Authors: Joe Ducie
Sophie stared at me. “You’re not
thinking about going back to Ascension City again, are you?”
“Always,” I said. “But not any time
soon. We’ve problems enough here in Perth without pissing off my brother.”
Across the balcony, following the
steel railing over to the limestone steps that led down to the lake, a familiar
figure walked up and onto our little courtyard.
Dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a
white blouse, and a brown leather jacket, Detective Annie Brie strolled
purposefully toward me. Her hands were safe inside her pockets, and she wore a
pair of dark sunglasses, framed by her straight raven-black hair.
I felt something, a tingle of
anticipation, as she drew level with our table and gave me a small wave. “Hello
again, Mr. Hale.”
“Detective.” I stood to meet her and
took her hand. One of the hungry ducks circling our table quacked indignation.
“You are a lovely surprise. Care to join us?”
“I will, yes.” She took a seat next
to me at the table, on a spare circular bar stool.
I made introductions. “Sophie,
Ethan, this is Detective Brie. I have a sneaking suspicion that she may have
followed me here today.”
Brie shrugged and offered me a smile
that didn’t feel real. “We’re keeping an eye on you, yes. For your own
protection, you understand.”
“Ah, not a social visit then?”
“No, we’d like you to come in—to
Joondalup Police Station, just down the road, and answer some more questions.”
“And so they sent the young, pretty
one to persuade me? For shame. Detective Grey most likely would’ve hauled me in
by the ear by now, hmm?”
Brie folded her hands over her lap.
“You’re not under arrest, Mr. Hale. But we do need you to answer some more—”
“Call me Declan, please. And have a
drink with us, Annie Brie.” I sipped at my schooner of delicious pink cider.
“Swim in the chaotic seas of infinity, stretched thin along a canvas of
corruptible reality, and wonder with me if this truly is as good as it gets.”
“What did you just say?”
“Declan does that,” Sophie said, and
held the Polaroid camera up to her eye again. “Spouts the poetic nonsense of
the long–suffering. You two look good together. Smile.”
A bright flash lit up the afternoon
and ’Phie’s camera spat out another picture. She handed it to Brie.
We watched the picture develop
slowly, fading from black to life. It showed the detective and I seated
together on our bar stools. I was leaning in toward her, and she sat straight
and proper—as you do around new people—with a carefully composed face baring
just the hint of a smile. Brie’s shadow stretched up the wall behind her as the
early afternoon sun began a slow fall toward the west.
Mine did not.
I wondered, with not too much worry,
if she would notice.
“So, how about that drink, Detective
Brie? This strawberry and lime cider is
dee
licious.”
Brie looked at me over the rim of
her sunglasses. “I’m more of a wild berry girl, Mr. Hale.”
“Known you half a day, and you’re
already breaking my heart.” I sighed and raised my glass. “Well, cheers
anyway.”
The schooner exploded in my hand and
a shower of ice, cider, and glass lacerated my palm. Something hard hit me in the
chest like a sledgehammer and I was knocked back off my stool and into the wall
behind me. Away in the distance, I heard a loud
snap
as though a car had
backfired.
I saw stars and struggled to draw a
breath, slumped against the wall. The air had been pushed from my lungs. One of
the ducks flapped its wings angrily at me a few feet away. Another
snap
cut through the air, and the bird exploded much like my delicious cider had.
“Duck!”
Brie yelled, throwing herself to the concrete
behind the table.
“It sure was…” I muttered, staring
at what was left of the poor creature.
Ethan and Sophie, not averse to
danger, scampered inside, abandoning their various cameras and laptops as the
tavern’s other patrons just began to react—to scream and run.
Someone was taking shots at me.
This wasn’t the first time, but it
was the first time in a long time.
I looked down at my chest. My
reinforced waistcoat shimmered with a dull blue light. A heavy chunk of hot
lead had flattened against the left breast pocket. It fell to the ground with a
clunk. If not for the Willful protections, I’d have found out once and for all
just how immortal the Infernal Clock had made me.
The pain blossoming across my chest
felt a lot like mortality.
This was a sobering thought and made
me thirsty. I made it to my knees and reached up onto the table to retrieve my
bottle of cider, still half-full. No sense seeing it going to waste.
All of this happened in a few
seconds, and Detective Brie acted with a lot more self-preservation than I. She
hurled her shoulder into the large table and knocked it over, shielding us both
behind the thick tabletop. Perhaps not enough to stop another bullet, but the
shooter wouldn’t be able to see us anymore.
“Are you hit?”
she yelled. Her service weapon—a
slick, dark pistol—looked out of place in her small hands.
“Hale, are you
okay?”
I took a drink. “I’m okay, I think.”
She stared at me for a moment, and
although I couldn’t see her eyes behind her dark sunglasses, I sensed a
thousand questions burning through her mind. Brie shook her head and snapped
open her phone just as another shot slammed into the table. The bullet didn’t
make it through the heavy wood, but a spray of white splinters erupted from the
underside.
As Brie called for backup, I peeked
around the table’s edge to see what I could see. We were surrounded on all
sides by several tall buildings just across the lake and beyond the tiny pine
forest. People were scattering every which way, diving for cover. The shooter,
whoever he was, could have been anywhere. But given where he had hit me and the
duck, he—or she—was most likely on the roof of the building across the lake.
The angle was right.
I ducked my head back under cover
just as another shot pinged off the metal rim of the table and ricocheted into
the wall. Chunks of red brick stung my cheek.
“Stay down!” Brie ordered.
“Yes, ma’am.” I finished the bottle
of cider in one long slug and noticed the Polaroid picture of the detective and
I had fluttered to the floor by my knee. I picked it up and shoved it into my
pocket.
“Declan!” Sophie called from inside.
“Shield’s up. You can make a run for it now!”
“Grand. Come along, Detective.”
I stood up and saw a strange thing.
The air shimmered across the center of the courtyard. Sophie’s shield was
near-invisible, which was for the best, as I could only explain so much so
quickly, and Brie was going to have a hard enough time believing me innocent of
anything after all this.
“Are you mad? Get down!” She grabbed
at my arm and pulled me a staggering step to the side. She was surprisingly
strong.
Another shot cracked through the air
and hit Sophie’s shield. Her Will held strong, and a dozen concentric ripples
spread out from the impact, shining ever-so-briefly silver in midair. A
high-caliber pebble, traveling at the speed of sound, cast on still waters.
I turned my arm in Brie’s hand and
grasped her forearm. She was strong, but I was stronger. I pulled her inside
and out of any and all lines of sight.
Inside the bar most of the patrons
were making a quick and mad exit out the rear door on the other side of the
building. Sophie kneeled next to the pool table, her hand pressed against the
beer-soaked green carpet. A faint, luminescent glow spread between her fingers.
“Ethan?” I asked.
“He went out the front,” Sophie
said, maintaining her shield to protect those still out in the courtyard. “If I
know him, he’s circling round the back of the lake to find this bastard.”
To hear Sophie curse was rare. I
offered her a crooked smile. “Better get after him then.”
“Yes, please. Don’t let him die.”
“Hold on a minute—” Brie began,
reaching for my arm again.
I stepped back and turned to run.
“Hale, stop!”
Her gun came up, but I didn’t
believe for a second that she would shoot me in the back. I set off at a quick
jog out the front of the pub, darting past the pizza shop and a hairdresser’s
and along the outer rim of buildings that led down to the lake.
The tick-tick of flat heels clipped
the path behind me. Annie Brie was keeping me in her sights.
A heavy crowd moved around the lake.
Some of the people were running from the tavern while others were just looking
around curiously—they knew something was wrong, that something in the air felt
off, but were oblivious to the danger. A crowd was good. I could get lost in a
crowd.
Brie caught up with me—she was in a
lot better shape and a lot less hung-over—and cast a quick, worried glance in
my direction.
“Shooter has to be in this
building,” I said, pointing at the one I’d picked out at the tavern directly
across the small lake. We were about fifty meters away and closing. “If he
hasn’t already fled, then he’d have to come down through the interior, don’t
you think? There are no adjoining buildings, and I can’t see external access.”
“Who
are
you?” Brie asked.
She had holstered her weapon, which was smart—for now. “Tell me again how you
manage a small bookshop.”
“Later. Let’s go bag ourselves a
perp.”
“You know the police don’t actually
say that,” she said between steady, deep breaths.
“No? Fuckin’ Hollywood.”
Brie and I ran up the steps of
Engineering Building 23, according to the frosted letters on the double glass
doors. We’d outpaced the crowds around the lake, and things were quiet this
side of the university.
A few people stood on the steps, shielding
their eyes against the sun and staring at the tavern. Of Ethan there was no
sign, but this building had the right feel to it. The man who had shot me was
here—I knew it. Call that knowing a sixth sense, a tingle of Will, born through
years of war and brutal training at the Infernal Academy.
Trying to kill me from a distance
like that…. Well, it was smart, I guess. I had a helluva track record for
surviving close encounters with killers—save for one small blemish in the heart
of Atlantis three months ago. If he was a hired gun, a normal human with no
ties to Forget, then he would have to escape the old fashioned way.
But if he was Willful, which was
actually much more likely given that he was targeting me, then he may have
already escaped. A Knight or a Renegade could have used any novel of the Story
Thread to slip out of this world and into another. The shooter could have been
a thousand universes away already.
The automatic doors slid open on
silent hinges, and a cool blast of chilled air washed over Brie and me,
dispersing the sticky heat of the day. Our footsteps echoed loudly on clean
marble floors.
I looked at the detective, and she
drew her sidearm again.
The lobby was a wide-open space,
well lit, with a set of polished wooden stairs leading up to the second floor
opposite a bank of clear glass elevators. It was also deserted. Not a soul in
sight. From the center of the lobby, I looked up and could see all the way
through the heart of the building to the top floor, about five stories high.
“Quiet, don’t you think?” I
muttered.
A loud thump echoed from above,
shattering the silence. Brie snapped her head up just as two figures impacted
against the waist-high barrier on the third floor. I caught a flash of dark
hair and a bald, tattooed head. With a sharp cry, the brawling pair tumbled
over
the barrier, ten meters up.
Brie gasped, and I pulled us both a
careful step back as the two men plummeted down through the air and struck the
floor at our feet. The larger, bald man hit first, and Ethan—bless his quick
thinking—landed on top of him. A long, black duffel bag hit the floor nearby.
Ethan rolled off the bald man with a
groan. His lip was bloody, and it looked as though he’d taken one awesome right
hook to his left eye, which was swelling shut fast. His good eye focused on me,
and he made a dismissive gesture with his hand.
“He’s all yours, boss.”
Baldy was dressed in a simple pair
of jeans and an Army surplus–green jacket. He shuffled away from Ethan, dragging
himself with his palms. A steady trickle of blood dribbled down his chin from
his mouth. If this was our shooter, then I hoped something vital was bleeding.
Surprising Brie and me both, he spun
on his leg and made it to one knee.
“Don’t move!” Brie said, raising her
gun to cover the man.