The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes) (23 page)

T-Bone
paced back and forth, looking the same as usual but a bit more paranoid.  His eyes kept darting around the living room, to the busted doors and back towards the entry room.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

He flinched, looking up like he was seconds from dodging bullets flying at him.  When he saw it was me he calmed a bit, but only a bit.  I get the feeling that if T-Bone’s pool had been back to shape I would have been electrocuted and charbroiled like Backup.

“Get down here quick!” he
downright ordered me.

“I’m busy with Suit and Pajamas.”

“Huh?”

“The guy
who leads these idiots and his skanky girlfriend,” I said, remembering that T-Bone wasn’t in on my internal naming scheme, “I got them cuffed up.”

“Where’s
Vega?”

“No
Vega and no JoJo.”

H
e pointed down at the floor.  “Then get down here!”

“Why?”

He glanced at every door or hallway in sight.  “After you left me behind I locked the front door, only someone tried to open it, and now they’re walking around the house!”

Has to be Tatter
, I thought.

Before I could do anything about it Tatter popped up at the backdoor, arms so filled with takeout food he couldn’t see the door was blasted glassless.  “Who th
ink it a funny
broma
to order
Lon Ga
, then make me go get it, then
cerrar
a door on me?  Which
pendejo
needs to get reminded who
I
work for and who
you
work for?”

Too perfect.

I had to indulge the wordplay this time . . . no choice with such a slow pitch.

“How ‘bout me?”

He looked up over the edge of the paper bags, eyes going wide at the sight of mancer in his den.  I grinned again, leaning against the metal of the balcony railing, hands white, knuckles scraped up from smashing face earlier.

You.

Are.

Going.

To.

Get.

Fucked.

Up.

Tatter didn’t notice the three tied up Coyotes . . . didn’t notice T-Bone either, standing there in the middle of the living room, nowhere to run to.

Probably the only thing that saved
T-Bone’s life.

The
Lon Ga
dropped out of Tatter’s hands, smashing down to the floor in a wet crunch, whatever Vietnamese eat and plastic containers getting it on with an orgy.  A gun came out quick, of course a gun, always a gun with these guys.  Small-like in totality, hidden in his jeans at his back, but with a big barrel on top.  He didn’t bring it around his body in an arc and up around to me but instead . . .

The gun
came forward with a quick snap of his elbow, horizontal not vertical.

Pop.

Pop.

Too low
, the bullets embed in the wall just below the balcony.

Pop.

Pop.

Recoil from the first shots and the awkward angle push the gun too far to the left, his shots spraying wide of me.

I don’t bother turning.  My mind does the angles, does the math.  It realizes real quick that being that far up I don’t have to go left or right to get out of the way, I just have to back up enough to have wall between us.

As Tatter’s arm fights the recoil to return back
to its original position his wrist rotates and his shoulder drops to bring the gun to vertical.

My feet set, my center of gravity goes backwards, and my hamstrings launch themselves.

Pop.

Pop.

Two bullets go right over my head, so close the air around me snaps with their passing.

Tatter’s other hand rises,
surrounding the hand on the grip and providing the correct platform.

My arms go out and down, throwing my momentum off and bringing my upper body down while having my kicking legs rise into the air.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

Click.

I was still alive and Tatter was out of bullets.  Time went fast forward, my brain finally catching up with everything else that had happened.  I touched my stomach, my chest, my neck.  No blood, no wounds.  Above my head
, my eyes found six bullet holes really quick.  I grabbed my balls, my thighs.  I looked at my arms and wrists, my hands.

I
just barely didn’t piss my pants.

“Fuck!” I growled just to hear my favorite word.

Time returned to normal.

My eyes glinted.

I was still alive . . .

. . .
and Tatter was out of bullets.

Gun
, I thought first off, before I’d even gotten to my feet.

No
, I thought next at my knees.

Waste my anima pool on a gun again?  Wasn’t fair.  Besides, I don’t know much about guns but even I know guns without bullets might as well be paperweights.  Tatter would have been better off with a pair of brass knuckles than an empty gun. 
Or one of Suit’s massive dildos . . .

I hit the balcony
with three hard steps behind me, pushing forward, building up what speed a short, muscled guy like I can.  Why’d it always have to be speed?  Where’s the situation where my stamina could win out?  Instead . . . three hard steps to the balcony, my wide frame and muscled weight moving against all those Newtonian forces.

Newton would have pissed his codpiece if he
’d ever seen what happened in front of me.

Anim
a rushed ahead, a vanguard of knights getting down with a charge of metal on their big bad anima horsies.  It crashed into the balcony railing, flying from end to end.  Not to destroy.  I’m good at that.  But metal . . . I can create with metal too.

No spillage this time.  No extra.  One target.  Not one drop wasted.  The balcony railing ripped from its fastenings, the screws happily yielding to the whole.  One side stayed, the rest spread out like some ribbed metal tongue.  Or a ramp
. . .

My mind might have done angles and trajectories just fine w
hen it went a million miles an hour, but back in normal land it drew a huge blank on the length of the railing and the height of the balcony.  A ramp, sure a ramp, but only for a few feet extra.  Didn’t help that I came on it so fast . . . fast for me at least.

Hallway, hallway, open space a
gain . . . there’s Tatter, not even bothering with another clip, just throwing the gun to the floor like it had been the one to mess up his aim.  Railing at the very edge of my vision, a hint to some safety just before the fall.  My foot kept running with the drop, hit railing, then pushed off.

King Henry Price went airborne.

Not a place any geomancer wants to be.  Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage I am not.  No flying elbow drop here.

King Henry Price went kind of straight and then lots of down.  No elbow, no shoulder tackle.  Nothing heroic, just plain falling in the general direction of Tatter.  Hundred-eighty pounds of meat slamming into another hundred-something pounds of meat.

The impact carried the both of us backwards and then only me downwards.  I ended on my knees in front of him, arms grabbing at his shirt and pants, head all near places no man wants his head near.

Got to give it to Tatter, nasty cat killing Coyote he might be but the bastard was tough enough to stay standing.  More than tough enough to stay standing.  Tatter started raining down short little punches to the top of my skull immediately and didn’t stop for nothing.

The world going slightly fuzzy on me, honor damn died real quick . . . like I had any to begin with?

I punched him in the balls.

Didn’t stop the smack, smack, smack against my skull so . . .

I punched him in the balls again.

The sequel got through where the original had failed, making Tatter back up a few steps, giving me the space I needed to stand up and bring up my arms to guard myself.  Tatter did the same, gun forgotten . . . wherever it had fallen to.

We stared at each other for a moment.  Both all pissed off.  No secrets between us now.  Not like in the parking lot a few days back.  Knew he was a Coyote.  He knew I was an Artificer.  Information gets that good and the game gets a lot more complicated.  Ain’t the overconfidence or chaos that was in our first encounter.  No possibility for lopsided outcomes.

Both our asses were going to get bloody.

Of course
. . . both of us were so focused on beating face we forgot about T-Bone.

Being that he’s an electromancer, a fucking Stormcaller that my earthborn ass is jealous of, with the ability to throw around balls of lightning and ground electricity, and all that awesome shit that makes my little metal railing move look like a parlor trick
. . . being all that . . . T-Bone charging across the room at full tilt caught me just a little off guard.

Caught Tatter off guard too.

I know for a fact that the man has never played football in his life but damn . . . this little move would have ended up on his highlight film.  He rammed into Tatter, wrapped him up right under the armpits and kept on going.  He even hurtled the table, not stopping a bit until he reached the now television-less wall, where Tatter slammed against plaster and paint and whatever else they make houses out of.  Tatter hit so hard that he got
embedded
into the wall.

T-Bone
stepped back, looking back at me so shocked by what he’d done that maybe it had been me responsible.

Tatter’s only comment was a low groan.

My hands dropped to my sides.  “You couldn’t let me punch him at least one time?”

[CLICK]

Suit whined
all the way down the stairs.

You’d think he’d be grateful I untied him from the bed and
only bothered to retie his hands.  Sure, I left him naked as his birthday . . . suit . . . but that’s only because I didn’t want to have to touch him enough to put some pants on the bastard.

Not that Suit could see it, on account of his blindfold, but the living room was devoid of any type of body.  The movies
never mention how heavy knocked-out people are to move around.  T-Bone huffed so hard that he might be near a heart attack.  Might have been the weight or might have been Pajamas being naked.  Guy definitely needed to get a girlfriend if he was getting turned on by Coyote skank.

I leaned Suit into a
commandeered kitchen chair and sat down on the table opposite him—same table that had the coke and porn mags on it.  Coke was gone to the ether, porn mags were still turned to buttress mode.  Glass crunched under my shoes and Suit’s face cringed from the same. His feet pulled away from the floor, small cuts leaking blood from
market
to
wee wee wee all the way home
.

T-Bone
gave me a nod before he sat at the couch.  All tied up and accounted for in the guesthouse save for Suit.  Good.  Makes little talks easier when you don’t have to worry about someone crashing the party. 
Little talks and interrogations . . .

“Gagged too?”

“Gagged too, phone disconnected, and all locked in a room.”

My turn to nod.
  Given how much I’d screwed up . . . things could have gone a lot worse.

“We should cut our losses and leave,”
T-Bone said, not for the first time in the last few minutes.

Hadn’t been into attacking in the first place, wasn’t into having this bit of conversation either.  Wanted to be gone.  Wanted to wait for Ceinwyn to
help us fix our screw-up.  Considering we just kept screwing things up even more, maybe T-Bone had a point.

I wasn’t no closer t
o finding Horatio Vega than I’d been to begin the day.

Wasn’t no closer to JoJo either.

Bucket of fail, King Henry.  You fucktard.

“I was told this
is Horatio Vega’s house.”

Suit, naked
. . . tied up . . . blindfolded, still smirked.  “You’re an idiot, Price.”

“Too true
. . . really looking forward to killing him too . . .”

Suit laughed, smirk all wide.  “You don’t know shit.  Mancer
. . . so you think you’re a badass . . . don’t know shit.”

“Handled you and your boys.”  I flicked the blindfold
off his face, let him take a peek around his living room.  TV going banzai charge seemed to really upset him.  “All alone . . .
Hector
, I’m guessing.”

“Hector
Vega
,
puta
, don’t forget it before you think about touching me.”