Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (64 page)

“Here’s to walking away.” Falk lifted his whisky.

“More or less alive,” Jason finished.

Henry tossed his Rotten Rye back and felt it burn down to the pit of his belly.

Jason took a more measured taste of his cider, but after his initial swig, his face lit up like he’d just discovered jacking off. Then he all but dived into his pint.

“This stuff is amazing. It’s got to be the most delicious thing I’ve tasted in my life,” Jason informed him. “Have you tried it?”

“I’m more of a whisky man, myself,” Henry replied. That was when he wasn’t swigging back poison to keep himself on the brink of the shade lands.

“Yeah, but this is…I can’t even think of a word beautiful enough to describe it. It’s like drinking Vivaldi’s ‘Autumn Allegro’.” Jason clutched the glass between his hands, cradling the last inch of radiant liquor. Then he thrust the glass toward Henry. “You have to try it.”

“Don’t you want it?” Henry asked.

“Of course, but I want you to taste it more.” Jason slid the glass over to Henry.

There had been more than one story of drinking buddies beating each other nearly blind over a bottle of this goblin cider. And yet here was Jason, willing to relinquish it to him.

“Don’t tell me you’re weirded out by drinking out of the same glass because—”

“That’s it exactly. I’m a clean freak.” Henry actually laughed at the idea. Then he lifted the glass and drank.

Jason was right. It was delicious, beyond mere taste. Golden light of a fall afternoon spread through Henry. He smelled sweet, ripe fruit and brilliant fallen leaves. He faintly heard a bird singing. And in the midst of it all, he tasted just a hint of Jason’s warm lips. Henry allowed himself to savor it for only a moment.

He wasn’t here to daydream about Jason’s mouth or the comfort of his company. And it wouldn’t do him or Jason any good to linger on either thought.

“It’s good. Probably too good to be true,” Henry said and set the glass aside. “Now come along, Agent August. There’s a man in room ten we need to talk to.”

***

A narrow stairwell led them down what felt like fifteen floors and then opened into a hall cramped and corroded enough to look like it had come from a sunken submarine. The air felt thick in Jason’s lungs and tasted like seawater. Out of the corner of his eye Jason even thought he saw a school of silvery fish drift by. Above them, clustering around the lights fixtures, clouds of jellyfish appeared to be feeding on the insects drawn to the diffuse light.

Suddenly Jason wondered if he could be drowning and not know it. He crushed the thought. Falk wouldn’t let that happen to him.

Still, only a decade of practice in halfway houses and psychiatric assessments allowed him to keep calm and simply follow Falk through the curving hallway while green-eyed sharks swam past. Keeping his gaze focused on the vision his glasses offered, Jason saw only a series of heavy hatch doors, each bearing a painted red number.

They reached ten, and Jason realized that they weren’t the first ones to come after Phipps. The heavy metal door bore deep dents had obviously been forced. A thick fungal stench poured out into the hall. The voices that rumbled from behind the battered hatch sounded as low and deep as an avalanche.

“Troll,” Falk mouthed and he moved quickly between Jason the door. He dropped one hand into his pocket and Jason wondered if he was going for his badge or his knife. But Falk just pulled out his flask and took a swig. Then he edged the door open with his foot. It swung in, exposing the cramped room within and its three occupants.

A withered, leathery man the size of a child spun on them. He wore nothing but a pair of knee-high black socks and held what looked like a soldering iron in his bony fist.

The other two occupied a half-collapsed bed. Jason hardly recognized Phipps from where he lay, gasping beneath what looked like a rockslide. Then the lichen-speckled, stone-gray creature holding Phipps turned its head to glower at Falk and Jason. Its eyes were pits, and when it opened the ragged chasm of its mouth, a sound like cracking boulders rolled out. Jason guessed that was the troll.

“Now here’s a picture for the scrapbook,” Henry commented offhandedly. He addressed the leathery little man standing closest to them. “Do you always get up to these kinds of hijinks right after posting bail?”

“God’s twat! What hole did you dirty badges crawl out of? If you haven’t been told, you got no authority here, you dick wadcutters,” the little man spat. “This is my personal business.”

“Looks personal enough,” Falk replied. “The thing is, I’ve got private business of my own to discuss with Phipps there.”

“I got him first. You can have him when we’re done!”

“We all know he won’t be doing any talking after you and your troll moll have rammed that soldering iron up his ass.”

Jason’s stomach lurched at the thought.

“He owes me—”

“He owes everybody,” Falk cut the little man off. “But he isn’t going to be able to pay no matter what you do to him. His accounts have been frozen by NIAD.”

“Sez you.”

“Yeah, sez me,” Falk agreed. Almost casually, he pulled his switchblade from his pocket. “So, you can believe me and move along or we can knock heads and see who goes home with a bloody nose.”

The bed groaned as the troll rose from it. The creature’s jagged skull gouged furrows in the metal ceiling as it straightened to its full height.

Jason’s heart lurched and then started pounding like a jackhammer. A sudden cold sweat dampened his skin. This was going to be just like the fight in the HRD Coffee Shop—only that troll looked far too big and hard for a mere switchblade to penetrate.

That familiar calming melody rose in the back of his mind, but he resisted it. If Falk needed his help, he couldn’t just huddle in a corner humming to himself like a hapless basket case. For the first time since he’d been a child, he sought the blade-sharp notes of a different melody. He held them ready but couldn’t bring himself to unleash them.

“Nice knife, badge.” The little man sneered at Falk. “What are you gonna do, clip my nails?”

In response Falk growled a throaty word and spat on the blade. Even with his glasses on, Jason saw the white flame that gushed up from the silver spittle.

“Whoa!” The little man dropped his soldering iron and hopped back to his troll companion’s rocky shins.

“Nothing to fear here.” Falk stepped into the room, smiling like he was delivering a punch line. Wisps of white mist rose in his wake and Jason felt the difference in the atmosphere like a sudden frost in the air. Black shadows churned at the edge of his vision.

“I just thought you two might want a night-light for the dark when I open the shade lands.” Falk blazed as brightly as the flame of his blade.

Phipps issued a weak, sick groan from where he lay, spilled across the broken bed. A weirdly childlike screech escaped the troll and it shook its rumpled head wildly. At its feet the leathery little man blanched to dull gray.

“No need to turn nasty, badge.” He gave Falk a terrified grin, displaying teeth as ragged as bottle caps. “Linda and me believe you. We’ll just be moving along.”

“You got till the count of three to scram,” Falk replied coldly. “And I’m already on two.”

They bolted through the door. Jason had to step back to avoid being rolled over. He watched them race to the stairs and clamber up in a racket of metallic scrapes and odd curses.

When he stepped inside the cramped room, he found Falk straightening Phipps up to sitting. Not even a hint of the murky darkness of the shade lands remained. The overhead light cast bright white illumination across Phipps and the squalid little room.

“Thank you,” Phipps said to Falk. He brushed his silver-gray hair back from his face and made a hopeless attempt to straighten his torn silk pajamas. A large bruise was already darkening the left side of his face. The holes in his clothes afforded Jason a view of red abrasions.

“No,” Falk replied. “Don’t thank me. I’m likely to do worse to you myself.”

Phipps glanced quickly, searchingly, to Jason and then swallowed like it hurt.

Despite his harsh words, Falk dragged a tiny table to Phipps’s bedside and, after rummaging through a couple drawers in his dresser, brought over a bottle of what looked like wine. He produced a tin cup from his coat pocket and set it in front of Phipps.

For his part Jason didn’t know what to feel. Half of him still felt indebted to Phipps for the kindness he’d shown him. But that only made him feel all the more betrayed, knowing now that the man had sold him like some knickknack.

Jason leaned against Phipps’s wooden dresser, trying to affect an air of indifference.

“Well, you certainly have the advantage over me—I take it that you are Irregulars?”

Falk just gave a curt nod.

“You’ve come calling to discuss something you discovered after you broke into my business, I suppose?”

“Right again,” Falk allowed.

“Jason Shamir…” Phipps nodded to himself as if there could be no other answer. “I had wondered how quickly you’d penetrate the anonymity spell placed on him. I hadn’t thought quite so soon.”

“You mean not before Cethur Greine set you up with asylum in exchange for the information you gave him, yeah?” Falk’s tone remained conversational. It reminded Jason a little of his own interrogation.

“Yes. Another day at least.” Phipps sighed heavily, then glanced forlornly to the battered mass of his door. “I really do need to look into recovering my security system.”

“You might want to invest in something electronic this time.” Falk found a chair and seated himself across from Phipps. “The ghosts of murdered little girls just aren’t as reliable as they used to be.”

Phipps raised his eyes to Falk.

“I take it that you were the one that got in.” Phipps offered Falk a mock salute. “I had wondered how those fresh-faced fascists made it through the door so very quickly.”

“Maybe you just left it unlocked.” Falk picked up the wine bottle, pulled the cork free, and set the bottle back down in front of Phipps.

“Very civilized of you,” Phipps commented. “Or is this to be a last drink for a condemned man?”

“That would depend on how cooperative you decide to be,” Falk responded.

Phipps filled the tin cup himself and swallowed the contents in a single gulp.

“Ask what you want.” He refilled the cup. “I’ll tell you everything I can.”

“Let’s start with exactly what information you sold to Greine,” Falk prompted.

“Everything I knew and a few things one might call conjecture.” This time Phipps took a more refined sip of the white wine. “The boy was obviously in possession of the Stone of Fal. I knew that the moment I heard him singing. And once I managed to glimpse past that anonymity spell I realized that he was the spitting image of Cethur Greine himself—”

“What?” Jason couldn’t help himself. Falk shot him a silencing glance, then returned his attention to Phipps.

“By that you mean you suspected he was the Greine’s son?”

“Exactly,” Phipps replied. “There have always been those rumors about the fruit of Greine’s wedding night. Born dead, thrown into the sea. Supposedly eaten, if you trust the word of a certain Moth Man—”

“Never have before,” Falk replied. “Wouldn’t start now.”

Phipps nodded.

“None of my informants agreed on what fate had befallen the child, but they all agreed that the princess had borne Greine an heir. And I realized that he hadn’t died at all. He’d grown up in the earthly realm of his ancestors. When I passed that on to Greine he seemed quite pleased.”

“Why the hell wouldn’t he be?” Falk drew his own flask from his pocket and took swig. “You gave him exactly the ammunition he needed to lay legal claim on Jason and the stone.”

“If it matters at all, I’d like to point out that Greine wasn’t my first choice,” Phipps stated. “If your raid hadn’t ruined everything, Jason would have been back in the hands of his mother’s agents by now.”

“You mean those two who just left?” Falk raised his brows. “Because I got it from one of their colleagues that they’d rather kill Jason than chance him falling into Greine’s grasp. So you’d be doing him no kindness there. Or did you mean that you tried to sell him back to the mother who hid him away in the first place?”

Phipps pulled a pained face that made Jason want to slap him. “It wasn’t as if I were spoiled for choices, was I? I contacted the princess first but heard nothing back. Then I found out that she’d been locked away, sleeping in a tower for the last decade. Shortly after that I was approached by that gruesome brownie about locating the Stone of Fal…And, well, I’d already located it, hadn’t I?”

“I—” Jason barely caught himself; he felt so betrayed—and not just by Phipps but also by his revelations. By the fact that some tyrant had claim over him as his father while the man Jason had known and loved…Jason didn’t even know who he had been. And his mother— if possible, he knew even less of her.

“I read that Jason Shamir had only been working for you for seven weeks,” Jason ground out. “Did you start looking for buyers the minute you hired him, you ghoul?”

“Yes. I knew he was something rare and valuable the moment I laid eyes on him and such commodities are what I deal in.” Phipps drew himself up straight as though there was some dignity to be claimed by the admission. He narrowed his gray eyes at Jason. “But don’t pretend that you Irregulars are just going to pat that boy on the head and turn him over to his daddy. We all know that’s not the case. Your people want the stone just as badly as anyone. Unless Cethur Greine acts very fast, your so-called Research and Development people will have carved the stone out and slapped together some zombie patch job to fob off on him.” Phipps sneered at Jason. “You Irregulars like to claim that you’re defending us all from ourselves, but isn’t it just so convenient that to do so you have to seize every talisman and charm you can impound?”