Chapter 21: A Car Battery

  Time stretched on in the hideout. The early summer heat beat down on the desert, fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and the air filled with techie bickering. In truth, Miya tuned out when Amanda and Rob announced at least a day lay between them and completion. Miya stood to stretch her legs as Chris tried to play peacemaker, wandering over to the other end of the open main room of the hideout for a drink of water. Not a moment later, Ben joined her, yawning wide as he stood next to her.

  “So, this Don guy, yeah?” said Ben. “I dunno ‘bout you, but I’m bored as fuck. Cars are workin’. Guns are clean. Got a plan on how to deal with him?”

  Miya bit her lip. Now that I think about it. “Not particularly.”

  “He’s got a shop, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the setup look like in there?” asked Ben.

  “Some small, dingy little adobe building. He’s got a single bathroom, an office with like a desk and nothing else, and the main floor. Not much else,” answered Miya.

  “He live nearby?” He fixed her with an intense stare, even as his ever-present smile flickered on his lips.

  “I don’t know where he lives, but he always drives a car to his shop. I don’t know what kind of hobbies he has or anything either.”

  “Could bust his car windows. He comes out, we nab him there,” suggested Ben.

  “Yeah, but he’ll be coming out expecting a fight.”

  “So?” asked Ben.

  “He’ll come out ready to thrash someone. And we’ll be in thrashing distance. Would you want to fight an angry mage or surprise one?”

  “Well, he’d recognize you. I’ve ain’t been in a magic shop before. Would I stick out if I waltzed in?”

  Miya rolled her eyes and explained, “He’s got all kinds of kitschy tourist shit. He’s tan so he pretends to be a native mage, though I’m pretty sure he’s Italian. Half of the things he sells aren’t even magic, not that any non-mage would know.”

  “This was your teacher?” asked Ben.

  Miya shrugged and said, “It was an informal thing.”

  “Alright.” Ben’s eyes flickered over towards Olivia. “Want some fresh air?”

  She bit her lower lip. Why her? Wait, she can hear us from over there if she wants to. We aren’t really including the others already. As long as we don’t do anything stupid. “Sure.”

  With the others still consumed by arguments, Miya and Ben slipped out the front door. They leaned side by side against the north facing wall in the shade. A quarter mile away and up a barren dirt hill, the roar of the morning rush hour traffic dwindled as the morning shifted to noon. She couldn’t see a cloud.

  “So how do we do this?” asked Miya.

  After a moment’s consideration, Ben replied, “I go in, lookin’ like a tourist.”

  Miya shot upright as a thought occurred. “Do you burn easily?” she asked, interrupting him.

  “Not particularly. Why?” replied Ben.

  “OK. Well, at least stand in the sun and sweat for a bit. We can grab a water bottle from a gas station to sell it. Do you think a fanny pack is overkill?”

  He snorted. “I gotta draw the line somewhere. I do have some dignity.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “OK, I go in lookin’ like a red-faced tourist. Look around for a bit. Is Don chatty?”

  “Nope,” said Miya with a shake of her head. “He’s going to be sitting behind the register. He’ll get up to make a sale though.”

  “Charmer, huh? How does he do business like that?”

  “Not great.”

  “I look around, maybe don’t small talk him too much. Draw him out from his counter with some questions about some thingy. Knock him out when I get the chance. We need to haul him out or just lock the front door?”

  “He’s got the keys on his belt; I’ve seen which one. The shop isn’t super open or easy to see into.”

  “You come in, we do what we need to, an’ get out. Easy day.”

  “Alright,” said Miya with a slow nod. “I’m liking this.”

  Ben cast a glance at the door behind them. “Wanna leave the others outta this?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m assumin’ you’re gonna make the fucker pay and I ain’t talkin’ money. But we got two cops with us, Rob’s got the techie bug, an’ Olivia don’t got the stomach ‘til her blood gets runnin’. We may as well get stuff done while the techies do their techie shit.”

  Miya took a moment to parse his rapid speech and consider. He’s got a good point. “When?”

  “Now?” he said, dangling the keys of their stolen secondary car.

  A thought in the back of her mind stopped Miya from agreeing outright. “What if they need me for something for their science project?”

  Ben grinned wide and cocked an eyebrow. “You really think the bitchy whiz kids are gonna hash anything out in the next couple days?”

  Miya let out a short laugh. Bitchy? One of them is literally your identical brother. “Let’s do it.”

  ***

  Miya and Ben spent barely an hour staking out Don’s shop. Everything about the freestanding adobe building was as she remembered, save the green skull graffiti tag covering one of the sides. The area didn’t quite qualify as a shantytown, but close enough to make little difference.

  He turns off the normal alarm when he’s in the shop, Miya thought to herself from the passenger seat of their parked car, half a block and now out of sight of their target. Magic is a bit trickier. Using hostile magic on inanimate objects in there might horribly backfire with all the other magic stuff in inanimate objects he’s trying to sell. We’ll see. If I tamper with it before we go in, Don will know. And if anything goes wrong, just kill him and run, fuck everything else.

  They spotted Don’s beat up old car parked out back on their first circle around the area, but no others. He occasionally took special orders from clients for various items, though she only ever saw them arrive at opening. Without the Open sign in the front door, a casual passerby might have thought the store closed.

  She gave a reddened and impatient Ben a nod from the shade of their air-conditioned car. He returned her nod and sauntered off around the corner of a building, doing his best to keep his clothes riding up and revealing Amanda’s shock baton hidden at the small of his back. Little else remained for her to do but wait for his signal. So much waiting, this sucks, she thought to herself as she stared at her cell in anticipation.

  The buzz, when it finally came two minutes later, sent her jumping out of her seat. It’s finally happening. She put the car in drive and pulled into the dirt lot behind Don’s shop. Even with the shot of adrenaline, she struggled to haul the duffel bag they’d prepared out from the trunk. Her arms burned by the time she walked, as non-chalantly as possible for any onlookers, the short distance from the car to the shop with the majority of the weight onto her hip.

  Ben spread his arms wide as she stumbled into the familiar, dingy shop with a cocky grin and baton dangling from one hand. “Welcome! Got your custom piece ready to go,” he said over the ringing of the bell above the door.

  Except for a pair of shelves knocked off the walls, their contents strewn across the floor in whatever scuffle happened between Don and Ben, the dim magic shop brought back a flood of memories for Miya. There are the books. I might as well pick up a couple of those once we’re done here. Maybe I can help Olivia with one. There’s the meditation section. Even the dust doesn’t get disturbed by the AC. And he’s still got that gaudy brass star thing that he claims wards of spirits but really does absolutely nothing! I told him it’s hideous and would never sell. The sight of several crossed-out prices beneath it brought a smile to her face for a brief moment.

  Maneuvering her way past three foot high Native bird statue who’s eyes , Miya finally found her target. The smile vanished from her face. She stared down at Don sprawled out on the floor as the bag slammed into the floor, fists clenched. Motherfucker. I’ve still got wires in me because of you.

  “You OK? Look kinda sick,” said Ben with a sidelong glance in her direction, breaking her train of thought.

  Miya grimaced. Bad memories. “I’m fine.”

  “Alright. He got any magic-y shit on him? I dunno what I’d be lookin’ for.”

  They turned Don over, face up, revealing a middle aged man with dark splotchy skin and a beer gut an inch or two more prominent through his button down shirt than the last time Miya saw him months ago.

  “Hand me your iron knife?” she asked Ben, twisting to hold her hand out to him. He placed the handle of the small knife in her palm. “Just in case.”

  She reached for her magic. The mundanity of the world stripped away, revealing the motivating force in all things. Streams of magic, of possibility, wove their way through everything from the complex lattice in the wooden shelves, to the knitted scales in ceramic tile floors. All the curios of the shop, though, set her on edge. Dead magic in stasis, unable to change, unable to flow, their creator lying unconscious at her feet. She could summon a stream, poke the prophetic brass and electrum clock to her right, and not even Don could say what would happen.

  It all cut out around the iron knife in her hand. The glow, the possibilities, the streams all dulled to nothing round the knife. Imperfections kept the thing from total magic invisibility. Even Rob couldn’t go down and remove every molecule, and if he did the blade would be too brittle to use. Even so, she’d never seen a greater drain of magical energy than the unassuming little bit of metal in her hand.

  Don showed no signs of magical tampering in himself, or his clothes. He never told her his own specialty, but magic alterations of a living being backfired despite the best of intentions. His faded tan slacks hid nothing but his own skinny pale legs, his sweat stained button-down shirt only an uncomfortable volume of chest hair.

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  She exhaled. “I think we’re good. He’s a shopkeeper, not a soldier.”

  “Cool,” said Ben.

  She grabbed one of Don’s legs and helped Ben drag him to the back of the shop, past dirty shelves full of old Western themed knick-knacks.

  “You can grab that bag. Fuck it’s heavy,” said Miya. Ben laughed as he teleported over, knelt, and opened the zipper. He slipped on his silver comedy mask and tossed a roll of duct tape to her.

  With Don duct taped to a chair, she headed back to the entrance as Ben put the car battery, the source of her sore shoulder, off to the side. A couple people walked past outside, but no one bothered to check out the shop. Her phone buzzed as she flipped the Open sign to the Closed side, then pulled down the blinds of the front door. She checked the number. This won’t take long, Chris can wait, she thought as she slipped the phone back into her pocket.

  She returned to Don and rifled through his pockets, emptying them. Not much in this wallet. Keys, I’ll hold onto those. Nothing else. Her phone buzzed again. Damn it, what? Chris sent her a text. “Where are you two?”

  “Somethin’ wrong?” asked Ben, eyeing the phone in her hands.

  “Nomad is asking where we are.”

  Ben shrugged. “We’re technically grownups.”

  Chris isn’t my fucking dad. Miya slipped the phone back into her pocket as she said, “True. This shouldn’t take too long.”

  A low, slow groan floated from Don’s throat. Perfect timing.

  “Hey there, Mr. Kidnapper!” exclaimed Ben, walking over and squatting down to eyelevel with the man. Don groaned again in response, though this time with more energy. “You awake? Feelin’ alright?”

  “Who the fuck are you?” demanded Don.

  Miya stood directly behind Don, arms crossed. She noticed, around his bound hands, magic streams beginning to weave. She drew the iron knife. A non-mage could get far with such a weapon against a mage. A mage with such a weapon could be far more surgical. She scraped the edge of the knife against his wrist like a shave. The magic would simply reroute around an iron rod or cudgel, but an edge was made for cutting. Don’s stream writhed and dissipated, sending his hand into spasms.

  Ben’s head twitched towards Miya. She circled her hand in a “continue” motion.

  He gave a slight nod as Don tried to rise from the chair. “The hell?” he snapped at Ben. He tried to twist his head backwards at Miya. “What was that?”

  Ben grabbed Don’s dark grey hair and yanked it back towards him. “Name’s Skulker,” he replied, releasing him.

  Don took another moment to struggle against the duct tape before saying, “I’ve never heard of you. Let me go, kid, this won’t end well.”

  “Nah. You an’ me, we’re gonna have a chat.” Ben pulled up the office chair that had sat behind the cash register. On it he placed the strongest car battery the auto parts store on the way had. “Behold.”

  “What? You think hollow threats are going to make me talk? I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I promise I’ve got friends. You’ll regret whatever it is you’re about to do.” Playing dumb. Wait, no. He has no idea Ben is with me. He just knows someone is behind him. He has no idea what this is for.

  “An’ what is it you think I’m about to do? Notice anythin’? No wires. No cables,” said Ben in a hushed voice. “An’ you might be thinkin’ I’m just gonna splash acid in your face. Wrong!”

  With a grunt, Ben wrapped both hands around the battery. He swung it over his head and sent it crashing down on Don’s knee. Don let out a scream as his leg spasmed and something snapped. Fuck, we forgot to buy the cables. We may as well have done this with a rock. Ben let the battery drop a few inches back onto the chair and produced the shock baton. Oh yeah, I guess we can use the baton. Don recovered his composure after a couple minutes, though his hands trembled.

  “Why?” gasped Don. “What have I done to you.”

  “Not him,” said Miya, walking into his field of view and savoring every word. “Me.”

  Don took a couple seconds to react to the sound of her voice. He mouthed, “What?” silently.

  Miya nodded to Ben. “Thanks. You want to check his office?”

  “No problem. I’ll be around if you need me,” said Ben, handing her the baton and wheeling the chair and car battery out of her way.

  “Hi, Don,” said Miya, once Ben left.

  “Miya? Where have you been?” said Don as Miya sat down across from him.

  She tapped the butt of the baton against his broken knee. He sucked in air. “Oh, out and about. You know. You seem sweaty all of a sudden.”

  “Yeah, I’m tied up,” he managed. “What do you expect? Come on, let me out. Why are you with that guy?”

  “Why do you think? Come on, you’ve got a brain, right?”

  “I don’t fucking know-”

  She cut him off. “Answer the question.” Enough fucking games. I want to hear you say what you did, even if I have to drag it out of you volt by volt.

  Don stared at her for a moment. “I. Don’t. Know.”

  She jabbed a thumb into his broken knee. He grimaced, but didn’t break eye contact with Miya. “I. Don’t. Believe you,” she said in a near whisper.

  His brown eyes hardened. He leaned back as much as he could in his chair and kept his mouth shut. Great! Miya tapped his knee again, this time with the business end of the baton. He convulsed. A burning scent filled the air as the baton incinerated his pants around his knee.

  “Answer me,” she said, her voice flat and calm. “Why did you sell me out?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Another knee tap.

  “Fuck!” he yelled. He spat in her face. She wiped it off.

  “Answer me.”

  Another knee tap.

  He screamed.

  “Answer me.”

  Another knee tap.

  “I did it!” he screamed. There it is.

  “Why?”

  Don glared. “They offered me more than you ever could.”

  Miya caught the baton just before it could slip out of her fingers. “Money? That’s it? I spent months strapped to a fucking operating table for money? You betrayed me for that?”

  “What was there to betray?” Don finally snapped, now straining against the tape as he tried to shove his reddened face into hers. “You think I want to be sitting here in this dead end bullshit job, hoping some street trash shoplifted enough that week to help me pay my bills? I’m a mage! I could be so much more if I wasn’t held back by bullshit. Bullshit bills and bullshit taxes and bullshit people. Bullshit people everywhere. Flakes who don’t pay up for the bullshit I make them and punks like you who can’t afford shit. You think we were friends? I took your pocket change because I didn’t have a choice.”

  He gave up on trying to tear through the tape restraining him. Silence reigned for a moment, broken only by his panting.

  “That’s it, huh?” asked Miya, loosening the white-knuckle grip on the baton she’d developed over the course of his rant.

  “That’s it,” replied Don.

  She took a deep breath. “Now, what to do with you?” she asked herself aloud.

  “That wasn’t me. Whatever they did, that wasn’t me,” he said, realizing the hole his words dug him in. Miya saw red for a moment.

  She shoved a finger in his face. “I spent months strapped to a hospital bed so they could cut me up because of you. You really think I’m just going to take that lying down?”

  “Whatever it is you think you’re going to do, you’ll pay for it,” he said, his voice ragged and desperate. Bark bark, little doggy.

  “I know. But I’ve got something planned for you.”

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” spat Don. “They’ll be here any minute.” That’s cute.

  “That’s nice. This won’t take long at all.” She gathered magic around her hands. “I was going to have your own skull lobotomize you, but I’ve thought of something else. Fun fact. You know where blood comes from? Marrow. Bone marrow. It’s that stuff I’m permanently burning out right now in your bones. And my friend has a lot of knives.” She motioned to Ben, who’d taken a position behind Don.

  Realization dawned on Don’s face. She folded her hands and leaned back, never touching him. “No, no, no. You bitch,” screamed Don, thrashing against his restraints.

  Ben cut his screaming short by swinging the car battery against his head. It collided with Don’s skull, something snapped, and he stopped moving. She spat on his bloodied face.

  “That’s done,” said Miya. Finally.

  “Bueno,” said Ben, tossing the bloody car battery on the ground with a heavy thud.

  “You didn’t just shoot him?” she asked.

  “We bought the damn battery, I’m gonna use the damn battery. Got somethin’ in the back you might like.”

  Miya nodded as she pulled aside the ratty old curtain leading to the back room of Don’s shop. A single fluorescent light panel lit up the back. A couple flies flew off from the light before buzzing around it. Her nose wrinkled. Coffee stains marred the old, faded counters. The trashcan in the corner overflowed with papers and crumpled food wrappers.

  Ben lead her to a cabinet to the right of the room. An open safe took up the whole bottom shelf. Miya knelt to take a look. Hello there. She reached in and withdrew two small bars of metal, no longer than her finger. Yellow metal, far denser than she expected, with a symbol stamped on its surface.

  “Is this gold?” she asked Ben, a growing smile on her face.

  “Think so,” replied Ben. “Figured I’d have the mage check to make sure the other mage didn’t booby trap it or some shit.”

  “Ours now!”

  “Hell yeah.” He leaned in and examined the symbol stamped on one of the bars. Miya did the same wit the other. A key, its flanked etched with circuitry, lay on the bullion. “This is Overlord’s logo, ain’t it?”

  “That it is,” said Miya with a shrug. Whatever, metal is metal. Fuck yeah. How much is this going to be worth?

  “Gonna get the gas cans outta the car. Lend a hand?” His tone sounded more thoughtful than joyous. They pocketed their gold and splashed gasoline over the interior of the shop. Crime scenes are much harder to analyze when they’re a pile of ash and rubble.

  “Somethin’s botherin’ me,” said Ben as he heaved gas over a central shelving stand. “You can’t just fuckin’ spend gold like cash.”

  “You can pawn it. It’s gold! You can turn it into money somehow. That’s what its for,” replied Miya.

  “It’s stamped with the world’s most wanted man’s logo. Who’d touch it?”

  “There’s always someone greedy enough.”

  “Or he expects it to be spendable later.”

  They finished outside. Miya tossed the last two cans through the opened door as Ben produced a lighter.

  “Wanna do the honors?”

  “Fuck yeah.” She lit the lighter, then tossed it into the door as they both backed up. The gas caught fire instantly.

  She watched the dark smoke rise. The magic of something didn’t agree with the flames; something started an inhuman shriek from within before cutting off.

  “Outta here. This ain’t subtle,” said Ben, looking around. She nodded mutely. “You know he woulda told you anythin’ to make the pain stop, yeah?” said Ben.

  “I am aware,” replied Miya. “But the way he snapped, that felt personal, you kn-” The asphault trembled and rose like a wave, cutting off both her talking and them from the car. Shit, what?

  Ben grabbed Miya’s shoulder right before she collided with the now distended wall of parking lot. “Down,” he yelled, pulling her to the ground behind a dumpster. Something exploded very close by right as she hit the dirt. It took her a moment to refocus her eyes and for the ringing in her ears to recede into the background. She gritted her teeth to distract herself from the pain.

  Ben hauled her to her feet as people on the other side of the dumpster began shooting. Where the fuck did these guys come from? “Come on, come on,” he urged her, pulling out his own pistol and returning fire. The incoming bullets hammered against the metal of the dumpster, beneath the far louder cracks of Ben firing. The heat from the shop they just set on fire began to rise.

  Right. She pulled out her own pistol and turned around, squeezing off a couple shots. Then another man jumped out from behind a corner and tossed a glowing rock. Tendrils of magical power shot out from it once it hit the ground, anchoring it to dozens of points around itself.

  “Magic bomb,” she screamed at Ben, grabbing him and pulling him down as a tendril he couldn’t see shot through the air overhead.

  The glowing rock imploded. Masonry, gravel, the dumpster, everything gripped by the rock warped. Some brick twisted in a spiral as they pulled inward. Asphalt turned to dust, and the dumpster was shoved a good three feet back, knocking down Ben and Miya.

  “What the fuck is the Baron doing here?” demanded Miya as they climbed back to their feet.

  “Can’t stay here. That way,” Ben yelled back, pointing away from the gunmen, between the wall of the shop and the brand new magically created wall of asphalt. The flames of their arson, freed by the bomb, began to lick ever closer.

  Heads down, they hustled away from both the gunmen and their getaway car. Ben turned to make sure no one followed them through the dust left behind by the bomb. As she sprinted, Miya noticed about four cars blocking the street ahead. More gunmen lay in wait behind them. Goddamn it.

  “Stop!” she screamed over her shoulder, throwing out her arm to catch a distracted Ben.

  The hail of bullets shattered all of the windows. Ben whirled around and ducked as Miya dropped to the ground once again, taking cover as best she could behind a wall.

  “Fuck!” roared Ben, holding his hand close to his chest.

  He crawled over to her. She pulled noticed blood spurting from his hand. Shit.

  “Put pressure on that,” she yelled, holding her pistol above the wall and blindly firing a couple times.

  “Fuck!” he replied.

  She stiff armed him against the wall, and shot at two men trying to approach. That just bought us maybe ten seconds.

  She grabbed Ben’s arm. More platelets for you. I’ve got a basic healing method, maybe that’ll slow the bleeding. “Pressure,” she repeated to Ben.

  “Fuck!” he replied. Fuck, what do we do? Fuck.

  They heard a roar and a scream. Bullets stopped shooting towards them. Wait. That was familiar. Miya poked her head around the corner. Olivia had torn up one car, trying to get at the two men behind it. Another of the gunmen lay bleeding in the street, crawling away. Where the fuck did you come from? Also, yay, we’re not going to die now!

  To Miya’s right, liquid Nomad slammed another gunman into another car, scattering the remaining gunmen. An armored Delta behind him tossed something, and two went down convulsing. Nomad moved to backup Olivia against the other dozen gunmen as Delta rushed directly towards Miya.

  “The hell is going on here?” said Delta as she reached them. What do you think?

  “Ben’s hurt,” Miya shouted back over the gunfire. A ball of fire sailed across the street, prompting another roar from Olivia.

  “Fuck!” he added helpfully. He had a wad of his shirt pressed tight against his hand, which he curled his whole body around.

  “Shit,” said Delta, producing a strip of bandages from one of many pockets she had worked into her armor. “We’ve got to get out of here. Cops are en route.”

  “Come on, this way,” Nomad called out to Miya, waving her over.

  She ran to catch up with him. Behind him, Delta lead Ben around the other, now bullet ridden building. Olivia circled overhead as Miya and Nomad joined Ben and Delta at Rob’s truck.

  “How’s Ben?” she asked Delta as Rob started the truck.

  “I’m alive. Take a look,” he said, holding out his hand.

  He had two ragged bloody stumps where his middle and ring fingers should have been. Fuck me. She checked over her shoulder at the gunmen charging towards them. We can’t go back and get them. Fuck.