C.J. Carella's Website

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@2018 Fey Dreams Productions, LLC. All rights reserved.

One

 Her first words to me were: “There is a man who needs killing. Been told you can help me see him dead.”

The young woman had entered the bar, hesitated for a second or two, and marched right up to me, a determined expression in her face. It was early in the evening, and I was working on my fifth drink. Most people knew better than to come bother me, but the newcomer’s curt words got me interested enough to turn around on my stool and take a good look at her.  

Her features were stern, her nose aquiline and somewhat large for her face; weathered skin and crow’s feet bespoke of a life spent out in the open under the pitiless sun. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t put a finger on it. She could be anywhere from sixteen to twenty. Light brown hair, mostly covered by a yellow kerchief under a black felt hat. Her riding clothes – jacket over trousers and boots, all hand-made – were of good quality but showed a great deal of wear and tear. The moment she walked in, I took note of her weapons: a revolver in a cross-draw cavalry holster, carried butt-forward; a rifle slung behind her back; straight saber in a leather scabbard; and finally, a push-dagger skillfully concealed in her belt buckle. That made her unusually well-armed; repeating guns were expensive to maintain. There were maybe thirty revolvers and repeating rifles in the whole town; the City Watch made do with crossbows and trade muskets they’d bought from the Brits. It also meant she was smart. An unaccompanied woman in Oasis had better be armed or be known to have plenty of dangerous friends.

Impatient, too. When I didn’t answer quickly enough to suit her, she spoke again. “I said…”

“I heard you. Someone needs killing. No shortage of those. Good dozen or two right here in Oasis. Couple sitting right here.”

I didn’t mention there were plenty who would put me in that category, and with good reason.

Before the woman showed up, it’d been a quiet night at Navaja, my bar of choice for decompressing after a tough job. Navaja is the kind of watering hole that caters to a rough crowd. Mercenaries between assignments, riverboat crews, and vaqueros and miners looking for fun after long weeks out in the open range or digging for treasure in the Broken Wastes. Mostly Chaldeans, Mexicans and a few Han, the town’s founding peoples. The crowd was mostly human. Mostly male, too, except for a handful of bar maids and the woman who’d interrupted my drinking. Conversations in half a dozen languages were occasionally interrupted by bursts of harsh laughter or harsher cursing.

Besides the cowpokes, diggers and river rats, there were a few unusual patrons. Six troopers out of Zig City had their own table: big bearded men wearing distinctive bronze helmets and breast plates, leather riding boots, linen kilts and long leather cloaks; short swords and lightning wands hung from their belts. They were part of a cavalry squadron guarding some Sumerian bigwig headed to Tir-Na-Nog on a diplomatic mission. On the next table over, a Bigfoot by the name of Gurtagh and a Yeti I didn’t know were on the third round of an arm-wrestling contest. Gurtagh was a good guy, but my money was on the Yeti. A lizard-man swaddled in robes and a Bedouin merchant in similar garb were watching the contest.

It was still early. So far there’d been only one fistfight – two cowboys from different crews – which had ended without much bloodshed: Toto the bouncer, who is seven feet tall, green-skinned and looks like the misbegotten child of a gorilla and a hippo, simply grabbed both combatants by the scruff of their necks and tossed them out back, right into the pit where the new outhouse was going to be built. That quieted most everyone down. Nobody knows what Toto is – some sort of golem is the most popular theory – and he isn’t telling. Nobody messes with him, either. When he decided things had gone far enough – when men stopped using their fists and drew a weapon was usually it – he took care of it.

Tobacco, hashish and blue lotus smoke filled the place with their distinctive smells, mixed in with the deep-fried aroma coming from the kitchen out back. To kill the time between drinks, I’d been rolling up a cigarette filled with British Imperial Tobacco goodness. I didn’t much care for perfidious Albion, but they produced the best smokes in the Outlands. I lit up and waited for the young lady to compose herself.

The jukebox in the corner was running a seemingly endless series of Sumerian pop songs; the troopers kept it going with a steady stream of copper shekels. To me it all sounded like off-tune pop music played by a variety of string instruments and accompanied by female crooners favoring a cartoonish high-pitched voice. It was an acquired taste, and I had no interest in acquiring it. After a couple more drinks I was going to mosey on over the box and have it play something decent. Something from my universe. And if the troopers didn’t care for it, there’d be trouble. I was sort of looking forward to that.

The woman glanced around in growing apprehension. She hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings before barging in, but she’d finally realized she didn’t belong at Navaja. I could see the realization click in her head before she shrugged it off and went back to the business at hand. I could appreciate the attitude.

“This man is powerful,” she said. “Dangerous. Mayhap he’s not a man at all, but something else.”

“Plenty of those, too. Listen, kid, I’m off the clock,” I told her. “That means I’m not working right now, and that includes talking about work. Try me in the morning.”

“I did. Two days ago. Went to the flophouse you call home. ‘Sleeping it off; come back tomorrow,’ was what they told me then. Same thing yesterday. Figured on catching you before you drank yourself unconscious again.”

I shrugged. “It’s my week off.”

“You are Nathaniel Lot,” she said in an almost accusatory tone.

“That is my Christian name,” I admitted.

“The Nathaniel Lot.”

A couple of patrons at the bar gave her funny looks. The young woman made my name sound like it meant something, and most people in Oasis knew me as Old Nate, a mercenary getting a little too long in the tooth for his trade. A good man of his hands, as they called those who knew which part of a gun and blade to point at a target, but nobody special. That suited me fine.

“Kid…” I began to say, meaning to shush her, but she was having none of it.

“The Nathaniel Lot who killed the Beast of Newport? The one who led the Justiciars before the fall of Avalon?”

“Keep your voice down.”

Avalon’s name meant little to the locals, as any place four hundred miles away and fifteen years gone would, but there were lots of stories about it. Myths and legends, you would say. I didn’t care to be associated with them.  

“You are him, aren’t you?” she said in barely a whisper, her hand tracing a line on her cheek that matched the pale scar on my face. That was how she’d known who I was when she came in, and that meant that she knew someone from the bad old times, a long time ago in a place far away, when the things she was talking about had been more than myths and legends.

I couldn’t blame her for doubting who I was. What she saw was a wiry gray-haired man in dire need of a bath and shave, dressed in a scruffy shirt and faded and oft-patched blue jeans that were about ready to be sold to the rag-men. My carousing outfit, stuff that I wouldn’t mind if it got torn up or stained with booze, puke, or blood.

My current bender had been going on for near a week. I needed to decompress: the last job had been rough. On the other hand, the pay had been decent, more than enough to keep me in cheap booze and cheaper women for a month. I’d been planning to coast to a stop sometime next week, clean up a bit, and find another job. Guarding a caravan headed to the Broken Waste, doing strong-arm work for the local moneylenders, or hunting down a bounty; the actual job didn’t matter to me, as long as it paid the bills. But that was next week: I wasn’t taking job offers tonight.

“You wield the Agisweppen,” the woman added, pronouncing the Neo-Gothic word correctly, another sign that she knew a little too much about me. Most people just called my infamous sidearm the Dread, or just ‘Oh, God, what is that thing?’

“An elegant weapon for a more civilized age,” I mock-quoted, and smiled at her blank expression. There were maybe seven people among Oasis’ five thousand residents who might understand the reference, and most of them would not care to be reminded of Earth Twenty-First, the one with the Internet and electricity and cars, the one where magic and monsters hadn’t existed, at least not until the end of the world. Most people don’t care to be reminded of the things they’ve lost.

“Is that it?” she said, pointing at the revolver in my belt holster: a Colt Python, a relic from my home universe, modified to serve in the Outlands, where sorcery was king. The grip was ivory with inlaid silver symbols that hex-hardened the weapon. ‘Guaranteed to withstand spells rated two hundred Dees or below,’ the last gunsmith who’d looked at it said. The Python had saved me on several occasions, and reaped its share of lives along the way.

“Could be,” I said. “Want me to show it to you? Make it do a few tricks?” I added with a bit of an edge to my tone.

Her cheeks turned slightly red. “I just thought…”

“That I’d be taller? Better looking?”

“I… I’m not sure.”

I sighed. I was going to tell this girl to go back to whatever hick town she’d come from, but I figured humoring her for a bit wouldn’t hurt. As long as she was paying for drinks, that was.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Let’s sit at a booth. Buy me a round and tell me who you want me to kill.”

“All right, Mr. Lot.”

“What’s your name?”

She hesitated for a moment. “Kate. Kate Herrera.”

Her name hit me like a bucketful of ice-cold water.  

“You’re Kurt and Gemma’s kid.”

She nodded.

Kurt Herrera. Gemma Wycliff. They had been part of my old crew. He’d been with me when we joined the Justiciars and played at being knights-errant and saving the world. An artist with his bolt-action Mauser; he’d saved my life at least a dozen times. Gemma was a witch and vampire hunter from another Earth. A genuine hero, even before we went to Avalon. Not to mention the one who got away. No hard feelings; we’d never been good at making each other happy. Gemma and Kurt got together, got married and eventually got tired. Tired of the killing and the constant threat of death that went hand in hand with being a Justiciar. Last I’d heard, they’d gone off somewhere quiet to raise their child.

That had been sixteen, seventeen years ago: not too long before Avalon fell. Kate had been a chubby newborn back then, and I’d hardly noticed her, since as far as I’m concerned, children that age are either adorably boring or adorably annoying. I don’t do adorable. Kurt and Gemma hadn’t told me where they were going, and sure as tarnation hadn’t written or otherwise contacted me. No hard feelings about that. They’d wanted out of the life, and the best way to do that was to cut off all ties with those who stayed in it.

I could think of only one reason Kate would need my help instead of her parents’.

“What happened to them?”

She shook her head and rubbed furiously at her eyes for a moment, stopping the tears before they could flow. That was answer enough

“Let’s sit down at a table. Forget about the drink.”

I’d better sober up fast. I was back on the clock.

Two

We sat at a corner table that let me see both entrances to the bar.

Kate watched the arm-wrestling furry giants a couple of tables over. As I’d expected, the Yeti beat Gurtagh three out of four. The two species of super-ape are as closely related as polar and black bears, but the white-furred ones were bigger and stronger than their brown cousins. I’d made thirty shillings from that bet.

“Not much like home, is it?” I asked her.

“Not at all.”

“Where is home?”

“Ranch Esperanza. Uh, over at the Trans-Acheron Homestead. We raised horses.”

Which meant Kurt and Gemma had traveled over a thousand miles east to find their new home. Trans-Acheron was nearly on the other end of the continent. They had tried their level best to leave Avalon behind.

I searched my memory as Kate spoke about her home, comparing her description to intelligence briefings from Avalon’s Master Scribes. The Homestead was nestled under the Forbidden Mountains, filling a high plain in the far East. Its population was ninety-percent human. Mostly English-speaking with some German and Spanish mixed in. Farming and ranching country, protected by Christian priests and ‘white magic’ hex-workers whose faith and defensive sorcery kept most supernatural nasties out of the territory. I’d heard they used guns and gunpowder there, blessed to keep working in the face of hostile magic.

The little country was about as nice a place as one could find in the Outlands, the vast continent that didn’t correspond to anything you’d find on a map of Earth. I could picture Kurt and Gemma raising horses in a place like that. Growing old in peace. As long as Gemma kept her magic tricks under wraps, since the locals didn’t cotton to her brand of witchcraft, they would have been fine.

“It’s downright pretty in the spring and fall, not too bad in the summer, and most winters are tolerable,” Kate went on. “On a clear day, you can see the Forbiddens peeking over the horizon, reaching towards the sky, always capped in white. A peaceful country, it used to be. Last big fighting they had was before I was born, and it ended with a treaty between Homestead and the Zulu Nation. It’s been peaceful there all my life.”

For a moment, the ghost of a smile showed up in her face as she remembered better times.

“Sounds downright pleasant,” I said.

A place like that wouldn’t have any use for the likes of me. My old friends could change their ways. I couldn’t change what I was.

“Used to be,” she said. “Not anymore.”

She was fighting hard to keep her emotions under control, and doing a better job than I would have at her age. I could still see what she was feeling. Sorrow and loss, of course, but above all, shame. Shame at being alive when they were gone. Shame at leaving people behind. I knew exactly how that felt. I wish I didn’t.

Having had more time to examine her features, I could see bits of Kurt and Gemma in her face. The eyes were Gemma’s, same color and shape. The nose, less fortunately, was Kurt’s, whose nickname had been Beak. Hers wasn’t quite so bad, but I could tell she was self-conscious about it. And I’d bet that when she was a child people picked on her about it – and she made them pay for it.

“What happened?” I prompted her after a few seconds of silence.

The look in her eyes as she spoke told me most of the story. I’d seen it in hundreds of faces, always in the wake of disaster and loss. Those were eyes that had seen too much.

“It started two years ago,” she said. “In the swamplands, down on the southern bank of the Murky River. Places not fit for raising crops or cattle. Some hunting, but many of the varmint are too dangerous even with guns, so we mostly left the place alone.

“Our preachers and hex-workers kept evil things from trespassing on our lands, and the First Selectman’s Home Guards kept close watch on it. Horseback patrols and gunboats: that was enough to keep the peace, for as long as I remember. But two years ago, the raids began.”

Peace and stability rarely lasted long in the Outlands. I knew of exactly six city-states or kingdoms that had survived for more than a century before falling prey to some disaster, civil war, or invasion. Most never lasted more than a generation or two. The Trans-Arch Homestead had been around for ninety-eight years or so. Nice while it lasted, I supposed.

“Small steadings sacked and burned down in the night, travelers gone missing, river ships lost with all hands. The Guardsmen found nobody, and then their patrols began to go missing as well. Took a while, but it turned out the raiders were coming from the swamplands. A few survivors saw them. Half-man, half-beast, most of them, and others that looked like lizard people.”

Maybe the good people of Trans-Acheron could have used someone like me after all.

“By the time Ma and Pa got involved, there was an army of ‘em down in the swamps. Critters and beast-men and wild humans, using dark arts. They had a leader. The Warlock, they called ‘im.”

Something must have come through.

Nobody knows a lot about the Outlands, or if they do they aren’t telling. People, critters and stuff arrive from other places. From other times, too. From my Earth in the early 21^st century, and from Earths where history went in different ways. Most didn’t choose to come here. They were dragged through tears in the fabric of reality: call them dimensional anomalies, magic portals, wormholes or what have you. They take people from their homes and drop them off here. Refugees from a thousand different worlds and their unlucky descendants. Most are people – not all of them human, but people still – but others are something else.

“Pa joined the Home Guard,” Kate went on. “Ma wouldn’t help at first, but she came around when the raiders torched a church filled with women and children. She dug out her old grimoires and her athame and went hunting for raiders. The First Selectman did his best, too. Used to be we all grumbled about the taxes and the fat Guards with their fancy guns and armor and fancier horses, leastways we did afore we found out we needed them. They all went out there and fought the Warlock’s army.

“They fought, but they lost. The First Selectman and his Guards, and Ma and Pa, they lost, that is. There was a big battle at Pedro’s Bend, down by the riverside. Four regiments were there and most of them got killed. The rest ran away. First Selectman got killed, too, and the Warlock hung his head from a pike. They said the First Selectman’s head is still alive, can see and even talk if you blow a bellows under the stump of his neck.”

By that point in the story she was rubbing her eyes again. She didn’t sob, though. I figured she’d cried herself out a good while ago.

“Ma and Pa came back for me at Ranch Esperanza. All was lost by then. People had ridden through our lands, bearing the news. Portsmouth taken and put to the torch. Fort Torrance fallen a day later, the entire garrison cut down or impaled and left to die.

“We lived but four days’ ride from Fort Torrance, so we knew we’d be next. Most of the ranch hands took what they could and left. But I waited for them. For Ma and Pa. And they came for me. We burned the ranch house ourselves and set the horses loose afore we left, the ones we didn’t take. Maybe if we hadn’t taken the time to do that they wouldn’t have caught up with us. I saw them coming fast behind us, lizard people riding two-legged dinos, the kind we saw sometimes in the jungles to the south, except nobody could tame them or do nothing other than kill them. But these took to the saddle and ran faster than our horses,

“I got away, along with Mr. Samuels, our foreman, and his wife Teresa. And that only ‘cause Ma and Pa and the handful of the Guards they’d brought along hung back to slow ‘em down. They fought the beast-men and their critters, killed a bunch of them. Ma got killed in the fighting. Pa got captured.”

She took a deep breath.

“We hid up in the hills and watched the end of it from the woods there. The Warlock showed up for that, and I got a got look at ‘im. Made Pa’s death last a long while. I had Pa’s rifle. I could have put him out of his misery. But Pa, he made me promise not to turn back, and Mr. Samuels reminded me of it. So I kept going. We made it to the Acheron River, and by God’s grace we boarded the last paddlewheel out of Riverbend. The Warlock now rules most of Homestead and is fixin’ to attack KwaZulu next.”

The fire in her eyes was back.

“That’s who I want to see dead, Mr. Lot. I want justice. Justice for my dead mother. My dead father and all the dead in Trans-Acheron.”

“I suppose you want to come along, too.”

“Damn right I do, pardon my language. I want to watch him die, or even better, to do the deed myself.”

“Get yourself killed, more likely.”

“I can fight,” Kate said angrily. “When we left Trans-Ach, we were beset by a band of robbers from KwaZulu. Herdsmen who decided murdering and plundering a band of refugees would make for a fun diversion from watching over their cattle. I shot two of them and drove a third mad with the Eye of Thoth, showed him the truth coiled inside his sinful soul. I can fight.”

“Never said you couldn’t. World’s full of graves belonging to tough men who ran into someone tougher.”

“I’m not afraid. I only ran because Pa made me promise. Told me to come to you for help. I’m here now. Help me or not, but I’m going back. I want justice.”

I looked her straight in the eye and she met my gaze without flinching. Had to give her that; she had guts, even if she was wrong about a few things. She didn’t want justice. She wanted revenge, which is what passed for justice in much of the Outlands. I wanted to tell her that the best thing she could do was to get on with her life. To forget her dead parents and fallen Trans-Acheron. To move on. Most of all, I wanted to tell her that nothing I did could give her the one thing she truly wanted: her old life and her parents. Nothing I could do would bring back the dead or undo what she’d seen from those hills.

That’s what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t.

Gemma. Kurt. They had been two of my own. Refusing their kid wasn’t an option.

“All right.”

“You mean it?”

I nodded. “We’re off to kill the Warlock.”

Three

“I am truly and deeply in your debt, Mr. Lot,” Kate said. “Words can’t just describe… I know my Pa and Ma would have, they…” She stopped herself from blabbering with a visible effort.

The relief in her face made her look much younger. She smiled, probably for the first time since the day her parents died, and couple of tears broke out and ran down her face as she sagged in her seat. I understood. She’d been carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, and finding someone to share the burden is one of the best feelings in the world. I was probably going to get us killed, but the look in her face almost made all the upcoming pain and suffering worth it. Almost.

That pleasant feeling didn’t last. They rarely do.

Two trolls walked into the bar. Not the punchline to a cheap joke, but serious business.

They were misshapen, oversized humanoids with pale, leathery skin, hunched over but still as tall as Toto or the Yeti, and even more massive than either, being almost six feet wide at the shoulders. They’d had to come through the door moving sideways, and Navaja’s front door was made to fit most two-legged critters. One of the trolls had three eyes evenly spaced above a long, drooping nose that could have belonged in an anteater’s face; the other one had the normal compliment of peepers, but the left one was four times as large as the right, and to add to his charm he had a second mouth, grinning from his forehead. Their bones creaked when they moved and a vaguely shrimpy smell surrounded them.

Their species came from a world where they’d had a thaumaturgical version of World War Three, and the survivors had been hideously mutated as the result. There weren’t many around – for one, most of them were sterile – but they were highly prized muscle, being stronger than even their size would suggest and very hard to kill. They were armed with hammers that looked like long-handled giant meat tenderizers, and wore aprons made of Super-Gila lizard leather that would turn arrows, crossbow bolts and most pistol rounds, with a few woven enchantments thrown in to make them resistant to magic. Two walking tanks.

Those two were the only specimens of their kind in Oasis. Everyone knew who they worked for. Since the big lugs didn’t frequent Navaja, they must be there on business. On Don Rodrigo Duende’s business. Rodrigo ran girls, protection and drugs in the low-end neighborhoods of Oasis, the places the City Watch seldom visited and did so only in platoon strength. He was feared throughout the city; he had a pureblood Fae bound to him and had used that power to gather a large band of cutthroats around him.

Conversation died down as people noticed the trolls’ entrance. Toto stood firm, just to show he was afraid of no trolls, but even he wasn’t crazy enough to pick a fight with Rodrigo’s enforcers. The Bedouin and lizard man merchants left a handful of silver shekels on the table to settle their tab and made a hurried exit. Gurtagh and his Yeti friend snorted and left as well. The trolls let them pass; their business wasn’t with them. The big critters stood by the entrance while they looked around for something or somebody. It didn’t take long before all five of their eyes focused on my booth. Specifically, on Kate Herrera-Wycliff.

She’d noticed the sudden silence in the bar and looked towards the entrance. Her hand began to reach for the gun at her belt.

“Be cool,” I told her. “Trust me, it’s going to be okay.”

They were headed towards us, their footsteps echoing on the floorboards like hammer blows. I stepped out of the booth and stood up to them.

“Anything I can help you with?”

“This does not concern you, Lot,” one of the trolls – Oliver was his name – said in a surprisingly pleasant baritone, even though it came from the mouth on his forehead. His pal didn’t speak and as far as I knew had no name. Oliver did the talking and thinking for both of them, and they went everywhere together.

“We are here for her,” he added, extending a finger the width of a twelve-gauge shotgun towards Kate.

“She is my guest.”

“I see. Well, I must bring her to Don Rodrigo. You can come along if you wish. If either of you resists, well…”

The nameless troll huffed and puffed, generating a good deal of slobber. I looked over my shoulder. Kate was standing behind me, her hands held loosely to her sides.

“What is happening, Mr. Lot?” she asked me.

I’d been talking with the trolls in the local Aramaic-Spanish pidgin, next to incomprehensible to outsiders unless they used a translation spell or device. Still, you didn’t need to follow the conversation to get a bad feeling about a pair of mutated giants dropping in on you. I figured she was a split second away from going for her gun or throwing a spell.

“Just talking. No worries.”

I turned back to the trolls, hoping she’d trust me. This wasn’t the place to start a fight. Even if we won, the rest of Rodrigo’s gang would come gunning after you. Best to go straight to the top and settle things there. One way or another.

“Sure,” I told the trolls, a big fake grin pasted on my face. “Let’s go see Don Duende.”

Maybe we could talk our way out of this.

* * *

“Hand over your weapons, Lot,” Jason Mirzoyan told me.

 The former Navy SEAL didn’t look happy to see me. A pity, since he was one of a handful of Americans from my timeline, or at least one close enough to mine to make us compatriots of a sort. Problem was, Petty Officer Mirzoyan was a nasty piece of work. Liked to hurt people for any reason or none. Also what my father would have called a Blue Falcon, someone who’d turn on his buddies on a dime. The sort of soldier I wouldn’t trust without close supervision. I’d worked with him once, and that was all it took. He was no good.

He also had the only working M4 carbine in Oasis, if not the entire Outlands. The amount of hex-work it took to keep the selective-fire autoloading weapon operating made it a legendary relic of sorts. Even low-grade mages could make anything with springs and moving parts go awry unless it was protected, one of the reasons technology didn’t rule the Outlands. Magic was the reason why we couldn’t have nice things, like a functional power grid or the Internet.

I don’t like magic very much, even though I’m thoroughly infused – one might say tainted – with it.

“Sure thing,” I said, unstrapping my gun belt with slow, careful movements.

Mirzoyan had been speaking English, so Kate understood the order. When she saw me hand the gun to one of Rodrigo’s thugs, she began to follow suit. I also removed my Bowie, the boot knife, and the folding blade in my pocket. I hadn’t been expecting trouble, or at least not the kind of trouble you solve with gunfire, so I’d left most of my ironmongery at home.  

“Charms, too,” he said, gesturing towards the ivory rune-stone hanging from my neck.

It wasn’t much, just a cheap trinket that would turn aside plain curses or simple ill wishes. Bad thoughts had some power in the Outlands, although their effects were only obvious if you liked to run a lot of statistical studies. If enough people didn’t like you, the chances you’d stub your toe on a doorframe or got bit by a scorpion increased by some percentage points. My charm helped protect against that sort of thing. If someone with the proper training and strength of will sent a spell my way, on the other hand, that carved bit of ivory would be as useless as a leather jacket hit by a bullet.

I handed it over just as Kate finished divesting herself of her weapons. Mirzoyan didn’t seem to be worried enough about holdouts to insist on a full body search. No reason he should be. Between the trolls standing behind us and the dozen or so throat-cutters hanging around Rodrigo’s ranch house, a derringer or concealed knife wouldn’t do much good.

While the hired thugs took our gear, I killed time by enjoying the view outside Don Duende’s place of business. The manor house was perched on top of one of Oasis’ shallow hills. It’d been a long walk to get there from Navaja, but even though my knees hurt I was grateful for it since it’d given me time to sober up.

From Rodrigo’s front door you could see Oasis’ east wall, a good section of the town sprawling within its confines, and the mage-road station, standing out because of the occasional flare up of magical light as a mago-motive engine warmed up. The seven-thirty to Avaricum was about to leave, a mere forty minutes late. The mago was painted red and white and shaped roughly like a bullet. Unlike a train engine from a sane universe, mago-motives didn’t have smoke stack; instead of coal, they used power-crystal spell engines to heat water and produce steam which they never needed to vent. The hissing sounds as it got ready to depart reached all the way here, half a mile away. I watched the locomotive pull the twelve cars bearing cargo and passengers at a steady pace, gaining speed as it crossed Oasis rail gate and left the city’s walls behind. I wished I was aboard one of the coach cars.

 The Duende place consisted of half a dozen buildings arranged on top of the hill. The biggest structure had once been a Christian monastery until twenty years ago, when a dispute with devotees of the Temple of Ishtar led to the expulsion of the monks. It now served as Don Rodrigo’s place of business and occasional ballroom. The bell tower had been converted into a watch post with a couple tough guys with trade muskets (two apiece) looking down on us.

Next to the former church stood a ranch-style house of whitewashed adobe and brick; you could have dropped anywhere in my world’s American Southwest and nobody would have given it a second glance – except for the hex inscriptions painted along the base of the walls and every window and door’s trimmings.

“I’ll let the boss know you’re here,” Mirzoyan said.

As he went into the desecrated church, the dying sunlight shone on the chain mail suit he wore over his digi-cam fatigues. Enchanted armor, of course, better than Kevlar against bullets and much better than either Kevlar or Renaissance plate armor against hand weapons, blunt, piercing or sharp. The soldier-turned-enforcer’s gear was probably the best among Rodrigo’s men, but there were plenty other elite warriors in the bunch.

Three of them rode into the compound while we waited: Huns – the Octar brothers, I’d worked with them a couple times – armed with short recurved bows and rune-marked arrows that could punch through ten millimeters of hardened steel at a hundred yards, not to mention loaded with curses meant to kill if they broke their target’s skin. A nasty bunch, and the only survivors of a band of about a hundred that had infested the arid plains northwest from Oasis until the combined posses of the four nearest towns had found their camp and killed everyone in it, women and children included. The Octars had survived only because they’d seen the way the wind was blowing and secured employment as mercenaries and, more importantly, Don Rodrigo’s protection.

Standing by the double doors was a Hottentot – pardon me, a Khoikhoi – warrior, tall and lean, clad in a loincloth and a cape, and carrying about a dozen blades of assorted sizes, plus a Pain Gauntlet of Tir-Na-Nog manufacture that could scramble every nerve in a man’s body with a single touch. Darn Elves make some nasty weapons. The African fighter had never volunteered a name as far as I knew; everyone called him Smiler, not because he grinned a lot – he mostly didn’t – but due to his penchant for giving people a second smile by slitting their throats.

The rest of the dozen or so men I saw either standing at the ready near their boss’ house or lounging around their wooden shacks with their wives or lemans were the typical sort of thug you’d find in Oasis. Various mixes of Latino, Middle Eastern or Chinese types, armed with a variety of knives, swords and clubs. At least three of them had single-shot breechloading pistols with one or two barrels; about as many owned Sumerian-made battle wands that fired little fireballs that would cook half a pound of human flesh if they hit. They had a hard time penetrating rigid armor but even then the fireballs would splatter and give you nasty second- and third-degree burns anywhere with uncovered skin. Hard to choose which weapon was worse to be shot with.

A small army, well-armed and comprised of bully-boys for hire, men who’d rather steal or intimidate than work for a living. Children stories to the contrary, bullies aren’t necessarily cowards: the willingness to hurt others gives people at least a modicum of courage. Like all predators, they preferred to go after weaker prey, of course. Under the current circumstances, they wouldn’t think twice about dealing with a young woman and an aging rent-a-gun.

Besides the guards there was a short gathering or people outside the church doors. I recognized two pimps and one of the protection ‘tax collectors;’ they all held fat purses and were clearly there to pay Don Duende his cut. The others included a couple of local peasants, holding their straw of flowerpot-style hats in their hands with hangdog expressions. A well-off merchant in a colorfully-dyed wool tunic stood a slight distance from them but with a similar look in his face. Whatever business they had with Don Duende wasn’t anything they were looking forward to. Debtors begging for an extension, or people desperate enough to ask for the Don’s help. Two or three nights a week, Rodrigo held court on his meeting hall. The difference between a lord of pimps and a nobleman is one of degree, not of kind.

All the petitioners went in before us. Kate was annoyed but I took it in stride. If I hadn’t been there, Kate’s wait would have been a lot less pleasant; those trolls had meant to drag her to Rodrigo’s house by any means necessary. I’d noticed one of them had a mage-collar, an ugly cast-iron device meant to prevent the working of sorcery. My rep had spared her from that much, at least. I hoped it might stretch enough to buy our way out of trouble.

The pimps and the racketeer came and went without incident; they knew better than to short their boss. The merchant was next; when he emerged from the church there were tears in his eyes and he was whispering a name – “Amelita” – over and over. My guess was that he’d bought the freedom of one of Rodrigo’s girls. There was too much joy in the man’s face for the rescued woman to be a lover; a daughter, perhaps. Two of the peasants left looking even more unhappy than when they went in and headed down the hill at a fast walk.

The third peasant didn’t come out at all.

“Don Rodrigo will see you now,” Mirzoyan said as a couple of servants in simple linen robes held the double door open for us.

We went in, with the trolls right behind us and the Huns following them.

The high-ceilinged room had once been the monks’ dining hall and it still served that purpose. Some of the space was taken up by a pair of rows of long tables and benches, enough to seat thirty or forty people comfortably. Off to one side, where confessionals had once stood, they’d put in a decent-sized bar and a row of stools. A bored-looking girl was behind it, mixing drinks. There was a wide gap between the two rows, leading to a table set perpendicular to the others: the boss’ table. A smaller door was on the other side of the room.

The pathway between the rows of tables was covered with sand. As we entered, a couple of servants were finishing removing a patch of blood-muddied sand and replacing it with a fresh bucketful. That explained what happened to the last supplicant; his interview must have gone badly. When they were done, the servants left through the small door.

One of the common tables was occupied by four men playing cards: three ordinary thug and Obrahim Guey, Rodrigo’s second in command. Obrahim was a wide-shouldered man with long curly hair and longer beard. A six-shooter and a rune-covered Frank throwing axe were on the table next to him; a variety of knives, firearms and curse-casters hung from a leather harness over his checkered tunic. He met my eyes and gave me a cold, measuring look. One false move and he’d put a bullet or that enchanted axe in my skull. Probably both; Obrahim didn’t think there was such a thing as overkill. I nodded at him and turned my attention on the man who’d brought us here.

Don Rodrigo Duende was behind the central table, sitting on an ornate wood and gold leaf chair instead of a bench. Having dealt with several actual monarchs, I was a lot less impressed with the spectacle than I was with the killers sharing the room with us and the man who’d summoned us. The troll duo walked past us and stood on either side of the table, ready to crush anyone who dared threaten their master.

The crime lord was a stout man of middle stature and brown hair and eyes, clean-shaven. He was wearing a white ruffled shirt with silver buttons under a ornate gold-and-black vest and lots of jewelry, about two pounds of gold in assorted rings, necklaces and pendants. Some of the gaudy stuff had magical properties, but most of it was just bling, as they used to say in my world. Despite the finery, he looked like a scribe or a merchant house’s clerk: that impression was reinforced by the measuring scale on the table next to an abacus, several scrolls and ledger books, a long-feathered quill pen and ink bottle, stacks of silver and gold coins, and two leather sacks presumably filled with more money.

An ivory walking cane was leaning against the table, topped by a transparent crystal globe about the size of a man’s fist. The enslaved Fae was trapped inside the globe. A sprite, visible mostly as a floating blue light, about as big as a thumbnail. If you squinted you could see a tiny humanoid figure inside the light, although that was just a way for the mind to make sense of the psychic emanations coming from the critter. The sprite seemed cute, the kind of critter that only existed in Disney films in my birth world, but looks were always deceiving when it came to the Good Folk.

Pure-blood Fae like the sprite were rare in the Outlands outisde Tir-Na-Nog, ruled by an offshoot of the Court of Light. They were beings of spirit rather than flesh, although when they wanted to they could become more solid than you would like. They were extremely powerful and, from a human perspective, rather insane. There was no way that a jumped-up thug and middling sorcerer like Rodrigo could hold a true Fae against its will, so for some reason or another the sprite agreed to become a slave. The reasons didn’t matter. Rodrigo probably thought he’d tricked it into his service. I thought things had happened the other way around.

In any case, that light critter at the end of his staff gave Rodrigo enough power to beat just about any sorcerer in Oasis and give even a coven of witches or the local Magi council a run for their money. If the man had been a mite more ambitious, he could have ended up running the entire city instead of just skimming from the top.

In the good old days, upon arriving to Oasis I would have kicked down Duende’s door and cut him down on the spot. Call it a good first step towards cleaning up the town. But I wasn’t a Justiciar anymore. There were no Justiciars anymore. Instead, I’d borrowed money from the guy on occasion – I was all paid up so I knew the trolls weren’t there for me – and even done a couple of jobs for him. Nothing involving violence against the innocent, the line I’d drawn for myself long before I was a lawman and kept to even after I became a solo operator. But I’d taken the man’s money and done his bidding. That made me less than what I’d been, if there’d been any need to confirm that fact.

Don Rodrigo lifted his eyes from a ledger he’d been writing on and regarded us with mild curiosity.

“Kathryn Herrera-Wycliff,” he said. “I was expecting you to arrive here hogtied and inside a burlap sack, but it is still a pleasure to have you.”

“Like I told your trolls, Don Rodrigo, she’s with me,” I said. “I’d appreciate to know what this is all about.”

“I have a bill of attainder from the First Selectman of the Homestead of Upper Trans-Acheron. Kathryn Herrera, age nineteen, found guilty of murder and insurrection.”

“Lies!” Kate shouted. “The First Selectman is dead, and the Warlock who falsely claims the title never stood for nomination, nor was he approved by the Town Meetings of the Homestead!”

One of the trolls huffed threateningly in her direction, regaling us with some eye-watering bad breath even from fifteen feet away.

 “Foreign politics bore me,” Rodrigo said. “A reward has been offered for your return to Trans-Arch. That is anything but boring. Count yourself lucky the greater prize is for your living person, or we’d be already crating up your carcass for shipment.”

Kate’s anger was mixed with confusion. “Why would that demon-lover want me?”

“The leaflet did not say.” Rodrigo took a rolled piece of paper and unfurled it, showing us a perfectly-detailed drawing of Kate’s face under a WANTED sign written in English with stylized letters.

“A courier put up copies of this sign on the post office, the train station and the Swordsmen Guild. My intention was to claim the reward. However, since you are involved, Mr. Lot, I am prepared to be reasonable. You laid a claim on her. I am willing to cut you in on the reward. Call it a finder’s fee. Or if you’d care to match the prize on her head, I’d be willing to let you go.”

“What’s the reward?” I asked.

I had close to a thousand shills in a secret stash behind the flophouse I called home, and six hundred in a few other hiding places. Assorted people owed me another couple hundred, maybe. With a little time, I could double my cash holdings by selling all my earthly possessions other than my guns, personal gear and my horse. That came out to a respectable amount, considering a laborer made a shilling a day and you could feed yourself very well for a week for a couple shillingss or three shekels. Three thousand in cash didn’t make me rich, just fairly well-to-do.

I’d give it all up if we could walk out of this in one piece. The trip to Trans-Acheron wasn’t going to be cheap, but we’d figure something out. We had to be alive to worry about traveling expenses, and I wasn’t sure I could take Rodrigo and his gang by my lonesome.

“What is the young lady’s worth, Oliver?” Roderick asked the troll to his left, the one with the misshapen eyes and the second pie hole.

“Five thousand Albion shillings,” Oliver said out of his well-spoken second mouth. “In Uruk silver shekels, that comes to six thousand, three hundred…”

“That’s close enough, Oliver. I will even give you a discount, since you’d be saving my men a trip all the way to Trans-Arch.”

“How much of a discount?”

“Let’s say four thousand, five hundred shills or their equivalent in specie, Albion bank notes, or Uruk-sealed clay bearer tablets. Pay up, and your lady friend is free to go on her way,”

Roderick paused for a moment to let the numbers sink in. That wasn’t the highest bounty I’d heard of, but definitely among the top ten, and all of those had been for some nasty critters or individuals. This Warlock wanted Kate very badly.

“Payable immediately, of course.”

“I can get you fifteen hundred tonight,” I said, my hopes deflating. “Another fifteen in a day or two. Three thousand in cash, and saves you a long trip. Plus the risk this guy doesn’t pay up.”

“That will not do,” Don Duende said. His smile was almost sympathetic. “The reward has been posted at Drummonds Bank, so there is no risk of betrayal.”  

“I wasn’t done,” I said. “Three thousand, plus y’all get to be alive to see the sunrise tomorrow.”

Rodrigo’s smile was replaced by a scowl. Obrahim Guey set down his cards and shifted his weight on the bench, ready to go for his weapons. The threat got them riled up. It didn’t scare them, though.

All the time and energy I’d spent playing down my reputation had paid off. None of the men facing me knew me as anything other than a competent mercenary. Even if they knew my full history, the Justiciars had operated in a distant land many years ago, plenty of time to fade into myth and legend. The stories provided some entertainment, told in a pub or around a campfire, but weren’t something that would make a warrior hesitate. You didn’t sign up for the life if you scared easily. Most of those hard cases figured they could take me one on one, or at worst two on one. Over a dozen one against an unarmed old man? Piece of cake.

Oliver the troll grinned at me, displaying a mouthful of horse-sized chompers. The trio of Huns had moved to the other side of the dining room and their bows were held at the ready. One word from Don Duende and I’d be getting three cursed arrows in the gut for my troubles, not to mention about a pound or lead and several flame bolts from everyone else, with the trolls stomping on whatever was left of me afterwards.

“I can swing more if you give me more time. I just need to sell off a few things,” I went on, but my calm tone was beginning to fray around the edges, and the henchmen leaned forward, scenting weakness.

I really didn’t want this to happen. Mostly. There was a part of me that did, I’m ashamed to admit. It’d been too long.

“What do you have to sell, Lot? You spend your money as quickly as you make it. Or will you sell the fabled Dread?”

I was a little surprised the Rod knew that much about me. Unfortunately, he didn’t know enough.

“I’d be happy to take it off your hands – for, say, four thousand shills?” the margrave added. “I hear it’s a powerful magical item, and that would be enough to secure your lady friend’s freedom. Assuming you still have it.”

“I can’t give it up, even if I wanted to.”

“That is too bad. One hears some entertaining stories.”

Rodrigo opened his hand, and the cane floated towards it. He tightened his grip and blue light the same hue as the sprite he’d enslaved flowed from the cane and surrounded him in a protective nimbus.

“Kill him,” the crime lord said. “Take the girl alive.”

No choice. I summoned the Dread.

Four

It arrived with a blinding flash of red light and a thunderous shockwave that sent everyone but me reeling back, half-blind and deaf. Summoning my sidearm usually bought me a few seconds of confusion. Just enough time to even the odds a little.

The Octar brothers had been furthest away, so the flash and thunder didn’t hit them as hard as everyone else. They weren’t far enough to be spared from the sudden feeling of approaching doom that affected everyone who looked at the glowing weapon in my hand. I’d never experienced it firsthand, but from what witnesses and survivors told me it was like watching an avalanche or wave of lava rushing towards you. Like confronting something that flesh and will could never overcome.

One of the Huns hesitated, fear freezing him in place. The other two were tougher, or had better charms to stave off magical influences. They loosed within a second of each other, but their aim was off and I was on the move. A cursed arrow flew through the space I’d occupied a moment before. The other struck a table; the varnished wood blackened and rotted away as accelerated entropy had its way with it. Against flesh and blood, the effect would be even uglier.

The third Octar brother recovered from the spasm of terror that had paralyzed him while I shoved Kate to the ground and out of the line of fire. He sent another arrow my way.

Instead of trying to dodge the missile, I unleashed the Dread at it.

To someone like the archers I was about to kill, my weapon looked a like a bizarre hand axe, one made of metal and bone, with an ivory-covered hollow shaft and a handle that curved forward. To those familiar with firearms, it appeared to be a long-barreled black powder pistol, except with no visible lock or trigger, with a wide blade fixed along its barrel. Wizards would call it a wand, a focus of arcane power made with forbidden materials and nearly as dangerous to its wielder as to its targets. All those descriptions were true but weren’t the whole truth.

And seeing it was nothing compared to holding it. Its handle felt like some beast’s skin, hot and full of sucking pores that latched onto my hand like a school of tiny remoras. The Dread banished all the aches and pains from old age, the alcohol poisons in my bloodstream, and most human emotions. A thin crimson haze descended over the world even as everything seemed to slow down. I saw the arrow moving through the air and had all the time in the world to level the Dread and unleash Surtur’s Breath.

An explosion of blood-red energy blasted out from the bone-shrouded muzzle and corkscrewed through the air. The cursed arrow was devoured by it, its shaman-inscribed magic vanishing in a sickly-green flash. A moment later, the red energy ripped into the Hun, flinging him back with a smoking, fist-sized hole in his chest. I pivoted as I shot the dead man’s brothers. One Hun toppled sideways, half his waist sheared away; the other leaped away from the blast, but his left arm dropped to the ground, severed above the elbow. The one-armed survivor staggered a couple of steps and sat down hard, cradling the smoking stump, eyes glazed with shock. I didn’t bother finishing him off.

I was grinning, teeth bared in an expression of murderous good cheer, red flames flickering behind my eyes. My entire body was wreathed in red light. Two of the men who’d been playing cards got a good look at my face and the Dread in my hand. They ran for it, giving me a wide berth on their way to the exit. Give the other thugs credit; they stood their ground. Brave or too stupid to know better, I couldn’t tell.

They shot back. Luckily, I was moving faster than a normal human. Obrahim fired without getting up, fanning the six-shooter and emptying as fast as he could pull the trigger. He missed every time, but it takes a brave and smart guy to calmly aim at an old man who has turned into a demonic creature, and he was one but not the other. One of the card players was both: he leveled his battle-wand at me, but I got him before he could squeeze the release lever. His head blew up and Obrahim ducked under the table as bone fragments and bits of fried brain rained over him.

The trolls were on the move. I jumped onto one of the tables and leaped to a second one, trying to keep my distance while I did a quick check to my rear. The thugs who’d rabbited had left the double doors open and Petty Officer Myrzoyan and Grinner the Khoikhoi tribesman had come in. Crap.

Oliver swung his giant meat tenderizer at me and I leaped a third time. The twenty-pound hammer barely missed me. Grinner’s throwing iron didn’t,

The heavy weapon looked like a shuriken and an axe had a baby and it crackled with the power of the evil god Gunab, bringer of disease. The impact staggered me just as wo .223 bullets hit me dead on and went ricocheting into the room, unable to pierce the red aura protecting me. The African throwing iron got through, though. I felt a sting on my shoulder, but I barely noticed it as I shot back. Grinner dropped with a through-and-through smoking hole clear through his chest. Myrzoyan kept shooting though, sending a constant outpour of aimed fire my way as he maneuvered around the tables and benches.

I somersaulted behind the bar as little fireballs and a variety of bullets filled the air around me. Fast as I was, I still caught one of the former and three of the latter before I disappeared behind the solid mahogany. I landed hard. One of Mirzoyan’s shots had gotten me right in the guts, and the agony from that wound drowned out the second degree burns on my shoulder from a dead-center firebolt and the outbreak of sorcerous malaria trying to consume my body, courtesy of the dead Khoikhoi’s cursed throwing iron.

My vision was narrowing into a dark tunnel. With the last of my strength, I used Dread on myself.

The red flames coursed through my body, burning out the disease, expelling the bullet lodged in my lower intestine – plus another one I hadn’t noticed just to the left of my spine – and repairing damaged tissue and bone. It healed me in its own brutal fashion, leaving scars on my skin and my organs that would continue to pain me for the rest of my life. The Dread didn’t care about my comfort or long-term well-being; it saw me as a tool. The Agisweppen lived for slaughter, but it needed someone inflict it. Kept at bay for over a decade, it was bursting with the need to lash out. It put me back together and blotted out all my aches and pains, although they would make a triumphant return soon enough.

The bartender was sheltering behind the bar, on the other end from where I’d landed. She looked at me, eyes wide in fear, before lifting the trapdoor leading to the basement and jumping down. Not a moment too soon, either, because Myrzoyan’s M4 shots began punching through the bar right where she’d been crouching. I absently wished her well before worrying about myself.

For a second or so, I lay on the floor, covered by broken glass, spilled booze and blood while shots slammed into the bar or cracked over it. God, I felt old.

Legend had it that the Agisweppen was made by the mythical smiths Eitri and Brokkr, the same pair that made Mjolnir, Gugnir and other fabled weapons of Norse mythology. Unlike those artifacts, however, the Dread’s power wasn’t limitless. I’d spent much of it killing Rodrigo’s thugs, not to mention healing myself. I had maybe a dozen more energy blasts before the weapon needed to recharge its batteries, so to speak; less if the glowing aura around me deflected too many more shots. There was a was a way to recharge it quickly, but every time I’d used it I’d lived to regret it.

I’d better make those shots count.

The M4 paused its continuous firing. A couple of thugs had reloaded their battle wands – a power crystal produced five shots – and kept shooting, but their flame bolters didn’t have enough penetration to get through the bar. They’d set it on fire, though. I ignored the rising flames: they were mostly on the other side of the bar so far, although it something reached all the spilled alcohol that would change. I shifted around and got ready to vault the bar for round two.

My ears were ringing very badly – gunfire indoors is murder on your hearing – but I could make out a female voice reciting an incantation in Latin. I recognized both the spell and the voice. Kate, using one of her mother’s favorite combat hexes – the Golden Noose, which created a thin band of energy around the target’s throat. Problem was, I could also hear Rodrigo’s sprite as it sang. The Fae’s voice sounded like something you’d need a full orchestra to reproduce and I didn’t understand their language. I’d heard the spell-song before: a counter-spell meant to send hostile magic right back to the caster. I had to get going.

I’d begun to vault up behind the bar when the Navy SEAL dropped a grenade on me.

Four-second fuse; Mirzoyan had sent the metal sphere on a slow lob, timed so it went off behind the bar. If I’d waited just a second more, it’d have blown up right in my lap, but I began my jump early enough to be mostly over the bar when it went bang. As it was, I caught a bunch of high-speed fragments on the way up, and that hurt even through my protective aura. Keeping me alive burned off more of the Dread’s power. But I was on the move, and by the time the SEAL grabbed his carbine, the trolls were in his way and he didn’t have a shot.

Of course, the trolls had clear shots at me.

The nameless three-eyed troll swung his maul so hard I could swear I heard it crack at supersonic speed on its way down as I finished rolling away from the burning bar. The giant hammer missed me by less than a hand’s breadth, and the massive impact shattered the bar into a thousand splinters. I landed in a crouch, using Three-Eyes as a shield against both Mirzoyan and Oliver, and slashed at a leg the size of a tree trunk.

Surtur’s Breath is nasty, but the edge of the Agisweppen’s blade is made from the teeth of an archdemon, fused together into a chopping blade that can cut through most things mundane and magical, and it never runs out of power. I didn’t have the leverage for a heavy swing, but the troll’s skin and muscle – and the hamstring I’d targeted – parted under the impact like so much custard. Thick purple blood sprayed everywhere; the troll collapsed sideways when his left leg refused to support him, and I went with him, using his falling body for cover. Oliver roared with both mouths when he saw his buddy go down.

Three-Eyes was down but not out. He’d dropped his maul when he fell, but he reached for me with his hands. I’d seen trolls crush solid rocks, bend thick steel bars, and rend living beings with equal ease. If he grabbed me I was done for. So I used one of my remaining four charges on him. Surtur’s Breath took the critter right under the chin, tearing his throat out. The gigantic mutant convulsed, one hand dropping less than an inch away from my face, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

No time to celebrate. I felt an impact on my back: Obrahim had come out from under a table and thrown his axe at me. Even with my sidearm’s protection, it felt like someone had swung a crowbar at me. The runes and enchantments in the weapon were good enough to hurt me but not enough to pierce the red aura and chop into my spine. I whirled around and blasted Obrahim; his leather jacket had some protective spell woven into it, but all it managed to do for him was to leave a recognizable corpse behind. He went down for good.

Oliver’s stomping footsteps were coming closer, and I knew Mirzoyan was waiting for me to show my head so he could shoot it off. Rodrigo was still reciting spells, so he wasn’t done with Kate yet, but that wasn’t going to last long. The Dread had saved my life yet again, but it was out of power, and lying on the ground with a hand weapon was no way to start a fight with a troll wielding a maul with a six-foot haft.

So I fed the weapon another piece of my soul.

It didn’t hurt physically. The pain was like what you feel when you see a loved one die. The price for carving out a slice of your soul is heartbreak. That was followed by a feeling of emptiness, a certainty that I’d become something less than what you were. You cared a little less about everything, including yourself, and the knowledge that I could well die in the next few seconds didn’t bother me as much as it had a moment before.

All that took an instant, although it would keep gnawing at me for the rest of my life. But the important thing was that the red haze around me grew brighter and more powerful. The Agisweppen had regained its full strength and I was ready to kill again.

Oliver arrived just in time to get blasted three times: groin, mid-section, collarbone. Each shot tore out basketball-sized holes into his flesh after punching through his battle apron. Not even a giant mutant could endure that punishment; Oliver’s mug froze in surprised agony, both mouths open in silent ‘o’ expressions, and my only problem was to roll out from under the collapsing corpse. That left Petty Officer Mirzoyan and Rodrigo.

The American operator was behind an overturned table, his M4 braced and ready. As soon as I was off the dying troll, he opened up on me. Nothing fancy, just more steady semi-auto fire, calmly tagging me over and over. He hit me four times in the time it took me to come off my roll and let him have it. The fourth shot almost did the trick; the high-speed bullet glanced off my skull and gave my brains a good shake. I was half-blinded by blood running down my face – scalp wounds gush like a mother – and the concussion had me on the verge of passing out, but the Dread kept me going, and the twisting red flames got him right under the chin and tore his head clean off. I felt bad about it – he was a piece of work, but there weren’t very many of us, boys and gals from US-21^st – but it was him or me. Either way, there was going to be one fewer of us, so I picked him.

Before Mirzoyan’s body hit the floor, Rodrigo got me. Or rather, his pet sprite did.

The old stories about faeries causing food to go bad, crops to rot and farm animals to drop dead had a basis on reality. One of the things Fae are great at is snuffing out the lifeforce of lesser beings. Humans are harder to kill than cows or goats, but the High Fae, the elite that could challenge pagan gods and other greater powers, they could kill someone with a glance. The sprite sent a death curse at me. I felt every organ in my body grind to a halt like a machine that had run out of batteries. For a second, the red haze over my eyes was replaced by tunnel vision that was rapidly narrowing into total darkness.

Good thing I’d just recharged the Dread. Its red flames jumpstarted my entire body. I found myself gasping desperately for air; my lungs were on fire, my insides hurt like someone had been kicking me for an hour, and my heart was racing like a horse on fire, but I was alive.

As I turned to face Don Duende, I spotted Kate Herrera. She was writhing on the floor, her hands trying to pull the tightening golden noose from around her neck. I didn’t have time to help her, not yet.

Rodrigo’s face was twisted in a mixture of fear, fury and desperation. He waved his cane in a circle, creating a shimmering protective barrier. As such things went, it was a crude construct, meant to stop most physical forces and simple spells. My first blast of Jotun-fire cracked the shield; the second one shattered it and sent Rodrigo flying backward with his hair on fire. The weapon thrummed in my hand like a tuning fork, reveling in the crime lord’s suffering.

I hated myself for using the Dread. I hated Rodrigo for giving me a reason to do it. And I hated Kurt and Gemma for having a daughter, and her for coming here and turning my life upside down.

Kate’s struggles were growing weaker. I almost ignored her plight and concentrated on finishing off my prey, but there was enough humanity left in me to turn to her. She was being slowly suffocated by her own spell. I knelt by her side and touched the band of golden energy encircling her throat. The Dread could shatter most kinds of magic, but undoing this sort of work took finesse, not brute force, and I’d never been a worker of wonders.

“Hold still,” I told her.

She did, her eyes wide, and I carefully placed the point of the blade against the skin of her neck, barely touching the Golden Noose. I directed the Dread to sever it without harming its victim. It wasn’t easy. The weapon nearly rebelled against me, and I burned almost all the power I’d just fed into it to force it to do my bidding. That was the main reason I didn’t summon it except when I had no other choices. I didn’t trust the darn thing to do anything other than kill, and I knew it’d be just as happy murdering my loved ones as my enemies. It was alive, maybe even sapient, but it was driven by hatred and bloodlust. It was nobody’s friend.

This time, though, it obeyed me, and the magical construct strangling the young woman disappeared. Kate started coughing uncontrollably, and I rose to my feet to make sure everyone was down. I felt drained and all I wanted to do was sleep. I’d rarely gotten what I’d wanted, and I was sure that streak was going to hold.

Everybody still alive had fled Rodrigo’s meeting hall. The Don had recovered while I helped Kate, however. He’d lost most of his lustrous hair; only a few intact patches stood out on his scorched scalp. But he’d put himself out and the wall of arcane force surrounding him was back in play. The Fey trapped in his cane was giving him a lot more juice than a sorcerer of his caliber could normally harness.

The crime lord and I stumbled towards each other, two punch-drunk brawlers too cussed stubborn to call it quits.

He put everything he and his slave had in a another killing hex. I took the hit; my organs didn’t go necrotic, but the pulled pork and rice I’d had for dinner curdled in my stomach something fierce, and most of the energy left in the Dread was spent on keeping me alive. No problem: the jagged blade still worked fine, and I hacked into the mage-shield, breaking the solid energy barrier as easily as if it was a glass window.

Rodrigo lost his balance and landed on his ample behind, a sight that would be a lot funnier without all the blood and the bodies of his gang ruining the ambiance of the place. I glanced at Kate Herrera. She’d managed to get a knife out of a concealed boot sheath, and she’d risen to her feet, but her hands were shaking badly. I couldn’t blame her: unexpected violence was not good on the nerves. It takes experience or training not to freak out when blades come out, guns go off, and blood is spilled. Add to it the way I changed when I summoned my little friend, and I was surprised she wasn’t running out the nearest door.

Did she have second thoughts about coming to me? I suspected she did.

I didn’t give Rodrigo a chance to throw any more hoodoo my way. I hacked through the ivory cane with one swing and my blade dispelled every rune and hex-sign in the enchanted rod. The sphere holding the sprite shattered and the critter flew out.

FREE! I AM FREE!

The blue light pulsed brightly as the Fae flittered about the corpse-strewn room.

Thank you, Nathaniel Lot, the sprite told me; her psychic voice was clearly female and I got a sense the critter was far older and more powerful than I’d imagined.

“You lied to me,” the crime scolded his former slave.

I spoke no lies. I saw that the woman you sought would be found and here and told you so. I also saw that your pursuit of her would lead to your death and my freedom. That I did not tell, for I wished it to come true.

Most pure-blood Fae can’t lie – some sort of powerful geas from an even higher power saw to that a long time ago – but they will happily play word games or withhold the truth if it will serve their interests. They will stick to the letter of any contract or agreement, while doing their level best to screw you anyway. Enslaving one was insanely dangerous. Maybe Don Duende should have thought twice about that.

Rodrigo turned to me. “Name your price, Lot. Anything you want. Anything.”

“Where is the courier who put up the bounty on Kate?”

“If I tell you, will you let me go?”

“You done bought your plot when you tried to kill me, Don Rodrigo. Only choices left for you are go easy or go hard.”

 I made a small arc of red light crackle around the edge of the blade for added emphasis. Rodrigo got the message and began talking:

“He arrived yesterday on the two o’clock train from Avaricum. Strange little bugger he was, always hooded but we all saw his head was shaped like a dog’s, or maybe a hyena. Left this morning on the train to Goryeo.”

Avaricum was the next big town to the east on the British mage-road line. A druid-ruled walled city, a lot more lawful than Oasis. Goryeo was a small Korean kingdom to the west. The courier was hitting all the stops on the railroad, which covered most major spots west of the Acheron. Meant that lots of people would be looking for Kate, many of them a lot nastier than Rodrigo and his gang. Six thousand shills made for a powerful incentive; that much cash would keep a small merc company supplied for a month.

“It was only business, Lot,” Rodrigo said.

“I know. So is this.”

I made it quick. Probably less than he deserved, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone else ever again, and that’s as good as it gets in the Outlands.

Afterwards, I dismissed the Dread. I had to; the longer I held the monstrous thing, the harder it became to let it go, and the tougher it became to deny the urge to destroy everybody and everything around me. My thrummed angrily before it popped out of existence, leaving behind a reddish afterimage and a faint stink of brimstone.

I rummaged through the dead crime-lord’s pockets. Two purses went from his belt to mine. I planned to take the money on the table as well as Mirzoyan’s M-4 and a couple other valuables from the rest of the Rod’s posse. I had a feeling we were going to need every penny.

Nathaniel Lot, the sprite sent into my mind. I am in your debt.

“Nothing to it. I don’t like slavery much, and freeing you helped me beat him.”

By slaying him, you ended my torment. And for that deed I will now tell you one fortune.

“I’m listening,” I said, although I didn’t care for such things. Visions of the future had a way of coming true in unexpected ways.

You need your old companions, the sprite said. Those who yet live. Ashen-Torr of Atlantis. Kindly Kora. Orion the Hunter. Doc Moriarty. Red-Handed Mada. Gather them together, and you have a chance. Go alone and you both will die.

The old gang. There had been thirteen Justiciars in Avalon Reborn, the place most people simply called Avalon, the now-fabled part of the Outlands where King Ambrosius Aurelianus III had turned myth into reality, with more than a little help from the Raighany Lynn, the beautiful and terrible Fae that legends referred to as the Lady of the Lake. Gemma and Kurt had left a couple of years before things fell apart, and they had been replaced, so that made fifteen. Of those, only six of us survived.

I knew where most of them were, at least within the last year or so – keeping track of them was something of a hobby of mine – but I had no idea if all of them, or any of them for that matter, would be willing to follow me. I had abandoned them, after all.

Some would. Not for me, but for our dead companions and their daughter. Everyone liked Kurt, and most of them loved Gemma. Doc and Mada would feel honor bound, just like me. Ash and Orion might or might not; I’d give it a fifty-fifty chance; immortals and demigods had learned not to care about ephemerals. And Kora, she might slit my throat by way of greeting me. She was Fae-blooded and our parting hadn’t been pleasant.

It must be all, or it might as well be none. Mark my words, Nathaniel Lot.

The faerie might feel she owed me a debt of gratitude, but many Fae hated owing humans anything. I had no doubt that her fortune was nothing but literal truth, but she could easily have omitted information that might save my life. Death cancelled all debts. You didn’t deal with the Good Folk unless you absolutely had to. They had that in common with the Dread.

I nodded to the sprite. “Thank you.” I would follow her advice. I might have looked for some of my old pals even if she hadn’t mentioned them.

The glowing critter seemed to grow larger, and for a moment I found myself looking at something larger than a mountain, more alive than flesh and blood, denser than stone. The feeling was familiar; I got it whenever I called my untrusty sidearm, or whenever I encountered the kind of power that would fill most humans with absolute awe or terror. I waved goodbye at it.

An eye-blink later, the sprite was gone and reality seemed to shrink a little, as if it’d stretched out to fit the critter and was now returning to its normal size.

The High Fae are like that. They, the Celestials and the Pantheon-Born are a pain to have around.

“Mr. Lot.”

I turned back to Kate. She’d recovered from her brush with death, although she still looked a bit pale and shaky. So did I, for that matter. And she had no idea how lucky she was to be alive. The only thing that had kept her in one piece was Rodrigo’s greed. Our first fight together, and we’d both come as close to getting killed as you could while still breathing.

Reconsidering wasn’t an option, not if the Warlock had put a price on her head.

While I looted the dead, she found our weapons, stored neatly under Rodrigo’s table. She handed me my gun belt.

“Will the law come after us?”

“Eventually. Most people know better than to stick their noses in Rodrigo’s business. Some of his servants and hired guns may be looking for help. Best we be gone before the sun is up.”

We might have to fight our way out of Oasis. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I had friends in the Town Watch, or at least friendly acquaintances. I didn’t want to hurt them.

I would do what I had to, though.