“I’ve only got tonight. Thanks, though.”
She gave him a little wave and walked down the street. She could feel his stare on her shoulders and she willed herself to not look back.
***
Three down and an entire world to go. He’d licked his claws clean, but had found the blood entirely unsatisfactory. Besides, he thought, the image was too cliché. He was above that idea of a monster. He was independent from that thought. He thought she knew this, but still she chased him—hunted him—in true monster fashion. She had a gun and, though it had no silver bullets, she had enough power backing her to make her a serious threat.
***
“Ah, Mieshka.”
Her first impulse was to run. Roger had that effect on things. Instead, she swallowed her jumping heart and forced herself to turn around.
“Roger.” It was amazing how much narrower the alley seemed with him in it. He stepped forward, and the light from a shop’s window slanted across him. He looked quite at home in the dim back alley.
“Long time no see, Mieshka. How’s Joanne?”
Jo, her coworker, had been injured last week in a brawl. Roger hadn’t been responsible for the injury, but the two had a history of picking fights.
“Out of the hospital. How about Stan?”
“Dead.”
Oops.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Shall I send Jo your regards?”
“It would please me, Mieshka. I also have a missive from my employer to yours, if you’d be so kind.”
She flinched back as he reached for something in his jacket. When he produced a letter, it was with a small smile she didn’t like.
“Not a bomb, is it?” Their bosses had a rocky history.
“Quite the opposite, I think, Mieshka.”
He held the letter out to her and stepped forward, pausing as she moved away. Logically, Mieshka knew Roger had no reason to harm her, but she couldn’t help remembering just how quick he was with a knife. The Mieshka felt solid at her back. It should have made her feel dangerous, but instead she felt like a carrier pigeon being coaxed to having something tied to its leg.
“The Water Mage, Mieshka, is not stupid enough to send a bomb to kill a Fire Mage.”
She swallowed and remembered to breathe. Then he threw her another kind of bomb.
“We lost her in Southside.”
“What?”
“Kitty. You’re looking for her, aren’t you?”
This close, she could see his eyes. They watched her with the same meticulous care they gave everything, though there was a trace of amusement in his smile.
“Oh. Thanks. I’ll, uh, get this to him.”
“I expect you will.
She tried not to relax too much when he turned to leave. He’d probably sense it.
***
What she didn’t realize was that he knew all her little secrets. He knew her tricks and he knew her trades. He knew her back-up plans and he knew her weaknesses. He knew how to dodge her lightning, and that made him near invincible to her.
He wondered if he could kill a god.
He doubted it. His benefactor wasn’t that stupid.
***
Mieshka was lost. She probably hadn’t managed to get anywhere near Southside, which was just as well because Kitty probably wouldn’t be there. No one stuck around with Roger on their tail.
She grumbled from one dark alley to another, all with varying heights and all narrow enough for her to touch both walls easily. Her left hand habitually brushed the wall, feeling her way along. A lot of these alleys had little or no lighting, and Mieshka was a member of the clumsy club. It was her legs, she blamed, they were too long and she felt like a giraffe. She stubbed her toe on a box and sent it forward a few inches. She could see its shape by the next alley’s faint glow.
Light. She picked her way to the corner.
To Mieshka’s joy, someone had strung the rafters with Christmas lights. The colours of the strings changed periodically down the alley, but they made her pay more attention to the beams. Rafters like these were common in the underground city, wedged between outer walls. Supposedly, they prevented the buildings from shifting too much. There was a set of stairs at the end.
“Hey. Hey!”
She looked up.
“Hi.”
A pair of well-worn soles stood on the rafter above her. She could see their red tips poking out over the wood. She moved back from the alley’s entrance and found a pair of legs squatting over them. A face peered down at her.
“It’s dangerous down there,” said the stranger, who balanced on the beam with her wrists resting on her knees. A gleam caught Mieshka’s eye, and she noticed one of the hands held a gun. It was casually pointed at her head.
Mieshka moved back another step, swallowed a jump of adrenaline, and felt the corner of the intersecting alley nudge the back of her arm. She kept her voice steady.
“It’s dangerous up there. I could fall.”
“I suppose,” said the woman, and Mieshka’s eyes followed the gun’s barrel as the woman lifted it and aimed it farther down the alley.
“But down there, he could get you.”
Fear tightened her stomach, and she felt it turn in her gut. Despite herself, Mieshka turned and followed the gun’s aim. The alley behind her wasn’t nearly so festive, and the rafters lifted to give the woman an open range in the narrow maze. There didn’t seem to be anything remarkable about the empty alley. Just the usual darkness they came with, the same as what she’d just been stumbling around in.
But something moved in the dark. It was subtle and quick. She could have imagined it, except it happened again with the same velvet smoothness. The dark of the alley seemed much more alive for it.
Bang!
Mieshka jumped, and the shadow did too. She was deaf for a few seconds after, and when her hearing returned, it came with a ringing. It wasn’t just the bullet the woman had fired. Mieshka had seen a form jump away from a blinding, dancing arc of electricity. The Christmas lights flickered.
“There’s a chain ladder on the wall a little way back.” said the stranger over the ringing in her ears, and Mieshka didn’t need telling a second time. She turned and ran, which is what a Mieshka does best.
Bang!
This time she heard it: a loud thunderclap with the gun’s retort. She didn’t look back a second time. She was pretty sure she didn’t want to know who ‘he’ was until she could look down on him. She almost missed the chain, but luckily some lights were wrapped around the top rung. She scrambled up it.
“You bitch, can’t you leave me in peace?”
It wasn’t the woman talking. This voice was male and odd in a way that made Mieshka scramble harder. It spoke slowly, and its pitch wavered a tiny bit through the sentence. The ladder jangled and swung stubbornly.
Bang!
Another thunderclap boomed through the scene, and the flash left little dots in Mieshka’s vision. There was a shriek, and something scraped the wall. Mieshka jumped, grabbed the highest chain she could, and pulled her legs up to push against the wall. She ran out of ladder as she reached the rafter. Something scraped on the ground below her as she jumped for the beam. Then the woman was there and pulling her up. A few seconds later, Mieshka was straddling over the support with her legs curled up and out of reach of whatever was below.
She looked down and saw a cat.
A kitten.
“Quick, get the ladder up,” said the woman, aiming the gun at the kitten. The kitten looked up at Mieshka with piercing blue eyes. Even in the alley’s gloom, she could see those eyes. It had a blotched grey coat.
“What the f—” said Mieshka, but stopped when the kitten moved.
She wasn’t sure why the movement drew her attention, when she really should have been focused on the gun, but she looked down.
The kitten was reaching for the ladder. Her breath caught when she realized what she was seeing. It shouldn’t have been able to reach the ladder, but its
foreleg had grown grotesquely long for the act. It caught her stare and pulled its lips into a sneer.
“What’s wrong? thought I was a cute little kitty?” It snarled over the last word, and those teeth came much closer than she was comfortable with.
But not high enough to reach the beams. Mieshka hooked the ladder with a foot, and pulled it out of its reach. The woman grabbed the rest of it and draped it over the wood. The kitten-thing edged along Mieshka’s gaze, and slid back into a smaller form as it paced. it was a grownup version of the kitten she’d first seen, with long, skinny limbs, and a longer face. It had very prominent canine teeth, and his eyes, which she now saw were sunken into his face, never wavered from her. Its long tail moved madly, and a shadow snake writhed on the floor to its beat.
“What the hell?”
“It’s complicated,” said the woman. She was several skin tones darker than Mieshka. Her hair was black, and pulled into a rough ponytail. There were lines of fatigue under her eyes. The hand that held the gun shook. A number of hairs strayed from the ponytail, completing the image of someone wanting for coffee.
“You’re Kitty, right?”
“Yeah,” said the woman who watched the cat.
“Is he—”
“No, he’s not the reason I’m called Kitty.”
“Ah.”
“He used to live in my head. No one knew about him till a week ago.”
Maybe that explained the ‘mental condition.’ Mieshka decided to digest that later.
“When you killed that guy?” she said.
Kitty looked up, and Mieshka could see the gleam of light in her eyes.
“That wasn’t me.”
Mieshka raised an eyebrow.
“That was him.”
Mieshka looked down for a long moment. The shadows had grown around the cat, and they seemed to swim to his call. The black blotches of his coat bled like an ink-wash painting, and lingered in the air where he’d been. His face twisted in her gaze, and fury bristled his back. She could feel their gaze, like a poison in her mind. She believed Kitty.
“So who’re you?”
“Meese.”
“No shit?” The woman gave her a once-over. “I thought you’d be taller.”
“Her tales certainly are,” said a gentleman’s hiss from directly below.
“Shush you,” said Kitty to the cat, like they were old friends. His eyes were back to staring at Mieshka again. She thought she detected a change in their expression, though the venom remained.
The lights flickered.
“He’s trying to turn them off.”
They flickered again, and Mieshka looked up at Kitty.
“Let’s go.”
Left unsaid between them was just how neither of them wanted to be in the dark with the thing below.
***
What he didn’t know was anything about her new little red-haired friend with the big underworld reputation. He was not one to underestimate an enemy. It was time to end them. He pulled and felt the tug of the dark god’s gift within his reach, like a boat moored to his soul, bumping with the weight and drag of the lake it floated on. This time the lights went out for one long, delightful moment. Kitty fired at him again, and he dodged, but the burst was enough to drop his focus on the dark. He realized he would need some time to work his magic and, with a sneer, he walked away from his prey and into the quiet of the shadows. He left them the stair to run with, but he doubted they’d take his offer. He wasn’t a very trustworthy character, after all.
***
The ceiling above them rumbled and shook. Mieshka gave it a worried look.
“Subway tunnel,” explained Kitty, and then turned the sentence around in a way Mieshka was beginning to expect of her: “You smell like one.”
“Like one what?”
“Like a fire girl.”
Mieshka glanced up. Maybe it was time to get some answers.
“Really? You can smell that?”
Though Kitty leaned back against the wall, she seemed to have more energy. She regarded Mieshka with a smile that Mieshka wasn’t sure how to interpret.
“A little. You don’t use it, do you? Why not?”
“It was temporary. I burnt out.”
“You sure?”
Mieshka didn’t answer, and the silence hung between them for another long moment. By the face of her phone, it was past midnight. The sun would be rising in another eight hours. But it was always night down here.
“What’s it like?” She asked. “Being an elemental. Where’s it come from?”
“If you’re a fire girl, you ought to know.”
She remembered her fingers burning like kindling, the flames dancing without heat. She’d burned the sky.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t—Please tell me.”
Kitty had a habit of holding a stare. Mieshka was determined to keep eye contact.
“It’s like I can feel all this big energy around me, everywhere. In the wires, in the air. My nerves, my heart… it tingles when I use it. Sometimes it hurts, but I guess that’s the risk you take. You gotta really concentrate, though. Like anything, it gets easier with practice. I don’t get it.”
Another turn of topic that Mieshka couldn’t follow.
“Get what?”
“How did you get such a hardass rep down here?”
“Oh.” Mieshka knew what she meant. Mieshka wasn’t the hardass type.
“It wasn’t my fault.”
***
He found them. It wasn’t that hard—he knew Kitty so well, after all. He was the size of a collie now, with a tail that lashed long and mad. His ears had grown in length, along with his teeth. His claws touched the brick with every step, and when he jumped, they left small scores in the clay. Behind him he dragged a pool of shadow. Sometimes he would hear it laugh, but he didn’t think much of it. It was allowed to be a little not-right-in-the-head; it seemed par for the course. He paused on the edge of their hiding place—a small rooftop that didn’t quite hit the ceiling of this world. He liked this world for that. Everything knew exactly how high it could go, and they were all at the mercy of this cement sky. He watched her look up and shout. The darkness, roused by her voice, flooded past him. He laughed a hearty, savage laugh, and followed its lead.
***
They ran away from the dark and across the shakier rooftops of lower buildings. It had been an instinctual thing, the direction they took, and Mieshka was glad it was an instinct they both shared. She did not want to be alone up here.
For about a minute, they seemed to be getting away, but then the vague, moving, hissing dark gained and no amount of fear was going to keep it back.
They hit a ledge. Mieshka jumped down, hit the pavement, and kept running. She assumed Kitty was right behind her. She felt the hairs on her entire body stand up all at once, and the light around them left for one long, terrible moment. Something, and she could guess what, hissed entirely too close to her. She heard a clang, and then a bang followed by Kitty’s electric signature. When she regained her hearing, she heard Kitty swearing. Then she was blinded by a bright flash that lasted as long as the dark had before. Mieshka heard herself breathe, and then the air erupted around her in the sound of sheet metal tearing.
Kitty yelled, and her gun clattered on the ground in front of Mieshka, its barrel nearly clawed in half. There was blood on the handle, and Mieshka looked to see Kitty holding a bloodied fist to her chest.
“Hello, my pretty,” said the cat, who had now turned his gleaming grin on Mieshka. He stalked toward her with a predatory ease. She backed up and fumbled for the gun at her back, tugging it free from its leather holster. He paused when he saw it. Its barrel was hardly thicker than two of her fingers.
“Now ain’t that cute. Does it come in pink?” He chuckled.
“You know what happened to the last person to laugh at it?” she said, conscious of how her voice wavered and broke and did little to promote confidence.
“No. Enlighten me.
”
She paused and thought about it.
“Actually, I don’t either.”
She pulled the trigger and the gun went off with something similar to a bang, but completely lacking in volume. The bullet bit the concrete several meters behind the demon. She saw Kitty skitter out of the way and slink against the wall. Now that she knew what to look for, she felt the energy the woman gathered. She took a steadying breath and tried to do the same while she focused on the demon in front of her. The Mieshka held three bullets, and the demon’s smile had grown at her lack of aim. He moved toward her with the smooth waltz reserved for ghosts and shadows. Mo had given her three extra clips, but she doubted the cat would give her time to load them. Resisting the urge to close her eyes, she tried to picture the fire she’d held before. The Phoenix, with its eyes burning like hot ash and wings stretching to the horizons.
And that old heat folded over her like the sun.
She took a breath, focused, and pulled the trigger. She didn’t miss.
***
They struck together, and his very real body went through some very real pain. He hadn’t known the little redhead was a fire wielder. His heart, black thing that it was, stopped beating when Kitty’s electricity hit it. He’d tried dodging it, but the fire had made him hesitate. And now he was burning to the tune of life. He realized he was about to be acquainted with Death, who probably did not offer deals. At least no deals he could take. Someone already had claim to his soul, and he wondered if that claim meant he would be doing a lot more burning in the near future. Perhaps, he thought, the devil had more use for him than that. Perhaps, he hoped, it was in the devil’s best interest to keep him alive. His fur was burning, and he smelled the sulphur of it briefly before the fire took his nose and lungs. The darkness he kept fled from the fire, though some remained in the corners of the place. It would lick up his ashes when he was all burned away. He wondered why he ever had ever wanted to be alive.
***
They watched the fire burn the beast. Mieshka, who still didn’t think she’d done it, had stumbled to the side with the little gun’s retort, and kept stumbling until she was next to Kitty. Her hands tingled and stung and shook, mainly from the little gun’s kick. The fire’s power had left as subtly as it had come to her, but she could still feel it burning in her chest. She couldn’t read the other woman’s thoughts, but Kitty’s mouth was a grim line as she watched the flames eat through the body of her enemy. They stood like that for a long, long time, until the cat was coal. She could see the sparks on the embers. The air waved a lazy heat, lounging after a big meal. Kitty was quiet until ash frosted the coals, and the smell wasn’t so obvious.