The Necromancer's Gambit: Trap

I can’t believe I’m being sent on a fucking errand. I’m barely sober enough to hand over my keys to Rook. The King says he needs something, though I’m not real sure on the specifics. I kind of think this is just payback for drinking his liquor. Though that wouldn’t explain why he has Rook babysitting. Maybe he made a pass at her and she didn't reciprocate- so he's punishing her, too. 

But we've got his precious keys, and we're opening up one of the few brick and mortar magic supply shops in the city. I've never heard of the reagent he requested, though he swore up and down it was Maori, and that if I asked Bishop about it he'd have an ED curse put on my junk again.

When we get there, I pull the Judge out from under the driver's side seat while she's still sitting there. “Pardon my reach,” I say, though I'm hammered enough my attempt to balance against her leg only means I end up grabbing the dashboard and smacking my chin against the steering wheel.

“My God, what is that?” she asks at the sight of my piece, and I grin.

“My gun?” I bounce it in my hand. “I like the heft of it. Because it reminds me of my penis.”

“What are you compensating for?”

“How completely fucking awesome I am.”

“One of these days I’m really going to have to teach you the meaning of the word compensate.”

“So long as you do it with your mouth.”

“I think I may need to resort to flash cards.” It seems like there ought to be one more good innuendo in there, something to do with flashing, but my brain’s a little blood deprived at the moment, so you’ll have to forgive me about letting that one drop.

The keys do their thing, get us into the shop. It's run by a sweet little old lady, who doesn't even use magic. Her husband did, but he passed away, and she kept the store. Every couple of weeks she has a security mage come in and check the antitheft spells, but really it's nothing even a guy of my intellect couldn't get around with ten minutes prep.

But the keys make that moot, disable any security spells whatsoever. I hear glass break at the rear of the store. And I run, because I been a Pawn long enough that I run towards danger like a fucking moron.

And I recognize the asshole even in the dark shop. “Find a light,” I tell Rook, before training the Judge on him. It's times like these I wish I had a laser on my gun, so the fuckwit would know how dead to rights I have him. But I cock back the hammer, just to give him an inkling. “You know what the Judge'll do to a person at this distance- or at least, you've seen what it'll do to a bag of meat.”

He snorts, angry, but agreeing. To a hunter, that's all a vamp is- bag of meat, that has to be killed, to keep it from killing somebody else. The lights come on. Mikey's got a crossbow trained on me. It'd be a Mexican stand-off if it weren't so fucking gay.

“Crossbow? Best case scenario is you hit one of the pair of us. Meanwhile, the Judge all but separates your legs from your torso, and all of your organs do a Wile E. Coyote out of the hole.”

I feel something twisting around in my jacket pocket, and before I wonder if he's somehow magicked a scorpion into my coat I reach in and pull it out. Once I have it out of my coat I realize what it is even before I open up my hand to get a good look at it.

I smile. “You know, I never wondered to myself before. But the dirt, see, it could have been from the vamp- that’s true. But once we caught him, I didn’t even think to check. But I been wondering all the same, if maybe, maybe it came from somebody else who was there. Somebody like, say, you.” I drop the dirtsack out of my palm, but keep hold of the string its on. It spins around on the thread, but after it spins past him, it snaps back. I move it to the left, and then the right, and it follows him.

“Your dirt’s happy to see you, Mikey, and so am I.”

“I thought that was your gun” he says.

“Maybe we’re both happy to see you.”

“And it’s Michaelangelo.”

“So you were named after a Ninja Turtle?” Rook asks.

“I was named for the archangel, Michael.”

“So not the giant stone dong-toucher, either?”

That’s when the vamp comes through the back door. I’m not surprised, exactly, but I don’t welcome him, either. “The vamp I didn’t get a name of, on account of I couldn’t hear him over the sound of my dick in his mouth. I’ve just been calling him Sound of My Dick for short- though the fact that it always reminds me of the Sound of Music always makes me feel a little fruity.”

“So another man’s mouth on your dick, totally straight, but a little bit of Julie Andrews and your masculinity melts”

“In his mouth. But it’s not gay at gunpoint.”

“I don’t know if I should hope you’re joking, or worry that that’s the kind of thing you’d joke about.” 

We’re dead if we try to take them together. We need to split up. “Hey fangnuts, I’m going to torture you again before I murder you. Only this time I’m going to go in the back door, by which I mean I’m going to drill a hole in the back of your skull and put my dick in it. I hear it’s like being stabbed in the childhood, and cum in the brain is guaranteed to make you seize up like the neighborhood spastic- like God himself donkey punched you.”

I fire the judge high, smashing the rear windows the rest of the way out. Then I run, shoving Rook down and away. I tell myself Mikey’s an upstanding Christian man- less likely to bite on the first date. Of course, I would have pegged him as less likely to partner with a murderous cabal of fuckpigs- sometimes religion and politics makes for strange bedfellas.
 
I get out to the truck. Thankfully she gave me back my keys, so I start it up. The vamp's almost crazy enough to rush me in the Jeep, since the top's all cloth, but I gun the engine, and I think he realizes I'd run him over in a heartbeat, then empty the Judge into his head.  Wouldn't kill him, but I'd be fucked by a black clown if they'd get him scraped up off the pavement before sunrise.

He runs to their car, an impala, and follows. I gun it hard, and I know the way, which lets me open things up a little. But I can tell from the headlights in my rear view I'm gaining seconds, not minutes.

I run up the stairs to my apartment, each step the wood and my muscles complain about my damn diet. I bolt the door but that's probably time wasted, because even a solid door with a bolt ain't slowing him down. And there's none of that polite 'can I come in' bullshit, either. 

I make it to my bedroom, to a stash of reagents and ready-made spells, and grab a hand full. I get ten seconds to prepare before he shatters his way through my door.

I give him the other five barrels of the Judge, but I'm shaking, and they all go wide enough that he keeps moving- even if he picks up a couple of ounces of shot along the way.

But I expected that. I had another spell that would be better for the occasion, but I didn't grab it in the moment I had to, so I'm stuck with setting the bastard on fire. I know even before I do that it's a bad move; fire won't stop a vamp, not right away, and in the interrim what you're left with is a vamp that's on fucking fire.

I cast it, and the smoke detector goes off. He screams, but it only makes him come at me faster. I try to ready a good Norse poison when he grabs me by the neck and twists. But he isn't trying to snap it. He's going for a drink. He's going to have his way with me, first. Fucking sicko.

He takes a couple of gulps before he lets me drop. I cover the hole immediately with my hand, because I know if I don't I'm another second from passing the fuck out.

He throws himself onto my bed, and rolls himself up in sheets until the fire's out. Then he rises up, still wrapped in sheets I jerk off in regularly, for some reason convinced that just because he's smoking a little he looks cool.

And then he drops to his knees, wheezing. One of the things I got out of the stash was a bandage; mostly it ain't magic, though it'll help the hole in my neck heal faster. By the time I finish that and roll up my sleeve he sounds like he's drowning. I show him the fresh puncture wound in my arm.

“I don't do drugs- least, nothing I have to shoot. That thirty second head start I had in here, you didn't wonder what I used it for? I shot up a syringe full of liquid garlic. LD-50 on it's something crazy, but you vamps have a reaction just like ODing rats.”

“That explains the burning- and there'll be ulceration to go along with that. But I bet you’re also noticing you’re having trouble breathing; that’s acute pulmonary adema- your lungs are filling with fluid. With a normal human, that'd definitely be something to worry about. With a vamp? I don't know.” I disappear into my kitchen. “But Knight's been trying to get me to play things safer,” I emerge with a butcher knife, and I stab it in each lung.

He falls to the ground, gasping, but able to breath- just barely. But just as he's about to look up at me with puppy dog eyes, I bend his head fore ward and slice deep enough into the back of his neck to get his spinal cord. 

He's still conscious, after that, but he's got no control of his body. But I cocoon him in duct tape, then toss him in the Jeep, and we drive out to Warrior Rock Light, the automated lighthouse on Sauvie’s Island.

By that point he's crying and trying to whimper. In his head, he's probably telling his sob story about how his puppy stubbed his toe when he was a kid and that justifies him being a murdering prick. Or maybe the pain's just getting to him.

By the time I get him inside the lighthouse, his spine's healed up enough that he can talk again. “You don't have to hurt me. I'll leave.” 

“You've got it wrong,” I tell him. “Last time I wanted something out of you. This time, I just want you to die.”

“It's a lighthouse, so you've got sun exposure most of the time. But the kind of glass they have helps diffuse sunlight, so it won't kill you immediately. Last guy took at least nine days; I say at least, because after that I got bored of camping out here and went home. Came back a couple weeks later to be sure he’d gone to dust, so I can’t say with certainty how long you’ve got. Days are shorter, this time of year, so I'd say you've got more than nine days, but less than a couple of weeks. Bishop'd know to the millisecond; course, she'd probably murder me for being so cruel. Course, you did kill a friend of ours, so maybe she'd make this one exception.” I lean in close. “You really did pick the wrong guy to try to murder.”