ARC: Peacemaker (19 page)

The doors slid open and revealed a lift.

I turned to face-chain guy. “You’re shittin’ me. You mean I…?”

He grinned and the chains tinkled. I so wanted to rip them out.

Instead we rode down in silence. When the doors opened at the bottom, he removed my lasso and pushed me out without a word.

I found myself at the back oftenement#4 looking at a landscape that stole my breath. A wide tract of bare, churned earth punctuated by mounds of burned bricks and charred remains amid glowing coals. From the choking smell, I knew at least some of them were animal or human. It was a burning ground; a body incinerator made all the more ghastly by how public it was.

I walked away quickly, heading for the nearest corner to take me down the side of the tenement and back to Sixkiller. Halfway along, I heard voices behind me. A quick glance told me that a posse of guys had rounded the corner after me, carrying spears and clubs.

My walk became a sprint past the stairs I’d climbed previously.

No Sixkiller.

I’d almost reached the front corner when the first spear thudded into the ground at my heel. I bowled around the edge of the building and collided with Sixkiller who was sitting with his legs out and his back against the wall.

“Spears…” I gasped. “Clubs!”

He sprang to his feet. “We take them.”

“Be my guest,” I said without breaking stride.

“Virgin!” He shouted after me, but I wasn’t stopping. I didn’t plan on ending up on a pyre in the burning grounds.

As I reached the other side of the street, I heard his boots on the pavement catching up with me. Thank heavens for that! It would be have been tough explain losing him in Moonee to Bull.

“Hurry,” I called over my shoulder.

We were almost at building #3 and I could see another gang emerging from the foyer. These guys had aluminum baseball bats and shivs as long as small swords.

A voice bellowed through a loudspeakerfrom above. “Ranger!”

I glanced up and saw a mini-drone with the wingspan of an albatross heading straight at my head. I ducked, still running, and it landed lightly on the pavement a few meters ahead of Sixkiller and I.

Three pistols were strapped into the carrier on its back. I broke stride just long enough to free my 9mm and toss the Marshall his Peacemakers.

“Don’t…fire… unless… you…abso… lute…ly…have… to…” I puffed at him and veered back across the street to avoid the guys with bats.

Spears rained about my feet. One nicked my shoulder and I heard Sixkiller grunt with the impact of another.

“Don’t shoot,” I said. “We’re nearly there.”

The previously quiet enclave was now rampant with screeches and cries that sounded like they might come with a free scalping.

Nearly. There.
The alley way that led back to Gilgul was a tantalizing few lengths ahead but the guys with shivs had crossed as well to head us off.

Ten strides. Nine…

Whump!

Someone took me out from the side and I went down heavily, cracking my head on the pavement. The world went grainy for a second then brightened. I heard two pistol cracks followed by soft thumps. A hand touched my shoulder and rolled me over.

I lashed out, connecting a punch with Sixkiller’s jaw.

I realized what I’d done when he swore.

“Nate!”

But he’d had already sunk into a crouch, one pistol drawn.

The guy who’d tackled me lay dead on the ground, a shiv on the ground near his open palm.

The rest of his gang had fanned out around us. Lined up behind them were the spear throwers.

The two gangs exchanged some excited street dialect that I didn’t understand. The gist of it was pretty plain though. They were fighting over who had the right to claim us.

Sixkiller fired a warning shot in the air.

“Git back!” His voice was hoarse and steeped in bad intent. Enough to make my skin prickle.

“Be calm, Marshall,” I said.

“Never been calmer, Ranger. Now git into the alley.”

Only a few steps backwards and we would climb the crates
–
the line between death and the relative safety of Seer Parade.

I got to my feet, lifted my 9mm and stepped alongside him. “After you.”

He made an irritated noise in the back of his throat. “This ain’t the time for–”

“One step back at a time
together
,” I said. “On my count…”

My sideways glance caught his brief nod.

“One…”

We stepped backward.

Three pistols against spears, shivs and bats. It seemed like we were on the winning side.

“Two…”

My sense told me three more steps would do it. I could smell the rotted fruit from the crates.

So close. “Three…”

Our pursuers surged forward, suddenly forgetting their differences as their prey appeared about to escape. Spear lifted. Shivs too.

“Four…”

Then suddenly we had a much bigger problem. Around one end of the semi-circle, stepped a guy with a bare chest. The tattoo on his breast was large an unmistakable
–
a circle encompassing a crow. Korax.

He lifted a semi-auto to his hip.

From nowhere, I heard a thundering noise. In the corner of my eyes I saw a buffalo galloping towards us.

A bison. Had to be.

Nothing else in my mind matched with the shaggy shoulders and fierce spray of saliva spray from its mouth.

“
Ohitika
!” gasped Sixkiller.

If that was his disincarnate then we were seriously
–

“Five!”I yelled and fired at the guy with the semi-auto simultaneously.

Then Sixkiller and I turned in unison and dived over the barricade of fruit crates.

A fierce rain of spears and bullets pelted down after us.

I kept rolling as I hit the ground, using momentum to get me as far into the alley as possible.

The semi-auto chopped the crates to bits. Wood chips sprayed me and I glimpsed Sixkiller lying on his stomach returning fire. The sight of the buffalo standing over him, fierce and protective added to my acute adrenalin rush.

I loosed a couple more shots, more a fear reaction than anything particularly effective against an automatic weapon, and scrambled on my knees towards the blind alley and Seer Parade.

I reached the false wall, still on my knees. Sixkiller was close behind me and the guy with the semi was kicking decimated crates out of his way.

A volley of fire started, this time above my head coming from the direction I was crawling; two guys leaning against corner walls looking back at us.

One of them nodded and beckoned. I got to my feet and sprinted around the corner where I collapsed, my back up against the wall, sucking in air. Sixkiller rolled out behind me, and suddenly we were side by side again, staring out at curious passersby.

My whole bodyshook from exertion. The Marshall seemed calm other than the fact he was panting.

On the other side of the alley opening, our armed allies had slung their rifles over their shoulders and were busy sliding the metal grate across the gap. It locked into place with a
thunk
and they snapped a heavy bar into place.

Everything went quiet. We’d made it back across the invisible line.

“I think I shot the guy with the semi-auto,” I said.

“Not damn quick enough. He near took my head off.”He nodded at the guys securing the gate. “Hadn’t been for them though, we’d be stone cold dead.”

“Hadn’t been for your disincarnate scaring me half to death I might never have pulled the trigger at all.”

He frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

“The bison. I saw it.”

“
You saw Ohitika?
”

“Saw it come hell for leather at those guys. Then it was standing over you in the alley. What did you call it? Ohi…?”

“Ohi-tika. Means
brave
,” he said.

I nodded. “Fierce alright. Don’t think you’d want him around all the time.”

“Ohitika only reveals himself to people he chooses.”

“Oh. Right,” I said. “That’s… um… nice.”

Sixkiller shook his head and swallowed, seeming at a loss for words. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb.

One of the guys approached us. He wore shorts, a dirty singlet, boots and a satisfied smile. “Best you get up. Papa Brise wants to talk.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sixkiller held out a blood-wet hand.I took it and we helped each other up.

“Sure,” I said to the guy. “And thanks… y’know… for that.”

He patted his rifle as if it were a pet. “Can’t have the fucking
Moonees
Moonies
up in our place. We got business to conduct. Shit is bad for tourists.”

I felt relieved at that. Order among the disorder.

“How did you know we were there?” I asked.

“We watch their side. They watch our side. Way it’s gotta be.”

“The gate was unlocked though.”

“Yeah, we leave it like that for the most. We lock it, they get the message.”He sauntered off down Seer.

“You’re bleeding,” I said to Sixkiller as we limped after him.

“So are you. Shoulder.”

I looked down at myself. The peak of my adrenalin had begun to fade and things hurt; the shoulder that the Mythos had attacked, and now the other one, right at the top of the arm where the spear had grazed me.

The increasingly familiar sense of having been tossed around and mangled returned.

“Nate,” I croaked. “You need a hand?”

If my request surprised him he didn’t show it. He shook his head.

Together we limped along Seer towards Mason Way. Before we reached the end, Brise’s guy threaded between a real-animal-hide stall and a tarot reader, and up a set of removable stairs hooked to the awning in front of a bar called, Sage.

The stairs were a tough ask in my present condition. I gritted my way up them, drawing on the hand rail and innate stubbornness to get me through. From Sixkiller’s periodic grunt, he was feeling it too.

We passed through three pairs of guys with guns before our guy left us in a small room with two big couches and a large wall screen. The ashtrays on the armrests overflowed and the stale smell of cigar added to my woes. I stayed standing, conscious of the blood on my shoulder and hands.

Sixkiller propped against the wall next to the door we’d been brought through, not about to be ambushed again.

I estimated he had about three rounds left at most. I had two.

They hadn’t taken our guns, so I guess that was something.

“Ranger and Marshall!” boomed Brise’s voice.

He sprang to life on the screen, not in person. “Someone will fix your wounds soon. But first, explain your-fuckeen-selves.”

Medical help? I wondered if Papa Brise was looking to build allies. Might be a smart move. And somehow, for no good reason, I trusted Papa Brise a whole lot more than Kadee Matari. Not that
that
was much a measure.

“We went to speak to Kadee Matari. Find out more about the bone feather talisman,” I said.

“You got fuckeen front, Ranger, I give you that. What did the Stoned-fuckeen-Witch have to say?”

“That it was a collective warning from Romany, Africans, Druze and others. Then she said I should find out what it is that I believe in.”

“As clear as my fuckeen whizz in the morning,” said Papa Brise with a sneer.

“That’s all I got from her. Some gangs chased us out of Moonee with spears and shivs and clubs. But someone showing crow and circle ink joined them last with some real hardware.”

Brise’s face folded into unhappy lines. Not concern for our welfare, I guessed, but concern for his territory. The huge man, stroke an imaginary moustache on his face. “That she spoke with you at all is fuckeen mystifying. You must be fuckeen charmed, Ranger.”

“Who are the crow and circle, Papa Brise? I’ve heard they’re called Korax.”

Sixkiller stiffened and lifted his head when I said that, suggesting he had heard the name too.

“I know as much and as little as you, Ranger. They are here and fuckeen there. Selling fuckeen hardware, fuckeen shit, fuckeen everything,” Papa Brise moaned.

“They’re locals, you mean?”

“Some. We hear accents like the Marshall’s as well,” he said.

“Is it affecting you?”

“I fuckeen run Mystere. It has been that way since I took it from Lobo Smith ten fuckeen years ago. There are drugs and deals and bullshit... all fuckeen normal. But I control the flow. You fuckeen feel me?”

I stared and Sixkiller gave a slow nod.

“These Korax they’re coming and changing the fuckeen flow. They talk to Kadee Matari. Maybe planning something. This last few days already… fifteen fuckeen murders in three streets and not one is mine. The Stoned Witch is trying to take me down. I’m losing control of my own fuckeen place.”

His admission might have been either darkly humorous or personally damning at another time. Right now it was just plain frightening.

“But what’s it about?”

“That’s why I save your fuckeen life, Ranger. You find out for me andso I can stop the Stoned-fuckeen-Witch. She burns the shit of fuckeen babies in her pipe and smokes it.”

The screen went dead and Sixkiller and I were left staring at each other.

“Korax?” he said.

“I hear stuff,” I said shrugging. “What do you call them?”

“That name might fit.”He glanced away from me and I suddenly realized how truly bloody he was. And pale.

Before I could retort, the door opened and a young woman with white hair, wearing a halter top that showed off her violet tattoos, entered. She opened the case she carried, took a plastic sheet from it and spread it on the ground. Then she set the case on the coffee table and selected a short bulky object that she unfolded into a small stool with three legs.

She motioned to Sixkiller to sit on it.

“Why would I do thet?” he asked.

She opened her mouth and pointed to her tongue. Or what might have once been a tongue. Now there was a lump of tissue split into two short peaks, like the ears on a dog. They wiggled freely, independently of each other.

When he remained where he was she made an angry noise and rummaged in the case. After a moment she held up an aerosol can and a tube of antiseptic.

“For chrissakes let her fix you up before you bleed to death, Nate.” I sat down on one of the couches as I said it, suddenly tired beyond my ability to fathom.

Sixkiller’s shoulders sagged a fraction and he moved stiffly to sit on the stool.

With quick and efficient hands the woman swabbed and applied the plastic bandages to the scratches and scrapes on his skin. She took her time on the deeper spear wound, squeezing it full of antibiotic and anti-inflammatory goo into it. When she’d finished that, she pulled a plastic bag out of her overalls and handed both him and I a square cookie each.

I declined but Sixkiller took one, smelled it and handed it back.

She shrugged and popped it in her own mouth. While she chewed, she motioned the Marshall off the stool and me onto it.

The same quick, sure hands dealt with my injuries. When she looked at where the spear had sliced my shoulder, she rummaged in the bag again and produced a tube of skin glue.

She sat the stub of her mangled tongue between her teeth, concentrating on pulling the skin together in a straight line. I tried to imagine what her story was as she worked. When she finished patting the wound dry I found myself asking, “Why are you working for Papa Brise?”

She paused for a moment then snapped the lid on the glue and began packing up her gear.

“Virgin,” said the Marshall softly from his post by the door. “We should go.”

I stood up. The glue must have had its own anaesthetic, for the wound no longer throbbed as much. “Thank you for helping us. I’m the Ranger in the South Eastern Sector of Birrimun Park. If you ever need somewhere to go, come to the Park offices on the Ring Road. I’ll do what I can for you.”

She blinked, as though having difficulty absorbing what I’d said.

“No strings,” I added, forcing a smile. “One good deed, you know…”

She gestured that I should get off the sheet. By the time I’d joined Sixkiller by the door she had packed it and the stool away and was re-shouldering the pack.

We stood together in a brief awkward silence. Then Sixkiller and I left.

“Why did you say that to her?”he asked as we headed back over the bridge towards the bus depot. “She works for a criminal.”

‘Because I did,” I said, way too tired to be explaining myself.

He shook his head and let it drop. Thankfully he didn’t speak again, even after we boarded the commuter bus heading north.

The other travelers aboard kept a wide birth of us and our blood-stained clothes but I was too tired to care about that either. Sixkiller’s arm against mine was warm, and the seat was comfortable and the drowsiness beset me almost immediately.

I woke to find the bus had gone quiet and my nose was pressed into the leg seam of Sixkiller’s jeans. The smell of dry blood and stale sweat pervaded my senses.

I sat up and looked around. The bus was empty apart from the auto-cleaner, and the driver backing up his credit machine. The cleaner skittered over the seats with a low pitched hum as it gobbled up rubbish and sprayed disinfectant and odoriser.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I asked.

“Thought you needed it. And to tell you the truth, thought you might use that on me if I startled you.”

I followed his glance to my right hand. My fingers were clenched around my pistol butt.

Carefully, I un-kinked my forefinger and slipped it off the trigger. “Jees, I could have shot myself.”

“Or someone else,” he pointed out.

“Definition of a bad day,” I said as I tucked it back into the holster under my jacket.

Sixkiller took a long deep breath, as though he hadn’t had one for a while.

“Sorry about that,” I added.

He got up and stretched. “Been a day alright. I need a wash.”

The thought of a hot shower was motivation to get moving, so I followed him off the bus and we flagged a taxi to get us home.

Watching the late afternoon world along the Ring Road flash by, I felt a strong sense of dislocation. Business as usual. Orderly tourist retail in progress, and a kaleidoscope of flashing motel
Vacancy
signs.
Moonee
Moonie
, Mystere and even the Park might as well have been from different dimensions.

I wondered how Sixkiller felt right now, so far from home and constantly under threat. Maybe that’s what a Marshall’s life was? Maybe he thrived on it? Maybe his calm exterior hid a need for risk. Maybe he was deeply screwed up.

I decided right then and there to ask Caro to spare some of her investigative energies for Sixkiller. I needed to know the man who was stuck at my side in this battle.

And his buffalo disincarnate. What a powerful and terrifying sight. Even now, my gut cramped up at the memory.

“Virgin?”Sixkiller was standing, holding the door of the taxi open.

I paid the driver, got out and headed straight for the lift, desperate for my own space. But the Marshall stayed until it pinged open on my floor then he walked with me to my door. I think he would have planted himself on the couch if Heart hadn’t been there waiting.

“You staying the night?” he asked Heart. “She needs someone with her.”

Heart nodded. “I’ll be here until you come for her in the morning.”

I wanted to snarl at them both that what I needed was privacy. This sudden unspoken agreement to share bodyguard duties on me was a cheese grater on my skin.

When Heart shut the door on Sixkiller and dead-locked it, I didn’t wait to chat but disappeared straight into the shower, unbuckling my pistol and dropping my stained clothes in the rubbish, not the laundry, chute.

Heart sensed my mood and left me alone.

When I emerged in a tank top and my most comfortable shorts, he had a tumbler of rum and some pretzels waiting on the coffee table, which he’d shifted so it sat right in the middle of John Flat.

“Inspector Chance won’t like that,” I said.

“Stupid that it’s still there. They’ve done their forensics. She’s just playing the intimidation game with you.”

“Caro says I’ll see the outline there forever, so she’s given it a name.”

He raided and eyebrow and held out the tumbler.

“John Flat,” I said, sipping and edging around the table to sit next to him. The alcohol burned for a bit and then softened my knotted gut. I sank back into the cushions and tried to relax.

“You want to tell me about the blood on your clothes and the wound glue on your shoulder?” He let his fingers trace lightly the new wound.

“In this case knowledge is not a good thing,” I said, sipping again.

“I’m no stranger to trouble, Virgin. And truly, I want to help you.”

I took his hand and squeezed it. He looked almost as tired as me, his face a little thinner than a few weeks ago and his eyes a little swollen. “Have you been sleeping?”

“Don’t switch the attention on me,” he said. “I mean this.”

“I’m sorry Heart. It’s just been a really crappy few days.”