Hexomancy (9 page)

Connie spread her stance and put up her dukes, turning to keep both Eastwood and Ree in her peripheral vision. “Bring it.”

“Gladly,” Ree said, shuffling forward as she drew another knife, cutting herself a path in to striking distance.

Connie pushed off and came at Ree, hunkering down into a metal-capped battering ram. Ree dodged to the side, her jumps no longer backed by super-soldier strength. Connie’s knee bashed and cut Ree’s shin, but Ree got in a slash across the woman’s back in exchange. From the other side, Eastwood closed and swung with brass knuckles, each finger styled with a ward. Looked like a prop out of
Supernatural
, or maybe
Dylan Dog
.

Ree was hoping for
Supernatural
.

Fighting two on one, they should have been able to keep Connie on the defensive. But the Derby Strega was used to power plays and made offense her best defense, wheeling and turning to keep Ree and her sometimes mentor closer together so she could parry both of their strikes in the same motion.

Ree’s knife made sparks on the Strega’s armored cops as the Strega blocked, dodged, and weaved. The Strega got in a solid jab to Ree’s head, blowing through Ree’s block with her mass advantage but landing only her fist, not the blade.

As Ree stumbled back, Connie grunted, arcing over in pain. Eastwood jumped back, then charged ahead immediately, opening up to draw Connie’s attention.

But it was no good. There was blood in the water, and Connie pressed her advantage, rolling forward and grabbing Ree from waist to shoulders. Connie grabbed and squeezed the woman in a destructive bear hug, locking down Ree’s knife hand along the way. She fought back but lost her grip on the blade as she tried to flip it around into a reverse grip.

She was too short for a proper headbutt, so Ree opted for the second-best option, which was a stiff knee to the groin.

Her knee found only hard plastic.
And a jill, too? Fucker.

Connie laughed, squeezing harder.

Eastwood pounded at the woman’s back, but her grip held strong. Ree fought, puffing herself up as best as she could, then, taking Eastwood’s timing into mind, deflated and dropped a half beat after Eastwood’s brass-knuckled rabbit punch.

She didn’t get all of the way out but slipped down to Connie’s waist level. Ree dropped into the splits, scuffing one knee along the way, but it got her under the derby Strega’s grip. Ree threw an elbow into the side of Connie’s knee, above and just behind the armored knee guard. At the same time, she knuckle-punched the woman’s upper thigh, all notions of clean fighting thrown out the window.

Connie grunted again, and Ree rolled back and up to her knees, the world spinning. She stood slowly, guard locked down tight.

Times like this, I really wish I was Chaotic Neutral.
A Chaotic Neutral Ree would have just blastered and lightsabered the woman into ribbons and walked away for a hot dog.

Connie caught Eastwood with an uppercut that hit like a ton of bricks, and Eastwood stumbled back.

Ree jumped up on the woman’s back with her best “little kid with enough grappling skills to be dangerous” grip, trying to snake her way around to a half nelson.

She held on as tightly as possible, wrapping the woman up into a triangle choke hold. Unsurprisingly, the woman dropped straight back, hoping to crush Ree under her substantial bulk. But Ms. Smith didn’t train no chump.

Ree unlocked her legs and swung back, landing on her belly instead of becoming the squishy middle of a Strega-concrete sandwich.

“Now!” Ree said, wincing with the force of the impact. Connie rolled over to try to keep Ree on the ground, but Ree scuttled back to her knees, getting clear.

Giving her a great view of Eastwood landing the coup d’grace, clocking Connie in the back of the neck, below her chromed helmet.

Eastwood’s blow made a meaty thud, supplemented by the slap of metal on flesh. Connie grunted once more, then collapsed to the concrete. Ree held her guard, in case she pushed on, but the woman seemed out for the count.

“Holy crap,” Ree said, massaging her jaw, which would soon be blooming into impressive shades of purple bruising.

Eastwood had found time to take a minor healing potion or the like during the fight; his cheek was no longer slashed open like the cover of
Wolverine
#50.

“That could have been a bit easier,” Eastwood said. “I’d take an easier fight next time, yep.”

“What do we do with the team here?” Ree asked.

“Well, I sure as hell don’t want to burn through the cards it’d take to BAMF them all back to the Dorkcave, and I definitely don’t have the space or equipment to lock them all up long enough to do anything useful. I say we leave them and just take Connie here. I’ve got an idea.”

“That’s never good news,” Ree said, scanning the edges of the park to look for reinforcements, further ambushes, or stray velociraptors. “This doesn’t involve sacrificing puppies, right?” She went over to where the shield had fallen and retrieved the child’s toy. She’d be better off with a full-size prop, but magic was magic.

By way of response, Eastwood’s face scrunched up into a pucker of disapproval. “Just get over here, and grab an arm.”

Eastwood grabbed one of Connie’s muscled arms, and fished a collectible card out of his jacket. He held up a card, showing a Fleer Nightcrawler from the early ’90s. Ree held on to the wave of nostalgia and lifted the woman’s other hand with both of hers, counteracting the extreme gravity compliance of bludgeoning-related unconsciousness.

The older geek took the card between his teeth. With the sound of tearing paper, the world.

Went.

BAMF!

Chapter Nine

BAMF!

With the familiar sound of teleportation, Ree, Eastwood, and Connie popped back into the world, through several scary dimensions that Ree wished she’d not read the comics issues about, believing very firmly in blissful ignorance when it came to hell dimensions, and popped back into the Dorkcave, Connie between them, now lying on the floor in front of Eastwood’s media wall.

“Tie her to the stacks while I get the ritual ready.” Dropping the woman’s arm, his focus went back into the rows and rows of merch.

“Sure, Eastwood,” Ree said as she tried to move the woman, “I’ll just drag the unconscious burly derby girl with fifty pounds of gear on. No problem!” Adrenaline from the fight bleeding off, her efforts to drag the woman on her own added up to an express ticket to nowhere. Without the magical superpowers, she was back to being small, sleep-deprived, and hungover, none of which were helping.

Harumphing, Ree let the woman’s arms drop back to the floor. She turned around to Eastwood’s media setup and cued up “Chosen” from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
, watched for five minutes, then ten minutes, temporarily forgetting why, then pulled herself away from the show and tapped into Buffy-level super-strength to haul Connie over to the stacks.

Once she was in place, magical yellow handcuffs from Green Lantern went over a basic plastic zip-tie. The most important thing with Stregas was cutting off their ability to do all the gestural bullshit that Hexomancy required to make people slip on bananas that didn’t exist and to get jams with guns that had just been cleaned and inspected.

Ree kept an eye on Connie, imagining that a tough witch would come to fairly soon.

Which reminded her of another thing. She grabbed a roll of duct tape and ripped off a five-inch chunk, pressing it over the woman’s mouth, making sure to avoid the nose. She wanted the woman unable to do magic, not unable to breathe.

“Okay, here we are,” Eastwood said, hauling a cardboard box through the stacks, moving with labored effort.

“What you got in there, a pile of bricks?”

“Better. Oracles.” Eastwood set the box down with a thud, then slid it over to Ree with a not-at-all-smooth push with his leg.

“How does this help us?”

“I did some research. Eriko, an old friend of mine from the Astral Cowboy days, who still works Spirit-side, got me a tip. She heard that you can mute a Strega’s power; there’s a way to cut off their connection to their patron, Fate. Poof, no more Hexomancy. Best bet from that source is that if you take a Strega’s favorite oracle, burn a copy, and make them breathe in the ashes, the sympathetic tie between them and the destroyed incarnation of the oracle causes them to lose their ability to control fate.” Eastwood looked like a kid talking about the PS4, not a grown man talking about stripping someone of their power.

“That’s your big plan? Rob these women of their powers entirely? No ‘make them swear to never come after us,’ no ‘convince them that you deserve to live and I should get to be a magical girl if I want to be’? You’re going straight to Fridging them via de-powering?”

Eastwood leaned back, hands crossing. He hadn’t been expecting that, had he?

“She tried to kill us. Lucretia broke the spirit, if not the letter, of her judgment in giving out information about us. Lucretia beating Grognard’s
giese
proved that. The Strega will keep on coming, and if we just beat them and try to lock them up, we’ll have ourselves an Arkham Jailbreak’s worth of trouble by next summer. This solves the problem without having to spill any more blood. This is the humane solution, Ree. It’s just not the nice one.”

“Don’t you think taking her power away from her will just make her hate us more? What’s to stop her from assembling another team and running us down when we aren’t prepared?” Ree asked.

Eastwood’s face darkened. “You have a better idea, then?”

She didn’t. But robbing someone of their power, especially a guy doing it to a woman, rubbed her several of the wrong ways.

“I don’t, but I don’t like it. We should call Grognard, maybe see about getting her run through a trial, too.”

“Lucretia stacked the deck in that trial; who says Connie wouldn’t do the same? Can you keep on counting on luck?”

“Who said it was luck that I won?” Ree realized she was yelling. She took a long breath and spoke again. “How would you even figure out which oracle is hers?”

“That’s not very difficult. Dab a drop of blood on one card from each deck, see which one resonates with a magical signature, using these.” Eastwood pulled out a set of Shade-designed glasses, undeniably ’80s. They matched the set she’d been given after the trail.

“I’m still not happy about this. Is there a way of making it less permanent, or making it just so she can’t use the power against us?” Ree asked.

“Not that I know of. And the Strega aren’t exactly forthcoming about how to help defeat them or slag their power. This solution cost me several favors, plus my original hero glaive from
Krull
.”

“Aw, I love that thing.” She’d found better tools since, but it was too ridiculous to not love.

“I want to make some calls before I sign off on something like this,” Ree said.

Eastwood held a hand out, inviting her to go.

Quick-drawing her phone, Ree headed toward a corner of the room, calling Grognard.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“It’s Ree. Got a question. Another Strega came after Eastwood, nearly took him out. We posse-ed up and now we’ve got her tied up in the Dorkcave. Go team,” she said, with little enthusiasm, her positivity batteries running red.

“But now Eastwood has this ritual that he says will take out her magic, permanently. And I’m not on board. These Strega think they’re doing Good Work, and Eastwood’s hardly squeaky clean. . . .”

“Mm hmm,” Grognard said.

“That it?”

“This is your call, Ree. Either you’re on board, or you try to stop him. This Strega tried to kill you, right?”

“Yeah, but people do that pretty often now. Doesn’t mean I’m excited to return the favor or cut away their magic. Alex Walters, sure, I’d have done it in an instant. Wouldn’t mind doing it to Lucretia. But this woman was getting her sister’s back; they think they’re Righteous.”

“Most villains do, though, right?”

“And Eastwood thinks he’s Righteous here, leaving my Chaotic Good ass in the middle.”

Ree sniffed smoke, and turned to see Eastwood lighting a deck of cards on fire.

“What the fucking fuck!” Ree said, running back toward the scruffy geek and the unconscious Strega. Eastwood dropped the deck in front of Connie as the cards caught fire at unnatural speed, fire leaping a yard high, coruscating through a million colors.

The deck burned by the time Ree made it back to Eastwood, diving shoulder-first and knocking him over, the two sliding along the concrete floor.

Eastwood grunted. “Frakking hell, Ree. It had to be done.” The older geek shoved Ree off to the side as he scrambled to his feet.

“No. Fucking. Way,” Ree said, crab-walking over to Connie as the ashes wafted up to her nose.

The woman breathed in deep through her nose, head snapping to attention, her eyes going wide, shot through with bloody veins that went from red to purple. Then her whole eyes went white. Ree felt the air grow heavy, then crack and shatter all at once.

Connie screamed.

Ree turned and hauled off on Eastwood, laying him out with a roundhouse. He came back up, blaster in hand, giving her a threatening view down the barrel.

“Cut that shit out, now. It’s done. Let’s see if it worked.”

“You cocky, self-righteous asshole!” Ree said, her voice filling the Dorkcave. Her hands were vibrating, her ears on fire.

“I just saved our lives from someone trying to kill us. Try to be a little grateful.” Eastwood plucked a Green Lantern ring out of his coat and slipped it on with his left hand.

Connie’s muffled speech turned both their heads.

She was struggling against her bonds, her eyes back to normal. Eastwood leaned forward with the shades.

“Her aura is gone. The magic, at least. She’s just a pissed-off derby blocker now.”

“Your definition of
just
leaves something to be desired,” Ree said, remembering the power of the woman’s blows.

Ree stepped over with care, prepped for random slips, muscle spasms, or falling pieces of roof. She ripped the duct tape from Connie’s mouth, not above taking a little pleasure in the woman’s pain. Light sadism was fine. The woman had tried to kill her, after all. And the pain of the duct tape wasn’t permanent.

“You arrogant, selfish asshole!” Connie’s voice was strained by fear. “You don’t know me, don’t know the people I’ve helped, the wrongs I’ve set right. My sister will come for you upon the solstice, and she makes me look like a rank newbie. What are you going to do next, slit my throat and offer up my blood to your dice bag?”

“I don’t want anything associated with you anywhere near my dice,” Eastwood said. “You have two options. You leave Pearson and never come back, or your story ends here.”

“I’m not letting you murder her in cold blood,” Ree said.

“Because you did a great job of stopping me before.”

“Motherfucker,” Ree said.

“We’ve established that,” Eastwood said.

Ree saw red, the murder cue from
Kill Bill
playing in her mind.

“Maybe I should just sit here and wait for you two to kill each other, and then I can just skate away, scot-free,” Connie said.

“Shut up!” Ree and Eastwood said in unison.

“I’m staying until I’m sure you’re not going to kill her, but then we’re done, Eastwood. Fucking done. No more bodyguard, no more Geek Girl Friday. ¡Estoy harta de bregar contigo!

“You were doing good for a while there, pulling off the whole Thunderbolt thing. But this is too fucking much. You couldn’t wait ten minutes for me to consider, try to convince me, instead of steamrolling right over a grown-up discussion by making a huge fucking decision without your partner?”

“That what you think you are, a partner?” Eastwood asked. “Because I’ve never seen anything to make me believe you’re anything more than a sidekick. You’re Robin, not Nightwing. Not even Red Robin.”

“Label me however you want. You’re still a sociopathic asshole.” Ree dialed Grognard again, stepping back, but keeping both the geek and the Strega in her view.

“Me again. He did it. He fucking did it. I need you to come over and help me escort Derby Strega out of town so that Darth Geek here doesn’t decide to just off her.”

“Okay. I’ll be over in a half hour.”

“Any chance you could put a rush on that? Things aren’t exactly comfortable here, what with the betrayal, the assault, and the burning rancor of a woman in armor.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Try to keep the body count to a minimum, okay?”

“That’s the plan. Thanks, man.”

Grognard grunted in assent, then hung up. “He’s coming in a half hour. The three of us are going to escort Ms. Clothos-Line here out of town.”

Ree turned to the Strega. “When we drop you off, you’re going to do yourself a favor and never set foot in this town again. You won’t inform on us to any of your sisters except to tell them to stay away, and you’re going to be a good person, helping babies and shit.” Ree realized she was rambling but leaned into it.

“You say you’re a white hat, then prove it. Go forth and be awesome, bringing light and shooting rainbows out of your butt. Then we can feel bad for taking away your power, and you can be all smug about it and we’ll brood, pondering our slow, incremental descent into villainy. Or at least, Eastwood here will do that, and I’ll be busy having nothing to do with him. ¿Tu me entiendes?”

Connie’s voice was cool. “Got it. You won’t see me again. You going to take these cuffs off, or what?”

Ree looked to Eastwood. “Hell no,” he said.

“Not yet,” Ree answered.

“Can I at least get some water, then? Fights leave me thirsty as hell.”

“I wonder why that is. Maybe the part where you almost killed me?” Eastwood asked while Ree went over to pour water from Eastwood’s water cooler. It was probably the most innocuous office-y thing he had, the standard plastic setup with two spares waiting.

Ree helped the woman drink, her hands still bound.

And the following twenty-nine minutes passed without words, without anything resembling comfort or relaxation for any of the three in the room.

When the door buzzed, Ree jumped in place, the awkward equilibrium disturbed.

After quick pleasantries between Grognard and Eastwood, the ex–Console Cowboy released Connie’s manacles, reattached them once she was on her feet, and the three of them walked her to the door.

Eastwood stuffed his psychic paper in his front coat pocket, all of the excuse or justification they’d need if anyone stopped them.

An hour later,
Grognard dropped Ree off at the Shithole, and awkwardness dropped off her like squamous scales falling from her eyes. But no way was she changing her name to Paul. Being a saint would be nice and all, but she was never any good at being a Catholic, which made her an outcast to both sides of her family. Luckily, her dad didn’t give a crap about any of that and kept her shielded from most of the familial censure.

Ree walked into the apartment to see Sandra, Priya, and Anya sitting around the couch, several bottles of liquor open between them. Her roommate, Sandra Wilson (Strength 15, Dexterity 13, Stamina 13, Will 12, IQ 12, Charisma 13—Geek 3 / Scholar 3 / Professional 2 / Dancer 1 / Teacher 1 / Waitress 1 / Chef 1), was a Greek American Amazon, just over six feet tall, with perfectly-formed ringlets of hair. Normally dressed business casual like it was her second skin, today she had on a T-shirt and worn pajamas, making the most of her Funemployment.

“Hey,” Ree said, dropping her keys into the Bowl of Unlost Keys.

“Hey,” Anya said. “I figured it was time to close the circle of knowledge.”

“Thank God. Where are you?”

Sandra piped up. “I’ll tell you where I am. I am confused, befuddled, a bit impressed that you kept this from me, and more than a little angry that you told Priya and Anya before you told your frakking roommate.”