Feeling the Way, CH 09 (Patreon)

I picked up on the tail as soon as I set foot on King Street, south of Erb. The guy wasn’t trying very hard. Bulldog, under six feet, but stocky. Dressed for the weather, which meant I couldn’t see if he was armed. I picked up the second guy a few minutes later when the two exchanged a look. Horse, a head taller than the bulldog, lean but he walked like someone who knew how to fight—we have a walk; learn how to fight and you’ll be able to see it, too.

The third and fourth were tougher to find in the crowd, but my initial two kept glancing ahead of them, of us. It’s easier to pick out someone following you than someone waiting to ambush you, but I’ve been attacked so often at this point I’ve had to learn. 

My family has enemies, and they don’t all respect our strength. Alex brought in a CIA guy to teach us the basics when I was twenty; right after a kidnapping attempt.

So, the cheetah and bull eventually made themselves stand out with how much attention they were giving me. I saw all that in glances and reflections. Never look directly at the people who follow you, one of the first things he taught us. The other one was ‘control the terrain’.

The odds were they knew the city better than I did. If I gave them the time, they might herd me to an area that advantaged them. What I had was knowledge of how I fought; the places that supported that.

Considering how I got the last time I fought, you might think I prefer long-range fighting. I don’t. For one thing, guns are deadly. It takes little miscalculation to turn a disabling shot into a killing one. I do know how to shoot; I have Alex’s gift for it. But with it comes a need to solve problems with a gun, so I stay away from them if I can. Also, if I’m shooting a gun so are my opponent. Firing at one another isn’t particularly strenuous, so not to my advantage.

If I’m going to fight, I want it to be hand to hand, close combat, tight spaces governed by the environment. Alleys are good for that. I like hand-to-hand because it tires out my opponent, while I don’t; at least not for normal fights. I’ve yet to fight anyone other than Wolfgang who keeps a fight going long enough for me to get tired.

Since I didn’t know the area’s layout and Google wasn’t good about giving alley sizes, I picked the first one that felt narrow enough. It was around three meters wide, but these guys didn’t want to kill me.

Oh, yeah. I knew who sent them. MacDonald wanted me to understand he wasn’t happy my family supported the Carbonneau. There are plenty of other people who could want to hurt me, but none of them knew where I was. How these guys had found me, I’d chock up to access to the city’s camera and my own carelessness.

To make sure they followed me, I didn’t duck in the alley; I ran for it.

Alleys are alleys the world over. Not places you hide in, unlike what movies tell you. There might be a dumpster, which there wasn’t, but those are obvious. Sometimes the buildings weren’t perfectly lined up and you got nooks to duck into before your pursuers turned into the alley; this one didn’t. This alley was clean and straight. Which was fine. I wasn’t trying to get away. I stopped and turned to wait.

The first to reach the alley were the bull and cheetah. He was muscular for a cheetah. Every one of them I knew was on the lean side; which meant you were completely surprised when they kicked your ass.

Yours, not mine. Only one cheetah kicks mine, but that’s because I let him. Don’t tell him that.

They froze, surprised to see me waiting. The Bulldog and horse joined them a few seconds later. They blocked the mouth of the alley.

Considering my reaction the last time, you’d think I wouldn’t want a fight. I don’t like them, that’s for sure, but I’m an Orr. We never run from a fight we can win. And those four didn’t stand a chance. Still, it would be nice if it could be avoided.

“I have no idea what you’re being paid, but it isn’t worth the beating you’re about to get,” I said. “Walk away now.”

The bull and horse stepped forward, leaving the other two to guard the alley. Two against one, this would be over quickly.

I ran, and the horse moved ahead of the bull, eager to intercept me. I smiled. You want me first? Too bad. I jumped up and sideways at the wall, kicked off to gain more height, and landed behind him. I am not in the business of making people who attack me happy. 

I elbowed the bull in the face, staggering him back, but he kept his footing. He dodged and punched. I blocked. He was strong, but I was tougher. 

Also, more aware. 

I ducked the horse’s kick, shoved the bull away, turned to block the horse’s punch; also strong. I returned a series of punch, jabs, and kicks that he dodged, and blocked. The guy was better than I expected a thug to be.

This might be fun.

I pressed the attack; he backed away until I miscalculated and he went on the offensive. He was pretty good. I blocked more hits than I took, but I also picked up his rhythm, his style. I didn’t know it. Unlike Arnold, I have not cataloged all fighting styles. When he made a mistake, I took back the offensive. I slipped more hits through his defenses, and he felt them, wincing and tensing in anticipation of the next blow.

Tensing in a fight was never a good tactic, nor was getting distracted by the thing he pulled from his sleeve. I went on the defensive, expecting a knife. I saw something the size of a playing card with squiggles on it, then darkness leaped off it and onto my face.

Magic.

I tried to pull it off, but my fingers felt nothing.

Then the punch hit me in the face, and I was fighting to keep my footing. Another one, and again. I heard the scraping of feet at my side and sidestepped that, feeling something catch my jeans too close to my knee for my liking. They weren’t going to kill me, but they going to make this painful.

My back pressed against the wall and I took the hits, protecting my face. How long was the darkness going to last? I could take a lot of punishment, but I had limits, and there were four of them.

My brother, Win— Winfred— is a brute of a man, looking at him. He’s a wall of muscle, and that’s without Uncle Dietrich’s gift, but you never hear him move. He is quiet. You’d think that’s his ability, but that’s the result of his ability. What he’s got is super-acute hearing. He can hear a pin drop on the other side of his house. That’s not an exaggeration, well, not much of one; his house is pretty large. He can tune it down somewhat, but not entirely, so he’s careful about making sounds lest he drives himself insane. He sleeps in a soundproof room.

I have a lower-tier version of his gift, so I can tune it down to the point I barely notice it, and since it doesn’t drive me insane, I’ve spent time learning to use it to tell where people are. It’s not echolocation, but it’s the next best thing for me.

It’s not the fist moving through the air, that makes no sound to speak of, it’s the rustling of the jacket that told me the punch was coming. The guy’s heavy breathing told me where he was in relation to the fist, so when I diverted the blow, then raised my elbow in his face, he never expected it. I just grazed him, but he backed away, surprised. They all do, and that’s their big mistake.

They should overwhelm me with blows, instead of becoming cautious. One of them might suspect I was more than normal, but that’s not certain. The darkness could be because I was getting the upper hand. The fact he wasn’t using more magic told me the others didn’t know about it.

I stepped away from the wall to give myself space, smiled, and raised my fists. “Who’s first?” I said.

The scraping of boots, someone approaching, stopping out of punching range, another scraping, a pivot, air through an open jacket. I raised my arm to intercept the foot, caught it before he could pull it back and twisted hard. I didn’t hear bones break, but the guy landed on the ground whimpering.

Scraping to the left, quick steps, rustling of a sleeve against a shirt. I stepped back, not enough; the fist clipped the end of my muzzle, but I punched him in the side as hard as I could. I felt ribs break before he moved away. I hear him crash down as I straightened; his breathing labored.

Two left. But only the sounds of one set of boots. Keeping their distances.

Where is the third guy?

The punch connected with my side and I struck in that direction, air. A faint scraping of stone against stone; stopped in mid sound as he realized he made it and that I was listening for it. The punch hit in my other side and my fist went through air where a head should have been.

It wasn’t magic, so misdirections? The hits were real enough. So he was there.

I relaxed, readied myself for the next punch. I didn’t hear it at all, but it connected with my stomach. My feet went up, hard and fast. It connected with something, then was directed up a little more before making a solid impact. The guy lifted. As I lower my leg, he crashed down.

My sight returned to the horse in a ball, hands on his crotch. I winced in sympathetic pain. That definitely hurt.

I straightened, look at the fourth man over my shoulder, the bulldog, and smiled, showing teeth. He stared at me, trying to muster what little courage he had left. I turned to face him and raised my hand, tensed and extended my claws.

He took off.

I sheathed them. I doubted he was going to look for a cop to report me for showing claws. 

I looked at the whimpering men and started by searching the horse. If he was from the faction I suspected, he should have a box on him. I found it, but dismissed it at first because it wasn’t what I thought of when I thought ‘box’, but then I found the card he showed me. Playing card size with writing on it I couldn’t decipher, but they look like kanji. I flipped it over and looked at the back of a playing card. One of those semi-generic red swirled patterns. That meant…

I took the deck of card from his pocket and opened it. A bunch of red backs, when I shook cards out and turned them over. More Kanji. I put them back with a sigh, closed the pack, and pocketed it. Either Macdonald had contact with the Ten Knives, which happened. We weren’t as insular as when the Gray Church had a gun to our collective heads, or this was a mercenary, using his magic as an added skill in his repertoire. It didn’t matter unless I made a big deal of it, which I didn’t intend to.

I stood. So which one of them was in charge? None of them had the look. I pulled the bull to a seated position. He stifled a scream as his leg jostled. The angle on it didn’t look good, but I forced myself to ignore it.

I shook him. “I need you to deliver a message.”

He whined, eyes on his leg.

The best way to get him to pay attention to me was to hurt him again, but I couldn’t do that. Even defending myself, I’d be paying for it later. Just contemplating hurting him on purpose didn’t sit well with me.

“Look, I can’t do anything for your leg right now, but as soon as I’m gone, I’ll call 911 and get an ambulance here. But before I do, I need you to listen to me. Okay?” The calm in my voice got through to him the way the harshness hadn’t. I forced myself not to look away from the pain on his face.

“I need you to tell MacDonald he screwed up.”

“I don’t—” he stopped as pain surged.

“If that isn’t who told you to attack me, give them the message, and tell them to pass it along. MacDonald’s behind this. So tell him he screwed up. I was happy to leave and forget about our conversation. This ensures I’m never going to forget. I’m not going to tell my fathers, so he doesn’t have to worry about my family coming down on him. I will be dealing with this myself when he least expects it. Can you tell him that?”

The bull nodded.

I turned to the horse. As much as I wanted to leave, I couldn’t do that without letting him know what I was going to do. I could get away with a lot within the Society, we all played by the same overall rulebook, but when dealing with other factions, I had to be more careful. For one thing, I didn’t know what the rulebook said.

What I did know was that for a Ten Knife member, their box was sacred. For one of them to lose it was tantamount to dying. If I destroyed it, I’d destroy him.

But I had no idea what the reprisals would be.

I crouched next to him. “Hey, Knife.” He heard me, moved his head slightly, but didn’t acknowledge me. I took the deck and tapped it on the ground, before his eyes. “You’re going to want to pay attention.”

His eyes widened, and he reached, but I took it away. I had his attention now.

“I need to know if you were hired directly to work with them, or if you’re just part of the group.”

“Part of,” he croaked.

“Do you know who I am?”

He shook his head.

“My name is Wyatt Orr.”

He shrugged.

That was an odd feeling, not being recognized. My family’s infamy was wide enough that anytime I say ‘Orr’ within the magical community, I got a reaction. Maybe I traveled too high within those groups. Not being recognized was nice, although it complicated this, since I had no way to know if he was going to take me seriously.

“I’m keeping this,” I said.

“No,” the terror was lessened by the groan that cut it off as he tried to reach for me.

I swallowed, the guy had attacked me, he deserved this.

Fuck!

I put the deck in a pocket and took a pen out. I pushed energy into it to turn the stasis phrase off on the cartridge and took his hand. He fought me but had little strength.

“I’m going to heal you, so stop fighting.” He relaxed, but the wariness didn’t leave his eyes.

I traced a medium healing sigil and considered him. Even if I could get him to power this thing himself, and since he was magical, there was a chance it could work, I didn’t expect him to let me kiss him, or that it would be as much of a turn on as it is for us. I focused on the sigils and pushed power into it, more than it would normally took.

Our magic is based on lifeforce, vitality, and lust. Everyone has that, and if they are horny enough, they can power simple sigils themselves. I really wish the orgy phrase fell into that category. But for more powerful things we have to provide the power, and that runs into the problem that everyone has their individual forcefield; think those old Star Trek movies, if you don’t know them, go watch them. So I either need to get them to lower that or punch through them. Making a guy horny puts me on the same wavelength, so lets the energy flow.

That won’t work here.

He sighed as the pain lessened.

“Do you guys still have a group in Flint?”

He looked at me suspiciously before nodding.

“I’m going to drop this off with them.” I patted my pocket. “Don’t be there when I do. You can pick it up after I left the city. Are we clear?”

“They’ll—”

“I don’t care,” I cut him off. I didn’t want to know what they might do. I’d heard plenty of stories, based on the fact the Knives originated in China and Japan, about what they did to people who failed, but I was reminding myself pretty hard that most stories told about my family were outright lies, so those would be too.

“You attacked me, by my family habit, that means I can do pretty much anything I want to you, so count yourself lucky you picked on the nice one and this is all I do. I’m going to call an ambulance once I’m out of the alley, if you don’t want to be here when they arrive, you should start moving now.”

I headed for the alley’s mouth and called 911. I gave them the address because even if it was illegal to do so, I was not giving them access to my GPS location, because I knew the kind of apps that could be slipped in at the same time. I had way too many slicer acquaintances to ever trust the government with my phone.

With that done I headed to the hotel, checked out, and headed west. 

I was not having the coming breakdown in this country.