Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (52 page)

Then he stole a glance to the tall blond man behind him. The man cocked his head, watching Jason in return and giving him a crooked smile, like he was thinking of a joke.

“There’s more here than meets the eye, isn’t there?” The man’s low voice rumbled through Jason and this time Jason saw the silver flames dancing inside the man’s mouth. He felt a surge of heat flood him and then his muscles and mind went limp and empty.

Chapter Two

Henry considered the unconscious young man. His pallid face shifted between pretty and plain under the flickering florescent security lights. His body felt too lean for comfort, but he wasn’t so slight that lifting him came easily. Henry was glad to flop him down on an absurdly lavish divan. The young man sprawled in his oversized brown suit with the grace of fallen lumber.

Gunther followed them, walking the battered bicycle into the antiques shop. Green trails of spent dampening dust powdered the wood floor. Strips of red exorcism tape closed off the foot of the nearest staircase, and from the noise Henry guessed that Commander Carerra and her agents were still fighting through the balconies that made up the second floor. As if hearing his thoughts, Carerra appeared and peered over the wrought-iron railing. She regarded Henry and his unconscious acquisition with suspicion, then returned her attention to something dark and snarling just beyond Henry’s line of sight. A moment later, a deafening staccato of gunfire muted the bestial roars to a whimper and then quiet.

Henry turned his attention back to the young man spilled across the red silk cushions of the Indian divan.

“Who is he?” Gunther leaned the bicycle against the abandoned sale counter and stepped closer to Henry’s side.

“Not sure,” Henry admitted.

“When he was looking at me…” Gunther tilted his head so that a lock of his black hair shadowed his eyes. He frowned as he studied the unconscious man but said nothing more.

Henry simply nodded. He’d met Gunther’s parents when they had just emigrated from goblin lands and were still uneasy in their new human forms. They’d worked as translators in the old San Francisco office where Henry had often crashed between his assignments. Over the years Henry had become a regular at their holiday dinners.

That had been decades before Gunther had been born, and as far as Henry knew, Gunther had never worn the flesh of his ancestors. He’d been made tall, dark, and handsome while still a toothy embryo in his mother’s womb. The only hint of his unearthly heritage remaining was his taste for tobacco laced with straight butane, but otherwise not even Henry could discern a flaw in his human appearance.

And yet it had seemed that this inert young man on the divan had looked directly through the strongest and deepest spells of transformation. More than that, he’d broken through the Lost Mists and breached Henry’s wards to reach this place.

“A witch, you think?” Gunther asked. “Maybe he’s disguised. They haven’t found Phipps yet. Could be him.”

Henry scowled at that. Back in his day a dealer like Phipps would have been their first target. Securing the treasury of talismans and stolen magics that Phipps had hoarded here in this shop would have come last. But the Irregulars were all about re-appropriating and neutralizing trinkets these days. With so many wars of sovereignty raging across the unearthly realms, every nixie prince and kelpie queen was looking for the symbols of power and legitimacy to prop up their claims to the ancient thrones.

“Could he be extra-human?” Gunther’s expression conveyed his skepticism of even his own suggestion.

“He certainly doesn’t look the part. Doesn’t feel eldritch either, but maybe.” Henry held out the black nylon wallet he’d lifted off the young man in the alley. It contained three dollars, a cracked BART pass, and a forlorn-looking identification card.

“ID says he’s Jason Shamir. This home address mean anything to you?” Henry handed the wallet to Gunther.

“Just off the Tenderloin.” Gunther arched a dark brow. “Skid row. Could be a junkie? Maybe that’s why he freaked out when he saw me and Tim.”

“It’s possible,” Henry conceded. Clearly Gunther had been shaken by Jason’s reaction to him. “That still wouldn’t explain how he got through the mists.”

Gunther scowled but said nothing.

Henry crouched beside the divan and leaned very close. He studied the fine skin and simple, clean features. Too simple, really. Natural skin bore freckles and moles, tiny imperfections that made individuals so very singular. Jason’s skin was smooth as a newborn’s and devoid of anything that might serve as a distinguishing feature. At a glance he could have passed for anyone and no one.

“Something’s not quite right about him, that’s certain.” Henry watched the rhythm of Jason’s steady breath and slowed his own. As Jason exhaled, Henry drew in all that he gave up.

Dark coffee and hints of cinnamon toothpaste rolled over Henry’s tongue. He tasted exhaustion and hunger. As he held the breath in his lungs he felt the electric crackle of longing and the suffocating cold of fear. But nothing more. None of a faerie blood’s violet perfume nor even the faint dank of black cat bones that clung to most young witches. Not even so much magic as a lucky rabbit’s foot was on the boy.

Absolutely average—less than average, in fact, since most young people still carried those tiny charms of a mother’s kiss on their cheeks or a father’s best wish upon their brows. But this youth lay devoid of even the smallest blessing to protect him.

Only when Henry released the breath did he hear the faintest whisper of something unearthly. For an instant the sweetest, saddest melody drifted from his lips like a whisper. Wordlessly, it promised Henry something gentle as salvation and stronger than hope. It felt like sure hands stroking his weathered cheek as if he were handsome again. It warmed him like sunshine and for just a moment it made him believe that Frank was still alive, standing just behind him.

But he knew it couldn’t be Frank’s hand brushing the ragged collar of his coat just now, because most of Frank’s finger bones lay like shrapnel beneath Henry’s skin.

 Henry recoiled at once, bounding up and away from the prone young man. He nearly collided with Gunther, who’d moved closer and stared at Jason with rapt fascination.

“Shake it off, Gunther!” Henry elbowed Gunther’s chest and Gunther suddenly snapped upright as if he’d just woken.

“Henry…Where am—” Gunther looked around in confusion and then his gaze settled back on Henry. “What the hell was that?”

“Not sure, but I think—” Henry stopped short as he realized that at least a dozen agents had been drawn to the balcony railing above them and were now staring down in varying states of confusion. Only a few feet from Gunther, two winged snakes that had previously camouflaged themselves on a carved bedpost hovered in the air, their gilded wings beating softly as they stretched toward the divan. They crooned like hungry doves and circled, as if searching for something that they had suddenly lost.

A dirty-looking brownie, standing no more than two feet tall and wearing only a pair of black dress socks, also seemed to have been drawn out from where it had been hiding in the dark corners of the shop. Now the gaunt, leathery creature swayed less than a yard from Henry and stared at Jason with its bony hands lifted like it was about to receive a precious gift.

Just as awareness lit the brownie’s expression, Henry bounded forward and snatched hold of it.

“NATO Irregular Affairs Division,” Henry informed the brownie before it decided to bite.

“Aw shit,” the brownie mumbled.

“Do we have a situation down there?” Carerra’s voice carried down from the second floor. She shouldered between two of her stunned agents and glowered down at Henry from the wrought-iron railing.

“It’s under control, Commander,” Henry assured her.

Carerra turned on her own agents, ordering them back to their positions. Just as she began to move away, the brownie let out a howl and jerked against Henry’s grip. It kicked at Henry’s crotch, landing a hard punt into his thigh. Henry swung it up off its feet and dangled it by its wrists at arm’s length.

“Put me down, you hog twat!” the brownie shouted. “Criminal brutality, that’s what this is! Not one of you dirty badges has got goods on me! I was here square and legal to do proper business for my master. I got rights!”

“I suppose you’ve got a passport and the sales documents to back you up?” Henry asked, and despite himself, he smiled at the savage little brownie. There weren’t many of this kind left. Nowadays most dolled themselves up like little butlers and played hurt or obsequious when they were collared with counterfeit bills or sacks of severed hands. It had been decades since Henry’d encountered a filthy, cussing brownie, swinging its withered little prick around like it could piss acid.

“I got that an’ more for you, dick wadcutters. It’s in my fine boot!”

“Dick wadcutters?” Gunther repeated the words as if they were from a foreign language. “What does that even mean?”

The brownie simply thrust out its stocking foot. Henry kept his right hand firmly clamped around the brownie’s tiny wrists and used his mutilated left hand to peel down the brownie’s sock and pull out a wad of reeking papers.

He tossed them to Gunther, who made a face at the dank fungal aroma but quickly flipped through them.

“Well?” Carerra called down. She sounded tired of the matter already.

“The passport’s legal,” Gunther announced. “The bill of sale looks shady, though.”

The brownie shrieked an obscene protest.

“Them papers are clean as a unicorn’s snatch, you screw! My master paid for that boy half up front, a troll’s skull of gold dust!” The brownie kicked its foot toward the divan where Jason lay. “I just came to collect the property. But seeing how you dirty badges banged the boy up, I want a discount!”

“This just gets weirder and weirder,” Gunther commented softly. He frowned at the young man.

“So, we can add human trafficking to Phipps’s crimes,” Carerra pronounced from the balcony. “We’ll need the paperwork on this filed before I get back to the station.”

A brief burst of gunfire sounded, followed by the voices of alarmed agents. Carerra glanced over her shoulder and obviously did not like what she saw among the antique canopy beds and exotic gilded statues. A smoky serpentine shadow swayed against the high ceiling, growing steadily more solid by the moment.

“Right now we’ve got bigger fish to fry up here.” Carerra turned her attention to Henry. “You handle this, Falk. Figure out what the hell is going on with that boy.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Henry saluted, though Carerra had already turned away.

Chapter Three

Jason woke to the awareness that he lay prone atop a firm surface. His feet dangled slightly and his right forearm throbbed with a dull ache. For just an instant he thought he’d fallen asleep on his narrow futon and dreamed something terrible.

But he knew instinctively that this wasn’t his home and he hadn’t been dreaming. His memory roiled with images of pale monsters in dark uniforms and a strangely luminous vagrant with a silver flame flickering in his mouth.

Crazy stuff
, he thought in frustration. The kind of crazy that had gotten him locked up before and could get him locked up again…maybe already had.

He flexed his wrists, testing for the resistance of restraints. He encountered none and opened his eyes to take in the small beige room and the two other occupants seated at a cheap looking table. One of them took a swig from a metal flask while the other held a white paper coffee cup to the bloody gash of his gaping mouth.

Jason closed his eyes again immediately.

“Back among the conscious, Mr. Shamir?” He heard the rustle of clothes as the big blond vagrant moved closer to the white vinyl couch where he lay.

“He’s awake?” The second voice was smoother, younger. He sounded so calm, so human. Jason recalled him answering to the unremarkable name of Gunther. Still, Jason kept his eyes closed. He didn’t think he could bear to look at that gaping mouth again.

“Yes, I’m awake.” For a moment Jason tried to imagine what the other two men made of him, of the entire situation. He probably seemed insane. Jason didn’t allow himself to consider that they might be right to think as much. “I crashed my bike…”

“Yes, you did,” the vagrant said. “Banged up your arm too.”

“We had a medic clean it up for you,” Gunther told him. “It’s scraped up, but nothing’s broken.”

“Thanks,” Jason replied, but then he didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to demand to know where he was and who these two thought they were, holding him here.

But, God, he didn’t even know if he was really here with them. All of his senses told him that he was in the grip of reality: the slight tack of the vinyl against the bare skin of his arm, the smell of stale coffee, and the noise of an overhead fan.

And yet when he cracked his eyes just enough to glimpse the two men, horror gripped him and everything became unreal. It wasn’t just the toothy, slit-eyed monstrosity of Gunther. The other man, too, grew stranger and stranger the longer Jason studied him.

He flickered slightly like a florescent light that hadn’t come up to its full burn. A haze like the tracers of taillights built around his eyes until they seemed to blaze beneath the dark shadows of his lashes.