Crossroads (6 page)

“Awakening? Talent? What the frag are you talking about?”

He touched the star at his throat and said, “Magic.”

I felt a chill go up my spine. I knew, just like everybody, that magic had come back to the world and that magicians, ghosts, and dragons were a reality. The native Americans, led by the Ghost Dance prophet, Howling Coyote, had used their magic to reclaim much of their lost land and form the Native American Nations. Magic was a reality, but few people ever saw a real magician. I certainly never had, until that moment.

“You’re a . . . wizard?”

“It’s as good a name as any, I suppose.” he said. “Yes, I’m a magician, but don’t be too impressed. As you'll learn, magic is more a state of mind than anything. Unless I miss my guess, you’re a magician, too.”

I refocused my eyes on the black pit of the gun barrel and yanked my thoughts out of the past. The woman still regarded me coolly over the gun.

“That’s how I knew Jason Vale.” I said. “He saved my life when I first discovered my Talent and taught me how to use it.”

She looked slightly surprised for the first time, and her gaze flicked from my feet to my face as if she were getting a second look.

The gun barrel dropped about ten centimeters. I decided to take that as an opening. “So tell me, what does all this have to do with Jase?”

“Someone wants to kill me, and maybe you, too. Because of him and something he was involved with.”

“What?” I said.

She took a deep breath and started to explain. “I was hired by a Mr. Johnson to
—”
The crack of shattering plastiglass cut her off as a small, roundish object crashed through the window and tumbled into the room.

GRENADE!

Everything went into automatic as time seemed to slow to a crawl. I hit the floor and rolled behind the heavy steamer trunk I used as a coffee table. There was a dull “wumph” as the grenade went off, and a thick, white mist filled the room. Almost immediately my eyes began burning and I started coughing. Tear gas!

I crawled toward the door on knees and elbows and nearly bumped heads with my uninvited guest as she did the same. When she reached for the doorknob, I grabbed her hand and shook my head.

Holding the bottom of my coat over my nose and mouth, I choked out a phrase in Latin, extending my senses beyond the door and the walls of my apartment. Suspicions confirmed I stood up, eyes burning and streaming profusely now, and thrust my hand toward the door, palm out as I coughed out a single sharp word.

The door exploded outward like it was hit by a bullet train. I heard shouts of surprise and pain as the thugs waiting in the hall were struck by jagged fragments of flying synthwood. A gun roared and blasted chunks of wood and plaster from the ceiling as its startled wielder fell backward, clutching at the bloody piece of door protruding from his throat.

There were two other attackers awaiting me as I stepped out into the hall. One ork and a human woman who looked to be hyped up on something, whether drugs, magic, or wire, I couldn't say. The third guy was down and bleeding from the throat wound. I turned toward the ork and thrust my hands forward as though holding an invisible ball between them. Pale magelight flickered around them like heat rising off a summer highway, and the ork took a step forward, raising his gun. Then his eyes glazed and blood began to run out of his nose and ears as he toppled forward like a poleaxed cow.

I began turning toward the woman, but she was too fast. As she brought her gun to bear I started casting a protection spell, knowing I wouldn’t be nearly quick enough. My attacker knew it, too, and she gave me a nasty, feral grin that showed her sharpened canine implants before tightening her finger on the trigger.

The smile vanished in a red mist as half her head exploded, sending bits of bone and brain splattering all over the hallway. I turned to see my recent guest standing back near the doorway holding the smoking Ares Predator that had been pointed at me only a minute ago. Her eyes were red and puffy and tears steamed down her cheeks as the gas slowly drifted out of the broken doorway. I picked my hat up from the ruins of the door and started dusting it off.

“Thanks.” I coughed.

“You’re welcome.” she said. “For the time being, it seems like we need each other.” I wasn’t about the argue with her assessment right then. Especially since she seemed to be right.

“Looks like you were right about someone out to get one or both of us, and the fact that they hit us with a grenade says they probably have friends outside. Do you have any connections here in DeeCee?”

She shook her head numbly.

Frag. That figured. The security for my building was pretty decent, Assets saw to that, so the cops would be here any minute now. Right at the moment, I didn’t feel like giving a long explanation to the authorities and testing out the strength of the legal identity Jane-in-the-Box had set up for me here in DeeCee.

“My car’s around back.” I told her. “We can try getting out that way. I know a place where we can go and finish our little chat.”

I reached inside the apartment and grabbed the kit bag I always left sitting near the door. I made a habit of keeping all my “necessities” handy in case I had to book in a hurry. With Assets, there were always runs coming up at a moment’s notice, and I wanted to be able to roll out just as fast. When you ran the shadows, disappearing was a habit you got into.

My guest ran back to the chair and retrieved a narrow case on a shoulder strap. I had hung with Jane-in-the-Box and other deckers long enough to know it was a cyberdeck carrying case, which only made me more curious about what this lady knew.

I led the way downstairs to the back door. We didn't encounter any more muscle, and I was grateful for living in Rockville right then. The rest of the tenants knew enough to keep their doors closed and locked and pretend they didn’t hear anything when the shots rang out earlier. They would wait for the cops to show before they poked their heads out, which was just fine by me If I’d lived in a real high-class neighborhood like Ryan thought I should, the cops would already be all over the place. Of course, if I lived in a high-class neighborhood, people probably wouldn’t be tossing grenades in my window, either.

The back parking lot was pretty dark. Fate had chosen last night for the local go-gang to shoot out most of the working lights, and the building superintendent hadn’t bothered to fix them yet. As we moved over to my trusty steed I hit the remote control in my coat pocket to disarm the security system. I felt my companion come up short behind me.

“How’s your driving?” I said.

“Why me?” she asked.

“Because I want to have my attention free in case somebody else wants in on this little party, okay? Doing magic can make it hard to concentrate on mundane things like
staying on the road.”

"So ka. ”
She popped open the driver’s door and climbed in while I moved around to the passenger side. I paused for a moment to close my eyes and whisper a phrase under my breath, then got in.

“What was that, a prayer?”

“Something like that.” I gave her the ignition code and she punched it into the car’s keypad, bringing the engine humming to life. She opened the small panel to the right of the steering column and pulled out a length of optical cable terminating in a connector, which she plugged into the chrome-lipped jack behind her ear. It gave her access and control over the car’s auto-pilot and other systems. I didn’t use it all that much, myself. Despite the hardware in my head, I preferred to do most things the old-fashioned way.

“It’s not rigged.” I said, though she already knew that. I didn’t have the complex cyber riggers used to make themselves nearly one with the machines they operated. Aside from the fact that it would probably cripple my magic, the whole idea kind of frightened me. Merging that much with a machine just wasn’t natural, if you asked me.

She nodded. “That’s chill. I’m not wired for it.” She threw the car into reverse and pulled out of the space. “But I think I can manage.”

We moved out of the lot with the headlights off. When we reached the street, I directed her to turn right, then hit the lights when we had gone about a block. A Ford Americar appeared around a corner about three blocks behind us. “Should we try and lose them?”

“Just a tick.” I closed my eyes and traced a symbol in the air with my index finger like I had in my apartment. A strong impression of danger filled my mind.

“Gun it.” I said. She hit the accelerator and we shot ahead, but the driver of the Americar compensated quickly and gave chase. Suddenly the chatter of automatic gunfire split the night, and the rounds sparked off the pavement as we took a corner.

I crouched down in my seat as a shot blew out the rear window. Damn, now they were getting me mad. My doss was one thing, but nobody was going to shoot up my car! I focused my attention on the astral plane and spoke a short phrase as we took another corner.
Go get ’em!
I thought.

I was slammed against my safety harness as we screeched to a halt. I looked up and saw that the narrow side street we had turned into ended in a tall chain-link fence.

“Oh, frag.” muttered the mystery woman. The Americar rounded the corner, and she reached for her gun, but I grabbed her wrist.

“What the frag are you . . .” she was starting to say when a hellish yellowish light flared in the alleyway. The windscreen of the Ford shattered as it careened out of control and skidded onto the sidewalk, crashing into the side of the building, sending loose bricks flying. Smoke and flames poured out of the broken windows for a moment, then the Ford went off like a bomb. An orange fireball boiled up to the sky in a cloud of black smoke as bits of car rained down over the area, pinging off the roof and hood of my Westwind.

She sat in stunned silence for a moment, staring at the flaming wreckage, then finally found her voice. “What. . . what the frag happened? Did
you
do that?”

I shrugged and tried not to look too smug. “I've had a fire elemental tagging along in astral space ever since we left the parking lot. I told it to get them off our backs. Fire elementals tend toward overkill sometimes.”

She just looked at me for a moment, then back at the flaming wreck of the Americar, then back at me. “No drek.” she said quietly. “By the way, we haven’t really been introduced. I’m Ariel, but my friends call me Trouble and . . . what’s so funny?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t help but laugh.

Extending my hand to take the one she offered, I said, “M'lady, I knew you were trouble the moment I saw you.”

4

After we drove around for a bit to make sure no one else was following, I asked Trouble to pull over into a darkened side street not far from the glowing neolux sign of a Stuffer Shack. It was getting late, and there was little traffic on the road. As we pulled over I popped my seat belt and opened my door.

“I think I should take it from here.” I said. Trouble made no objection, just nodded. We both got out of the car, and I moved around to the driver’s side while she slipped into the seat I’d vacated. Once the doors of the Westwind were shut again, I reached into the pocket of my long coat, pulled out a length of black silk, and started folding it carefully.

“What’s that for?” Trouble asked, no doubt expecting some kind of magic trick. I clutched an end of the cloth in each hand and held out the folded strip to her. She glanced at it and gave me an incredulous look.

“You have
got
to be kidding.”

I shook my head. “Nope. Before we go any further, you’ve got to wear this.”

“A blindfold? Do I look stupid to you? There are people trying to kill me.”

“Trying to kill
us.”
I corrected.

“So we’ve got a reason to trust each other that’s . . .”

“That’s the only reason we’re still here.” I interrupted, “but I’m not the only one involved in this. I have friends, associates. As much as I don’t want to involve them, right now I haven’t got much choice. If I’m going to do anything that affects them, I have to protect their interests. So you can either wear the blindfold or we can part ways right now. I’ll drop you off and we can call it quits. I’ve got more questions I want answers to, so I’d like to have your help. If you can’t give it, I’ll find the answers on my own,
so ka!
”

Trouble looked me in the face for what seemed like a good minute before she took the cloth from my hands and tied it snugly over her own eyes, brushing her hair out of the way to adjust it.

“Happy?” she said.

“I’m not happy about any of this, but thanks.”

She nodded and I could see she understood the score. Loyalty in the shadows was all-important. You had to know who you could count on, and friends didn’t betray friends. We both understood that. She wasn’t happy about wearing the blindfold and I wasn’t happy about doing it, but we understood why it had to be that way.

I also had to admit that the blindfold was only partially to keep the location a secret. I wanted to see how far she was willing to trust me. The fact that she was going along with the blindfold at all told me two things: first, she was most likely telling me the truth, and second, that she was in pretty dire straits to agree to something so dangerous.

Settling back in her seat, Trouble flashed a small smile.