“Damnit.” Baxter swore through the walkie-talkie. I imagined that Alicia gave him a dirty look.
“We haven’t come close to finding that store,” Rehl said bitterly. “If he can sit in safety and attack us from in there, then we’re done before we start.”
I swore to myself and stepped wide around a bag of trash left outside a small tire shop. Rehl had it absolutely correct, of course. Without being able to find Fallen Leaves, we remained in the open. We’d somehow lost all element of surprise. And now, surprise, surprise, the Gaunt Man had eldritch power he could send out upon me while remaining hidden himself.
If only Jax’s sight had been more clear. If only we had any clue at all where the store—
“Wait a minute.” I stopped in my tracks as sudden inspiration blazed in my mind. “Guys, I know where he is.”
“What?” Baxter sounded frantic.
Damnit. I’d been an idiot.
“When he had me in that stupid little tea room, I saw something.” I paused. “I saw an address.”
“You remember it?” Rehl’s eagerness came across the walkie-talkie. “Please tell me you remember!”
“Um, yeah.” I frantically thought, trying to remember exactly what I had seen on that little business card. “Is there a… Chester Street nearby? Maybe forty Chester Street?”
“We passed a Chester Court five minutes ago.” Alicia smiled; I heard it in her voice.
“Chester Court!” I practically skipped in place. “That’s it!”
“We can turn back and head that way,” Rehl said. “It is a dead-end street; it shoots out west from Flatbush.”
“Wait for me there!” I smiled and turned on a dime. “I’m going to get my bike and park closer. I might be interested in a rapid getaway when this is over.”
“Copy that,” Baxter said, cheesily.
I rolled my eyes, and then broke into a mad sprint.
We might not be out of the game yet.
5
Night had fallen across the borough and the autumnal wind turned sharp. I trotted down the sidewalk and jogged north toward where I had parked my motorcycle.
My mind spun.
If the others had it right, we might be able to knock on Mister Lorne’s door in less than fifteen minutes. Once that happened, the situation could become very fluid, very fast.
I needed to be the first one in the door.
Thinking back on some of the plans I had made, along with some of the things I had brought with me, caused me a little bit of concern. I didn’t know exactly how far away Rehl had parked his car, but we might find ourselves on the run fairly soon.
Nothing good would come from my wounded friends limping out of Fallen Leaves, only to have to sprint several blocks to get their car.
So much had been impossible to plan for, now as we approached the final assault I couldn’t help but feel a little frantic.
I ran, so caught up in my own thoughts I almost didn’t hear the odd song. As I slipped down the street and dodged people in the sidewalk, the barest snatch of it drifted to my ears.
For seven long years I’ve been in prison,
For seven long more I have to stay;
“What?” The warbling tune came from just behind me, as someone sang with a slightly scratchy voice. I stopped mid-run and stared at the person I had just sprinted past.
I saw a man of middle years, reddish hair sprouting wildly beneath the old-fashioned hat he wore. He also had a thick coat on, hunched over against the wind.
As I spoke, he turned to face me. He had a reddish, pinched face, but his dark eyes glinted merrily.
He continued to sing.
Just for knocking a man down in the alley
Taking his gold watch away.
“Where did you hear that song?” Unconsciously, I took a step back from the man. My right hand crept into my jacket, where both my knives and the Beretta waited.
The man did not answer. Instead, his smile grew wider and he sang a verse I hadn’t heard before.
Sitting alone, sad, all alone,
Sitting in my cell all alone;
A-thinking of those good times gone by me,
Knowing that I once had a home.
I turned away from him and strode away, but quickly broke into a trot again. I glanced over my shoulder, to see if the man had continued to walk toward me.
Instead, I beheld a horror.
His entire body shook. It trembled with ferocity in ways no human muscle could move. The man’s skin sloughed off and he shook his head.
His hat fell to the ground.
Beneath the hat, his hair fell to his shoulders, no shock of Irish red, but raven black. It slid around his shoulders, and the same color crept across his skin as his bones cracked under the stress of his transformation.
“That’s a ‘no’ for me.” While I continued to sprint, I reached down and toggled the button on my walkie-talkie.
“Monsters!” I aptly communicated to my friends.
“Monsters?” Alicia’s tone teased me a bit. “Abriel wishes you would be more specific in your speech, Liz.”
“Um.” I glanced back over my shoulder.
The man had vanished.
“Um?” Baxter poked in. “I’m starting to agree with Abriel.”
I froze in place and spun around in a frantic search for the monster. Around me, New Yorkers went to and fro on their business, but none of them looked as if their skin had melted off, nor did any of them sing creepy songs.
“I don’t know,” I whispered into the mic. “I thought I saw someth—”
The gruesome apparition fell on me from the sky.
It landed in a burst of blackened feathers and razor-sharp talons, and hit me from behind, knocking me flat onto the concrete. I felt those claws tear into the leather on the shoulders of my jacket, but the heavy duty construction of the garment saved me.
My leathers were intended, after all, to protect me from the concrete during all manner of ill-advised accidents.
Someone on the street screamed. That cry echoed elsewhere, another wail. People screamed, and panicked crowds began to move all around me.
Good. Just what we needed.
“Elisssabeth…” The raucous voice uttered my name with a little too much sibilance. “You have been unruly.”
“Unruly.” I pushed myself up from the concrete. “That’s me.”
I stared back at the creature that had driven me down.
A kenku?
It wasn’t, I felt certain. Instead this would turn out to be another of Mister Lorne’s bondservants, someone who had come to him for a favor and gotten bamboozled into giving far more than expected. However, to a girl who spent most of middle school immersed in books about mythological miscreations of all kinds, the similarities were stunning.
The avian-man stood a little taller than me, wrapped in robes of patchwork leather. A simple rope tied the robes around it and several small pouches and odd containers hung around it. Black wings stretched out behind like an angel gone wrong, and in each clawed, birdlike hand, it held a blade, like small sickles.
On its forehead, a glyph glowed, burning a brilliant gold.
“It iss foolisshnesss.” The probably-not-a-kenku tilted its birdlike head to where I sprawled on the sidewalk. “The Gaunt Man iss more than you ssusspect. Come with me now. Let me teach you.”
“I am literally the worst student.” I shook my head. “Last guy who tried to teach me something ended up kidnapped by some skinny asshole.”
“What the fuck is that?” A male voice, some New Yorker who hadn’t quite seen it all, came from behind me. “Some kinda street theatre?”
“Do you wissh to presss your point?” The inky black thing scraped its two sickles together. “Here? Sso closse to his plasse of power?”
“We already went over this.” I shrugged. “Unruly.” I sprinted into the street.
Traffic had slowed considerab
ly, what with the mix of panicked people who ran from the demon bird that fell from the air, and the New York gawkers who hadn’t seen the whole thing. One taxicab screeched to a stop right in front of me.
“Hey!” The florid man leaned out his window to yell at me. “You need to watch where the fuc—!”
A second kenku fell out of the sky. It smashed into the hood of the taxi, and left a huge dent in the center of the vehicle.
“Hey!” The man yelled louder now, perhaps upset he’d lost control of the situation. “What the fuck are you people doing?”
I didn’t answer. At the realization that I faced more than one feathered fiend, I threw everything I had into my escape.
I sprinted like a madwoman.
“Monsters!” I rasped into my walkie-talkie. “Big, ugly, bird monsters.”
“Bird monsters?” Baxter asked. “How many?”
“Uncertain.” I dodged around another car, and then sprinted straight up the middle of the street. “So far two, which is way too many.”
“Fuck.” I could imagine the scowl on Rehl’s face. “Need help?”
“I’ll come to you.”
The situation had spiraled into the worst of possible worlds. Hidden within my jacket lay the Beretta, along with three extra clips. I had no doubt the gun might ease my escape significantly, however, long term ramifications went with that decision.
Specifically, New York’s finest.
At the same time as I hauled ass up Flatbush, the tempest boiled and sang in my heart. It felt like I had an additional fierce presence, a wild beast that lurked within my body.
Creepy as that sounded.
I hadn’t truly had the opportunity to whip out my wind-fu since Abriel had given me a permission slip to go all bad-ass. Now might be a perfect time for that, as I imagined all kinds of hilarious consequences as a result of hurling wind at flying creatures.
Yet… no good. Oh, I could change minor things, maybe create small shifts in reality, but it remained difficult to track how easily the Facility sensed such foolishness.
One little slip and I might be chased by more than kenku. I could get black-bagged.
“Elissabeth.” The raspy voice floated down from overhead. “You aren’t thiss sstupid.”
Fuck. I threw everything I had into a barrel roll to my right, which carried me across a lane of empty traffic.
No sooner had I moved, than the second kenku dropped from the sky, and landed right where I had been. Behind it, the original came down at the edge of the street, while a third landed on the sidewalk.
Three of them. Completely unfair.
When I saw the fourth, I sighed.
People had started to scream again, and traffic had come to a complete stop. Residents rushed out onto the balconies of their apartment buildings and I saw one guy with a camcorder pointed down at one of the kenku on the sidewalk.
I bit my lip. Between the screams of the New Yorkers, stopped traffic, and the people shooting home movies, this had spiraled way, way out of control.
Soon, the police would show up whether I shot my gun or not. So much had happened so quickly—
That might be an interesting point. Was it worth it to keep the Beretta out of play if the cops would show up anyway? Especially if it meant I gained an advantage by pulling it?
“Lasst opportunity, child.” The creature’s calling voice sounded neither reasonable nor kind. “Come with me and you need ssuffer no further.”
“Oh, someone’s going to suffer.” I stared squarely into the avian black eyes. “I don’t think either one of us has the power to stop that, at this point.”
I drew the Beretta.
I drew well, for all of my lack of experience. I snaked my hand into my jacket, grabbed it and drew down on the brute all in one swift motion.
The kenku blinked with surprise as I aimed the gun at its head and pulled the trigger.
Click.
“What?” Nothing had happened.
I’d forgotten the safety.
“Your choissse iss made.” With narrowed eyes, the kenku sprang toward me, its wings thrown wide as those sickles swiped for my face.
I dove to one side and clicked the safety off. I hadn’t expected the bird to be so swift. As a result, I had almost lost part of my face to one of those wicked, curved blades. That dodge botched my dexterity, and I stumbled against the hood of a black charger.
“Hey!” The owner of the car honked, as if that might somehow drive me and the bird-demon away. When he realized what he saw, he screamed, “What the fuck is that?”
“Not sure!” I didn’t turn to look at the driver, instead I swung the pistol around and fired. I held my arm just as Rehl had taught me, gave the Beretta a double tap, and followed up with two more.
The beast screamed its fury.
I had no idea how many of my shots struck, but dark blood and feathers burst into the air as it whirled in my direction. It swung as it came on, and that sickle sang while it sliced through the air.
The blade bit deeply and tore into the meat of my left shoulder. I cried out and staggered back from avian death and waved the gun wildly in its direction.
The driver of the black charger decided in that perfect moment, to slam on the gas. His car only had about ten feet to get up to any speed, but he kept the thing in neutral until his RPMs screamed. Then he dropped the lever, and smashed into the kenku.
The creature went flying, and not in the typical sense.
It landed on the concrete with a wet crunch.
For a moment, I stared at it, my eyes wild.
“Thank you so much.” I said to the driver, my certainly wild eyes glued to the broken, winged thing.
“Bird monsters now?” The guy gestured wildly out his window, and his voice dipped into aggrieved panic. “This city!”
“I know what you mean.” I glanced over my shoulder to where the other three raven-men had stood.
Gone.
They had completely vanished.
“That can’t be good.” I turned my back on the driver and wove my way through the stopped traffic.
Once I back on the sidewalk, I began to run.
6
“Liz?” Rehl’s voice crackled in my ear. “Did we hear gunshots?”
“I bet you did.” Terrified, I kept my eyes cast up as I ran. One of the kenku could drop out of the sky and land on me in any moment, and that sounded bad.
I hated three-dimensional combat.
“Were those your gunshots?”
“Depends upon if the cops asked me that,” I panted as I dodged past pedestrians. It seemed as if the gun in my hand encouraged them to stay out of my way. “But yeah. I’m on the run from bird monsters.”
“We’ve made the store!” Baxter exclaimed in contagious excitement. “We can see it from where we are.”
“Made?” I shook my head. “You’ve really got to lay off the pulp noir.”
“Abriel revealed the store to us,” Alicia chimed in. “It just looked like an alleyway that branched off of Chester Court.”
“That’s perfect. I’m less than a block from my bike now—”
I broke off in midsentence as one of the men I sprinted past whipped his arm outward. It caught me in the throat and clotheslined me as if I were a wrestler on Saturday night television.
I went down. I went down hard.
The gun skittered across the pavement. If it hadn’t been for the helmet on my head, I probably would’ve knocked myself stupid.
This time, the kenku didn’t waste time with taunts or clever words. It shifted form as I went down, a blur of melting flesh and black feathers. It held a sickle in one of its hands, and swept it toward my chest before I even fully realized what happened.
What?” I gasped as the air burst from my lungs.
That wicked sickle took up the entire sky. I had no time to roll, no time to dodge in any way.
It plunged straight down through the air and whistled as the blade sliced into my leather jacke
t right at the center of my chest.
Where it met one of my knives, hidden within my jacket.
CLINK.
The fierce strike felt like being punched in the chest. Even though the edge of that blade had been stopped, it still hurt.
“What iss thiss?” The kenku stared down at me, stunned its strike hadn’t sliced me in half. In that moment of shocked surprise, a stark realization came over me.
These guys had tried to kill me. They weren’t just taking me into the Gaunt Man, not now.
They played for blood.
He raised the sickle high over his head.
I rolled to one side and that wicked blade bit into the concrete, sending up sparks as it struck. The being’s black eyes peered down upon me and I saw my reflection within them.
Blue eyes gone wide. Terrified.
I twisted and swept my foot out. It connected with the back of Big Bird’s knee, and he stumbled and almost fell as I pushed myself up.
Gun! Gun! Where’s my gun? I didn’t see it anywhere. As the kenku lunged toward me again, I plunged my hand into my jacket and whipped out the same blade that had just saved my life.
Without thought, without Wind, I hurled the knife toward the fiend’s face. As I’ve said, Simon made me spend hundreds of hours in practice with the things, before he taught me how I could augment my throws with the Wind.
The blade struck and caught the kenku in the side of the neck. It gurgled and stumbled back a step.
I shifted to my right and kicked at its knee. Not much of an attack, as I had to keep my eye both on it and on the sky. But I always liked to aim for any obvious weakness.
It lunged at me, a snarl on its beaky face. Apparently, that knife shot hadn’t been as mortal a wound as I would have hoped.
“Liz?” Baxter wailed in my ear, and I realized they had been trying to raise me for a few moments now.
“Busy!” I called and dodged another of the sickle blows. My arm still bled freely from the first strike and I had no desire to suffer a more significant one.
In that moment, I found hope. I saw my gun.
It lay behind the creature, far back against the wall of the sub-shop we fought in front of. Impossible to get to, not without getting through my bird-brained friend.