Chapter Seventeen

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Nothing much happened on Christmas.

I was, on the whole, glad for it. In part, this was because it meant no catastrophes happened. But there was no celebration either, and I was glad for that part, too. I didn’t love the holiday; it didn’t haunt me the way it did Pepper, but holidays in general weren’t my favorite thing, and this one in particular I didn’t care for. There were several sets of moods associated with Christmas—rampant materialism and conspicuous consumption, family with the implication of traditional values and structures, and Christian theology with overtones of orthodoxy and martyrdom.

The first of those I just didn’t like much, and I could acknowledge that part of that was my relatively privileged position. It’s easy to disdain materialism when you don’t lack for the material, and I’d been coasting my whole adult life on an inherited trust fund. The second, well, family was not something that had good associations for me. I was hardly going to be calling my relatives to wish them well. And for the last, when a large portion of Christian sects would place me in Hell from birth as a demon, a large portion of the rest would put me in Hell because I slept around and wasn’t picky about gender, and most of the remainder would be convinced by the blood on my hands?

Yeah. Not a fan. I didn’t hate the religion, didn’t go out of my way to antagonize them or anything. But I wasn’t fond of it, either. My usual policy was to leave them the hell alone, and I appreciated the faith most when they returned the favor. I didn’t celebrate their holidays.

And so, I was glad for the quiet. My friend group really didn’t have many people who disagreed with me on the topic. Saori and Capinera weren’t even native to this world and definitely didn’t care about its calendar. Melissa and Pepper both had more horror than joy associated with holidays. Raincloud had gotten bored of the fuss weeks ago. For us, then, it was just another day.

Capinera’s scheduling for the Blackbird Cabaret was wholly arcane to me, and when I’d asked her about it, her answers had been so confusing that I’d just given up on even trying to understand it. It had logic to it but not of a kind I could make sense of. I could check her schedule for the next week or two, and go from that with fair confidence, but any further out than that and my ability to predict it was essentially nil. And so, similarly, I had come to regard it with much the same calm fatalism as the weather. It would rain, or it would not. Capinera would take a day off, or she would not.

Today she did take the day off, and it was quiet. This changed around sundown when Saori showed up unannounced, and informed me that as I was planning on being a reckless idiot soon she was there to celebrate my poor life choices. When I pointed out that I wasn’t planning on starting until tomorrow, she looked at me like an idiot and told me that celebrations for this happened well in advance, since the whole point was that I might be getting myself killed in spectacular fashion.

I had to admit she had a point there. And so, food was eaten. I attempted, with little success, to convince the three of them to play Monopoly. I wasn’t even halfway through explaining the rules when Raincloud declared the game a prime example of non-entertaining insanity and Saori accused me of only suggesting it in hopes of causing mental anguish as a prank. (Which, to be fair, I was, so I couldn’t really get too upset.)

Towards midnight, Saori (who was at this point moderately intoxicated, and the rest of us were appropriately nervous) more successfully got a game of liar’s dice started. Capinera said that she didn’t know the game, and would we be so kind as to show her the rules? Naturally, Saori agreed, and suggested we play for small stakes so she could learn, with a distinctly malicious grin.

Capinera just as naturally proceeded to play like a novice, bait Saori into raising those stakes, and then run the table with expert skill. I laughed at how she had been taken in by the oldest trick in the book; Saori gave me a look that suggested I would pay for this later, but she was also visibly amused herself.

The night passed quietly. I fell asleep on the stage with Saori and Raincloud in a tangled pile of limbs, while Capinera read the musings of dead philosophers. As ways to celebrate poor life choices went, I had to admit this was pretty good.

---

“The hell do you want?”

I’ve never been great at answering phone calls with much courtesy. It was showing this morning more than most; it was barely noon, and I had actually been sleeping well for once, and neither one left me feeling charitable towards whoever had woken me up.

I had to admit, I was vaguely curious how these people did it. It wasn’t like I even slept very much, or on consistent hours. That everyone and her sister could apparently time phone calls around waking me was vaguely impressive.

There was a moment of nonplussed silence, followed by a cautious male voice saying, “I’m calling for a Miss, uh, Sugiyama?”

“Congratulations, very proud of your achievement. The hell do you want?”

There was a distinct thread of amusement, now. “Saito said you might want to chat.”

“Ohhh,” I said. “Right, I remember now. Sorry about that. Call me Key.” I wasn’t trying to get him to pronounce Kyoko, though in this case that was less for the sake of anonymity and more that I just disliked it when people butchered my name. If he stumbled on Sugiyama there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d get Kyoko right.

“Johnny. And no worries, some mornings are like that. Nice to meetcha.” He sounded amiable, which was nice of him. I rarely had a reason to use that word, and I appreciated this one.

“Likewise. Uh. How do you want to…?”

“I’d rather not talk over the phone, and I’m in town today. Does Westinghouse Park in Point Breeze work for you?”

I thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I know the place. It might take me a little while to get there, though.”

“Not a problem. Forty minutes good?”

“Yeah, that should be fine.” I hung up and glowered at the phone.

Raincloud was also glowering, though hers was more amusing. A Siberian husky managing to glower was…not something you saw every day. Do we have to?

I shrugged. I have to. You can stay behind if you want. I didn’t say it out loud. Saori was still asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her. The phone call hadn’t, but I didn’t want to push that.

Raincloud was up and at the door within thirty seconds. I laughed softly, and followed her, albeit more slowly. I had clothes to put on, and gear to grab. I wasn’t carrying much to this meeting—it just made more sense to leave most of the weaponry and assorted other belongings here. But I had my shotgun under my coat, a couple of knives in case Thorn wasn’t an option for some reason, and a handful of more generalized tools.

Capinera was leaning against the wall watching while I got ready. If she had slept, I couldn’t tell; if she needed to, it didn’t show. She really didn’t seem to need much sleep at all, and I envied her for that. No amount of caffeine was enough to fully make up for my terrible sleep quality.

“You two heading out?” she asked me.

“Yup, looks like. Saori’s asleep still, and she seemed tired last night. Kinda want to let her rest some more, but I’ve got a meeting.”

“Okay. Let me drop the wards for you.” She turned and started working on that. I could feel it, this close. Even with my filters firmly in place, what still got through to my conscious awareness was enough to feel it, magic moving through the world with a scent like blackberries and bloodstained smiles.

I had to learn this trick. Practical value aside, if I had to keep asking someone else to get the door for me to leave like this, I’d lose my mind. It reminded me too sharply of the psych ward, and some of my experiences there had been bad enough I was liable to go into flashbacks from this eventually.

“Thanks,” I said, and stepped out into the sunlight, blinding after the comfortable darkness of the Blackbird. Behind me, the door closed, and the locks slid home with a series of sharp clicks.

---

Westinghouse Park was an odd place. It was a reasonably expansive park, built on the grounds of the old Westinghouse estate. It was here, in a manor named Solitude, that George Westinghouse had done much of the early research on electricity and electrical systems, and Tesla developed alternating current motors into a functioning system. It was on the same grounds that Westinghouse had drilled one of the first commercial natural gas wells, and in the process produced a burst of flame a hundred feet tall, so bright that people could read newsprint by its light a mile away.

It had been one of the centers of early American industrialization, the heart of a robber baron’s empire. But that was a long time ago. Now, it was…well. It wasn’t far from where Alice lived, and it was comparably desolate. The buildings were half-abandoned, and the park itself was tired. It was trying its best, and it wasn’t exactly bad—the grass was healthy, the playground tidy and in decent shape. People did go there, but everything was old and worn. The basketball court was cracked and the hedgerow running along the northern edge of the park had gaps. It often wasn’t hard to tell that the city’s main mental health crisis center was within walking distance, either. The rideshare driver didn’t quite ask me what the hell I was doing there, but he looked like he was thinking it.

Then again, I was wearing a trench coat, what that didn’t cover was heavily tattooed, and I had already bribed him to get Raincloud in the car. So maybe I looked like I belonged here, and the question was why the hell he’d agreed to give me a ride when I was clearly unstable, criminal, or both. Which, to be fair, would be an accurate assessment.

Regardless, I was there, and it wasn’t hard to find Johnny. There were not many people at the park in the snow the day after Christmas. When I saw someone sitting alone in the snow in the northwestern corner of the park, far from the playground and the basketball court, I was pretty confident.

He didn’t look up as I walked up and sat down next to him, close enough to talk but far enough for personal safety. “Nice weather today,” he commented. His voice was soft, with the characteristic drawl common among the hillfolk of the Appalachian region.

“Not bad,” I agreed. It was clear today, and calm. The air was cold, and that always felt bracing to me. The sting of taking a deep breath did not substitute for sleep, but it at least did something to help me shake off the fatigue. “I assume you’re Johnny.”

“It’s what they call me,” he agreed. “How’s Saito doing?”

I relaxed a bit. I’d been pretty sure this was the right person, but the implicit verbal handshake was still comforting. Johnny was a common enough name that it was—barely—possible I’d gotten the wrong person. But the chance of me guessing the wrong person at the park, that person’s name coincidentally also being Johnny, and then for that person to also mention Saito? Nil.

Which did not, I reminded myself, mean that he was who he claimed. It just meant that if not, this was a deliberate ambush rather than coincidental mistake. But then, that was why Raincloud was out in the trees in front of me. It was the most likely place to put a sniper, and she was a very effective scout. A mostly-white dog can hide pretty damn well on snow, her senses were pretty sharp (as evidenced by her warning us about the bomb), and she could communicate an alarm to me without anyone else hearing. Excellent sentry, on the whole.

“I don’t have a clue,” I said, honestly. “Haven’t talked to him in years, up until a few days ago.”

“But he still took the time to set up a meeting,” Johnny said. It didn’t sound like a refutation, more just an observation.

I smiled a little. “We go back. And Saito’s the kind of guy for whom loyalty doesn’t have an expiration date.”

He nodded, slowly. “I know that type. I respect that in a person. And Saito’s someone I can respect. So, on to business. What are you looking for here? He wasn’t very specific.” Johnny had to have noticed the incongruity. I talked like I had known Saito years ago in another country, but I looked like I was barely out of high school? There was no way he’d missed that. He didn’t show a reaction, though.

I shrugged. “Not sure how specific he could be. I don’t even know how specific I can be. I’m mostly looking for munitions, maybe other supplies, maybe information.”

“Munitions,” he repeated. “Anything in particular?”

“Eh, not sure what all is available. I’ve got shit aim, so guns are pretty much only useful at short range. Knives I’ve got covered. Someone tried to kill me using plastic explosives recently, which has me wondering where to get those. Not that I expect you to snitch on anyone,” I added quickly, before he could respond. Nobody wants to work with a snitch, and I highly doubted he would appreciate it if I implied he was one.

Johnny nodded, slowly. “I see. Well, guns are easy. Explosives are possible, but they would take time for me to get. They aren’t exactly something I work with every day.”

Huh. He was…very casual about this. Very willing to tell me incriminating things. He had never met me, had no idea whether I was using a recording device. Either this was a trap, or Saito had put in a pretty fucking good word for me.

“That’s fine,” I said. “The explosives are more of a future thing anyway. Guns might be a today thing. I also need armor, but I don’t know how likely you are to have what I’m looking for there. Steel exterior and kevlar lining would be ideal.”

I’d made fun of Saori for her gear. It seemed ridiculous in the modern age. I’d since come to understand, though, that I’d been looking at things from a very limited viewpoint.

Once the supernatural was involved, guns were much less reliable. They were great at killing humans, but they weren’t designed with supernatural targets in mind. And they didn’t even work in a lot of Otherside domains. That wasn’t relevant to me but it probably would be in the future. People in the supernatural crowd still used swords because swords still worked, and they worked everywhere.

And similarly, the plate armor looked silly and anachronistic, but she wore it for a reason. Kevlar alone didn’t do great against knives or blunt force trauma, and a lot of things I was running into now were…well. My shoulder was healed, but the lingering cut on my hip was a great reminder of why I wanted this.

“Yeah, armor isn’t really going to happen,” Johnny said after a few moments to consider. “I could probably get it, but I’ll be honest with you, quality will be pretty bad. Guns are easy, though. I can get a heavier shotgun than you’re carrying, if you want. Specialty ammo too.”

It did not surprise me that the arms dealer could tell I had a gun under my coat. Knowing that it was a shotgun was a little more impressive, though, and I was curious. “How do you know what I’m carrying?”

Johnny smiled, showing a few missing teeth. “There aren’t many guns with that profile,” he said. “I can tell it’s larger than a pistol from how you’re moving, not long enough to be a rifle without showing more through the coat. You said your aim was shit, so you’re probably not carrying a carbine, and if you could get something like a P90, you wouldn’t need me. Shotgun’s the only thing that fits.”

I nodded. “Nice party trick. I should learn that one. You said you have a heavier model?”

His smile widened, and he leaned back in the snow, looking out through the hedge to the north. This side of the park faced directly onto the busway, so the only traffic was the occasional bus. It was quiet here, and it was hard to see how Johnny could have looked more casual.

“I can get one,” he said. “Promise. Again, if you could get something like that, you wouldn’t need to talk to me. I can get you any gauge from eight to twenty, pump or semi-auto.”

I turned and stared at him. That…shouldn’t be a thing he could do. I wasn’t a huge gun nerd, but even I knew this was absurd.

“How the hell are you doing that?” I asked after a moment. It was very blunt, but I was too startled for social niceties. “Nobody even makes a ten-gauge semi-automatic. And nobody makes eight-gauge shotguns at all anymore.”

Johnny’s grin was loose and relaxed. He looked smug to me, visible mostly as a vibrancy in the faint, shimmering feeling of human magic he carried. “No official manufacturer makes those,” he corrected me. “When you’re friends with a gunsmith, you’d be surprised what all is possible. Ammunition, too. I’ll throw in a couple boxes of buckshot as a free bonus. I can sell you buckshot, flechettes, electroshock, you name it and I’ve probably got it.”

Which was bullshit. A gunsmith didn’t have the machining tools to make an eight-gauge barrel just lying around waiting for a custom order. Flechette rounds weren’t used in shotguns, either. I knew that, because I’d tried to get some a few years ago, and the only manufacturer of note had stopped production years before that.

This…either this was just bait in a trap, or Saito had put me in contact with someone…out of place. Someone who had munitions for sale that humans didn’t need, didn’t make, and could barely use. This situation was suddenly feeling very different, and it called for a different response, a different persona.

“I’m not paying up front,” I said. I stretched my back as I did. It did a lot to sell the look I wanted. I was the mark too stupid, taking this too casually, to realize that the person she was talking to only looked casual. It also let me get my feet under myself. “No offense intended But I don’t feel like paying up front for something that I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist.”

Johnny laughed. “Well, that’s fair. I can get them here and you can pay on delivery. It will take a while, though. I only visit Pittsburgh once in a while, I’m mostly based further south.”

This wasn’t right. He should at least have asked for collateral, escrow, half up front, something. This wasn’t how this kind of transaction worked. but he hadn’t even hesitated. On its own, a small thing. But the scenario as a whole, in the context of my recent life? There was only one rational response here.

We’re running. Pedestrian underpass northeast of here. I projected this thought clearly enough that Raincloud could parse it even at a distance, and I could feel her confirm that she understood.

“Eight gauge semi-auto and two boxes of flechettes, payment on delivery.” I didn’t say anything else, was already standing as I spoke. I didn’t even pretend that the sudden departure was planned or that it was casual.

I just immediately bolted for the other side of the park. I’d already sent Raincloud that direction. It was the quickest way to break line of sight with the park, and it was running towards Alice’s place, which seemed like a good idea.

After a few steps I juked to the left, down onto the slope that separated the park from the busway below. I figured it would be a decently unexpected direction to dodge, since most people didn’t like to walk on sloped terrain, and the undergrowth was enough to disrupt line of sight somewhat.

That dodge was a good idea. I could tell, because it was the only reason the bullet missed me.

I heard the bullet as it went by. That wasn’t good, because even with my hearing, that still meant it had come way too close for comfort. The sharp crack of the gunshot was quiet, too, on a relative scale. It was pretty loud, but if I could hear the bullet it wasn’t as deafening as usual. Either subsonic rounds or a suppressor of some kind. That would limit the effect some, they were rifle rounds, and I wasn’t armored. If they put a few bullets into me I was going to die. It was, ultimately, that simple.

Adrenaline hit, and the world felt so slow as I kept sprinting through it. I stayed on the slope for now; after living in one of Pittsburgh’s more infamously steep neighborhoods for fifteen years, I was pretty good at running on uneven ground. And it would keep the visual screen provided by the vegetation, which wasn’t great but it was the best cover I had available.

The second shot came about two seconds after the first. Long enough to have aimed, but short enough that the person aiming was good at it. It wasn’t quite as close to me as the last, but that wasn’t much comfort. The world was slow and I was not, but I couldn’t outrun a bullet, and I didn’t like my odds of surviving a hit.

I didn’t know where the shooter was, either. The angle wasn’t right for it to have been Johnny pulling the trigger, though. He might be an accomplice, he might just be smart enough to run when the shit hit the fan, didn’t really matter which right now. He wasn’t shooting me.

I waited about two seconds, and then abruptly dodged sideways, further downhill. There was a plume of snow where I would have been if I hadn’t changed trajectory.

I’d thought he would space them out consistently. It was nice being right. I had no idea why I was dissociated enough to think about that, but I was. And it wasn’t like I’d thought of anything else. Standing still was death, I was just about out of space to run, and it would only take one lucky shot to kill me.

Then I realized the obvious answer, and if I’d had the breath I would have laughed at myself for not seeing it sooner. Change of plans, get to the busway and go east. I sent a mental image to Raincloud along with the sentence, and got back a feeling of agreement.

I took one more stride, trying to get the timing right. It was more instinct than cognitive tracking; even for me, I was juggling too many things to process consciously this fast. My momentum, the timing of the shots, guessing at how the marksman might vary that pattern or attempt to predict my dodge this time, getting my footing just right…it was too much.

I didn’t dodge this time. It wouldn’t work; not enough space, not enough cover, not enough sense of where the shooter was. If I kept doing that, I’d be dead in short order.

Instead, I jumped, putting my full momentum into a running leap downhill.

I was not a gifted acrobat. I had no illusions on that front. I could not, for example, hold a candle to Saori when it came to agility and grace. The kitsune had superhuman levels of both, and I…didn’t.

But there was a reason the long jump was grouped with athletics, not gymnastics. Jumping wasn’t the product of grace, just of speed and strength. I was stronger than any human short of a serious weightlifter. I was also a lot lighter than said weightlifter would be, which gave me a fantastic strength-to-weight ratio.

So when I turned that sprint into a running leap, I got some spectacular air. I cleared the fence at the bottom of the hill with ease, and landed on the busway around the same time I heard a fourth gunshot. I didn’t see where it hit, but it didn’t hit me, so I didn’t care.

Jumping is not the product of grace. But landing is, and falling from that far up onto asphalt sucked hard. But while I was a shit gymnast, I used to be a pretty good judoka, and did enough falling that I was still decent at this particular facet of it. I turned the fall into a front roll, and it still sucked hard but it didn’t actually hurt me. I pushed myself back upright with more grace than I was expecting, and kept running. Ahead of me, I could see Raincloud scrambling up and over the fence. I was winded after the fall, but now I was running on dry asphalt. I handled uneven ground well, but an actual highway was still much easier. I was running pretty damn fast still by human standards.

She started running beside me, and I didn’t slow down. Siberian huskies also run pretty fast by human standards. She wasn’t fully grown, but as a burst of speed she was already able to keep up at this speed.

We wouldn’t be able to do this very long. The busway was absolutely not intended for pedestrian use, and getting pasted by a bus would not be any less fatal than a bullet to the head. It would arguably be a more entertaining way to die, but on the whole I’d still rather not.

But for the moment, it was an open road with no obstructions and good footing, and that made it a hell of a lot less dangerous than where we’d just been. I kept running. I didn’t hear any more gunshots, and I was guessing that we’d broken the shooter’s effective line of sight, but I wasn’t slowing down yet, just in case.

We kept going as long as I felt I could risk, and then hopped the fence on the other side of the busway.

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