http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2010/03/19/birthday-story-part-1/
http://www.ilona-andrews.com/?p=4288
I didn’t forget about the birthday story for the forum. I’m working on it between editing BAYOU MOON. Unfortunately, so far it’s an epic fail that refuses to come together in any kind of reasonable manner. This all might be scrapped and I might start over.
Anyhow, Part 1. It’s set after MAGIC BURNS before MAGIC STRIKES.
There are days when time slowed down. It dripped past me, painfully viscous, like cold molasses. Today was one of those days.
I glanced at the watch hooked into the loop of my jeans. I used to wear my watch on my wrist, like normal people, but a few months back I’d ran into a pyromanic armed with a salamander and discovered that watches, even plastic ones, had a tendency to get really hot and burn the hell out of you, especially when hit with a direct blast of salamander fire.
“Two hours till the end of my shift,” I told Marigold.
Marigold, being a mule, remained unimpressed with my stunning time-telling superpowers.
Around us the ruined city crawled by, a collection of crumbling wrecks and new sturdy buildings, stark in the darkness of early morning. Here and there pale blue lights of feylanterns illuminated steel bars guarding the windows. Magic flowed through the city, like an invisible river, smothering car engines, choking guns, feeding mages with power. In the next few hours it would vanish as abruptly as it appeared, and the technology would once again reassert itself. Electric lights would come on and every punk with a gun would think himself king. Magic came and went in waves. Nobody knew how strong the waves would be or how long they would last.
That’s why I carried a sword. It always worked.
“I’m in a melancholy mood, Marigold. Would you like to know why?”
In all likelihood, the only thing Marigold wanted to know would be when I’d get out of the saddle and return her to the stables of the Order of Merciful Aid, where the Order’s grooms would wash the bonnacon blood off her back. The bonnacons looked just like regular bulls and cows with the exception of their inwardly turned horns. They seemed like perfectly reasonable animals, until a dog happened to bark three miles away or a stray cloud in the sky caught their attention, and then the perfectly reasonable animal would plant himself where he stood and proceed to unload a twelve foot long jet of corrosive feces, burning everything behind it. Bonnacon dung could literally peel the paint off a car. The one whose blood currently decorated Marigold’s back somehow found his way into a herd of cows on the southern edge of the city and scorched the hides off a dozen prized heifers before the owner of the ranch called the Order of Merciful Aid. The Order sent me to resolve the problem. Here I was, six hours later, riding back, covered in blood, my new boots burned with bonnacon shit, and I wanted to talk, whether Marigold liked it or not.
“Today will be an interesting day, Marigold. Today I turn twenty five.”
The mule sighed.
“My sentiments exactly. Here I am, twenty five years old. My mother quarter of the century dead. My stepfather ten years dead. Greg, my guardian, six months dead. Everybody is dead. No friends, no family. No birthday cake, unless I make it myself. Nobody to meet me at the door.”
No response. Mules made for excellent listeners but when it came to making sympathetic noises, they failed in an epic way.
“I’d done a lot of things in my twenty five years. Some nice, some not. Mostly not. But I always tried to do the right thing. I work for the Order, which is all about preservation of the law and peace. Sure, I’m not a knight, but I get to help people with their problems. I work hard and I pull long hours. You’d think I’d have something more to show for it than an empty house and an absent birthday cake. You have to admit, it does kind of suck.”
Voices. Coming from the left, off the street.
I turned Marigold and guided her down the alley. The street widened around a lone lamp post crowned with a feylantern. Three guys flanked an old man, pushing him toward the wall. A hold up.
The oldest of the punks held a crossbow, two others carried clubs studded with nails. The old man’s back pressed against the bricks. He wore a dark BDU jacket. His grey hair fell on his shoulders.
“Easy now, grandpa. Easy.”
“How long?” the guy on the left asked.
“He should be almost here.”
My hand strayed toward my saber in a sheath on my back. Normally I’d pull out Slayer and talk shit to scare them away, but tonight I didn’t feel like it. Tonight I felt like hurting someone.
“I don’t like this, man. I don’t like this.” The third punk glanced down the street. “It’s too bright here.”
The shooter glared at him. “Don’t be a fucking bitch. It’ll be over in a minute.”
No ordinary hold up. Oh well.
I pulled a throwing knife and hurled it. It sliced through the air and bit into the shooter’s back.
He screamed. The others stared at him.
“As I was saying, Marigold.” I slid off the saddle. “You’d think that I’d have something more to show for my effort. So I decided, instead of staying in the city tonight, I’m going back to Savannah, where my dad’s house is. That way I won’t be stuck celebrating my quarter of the century in my dead guardian’s apartment. ”
The punks stared at me. The moment of hesitation cost them – I had time to close the distance.
The shooter snapped out of it and whirled to me, squeezing the trigger. I hit him in the throat. The crossbow bolt went wide. He crumbled. The guy to the left swung his club. Too slow. I dodged, letting the club whistle past me, and hammered a punch to his kidney. He gasped. I hurled him aside and caught the third punk’s club, as it came down. I gripped the club and pulled him to me. “What’s next?”
He gulped. A young guy, twenty at most.
“What are you going to do, hotshot?”
He dropped the club and swung at me. I saw the punch from a mile away. He missed and hit his fist against the wall.
“Want a second shot? Let’s try one more time!”
He hit again and smashed his knuckles into the brick with a wail. I slipped out of the way, grasped his shirt and drove his head into the wall. Cartilage crunched. Blood drenched his upper lip. He screamed and dashed into the night. His buddy followed.
“That’s the problem with me, Marigold. I was raised for a purpose – to be the best killer I could be.” So I could kill my real father when he finally figured out I existed.
I strode to the gunman, curled on the pavement, put my foot against his back and pulled out the knife. He cried out. Red gushed from his back, drenching the shirt. I’d angled the knife, and the wound was shallow. It would be sore as hell and take a long time to heal, but he wouldn’t die from it. Too bad it was over so quickly. Barely took the edge off.
I crouched by him and yanked his head up by the hair so I could look in his face. “What’s the story?”
“Martinez,” he gasped. “Pays us. He’s got flesh-eaters.”
I let go of his hair. “Who’s Martinez?”
“He runs a freak kennel. He sells monsters.”
Freak kennels acquired supernatural creatures, “trained” them, turning them vicious if they weren’t there already, and sold them to the highest bidder. Having a couple of pit bulls on a chain was no longer fashionable among the thug elite. Now nothing less than a crocotta or a baby wyvern would do.
“What kind of flesh-eaters Martinez has?”
“Red,” he said. “With big teeth.”
Well that narrowed things down. “Aha. And you’ve been feeding people to them?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“How many?”
He shook his head.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll hurt you.”
He looked into my eyes and turned white. “Two,” he said hoarsely. “We brought him two.”
Two people dead, eaten by red flesh-eaters. Few things were worse than being eaten alive.
My ears caught the sound of the heavy footsteps behind me.
The thug spat blood. “It doesn’t matter. He’s here.”
I winked at him. “Don’t go anywhere. I’d hate to have to find you.”
The sound of the steps came closer, emanating from the dark street. I rose, unsheathing my sword.
The old man slumped against the wall. Odd, he should’ve cleared out by now. Probably in shock.
“Sir, stay behind me.”
I put myself between him and the sound.
A man emerged into the light. Tall and heavy, too heavy to maneuver fast, he wore a short coat, open in the front to reveal a thick gold chain wrapped with a smaller chain of silver. A miniature silver skull with a corona of spikes hung off the chain. The skull eyes radiated pale blue light. Hello, Martinez.
The man stared at me. Hispanic, about twenty five or so. Middle-aged in street thug years – they didn’t have a long life expectancy. Round face, mustache, scraggly goatee, more fuzz on the chin rather than a real beard.
His hand stroked the skull. The eyes flared brighter.
Two beasts trotted out of the darkness. Blood-red, with ragged, blotchy fur, they were the size of a large leopard. Their forelimbs bulged with thick muscle, shaped more like the oversized arms than cat limbs. The equally thick hindquarters were definitely feline. Wide, reptilian paws tipped with black claws gripped the ground. Their heads sat low on thick necks. Each carried a dozen short chains tipped with metal skulls. The chains were hooked straight through the pelt and the skull eyes glowed with blue.
The beasts’ muzzles were awful. They stared at me with unblinking black eyes. Wide hyena mouths gaped open, showing rows of conical fangs embedded in ruby gums. The eyes and teeth were bad enough, but their noses were shockingly human, forcing a comparison with a face, and the impact made nausea squirm through me.
The wind brought a noxious stench of old urine. I looked closer. Yep, dark yellow stains covering the pelts on the underside on both beasts. Someone kept them confined in small cages. They spent their life laying in their own excrement.
I took a step back. The creatures followed. That’s right, come with me into the light, show me your tails…
A long flexible tail curved up from their hindquarters, terminating in a wide flat cone. Rings of muscle layered the tail, making it look segmented. Manticores. Not full grown, adolescents, mangy and battered. There should’ve been poisonous barbs on the tails. Someone pulled them out, causing the beasts excruciating pain, and I had a feeling I knew who that someone was.
“You sonovabitch.”
I flicked my sword, warming up my wrist, and started toward Martinez.
He clutched at the skull. His voice intoned dully without inflection, “Kill. Kill. Kill.”
Blue light splayed from the skulls in manticores’ hides. The creatures screamed in unison, like two hoarse trumpets. The left manticore dropped to the ground, crying. The right lunged at me, its eyes mad with pain.
It came at me, flinging spit. I raised my sword.
The manticore lunged. I sidestepped and slashed across the thick neck. Blood drenched me. I’d severed the jugular. The manticore twisted. Huge teeth grazed my arm. I dodged, once, twice. The manticore snapped again, slower this time. Blood drenched its neck and side, spurting in thick gushes with every heart beat.
I turned my back on it and marched to its handler.
Martinez backed away from me, his hand clutching the skull. “Kill, kill, kill…” He scuttled over to the remaining mantiocre and kicked it. It cried out, still caught in the web of skulls.
Scumbag. I flicked the blood off my sword.
He grabbed the skull on his neck and jerked it up, clutching it between the palms of his hands. The blue glow blazed, two dots of white sparking inside the skeletal orbits. Pain skewered me in a hot rush of heat. It carved its way down my legs and exploded into the soles of my feet. Walking turned into an agony, as if each step sliced me with a dozen jagged razorblades. I grit my teeth and kept coming.
Martinez pulled out a bowie knife and stabbed at me. I dodged and sliced across his gut. He screeched and crumpled down. I’d put a lot of power into the thrust. He wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.
I leaned down. He stared at me with bulging eyes. I grasped the chain and jerked it off him, ripping the skull out of his fingers. The blue glow vanished. The pain slowly drained out of my legs. Behind me the remaining manticore whined softly.
I turned to it. The beast hugged the ground. The skulls on the chains stuck through its skin were dull, little more than painful trinkets now, but it refused to rise. I approached it, moving slowly.
I had to kill it.
The manticore whimpered.
“It’s alright,” I lied to her. “It’s okay. Stay there. Now’s that’s a good girl.”
The manticore shuddered on the ground. I couldn’t let her loose. Not in a city full of people. Manticores were carnivorous. Their name translated from Persian as man-eater. It wasn’t her fault, but I couldn’t let her go.
I stopped over her and raised my sword, looking for the quickest target. Something that wouldn’t hurt. God, you could see every bone the sad thing owned. The tops of her hips stuck out through the red hide.
The manticore raised her head, glanced at me, and licked my boot.
“Damn it!”
The manticore shrunk from me and slinked away. I growled and twisted a loop out of Martinez’s chain, working it into a makeshift choke collar. “Come here, sweetheart.”
The manticore backed away from me.
“Come on, who is a good… beastie?”
The manticore hesitated.
I took another step. She shied to the left. That’s the last thing I needed, to chase the stupid creature across the city.
The manticore froze with one paw in the air, staring past me, mesmerized. I turned. The old man had stepped away from the wall. His eyes glowed with pale red, like two pink tormalines. Within the glow, his pupils tracked me like narrow slits of onyx. He opened his mouth and I saw a forest of sharp needle teeth.
Not good.
The red shine beckoned, luring me closer. It felt old, so old, and cold somehow… I’d never seen anything like it. I raised my foot to take a step toward her and caught myself.
“Good now,” he said. His voice was deep and throaty. “You put chain on her now.”
His voice splashed me like a bucket of iced water. I slipped the chain on the manticore’s neck and wrapped the other end around my hand. The old man bowed to me. I bowed back, because I couldn’t think of anything better to do. He turned, drawing his old army jacket tighter about himself, and melted into the darkness.
“That was creepy,” the thug on the ground volunteered.
“No shit.”
The manticore tugged on the chain, realized she was caught, and licked my hand.
Great. Just great. I growled and went to collect the thug. I had to call PAD and let them know I had two dead bodies and a slightly damaged murderer for them to play with.
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