I watched as she mortared ice from the cooler, leaving it fine-grained in the glass, and poured in equal amounts of the dark and light liquors before topping it with cream and shaking it once, twice and sliding it down the bar towards me. I stopped it with a hand, gently; none spilled. She smiled, one-sidedly, and returned to cleaning glasses, watching me as I took a drink.
Perfect.
I was trying not to watch her, my right hand clutched around the pocket watch in my jacket pocket. Old-fashioned, heavy and expensive, it was a Patek Phillippe that had taken me two years to save up for, and three years more to invest properly. Now it was my shield and sword, and my only hope.
Another sip. The tender's hair was the fine white of snow, her face unlined with strong features, the skin soft and unblemished, her eyes dead and cold. She had finished polishing the final glass in the row and was standing with her arms crossed, watching the commuters. I closed my eyes and tried to still my heart, drawing the warmth from the pocket watch up my arm, the power building in my chest and surrounding my heart. I didn't know if it would be enough to protect me from even her casual notice, but I hoped so - it was all I had.
"Excuse me, miss?" My voice was rusty, the old accent all but gone.
She turned, one eyebrow arched. I noticed the row of potted plants behind the bar, blocking the view of anyone behind it, and my voice firmed with the recognition. "Please note, I'm not asking this - but if I was to ask the bar to turn its back to the forest and let me in-"
I hadn't finished before she jerked forward, reflexively, arms arched as if to claw. I felt an enormous silent thunder against my chest and stumbled backwards, taking the stool over with me; I caught myself on the bar's edge and managed through main force not to turn away. The watch burned in my pocket as it dissipated the Power thrown against its ward. She and I looked at each other, eyes locked, for perhaps ten seconds, perhaps a century -
- and then she turned away, shrinking, behind the bar.
I let out a breath, slowly.
When she turned back, her eyes were brilliant, twinkling. Her skin was as wrinkled as any I'd seen, her back bent, and her hair, while still white, was coarse and stringy. Her voice came out a croak. "Well met, youngling. Well met."
"Hello, Baba."
"What now?"
"Nothing, Baba. Nothing. I didn't ask. I said-"
"Aaaaahhhh, yes. You said,
if
you were to ask. Clever boy."
"Yes, Baba."
She laughed for a time, an honest humor, leaning on the bar. No-one else came past; below, the commuters continued their one-way dance into the city. I took up my drink again with trembling hands, sipped, and found that all the ice was gone. The cream had curdled, into solids; I spat it back into the cup, placed it on the bar as quietly as possible, but she saw anyway and swept it into the sink. "Ah, the milk. It'll happen, grandson. It'll happen. Let me get you another."
"Baba, may I-"
She looked up, sharply. "Is that what you came for?"
"I came to ask what you would have, in return, for that mixture."
She looked at me for a moment, then sighed, reached across and chucked my chin with her fingers. They felt dry and cold, winter's sticks in summer awaiting the fire. "You'll come and speak with an old woman, boy?"
"I would, grandmother."
"Your word."
I took the watch out of my pocket and laid it on the bar, turning it to face her. "My word, Baba."
She looked into the watch, and a smile crossed her ancient face. "Ahhh. He comes through here, betimes. He would say your word is good, eh? Belike." Reaching under the counter, she brought out two bottles, one dark, one light, and mixed them in a jigger, then swiftly poured the result into a small crystal bottle which she produced from beneath the bar as well. Stoppering it with glass, she shook it once, twice; at each motion, reality shivered in ripples away from the bottle and I felt the power shake my liver and lights.
Then she handed it across the bar to me. I took it in my hands, the waters of Baba Yaga, and tucked it into my inner jacket pocket next to the Patek Phillipe. She nodded at me. "You've places to be. Come see me Thursday morning."
I'm a hard trader; I'm a user and a bastard, but I could hear the quaver of the lonely grandmother in the instruction, and that more than anything else ensured that it would be obeyed. I leaned across the bar and kissed the old woman on her dust-dry chilly cheek. "I promise, Baba."
I slid off the stool, both my talismans leaching power into my gestalt from under my jacket. Faerie fire flickered from my fingertips before I could muffle it, the power sliding out and grounding itself in the decades-old marble of Grand Central Terminal with the appearance of purple lightning. I slid my belt around, the polymers of the gun neutral even against my skin, and moved off into the flow.
The cold gaze of the white-haired fashion model watched me go.
III
Lost and found in gunfight metaphor
* * *
The loss of the Towers has put a slight crimp on my activities in Manhattan. It's difficult to negotiate with those who live in the Heavens when one can't get as close to said Heavens. Luckily for me, Art Deco has one thing the Towers didn't.
A lightning rod on the same building as the Observation Deck.
I stood on the northeast corner of the Empire State Building and looked out over Manhattan Island at night. The air was muggy, oppressive and loaded with the sullen energy of thunderstorms licking their way across eastern Pennsylvania and up the Jersey shoreline. Off in the distance, flickers of heat lightning backed by the real thing could be seen even through the ochre haze of streetlights.
The deck was deserted. It had closed some three or four hours before. I had hidden myself in a corner, helped along by some of the talismans in the leather bandolier beneath my overcoat. The pocket watch had rippled me out of sight as the guards swept through, kept the light off me as they passed, and now here I was turning the smooth angled shape over in my hands and waiting for midnight to come.
You'd think that it would be too clichéd for the lightning storms to arrive at midnight, but you'd be wrong. Where do you think the clichés come from? From just this sort of situation. I sighed, once, and tried to calculate how quickly the flashes in the distance were coming closer. It looked like the western approach would make the cut, tonight; the front would push across the Island to the sea before being shoved north by the Gulf Stream.
The weapon in my hands was ancient, cracked and weathered but still whole. It was perhaps eighteen inches in length, shaped unevenly but with care. I held it to my eye and sighted down its off-white edge and looked down towards the Battery. Light reflected dully off its surfaces.
An hour to go.
It had taken a year and a half, this time. Mostly dry and dusty study, to understand who it was who peered down at me from the barred and closed-in sky; research to determine whose face I was trying to make out in the clouds over midtown. Was it pity? Fear? Anger? Which? Important to know, crucial - especially if one were to unlock the bars as I knew I wanted to. Even then, I knew.
It's what I do. I find them, seek them out where they've been hidden or where they're hiding. They all come to New York, eventually; there's sin here, and grace; there's power and there's puerile anonymity. Some are curious, some hungry, others lost.
The old Gods all come to New York.
It had taken me six months and a lucky break to identify the faces looking solemnly down from the center of Manhattan. A photograph, done in high dynamic range techniques to commemorate and display the changes in the skyline, caught the face as it gazed down from a sky thick with smog and moisture, and my Talent and will made out the forms in the mists. I can Hear, and See. That's all. But that's enough, for I'm a hard bargainer.
His name is Bobbi-Bobbi, and he's Australian. Original, Aboriginal, and lives in Dream. He's a snake with features, and he was first friend to Man - he gave Mankind his first prey, the flying fox. When the foxes grew too clever and flew too high, Bobbi-Bobbi gave us our first weapon.
I turned it over in my hands again. The rib bone from his side, planed smooth; a half year of searching in Australasia, advantaged only in that I could See the fakes and the frauds. I'd found it, finally, in the hands of a man living in a stand of swamp as his ancestors had. It had taken me a month to convince him to pass it to me. His sons had gone City; but I ... I could See what he could See, and he handed me the bone boomerang wrapped in handkerchief before he died of cancer.
The Desert Eagle rode under my right ribs in its holster beneath the overcoat. I'd gone to Australia with a Glock there, but he'd taught me that that was wasted economy. The gun was a desperation defense I'd only had to use twice, before I met Willant; by the time he died, he'd shown me what a fool I'd been. I'd replaced it with the heavier machine upon arriving home.
Forty-five minutes.
I stepped to the middle of the Western face of the deck and looked out at the storm, closer now, visible over New Jersey. Perhaps approaching Newark. Lightning was visible branching between the clouds and the ground. I held the boomerang up before the light and watched its surface; as the lightning flickered off in the distance behind it, the cracks in its surface glowed slightly, in sympathy, small glow-worms of purple and blue runneling between the bone surfaces for moments before grounding into the ivory.
There was a soft
gong
behind me. I spun around, trying to place it, and even as I shoved the boomerang into my inner coat pocket part of my brain was cataloguing it as elevator - but the doors were sliding open inside. I was caught silhouetted, not expecting the sentry to return for another hour, so I froze rather than offer movement, but too late. The doors clicked and one swung open to admit four shapes onto the deck, three of whom were decidedly bigger than I.
"Michael. What a surprise." The voice was rough but cultured. I sighed and relaxed, bringing my hands to unthreatening positions midway between my sides and my shoulders.
"Mal. How are you?"
There was a brief rasping sound, followed by the red glow of a cigar. "I'm doing well, thank you, you young interloper. What have you got there, now?"
"Where?"
The smallest of the four shook his head and blew out a cloud of tobacco smoke. "Oh, come, Michel. In your coat, boy. In your coat."
"Just my usual, Mal." I didn't move my hands. I was trying very hard not to sweat, but was fairly sure I was failing. The man across from me was handsome in a very rough sort of way; his face was heavily lined, as from outdoor life, but his eyes were bright and his shoulder-length hair glossy black. His fingers were adorned with silver rings, and his nails long. I could see that most of his clothes were dark leather.
Also, he was uncountable thousands of years old. Story had it that Malsumis was created, along with his twin Gluskab, from the dust left over when the Abenaki god Tabaldak created man. Gluskab thought man was a pretty cool idea and was generally a booster. Helped us out. Brought forth game, fish, crops, all that kind of thing. He and Bobbi-Bobbi would have gotten right along.
Malsumis, though - yeah. He was most definitely not on the happy and peppy list. He and I had run across each other three times in the past, as I went my way through New York - meeting, searching, gathering. Our first meeting had been a disaster, and I had barely escaped with my life. Only an idiotic amount of luck had allowed me to wriggle out of his reach, and that had only made him interested; the next time we'd met, I'd been doing my research and was armed up to within an inch of clanking in my Burberry. I'm still not sure if he was actually wary of my hardware or just so amused at my array of charms and trinkets that he let me go for the humor value, but it had worked. The third time we'd actually had interests in common, and a truce had prevailed for the hour we'd spent in each other's company.
Now, however, he was eyeing me with an avid look which said I had something he wanted and he had three really big guys to pry it out of me. That didn't bode well for any form of cooperative venture. He sucked on his cigar again and cocked his head, looking at my coat. "That's an awfully big gun you have there, boy. You do know that can't possibly hurt me."
"I do, yes. So there's no reason you should feel offended or worried if I keep it." It was true. Mal was pretty much invulnerable to kinetic impact. He reacted almost exactly like an enormous tree if he was hit by bullets - he oozed, very slowly, but it made no difference at all for several months. By which point he'd certainly got done killing you and, most likely, dealing with the wound.
"No, no, by all means." He waved a hand negligently. "I'm much more interested in that throwing toy you have in the other pocket."
Damn. Well, at least two of the heavies had looked at each other when he mentioned the gun.
They
probably weren't immune.
"This? Just a toy, as you say, Mal."
"No. Won't do. Bring it out, Michel."
I sighed and reached carefully into my coat with the fingertips of my left hand (Malsumis nodded approvingly) and brought out Bobbi-Bobbi's boomerang, dangling it from my fingers.
"That would be it. Hand it here."
I looked at him. He looked at me. His eyes narrowed, and he threw his cigar over the railing of the observation deck. "I said," Malsumis continued more quietly, "give me the bone."
"No." I said it carefully.
He made a pursed-lip motion akin to spitting, then turned his head to his left. "Kill him. Bring me the bone."
There was a moment's pause, which Malsumis used to step backwards twice. Then Goon One and Goon Two, at his sides, stepped forward once towards me. I cringed somewhere deep inside, prayed to the Gods of physics and practice, flipped the bone from my left hand to my right. Turning ninety degrees, I drew back my shoulder as the three Goons started to move more quickly; they were perhaps eight or nine feet away now. With my right hand, I threw hard. The boomerang sailed out into the night sky over Manhattan, vanishing into the sodium and mercury light haze. Malsumis' head turned to follow it, as did two of the Goons. The third was tracking me as he continued to close, but my left hand had unsnapped the holster and pulled the Desert Eagle out to meet my returning right hand. By the time the Goons were all back in motion, Goon Three (the mover) had almost reached me, and the gun was up in ready position.