The Necromancer's Gambit: Pin
Nicolas Wilson
The Kindred stay hunkered down in their cars, waiting; they’re no soldiers. If they’ve got something to shoot at, or something to charge at, they’re a reasonable facsimile. But soldiers are more than that. They’re supposed to be problem solvers, and the Kindred aren’t. They’d wait out there until they got somebody new to shoot at, or new orders.
The magic I use is basically just an unlock spell, without the spit. That makes it harder. The distance adds more difficulty. But I pop open the gas caps on the Kindred’s cars. By now I see a third vehicle, one that hadn’t entered the fray before.
Teasing out the fuel’s a different kind of spell. It requires… seduction, like making a snake dance with music, to get it to pour outside the vehicles. I don’t need much, just enough to catalyze. It isn’t liquid fuel that’s flammable, it’s the vapor. But still I need the spark. I provide that the old fashioned way, by shooting one of the cars with my revolver.
They turn to see me, ready to return fire, but I’m already back in the doorway, hidden enough from sight. The fire is energy, raw energy, and I use it to convert still more of the fuel to vapor; it’s a lossy process, but it’s worth it.
The tanks explode from the pressure, but I capture that energy, force it into a ball of fire bigger than a man. It hovers in the air above their cars.
Then I step out in the open. One of them gets a bead on me with his gun, chambers a round, and is about to fire when the man in front of him tells his to stop. “He’s the only thing containing that explosion. You shoot him, we all get torched.”
I keep walking, trying to hide the fact I’m a medium breeze away from passing out. The strain of this spell would usually about kill me, conk me out for a couple of days. But as I reach the fire, I put my hand up into it. I extract just enough energy to prop myself up. This is different from when I absorbed the mana bomb, because I’m not just a conduit, I am the reservoir. So even more resistance. I’m going to lose my knuckle hair for sure, maybe all my body hair. I just hope I don’t singe my taint this time, or set my underwear on fire; you would not believe how long that takes to heal.
I stumble as the last of it seeps into me, and double over, and it’s about all I can do not to throw up. I want to take a nap and run a marathon, drop-kick a baby and try to make a new one at the same time. That kind of feedback makes every nerve alive at the same moment, every craving come online.
But I steady myself against the car, push myself back to my full height. “Any of you makes a move before I’m out of sight, and I let it go.” I walk to my car, and after I unlock my door, I add, “I’d suggest you duck and cover.”
They do. Because the smart ones understand that as soon as I’m out of sight, or at least out of whatever range I might have on this spell, the fireballs going off anyway. With the amount I peeled off for myself, it shouldn’t kill any of them. But it’s going to concuss the hell out of them. They aren’t following me back to their home base- or worse, heading to the Lab.
My car starts. There’s one hell of a breeze as I drive away, from all of the bullet holes in my doors. That makes me feel a little better about the firebubble bursting in my rearview mirror as I drive away. It makes a sound like thunder, and there’s a part of me that wishes I could have stuck around to watch it happen.
But I’ve got the Kindred’s boss to see. And I pray that for once Pawn didn’t fucked up his assignment.
I’m on the road a long time, and it’s hard not to wonder if in those moments Queen and Rook are dying. But I’ll only hurt their chances by hovering over the phone; they’ll need their wits about them. And I need mine.
I’m even more skeptical about Pawn’s intel when I see the outside of the place. Nondescript little warehouse, none of the pomp and circumstance of Baldur’s last operation. And none of the razor wire.
But when I get closer I see the car parked out front, with a beefy forearm with runic tattoos designed to guarantee virility and ferocity sticking out of the driver side window. But like I said, there’s no razor wire, so I drive around back and hop a four-foot tall concrete wall. The next posted guard is on the door, or rather inside it, and he’s green enough he opens it while asking out loud, “Who could it be? Perimeter didn’t say anything.”
I answer his stupid question by putting my gun in his face. The Kindred are set up in tents inside the empty warehouse. But standing above all of them is one of those multiple-room tents with built in climate control. Next to it is a chair on a forklift.
I take the guard at gunpoint there. Other Kindred get curious, and follow. But they’re not wholly sure what to do. When we get to the tent, I push the gun into the guard’s neck. “Call him.”
“B-Baldur?”
He sighs, then I hear the sound of zipping. But it isn’t the front door zipper, not at first; that comes a moment later.
Baldur, shirtless, emerges from the tent. He barely acknowledges me, but goes and sits in his chair. Then he looks at his guard, still at gunpoint, and says, “Up, please,” expectantly. The guard glances at me, then goes to the forklift controls and raises Baldur’s chair.
“Knight, isn’t it?” Baldur asks. “I seem to remember you hitting harder than I’d assume looking at you.”
“Not a social call,” I tell him.
“Well, if it’s an assault, I think you came underprepared.” The curious Kindred who followed me flick off safeties and chamber rounds. Must be a dozen weapons, mostly rifles and automatic weapons. Of course, I’m between them and their leader, and he’d backstop any shots they took; fucking amateurs.
I pull my other hand out of my coat pocket, and hold up the thing I got out of the armory for him to see. “It’s a mana bomb, built around a reservoir, on a dead man’s switch. You’ll note, I’ve already pulled the pin.”
“Mutually assured destruction? Well, we’re all MAD here. But, wait, you’re threatening me with a thermal detonator? You remember how that scene in Jedi turned out, right? I’m not sure I have a slave bikini in your size.”
“If I recall correctly, the detonator worked fine. It was when she tried to rescue Han that she got caught- though why she didn’t whip out the detonator again is anybody’s guess.”
“I’ll take hack writing for a thousand, Alex. Of course, if I were Jabba, I would have included the detonator in the price for the wookie. You know, screw me once, shame on you. Not that you’re likely to give me a weapon of magickal destruction as a parting gift.”
“Are we negotiating now? Because I have a precondition. The hit on the royals ends. Now. You make that phone call- otherwise this escalates to full on extortion.”
“A knight extorting his citizenry. That is very old school-the heraldic kind.”
“Well, as I see it, right now, you’re an escaped fugitive. These yahoos are harboring your ass. I could explode the lot of you and nobody’d bat an eye.”
“Sounds like the same kind of horse shit you threw me in the clink for in the first place.”
“That horseshit came from Idaho. I suspect that’s why you left in the hurry you did, because they finally had enough noncircumstantial evidence to snatch you in the night. There isn’t anything saying we can transfer charges between the Gambits, but there’s nothing saying we can’t, either. Call it a gray area.”
“I think I prefer to call it fascism, abuse of power, the police state lashing out to protect itself.”
“You can stow your rhetoric. As I said, this is no longer a negotiation. Frankly, we already took down your shadow Gambit’s Knight. I don’t think your ego would let you accept a post like Pawn, so you’re higher value. So if I’m trading myself for you and your little ska band- seems like I’m making out, on the score.”
“I like that. This is all a chess game, to you. Point values and shit. And if that means you fall on your sword, so be it. A warrior’s sensibilities. You can drum that into people, but to really get them to embrace, understand and respect it on a visceral level, that’s different. But all of that presumes that I wanted any part of this, what did you call it, a shadow Gambit? I don’t like there being assholes in charge- I don’t see how things are rectified by me being one of those assholes.”
“Then you’ve got all the more reason to deal.”
“You worked with that mud person, until he kicked, but at least you never worked with vampires. I guess you haven't made the effort to butcher the ones who live in your back yard, but there's a difference between letting dogs stay in their kennel, and inviting them into the house. But presuming I’m not part of this rogue gambit, I must have some other motivation, right? You did kidnap me, throw me in a crazy kind of hell for a few years. That’s probably enough to want most of you dead.”
“If all you’re after is revenge, well, I’m the one who put you away- me and Castle. We didn’t take it up with the royals, didn’t even mention it to them until after the fact. You want to settle that score so badly, we can all just die, here and now- it’s worth it to me to take you off the board. And let me be real clear, here: I’m done fucking around with you.” I arm the device countdown. “Thirty seconds, and then this entire debate becomes academic, in the past tense sense.”
“Doesn’t give me much time to haggle. But I presume we leave you alone for the time being.”
“And we do the same.”
“And my charges?”
“We’ll call it time served.”
“And the explosive?”
“I’ll destroy the device on my way out- but I’m keeping the reservoir.”
“Which is probably enough power to flatten the building anyway.” He dials on a burner. I put my finger back on the switch and the countdown stops.
“Ulf? Cease hostilities. And make a show of leaving. Yes, this is Baldur. Don’t be a fuckwit, we’re on short-time here, and you do not want my poltergeist haunting you.” He hangs and smiles at me. “I plan to murder you some day.”
“And I plan to put you back in jail. That doesn’t mean we have to be pricks about it.”
“You’re a strange man, but I think I enjoy that about you.”
I dial Rook. “They standing down?”
“Not at the- wait, boss. Yeah. Holy shit. There were three times as many as I thought. And closer. Fuck they were close. They were at the back door. I think they” there’s a loud crash.
I eyeball Baldur, and he puts up his finger telling me to hold on before I murder us all.
“Jesus, Sorry. They had the back door off its hinges- that was it falling as they left. They would have been inside in seconds, maybe a minute if there were any countermeasures left unspent.”
“Also the gay bomb,” Queen says in the background.
“Did you ever actually have the gay bomb assembled?” Rook asks.
“A gentleman never tells.”
“I have to go. I need to throttle a gentleman.” She hangs up, and I put away my phone. Baldur heaves a sigh, smiling. “You nearly exploded a lot of innocent people there, sheriff.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call you innocent in this.”
“Co-belligerents, then.” He smiles. “I wonder if I’ll shoot you when the time comes. I’d really need some time-lapse to go that route, you know, so I could watch it over and over again in excruciating detail in painfully slow motion while I’m fellated. But go ahead. Flee. We’ll do that some other day. Go. My prostitutes aren’t going to pleasure themselves… well, actually, they would, if I asked them, but I’d like to be there to see it. So go.”