There was a series of extremely loud explosions, six in all, in three pairs.
When they were done, the Goons were down on the deck in various positions. My wrists ached, there was a stink of cordite in the air, and the magazine of the Desert Eagle was in midair on the way to the deck flooring. My left hand was moving to my belt for the reload. Malsumis' face had gone hard and angry, but he hadn't moved. I finished reloading and brought the pistol to bear on his chest. He looked at it, then at me, and scowled.
"Boy, you and I both know that toy will do you no good. I'll still rip your lungs out through your ribcage, and neither of us will have the damn-"
There was a meaty
THUNK
as the boomerang sailed in from the night sky and hit Malsumis in the back of the head, pitching him forward onto the deck before dropping to the ground. I danced backwards three steps, keeping him some fifteen feet away. He roared and leapt back to his feet, pivoting around his toes in an impossible levering motion with black blood on his lips and nose. His eyes were glowing electric blue with red at their pupils. He quite clearly wanted to kill me, and considered the momentarily sting of a .44 round to be well worth the tradeoff.
I slapped my left hand once to my chest. Anchored there, in its leather bandolier, was a lumpy shape. I saw the slight ripple spread out from me as my hand touched it. Mal saw it, too, as he lunged forward, and I had time to see his eyes draw together slightly in puzzlement.
Then I extended my left hand out, fingers spread towards him, and fired the big pistol with my right.
The pin hit the first cartridge of the new magazine. Powder burned. Physics exulted, and the enormous bullet sang down the barrel, several dozen grains of steel-jacketed lead slamming out the front of the gun towards Mal's oncoming form -
But before it could reach him, the watch at my chest pulsed, once.
The kinetic energy flowed from the bullet midflight, back, back down the funnel projecting from my left hand, into my body. I felt the Waters of Baba Yaga flare in their vial, changing the energy; the vial pulsing silver, the energy flew back down my right forearm, down the gun, rushed out the barrel and past the now slowed bullet and struck Malsumis as he rushed towards me.
In a circle four inches wide, that energy did one thing and one thing only. Flavored with the Water of Life in Baba Yaga's bottle, touched with the Water of Death, it made him flesh; it made him alive; it made him mortal, it gave him death.
His eyes widened.
The Desert Eagle's slide cycled and blazed again, once, twice. Both bullets flew down the silver path of entropy and life, straight, as straight as practice and wrist exercise could hold the gun, into Malsumis' chest.
Blood, red and human, exploded out the back of his body. He jerked to a halt in midair, and then staggered backwards against the railing of the observation deck and slid to the ground. One hand went tentatively to his chest, and then he looked up at me with a peaceful expression of vast surprise. "Michel?"
I knelt in front of him, the Desert Eagle smoking. "Mal."
"What have you done?"
"You're not going to die, Mal."
"I can feel it happening, Michel ... I can feel blood, in me-"
"You're a god, Malsumis. You won't die."
He forced his gaze to me. "This ... this is the most ... " he coughed twice, blood coming up. " ... the most
interesting
evening I've had in years, Michel."
"Yeah." I was very, very tired. "Think about how you felt, Mal. Think about how we feel all the time. You know you're going to make it, now. But you didn't, for a moment. That's how we feel, every fucking moment of every fucking day. That's how they felt." I waved at the remains of Goons one through three.
Malsumis coughed again. "It's ... just a bullet." his expression was firming.
"Yeah?" I stood. "Guess what." I fired two rounds into the night sky, wrenching their energy into disruption and hard kinetics. Obedient to my cast, the safety fence shrieked and parted, an oval the size of a door tearing itself open. I holstered the Desert Eagle and gripped his coat lapels.
"Michel? What are you ..., " he coughed blood again. "What are you doing?"
I held him up to my face. "I don't like you, Mal. I respect you. But you don't think about how we feel. Not ever." And I dragged him over to the edge of the roof deck, hoisted him up the safety fence. His eyes widened, finally.
"What are you ... you can't ... "
"Sure I can." I hunched my shoulders and threw him over. He went without a sound.
I turned and sighed. I walked back across the deck and picked up Bobbi-Bobbi's boomerang, looked at my wristwatch, cheap Casio. Five minutes. There was no sound from the corpses, and no sound other than the rumble of the City. I leaned against the fence and waited.
At Midnight, the lightning came down and struck the tower. I held the boomerang up to it, and the power came; the sky ripped open, and Bobbi-Bobbi peered down. I shielded my face from the glare, and when the lightning had gone, there was a jet-black man in a thong crouched on the deck in front of me. He was holding a lethal-looking spear and had an elegant knife. I nodded to him.
"Michel."
"Bobbi-Bobbi."
He looked around, saw the corpses. He shook his head. "Death still walks among you all, down here. This is why I don't come down."
"An Elder brought that on them. But that's not why I'm here."
"Why are you here, Michel-who-talks-with-us?"
I held out the boomerang. "This is yours."
He took the bone weapon, surprise on his face. "And what do you want in return, trading man?"
"Nothing." I sat down, wearily. "It's yours. Take it back."
He looked at me, then sat as well. Looking over, he prodded the corpses with his spear. They rose up into the clouds, fading into the mists fifteen or twenty feet above the observation deck level. I ignored them. "This has been lost a good number of years, Michel Trader Man. Done much harm."
"I know."
He stood again, slapped it against his palm once then held it to his side where there was a scar. I saw a brief flash of light, and it was gone, along with the scar. He grinned at me, teeth brilliant in the gloom and angular floodlights. "Maybe we talk again, Michel Trader Man."
"You know where I am, Bobbi-Bobbi."
He looked me up and down, nodded. Then he turned and climbed up on the safety fence. I watched him. Before stepping off, he turned again and laughed. Reaching up, he twisted the head from his spear and tossed it to me underhand. "For you, Trader Man. One weapon for another. You got build your own spear for it, though; no giving you the whole thing this time."
I caught the stone shape, feeling the warmth in my hand. I looked at him and nodded my head. "I understand, Bobbi. I'll be here if you want to talk."
"Maybe, then." And he stepped off the roof.
I tucked the spearhead into my bandolier, feeling the edged power of it crackle against the watch and the vial. A grin cut across my face. Carefully, I picked up the Desert Eagle's magazine and empty shells, taking twenty minutes until I had counted all those I'd used.
Then I let myself off the roof deck and descended into the sea of New York light.
IV
Someone to pull the trigger
* * *
There's an old rule that applies to drinking in New York. It will keep you safe in the worst bars, in the worst neighborhoods - even the ones where the stockbrokers drink. A cabbie once told it to me when I was seventeen, which in New York terms means three years past drinking age. "Kid," he said as he let me off in front of an Alphabet City bar which had been colonized by bikers, "What the hell are you doing going in there?"
There wasn't really a good answer to that, since I wasn't really sure myself. "I'm looking for someone," I had told him, almost entirely truthfully.
He'd shaken his head at me in the rear-view mirror and then turned, cabbie style, one arm across the front bench seat to look through the hazed Plexiglas window that separated us. "Can I give you some advice?" he'd asked. I'd looked at him, then at the bar out the passenger side window. Two enormous men dressed in decorated leather jackets were urinating against the front of the bar while a third lounged with his arms crossed, leering at a girl who was walking by in the company of no less than seven teenagers whose clothing screamed 'GANG MEMBER.' She shrank from his gaze and all eight of them hurried their steps.
"Sure," I said.
"I ain't gonna tell you not to go in there, 'cos it looks like you're gonna no matter what I say. But look me in the eyes while I tell you this."
I looked him in the eyes. "Go on."
"You got three inches of space around you, son. That's your personal Red Zone. When you walk in there, if your Red Zone touches anybody without them meaning it, you say 'excuse me, sir' and you keep walking. If anybody comes into your Red Zone like they mean to do it, you give 'em one chance by walkin' around em. That's courtesy. Shows you ain't looking to cause shit. If they come into the zone a second time, you ask 'em if you can help 'em. If they don't make nice, then that's three strikes, you got me?"
I nodded, swallowed, then asked the question. "What do I do if they get three strikes?"
He grinned at me. "That's your problem. What I'm telling you is this: if you follow those rules, the only people who you're gonna have to deal with are the ones who were gonna start a fight with you no matter what you did once you walked in that door. You might still have to fight or run, but you'll always know you had no choice."
I'd tipped him double the fare. He shook his head while he drove away.
I walked past the three huge guys at the front door, making a slight jog so my Red Zone didn't touch theirs. They looked at me but didn't say anything. I went into that bar that night, found who I was looking for, and got out of that bar that night. I'm not telling you I never got in fights, but I'm telling you that that cabbie was right; every time I've followed that rule, I've never had to fight anyone that wasn't doing his or her damnedest to make sure we squared off no matter what I did.
Unfortunately, some days there's just one of those jackasses in the bar.
I was in a dark and dusty corner joint in Washington Heights, the kind with an Irish name but nary an Irishman in sight and where the beer is decidedly American but the rum, if you know how to ask for it, is dark, wicked and unnamed. If you did know the name you'd probably have to report the owner to the Customs and Excise people for illegal trafficking with some dark and mysterious South American lost city.
I like rum like that. It was one of the reasons I was there.
The other reason was rumors. I chase rumors much of the time. It's what I do. The leather bandolier across my chest is strung with the fruits of those pursuits, and it's saved my life more times than I can count.
Would my life have been endangered if I hadn't pursued those rumors in the first place? Ah, well, that's another of life's questions. I sipped rum and sniffed appreciatively at the odors from the illegal propane grill midway down the bar where the bartender was frying something that smelled a lot like pork and plantains.
Anyway, there had been rumors. The weather had been ferocious in New York this summer so far - thunderstorms, even hail. Global Warming was big on the radio, as was El Nino, but the buzz Uptown was that Someone was in town. Someone was upset.
I was poking around to find out who it was, and if they'd talk to me. That's why I follow rumors. I talk to those who have few others to talk to. Mostly because my grandmother once taught me that too much respect just creates a wall of loneliness, and loneliness can be worse than death. But also because she also taught me that New York is a human place, and someone has to keep an eye on things.
I love my grandmother.
The rum was even more evil on the third cup than the second. I had been listening to conversations all over the bar for a couple of hours, and while people were talking about all manner of things, none of them seemed to be talking about the shitty weather or about mysterious visitors from out of town. This, too, was normal; most of the chase involves sitting around listening. I'm good at that, too.
Sometimes I trade on the markets. You'd be surprised at what listening to the communities of New York as a full-time occupation can tell you. I don't do too badly.
Three drinks is usually my limit, though. Time to find another bar. Nobody had bothered me, and I hadn't bothered anyone, just had my drinks. I was rising from the booth to go when my Red Zone flashed a warning and I sat back down quickly to get my hands beneath my table. A slender man in a dressy shirt and slacks slid into the seat across from me and smiled. I didn't know him, so the smile made me instantly wary. "Can I help you?"
"Probably." He didn't go away. Strike two.
"How?" My hands were still below the table.
"Well, for one, you can put your hands on the table." He had both of his in view, resting on the table in front of him.
"Really. Is that a threat?" Belligerence was creeping into my voice. I wasn't sure what was going on, so this was opening move 47-j - test the waters.
"I rather think so, yes." He was still smiling and his hands hadn't moved. I narrowed my eyes.
"Why should I do that, precisely?" I gave him a once-over, visibly. I'm not a very big guy, but I was larger than him, and there was little doubt I was in better shape. The intimidation behind that once-over? Secondary move 32-q.
Didn't work. His eyes got a little harder. "I really don't want to make a nasty scene in here."
Strike three. Time to move to my favorite weapon. I ran my mouth. "Is that so? That's just terrible. I'd hate to drop you down the popularity list in the neighborhood watch. Your compadres here look like they'd take it terribly amiss if your fur got ruffled." I waved my left hand at the other denizens of the joint, solid South American blue-collars all.
My boothmate didn't rise to the bait and look away. He lifted his hands from the table in what looked at first to be a placating gesture, palms towards me - until I noticed that his fingertips were curled slightly inwards. "They won't notice a thing. Not a thing, I assure you."