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fiction: serial fiction
the crown: book two, chapter seven
The dust from the smashed vent hung in the air like a broken promise, and a disturbing stillness held sway. James crept slowly ahead, squinting and trying to detect movement in the swaying airborne sediment.
Nikolas Manos had a considerable amount of experience in low light environments, and detected James the second he came around the corner, despite the diminished visibility and lackluster illumination. Cupping his right hand as it held his gun, he maneuvered himself down the hall soundlessly, his teeth ground against one another as he concentrated.
Mai Shen, of course, heard both of them coming, more comfortable with her senses over the centuries than either of these mortals could ever hope to be. She stood, as still as an abandoned temple, debating whether or not she could slip past James without too much drama. She debated the benefits of melting herself into an amorphous mass of hair, slithering along the floorboards with the submachineguns held within her form. She was confident she could get past James without him noticing, but the Manos hunter was another matter altogether, especially trying to carry two unfamiliar items. Making a choice between speed and being able to shoot back held her in place, considering.
A hallway away, Alexander's normal joviality was gone -- the sleek, efficient killer that lie beneath was left inside Alexander's expensive but durable clothes. His stance mirrored Nikolas' as he crept down the hall.
Nikolas had a lot better chance -- Tonya'd taken the opportunity to run in and hold herself suspended above the hallway, forming a human bridge with her arms and legs ten feet over the ground. She calmly observed Alexander as he approached, considering his clearly unusual weapon. Larger than a .45, that thing's almost a cannon, she pondered. Separating the killer from his toy would have to be her first priority.
Things started happening very fast. Tonya hurled herself at Alexander, who was stunned to have missed anything alive in the hall, and got off two shots at Tonya. One tagged her in the left calf as the other sang its murderous song, flying by her right ear. She swung her left leg and booted the gun mercilessly, sending it flying behind her as she landed, flat on her back, in front of Alexander. Before he could form a counter, she windmilled her legs and caught him in the chest, knocking him backwards.
As the shots were fired, James raised his head, calling out, "Baby, you all right?" Nikolas smirked as he kneeled and took aim, and Mai Shen was shaken from her considerations. She leapt into the hall at knee level and fired with both guns at where she remembered Nikolas being. She hadn't noticed the change in Manos' altitude and missed him completely with the gun in her left hand, winging his temple with a single round from the right. James cursed and went airborne, following where he thought the bullets were, bowling into Manos seconds after he got off three rounds at Mai Shen.
On the other side of the building, Tonya started getting up, feeling her thigh going numb as the acid struggled against her own resistance to injury. "That almost hurt, you little monster," she spat out, pushing herself towards Alexander.
Alexander was more offended than hurt. He deftly ran for the wall, propelling himself off of it with one leg and swinging around to kick Tonya in the jaw, which rocked her but sent a shockwave of pain up his thigh. Gazing at her with surprise, he said "I don't know who you are, but I'd have to assume that you're one of those cursed immortals, come to help your friend."
"I'm nobody you need to know," Tonya growled, really angry for the first time in decades, maybe centuries. "but I'm gonna shove your imperial mandate down your goddamned throat!"
"That was a Nuba wrestling move, when you got up," Alexander grinned, as he and Tonya began sizing each another up in the cramped hallway. "Plus you're stronger than any normal woman your size ... I wonder what kind of wonder you are. Well read, a challenging foe ... if I wasn't going to kill you, I'd ask you out!"
Nikolas was having considerably less fun in the other hallway, with James' iron grip around his throat like the clasp of a pit bull's jaws. Nerve pinches, pressure point strikes -- none of it was having any effect on this mystery man clad in black, cursing about his outfit.
"Goddamned Greeks and your goddamned stolen legacy," James raved as he bashed Nikolas' head against the ground repeatedly. "This is for Imhotep, and this is for those invading Macedonian bastards, and ..."
Mai Shen's groan shook James from his anger, and he looked around to see her lying on her side, facing away from him. "Oh damn ..." James muttered. He glanced back at Nikolas, shrugged, and punched the hunter hard, hoping it would keep him down before getting up to check on Mai Shen.
On the other hallway, Alexander struck out at Tonya with speed that belied his two hundred ten pounds, a strike that would have laid out an average Navy SEAL. Tonya, however, was considerably more durable than a Navy SEAL, grunted with the impact and grabbed Alexander's ankle, shoving him backwards into the wall without letting go. Her game leg started to give, so she swung with all her remaining strength, flinging Alexander towards the ceiling, bashing his head into the ceiling first and then his whole body into the wall. As he was flung through the air, he absently thought to himself, this woman is clearly more than she appears ... research when I get ... oh my, that is a wall coming towards me ... Unable to stand, Tonya collapsed to the floor with this exertion, a bloodied Alexander falling behind her.
James rolled Mai Shen over on her back and gasped -- the lower left side of her torso was a gaping hole, like a Warner Brother's cartoon where something cleaved part of a body clean off. He saw the acid still working on her, slowly dissolving the thick black hair that, now uncamouflaged, was visible comprising the inside of her body. The dissolving seemed to be slowing down, but it still clearly caused Mai Shen a great deal of pain.
"Can I do anything to help?" James asked nervously. "We gotta get you out of here ..."
"I'm ... I can survive this ..." Mai Shen coughed out, "but ... need time to heal ... rest ..."
"If I pick you up, and get you over my shoulder," James asked timidly, "can you make it? Will that hurt you?"
"It'll hurt like hell," Mai Shen smiled weakly, "but I can survive that ... I guess."
"Then we're getting the hell outta here ... we gotta get Tonya."
James gingerly picked up the broken immortal and got her over his right shoulder, rising slowly. He never glanced back to see Nikolas making his way around the curve to head for his brother.
Tonya groaned, feeling her leg slowly coming back to her, unaware that Alexander had likewise begun to creep towards the front door, away from her. She bit down on her lip and concentrated on performing a Khepera Het Heru chant in her head, which would help the healing some until she could concentrate and remember a better spell. She pulled herself up and noticed James coming around the corner, with Mai Shen over his shoulder.
"It's a bad day to be a grillion years old," he said grimly, kneeling down by Tonya's side. "I can carry you over my shoulder too, but it'll hurt when we smash our way out of here ..."
Tonya shook her head. "I can get up, we can just go back to the vent ..." she said weakly, still struggling.
Unbeknownst to Tonya and James, Nikolas and Alexander had found one another and used the sign language their family developed in the mid-1500s to update one another on how badly they were doing. Nikolas, being the least hurt, took the point, his shooter's stance perfect as he lined up Mai Shen in his pistol's sight, ignoring the conversation between the other two hostiles.
James stood and gave Tonya some room to rise, and that's when the shot was fired. The impact of the projectile knocked James back, and he snarled at the acid sizzling against his eyes. Tonya screamed, "No!" as James staggered, more worried about watching Mai Shen dissolve from the projectile's impact.
Tonya glared around towards the sound of the shot, and saw Nikolas, still aiming his weapon at James, watching Mai Shen die.
"We need intel and to regroup," Alexander managed, "these are dangerous enemies who know too much, let's go!"
Nikolas reluctantly holstered the pistol and helped Alexander back out the door, confident the other hostiles would make themselves scarce.
Tonya crawled over to James, now shaking off the surprise of the shot. "Baby, are you okay?" she asked.
"I'm ... aw crap ..." James exclaimed as he pulled at the strands of hair that comprised all that was left of Mai Shen. "This would never have happened to freakin' Superman ..."
"I don't want a superman, I want you," Tonya sighed, shaken. "Can you stand? Can you carry me? I'm ... my pride just got her killed. I'm not as together as I think."
James rose, shaking off the remains of Mai Shen with a shudder. "I got you, babygirl, but I'm just as guilty as you. If I'd have killed that guy, he'd never have been a problem ... I got scared by damned acid in my eye, I should know it can't hurt me ..." The words dropped from his lips like a leaden balloon.
Tonya touched his leg and said, "There'll be time to beat ourselves up later, we've got all of Seattle PD out there, and two angry immortal hunters ..."
James nodded, kneeled down and picked Tonya up. He jogged back to the hole in the wall where he'd smashed his way in, hovered briefly to get his bearings, and rocketed skywards, pushing through the everpresent cloud cover over the Emerald City.
* * *
Tonya limped back from the bathroom, now wearing sweatpants and a tank top, a magical poultice doing its thing under a fresh field dressing on her thigh. She found James sitting on the couch, his clothes still frayed from the acid, sitting exactly as she'd left him, staring at nothing.
She made her way over to his side and sat down. Putting an arm around his shoulder, she rubbed the back of his head with her hand, taking his arm in her other hand.
"It's not your fault, James," she said softly.
"You asked me to do one thing," he said grimly. "'Stay here with Mai Shen and keep her safe.' That's what you asked me to do. Now she's a pile of ... hell, I don't know what the hell she is, but she's dead and I may as well have pulled the damned trigger myself. And you got hurt on top of all that."
"First of all, I'm a big girl," Tonya started, "and I wouldn't have gotten shot if I'd waited another second or two. Second, unless you used the Crown and commanded her -- which may or may not have worked, truth be told -- she's considerably more elusive than you or I could handle if she's feeling froggy. She was known as the Sable Mane in Asia, and she's literally sentient hair. She can reconfigure herself in any way you want, feel natural like skin, but she's just a mass of hair that can think and talk."
"Was," James returned sadly. "She was a mass of sentient hair." He paused for a second, then said, "Sometimes I hear myself saying these sentences, about stuff we do, and it's a total trip."
Tonya embraced him, resting her head on his shoulder, as words could not seem to penetrate his frustration.
"I wanna kill those guys," James said calmly.
Tonya looked up at him quizzically. "Those Manos guys?"
James nodded. "There's three more, just like them," he thought aloud. "They've been trying to kill you since ... when was that? 1032? For a thousand freakin' years? Oh yeah, they gotta die."
Tonya thought a bit, and said, "They haven't been trying to kill me specifically, but I would have to assume that I'd fall under their areas of interest ..."
"That's why I'm worried," James said, turning to look at her. "They've had a thousand years to study immortals. You're hard to research, probably, but there's legends, folklore and what not. Now two of them walked away from a fight with a super strong Black woman and a flying jackass. If they put two and two together ..."
Tonya bit her lip, then shook the idea out of her head. "They have no idea how to find me ..."
"They found a woman who had all of Asia to hide in, who can get away from a flying man," James interjected.
Tonya furrowed her brow and considered that. "Mai Shen was a notoriously difficult woman to track," she admitted. "She set up some scam with a bunch of Asian families which made 'em do whatever she said, it was brilliant, some contract or covenant or something ..."
"What did Damian's email say? The one you got in Sumatra."
Tonya frowned until she remembered mentioning it, when Mai Shen had shown up, disheveled and dirty, at their hotel room. "Oh ... Damian was building a castle in Andorra, kind of a goof on the European conquerors who eventually came south. Anyway, uh ... he was building it with some ... unusual materials and processes. He noticed none of the project leads had checked in for a while, so he sent somebody to check on 'em. The whole thing had been burned to the ground, the rocks and bricks crushed to dust. Damian flew out and examined it, said it was good work, but nobody should have known about it, so he got paranoid and closed ranks. His email said, 'Watch your back, somebody exciting is able to find out what should not be known.' That was basically it."
"You chose not to tell me this ... why?"
Tonya looked down at her lap. "I didn't want you to worry," she whispered. "I mean, you're taking this extended 'vacation' from your writing, and we've been so happy, it just ..."
"Being in a relationship means overcoming hard truths and situations," James said coldly, his eyes trained on her like laser sights. "It means working together to fix things, learning together. I love you, but I can't have you shutting me out of burned castles and killer giant mutant beavers."
She managed a smirk at him. "The beaver thing really bugs you, huh?"
James stood up and replied, "Being treated like a child 'bugs' me. I'm younger than you, but I don't need to be protected from information." He turned and walked towards the bedroom. "Gonna shower," he said noncommittally, and was gone.
Tonya pursed her lips and considered her actions. He's right, I'm being unfair to him, she thought to herself. Too long keeping everything to myself, I guess.
She sighed, and then got an idea. She got up and headed for the kitchen, wondering if there was any turkey sausage left.
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