Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

“Bruce—”

“Shut up and get ready.”

Jerome stepped back and stood by the window.

The Azteca outside shouted in Nahuatl again, and Jerome looked at Bruce. “What they say?”

“They say they don’t want kill you. If you surrender, you go live as a prisoner.”

Jerome shook his head. “So they can sacrifice all of we later? No.”

Bruce shouted back, and the downstairs door burst open, two Jaguar warriors pushing through. Jerome shot the first one in the head.

Gunsmoke filled the room. Jerome recocked the hammer and fired at the second man and missed.

Damn. He cocked and fired again, gun jerking, and hit the man in the shoulder, but he kept coming. Bruce stepped in front and knifed the warrior, but another Jaguar warrior pushing through fired. Bruce fell.

“Bruce!” Jerome shouted as. He pulled the gun up to aim at the warrior-priest that leapt into the air at him with a net, then stopped. His hair swayed, his mask slipped, and he gurgled. The priest hung in the air, a long speartip sticking through his chest.

The priest moved aside to reveal a tall man in a long trench coat and dreads. Jerome couldn’t believe it.

“Pepper?”

Pepper tossed the priest aside. His coat dripped blood, as did his dreads. Dirt smeared his brown face, and he looked around the room. “A last stand, Jerome? I was expecting you to run for the forest.”

“What you doing here?” Jerome walked forward to the door as Pepper moved over to the window to peer out at their surroundings.

“Saving your ass. I promised John I’d keep an eye on you. Bad timing to promise that, don’t you think?”

Jerome could see a trail of bodies on the stairs. He hadn’t even heard the slaughter Pepper had perpetrated. “What now?”

“Well, we’re surrounded,” Pepper said. “So let’s move quickly.” Pepper stepped backed to the doorframe, a shotgun poking out of the trench coat. He fired it, twice, then reloaded.

“Down the hall to the window.” Pepper shoved Jerome toward it and covered him like a shield as he fired again down at the entryway to the building.

At the end Pepper smashed the wooden shutters out with a fist. Jerome looked down at the street. “What now?”

“Jump.”

“That’s cobblestone.”

Pepper fired the shotgun again. “You want to wait for them to come back up the stairs?”

Jerome clambered out onto the sill and took a deep breath. He lowered himself by his hands awkwardly, then let go. He hit the stones with a jarring thump that knocked the breath out of him.

A stone-cracking thump behind him. Pepper landed on his feet, shotgun in each hand aimed down each side of the road. “Move.”

They turned the corner, and Pepper stopped. Twenty Azteca with rifles clustered around a car. Pepper pushed Jerome behind him.

“Gentlemen,” Pepper said in a calm voice.

“Hello,” said the man in the car, standing up to look at them. He wore a feathered cape. His pronunciation sounded odd, not like Xippilli’s but more halting and unused to the language. “My name is Ahexotl. Xippilli said you were here.”

Jerome bit his lip. Xippilli. That traitor. They might have had a chance if he had kept their location secret just a little bit longer.

Pepper looked behind them as more Azteca moved into the streets, surrounding them. “What do you want?”

“Originally the boy, but now, just you will do. Drop your weapons. You can’t get out of this.”

Jerome felt Pepper twist, tense, then stop. “You’ve seen how many I can kill if I choose back there?”

Ahexotl nodded. “Maybe you could escape. But then the boy will die, and I think you don’t want that. But to the reason I’m here: You are one of the Nanagadan immortals? Like this boy’s father?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Ahexotl said. “I’ll let the boy live if you come with us and talk to the gods.”

“The Teotl wish to speak to me? Why?”

Ahexotl made a face. “They have not deigned tell me yet. But they are most insistent that they talk to someone of your kind.”

The two men stared at each other, two predators sizing each other up.

“I’ll come,” Pepper finally said. He dropped the pair of shotguns. “The boy comes with. Harm him and, Ahexotl, I will not just kill you, but kill you very, very slowly.”

Ahexotl smiled. “May I offer you a ride?”

“You may.” Pepper walked forward and pulled Jerome with him. He muttered, “Stay fresh, stay sharp.”

“I’ve got a pistol,” Jerome muttered.

Pepper laughed, and the two clambered into the steam car with their new enemy.

Mother Elene waited for John in the basement of an unassuming three-story house. From there she took over, leaving Sister Agathy behind and opening a door in the wall into a tiny, cramped room.

It was an elavator, which hissed and slowly sank down through the earth once Mother Elene shut the door.

She said nothing until the elevator finally shuddered to a halt. “This way.”

John followed her into a large rocky chamber. They were deep beneath the city now. The walls dripped strips of bioluminescent slime that lit the chamber in a faint green glow, helped along by large flaming torches planted every few feet.

Large eggs sat at the far end.

“You welcome to a privileged sight,” Mother Elene said. “The Metamorphosis.”

John walked toward the eggs.

“Stay back,” Mother Elene snapped. “Show some respect, man. Them the Loa.”

“They are turning themselves into something different, a different physical form?” John asked.

Mother Elene nodded. “Yes, but it ain’t for fighting, like you thinking.”

“For what then?”

A hissing set of syllables from behind John startled him.

“The escaping,” the Vodun priestess said, translating for him. She sat down in a wicker chair by the doors they’d just come in. On the other side of her lay a Loa, its body looking like a pearly seashell. Halfway to becoming an egg like the others. The head had become absorbed into the shell-like area, but the face remained. Large eyes, beaked nose, and a slit mouth etched onto the shell’s surface.

In the last war the Loa had disappeared into the bowels of the city to ride out the invasion. They were not repeating that, but doing something else now. They also knew how dangerous things had become this time around.

“You know the Teotl are coming from orbit?” John asked it.

It wheezed back. “Yes. We hear them calling for all of we. But we don’t respond,” Mother Elene translated.

“So you’re running from the fight,” John said. “What do you want with me?”

The Loa spoke for itself. “Information, assistance.”

“Your ulterior motives disturb me.” John folded his arms. “You’ve caused us so much grief, and death, the Teotl and you.”

For a few seconds the Loa hissed furiously, while Mother Elene looked down at the ground. Then it gathered itself. “You of all people know the damages your kind did as well. You yourself destroyed an entire lineage of my sisters in a nuclear attack. Do not presume yourself innocent of such vile things.”

John blinked and then nodded. The creature was truthful, though he’d only had ten years to readjust to those memories and figure out who they meant he was.

Not always someone he liked.

“What am I here for?” he repeated.

“Well, once, a long time ago, I would have liked to have killed you,” it said. “When you destroyed my sisters in a ship attack, I begged to come all the way out here and fight to wipe your kind out. We could not share a planet. Your DNA, right-handed, ours left. Our terraforming plans clashed, only one of us could live on a planet created by the other.”