Hexomancy (22 page)

“I believe those youths on the bikes are intending something rather untoward,” Drake said. Ree checked the side mirror and saw a trio of red-skinned spirits straight out of
Akira
aiming machine guns and a 50-caliber cannon at Mel’s cab.

“Punks,” Mel said, hauling on the parking brake as the car burst out of the alley and into a busy street.

The car screamed, metal-on-metal-on-aether, smuggler’s turn, the car spinning 270 degrees. As the cab straightened out, he gunned the gas, and Ree lurched back in the seat.

“Sweet Muppety Jesus, please protect me in my time of ridiculous.” A hand wrapped around her white-knuckled grip on the seat beside her. She looked back to Drake, smiling through strained teeth, a terrible and terribly sweet attempt to distract her. She wanted to release her hand and squeeze back, but at just that moment, she wasn’t certain that she wouldn’t start bouncing around the cab like a Super Ball if she let go of her death-grip on the car.

A minute later, Mel eased up on the throttle and resumed following what Ree took to be the traffic laws, flying in formation with the spirits just fifteen feet above the street.

“See? That wasn’t too bad.”

“Next time you have a stupid idea, please keep it to yourself,” Ree said, hyperventilating.

“Indubitably,” Drake added. Ree let go of her seat to squeeze Drake’s hand.

“Whatever, you know that was fun. A little something to prime the engines, eh, brother?” Mel winked back to Drake.

“Of a sort,” Drake said.

“How much longer, taking this way?” Ree asked, her eyes locked on the horizon in a feeble attempt to settle her stomach. The mega-corp towers pierced the cloud layer ahead, shining with neon night light, or maybe just glowing of their own accord.

“Not ten minutes. You kids should loosen up, enjoy the sights. The Google campus has the best adult playground you ever saw, guaranteed. And their jungle gym isn’t half bad, either,” he said, winking companionably. She leaned against the passenger’s-side door, uninterested.

Sexytimes were the furthest thing from her mind, as her stomach was ready to ex-plode, im-plode, and ab-plode at the same time.

But, true to his word, ten minutes later, Mel brought the car down into a parking spot. They’d crossed another dimensional threshold, and were now rendered in photo-realistic CG.

“Shade on the line there?” he asked.

“Hey, Shade?” Ree asked.

“Present,” Shade said, his voice thin.

“Everything okay there?”

“Don’t know. I haven’t heard from Grognard or Talon, but it’s quiet outside. How are you doing?”

“Mel wants to rake you over the coals for a bunch of money,” Ree said. Mel grinned, his teeth becoming like a shark’s.

“Of course. Tell him I’ve sent an extra little something to be dropped in his box.”

“That’s not dirty, is it?”

“C-c-cross my heart and hope to die,” Shade answered, his bravado forced.

Ree unbuckled her seat belt. “You’re all taken care of. Thanks for not getting us killed.”

Triumphantly not vomiting, Ree wobbled to her feet and took in the neighborhood. It looked like a cross between the Seattle of
Shadowrun Returns
and the shadow realm out of the
Lord of the Rings
movies, super-windy shapes attached to everything.

“Is this supposed to be like that?” Ree asked, leaning down to the window level to ask Mel.

The car zoomed off, pulling a half-Immelman to reverse and jet its way out of the neighborhood.

“I suppose he would want to get off to his next fare,” Drake said.

“Yeah, not sure it’s that,” Ree said, eyeing the streets. The empty streets.

“Where’d everybody go?” she asked.

Looking around, the streets and surrounding buildings were strangely quiet. The streets’ circuit board lights were flickering, and the buildings around them were all locked up tight, steel grates and gates and bars over windows and doors.

“Either this is a bad part of town, or a normal part of town freaking the fuck out,” Ree said.

Looking the opposite direction, Drake said, “I believe it to be the latter. We have company.”

Ree turned and saw two almost-cartoonish dust devils, each around five feet tall. Except that as they passed over the street, the circuit boards cracked, sparked, and shattered.

And they were headed right for the pair.

“How are we supposed to fight those?” Ree asked.

“I suggest we run,” Drake answered, turning and setting off.

Ree followed suit, and the two raced down the street, looking for any open door or source of higher ground. The shattering and sparks followed them, getting closer.

“Anyone home?” Ree shouted. “A little help here!”

No answer.

A block later Ree played a game of “One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others).” In the middle of the block, between five-story-tall chrome apartment buildings and office buildings, was an all-wood (in appearance at least) saloon, complete with a horse post, a wooden sign, and swinging double doors, though they were full height. Above the door, spelled out in vacuum tubes, was
THE GULCH
.

“There!” Ree said, gesticulating at the saloon.

Ree poured on the speed, and the two of them practically dove through the door, which proved to be made of not-actually-solid wood.

The pair fell into a tumbling, bruised mass of bodies, and as Ree got her bearings, trying to make the world stop spinning, a voice greeted her.

“Oh, you made it.”

“Hi, Eastwood,” Ree said. “We’re in trouble.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Old-School Brigade

The inside of The Gulch was all saloon, all the time, with strong touches of ’80s Cyberpunk. Every booth had a screen built into the wall, and instead of the piano, there was a Virtual Reality rig, oversized gloves, and a helmet that looked like the halfway point between the blast shield helmet Luke used to train with and a rejected Daft Punk design.

A pole-thin woman stood behind the bar, one hand on a shotgun. Eriko stood beside Eastwood, and three more Console Cowboys sat at the bar, hands on their sidearms.

“We come in peace!” Ree said, hands up as she stood.

“She’s fine.” Eastwood put a staying hand out, and the other cowgirls and cowboys stood down, returning to their drinks.

“There’re some nasty customers coming along. Good money says they’re black-hat Stregas, come to settle the score.”

“You don’t need to use the cowboy lingo just because we’re here.”

“Thank gods. You’ll catch me dead before you catch me in a poncho or a sombrero.”

“Catching us dead may be not outside the realm of possibility,” Drake said, one eye on the door.

“So, there’s nasty coming,” Ree said. “We’re here to help people not get dead. What can we do?”

Eastwood looked over to the bartender.

“Marianne, this is Ree and Drake. They’re okay. Geekomancer and a Steampunk Tech. Where do you want them?”

The bartender looked Ree up and down. Marianne stood just under six foot tall, plus or minus boots. Ree pegged her as no small part Native American, braided onyx-black hair, with cheekbones that could sharpen a bowie knife. She wore a denim shirt, sleeves rolled back.

“The wards here will hold for a while,” Marianne said. “But I won’t have us be trapped in here while she just throws crap at us. I want a party to ride out and bloody their noses before they can get to the saloon. You take Eriko and the twins.”

A black woman and man stood. Their complexions were smooth and dark. The man had dreads; the woman’s head was shaved clean. The man had a scar along his neck and the woman hefted a big-ass shotgun over her shoulder.

“Abraham, Luisa, this is Ree and Drake.”

The scarred man extended a gloved hand. His voice had the smooth cadence she associated with West Africa, Sierra Leone or the surrounding area. “Abraham. Pleased to meet you.”

Handshakes all around, and Ree cranked a thumb at the door. “So how do y’all want to handle the posse out there?”

“We kick their asses, and they leave,” said Luisa.

“An admirable plan, but it may be desirable to coordinate more closely,” Eriko said.

Marianne gestured to the Cyberpunks. “It’s our turf, so we’ll take point. You two can watch our back and play swing support.”

Eastwood picked up the thread. “Ree, your tricks won’t work nearly so well here; it’s all mental might-makes-right. Fight like you would normally, but you have to visualize your actions, otherwise the magic won’t work. Lightsaber won’t ignite, blaster won’t fire. Better to make mental constructs and keep them throughout the fight than to switch up. It was the biggest change I had to make, getting all versatile with props. But here, it’s Oppa Green Lantern–style, got it?”

“You better try it out before we get going,” Eriko said.

Ree pulled out her lightsaber and thumbed it on. The blade did nothing. She switched it off, then on again, visualizing her blade springing to life.

And so it did. Delighted, she held her focus, and waved it around in a slow pattern, making sure the blade maintained its integrity.

“Draw,” Marianne said, tossing an empty bottle at Ree. She spun and cleaved the bottle in two, pieces clattering to the floor.

“And now you,” Eriko said to Drake.

“Where do I fire?” Drake asked.

A pair of the regulars stepped away from a portion of the wall. A third, a cowperson of indeterminate gender presentation—short hair and androgynous figure—flipped a panel to reveal a shooting gallery, cans and pins twenty yards back.

“Nice trick,” Ree said.

“Comes in handy,” Marianne answered. “Spirit isn’t nearly as restrictive when it comes to the laws of physics controlling things like buildings being bigger on the inside. Give it a shot, Hornblower.”

Drake squared off, took aim, and then knocked three pins down in a row, the bursts from his rifle coming out pure white, glowing.

“That’ll do,” Eastwood said. “Everyone else, you better be ready to lend a hand, or I’m cutting you all off from my screener copies, got it?”

Grunts and murmurs of assent seemed to be good enough for Eastwood. He drew his blaster and looked to Eriko. “After you.”

She laughed. “Screw that. You take point!”

Once they got outside, the Console Cowfolk out in front, the crowd waiting for them included a half-dozen dust devils and several humanoid shadow-figures with glowing red eyes, riding half-transparent spirit-horses.

“You here for me?” Eastwood asked.

Whinnies and growls came in response.

“Where’s the Strega? Or is she like the last one, too cowardly to face me in person?”

A voice spoke from all around them. It was a woman’s voice, gravelly, a five-packs-a-day kind of strained. “You always thought you were so special. And so good at getting other people to die for you. My sisters and I have seen your crimes, and now I am here to cut your overstretched thread and restore balance.”

“You gonna do that by voice-over-ing at me, then?” Eastwood asked.

Instead of another response, the creatures charged.

Ree focused on her lightsaber prop, and a blue-white blade of focus popped on. The blade felt different in her hand, less weighty but more substantial, somehow. She spun the blade as the creatures approached, then dropped into stance.

The fight turned into a messy melee faster than servers dropping on an MMO’s launch day. The Console Cowboys and Cowgirls mowed down the spirits, fanning the hammer and lashing out with knives. But the creatures just came back for more punishment.

All the while, guns jammed, blades broke, and Eastwood’s friends slipped and tripped, Hexomancy running wild. This Strega’s hexes had a red-and-black hue and smelled of sulfur.

Ree fought around the edges, keeping anyone from getting flanked. Drake took a high position and played sniper, downing horses and stopping two-on-ones before they could happen.

Spiritual lightsaber blazing, she chopped through the dust devils, speared demon horses, and took the heads off shadowy figures.

But when one dissolved, another sprung up.

“They just keep coming!” Ree hissed through gritted teeth, chopping and weaving as quickly as she could. But it was like ghostly whack-a-mole, and nowhere near as satisfying as walloping things with a mallet.

“The summoning spell has to give out sometime,” Eastwood said. Beside him, Abraham dropped to a knee. Above him, a demon horse reared up to kick. A shot from Drake took the creature’s head off at the neck, dropping the spirit to the ground.

But they kept coming. Luisa lost her shotgun in the gullet of a horse, and the weapon vanished when the spirit vaporized. She returned to the fight with a pair of spiritual pistols.

Drake’s bursts came more sporadically. Ree checked over her shoulder to see him sweating like he’d been in a sauna. Her slicked hair told her she wasn’t doing much better, her mental exhaustion expressing in her spiritual form.

But the damned things just kept coming.

“Back inside!” Ree yelled, seeing the writing on the wall. They needed reinforcements in a big way. Ree cut apart two dust devils, making her way to give Abraham a hand up. Eriko buried a bowie knife in a shadow-man, then joined the group.

But Eastwood kept fighting.

“We need a tactical retreat!” she yelled. Eastwood snarled, cut the leg off a spirit-horse, then broke off and joined the group. Ree stood aside and covered their retreat with a construct phaser, ushering Drake inside before she dived through the double doors.

The saloon doors sealed as she hit the door, becoming a flat wall. The rest of the windows had done the same, the building going into lockdown.

“Well, that was an exercise in frakking frustration,” Eastwood said, tromping to the bar.

“That bad?” Marianne asked. The others had gathered around one table, weapons out and ready.

“It’s bad. The spirits re-form or are replaced as soon as we ace them. The Strega’s got a ton of power here.”

Shade’s voice came back through to Ree. “You there? Ree? The door is breached, but Grognard and Talon are still keeping the things out. Grognard keeps yelling things about how he wishes he had his beer with him this time. I don’t think we have long before we’ll need to move, which means you need to come back, pronto.”

“No can do, Shade,” Ree said out loud, for the cowfolk to hear. “We’re under siege here, and I don’t think this barkeep is going to abandon her post, either.”

“Then do whatever you can to siphon off some power or whatever. The waves slowed in the last two minutes, but now they’re surging again.”

Lightbulb.

“The more we fight here, the easier it is for the folks guarding our bodies,” Ree said. That got people moving, the remaining gunslinger-hackers on their feet.

“This time, we all go out to face them,” Eastwood said.

The barkeep pulled a hatchet and a peacemaker out from behind the bar. “Tony, when this is all over, you and I are going to have some words about your crap-ass timing, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Eastwood said, taking some gauze out from his coat and awkwardly wrapping it around a bite on his left hand. Eriko rolled her eyes at Eastwood with a smile and took over the binding.

“We have to stay together, keep them from overwhelming us,” Ree said.

Marianne chuckled. “Girl, I know your momma was somebody, but we’ve been fighting rogue spirits since you were running around in Wonder Woman Underoos.”

“That’s basically my whole life,” Ree countered. “I wore Wonder Woman underwear yesterday. They’re great.”

“Good for you. Now listen to your elders.” Marianne stopped by the door. “Teams of three or four. Keep by the door so we can retreat into here and take up cover. Things go sour, I’ll call the retreat, then we all go out the back to the rides. But I ain’t gonna retreat. We’ve held this place through two centuries in Internet time, and damned if some monologuing witch is going to kick me out. You hear me?”

“Yeah!” shouted the gunslingers.

“Now let’s kick their spectral asses all the way back to Hades!” Marianne said, shouldering her way through the once-again-door.

The group poured out, the Cyberpunks moving smoothly, psyching themselves up. Ree and Drake flanked Eastwood and Eriko. Outside, the monstrous crowd had shrunk. But at the center stood one important addition: a black-cloaked figure, face shrouded.

“Finally,” said the figure, in the same smoke-stained voice as had taunted them before. “This is long overdue. His Grace will be overjoyed when I present your head and your blade.”

The woman held out a hilt, and flicked on a ghostly red lightsaber. Eastwood flicked on his own blade, and the battle resumed.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Ree said as she followed Eastwood into battle, Eriko on her right, Drake on her left.

Willing her own spirit-sword into being, she waded into the mooks, pushing them back so that Eastwood could engage the Strega straight-on.

The dust devils were easy to deal with; she just had to keep her grip strong on the lightsaber, which meant not losing focus. She did her best impression of a Jedi Battle Mind, flowing from strike to strike, weaving back and forth, watching as Eriko fired point-blank, mowing down sprits and Hex creatures of all types. All of a sudden, the badassery of the Witch Hunter in
Diablo III
seemed far more feasible, seeing this woman stand within melee range with creatures of all sorts and keep her cool, keeping up her fire.

But keeping creatures off of Eastwood was a harder task than Eriko was making it look. Ree was practically jumping around the street, pushing spirits back, cutting down those that broke from the pack to attack Eastwood, who was in full-on Duel of the Fates mode with the Strega.

The pair cut and thrust and jumped and spun, the Strega’s strikes aggressive, risky, which Eastwood met with careful, defensive blocks and cuts. Eastwood liked to figure out an opponent’s weakness and then go for the kill, a fighting style oddly more measured than his frequent devil-may-care attitude toward the weird and wonderful world of magic.

Ree wanted to clear out the spirits so she could dive in to help Eastwood, end the duel before one of the Strega’s strong-arm strikes could push past Eastwood’s defenses.

But the spirits kept coming.

Drake sniped dust devils out from around Ree, keeping the creatures from overwhelming her. Drake was scarily good at firing where she had just been, providing covering fire despite the chaos of the melee. It was an utter delight and ass-saver to see the Precise Shot feat at work.

Ree speared one spirit through the gut and tripped another, spinning her blade to finish it off. She saw Darth Atropos blow right through Eastwood’s defenses and slash him across the left shoulder. The arm went limp like someone had shut it off, and he retreated, fighting one-handed.

Do or do not; there is no try
, she told herself, and jumped into the fray, raising her blade to catch Darth Atropos’s downward slash, which would have taken Eastwood’s head. The blades met, clashed, and the blade cast the inside of the Strega’s hood red, the face still shadowed.

“Foolish girl. His fate is inevitable; it has been foretold. You broke my sisters, but I cannot be stopped. He has decreed it. If you give him up, I may let you live.”

Ree pushed the Strega’s blade away and backed up, giving herself space. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

Drake fired into the duel, but the Strega swatted his shots away with ease, disdain clear in her movements. She was a quicksilver juggernaut, confident and inexorable.

Why the Strega didn’t just send Atropos first, Ree couldn’t say. But that’s how it went. Everything worked in threes, a progression. Might have something to do with elemental association. Hex storms associated with spring, spring Strega, spring equinox. The magical world was full of often-imperceptible rules and traditions that bounded magicians and monsters into habits, nervous tics turned into ontological boundaries.