Celebromancy (29 page)

“You guys are awesome!”

One of the team stepped forward, an older man of fifty-ish, with close-cropped black-and-silver hair that peeked out at the temples under his shield. “Thanks for the assist.”

Ree offered a hand, “Ree Reyes, screenwriter.”

The policeman chuckled, then met her with a hand that would have been big without a gauntlet. “Captain Brandon Chu. Washington said you had some skills.” Behind him, the SWAT team dropped the phalanx formation, some of them pulling water bottles from their harnesses while the others watched the campus. These men and women were rock hard. Ree saw Washington’s face behind the visor, and the officer saluted with her truncheon.

“This is your squad?” Ree asked, assuming she already knew the answer.

“It is. I’ve led this team for going on ten years. What’s a screenwriter doing with moves like Parker?”

Ree gestured like a bad stage magician with both hands. “Maaagic.”

Chu grinned, taking a drag from his water bottle. “You going to be able to keep that up?”

The music in her mind had dimmed, but was still going strong. “For a while. You?”

“We arrived about five minutes after you’d cleaned the clock of that dragon. Shame. Most of the younger officers haven’t ever faced down a full-grown dragon; they were climbing the walls on the way over.”

Ree gave Cap Chu the eyebrow of circumspection.
Most of them? So presumably some of them have? I may have underestimated this town’s basely crazy level.

Chu shrugged. “This job takes a special kind of crazy.”

“True story. Send up the signal if something else shows?”

“Will do,” Cap Chu said. “Let’s just hope this thing works. My girls are madly in love with
Mermaid High School
, and it’s hard to tell a seven- and nine-year-old to stop paying attention to their favorite actress without having to either deal with tantrums or share entirely too adult details about someone’s rap sheet.”

Ree managed a polite smile, not having been in any sort of position like that and not sure if she was being indicted as part of that rap sheet and associated behavior. She left the conversation and checked inside again, where Jane was in full-on ritual mode, locked into the film, strobing light like a number at the Grammys. She nodded to Drake, and the two of them changed positions, then settled in to wait, while Yancy stood at Jane’s side, her silent assistant.

The only sound in the building was the hum and spin of the projector and the steady drone of Jane’s litany, which sounded to Ree like a tabloid and historical survey of the careers of starlets across the years.

And I thought my magic was weird.

A few minutes later, another wave hit the campus, this time it was an even larger pack of apes from the
Planet of the Apes
knockoff film
De-Evolution
.

The apes broke the ranks of the SWAT team, so Ree swung into action once more, getting a smaller pack to chase her around the campus in a Spider-power-enabled re-creation of the scene where the heroine parkours her way through an industrial park to get to the secret formula for reversing the De-Evolution virus.

Cap Chu managed to rally the SWAT team, reposition, and call weapons free, which led to dozens of gorillas dissolving into ichor and the side wall of the office building used for the
Awakenings
set being shot up to the point of looking like it belonged in
The Walking Dead
or
Children of Men
.

By the end of the second wave, Ree’s Spider-powers were nearly depleted. She tagged Danny in for door duty and tried to top off her tank again using clips from her phone, but only got a few minutes before a flood of rats hit the campus.

They didn’t have much in the way of area of effect weapons, which meant that Ree had to dig deep into her sideboard, flinging fireballs and acid bursts and ice-rays like a level 20 Wizard from atop a wrecked car. When the wave subsided, the concrete was covered in ichor, and Ree stood in the center of a one-person ticker-tape-parade hangover. She was out of Spider-fu and nearly out of cards, which left her with her mostly-charged blasters and her swords. Drake had run through three-quarters of his charge crystals, and the ritual was only just now half-done.

Ree wished that
Sunset Boulevard
could have been a tight ninety minutes instead of an intense and lingering hundred and ten, but she cast her quibbling aside when wave four hit. Front ranks of orcs, with gorilla heavy infantry.

She watched the horde push forward, standing on a table to see over the phalanxed-up SWAT team.

“Fall back inside and bar the door!” Cap Chu ordered, and the team shuffled back, forming a pocket inside the door to receive the orcs’s charge. A group broke off to one side, so Ree ran to another entrance, shouting to Drake as she went.

“Cover the west entrance! We can’t let them inside on two fronts or we’re fucked!” Ree checked the eastern door, reinforced with a shelving cabinet. She looked across the building to Drake, who stopped at the western door. He gave a thumbs-up, then continued forward, leading with his hand-cannon.

“Status?” Ree shouted back to the SWAT team.

“This door won’t hold,” Chu said. “I need you to keep the others off our ass.”

“Got it!” Ree pulled out her blaster and kicked over some tables to make herself a low-rent fence for cover.

Something hit the door, and the shelving unit shuddered. “They’re heeere!” Ree shouted to everyone and no one, channeling Heather O’Rourke from
Poltergeist
. Ree set out her phaser and sword beside her, wishing she had a gun bunny in bed beside her to keep the weapons coming like the irascible Jayne Cobb. But then again, as much as she liked that idea, or the notion of finally getting herself a copy of the Cunning Hat, she liked her solid moral compass and triple-digit IQ even better.

The cabinet shuddered again, and then she heard wood splinter. The shelf flopped forward, landing just short of her table fence. Ree popped her head over the bench and fired as soon as she established the visiting figure was of the wrong genus to be human, even counting some of her harrier exes from the college hippie days.

She fired as fast as possible, trying to plug the door while someone came to back her up (hopefully). But a pair of orcs jumped in at an angle, knocking over the table to Ree’s left and opening a path for others to follow. One of the leading orcs jabbed a spear at Ree. She ducked behind the table for cover, then held the blaster over the table and fired indiscriminately, scrambling back and groping for the sword. Her hand wrapped around the leather strapping and she pushed herself to her feet, still firing as she backed up.

“A little help here!” she shouted again, panic not so much creeping as barging into her voice. She parried the orc’s spear-thrust as it tried to circle her, then dropped it with a blaster bolt. She didn’t have the time or the space to switch her weapons, so she fired right-handed and parried southpaw. She abandoned all pretense of containment, backing off step by step as a gorilla pushed the cabinet aside so that the monsters could stream in.

Ree broke and ran back to the SWAT team and the ritual space. Orcs and gorillas followed closely enough that she could hear lips smacking in an entirely-too-alarming way. The only question would be whether the orcs or the gorillas would get to nosh on her. She pushed the morbid thoughts back as she saw the SWAT team scattered and half-buried under a mass of orcs, with the gorillas hammering at the small cluster of officers, who had maintained ranks in a corner.

“Drake?” Ree shouted, hoping for backup. The only response was the sound of high-caliber gunshots in a measured tempo.
Sounds like he’s busy.

Ree opened fire at head level, confident she wouldn’t hit any friendlies, since she’d put a still-untouched Jane and Yancy on her right.

A wave of orcs dropped, but some of their buddies decided to come and get revenge. Ree kept on the move, running across the room as she unloaded. Halfway to the west side of the building, as she passed a stale-crumb-laden craft services table, the blaster made the sound of ultimate sadness, whirring down to nothing.

Ree dropped the blaster and switched the sword to her right hand, spinning into a double-handed slash that cut through one orc’s ax and then its midsection.

Two more filled its place before the orc hit the floor, pressing her with weapons that yearned to one day see the Iron Age but were still plenty sharp. Ree beat aside a spear then lunged to stab the other orc. She ducked under the spear as it came back at her, then rolled under a table and looked down the room to see Drake chased by a gorilla, running full tilt. His face was slick with sweat and blood.

“Incoming!” Drake said, jumping over the table Ree had used for cover. Ree rolled out from under the table and found three orcs waiting for her. Drake dropped the first with his rifle, but two more took its place. The orcs and gorillas closed in on them as rats filled the floor.

“That’s enough for now,” said a new voice, one that sounded like smarmy dipped in skeezy, with a shady cherry on top.

Alex Walters, Cinemancer Sleaze King of WTF.

The monsters held their ground, surrounding Drake and Ree and circling the projector. There were close to fifty orcs and a half-dozen gorillas besides.

Well, we’re fucked
, Ree thought, her mind flipping through crazy-ass plans and finding nothing that would do better than getting them all killed in a hurry.

Chapter Twenty-two

Salome Returns

When push comes to shove and the bullets are flying, the mooks are dying, and the next couple of minutes determine who goes home bloodied but victorious and who gets the economy ticket to the morgue, you better hope that you’re luckier, stronger, or better prepared than the other guys. Preferably all three. And if you can only be one, be lucky.

It’s worked for me so far.

Mostly.

—Eastwood, private correspondence with Captain Brandon Chu, PPD, June 22, 2009

Another group of orcs marched Danny and the half-dozen remaining SWAT officers into the room. Behind them came Alex Walters, dressed in an expensive suit that hung off of him like he was a tween wearing his dad’s clothes. And finally, Rachel MacKenzie in her own Oscar-night dress, décolletage on display, with a gigantic brooch, hair done up, and ears sparkling with matching diamonds.

“What are you doing here?” Ree asked, throwing the accusation at Rachel. Her eyes didn’t match her movement, like she was distracted, splitting her attention.

Alex cut in. “I invited her to join us for the big finale. I was more than a little offended that you didn’t send a car. There are standards to keep in this industry.”

“I invite you to fuck off and die in a ditch, slowly,” Ree said.

Alex gave a used car salesman smile. “Clever as always. But zingers aren’t going to save anyone today, Ree. My bosses have already written the ending; now it’s just a question of how I want to direct the scene.” The crowd of orcs parted for him until he stood at the edge of the circle surrounding Ree and Drake.

To the side, Jane continued her ritual, and the film showed Norma in her masochistic beauty regimen, torturing herself in preparation for a return to the screen that would never come. At the same time, the other projector showed a fast-scrolling run of #JaneDay messages, fans sharing their love of a dozen films and TV series.

“Oh, great, a muckracker with delusions of auteur-ity,” Ree said. “Please tell me you’re not a frustrated actor or writer. I might choke on cliché.”

Alex showed his teeth in a predatory smile. “Keep on talking, girl. You’re just making hot air.”

Drake kept his weapon sighted, aiming at whichever orc happened to be closest at any time. Seeing him up close, she saw that the blood on his face came from a gash just below the hairline, which had ruined his goggles and torn into his scalp.

Ree looked to the director and star plugging away at the ritual. “Jane, Yancy, a little help here?”

Jane was unresponsive, just carrying on with the ritual, speaking Norma Desmond’s lines along with the film. Yancy handed Jane a makeup brush, then snuck a look back to Ree. He mouthed a word that Ree guessed was stall. It lacked the
s
at the end to be
balls
, though that would be applicable, and
call
as in
call their bluff
didn’t sound like a terribly good idea.

Whatever, stall it is.

“So, Rachel . . .” she began. “What’s with the change of heart? Earlier you were all
I hate those bastards, but my hands are tied. But I’m no killer, just a jealous paranoid with three-thousand-dollar haircuts
. How much of that was crap, after all?”

But Alex cut Rachel off before she could respond. “Just enough to get you to bring the mirror here, to prepare everything ready for us to finish Act Three. And you’ve played your part perfectly. Even better than expected.” Alex looked at Jane and smiled, and it was almost like she could see his brain smirking inside that ugly noggin. “After you left, Jane, the powers that be made the price for your betrayal very clear. First, you had to fail. Anytime you had a film coming, Cosmic dropped a big fat tentpole film opposite your movie.”

Ree’s mind flashed through release dates, tried to remember poster lineups in the movie theatres. It was true, Jane’s post-Cosmic work had always floundered at the box office.

Alex continued with his Villainous Gloat. “Next, you were allowed a modicum of success, just enough of a groundswell that you’d get too big for your dress size. And that’s where Rachel came in. That curse, as you call it? It was my own invention, one of my best. Aside from my stories about your flailing that followed.”

Ree looked over to Yancy. His face was pained, and it was like he was trying to not hear Alex as he continued. “And it was great, Jane, because then you came here, tried to start over—like we couldn’t follow you? You hooked up with this little Geekomantress, and all it took were a few monster attacks here and there to push you to the perfect balance of failure and success to force you to dig deep and fuel the curse. Jane, you—”

Ree cut in, tired of Alex’s monologue. “I get it. You’re Schemy McSchemerson, vice earl of Schemeton Abbey. But who are these bosses? Your suit says big money, but if you’re anything more than a yes-man lieutenant, then I’m Jennifer Lopez.”

Alex crossed to stand beside Jane. The star was sweating, her teeth grit as she struggled, her attentions still on the ritual and the screen. Alex seemed to be ignoring Ree’s taunts, but she continued nonetheless: “No response for that, huh? Whose lap do you sit on? I know Cosmic holds the purse strings, but whose monkey are you, really?”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Bored now.” He waved a hand forward, and a cluster of orcs pounced. Drake took one of the orc’s heads off with his rifle, and Ree cut into another. But there were too many, and the group crushed in on them in an instant. Ree lost her grip on the sword, finding herself grappled to hell. The orcs forced her to her knees, but the encircling forces parted to give her and Drake a view of Alex whispering in Jane’s ear.

Ree shouted, struggling against the orcs. “Don’t listen to him, Jane. Finish the job, and then we’ll clean up here.” Ree kept the bluster up but didn’t see any way out. Barring a whole helluva lot of backup, if Alex wanted them dead, they’d be dead.

Alex whispered into Jane’s ear while the star struggled to maintain the ritual. Her gaze wandered over to Alex, her mask of confidence cracking. A buckshot burst of worry hit Ree.

“Don’t stop!” Ree shouted. But when she looked to the other screen, she saw that the Twitter feed had changed. Now there were more than a dozen retweets of messages from Rachel MacKenzie and Alex, ripping into Jane and her fans. The hashtag was contested now, split between the original message and the counterprogramming, a Celebromantic clash of the titans extending to their fan-bases.

Magical energy strobed and boomed at full-on concert levels while the film continued, closing in on the tragic finale.
Next time we do something like this, I’m insisting we use
Caddyshack
. Maybe
Bring It On
, if we’re feeling edgy.

In the middle of the scene where Joe sends Betty away, Alex took a step away from Jane, moving back from his in-your-face approach. His voice changed, becoming softer, less abrasive. “All right, Jane. We can end this now. All will be forgiven if you do as I say. You can have the mantle, you can have your career back, everything you want. That’s worth any price, right?”

Jane turned from the mirror, her body alight with energy. The magic paused, light show frozen in place.

Alex’s smirk returned, but his voice stayed steady. “There’s two ways this can go, now.” He started counting with his fingers for emphasis as he strutted around the room, basking in the attention as Ree struggled. “If you take Rachel out, all will be forgiven. The mantle will be yours, the curse will be undone, and you’ll never see me again. But if you don’t, if you’re too scared, I’ll kill Yancy, your girlfriend, her boy toy, and the whole cast. This is your last chance, their last chance. Is this what you want your legacy to be? A career implosion culminating in a mass suicide?”

“What are you talking about?” Rachel asked, surprised. “Alex? What the fuck are you talking about?”

Jane looked to Yancy, now restrained by orcs, then to Ree, and finally back to the screens.

Ree bit the hand of the orc whose hands covered her mouth, then spat out blood and shouted, “Forget him! You want to take someone out, take him out! This is all because they’re pissed you left!” The orcs closed in, shoving Ree flat on the ground.

“Its your choice, Jane,” Alex said. “You can’t win this without me.”

Rachel puffed herself up, taking center stage. “I’ve smacked you down before, kid. Don’t think I can’t do it again.” She rolled her hands, and Ree saw energy rolling into the star from the screen as tweets from Rachel’s fans dominated the screen.

Jane’s eyes filled with something Ree hadn’t seen before, something far darker. Jane reached out toward Rachel, and spectral hands appeared out of thin air, clawing at the superstar, like a mob of adoring fans. The hands latched onto the star, dragging her to the ground, then pulled her in a hundred directions.

“Jane?” Ree asked, her voice shaking. “What are you doing?” This was not the plan.

“Taking what’s mine, what has always been mine.” When Jane spoke, it was in a mix of her and Gloria Swanson’s voice, a tight unison of two voices trying to become one. “I should never have left the spotlight. It was mine by right, by fate. She’s just a footnote, and she’s deprived the people of my talent for too long.”

Houston, we have Zuul.

Rachel tossed her hair back and locked her eyes on Jane. The room filled with thousands of flashes and the sounds of cameras and roaring crowds. Ree slammed her eyes shut to block out the light, but the flashes kept coming. She dug her head into the ground to get her eyes away from the light. She felt staggered footfalls next to her, and got one arm free.

Even better.
Ree flopped forward, reaching for the dropped sword. She wrenched free of the other orcs. As she struggled free, she felt dozens of hands climb up and over her body like a wave. A discordant chorus called out, screaming Rachel’s name.

Ree nicked a finger on something sharp, then traced along the cold steel until she found the handle.
Well, it’s now or never.
Ree spun on the concrete, chopping at legs.

Ree shouted, “Prison break!” as the flashing lights subsided. Ree slashed at head level as she backed up, until she felt her leg run into well-oiled leather. “That you, Drake?” she asked.

“That it is, Ms. Ree. I will cover your flank.”

“No time for that—just watch my back,” Ree said, slashing with abandon. “Chu! Get your men out of here, get backup, whatever!”

Ree heard the sounds of weapons clanging and thudding against plastic riot shields. “Move out! Move! Move! Move!”

Jane and Rachel closed, locked in a Fashion Week version of the Gandalf vs. Saruman throwdown. Jane struck a pose, and another wave of spectral hands hit Rachel MacKenzie, tearing at her arms and legs, trying to bring her to her knees. Rachel tossed her hair in a slow-mo move straight out of a cover shoot, and the hands faded. Behind the two, Alex stood like a hipster version of Emperor Palpatine, his smirk wider than ever.

“You’re playing out of your league, girl,” said Rachel. “You want to play with the big kids, be the next Garbo or Andrews, but you won’t get your hands dirty like they did. I played ball, did the pictures they told me to. I paid my dues, and now I get what I deserve. And I’m not letting you or anyone else take it from me.”

Why do I feel like
Hollywood Babylon
didn’t even start to scratch the surface of how messed up this world is?
Ree thought as she Great Cleave-d her way through the mass of orcs, Drake at her side. They just kept coming, but she could see the end of the mob. The gorillas had chased after the SWAT team, which was bad news for them but gave her some breathing room.

“Ms. Ree, what is our course of action?” Drake asked while struggling with an orc for control of his rifle. He slipped a hand from the struggle and a split second later, the orc fell in front of Ree, a knife in its side. Drake ducked into a roll to pick up the rifle as Ree swung, baseball-bat-style, to knock aside another orc’s spear.

“Clear the mooks, take out Sleaze Boy!” As she spoke, a stray gorilla burst through the hole in the wall and charged them.

Well, shit.

Drake rolled up to his knees and popped off a shot against the gorilla, catching it square between the eyes. The beast dropped like a bag of anvils inches in front of the adventurer, its momentum bowling Drake over into Ree and tossing them both across the floor like so many ninepins.

The world kept spinning for a few seconds after she knew she’d stopped moving, so she turtled up, wishing for one of those SWAT shields.

Note to self: Look into expandable/portable magical shields. Sword and Board is much safer than Open Hand, even if it’s not as sexy.

She felt a hot gash open up along her leg, then another across the back of her head. Instinctively, she reached up to her head wound and came back with a chunk of hair.

Fucksticks.
Ree tried to focus, jabbing out at a dark mass as soon as she was sure it wasn’t Drake. The squeal of pain confirmed her guess, and she twisted the blade, trying to force the creature away as she got her shit together.

Ree bobbed and weaved with the three orcs facing her until one lashed out with his ax. She sidestepped past the strike, slashed at the orc’s shoulders, then ran past him, making her way toward the magic slugfest. She reached into her jacket and wrapped her free hand around the pocket watch she’d gotten from Eastwood, praying that it’d last long enough for her to do what she needed.

The irony of her life depending on a gadget from the man who’d been ready to kill to save her mom was not lost on her. But as far as Ree was concerned, Alanis Morissette could have a field day as long as the watch got the job done.

Ree crashed her way through a four-foot-tall wave of spectral hands, but Rachel pegged her before she could close to melee range. The star unleashed another blinding barrage of lights, but the watch blunted the blow. Ree couldn’t see, but kept going anyway. She threw a horizontal kick where Rachel should have been, but it didn’t connect. She recovered and sliced low, aiming for knee level. Still nothing.