I left and went back to Fairy before taking a gateway and shadow stepping into the car. The murderous jerk Goblin had taken the keys and without thinking, by sitting at the drivers seat, I had put blood stains on the back of my suit. I maneuvered gateways and took the car to Fairy. Examining it, all it needed was the seat fixed. The seat was worse than it looked. The Goblin had mangled the back of the seat well before I got in it.
While I’d been moving scrap around with the crane, he’d been in the back of the car preparing to kill me. This was looking more like a murder attempt than a random and violent theft. I didn’t know where the Goblin had gone. Ketler had a way to find him, but I didn’t plan to see another Death if I didn’t have to. I spent a while studying the seat, managed to do a decent fix on it, and put the seat back in and took the car back to the garage in Real.
The Goblin who tried to kill me was in Philadelphia, but the weather for shadow stepping was good so he could have come from anywhere. Unless someone had paranormal knowledge that I was going to be in Philadelphia, only a few people that could’ve known that. The guy I’d summoned to go there and the employees of the office were the only ones who knew I’d been there.
I went back to the junkyard and felt movement in the shadows. A Goblin was near. The Goblin that stabbed me stepped out of shadow and waved to the man in the office. The watchman waved and the Goblin slid back into shadow. He was close enough to the cedar tree I was hiding under for me to hear the gravel drop from his shoes as he went to shadow.
Lights suddenly blazed on and the shadows instantly disappeared. I think the Goblin who’d stabbed me was still in shadow when the shadows went away. He probably didn’t survive. I felt the heat from the lights despite the cover of the cedar branches. As I closed my eyes and shifted to a form that wasn’t blinded by the blazing light, the lights winked out, and I heard a door open. I stayed down, hidden by the mound of scrap tiles that had been pushed up around the tree.
The night watchman took out his cell phone. In Archer’s voice, he said, “I managed the loose end, so we don’t have to make the second payment. Bring the truck so we can load up on scrap.”
He put the phone in his pocket. “Good night, Phil. Good night, Alvin. Let’s hope you both went to a much worse place.”
Archer was a Titan or a Daemon. There were blurred lines, and he never quite made it clear. I figured Alvin was the Goblin who’d stabbed me in the back, literally. All the time Archer was staying with Hubert and me, I mostly avoided him. He was strong and tough but if I turned into the me in my favorite armored heavy equipment and spun the cab while extending the bucket, I might hit him hard enough to stun him.
Then I could probably bounce the scoop on him and grab him with the claws. Holding him with the claws and pounding him against the pavement enough times would probably take care of him.
It might not work. He was fast and he was a near perfect shot with any projectile weapon you could name. He might miss with the first shot as he got his bearings, range, and windage, but he would never miss with the second.
I needed to get out from under the tree to be able to transform into a form carrying so much bulk, and he would have seconds to prepare. If he had a gun he was used to using, I wouldn’t have seconds. Whispering, I summoned Maud, “Maud, lovely Ogress who heals, Phil summons thee. Archer is near.”
Maud asked, “Can I see?”
I shifted the summons so she could see the location.
She recited to herself like she was planning. “Hidden in a depression in a mound of broken and intact tile. The ground will be noisy and unstable, but we’ll have cover. Over us is a juniper or cedar tree, we can’t get out without moving it. Good cover but so poor strategically that no one with training would hide here. Archer has ignored it since he rejected it as a hiding place for himself. In turn, this makes it a good hiding place.
“Archer is standing by a door. He could get through it, but there are windows entirely around the office. If Archer runs, it will be to his truck or back to the scrap piles. The truck will be too slow, so unless he is going to use it for cover and has a weapon in it, he will go to the scrap piles.
Archer took out his cell phone. “Okay, I see your lights. I’ll open the gate.”
An eighteen-wheel truck drove into the junkyard and a solid-looking man got out. they started loading up with the pallets of the more expensive scrap at the front of the junkyard.
Maud said, “Leave the summons open for me to show up. The lights are too bright for you to shadow step except to the shadow cast by the tree out of the yard, and there is broken glass and gravel there. He will hear us. We have to wait.”
I opened the summons and we waited. Every time I thought I had a chance to get out and do something, one of them would turn where they would see me if I did.
Archer shouted, “Milton, I just got summoned. See you in Cincinnati.”
After Archer disappeared, Maud said. “We lost our chance.”
Milton laughed and let out a string of cuss words before saying, “You won’t be seeing me in Cincinnati. This is the last time you run out and leave me to do all the work. Thanks for the truck and the free load of scrap.”
I thought about doing something.
Maud said, “Leave him alone. Let him go. He’s no friend of ours, but he just made Archer his enemy. If letting Milton leave with a load of scrap means Archer has another enemy, it’s a low price to pay.”
Maud disconnected from the summons, and Milton drove off and left the gate open. I didn’t have my keys, and thinking about it, I was better off with Archer thinking I was dead. He might still be employed here so maybe I could track him that way, but if I closed the gate I might alert him, and if I left it open, he might lose the job. Archer wasn’t the sort that would give up his last paycheck, Social Security, or retirement benefits, so there might be a way to track him even if he lost the job.
I explored in shadow and noticed a camera hidden in a far corner of the yard. I slid a gateway over to examine it, and the area exploded and threw things in the air. In the areas where pieces fell, two more explosions went off. I backed up into shadow and took my gateway back. I worried that setting off the explosions might have revealed me, but if he had a sensor to detect a gateway, he only knew a gateway was involved.
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I used a gateway to retreat to the area where the car had been left in the ditch and changed into me with equipment to scan for Hubert’s resonant items. It was out of date, and the current methods would make such an item to identify his current resonance hard to make, but it would still detect me, and it would still detect the old items. A few blips appeared where the junkyard was, so Archer had probably set the place up as a trap.
On a wider scan, a lot of places in a swath had things lit up.
I didn’t see a choice. I summoned Kelter.
Instead of connecting to the summons, he appeared a short distance from me. “Let me guess. You want help finding the Goblin that stabbed you?”
I shook my head. “He’s gone and this one is complicated. It’s out of my league. It is indiscriminately aimed at me, but it’s real target is someone who isn’t even in Real.”
He asked, “How complicated?”
I said, “Very. There is a guy we call Archer. Titan or Daemon, I’m not sure. If he aims something at you, you had best change position unpredictably between the time he pulls the trigger and the projectile gets to where you might be. The blips on this screen are places where he has probably put cameras and explosives. They’ll probably go off if they are disturbed, falling shrapnel from one set off two more explosions. They will definitely go off if something supernatural goes near them.”
He asked, “What do you expect me to do about this?”
I shook my head. “Just pass it around that Archer isn’t doing you any favors and let me know if you want me to walk away from this or set off a bunch of explosions tonight.”
He gave me a sour look. “Seems like you are involved in trouble. Maybe it would be best for you to stick to the other side and stay out of Real.”
I said, “Fine, enjoy explaining away the magic-related technology after the bomb squad that finally survives one of these takes it apart. Archer’s going to keep doing this sort of thing even with me gone.”
Kelter said, “I need to get a few others in on this.”
I said, “By the way, Archer killed the Goblin that stabbed me, and he’ll probably keep killing off more supernatural beings, so he is probably just what you want, apart from his—”
Five more men in leather jackets appeared.
Kelter said, “Explain it one more time.”
I said, “Sixty or so bombs have been planted in junkyards across the Rust Belt and down through the Bible Belt. Definitely the Bible Belt, I’m iffy on the exact location of the Rust Belt. These bombs have cameras, and they send images to a fellow called Archer who designs and makes weapons with paranormal properties. I moved a gateway near one, and that set it off. The falling debris from that explosion set off two more. I can’t safely go near them, and I suspect you can’t either.
“Best I can think to do is set them off. Archer will know that I’m still alive, but I don’t want mortals killed, and I don’t think you want their technology examined by the first bomb squad to successfully deal with one.
“I realize you’re feeling duty bound to tell me to get out of Real. Fine, I was just looking for a good excuse to fade to Fairy, but I thought I would warn you that a bunch of explosions are about to happen, and you should probably stay out of the way until I finish and run off never to bother you again.”
A man dressed like an undertaker showed up behind the men in leather jackets. He laughed. “Stand down, gentlemen. The oracle is hopping mad that you’re about to start Ragnarok.” He held up his hands at me like he wanted me to calm down or back off. “Are you the fishmonger?”
I nodded.
The man said, “Men, this child has a blue pass. After he dies, he still has a blue pass. If he exceeds the Persephone limit, he has a blue pass. Memorize his form, boys.”
He asked me. “Can you forgive us and not visit destruction on us?”
I looked at the five men who just started to step back.
I winced. “Did your oracle give any details? I was about to set of some bombs so no one got hurt and go home, but now I’m not sure what to do.”
One of the men in leather jackets said, “We didn’t do or say anything. Kelter called us here to make a decision he didn’t want to make on his own.”
The undertaker said, “What are you planning? Can I call you ‘Fishmonger?’”
I shrugged. “Oddly, I figured that I’d just been given a good excuse to miss church tomorrow. I want to go play music afterwards, but that’s in Real, too, and I don’t think the deacon will be happy if I miss church and then go play music.”
One of the men asked, “Your deacon knows about Real?”
Another asked, “What’s your deacon’s name?”
I said, “I would rather leave him out of this. What does your oracle want us to do?”
The undertaker said, “Fishmonger, I can’t just ask the oracle for advice.”
The gateway I had used to get here opened. Two men stepped out with a woman between them. The men were the largest, tallest, and sturdiest-looking men I had ever seen. The woman had dramatic curves and thick red hair with glints in it like sparks from a flame.
The lady said, “I expected a bit more thunder and drama.”
In a low rumbling voice, the man on her left said, “Pivotal events have no sense of drama.”
The one on the right said, “I’ll bet five on the Fishmonger.”
A large coyote stepped out from the brush on the other side of the ditch. “I’ll bet ten on the Fishmonger and give you five to one odds in your favor.”
The undertaker said, “No one is fighting.”
I said, “No, I’m just leaving.”
The woman with red hair shook her head and her hair swirled around. Sparks spread and then faded away as she smiled at me. “And there we have it. Men, talk him out of leaving or the coming plague will be the least of your worries.”
She looked at me and then posed with one leg out of a long slit in her skirt. “It might be ill-advised to make a deal with me, but if you decide to stay and play, I give you permission to use me as a model.”
The coyote, the woman, and the two huge men disappeared.
The men in leather jackets looked at each other, and one of them disappeared. Kelter looked at the undertaker and disappeared. Then the rest of them disappeared leaving the undertaker.
The undertaker said, “Forgive me for not knowing who you are. I’m Cliff, by the way. As a Death, I am probably limited to five hundred dollars a day as a maximum expense toward helping someone stop the world from ending, but I can probably take a couple of days off to help you as long as I keep receipts.”
I asked, “Isn’t your entire purpose to keep order in Real and prevent the apocalypse?”
Cliff nodded. “Technically, but trying to explain that to accounting is another thing entirely.”
I asked, “Were those big men Deaths?”
Cliff said, “You just met four Devils. The hot one that posed for you was Lilith. So, how are you about to prevent the end of the world?”
I shrugged. “Now I am scared to do anything. Look, I was planning to set off a bunch of bombs that a fellow we call Archer set. I didn’t want anyone hurt. I am a bit worried since they’re all close to superfund sites that have mostly been cleaned up, but now I don’t know what to do.”
Cliff asked, “I know someone who can manage gateways. What if we put the explosives in another world?”
I said, “I slid a gateway near one of the explosives and that set it off.”
Cliff scratched his head. “It’s always wonderful when an oracle is involved. They jump up and down screaming, ‘Beware the crow!’ and then nothing. After you have spent your day ducking every time you heard or saw a bird fly over, you go home to unwind you find out your bottle of Old Crow Reserve is empty.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
Cliff nodded, “No, it really happened to me, just like I said.”
I asked, “So, how do I stop Armageddon?”
Cliff shook his head. “Maybe you buy a package of spoiled peanuts and spit them out. A squirrel eats what you didn’t and dies so it doesn’t short out a breaker box and start a blackout that causes the death of a child that might have come up with a cure for stupidity if the poor child lived. Who knows? Do you know any good oracles?”
I nodded. “Really, this is all kind of strange. I should go back to Fairy.”
Cliff said, “I am quite aware that some find it easier to slip away and decide the real world is too much trouble. I fight every day to keep things from getting out of hand, and I can go for months without seeing the good I do outweigh the bad. But there are moments when it matters, and sometimes after taking it on the chin and fighting the good fight, I get a nod from someone who knows about pain and sacrifice.
“If you are moving gateways around, then the odds are you can afford things I can’t imagine. I don’t know what you do or what you are meant to do, but let me give you the nod. I don’t know if it will mean to you what it means to me, but sometimes it’s all that keeps me going.”
Cliff nodded to me. I really hadn’t done anything to deserve that nod, but it had meaning to me. It meant more that being a king ever did. I went to Fairy knowing I needed to earn that nod.