Rob Thurman - Slashback

We were meandering through a maze of booths where actresses and models autographed pictures and nobody was naked, which was more than I could say about most of the people that I’d met through Goodfellow, especially in his premonogamous days when I’d make sure to call before I dropped by his place to prevent the awkwardness of walking in on an orgy. That had happened several times, more than it ever should to someone just wanting to hang out, watch a game, and have a beer.

There were also booths that sold “toys.” Toys for adults and I left it at that. I had no interest in toys. Nature had given me all the toys I needed.

“This reminds me of a time when the three of us were in Greece for the bacchanalia,” Robin mused with a lascivious grin, “and. . ah, I meant when I was in Greece with some friends of mine. Fertility rites, drinking, festivals, plays. Of course this was before the modern miracle of silicone, but nonetheless, very good times.” He lifted a hand in a casual wave. “Ah. Savannah, lovely as ever,” Goodfellow addressed as we passed an autograph booth with a woman with dark hair, wry blue eyes, and a pixie smile.

“Robin!” She waved enthusiastically.

“Lisha,” he called at the next booth. She lifted her head from the fantasy book with a dragon and a head on a pike decorating the cover that she was reading between autographs.

“Robin!” She said his name like a four-year-old would say “Santa Claus.”

“Miranda Lee.” That was the next booth. Blonde, freckles. The girl-next-door type who was about to eat her dinner. New York’s biggest cheeseburger.

It went on like that for several minutes until it ended with a run of platinum blondes.

“Robin!”

“Amber.”

“Robin!”

“Amber.”

“Robin!”

“Amber!”

“Robin!”

“All right, enough.” Niko took Goodfellow’s collar and urged him at a faster speed while I marveled at how many Ambers there were in the business. “Yes, we’re very impressed. You know every woman-”

“And man. Don’t be sexist,” Robin interrupted.

“Fine. And man in the business,” Niko went on, “but we are here to find Jack. He wouldn’t attack someone in the middle of this exhibition hall. It would be beyond noticeable. We need to find a secluded spot where those he judges so harshly might pass while alone and unseen.” I heard the faint clank of metal in Niko’s coat as he moved. Whether he’d be mistaken for a flasher or not, he had to have the coat to cover his katana and cover up the various other blades on him.

“Very well.” Robin pulled free and straightened his suit jacket. “Although it wouldn’t hurt you to learn to enjoy yourself while on the job. Shop for a gift for Promise. She’s hundreds of years old and has gone through five elderly husbands in the past fifteen of them. Do you think she might not want something to tuck away in the nightstand drawer for nights when you’re not there or for nights when you are -”

Nik snared the handful of suit collar again and this time dragged the puck along. “This looks familiar,” I drawled. “Oh yeah, you’re usually doing that to me.”

“I have two hands. Do not test me.” He moved faster yet and I had to pick up the pace as he and Goodfellow began to leave me behind. In minutes we’d left the color, noise, and milling people behind us and were down a hall Robin knew had an available bathroom only those familiar with the convention center would know of.

“The guest stars are here every year. They’ve sussed out the nooks and crannies and where best to go and not be bothered by a persistent mouth-breather. There are occasionally those who aren’t as respectful as they should be. This is the most remote of those locations.” There’d been three such remote locations but with two hastily improvised OUT OF ORDER signs, we’d whittled it down to one. Goodfellow was keeping his distance from Nik while staring morosely at the wrinkles in his jacket.

Leaning against the wall by a very sad plastic potted tree, I asked, “We’re staking out a bathroom for a monster? I read Dracula and I remember Van Helsing doing some impressive shit, but that wasn’t one of them,” I snorted. Niko lifted an eyebrow at the statement and I revised it. “Okay, I watched Dracula , the old one with that guy from The Matrix , and I don’t remember anyone in that looming outside a bathroom either.”

“I despair of you. I honestly do. I didn’t make you read Dracula , a classic, while homeschooling you because you said it made you uncomfortable. That it reminded you of the Auphe.”

I grinned. “Lying to get out of homework. I feel bad, Cyrano. No teenager would do that. What was I thinking?”

“Eighteen was far too soon to let you graduate. I don’t know what I was doing all those years ago. I should still be assigning you research papers on a weekly basis and hiding your guns until you complete them.” He leaned against the wall with arms crossed, but feet planted and spread slightly for balance. Always ready-on bathroom duty or not. After all these years it still didn’t fail to impress. I was wondering when a copy of Dracula would appear on my pillow when I had a chance to be impressed further.

There was a scream, a banging of the door at the end of the hall, and a woman with long brown hair came running past us, her face gray with terror. She was blind with it. She didn’t see the three of us as she ran between us. The only thing that registered was escape, the end of the hall, the people she’d left behind for a quiet moment to herself. Whatever was after her was horrifying enough that three people would be no help to her. She needed the three thousand in the exhibition hall.

“Jack,” I said, pulling my Glock with a silencer in deference to the crowd several hallways away.

Jack it was. He came boiling through the door, ripping it free, buckling the metal and tossing it across the hall to bounce off the wall and then slam onto the floor. The hall wasn’t as well lit as the rest of the place, but it became less so as half the lights fried from the electrical discharge that simmered in the air around the storm that was Jack.

“Where flees the adulteress?” His voice was all that I remembered it being-disgusting and spine-chilling for a reason I couldn’t put my finger on. “Where goes the wicked one?”

“That was Mandy,” Goodfellow said as he unsheathed his sword from his own long coat that hung over his suit Nik had traumatized him by creasing. “She is married, but her husband is in the business, and is it adultery if it involves your occupation and the party of the first and the party of the second both consent to said parameters of the relationship?”

“Be grateful he doesn’t know Shakespeare,” Niko grunted, his own katana already in hand. “‘First kill all the lawyers.’”

“Every trickster, pucks or others, has a law degree. It’s the perfect con.” Robin was trying for cheerful, but seeing Jack for the first time and having heard our story of failure of all our weapons against him, the cheer was strained.

Jack filled the back of the hall entirely. The destroyed lights and his own inherent darkness made him the same form impossible to pin down. Mist, fog, shadows, sparks that circled like a whirlwind within him and two oval-shaped eyes that were the last color you’d see if you were an unlucky bastard standing outside when a bolt of lightning struck you from an overcast sky. He was everything and he was nothing, all in one, and that was a problem. You can’t fight everything and you can’t fight nothing.

“What the fuck.” I just shot him seven times. Shooting him hadn’t worked when he’d attacked me in my room, but I liked to think two of my best qualities were persistence and the ability to hold on to resentment to my dying day. And I did resent Jack for showing up at one of the least convenient times in my life-especially when I’d been ready to give him a pass and ignore his existence.