Anton Strout - Deader Still

“Jeesh,” Jane said. “Do I crawl up your butt when you’ve got a case you’re working on? I’m making real progress here. They’ve got me researching like crazy in total Willow-mode here, and I think I have the Stacks actually playing nice with me.”

I paused. Truthfully, I was impressed, but with the horrible day I’d had, this wasn’t the way I wanted to end it. She was the one good thing I had going for me right now, but I couldn’t control the schoolboy jealousy.

“Can we discuss this later, then?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as cranky as I felt. Jane nodded, wrapping her arms around the book she held, but she didn’t move. “Just come on over after you’re done here. I’ll be home. I hope you and Thaddeus have a great time researching.”

I wish I hadn’t said it, but it was too late. I walked away before I could make it any worse that it already was, but Jane let out a heavy sigh as I went. I never would have thought the hardest thing to deal with back in the Black Stacks would be my girlfriend.

I headed back downtown for my appointment with the Inspectre, going over what had just happened and wondering why my inner alpha male had flared up so much over Wesker. How had a little light instruction on combating the undead turned into a fit of jealousy?

Things with Jane had been going great. Well, as great as they could be for an ex-cultist and a psychometric detective with little experience in long-term dating, anyway. I cursed the years I hadn’t been able to control my power. They had kept me from ever having a relationship successful enough to get to this stage of emotional irrationality.

Now that I was confused and full of steam to blow off, it was the perfect time to head back to the D.E.A. for that Fraternal Order of Goodness-level Unorthodox Fighting Techniques the Inspectre had mentioned. When I got there, I wove my way through an area upstairs that was a labyrinth of musty old offices but with slightly emptier corridors because of the restrictive exclusivity of F.O.G. The furniture was ancient, as if the minds of ages had been battling evil here for centuries, and after several wrong turns, I found Inspectre Quimbley in one of the training areas, suiting up in elbow pads that he was slipping on over his tweed coat.

The Inspectre looked up and gave me a fatherly smile.

“Almost ready,” he said.

He slipped on his protective headgear, the kind a boxer wears, and over his chest he pulled on an umpire’s padded vest with a large red heart painted where one would expect the actual heart to be, only it had a target on it. The padding made him appear even more walruslike than his mustache did, but I knew all too well that was only in appearance. Looks could be deceiving with Inspectre Quimbley. You didn’t live to be his age in his field unless you had serious skills.

“You F.O.G.gies don’t mess around when it comes to fighting,” I said.

The Inspectre was still giving me that paternal look when he stood up. “The forces of Darkness certainly don’t mess around when it comes to attacking us, so why should we hold back? Especially vampires. I’d rather have you prepared, my boy, than dead. Now, then . . .”

He pulled a long black cape off the back of the chair he had been sitting in. As he tied it on, I almost laughed. I was pretty much looking at a walruslike version of Count Dracula. He scooped up an enchanted coatrack in both his hands and brandished it like it was a staff. The little metal coat hooks at the top of it snaked to life like tiny metal pincers. All of this certainly helped dissipate the patriarchal mood and any humor.

I looked around the general clutter of the room for something weapon-y of my own.

“That’s your first mistake,” the Inspectre said.

“Sir?”

“Unorthodox Fighting Techniques at this level provides very little in the way of conventional weaponry. Open your mind to the art of improvisation during conflict. Few fights ever go as smoothly as they look in the movies, do they? You never know under what circumstance you might be called upon to defend yourself. Or with what.”

I missed the lower levels of this class. In those, I had fought with weapons like carnivorous sofa cushions, fire stokers that kept blowing soot into my face, potted trees that screamed when you hit them, pool cues, fountain pens, living lawn gnomes, and once, purely by accident, normal swords.

This time, however, nothing really jumped out to me and I was at a loss.

“You’ve already got the best weapon,” I said, backing away. Even the length of the coatrack gave it a considerable advantage. I was unsure of what to do, but I was still in the mood for a good fight. I had so much pent-up anger and frustration over the whole Jane situation.

“Use your head, boy,” the Inspectre said, smiling and moving cautiously toward me, “for more than just a place to hang your hat.”

His smile betrayed him. Even in a fight, the Inspectre couldn’t help throwing encouraging clues at me. A place to hang your hat, I thought to myself . . . would be at the top of another coatrack. I glanced quickly around the room and there it was, another coatrack blending in to the wall on the opposite side of the room. The Inspectre moved into swinging range. I had to act.

I turned and dashed across the room, feeling my hair stir as the air from the Inspectre’s swing blew by me. Ever the gentleman, the Inspectre waited until I got my hands on the other coatrack before charging me. The hooks on the rack sprang to life and I relished the chance to finally let my growing aggression out. All of it—the discovery of the people on the booze cruise, my troubles with Jane, the fact that someone had tried to sabotage the Oubliette—all of it came flooding out in quick, vicious attacks, all of which the Inspectre was trying his best to counter. On the plus side, he had landed very few strikes against me, so I considered our score pretty even by my count.

The old man spent the better part of an hour putting me through the wringer.

As fatigue started to set in, our coatracks clashed together as we struggled across the floor of the fight studio. For once, I realized I had the Inspectre on the defensive and pressed my advantage. I lunged toward him with the business end of the coatrack. The hooks waved like tentacles as they sought to disarm Inspectre Quimbley. I thought for sure I had him, but he sidestepped and parried. My weapon smacked harmlessly against the wall, and one of the hooks latched on to a light fixture, forcing me to stop while I untangled it.

“Good form,” the Inspectre said, “good form.”

I was too caught up in freeing my weapon, and the Inspectre knew it. He swung his own rack low and caught me behind the knees before I could turn back to him. They buckled, causing me to fall flat on my back, and I stayed there, the wind knocked out of me.

“The hardest part to mastering the coatrack,” he said as he triumphantly planted his on the floor, “is forgetting that it is not a staff. Most apprentices treat it like they’re sixteenth-century warrior monks from a Hong Kong action movie. Well, who ever heard of a monk using a coatrack to fight? Staff forms are the totally wrong fighting technique for them to practice . . . when what they should master is the tricky art of the rack.”

He offered his hand and helped me up.

“Of course,” he continued, his breathing a little labored, “if you were using this combat technique and a vampire was involved, the smart thing to do would be to snap off the end of it to make a stake to impale him with, but, bless my heart, these coatracks are so bloody cute with their hooks. They’re like little baby fingers.”

I pulled at my own tangled coatrack, which was now swinging playfully from the light fixture. It grumbled as I tugged it free, and I turned, readying myself. The Inspectre, however, looked winded and was leaning heavily on his own rack. The hooks seemed to be petting his shoulder.