To this day, I don’t know what Church said to him. I knew my boss, though, and knew MindReader would instantly cough up every little sin this guy had done, both on the clock and off.
“No shit,” Chang said into the phone. “Um… what if I told you I didn’t know she was married, and that wasn’t even my wheelbarrow?”
A moment of silence, then he hung up. He handed me both the phone and his car keys.
“That guy can fuck your math teacher, then fuck math, then give physics a reach-around and a Chang Bang while he’s at it,” Pookie said. “Try not to wreck my ride.”
His car drove like shit. My cell phone and the map had me to the Presidio in minutes — the wonders of modern technology. The lights of San Francisco quickly faded away, vanishing as I drove into the Presidio. Houses gave way to trees, to a surprising level of darkness. Cloud cover hid stars and moon alike. And, of course, there was fog and plenty of it. I felt more as though I were in the hills of Pennsylvania than in the midst of one of the world’s great cities.
The cell’s GPS took me far up a winding road to a parking lot that overlooked the city. Ghost and I got out. I drew my SIG Sauer and scanned the area. Darkness on all sides save for straight ahead, which was a sprawling view of house lights, car lights, and streetlights struggling to be seen through the fog.
Just one light pole here: and on it, a small closed-circuit camera. That was how MindReader had seen the Orc Brothers. Two immediate thoughts: one, MindReader was some seriously frightening Big Brother stuff; and, two, if this one little camera could spot the Orc Brothers and we had no other MindReader-based sightings of them in El Paso or anywhere else, Tres Hermanos Orco were very, very good at not being seen.
Ghost began to growl. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Ghost took a few steps from the car, body low, hackles raised — he was on point, nose aiming toward the dense shadows on the side of the parking lot.
I’d made a mistake: I had my SIG Sauer, I had my Wilson Rapid Response knife, but no body armor, no night vision, and no backup.
Ghost’s growl changed to a bark of challenge just as something — something big, too big to be a normal person — burst out of the woods.
I didn’t bother with questions: I started shooting. Seven rounds in less than a second, then the shadow turned and fled back into the woods.
Ghost went after it. I’d just started to give the stay command when I heard a horrible crunch of metal and breaking glass, and something hit me so hard it threw me through the air.
Half-stunned, I slid across the pavement, shredding both my shirt and the skin below it before I managed to roll to my knees. The Buick’s passenger side was caved in, a crater like a wrecking ball — an Orc Brother had hit the car so hard it smashed into me. And leaping over the Buick’s rear, lit up in the single streetlight, that same Hermano Orco — a big-ass, hunchbacked man wearing a camouflage raincoat.
Flat nose flaring, mouth open, two lower teeth sticking up like spikes of bone, he rushed me. I emptied my magazine. I capped off the last round from not even a foot away. It should have blown his heart straight out his back, dropped him like a bag of concrete — the fact that he didn’t even slow scrambled my thoughts for a moment, long enough for his huge fist to deliver a crushing body blow.
I felt ribs snap. The blow lifted me off my feet, threw me back, sent me tumbling across the pavement. I rolled to my feet for the second time, trying to brace for the pain, compensate for it, but no matter how tough you are broken ribs jam up the way you move.
The Orc Brother came straight in — hunchbacked, shoulders wide as a door, a steamroller with a raincoat trailing like a supervillain’s cape.
Knowing how bad the move would hurt, I feinted right, then stepped wide left. Orc matched the feint, but when he corrected, it was too late — I was already outside his right shoulder, my right hand driving my knife up into his chest. The point slid home just below his sternum; I had a flash of satisfaction that I’d pierced his heart just before his momentum slammed into my arm and shoulder, spinning me around, tearing the knife from my grasp.
I landed on my broken ribs. What air I had left in my lungs took a fast exit. I couldn’t tell if one of those lungs was punctured. If so, I still had a good chance of living longer than the asshole I’d just stabbed.
My enemy was down. Still rolling around a bit — it might take him a few minutes to die.
“Fuck you,” I said through clenched teeth.
And then, the asshole got up.
He stood slowly, but he stood. The knife was still sticking out of his chest. With one gray hand, he gripped the handle and pulled it free. Blood spurted once, twice… then stopped.
“No,” the Orc Brother said in a voice that — like his body, like his face — wasn’t quite human. “Fuck you.”
He smiled, staggered toward me, his balance becoming more sure with each step.
I had shot this prick at least five times at close range.
I had stabbed him in the goddamn heart.
And he was still coming.
A flash of white: Ghost jumping between me and the Orc Brother, fur raised, lip curled back to show wet teeth, a low growl gurgling in his throat.
A second flash of white — white with black spots. It was Emma, Erickson’s dog, at Ghost’s side, the two of them barking madly. Smaller than Ghost, but equal in projected ferocity.
The combined canine warning made the Orc Brother stop. Maybe he’d have come right at Ghost, but the pair gave him pause.
“I hate dogs,” he said. “Gonna kill your dogs. Gonna eat ’em while you watch, then gonna eat you.”
Fantastic.
I struggled to my feet, one hand holding my ribs. No weapon — I had to find a way to stop this bastard.
A hiss of air slipping past my right ear.
A thunk.
The Orc Brother looked down at the arrow shaft sticking out of his chest. He seemed confused.
“Burns,” he said. “Never burned before.”
A voice from behind me: “Welcome back to San Francisco, shitbird.”
The Orc Brother fell to his ass, still staring at the arrow shaft.
I recognized that voice: Jebediah “Bryan” Erickson. Whoever the hell he really was. I turned, expecting to see that pale face with the red stubble, the same black hair. Instead, I saw a man wearing a black navy pea coat, black jeans, black gloves, black skullcap with a black mask dangling from it — eyeholes and death grin poorly stitched in white. He held a black carbon fiber compound bow.
This circus sideshow had just jumped up to a full-on freak exhibit. What the hell was all this?
“You’ve got good moves, but the wrong weapon,” he said. “If the other two assholes come, use this. Stick it where it counts, leave it in.”
He handed me a sheathed KA-BAR. I took it.
“Watch my dog for me,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
He stepped between Ghost and Emma. Bryan/Jeb pulled an identical KA-BAR from inside his pea coat. Black anodized blade. Only the edge caught the glow of the single streetlight.
The Orc Brother saw him coming. For the first time, I saw fear in the monster’s eyes.
“No,” the monster said in that inhuman voice. “No, not you!”
The man in black closed the distance. He kicked out a booted foot so fast I didn’t see it move, just saw the Orc’s head snap back, one long tooth spinning into the night.
Bryan/Erickson grabbed the Orc by the throat. He stabbed the long blade into the Orc’s left eye, so deep I heard the tip hit the inside of the skull.
The dark wood rang with a sudden howl of anguish, a pair of inhuman voices combined into one. The trees at the edge of the parking lot erupted — the other two Orc Brothers came at us.