Charlie Huston - No Dominion

And she shows me the needle again.

I rub my chin against my shoulder.

– Well, Mrs. Vandewater, it took you awhile to get there, but you finally managed to say, tell me what I want to know or I’ll fuck you up forever.

She waits.

I roll my eyes.

– I don’t know what you’re waiting for, I already told you once to fuck off.

There’s a knock at the door. One of the machine pistol boys answers it. He nods at Vandewater.

She sets the syringe on the tea table. The boy assisting her closes the briefcase full of anathema.

She stands.

– Of course, one of the components of anathema’s effectiveness as a weapon is its brief shelf life. It must be distributed immediately after it is harvested. This batch is meant for the Hood. And the courier is waiting.

She walks to the door.

– But not to worry, the dose in that syringe will last more than long enough to serve its purpose. In fact, a few minutes’ aging will make it much more effective.

She leaves, escorted by Briefcase Boy and one of the machine pistols.

I look at the syringe sitting on the table and then over at the machine pistol boy and the tongue slicer that remained behind. I look again at the syringe, secure in the knowledge that when the time comes, I will beg like a child to keep her from sticking it in my arm.

I’m a dead man. And not just in the way that I’m always sort of a dead man. Once I’m in Predo’s hands there will be considerably less talking and much more thrashing and questioning. And after that, I’ll get to see my first sunrise in a quarter century. That should be worth something, but I expect I’ll be distracted by the sensation of my eyelids melting. Being addicted to this shit will be the least of my concerns. Hell, the smart play here is to volunteer for the light dose. Lady wants to offer up a last gasp of nirvana, who am I to say no? That or just answer her damn questions outright. Figure I got no one to protect. Not like I owe anything to Digga. Not like I can tell her a hell of a lot about his setup anyway. Figure she won’t stop with questions about the Hood. That’s her obsession, but she’ll get around to asking about the Society, too. Figure I don’t much care about that either. Why should I? Only reason I ever stuck on that turf is because I like the neighborhood. Sell Terry out? Yep, no problem. The thing to do here is let her shoot a little of that shit into me and go out with something soft on my mind. And who knows, maybe there are some answers in that needle. I don’t really believe that, but a lie can be just as sweet as the truth. Sweeter, nine times out of ten. Yeah, all in all, I got no good reason to be hardass here. I’m a dead man and the lady is just giving me a chance to decide how hard I want to go out. Most guys, they’ll never be so lucky. No reason to be a hardass at all. No secrets worth keeping. No one worth protecting. Just me. Figure a better deal ain’t gonna come around for a long while.

Vandewater comes back in alone.

She takes her seat. Lays a hand over the syringe.

– You’ve had ample time for thought?

I shrug, feeling something that resembles freedom.

Her fingers curl around the syringe.

– If, by any chance, you should need any additional incentive to make this easy and less time consuming, I could point out to you that our distributor in the Society tells me you have a girl whom you are-

She doesn’t get to finish. It’s hard to finish what you’re saying when a guy lunges at you and bites one of your eyes out.

The boy who wired my hands together in the car knew what he was doing. He looped it around each wrist several times, then crisscrossed it back and forth between both wrists, drawing them tightly together, knotting the loose end and mashing that knot with a pair of pliers. The boy who rewired them after they had clipped me free for tea time? He didn’t take the same class. Probably the one who drove around the block over and over. He should have started with fresh wire. But he didn’t. He should have made sure my wrists weren’t flexed when he bound me. But he didn’t. No, he used the same wire that had already been stressed by all my wiggling and twisting when I was figuring out how good a job the first guy did. He wrapped it around my flexed wrists so that when he was done I could relax those muscles and have a little slack so the wire didn’t bite so deeply into my skin. And he took those loose ends and twisted them together like the bit of wire used to close a bag of sliced bread.

If I ever find out which of them it was, I’d like to give him my thanks. Because it’s his shitty job that makes it possible to wrench my hands free and keep this crazy witch from clawing my ears off when I spit her eye in her face.

I’ll give it to her, she doesn’t scream, much.

The one by the window is circling, looking for an open shot, a shot that won’t have to go through Vandewater. The tongue slicer is closer, his hand is inside his jacket, going for a weapon that is less indiscriminate than the machine pistol the other boy has. Vandewater is blind, one eye somewhere on the floor, the other covered in blood, she’s still raking her nails at my face. I throw her at the tongue slicer. He has his hand out of his jacket, holding a tiny automatic that looks like a mechanical wasp. The old lady is coming his way. He lets the gun fall from his hand and holds out his arms to catch her. I don’t watch what happens next, I’m busy picking up the tea table and throwing it at the boy with the machine pistol.

He’s young and he’s well trained, but he hasn’t had too many opportunities to put that training to use, so he’s worried about getting hurt. Dumbshit little boy, he hasn’t been around long enough to develop new reflexes, his brain is still living in a world where large objects fly at you and you flinch; doesn’t get it that pain doesn’t matter. Something hits you, it’s either gonna kill you or it ain’t. The table doesn’t kill him. I do.

He puts his arm up, easily knocking the table out of the air, but I’m right behind it. He wastes time trying to bring his gun back down, centering his aim on my torso instead of simply pulling the trigger and waving it around. I’m on top of him before it can matter. The gun is out of his hand. He’s on his back. My knee is slamming into his crotch. He’s strong, keeps going for my face. One of those other boys is gonna come in here any second. I put my hands in the boy’s armpits and heave, sliding him on the wood floor, and his face disappears under the hem of the burgundy drapes.

The room instantly reeks of rotted meat being scorched by a blowtorch. I hold him there for a couple seconds while he shrieks and tries to pry my hands loose. When he stops struggling I’m off him and turning to see what’s become of Vandewater and the tongue slicer. He sits up. The drapes tent around him for a moment, flashing sunlight over his body, before they swish back into place. Then he sits there, the hole that used to be his mouth oozing cancer, his hands clutching at his peeling scalp, pushing at the tumors that have erupted across it, trying to force them back inside.

The tongue slicer is on his back, trying to restrain Vandewater, trying to keep her from mauling him while not hurting her. That pain thing again. If he’d been around a bit longer he would have pounded her unconscious by now.

The door is opening.

I look at the floor, see the syringe, pick it up. The door swings wide, two of the boys coming through it, weapons up. I bend over and loop my left arm around Vandewater’s neck and bring her up. She’s still blind, still trying to hurt someone. The boys are in. The tongue slicer is picking up his automatic. I’ve got the old lady in front of me; windpipe caught in the crook of my elbow, toes just grazing the floor. Her remaining eye is open, blinking the blood away. She sees her boys.