CHAPTER 57: F-SQUARED

  GARLAND HEIGHTS—NOVEMBER 25th, 1992 | AFTERNOON

  ?

  A dull energy of dark red leaked from his body like a crying candle.

  Cameron wore a thin, focused expression as he watched the battering ram construct—ivory just as tough as the shell he’d always worn on his skin—melt away from his arm. It dripped onto the ground like hot wax, rendered inert and useless the moment it left him, dissipating into a dredge of crimson that crackled and bubbled away into nothing.

  Dust plumed upward.

  His eyes trailed towards the sign he’d just launched Dean Dresker into. Half of it was missing, and what remained of it fell on the opposite side of the metal fencing that surrounded Lieberman Scrap & Stack.

  Cameron’s usual bulwark encased his body.

  “And now…”

  Fissures cracked around his white-ivory skin and leaked a deep scarlet, falling away from his body and bubbling into firecrackers of miasmic clouds. His chest expanded, his nostrils flared, and his mouth opened as he inhaled. A contented half-smile took hold of his face as he stared at his palm. All that looked back at him was smooth, verifiably human skin.

  Something stirred along Cameron’s belt loop. Guts whirred and thrashed within its sprite-cage, but it didn’t blink. There was no danger to sense—Cameron had already seen to that.

  “Yeah, missed you too, bud,” Cameron muttered, unlatching the cage. Guts whirred out and encircled Cameron’s head gleefully.

  Two days well spent.

  He’d learned more about his abilities than he could’ve hoped, and he only wished he could’ve ridden that high a bit longer. Maybe he might’ve, but Dean, wherever he was laid out on the pavement just out of sight, didn’t make for a good punching bag.

  Cameron never did like guy. He had a certain look about him; a roguish face that looked too sure of itself. A slight smile curved onto Cameron’s face as he recalled the permanent stitches on his mean mug. If he survived Cameron’s battering-ram, he’d have a few new ones to match it. He’d have to brag about it to Leroy later, maybe bore him with all the details of what exactly he’d picked up in the Threshold.

  Cameron glanced over his shoulder. His eyes widened. Moira knelt down next to Leroy, where she positioned his arm over her neck and shoulders.

  With a hastiness to his steps, Cameron trekked towards Leroy. His old eyes were baggier than usual, and he was covered in more blood than Cameron had ever seen on him before. Worse, most of it seemed to be his. His eyes opened and closed, slowly, weakly, and the brown of his gaze looked black and dull; like he was struggling to make sense of what was even in front of him.

  Cameron’s jaw tightened. He leveled his stare forward, listening to every faint wheeze and heavy breath that left his arbiter. Behind him, the remnant ice of whatever dome Leroy had put up to protect him and Moira shattered and melted.

  “Pasteurized demon blood, kid,” Moira said hurriedly. “You got any on you?”

  Cameron reached towards his belt. Three vials remained. He handed Moira each of them.

  Moira bit the cork off of one of them, her black lipstick staining the vial. She carefully leaned Leroy’s head back with one hand and emptied the green liquid into his mouth with the other. When she tried to do the same with another vial, Leroy turned his head away.

  “No.. just… one,” he muttered slowly.

  “You need to double-dose, asshole,” Cameron said, grabbing the bottle from her hands. He bit the cork off and tried to shove it into his mouth, only for Leroy to jerk his head to the opposite side.

  “Too… risky,” Leroy grumbled, his voice dry.

  Cameron furrowed his brows. “You’re losing too much damn blood, Leroy. Drink it.”

  He pushed the vial closer to Leroy’s lips, and Leroy, with every ounce of strength left in his battered mess of a body, gripped Cameron’s hand. Blood sputtered out between his teeth, and his pupils shook with a franticness that Cameron hadn’t seen. Not ever.

  “Raid,” Leroy said. “Janice…take me…”

  It took a moment for Cameron to understand what he meant.

  Tomorrow, they were due to storm the castle—Spectre was going to be turned into a verifiable battleground. Leroy, then, had two options. Single-dose and enter the fray slower and weaker than usual, or double-dose and spend the next day too hungover on pasteurized demon blood to be of any use at all. One dose of p-blood and whatever Janice could cook up would have to work.

  Sirens blared.

  “Ah, at long last, our oh-so-fashionably late blackjackets," Moira said with a sigh. “Kid, help me get him up. We need to get him in the car. He still driving that janky Cadillac?”

  Cameron nodded.

  He mirrored her position and planted one knee on the ground, tossing Leroy’s opposite arm over his neck and shoulders. With a sudden heft, the two of them heaved him up. His booted feet dragged along the dirt as they made their way towards the two-story office attachment.

  Inside, Uncle Tony—Anthony Lieberman—sat dead behind his desk, a bullet hole in his skull. Blood and brain matter spattered onto the ugly wallpaper behind him.

  Cameron’s stomach dropped. He’d seen death and he'd delivered death, but there were certain ways to go out that were worse than others. He knew Silvio’s uncle in passing, and had hardly shared any words with him at all, but he didn’t deserve the hand he was dealt. It had to have been Dean.

  “Fuck,” Cameron said lowly.

  Moira glanced at the corpse and looked down. “Come on.”

  Two blackjackets burst through the opposite door, pistols raised, uniforms prim and proper. Cameron glanced at their uniform plaques. Not BRIGGS, and not HEATHCLIFF, almost to Cameron’s disappointment. The one who wore SURRY was a broad-shouldered woman with short brown hair, and her partner, DAVIS, was a square-jawed jock of a man who seemed eager to fire off more than just a warning shot.

  Moira reached inside her coat pocket.

  “Stop! Hands in the air!” Constable Davis demanded.

  “Easy with the dick-swinging, alright? I’m showing you my badge, which, frankly, is better than one you wear on your belt,” Moira sneered. She held up her arbiter’s license.

  Constable Surry stepped in front of Constable Davis and snagged it. “Moira Saunter, arbiter.”

  “Uh-huh,” Moira said quickly. “Now, play some I-Spy-With-My-Little-Eye, and you’ll see red. A lot of red.”

  Constable Davis turned towards the body of Anthony Lieberman.

  “No, you dimwit, not there,” Moira said. “In front of you! The guy we're fucking carrying!”

  Constable Surry cleared her throat. “Ms. Saunter, we need an idea of what has happened here—”

  Moira’s siren-like eyes narrowed. “Get. Out. Of. The. Way.”

  Constable Davis kept his gun primed. “Lady, arbiter or not, we can’t let anyone leave until… what’s that?”

  Guts peaked out from behind Cameron’s head. Greenish-white wind swirled and collapsed in on itself. No shots had been fired, but Guts blinked nonetheless. A burst of wind sent Constable Davis against the wall. Constable Surry shifted her sights towards the sprite. Guts was quicker. A surge of force was expelled from yet another blink. Constable Surry the wall and collapsed with a groan.

  Moira smiled. “Nice. Kid, you take him to that bummy car of his, get going. I’ll stick around here, deal with this bullshit.”

  Moira slipped out from under the opposite end of Leroy. Cameron nearly stumbled to one side trying to adjust to the fullness of Leroy’s weight, however much that was. Two-hundred and something, at least. He issued a nod in thanks to Moira and made for the door.

  “And kid!”

  Cameron stopped, glancing over his shoulder.

  She pressed a finger to her temple, right on top of one of the many, many tattoos covering her bald head. “Don’t forget what you told me in the Threshold. ‘Cause I won’t. Once you’re in the big leagues, I’m collecting that pro-bono arbitration note.”

  "Yeah," Cameron said, issuing her a nod before stepping out of the door.

  ?

  The roar of Leroy’s Cadillac pulsed through the steering wheel. Last time they were in the car, Leroy had set the radio to 99.3, the Rat, whose station announcer proudly declared that Trooper’s ‘We're Here For A Good Time’ was up next. Cameron shifted the car into drive and immediately hit the nearest street lamp. The noise was loud enough to set off a nearby car alarm. Leroy, properly knocked out at this point, bled onto the passenger seat.

  “Fuck!” Cameron shouted.

  He punched the car horn four times in a row, inhaled, exhaled, inhaled again, and shifted the car into reverse.

  ?

  The greeting bell rang as Cameron swung the door open.

  Esme lowered her goggles from her face, minor skin marks plaguing the sides of her temples. She glanced at Leroy, and then out of her window at the car parked halfway onto the sidewalk, and then towards Cameron.

  “What happened?” she asked. “And why did you park on the street?”

  “Esme, the key,” Cameron said, trudging along her workshop. The dead weight of Leroy’s arm and bulky shoulders knocked over some of her artificed items for sale as they continued towards the back room.

  Esme held up a hand in trepidation, watching the value of her handiwork depreciate every time one of her creations clanked against the ground. “Yes. The key.”

  “The door, Esme! Fuck! Open the door!”

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  “Cameron,” Esme said cooly, fast-walking in front of him, key-loop already in hand. She paced through the hanging schematics that were strewn along lengths of clothing lines in her shoebox-sized smithing and smelting station, twisting a sigilmarked key into place. “There is no need to yell. I can see clearly that he is injured. Your tantrum, however, won’t get him up these stairs any faster.”

  “Yeah, fine, give me a hand,” Cameron insisted.

  Esme looped under the opposite side of Leroy, blowing away stray strands of chestnut-orange hair that peaked out from the black bandana on her head. With a strained groan, she stepped in tandem with Cameron up the stairwell. With his free hand, Cameron tossed the door at the top open.

  Tania sat reclined in her white thermal and black cargo pants, black baseball cap fixed onto the top of her hair, black-maroon hair curling out along her back. She’d taken half a bite of a potato chip from a very large bowl when Cameron and Esme trudged in. Not far in front of her, the TV droned on.

  “Shit,” Tania said, crumbs dotting her mouth. She wiped them away with a sleeve.

  Janice was seated on the opposite couch, coffee mug in hand, eyes wide. She lurched forward with an immediacy that surprised Cameron, and grabbed hold of Leroy’s cheeks, shifting his head from side to side. “What happened?”

  “Tania, clear the table,” Cameron said.

  Tania swiped her arm along the coffee table. Her bowl of chips clunked against the ground, spreading their contents along the small carpet beneath it. Joining said chips were a glass of water that shattered against the wall behind the TV, and a row of ceramic coasters that mixed with the water-soaked glass. Esme sucked her lips in and held back a comment that Cameron could see burning in her throat.

  “His jacket and his shirt,” Janice began. “We need them off.”

  Cameron and Esme worked in unison, removing the bloodied articles and placing them to the side. The single dose of pasteurized demon blood was already working, but Moira was right. One dose wasn’t enough. A fleshy poultice coagulated along Leroy’s visible wounds: punctures and lacerations along his shoulders, a small hole in his stomach, and a mosaic of black and blue bruises varied in size and placement. And those were just the ones Cameron could see.

  Tania hovered over them, seemingly unsure of what to do, with an expression that made it difficult to tell if she was going to start pacing or yelling.

  “Now lay him back, slowly,” Janice said, pivoting to grab a pillow off the couch.

  Janice placed the pillow under Leroy’s head. Cameron and Esme guided him down onto the coffee table. It was too small for a man of his size—but it would have to do.

  “Esme. Do you have any medical supplies? Gauze, anything with antiseptic properties?”

  “A basic first aid kit in my back room downstairs,” Esme said. “I will retrieve it.”

  Esme hurried back down the stairwell.

  Janice glanced towards Tania. “Tania, I have seven vials situated along that desk I’ve used for my alchemy station. You’ll find them in the first drawer. Two of them have a brownish liquid in it; like mud with a stony texture to it. Grab that.”

  “On it,” Tania said, bolting towards the far corner of the loft, closer to the windows.

  “Cameron,” Janice continued, “go to the kitchen. Get me a butter knife and a pen.”

  “A what?”

  “Cameron, please,” Janice insisted. “Now.”

  “Okay, okay,” Cameron said, pacing towards the kitchen.

  He pulled open drawer after drawer until he found a set of utensils, withdrew the butter knife, and focused his attention elsewhere. Pen. Where was he supposed to find a pen? His eyes surveyed the living room, only to land on the door leading to the stairwell. On his way down, he bumped into Esme, who very nearly fell, and issued him a quiet look of discontent.

  ?

  Cameron, Esme and Tania loomed over Leroy. Each of them had clusters of paper towels in their hands, and each of them had been applying pressure into the wounds that demanded the most attention. A pile had gathered on the floor not far from the scattered potato chips, most of which had been stepped on and divided into many smaller parts. On Janice’s order, they stopped, and she used up every antiseptic pack to clean out Leroy’s open wounds with a strange fusion of delicacy and efficiency.

  “Cameron, butter knife. Tania, the vials,” Janice said, extending both of her hands. The items were deposited into her grasp.

  Esme pressed a thumb to her lips, watching Janice in focused curiosity. “You’re applying the contents of the potion directly to the skin? I am far from an expert in alchemy, Janice, but the basic principles of alchemy suggest that… well, such an effort wouldn’t result in much of anything.”

  Janice scooped out a brownish, jam-like liquid out from one of the vials, and did the same for the second until the limited amount of contents were completely emptied by the butter knife. There wasn’t enough to cover everything, and as such, Janice was deliberate in coating the areas of his body that demanded the most attention.

  “Yes,” Janice said in agreement. “It won’t. Cameron, the pen.”

  Cameron handed it to her.

  “Fortunately, you don’t need to be the expert in alchemy, Esme,” Janice continued, hovering the pen over Leroy’s skin. “That is what I am here for.”

  Tania looked at Cameron like he’d have the answers, or like he’d suddenly know something about Janice that she’d neglected to tell her during their shared time under impromptu-protective custody. Cameron, confused, merely shrugged, stammering with his mouth agape.

  Around each of the areas where Janice had spread the contents of the vials, Janice drew symbols. Particular, specific symbols. Ones that Cameorn hadn’t seen before; inconsistent with just about anything he’d seen in Esme’s shop, be it by way of the runes she carved into her artificed objects or the schematics she had strung up in her back room.

  “Alchemical.. formulae?” Esme mused. “Applied directly to the skin? How truly fascinating.”

  “In spite of my comment, which, sorry about that by the way,” Janice said with a guilty, almost awkward laugh, “our trades aren’t all that different, Esme.”

  Cameron leaned over to get a better look at Janice’s handiwork. Her penmanship was precise, and by now, spanned over each area where the muddish-sludge had been spread over Leroy’s injuries. He couldn’t begin to understand what he was looking at. Esme loomed next to him, and shouldered him to the side a bit. Tania joined them.

  “I recognize some of these, at least, from some of the two years of common core at the Brinehaven College of the Arts. You’ve.. hm. These are Instruction Symbols, no?” Esme asked.

  “I see you’ve remembered at least some of what they forced down our throats,” Janice joked.

  “Don’t remind me. Enduring those required courses was a Herculean task; recognition of the symbols you’ve made is about where my expertise ends.”

  Janice nodded. “Alchemy is dualistic, and, well… often frustrating because of it. You on one hand must understand, or at least speculate as to how a certain mixture of alchemical reagents might mix together—”

  “Components,” Esme said with a soft smile. “In artificery, we must understand how components relate to the conditions of what the item does, and then—”

  Janice smiled back. “Express it through characters. Class of ‘71, and by the sounds of it the college hasn’t updated much of its policies. Is Doctor Fox still teaching History of Artificery?”

  “Sadly,” Esme said.

  Esme pointed a finger down towards what had been drawn along Leroy’s body, with a look like butterflies were flying in her stomach. Circular arrays contained interconnected triangles, which contained symbols.

  Jancie nodded back. “So, right, you can’t just, well, gather all of the materials, and boil them into a liquid in a big cauldron. Well, you do have to do that, but the effects of the potion need—”

  “Guidance,” Esme interrupted.

  “Yes,” Janice said with a nod. “All elixirs must be, as alchemists call it, minted, within alchemical formulae. Arrays must be drawn with the appropriate symbols, and said symbols exist to unify the reagents with an intended effect. Bluestein, cleverly enough, had ironworkers weld these into the very bottom of their vats and cauldrons for an immediate means of minting.”

  Each of their heads turned towards Leroy’s body. The brownish, jam-like liquid began to solidify, the alchemical symbols buzzing with a barely perceptible energy. What looked like stone crusted over and closed Leroy’s otherwise serious lacerations, sealing off his wounds as concrete scabs.

  “Genius,” Esme whispered.

  Janice’s face flushed red. “Far from it, the potion—a simple one, by the way, Stoneskin is one of the first things they teach you in applied studies—its already been minted, I just.. well, reiterated what mints a potion, and through some of the basic Instruction Symbols, like union, fixation, and coagulation, on the skin around where the potion has been poured.”

  “A clever, unorthodox subversion of the fundamentals, then,” Esme said.

  Cameron felt like his head was spinning. Next to him, Tania wore an expression that told him she was going through much the same. Where Cameron was confused, she looked angry, childishly, like she’d been left out of something. They both had, and for good reason.

  Janice and Esme, classically educated, were bonding in a way that Cameron suspected might be the start of a fruitful friendship. He was almost jealous, though he didn’t suspect he’d ever have the patience or the fortitude to last a day at the Brinehaven College of the Arts. Street smart and book smart were two different things, and Cameron was only as of recently getting comfortable identifying himself as the former.

  Tania’s ears perked. “Someone’s here. Two people.”

  “That uh.. a lycan thing?” Cameron asked.

  “No,” Tania said with a scoff. “Esme happens to have a bell attached to her front door, and every other door happens to be open.”

  “You all stay here,” Cameron said.

  Tania stepped in front of him and trekked down the stairwell. Cameron respected her initiative, but didn’t like the fact that she volunteered herself in a way that, frankly, stole his thunder. He followed after her, and Guts followed after him. Cameron briefly glanced at his single eye. No blinking. That was a good start.

  ?

  Captain Holmes stood with one hand at his hip, and nodded in greeting to Cameron and Tania. “Cameron. Ms. Ackerman.”

  Tania stared at him, tired but not unhappy to find him at Allure Artificery.

  “Didn’t expect to see you here, not so soon, at least,” Cameron said.

  Captain Holmes nodded. “Leroy’s doing. He didn’t tell you? Today’s the day.”

  “Of the.. raid?” Cameron asked unsurely. “No, no. It’s tomorrow. He said the 26th.”

  “Not of the raid, kid,” Captain Holmes said with a sigh. “Today was the day he said we’re all supposed to meet to discuss the raid. Here. Where is he?”

  “Upstairs on a table, looking a little worse for wear,” Cameron said.

  Captain Holmes exhaled. “Worse for wear is better than dead. You can fill me in once we’re looking at his sorry ass.”

  Cameron smiled at that.

  “He did mention something about more helping hands, Cameron,” Tania said, nudging him. “But I heard another person. Or, at least, heard the bell ring twice.”

  “You heard right. He stepped outside for a second. Leroy had me pick him up from St. Catherine’s,” Captain Holmes said.

  The door swung open, its bell chiming.

  “Man, whoever parked that car on the side of the road is a real grade-A asshole, I mean, you’d have to be damn near blind to—”

  Cameron ran an exasperated, worried hand through his raven-black buzz cut.

  No. Not good. Not good for many, many reasons, ignoring the fact that he was an annoying prick who would always have a better aim than Cameron; regardless of whatever they happened to be holding in their hands. Cameron’s Reign 18 was one thing. What was on his back was something else entirely. A bow without a quiver hung on his back, ornate, old, and tipped with metal ornaments that resembled hounds. Next to it was some sort of sealed off metal cylinder, like a mailing tube nearly the length of Canis.

  He wore a gray sweatshirt, camouflage pants, brown boots that practically went up to his knees, and had a bandolier worth of diluted pasteurized demon blood on his chest. Dark skin. Dreadlocks. Arthur Yeager seemed happier to see him, evidenced by a snide half smile that couldn’t ever quite be wiped away.

  “Long time no see, eh, townie?” Arthur said.

  Cameron’s head practically swivelled towards Tania.

  He followed her eyes and saw where they landed: the sword-shaped red cross tattoo on Arthur’s neck.

  Her eyes tightened into slits. Amber eyes turned to scintillating yellow. Her hair spiked up and grew along the length of her back, and her skin shifted into a haunting gray. Each of her nails turned black, sprouting out from her fingers like ten knives. Her body became a blur, and that blur tackled Arthur Yeager squarely out of Esme’s front window and onto the street.

  Cameron tried to pull his hair. There wasn’t much of anything to grab. “Ah, fuck!”

  Also, since it's been a bit since we've last seen him: Arthur Yeager is a warden and a curator, wielder of Canis, and the apprentice to Marshal Whitfield (AKA Eisenhower). The last time we saw him was during Cameron & Leroy's trek through the Pines. Naturally.. Tania is not so happy to see someone with that same old red cross tattoo that's been carved into her memory.

  Also, we got a few new reviews!

  A big special thanks to Heavyporker and Juan Miguel Carvajal, you guys rock. I was so happy to read the kind words you both had to offer.

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  GUTS

  DEAN DRESKER

  MOIRA SAUNTER

  JANICE OLIVERA

  ESME O'DOHERTY

  TANIA ACKERMAN

  ARTHUR YEAGER

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