Chapter Four

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I fought down the immediate urge to demand, “Where?” and instead opted for another one-word question.

“Why?”

Skip studied my face for a moment, gently rocking back and forth in his chair. “Why do I have this information? Why am I giving it to you? Because I thought we already—”

“Why don’t you just go in and get the Battle Born back yourself?” I asked, doing my best to keep my tone confident while I figured out this newest wrinkly. “You have the resources, surely. Send Balor or an army of Gardeners or even just two Battle Born. Two must be better than one.”

“Ah. I was wondering when this was going to come up,” Skip began. “It seems you don’t know quite as much about us as I was led to believe. The simple answer is, well, those are the orders. Someone with a bigger desk than mine wants me to send a fistful of psychopaths at the problem; I open a little file folder on my desktop dedicated to terrible people. The longer answer is that if we start sending our own after everyone who goes AWOL, we can’t control the narrative if we get our missing child back. Someone outside the organization does the job, then who knows how it happened? And if anything, it reinforces the idea in the others that the world is a desperate and precarious place full of individuals capable of hurting us and all the wonderful citizens we’ve sworn to protect.”

The sarcasm was heavy in his voice, especially at the end; and he seemed to reflect a moment before he continued. “That’s if you succeed, of course. You probably won’t. I’ll be impressed if any of you do, scouts honor, but no one is particularly counting on it one way or the other. There’s a betting pool going. I stayed out of it. Nevertheless, there’s the other half of it. If you all fail, none of our people had to get hurt in the process. None of the other Battle Born get any clever ideas of how they would get away. They stay here and get whatever story they get, and we try again. Getting the picture now?”

Pity touched my heart for nearly an instant before I was able to remind myself that for all of Skip’s outward disgust and sympathy for the victim, he was still here by choice and he would continue to profit from this practice he would have me believe sickened him. I knew better than most that sometimes you had to do something unsavory for the greater good. Worse, I understood intimately what it was like to be used as a tool. None of this applied to Skip. You don’t get a watch that nice and the authority to talk down to dangerous men if you didn’t compromise yourself along the way.

Then again, who was I talk about being compromised? Even now I had a choice. I could stand up and call Skip out on his hypocrisy and cowardice. I could try to force the antidote out of him if I needed to. I could have likely broken the man in two before anyone outside was any the wiser. But I wanted his information. I wanted him to think I was on his side and indebted to him, grateful to him for his help. So instead I offered a curt nod, and in the most appreciative voice I could muster, I asked, “Where is the Battle Born right now?”

* * *

The sun was setting by the time I arrived at the Hawthorne mall. It wouldn’t seem possible these days, that a place like this could exist, but seeing was believing in this case. Nearly twenty years ago, the vast shopping center closed up for good, standing as a monument to failure ever since. I had heard rumors recently that there were plans to revitalize it, but then again, there always seemed to be plans to revitalize it. I’ve had business here in the past. With the exception of a lone security guard and the occasional urban explorer, it was a rare unwatched location in the city, which made it perfect for transactions between discerning parties and for the temporary housing of things that go bump in the night. I’m sure some or all of the above contributed to its stagnation.

Walking around the building gave me enough time to regret that I didn’t have more equipment at my disposal. A small set of lockpicks, a fistful of caltrops, and a bit of blinding powder that I had been led to believe was enchanted, but I’ve since learned was merely Magnesium something or other. It ignited briefly and produced a momentary flash when exposed to the air. Magic or no, it had a use, and I don’t suppose I needed to know more about it than that. Still, between what I had at my disposal and my own set of skills, I didn’t like my odds if it came down to facing anything with the blood of a god coursing through its veins.

I also didn’t have a choice. Two teenagers in football jerseys slowly rode past on bicycles, not giving me much more than a glance, but the impatience I had for them to be out of sight served to remind me that every second I waited was an invitation for one of the bounty hunters to get there before me. I had an advantage at the moment, and if I didn’t act now, I’d be squandering this rare piece of good fortune. For Ann’s sake, I didn’t dare wait a second longer than necessary. The current security guard, an elderly Hispanic man, was making a perimeter check, which allowed me to time my entrance. As it stood, it didn’t appear that he bothered to walk along the railroad tracks behind the structure, which made it ideal as an entry point. No one was likely to see me from the street and I welcomed the low likelihood of being discovered.

Most of the entrances to the structure were boarded up with a handful of chains and padlocks on carefully chosen doors. The one I approached was attached to a loading bay behind some defunct department store. A Montgomery Ward, if I didn’t miss my guess by the faded color patterns. A couple of thoughts occurred to me as I set to the task of maneuvering a shim into the lock. The first fleeting thought was gratitude to the security personnel for not letting their padlocks rust and thus making my job easier. I’d have the lock open as quickly as someone might have with the actual key. But that gave way for my second, and more alarming thought. If Skip’s intel were correct, then it would stand to reason that the Battle Born would have had to remove one of these locks themselves. And even with the bare minimum effort the security provided here, someone would have noticed. A guard could be bribed or convinced to look the other way with a threat to their family, but this wasn’t an arms dealer or shrewd businessmen. Arguably, this was the loneliest person in the world. Someone on the lam, a fugitive from a dangerous, clandestine organization. They wouldn’t have an expired MetroCard, let alone the resources to make it unnoticed. That didn’t discount the idea of a secret entrance or six, but you wouldn’t know it your first time here. Hell, I’ve been here before, and I don’t know of any hidden passages. So then, that left the question of the hour, bigger even than how Skip knew where to send me. How did they get inside without anyone noticing?

I unwrapped the excessive amount of chain which had been snaked around the handles of two of the doors which led inside. A good four feet of machinery grade chain links. Overkill for a door, but then the door probably wasn’t used often. Upon further inspection, it seemed clear that the chain was worse for wear compared to the lock. The lock wasn’t brand new by any means, but it might as well have been compared to the chain which showed signs of rust. I took a second to consider this and it occurred to me that the chain might have been left over from the days when it would have been needed for heavy transport or some such, and it had been abandoned and then repurposed.

There would have been no way to rewrap the door handles after I’d entered and I decided to take it with me, wrapping it around my forearm over the sleeve of my hooded sweater, holding the end of it in my fist, careful to avoid as much skin contact as possible. I cursed lightly under my tongue that the chain had been made of iron for some inexplicable reason and didn’t have the courtesy to be stainless steel like its friend, the padlock. I had, for lack of a better term, an allergy that would have made prolonged skin contact uncomfortable, to say the least. All of the Fae did. I didn’t have time to stand around and lament all night, however. I opened the doors and slipped inside. Anyone passing by would be far more likely to miss the detail of the missing chain than they would be quick to spot the lock and chain in a pile at the foot of the door. Besides, this gave me a makeshift weapon. Not enough to instill confidence in my chances in a fight, but it wasn’t nothing.

The stench of mildew nearly overwhelmed me the instant I stepped inside. Years of neglect meant that the weather had taken its toll on the structure and stagnant pools of water were everywhere. The only light in the building was what managed to shine in through exposed holes in the roof from either the sun or streetlights. Thankfully my kind did just fine in low light, but I’d be just as blind as anyone in total darkness. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. My eyes needed at least some external light source to take advantage of my elven eyes, and for the moment I was grateful for what precious little seeped in from above.

I didn’t envy the task ahead of me. I was to search for a one-person army in the dark, more or less unarmed, in an unsafe environment that once housed over a hundred stores in the space of more than forty acres. I was a puppy looking for a hibernating demon bear with every intention of waking it and biting its ankles with no idea which cave it might have chosen for its slumber. This was a foolhardy plan for sure, but the one advantage I’d have is that so far as I knew, no one else knew I was coming and the Battle Born might be caught flat-footed. If was to have any chance of success here, it would be to hit early and hit hard.

My daylight advantage was all but gone after twenty minutes of searching, and I was no closer to finding my prey. The outside lights had kicked in, but they didn’t extend to the entirety of the enormous shopping center, which made my already glacial-paced search slow even further. At this rate, I could be here all night, and I didn’t know how long the Battle Born intended to stay or who else might be coming. I could move faster, but I risked exposing myself and I didn’t dare. Slow as it was, I was sure that my movements had been devoid of sound, and Heimdall himself couldn’t have seen me without at least squinting for a closer look.

On the other end of things, while I hadn’t made a noise, I hadn’t heard one either. Not just that I hadn’t heard the sound of someone skulking about, I hadn’t heard anything at all. Not rats or the less natural creatures one might expect to catch of glimpse of after dark. Nothing. I began to get the sense that not only was Skip’s information on the money, but everything here had been frightened off by their natural survival instinct to be someplace the big bad murder machine wasn’t.

I was on the second floor now, having yielded no results from below. As I made my way through a nameless, long forgotten store, my foot stopped maybe half an inch above a pile of trash. The lighting here was worse than it had been in most of the areas I had searched and stepping on this would have made quite the noise, relatively speaking. Crouching down to get a better look at the refuse, I stared at it with a measure of confusion. I needed the light of my cell phone, now dangerously low on battery, to get a look at what was I was seeing. Sprawled out in front of me, in no discernable order, were dozens of boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes. Swiss Rolls, Zebra Cakes, Nutty Bars; there was indeed no lack of variety. The snacks that had been eaten had the plastic wrappers left in untidy piles, but there were several unopened boxes as well. “This is fresh,” I puzzled out loud to myself, rubbing a bit of cream filling between my thumb and forefinger until it was too thin to see. There was no dust on the boxes either. This was very fresh indeed.

“What are you doing here?”

I did my best not to jump at the unexpected sound, but my head shot up all the same.

The source of the question was shrouded in the shadows created by the dim moonlight that found its way into the store. The voice was feminine enough, but the figure was imposing. An inch or two over six feet with wide, muscular shoulders that possibly gave the illusion that the person was wider than they probably were. Currently that illusion equaled the width of cargo van.

“Just a bit of urban exploring,” I said, standing up. It wasn’t technically a lie, which is always the best answer in these situations. “I’m sorry, was this your food?”

“What is an elf doing exploring an abandoned mall after dark?”

The tone was accusatory now, and covered ears or no, this person saw me for who I was.

“And does that make you the Battle Born, then?”

I wished almost instantly that I hadn’t asked that, but my bad habit of answering with a question to avoid answering directly got the better of me. I had been taken off guard, and my mouth had been quicker than my brain.

There was an uncomfortable pause that was filled with a heavy silence. “I have a name,” the woman replied. It came across as a threat.

“Forgive me; I’m sure you that you do,” I said apologetically. “Please, hear me out. I don’t want to hurt you.”

There was a sound like the snort of a bull. “If you know what I am that almost certainly means that you know I escaped, so I’m sure that you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

If I hadn’t been watching closely, I might have missed it. She moved almost too quickly for me to react. I spun on my heel, hoping to land a spinning thrust kick into her stomach and take the wind out of her, but she slammed into me before my leg could extend, sending my body back into the shop, slamming into the wall with a loud crack that I hoped wasn’t coming from me. My head was spinning, but instincts were taking over. If I didn’t get up and defend myself, my life would come to a very abrupt end.

I’d been knocked down and getting back to my feet proved to be an extremely short-lived victory. A fist hammered down in my direction, and I raised my chain wrapped forearm just in time to avoid having my skull caved in. The chain absorbed some of the blow, but not much, and I was back on the ground less than two seconds after I stood up.

There must have been some reason there wasn’t a follow-up attack. Maybe in the dark, I just looked dead. Or maybe the Battle Born just wasn’t used to things still breathing after more than one strike. Whatever the reason, it gave me the chance to whip the chain out and wrap it just above her knee. With an effort, I gripped the chain with both hands, ignoring the burning sensation as I threw myself behind her and yanked for everything I was worth.

It worked. The Battle Born went down hard, her feet taken out from underneath her, and there was a wet, sticky sound like a watermelon being punctured. I let go of the chain the instant I was able, desperately trying to avoid going into shock from the pain radiating through my body. My hands were shaking, but I gripped them into fists, willing them to be stiff as I scrambled back in her direction and let loose with a rabbit punch to the base of her neck before she could rise. This was no time to fight fair, and if I were lucky, it would put her down in one go.

Lucky wouldn’t be the word to describe me in the following moments, just like unconscious wouldn’t be the word you’d use to describe her. There was a sucking, slurping sound as she stood up, and I saw that when she fell it had been hip-first into an exposed piece of rebar that had unfortunately for her punched a hole directly below her ribs. And unfortunately for me, this had all made her quite angry.

The rebar and block of broken concrete were hurled without a word in my direction, but I ducked it quickly enough, only to be shoulder tackled as I stood up straight, sending my body rolling end over end until I was outside of the shop. That had done it. With all the bits of glass and debris on the ground I would have been a mess of small cuts if not for my baggy clothing, and by the time I had lost momentum, my legs chose that moment not to work.

“Please, just listen,” I said weakly. Every extra second she wasn’t swinging at me could mean the difference between life and death at this point.

The Battle Born didn’t seem keen on listening. She walked gingerly out of the store clutching her bleeding side. I managed to pull myself up into a sitting position, but that was about as good as it was going to get for the moment. She didn’t slow down as she approached me, her free hand balled up into a fist. If I didn’t think of something quickly, I would—

The blinding powder!

Looking away and shutting my eyes tightly, I shot my hand into the pocket of my hoodie and retrieved the tiny pouch, flinging it in her direction in one fluid motion. I saw the flash of red through my eyelids and heard a cry of surprise. I also felt like I’d been struck with a battering ram as gravity suddenly embraced me, my eyes opened wide to see the ceiling rush away from me as I plummeted towards the ground.

***