Then the lights flickered fast. Out in the dark amid the noise of the pile drivers there were cries and gunshots. Suddenly Bertrade was inside me, “My lefthand man!”
Under a spell my arm moved. The elf couldn’t stop it. The left arm was magic. He blocked my breath and sent a bolt of pain through my head, stopped my eyes from seeing. But the arm rose. I couldn’t see him but I fired. Nothing. My head spun.
For an instant my sight cleared. I saw the elf. I squeezed the trigger as my sight went dark. Nothing happened.
Blind, I fired to the left and there was a scream. My breath came back. My sight returned. Up the gangplank the elf grasped his shoulder. I felt him stop my heart. But I blew his jaw off and my heart started again. I shot him in the head before I passed out.
The morning was long gone and done when I came home. Mrs. Palatino had actually turned off her television, put on street clothes and was headed out to Thursday afternoon bingo at Our Lady of Pompeii Church. She gave me a look full of disapproval and shook her head.
I needed to go upstairs and change my clothes, stop around at the office. In my jacket pocket was a letter to the Beyers from Hilda, saying she was alive and well and thinking of them.
Bertrade had brought that with her from the Kingdom Beneath the Hill. Our business relationship was still intact.
We’d parted half an hour before. That night was spent at the Plaza: part of our reward for smashing the elf and his espionage crew. After he went down, three of his fellow Gentry came out of the dark and surrendered to Bertrade and her friends.
Culpepper and Mimi and a couple of other mortals the elves had recruited bore the body into the back of a panel truck.
That dream I’d half-remembered had been sent by Bertrade. In the game of cat and mouse she and the big elf had played, some of his magic was stronger than hers.
“Askal is his name. We met in the Kingdom,” she said, “and he was able to read me enough to know how I felt about you. He wanted to use you to draw me. I wanted to use that magic arm Darnel and I gave you to do away with him.”
It seemed to me like the kind of game in which mortals were just breakable objects. Bertrade winced when I thought that.
Askal, of course, didn’t completely die. I heard him shrieking; saw his shadow moving around the pier after his corpse had been taken away in the truck.
It isn’t likely I’ll ever go back to that spot on the Hudson. And it isn’t likely I’ll ever completely trust Bertrade. What I feel for her may not be love. But I know that when I’m with her this mortal life of mine gets torn open by magic, and when she’s gone that’s all I remember.
But when we parted outside the Plaza that morning and kissed, she told me she’d be back before long. And I look forward to it.
Tomorrow evening Jim and Anne Toomey will be waked out in Brooklyn. Their connection with me is what killed them, and I’ll think of that.
My life may not run out of me into a big red puddle, but someday my life will run out. And before that happens in this world of bait and traps I’ll see Bertrade again.
Richard Bowes has won two World Fantasy, an International Horror Guild, and Million Writer Awards. His new novel Dust Devil on a Quiet Street will appear on May Day 2013 from Lethe Press, which is also republishing his Lambda Award-winning novel Minions of the Moon. Additionally two short story collections will be published in 2013: The Queen, the Cambion and Seven Others from Aqueduct Press and If Angels Fight from Fairwood Press.
Recent and forthcoming appearances include: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Icarus, Lightspeed, and the anthologies After, Wilde Stories 2012, Bloody Fabulous, Ghosts: Recent Hauntings, Handsome Devil, Hauntings, and Where Thy Dark Eye Glances.
The Case: Sixteen-year-old Devonte allegedly wrecks his foster parents’ home. The damage is far more than one lone human boy could inflict. The kid’s not talking, but Stella Christiansen, whose agency placed Devonte, senses he is in danger.
The Investigator: David Christiansen, a werewolf and mercenary, as well as Stella’s estranged father.
STAR OF DAVID
Patricia Briggs
“I checked them out myself,” Myra snapped. “Have you ever just considered that your boy isn’t the angel you thought he was?”
Stella took off her glasses and set them on her desk. “I think that we both need some perspective. Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off?” Before I slap your stupid face. People like Devonte don’t change that fast, not without good reason.
Myra opened her mouth, but after she got a look at Stella’s face she shut it again. Mutely she stalked to her desk and retrieved her coat and purse. She slammed the door behind her.
As soon as she was gone, Stella opened the folder and looked at the pictures of the crime scene again. They were duplicates, and doubtless Clive, her brother the detective, had broken a few rules when he sent them to her—not that breaking rules had ever bothered him, not when he was five and not as a grown man nearing fifty and old enough to know better.
She touched the photos lightly, then closed the folder again. There was a yellow sticky with a phone number on it and nothing else: Clive didn’t have to put a name on it. Her little brother knew she’d see what he had seen.
She picked up the phone and punched in the numbers fast, not giving herself a chance for second thoughts.
The barracks were empty, leaving David’s office silent and bleak. The boys were on furlough with their various families for December.
His mercenaries specialized in live retrieval, which tended to be in and out stuff, a couple of weeks per job at the most. He didn’t want to get involved in the gray area of unsanctioned combat or out-and-out war—where you killed people because someone told you to. In retrieval there were good guys and bad guys still—and if there weren’t, he didn’t take the job. Their reputation was such that they had no trouble finding jobs.
And unless all hell really broke loose, they always took December off to be with their families. David never let them know how hard that made it for him.
Werewolves need their packs.
If his pack was human, well, they knew about him and they filled that odd wolf-quirk that demanded he have people to protect, brothers in heart and mind. He couldn’t stomach a real pack, he hated what he was too much.
He couldn’t bear to live with his own kind, but this worked as a substitute and kept him centered. When his boys were here, when they had a job to do, he had direction and purpose.
His grandsons had invited him for the family dinner, but he’d refused as he always did. He still saw his sons on a regular basis. Both of them had served in his small band of mercenaries for a while, until the life lost its appeal or the risks grew too great for men with growing families. But he stayed away at Christmas.
Restlessness had him pacing: there were no plans to make, no wrongs to right. Finally he unlocked the safe and pulled out a couple of the newer rifles. He needed to put some time in with them anyway.
An hour of shooting staved off the restlessness, but only until he locked the guns up again. He’d have to go for a run. When he emptied his pockets in preparation, he noticed he had missed a call while he’d been shooting. He glanced at the number, frowning when he didn’t recognize it. Most of his jobs came through an agent who knew better than to give out his cell number. Before he could decide if he wanted to return the call, his phone rang again, a call from the same number.