Secondhand Sorcery

This—Yuri thought as his face slammed into authentic Syrian mud, freshly moistened with evening dew, littered with authentic Syrian cigarette butts and random Syrian candy wrappers and maybe even a few genuine 100% Syrian vintage dog turds—this right here, it could have gone better.

Could have gone worse, too. It sounded like a whole bunch of people in his vicinity were currently getting some very unplanned long-distance emergency surgery, courtesy of Smith and Wesson, or maybe Achmed and Habib, or whoever made knockoff nine-millimeter surgical implements in this delightful corner of the world. Whoever made them, they certainly seemed to work, and Yuri was not, at that moment, sporting any new body openings. That was a plus. Plus, he was almost totally sober!

First goal: get out of the mud. It felt like more of a long-term goal at present, what with all the bullets still zinging around overhead, but he could army-crawl a little bit. He wasn’t proud. After what felt like a hundred yards but was probably twenty, the gunfire died down a bit and he felt free to scramble to his knees, then his feet, and haul ass to what passed for the nearest cover. It was a bush. One of the nice armored trucks would have been better, but he happened to have crawled in the totally wrong direction. Oh well. It was dark.

So, who was dead now? He couldn’t really see—again, it was dark—but he guessed the casualties were a little higher on his side, even though they had the others way outnumbered. If he was being totally honest, he didn’t exactly hire Navy SEALs. Local talent shortage. Probably a lot of them were a lot less sober than he was, which was why one of them had decided to turn this little park into goddamn Stalingrad the moment his boss happened to trip on a rock and fall. More evidence for cutting back on the coke allowance. He was tempted to take out his little notebook and underline that memo, but he didn’t have a pencil and that probably wasn’t the highest priority right now anyway.

So, what was? There was hella screaming going on out there, some of it high-pitched; he might have to hire even more Yuris soon. He couldn’t do much about that. Ruslan was handy, so maybe he could get some tuneups later. And everybody who ate a bullet here and lived could get a sweet badge, for morale. Maybe with like a bloody … tree or something? There just wasn’t much badass about this little park.

No. Focus. He really was sober, it was only a little hard to concentrate at the moment.

It didn’t get any easier when the image of an old geezer on the porch of a crappy shack jammed itself across his imagination. He got all fired up for a second, getting ready to kick some ass, but it didn’t last long enough for him to actually do anything. The giant flying ragdoll who’d got in his way back in Ankara (he’d been at Fatih too, but Yuri wasn’t good with names) popped up and let loose with a blast of wind that sent a couple of Yuri’s new trucks rolling. Then he disappeared, and Yuri was left with the hangover.

It was always fun trying somebody else’s halo, but that aftermath … man. He shook his head like a dog with water in its ears. Once he came out of it, he saw that he’d have to replace two trucks, and that didn’t help his mood at all. Those things were expensive. What a dick! Yuri could cop to the shootout; that was on him for hiring dipshits and being a little generous with the yayo. But as a wise man once said, you don’t fuck with another man’s vehicle. You just don’t do it. This was disrespect, and it demanded retaliation.

Oh, and the refinery. Damn thing was still burning, off on the horizon. That too.

Shum-Shum came out hot this time, red-hot and party-wild. He took out a bunch of the remaining trucks in the process, but hell, he wasn’t going to need that much transport back from the sound of things. And when they slagged and sagged down into the ground from a burst of magic lightning, that made them better cover for anybody who was left alive. More solid, low center of gravity, and all that. Yuri steered his buddy over to the other side of the battlefield, got to work doing the same for hostile transport. If bitches wanted to fall back, they’d be doing it on foot. Scorched earth!

Once that was done, Yuri let Shum-Shum go. He’d learned the hard way not to let him get carried away, no matter how mad he personally was. Even from that little burst a lot of the formerly-wet grass was scorched black, and … oh, balls, his cover bush was on fire. He ran for the closest melted truck while everybody was still blinking the spots out of their eyes. Nearly didn’t make it; somebody opened up with a sidearm while he was running, and he had to hit the dirt and roll to make the last few yards. His new jacket was going to wind up looking like crap by morning.

Somebody else was alive behind the truck—one of his guys, of course. Staying well back, since the damn thing was still scorching hot, but not so far that he was out in the open. “Did you catch the muzzle flash?” Yuri asked him, before remembering that most of these guys didn’t speak much English or Russian. It would have been handy to have Maria around for this. If he was lucky, she wasn’t still running. If he was even luckier, all this crazy shit would get her in the mood. Stranger things had happened.

Now the park was silent, real dead silent. Not even crickets, or distant cars. Probably he’d just roasted most of the crickets, and the survivors were … not pissing their pants, they didn’t have any. Did bugs even piss? He wasn’t sure. But he didn’t feel like hanging out behind this car for the rest of the evening, so he shouted out, “Cease fire! Truce!”

The only answer he got was another quick impression of the old dude on the porch, followed by the hobo wizard guy—Tantrum Song! That was the name!—dropping out of the sky right on top of him to pop a tornado in his ass. He only got a second’s warning before he was flying, and hit the dirt again harder and faster than ever before. A whole lot of things went snap and crunch at the same time, and he felt himself bounce like a skipping stone. The little bit of breath left in him went right out as he landed, and breathing in again hurt too much for him to really scream. All he could manage was a pathetic little moan, and that was muffled by the mud in his mouth.

Everything got wicked fuzzy after that; he was hurting real bad, and he wouldn’t have minded calling down Shum-Shum to let off some steam, but he couldn’t really focus that much. Nothing to do but lay there and hurt, and listen. Somebody was screaming, but it wasn’t him. Some chick. Sounded familiar, and it was getting closer. Then something grabbed his shoulder and shook it, and that hurt enough that he hollered for real. Inhaled a clump of dirt while he was at it. Choked, gagged, passed out. Hell of a way to go.

The next thing he felt was an especially sudden and vivid awareness that all that gunk—and it felt like there was maybe something worse than plain dirt and weeds in it—jammed up against the back of his throat, and his whole body just flailing, convulsing, thrashing, flipping over and spewing out the most massive wad of dirt and spit and loose rocks and vomit, god, the vomit, it all came bursting out so hard, like he could feel the back end of his intestines trying to come backwards out of his fucking throat, and it just didn’t stop, and his arms gave out and he was facedown in the goddamn mess, and his throat burned, and it was in his eyes, and then he was rolling back up and wiping it all out and off and screaming to the sky because he was just seven kinds of white-hot pissed.

“Yuri! Yuri, please!” Somebody grabbing his shoulders. It didn’t hurt this time, but he slapped the hands away. He tried to stand up but fell over backwards again and hit his head. “Yuri, you have to calm down! It’s okay, we healed you! You will live!”

“It’s not FUCKING OKAY!” he screamed, and that hurt because his throat was all raw. Somebody else was yelling too, and they sounded just as mad. Buncha yelling. Whatever. He wasn’t just going to whine like a little bitch after he went through that. Hell no.

He still couldn’t see; his eyes were a burning, smeary mess. Didn’t need to see. He didn’t feel much like partying right now but Shum-Shum could ball with the best. Light it up, motherfucker. Yuri could see the light in the sky, even if he couldn’t see anything else. He threw up his hands and cheered him on, sore throat or not.

Shum-Shum couldn’t really see either, but he knew what was what. The place was just like he left it, a mess of slagged cars and burnt meat. There was Yuri, that little blotch down there, and there was a girl next to him, and another girl way back in the distance, and then there was a boy and a girl off to one side together. All cheering together.

A couple of grown people. An old man and a chick, both leaning against whatever his buddy had left of a car, standing up in a hurry when the lightning started. At least, she stood up. The old dude was clapping along, and she had to drag him after her. They both got a little shock, just the fingers of one little arc zapping off the dead car, and went flying. Served the bastards right. On the ground, Yuri smiled.

One more man, real close by. Too damn close, and he wasn’t part of the party either. Shum-Shum could feel it, and didn’t like it. The punk was moving fast in Yuri’s direction, gun out, and he wasn’t having fun. Shum-Shum wasn’t down with that. Neither was Yuri.

Even now, Yuri wasn’t crazy enough to really let loose. That was how Shum-Shum’s first emissor bought it, and Yuri had apparently already died once this evening. Once was enough. He had his buddy drop low, skimming down to intercept, so low that even Yuri’s ears hurt with the blaring music. The man heard too, but he kept on moving. Shum let out a little burst of his best zap—no good. They sort of meandered in the guy’s direction and danced around him without touching. Some people just didn’t want to have fun.

The girl beside Yuri was still giggling, but she was also crying a little, bending down with her hands over her ears, flinching back from the lightning. The dude was shouting at her, pointing the gun at Yuri right past her, but she wasn’t listening to him. Any idiot could have told him she wouldn’t.

Shum-Shum dropped even lower, low enough to reach down with his arms and give the square a little hug. He didn’t do that much, he wasn’t a huggy kind of familiar, but it worked pretty well. A couple of tentacles wrapped around each arm, digging in with the beads. The guy twisted around and fired the gun straight up, three times, then yelled and dropped it as a tentacle tightened. Shum-Shum wasn’t even hurt. The dude might be a killjoy, but he couldn’t actually kill joy. Nobody could.

It was going great—he had one arm twisting around the grumpy bastard’s neck—when everything went south. Shum-Shum felt the woman, the one with the old guy by the car, reach down and grab something from inside her jacket. There was a sudden pushing sensation, like a big old bubble in the world, and the next thing Yuri knew Shum-Shum was letting go and flying back, tendrils flailing, and the man dropped to the ground.

Now Yuri was an island, a lonely spot in a hostile halo, and Shum-Shum was a football field’s length away behind him, twisting and hurting in a place no familiar should ever be. Not fair. Not cool. Yuri couldn’t hold him like that for long, with just a tiny stretching thread to connect them. There weren’t many people alive around here, not much food, and the new halo was about as hostile to Shum-Shum as a halo could get. All calm and smooth and steady. Pure sobriety. Yuri hated it.

The punk was reviving now, picking himself up, stretching out his hand to grab for his piece again. There was a new player too, an ugly old woman half-naked with her eyes lit up. She was moving Shum-Shum’s way, and she didn’t mean him any good. The girl next to Yuri was standing straight now, and starting to say something, but she was still all screwed up from halo shock. No help there.

Whatever. Yuri wasn’t new to this game either. He still had a solid jar of Faisal’s finest homebrew, jammed into his jacket pocket. It was tiny, smaller than a hip flask, and dented all to hell now, but it felt intact. He got it out and cracked it open—it stuck a little, like the cap was messed up, but he got it open—and just as the asshole was worming around the girl for a clear shot at Yuri the jar popped open and Shum-Shum disappeared and came back, all in an instant. No keystone sequence, no delay. Zero to fun in half a second.

He could feel at once that the man wasn’t safe anymore. It was hard to play those kinds of games when somebody was strangling you. Shum-Shum dropped down hard, before he could get his bearings, and gave him another good hug, better than the first. He couldn’t resist, even. He was laughing, or trying to laugh, as the arms wrapped tight around him, and lifted him up into the sky.

Up, up, up. Way up in the sky, where everybody could see. Everybody clapping and cheering for the show. Yuri wanted to cheer, himself. Everything was going right at last. But he needed to hold back, just a little bit. Kinda like sex. You needed to hold back and hold back and then—boom! That was how you really had fun. In one big flash, lighting up the sky, and the fun-hating bastard disappeared in a burst of a couple million degrees.

And that was all. He had nothing left to prove. He let go of his buddy, and down on the ground his mundane physical body blinked some more of the stinging gunk out of his eyes. It was the kind of situation that called for a really clever line, but Yuri was tired and hurt. He settled for holding up one hand in a finger-gun, mock-blowing the smoke off the tip, and croaking out, “Tagged you back, bitch.”

Then he laughed, too hard, and made himself throw up again.