Brightblade

by C. T. Phipps

  “Ebay,” I said, shaking my head. “You need to get an auction house to do this, Quincy. Some place with serious clout and reach.”

  “Sounds expensive,” Quincy said, shrugging. “Whatever the case, you’re still eating crow until I get a check in my hand from you or the insurance company. I need you to take this down to the Midnight Bank along with our other off-the-books proceeds.”

  I blinked. “Off-the-book proceeds?”

  “A lot of our clients like to pay in cash,” Quincy said. “Hazard of the business.”

  I would have complained about just how far Quincy was leaning into the illegal end of things but there was that damned hypocrisy thing again. “Listen, I’m going to need some time off to go pursue some personal matters.”

  “You’re in the doghouse and you want time off?” Quincy asked.

  “More like the bearhouse,” I said.

  “I don’t care if it’s Yosemite National Park,” Quincy replied. “What could have been so damned important?”

  “I’ve found the first clue in eight years to my missing brother,” I said, quickly.

  “It was more a rhetorical device and if he’s been gone for that long then a couple of more weeks won’t matter,” Quincy said, showing his usual sensitivity. He then picked up a large metal briefcase that I knew contained whatever our customers were willing to pay. Sometimes, he was paid in pennies out of spite and Quincy took them anyway.

  I sighed. “Fine. I’ll take this down to the Midnight Bank and drop this off then pick up Gilroy by myself. I think he’s far more likely to come along quietly now.”

  I was one hundred percent sure that wasn’t going to be the case but I wasn’t about to bring that up with Quincy now. Still, how bad could it be?

  Oh, why did I think that?

  Chapter Five

  The Burning Sword of Justice Burns Brightly

  (or: When did my life become a comic book?)

  “Going from fighting a werebear to standing in line at the bank,” Bryce muttered, standing there with his hands in his pockets. “This isn’t what I expected bounty hunting to be like. For both good and bad.”

  “Which is which?” Tracy asked, standing beside me.

  “I’m not sure,” Bryce admitted, managing whole sentences when he wasn’t looking at Tracy.

  “I choose not having someone trying to kill you over being bored stiff,” I said, holding my scabbard in one hand and the briefcase in the other.

  The three of us were standing in the back of a lengthy line that had only marginally moved since we’d gotten here a half-hour ago. The Midnight Bank was an institution that conducted way more business than it was built for and it was only getting busier as the nocturnal economy of New Detroit grew.

  The Midnight Bank, technically the First Bank of New Detroit, was an enormous marble institution located in the Halo between New and Old Detroit. It was a remnant of the original city that had been repurposed by the vamps who owned everything and now served as a 24-hour institution that did most of its business after other financial institutions closed.

  The interior was four-stories-tall with the walls leading up to chandeliers, murals of pale nobles on horseback, and actual frigging gargoyles lining up the arches. Dozens of offices were located here as well, human and undead businessmen carrying on their business well above the little people who were putting their money with a place that put the long in long-term investment.

  Honestly, it was less a group of freaks and weirdos than most people expected (speaking as someone who would be lumped among them). I was there with Bryce, and Tracy, but the majority were just ordinary citizens of New Detroit who’d adapted to the city’s new economy. Prior to 2008, the city had been dying by degrees, but vamp money had managed to put it back on the list of America’s fastest growing cities. Sure, your job hours might change and maybe you developed anemia despite not remembering you’d been fed on but that was the price of progress.

  Wow, I was a bigot.

  “Yes, you kinda are,” Tracy said as we moved one more space closer to getting our business done.

  “What?” I asked, doing a double take.

  “Sorry, you were projecting,” Tracy said, looking down at her Doc Martens. “I think you have some serious issues with vampires you need to work out.”

  “You can read my mind?” I asked, stunned.

  “Are you a bright?” Bryce said, awed. Then he looked panicked. “Wait, don’t read my mind!”

  Tracy rolled her eyes. “Like I need to be psychic to know what you’re thinking Bryce.”

  Bryce looked horrified.

  Tracy looked at me. “Would it help if I brought him to the Scarlet Woman and got him laid? I mean, prostitution is legal in New Detroit.”

  “You already broke his brain once,” I said, dryly. “Do you really want to smash it up completely?”

  Tracy shrugged. “If it helps.”

  Bryce frowned and looked to one side, radiating the kind of low-grade anger insecure males often struggled with. Bryce was a good kid, but I teased him perhaps a little too much. I just didn’t understand why he’d decided to become a bounty hunter, let alone with us. It wasn’t exactly the sort of job you just fell into and he had no former law enforcement experience. Yet he’d just showed up one day and was hired on the spot. Bryce wasn’t lacking for determination at least. A lot of other potentials, including a few hardened veterans and one ex-SWAT officer, had quit after a week on the job. He was three months and going.

  “I’m not a virgin or anything,” Bryce said, defensively. “I mean, I’ve had girlfriends. Three of them!”

  “This conversation is not going anywhere good,” I said, taking another step forward in the line of doom. The five people in front of us were variations, I swore, on the same little old lady who was talking the teller’s ears off. “So how can you read minds, Tracy? Believe me, I don’t mind. My sister was a telepath.”

  “You have a sister?” Bryce asked, interrupting the chance to move the topic off his relative inexperience. “Is she missing too?”

  I glared at him.

  “Yes?” Tracy asked, unaware what sort of nerve she was touching on.

  “It’s more like I don’t know where she is,” I said.

  “That’s usually how people define missing,” Tracy said.

  I was glaring at her now. This was starting to give me whiplash. “It’s not necessarily the case. Well, at least it’s different than Arthur. Anna was involved in a lot of top-secret government work. It wasn’t like she contacted me regularly beforehand. It’s just, one day, she stopped and I didn’t have any way of getting back in touch with her.”

  “Have you tried getting in touch with the government to find out where she is?” Bryce asked, helpful as always even if I really just wished he’d drop the subject.

  “I tried a few times but I always get redirected to BOSS and the call is disconnected the moment they find out I’m a bright.”

  BOSS had proven every bit as racist, unhelpful, and incompetent as most supernaturals had predicted when the President formed the organization. The organization was formed of failed Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, and Department of Justice agents. Virtually every volunteer for it was also someone who should have been on someone’s terrorist watch list. You know, if the government considered people who wanted to kill all supernaturals terrorists.

  “That sucks, I’m sorry,” Bryce said, radiating sincerity. That was one of the things I liked about him. Despite how easily embarrassed he got, he wore his heart on his sleeve and that was as good as gold among Empaths.

  “Dhampyr,” Tracy said.

  “What?” I asked, doing a double take.

  “A Dhampyr is a half-vampire,” Bryce explained to me like I was in seventh grade. “They’re the children that the undead can have with normal mortals. I know it sounds like Damphair but that’s from Game of Thrones and not related to the undead at all.”

  I stared at him. “I know what a dhampyr is, Bryce.”
>
  “Oh,” Bryce said. “Well, you see I just got my Degree in Supernatural Studies and—”

  “Oh my God, that’s why you work for us,” I said, finally understanding. “You didn’t realize that’s a vanity degree that universities give out to gullible students.”

  “It was taught by a real wizard!” Bryce said. “He could levitate and everything!”

  “I can levitate,” I said, simply. “Funny, I could probably teach the course too, but I couldn’t take the pay cut.”

  Bryce harrumphed. “I don’t know why I tell you guys anything. Wait, Tracy, you’re a half-vampire?”

  “Yep,” Tracy said, “That’s why everything is perky and perfect for luring prey in.”

  Bryce’s eyes widened. “That’s why…wait, you’re yanking my chain.”

  “Surely, an expert like you would know!” Tracy replied, batting her eyelashes.

  “You guys suck,” Bryce muttered.

  “Sometimes,” Tracy replied. “I also blow.”

  Bryce looked away so I couldn’t see his reaction.

  “So, you’re half vampire?” I asked, genuinely surprised. More so than I probably should have been since it made a helluva lot more sense than my theory she was a day-walking vamp. Older ones could but they didn’t so much walk as shamble. Being awake during the day and not exploding took a lot out of even powerful undead.

  “Yeah,” Tracy said.

  I blinked. “Wait, you’re Saul Baron’s daughter?”

  Tracy frowned. “Yeah.”

  Saul Baron was one of the Old Ones who’d come to power in the past year of vamp infighting. He was an old Italian undead lord that came off as a mobster only because The Godfather was based on the Borgias. I’d also dated his daughter for a while. You know, when I’d wanted to be drunk into oblivion. In both senses of the word.

  “Eww,” Tracy said. “I did not need reminding of that.”

  “What?” Bryce said.

  “She slept with my older full-vampire sister,” Tracy said.

  Bryce’s eyes widened.

  “Great, now you’ve broken him,” I muttered.

  Tracy waved her hand in front of him. “It’s okay, she’s AC/DC like me. You still have a snowball’s chance in hell, which is still a chance.”

  “Stop that,” I said, frowning. “I have enough problems with my Empathy powers around him already.”

  “You go both ways?” Bryce asked, looking at Tracy with eyes as big as dinner plates.

  I sighed. “Thank you for setting queer people back twenty years Tracy.”

  “It’s a vampire thing,” Tracy said, continuing our teasing. “Which means, of course all the dude vampires you’ve met want to sleep and eat with you too. Imagine that. Shirtless, no, no naked with fangs extended. Oily too.”

  Bryce deflated. Probably literally.

  “That was cruel,” I said. “Funny, but cruel.”

  “I’m also a witch so I have like several different bingo cards to check when discussing my identity,” Tracy said.

  “My father was Cuban,” Bryce said, cheerfully. “My mother is Afro-Hawaii.”

  “Really?” Tracy asked. “Cool.”

  “Next!” the bank teller said, causing me to turn and see the line before us had finally disappeared.

  “Oh, thank God,” I said, shaking my head. I wasn’t religious but at this point I would be glad to have anyone on my side who would get me out of this place.

  The man behind the counter was an elderly black man with hair that resembled, I kid you not, Albert Einstein. “Yes?”

  “I am here to make a deposit,” I said, putting the briefcase on the table. “Also, to put this in a safety deposit box. You know, if it fits. Which I never thought about until now.”

  The man didn’t react. “Do you have the password to access the safety deposit box?”

  “Password?” I asked, suddenly hating Quincy even more than I did before.

  “I’m sorry but our safety deposit boxes not only require a key, two forms of ID, and a blood sample but a password,” the teller said. “If you don’t have—”

  He was interrupted in midsentence by some force trying to clamp down on our brains and force us to sleep. Well, less “trying” than “succeeding” in the bank teller’s case, as he slipped forward and fell asleep on the marble counter before him. I fought it, struggling to stay awake against the energies demanding I do otherwise.

  Growing up with my siblings and my years of training at Solomon Academy had taught me how to resist psionic attacks. But this wasn’t quite psionics. The flavor was wrong. Magic then. God, I hated magic. It was up there with vampirism for handing out superpowers to people who don’t even have a hint of the discipline needed to handle them.

  Or maybe I was a bigot. Geez, that would suck.

  Focus, Ashley!

  I heard Bryce in the lobby hitting the floor with a loud thump. I heard Tracy starting to counter-spell before succumbing herself. Everyone else hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, which told me this spell was damn powerful. That left me to stop whatever the hell was going on and I was about 15 seconds from taking a, possibly final, nap myself.

  Maybe I don’t know how to cast a counter-spell, but I know how to stay awake. I punched my fist into the counter before me and felt the pain arc up my arm. Nothing like good, old-fashioned agony to keep you up. Thus, I was the only one awake when the three monster women came into the lobby.

  The three of them were humanoid in the broadest sense, and obviously female, but clearly weren’t baseline humans. The most human-like of the three was a hairless lizard-woman, covered in dark-green scales, and with a long, sinuous tail, but otherwise human in appearance. To her left was a bat/human hybrid-looking creature, whose body was covered in fur. Unlike the lizard, she had chosen to go without clothes, probably less because the fur let her get away with public nudity than because you couldn’t get clothing off the shelf to go with your upper arms being batwings.

  Her mouth was a little too wide, and her nose was broad and flattened with a bit of skin poking up over it. The third was clothed, though her clothing seemed coated with slime. It was hard to pay attention to any other details than her face, however, which wasn’t remotely human. Her skin was greyish pink. Her mouth took up the entire lower half of her head, and looked like a mass of short tentacles, until she opened it, which revealed two rows of teeth on either side of it. It was easily the most hideous thing I’d seen. She was also, incongruously, carrying what looked like heavy cutting equipment.

  None of the three were shifters, which was the first thing that the organized part of my brain told me. They didn’t have the right look or symmetry for them. That shouldn’t have bothered me but the fact I was encountering something I’d never seen before in my life bothered me to no end. They could be fairies, mutants, magical constructs, or maybe even aliens for all I knew. What did seem to be clear was they were using magic to rob the bank in what was easily the most over-the-top heist I’d seen outside of television. Well, actually, I’d only seen about three heists personally but this was still the most shocking.

  “Get to the vault,” the lizard-woman ordered and the pink-thing started putting down her equipment.

  Any hopes that I might not be noticed right away were dashed when the bat-woman screeched and pointed at me. So much for surprise. For the second time today, I found myself wishing I was armed, but a holster just didn’t go with the sexy TV lawyer look I’d been aiming for. Assuming the lizard woman was this trio’s leader, I dove behind the check counter and used my TK to send a stapler flying at her head.

  It flew through suddenly empty space to clang loudly off the wall next to the front door. The lizard-woman had vanished. A moment later, I felt her surprisingly strong arms wrap around me from behind, pinning my arms to my side as she tried to hold me still.

  “You’ll stop fighting me if you know what’s good for you,” she hissed in my ear.

  I, generally, never did, and threw my head back, s
mashing her nose into her face. She groaned and her grip loosened, and I twisted around to elbow her hard in her ribs…which would have worked, had she still been there, but she was suddenly on the other side of the room. Great, not only were they non-shifter animal/human hybrids but they had superpowers. How the hell did I end up having to fight four superhumans in one day? I had no idea what the other two could do, but I had to imagine I’d be finding out momentarily.

  As if on cue, the bat-woman screamed like a banshee and I don’t mean she shouted loudly. I mean I felt every bone in my body start vibrating and my eardrums felt like they were going to burst at any moment. My sense of balance was flushed down the toilet and I was only barely aware of the big glass outside window behind me shattering as my knees gave out. I tipped forward and grabbed at a chair to keep from hitting the ground, but only managed to slow myself down.

  Thankfully, the bat-creature clearly had limits and had to stop screeching to catch her breath. I took the opportunity to sprint forward and tackle her, or, at least, that was the plan. The result was me slipping on a pool of slime I hadn’t even noticed tentacle-girl spraying there. I slid forward and crashed into an unconscious Tracy and the lizard-woman was on me in an instant.

  “Stop fighting or I swear to hell I’ll break your neck,” she hissed as her arm constricted around my throat. “I don’t want to kill you but I swear I will. This is too important to let anyone interfere.”

  “Huh, a moral—” I paused before saying monster. I didn’t want to be one of those people who threw around that word casually. Even if I thought it. I had to admit, my options were limited, though. She had me dead to rights.

  “Alright,” I said, sensing her emotions.

  They were fear. Guilt. Stress. Not what I expected from them. Damn, I was a racist against supernaturals. I needed to see a therapist about that.

  That was when a handsome black-haired man walked in through the door wearing a business suit and trench coat, carrying a carved wooden staff. He banged it on the marble floors and caused an enormous echo to fill the area. “Clara, tell your cohorts to stand down. If you harm one hair on her head, you will have to answer to not only the United States government but the Men in Black. So says Special Agent Alexander Timons, formerly of the FBI and High Magus of the Star Chamber!”