by JM Guillen
Shadowed creatures walked through those gates. Creatures who wore dark suits and carried oversized guns. Creatures with indescribable tech that hovered around their heads or hung from their sides. One of them, a huge, bearded man, had a large mechanical device on his back, and carried a weapon that looked more like an old-timey riveting gun.
And yes. I smiled as I saw her.
They brought a witch.
Five of the things came through in all, but I noted that the gates remained open and active. I didn’t know what lay on the other side of them, but I guessed that the Facility had the ability to send quite a few more of their Silent Gentlemen, if that’s what they wanted.
After our last encounter, they apparently believed I was worth a little more attention.
It only took me a moment to recognize Garret. This seemed odd, in that many of the Ass-Hats wore similar clothing. I recognized more than just his attire, however. I remembered the way the cocky little shit walked, could tell him from even across the street.
Garret had wanted a favor of me—a boon. That wasn’t exactly the way he would define our relationship, I was certain. However, it was likely the closest metaphor that Jax could come up with for our relationship.
Hopefully, I was about to understand his value.
“Liz!” He raised one hand to me, as a friend might wave to another. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’ve been thinking,” I half whispered, half thought, and the Wind caught the words. Like a leaf in a storm, it carried them to him.
I registered the shock on his face when he heard my whisper. They all paused in place for a moment, and I had no doubt that Garret used some kind of Facility walkie-talkie to communicate what I had said.
The effect of five Silent Gentlemen halting in unison without speaking, spooked me just a bit.
The witch twitched and wove her fingers as she stared at me. Then the slightest hint of surprise registered on her face and her head slowly turned as she gazed down the street.
Straight at Chester Court.
“I have something I want you to see,” I whispered again, and the Wind rose around me, making my hair dance. It carried my words not because I commanded it, but because it knew me, and knew my desires.
“You do.” Even though the friendly smile remained on his face, I couldn’t help but notice that his witch stepped up beside him, her fingers already maddeningly twitching. “What is it?”
“Follow me, Garret.” Again, the Wind caught and carried my whispered word. “Let me show you.”
Without another word, I threw the hammer down on the Valkyrie.
I charged the Gaunt Man’s stronghold.
I did not look back.
4
The Valkyrie thundered between my legs as I closed on Chester Court. I threw the bike into the highest gear possible, stormed around that corner, and turned down the road.
It looked to be a nice little neighborhood. Chester Court had been designed as a dead end, with a wall that almost bordered Prospect Park. The street held two nice rows of brick homes and townhouses, and had been tended well. On each side of the street, trees blossomed with brilliant oranges and yellows.
Also, two horrific raven-beasts hovered above the street, engaging my best friends in a life or death struggle.
“Sneak attack, assholes.” I revved the bike again and charged forward toward the trio. One of the kenku glanced up at my approach, its eyes wide with fury and dark glee.
I pulled my pistol and steered with my left hand only. As I charged the avians, I pointed the gun’s muzzle in the air and fired, over and over.
One of them, the creature whose back had been to me, cawed in pain and dismay. It flapped twice and spun around in mid-air to face me.
“Liz!” Rehl called out as he spun sideways, drawing down on the remaining bird. “We couldn’t raise you! Then these two just came out of—”
The buildings along Chester Court exploded with raven-men. They burst from the windows, tore their way from behind doors. A couple of them even burst up through manholes in the street to land less than ten feet away from us.
“More corbies!” Baxter cried as he stepped up next to Rehl and Alicia. In his hand, he spun Simon’s cane in rapid circles.
“I thought they were more like kenku.” I grinned at him.
Then, I thought. Simon’s cane? He hadn’t taken it?
Weird.
Alicia stepped up next to me, that ember of white/silver light burning above her head. Her hazel eyes had gone completely blank, and a look of intense concentration furrowed her brow.
“There! Liz!” The moment she got close enough for the light to fall across my face, she pointed.
I watched as one of the townhouses, the only red one, faded into nothingness. I saw an alleyway that snaked off between the houses. In those shadows I could just make out an odd little storefront with a handmade wooden hanging next to the door.
Fallen Leaves.
The ramifications of the situation made me frown. If Alicia had to reveal the alleyway to me, it would still remain hidden to the Ass-hats.
One thing at a time.
“Rehl, I’m going to need you to knock at the front doo—” I stopped speaking suddenly as one of the kenku dropped down out of the air to halt right in front of me. Its eyes gleamed merrily and I recognized the robes of patchwork leather. It hovered there, black wings beating menacingly. Each hand gripped one of those wicked little sickles.
“Elissabeth.” If the creature could gloat, somehow grin through that beak, I thought it probably would. “Thiss iss the end of your road.”
I dropped the Beretta to my side, and did not say a word. Instead I called to mind the complex shapes that wove together to create the Seal of A’grimm.
The Wind exploded around me. It blasted through my mental construct and caught those sigils aflame with brilliant azure radiance. The glow shone all around me, casting stark and sharp shadows through the early evening. I saw its reflection in the eyes of dozens of the kenku, their beady black eyes looking on in horror and dismay.
The Wind lanced into the creature, punching it squarely middle mass with the force of a hurricane.
It cried a loud, raucous cry before being launched over one of the townhouses into the next block.
“So cool,” Baxter sounded breathless.
“Liz?” Alicia’s tone felt much harsher. “What you done? What exactly have you done?”
“I’ve taken my birthright.” I looked at her, calm certainty in my eyes. “I’ve done exactly as Simon intended.”
“Here?” She took a step forward, her voice a frantic hiss. “You know they’ll find you! It’s going to make things ten times harder!”
“Alicia,” Rehl warned her. “Can Abriel confirm the identity of our company?”
I spun in my seat and looked back the way I came. There, looking every bit like a posse of cyber-cowboys riding into a modern boxcar canyon, were the Facility Assets. They strode confidently, as if there weren’t a couple dozen murder birds lurking about with reaper sickles.
“Oh… fuck,” Alicia said.
“Hey!” I turned and looked at her. “Language!”
Then, all midnight feather and silver sickle, the kenku fell upon us.
“Damnit!” Baxter’s cry came from my left. One of the creatures had run up on him and almost caught him unawares.
It swung toward his blonde head with its sickle, but he dodged backward and almost fell. He righted himself, stepped forward, and swung at Simon’s cane.
He caught the creature squarely in the hip.
Its bone shattered from the force of that cane. The creature screamed as it fell.
“Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!” Baxter stared from the creature to me, and grinned through his shock.
He started to spin the cane again.
Alicia fumbled in her pocket and pulled out Simon’s old silver lighter. Rehl stepped behind her and fired twice at two of the kenku and drivin
g them back.
“I have to turn the bike around!” I yelled. I pulled past the little alleyway where Fallen Leaves lay hidden, though I wanted to charge toward it. “Knock on the door!”
“Got it!” Rehl reloaded his Beretta and shot one of the birds out of the sky.
Before I had even turned away from him, two more swooped down on me, taking me by surprise. I whipped the Beretta toward them, but not before one of their sickles got through my leathers, just enough to scratch my left side.
“Mother fucker!” I snarled with pain and shot wildly in their direction. One of them flapped away into the swarm of raven-beasts, but the other caught one of my bullets in its neck and went down gurgling.
Too many. I threw down the hammer on the Valkyrie and sent it charging forward. In the same moment, I called forth the Seal of Oeriim, to channel the Wind into a shape in front of me.
I had done walls, they’d been one of the first things that Simon taught me to do. He felt it important that I be able protect myself from the occasional horror of the astral planes. Walls had come fairly naturally to me, even though they weren’t the kind of construct that the wind seemed to enjoy.
It didn’t like being held in one shape. Hated being static.
This time, as the tumult of infinity coursed through my mind, blazing through those sigils in cerulean wonder, I shaped my wall slightly differently than I ever had in my long apprenticeship.
Not flat. Instead, I put a suggestion of Baxter’s to use.
I imagined a ninety degree wedge in front of the Valkyrie. As the wind capered and teased my hair around me, I charged my bike forward, holding my focus so that the construct of Wind moved with me.
The Wind didn’t love the shape. Not only was I forcing it to remain in a single form, but I was forcing it to move in the direction that I wanted. Not an easy task.
Yet, quite practical.
I hit an incoming knot of kenku like a locomotive and hurled them off to either side with my impromptu cowcatcher. As Rehl fired at two more, I spun the bike around, and got myself into position.
In that moment, the Ass-hats entered play.
As I spun the bike around, it was easier to see them entering Chester Court. Their crossbowman (I assumed it was the same guy I had seen the other day), had set one of his warbling fire-portals parallel to the ground, facing down. He strode confidently into the swarm of furious kenku, shooting the crossbow squarely at them with concise precision.
Each bird-man those silvery quarrels hit vanished, only to reappear momentarily at the spot of his portal. Thus, the effect was that the avian nightmare might swoop down on him at something like mach three, only to get teleported approximately two inches away from the concrete.
Then, as it died a mangled mess, it reappeared where it had been only moments before. It would fall to the ground in a bloody and broken heap.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. I felt fairly proud of myself for escaping them the other day, but now I wondered about that. This one Ass-hat, with little more than his magical portal crossbow, had slaughtered six of the kenku in less than a minute.
And that was just him.
Had they let me escape?
Even as I watched cross-bow boy score critical hit after critical hit, the lumbering barbarian came up from the other side. He whirled that rivet gun-device and drew down on one of the kenku that hovered closer to the street. Madly, he typed upon a crescent shaped device that hung on his hip.
WHUF! The creature flew back, gurgling a raucous scream as rivet-boy shot him square.
I thought that the shot was the end of it, but I could not have been more wrong. A burst of rippling emanations, like heat over cobblestones, came from the creature’s corpse, even as it flew. Instantly, five other kenku—the ones closes to the corpse—spun and fell toward that body, as if for a moment they had been snared by the gravity of the planet Jupiter.
Even from here, maybe fifty yards away, I felt a momentary pull, tiny but real.
Then it faded.
“Ho-lee shit,” I swore again.
A loud hiss filled the street as Alicia held up Simon’s silver lighter. She flicked the turn wheel and it sparked into flame. The moment that flame burned, a shimmering dome appeared around my friends. It glistened like an oil slick on water, and covered them completely.
One of the kenku, the one closest to my friends, attempted to charge the shimmering field. The moment the bird touched it, its descent slowed, as if it tried to push through a three foot wall of honey.
Rehl fired, shooting the creature squarely in the face. Apparently, Simon’s lighter-shield allowed things to pass out easily enough.
“Liz!” Baxter turned and looked at me. “The shop!”
“Got it!” I gave him a thumbs up.
My friends sprinted in a group toward the alleyway, Alicia holding that lighter high. Whenever one of the crow-things attacked, it found its way impeded by the barrier.
After that, Rehl’s shooting handled things.
I was so caught up in the cacophony that I completely missed the sucker punch.
One of the kenku cawed threateningly as it descended as it rushed me, its sickle held out wide.
“Fuck you!” I pulled the Beretta and shot, but the creature seemed to have been expecting that. It dove to the left and rolled, coming up standing just in front of me.
A second avian swung at me from the right.
It had dropped from directly above, and I almost had not seen it at all.
I twitched my head to one side, only not quite fast enough.
It hit me with the curved flat of that sickle blade.
Stars and red agony exploded in my mind. I tried to turn; I wanted to see them both at once, but the strike was too fierce. I’d let myself get distracted, and they’d caught me completely unawares.
I fell off my bike, my muscles like jelly.
As one of the creatures bent over me, everything went dark.
5
“Hey. Come on.” The male’s voice echoed from what felt like a million miles away.
I shook my head slightly and wondered who had left all of the garbage fires in my skull.
“Tired.” I mumbled and skewed my face against the pounding pain.
“This will help.” I felt someone’s palm press against my chest, beneath my jacket and over my heart.
Then I heard an ominous hiss, and a snick. I scarcely had time to feel the tiny bite of the dart before adrenaline thundered into my body. Every muscle I owned contracted at once, and I cried out, eyes bulging.
I stared up at the middle-aged man who had crouched over me. He smiled, crinkling crow’s feet blooming at the edges of his eyes.
“I think your little problem child is awake.” He stepped back, and I peered around trying to see where I was. “No mecha, obviously. Only hormone.”
Somewhere behind me I heard WHUF. It was followed by a WHUF, a WHUF, and a particularly savage WHUF.
“Evening, Liz.” Garret stepped over to where I lay, and extended a hand. “Care to tell us what’s going on here?”
“What have you done?” My heart barreled along like a locomotive out of control, my breath quick and gasping.
“It’s adrenaline.” It shook its hand as if impatient for me to take it. “Get up. We’re still in the middle of things.”
I took its hand, and it pulled me to my feet. I blearily looked around, trying to track what had happened.
How long had I been out?
Not long it seemed. There were still quite a few of the flying murder sickles lurking about, some perched on the edge of roofs, some in midair. All of them glared down at us, each waiting for their chance.
“You got anything you need to tell me?” Garret seemed out of breath and held what looked like a hand cannon in its right hand. Its hair was mussed and the right arm of its suit had been shredded.
Fuck.
“We need to hurry,” I babbled, not thinking straight. “It’s more than the birds. They sent in
a helicopter.”
“We’ve called off the cops. We have sweepers dealing with civilians.” Garret affixed me with one dark eye. “I’m more interested in why my favorite Irrat of Interest is rampaging through New York.”
“You really think it’s a rampage?” I shook my head. “I thought it was more like a spree.”
“Believe it or not, I don’t have much time for smartass-ery.” Its head ticked once, then again, like some kind of mechanical bird. It brought its weapon up abruptly and peered around for incoming crow monsters.
“Fine. Okay.” I shook my head to toss off the remnant jitters from the adrenaline. It didn’t work. “I figured out that you might not be bullshitting me, okay?”
“Is that so?” The tiniest grin pulled at the corner of its mouth.
“I know that the ‘third-party’ that you talked about is real. I know that my father has gotten mixed up with them.” I spoke frantically, trying to remember everything. “It was some woman named ‘Patricia.’ She had skill with alchemy or transmutation or something.”
“Okay.” Garret’s tone sounded like I might be getting on track.
“I know you were telling the truth about the third-party. I know my father is the person you said was caught up in all of this. You know, you said I knew someone?”
Around us, both the crossbow man and the giant bearded barbarian laid down pain on the kenku. The battle raged furious, and every few moments Garret paused to shoot at one of the murder-birds.
Each time he hit, a shot exploded in the creature’s body. Typically, it left a hole about the size of a dinner plate.
Kind of made my Beretta seem small.
“What does that have to do with all of this?” Garret gestured around us. “With these aberrations?”
“Your third-party has my father, is what I’ve been led to understand.”
“Okay.” Garret shot another of the creatures. “Our intelligence isn’t quite that certain, but okay.”