The Best Defense by Kristine Kathryn Rusch 3 page

I was pretty sure it was Krasny Mafiya muscle in case I tried something. Was Georgi offering up Balyuk as a test?

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Meeting,” said Balyuk, tersely.

He slowed beamer down, stopping behind stalled moving truck.

I glanced at him out of corner of my eye: big beefy man in expensive suit, red hair, blue eyes, pale skin, the faint outline of a Roman cross under his pale green Arrow shirt. No way for me to read him. If only‑

Something smashed through front windshield. It was the size of an anaconda, but ebony with scarlet eyes, as big around as man’s thigh and impossibly long.

It wrapped itself around Balyuk and squeezed. I heard crunch of ribs snapping. Then it reared back and sank three‑inch fangs in lawyer’s neck.

“Liod,” I shouted, and suddenly the dragon was a statue of crystalline ice.

Giving me time to pull my Glock and shoot the Chinese thug coming up over the hood pop‑pop‑pop three times in chest. Then I dropped guy coming around passenger side with a head shot.

I put next bullet into the dragon. It shattered into a million pieces, filling car with tinkle of breaking ice.

It was already too late to save Balyuk. His throat was a bloody, broken mess, his stylish shirt stained black with blood, his breathing labored and ragged.

But he was still alive.

I reached over and touched his chest, feeling the cross beneath his slick shirt.

My eyes darted to the rearview mirror. The men in the dark sedan were running up, weapons drawn. About damn time.

I turned back to Balyuk and for a second our eyes met.

Then I popped buttons of his ruined shirt and my fingers found bloody cr‑

Knowing shot through me like electric current.

I stalked silently through cold warehouse, a wolf at home in the frigid wastes of the world, winter’s master. From the shadows I saw Chinese and their heroin. The Black Dragons were powerful and brave, but it would not save them.

They were in my world.

I must’ve passed out after that, because I came to in hotel suite. It didn’t matter, though.

Because I knew everything.

When I awoke, Georgi was leaning over me, and for just a second I saw the boy I grew up with, not the man I knew now. His eyebrows were hunched with concern, his full, red lips slightly parted.

And when our eyes met a bright smile exploded across his face.

He glanced back at the others in the room. “You see? It will take more than Chinese tricks to kill my little brat.”

Brat.

Brother.

My throat closed painfully.

“You are well, Valeri Mikhailovich, yes?”

“Yes,” I said weakly.

Georgi quirked an eyebrow. “Apparently your sit‑down with Zhang did not go so well. Why do they believe we stole drugs?”

My eyes flickered to the guards and then back to Georgi. “When Zhang and I were talking… our minds touched. I saw…

Georgi shook his head, the question plain on his face.

“Georgi,” I murmured.

He leaned in to hear me.

“There are traitors,” I whispered.

His eyes widened. “Nyet,” he snarled.

I looked at the guards again.

It was impossible for someone to take advantage of Georgi’s trust, for he trusted no one. No, the answer was suspicion. With Georgi, suspicion was the lever.

He turned to the guards. “Out.”

One of them hesitated.

“Out,” he roared.

The door snicked shut and just like that Georgi and I were alone.

There was a second of silence, and then he asked the question I knew he would. “You have proof?”

I nodded. “Square box in coat.”

He pulled the box out of my pocket, opened it. Looked at the curled, black monkey hand. Picked it up and studied it, frowning.

Because, of course, there was nothing there. Just stupid good luck charm.

And for the second he was distracted, I pointed my right hand at him and shouted “Siwang.” The Chinese death curse worked instantly, turning his blood to dust, squeezing the air from his lungs. He looked at me, eyes wide, mouth distended in a silent scream.

Then he fell, still clutching the monkey’s paw in his hand.

And there he lay, chieftain of a mob at war with Chinese, a Chinese charm clutched in his hand, the taste of Chinese magic still charging the air.

What would you think?

Zhang would take blame, and I would lead war of vengeance. And anyone who did not show me proper loyalty would find himself on front lines.

And so I found my prayer had been answered. I knew who set me up, had arranged for poor sculpting job, who had bought monkey paw, who had been holding heroin all along, and it was not Georgi.

Was me.

I stumbled out of bed and found my boots. Johnson had been looking for an object of extreme value, and his glance had passed right over my boots. As a Chicagoan he thought he knew cold. Bah! He did not know cold. Anyone who has survived Siberian winter knows true value of good pair of boots.

I carefully tucked them away for time when I could use $32 million worth of heroin.

Then I went to the dried, blackened husk that was all that was left of Georgi Dorbayeva, and knelt down. A single tear slid down my cheek.

My brat.

But this is way of world. There can only be one lead wolf.

The thing Georgi forgot is that lead wolf owes his position to strength, but the second wolf owes his to guile.

I gently touched my brother’s desiccated face.

Is not a lesson I will forget.

The Old Girlfriend of Doom by Dean Wesley Smith

Sometimes even superheroes can’t save the day, or the girl, or the dog, and that fact is even sadder when the girl is one of the superhero’s old girlfriends.

Honest, Poker Boy, and just about every superhero, once had a childhood, a life as a young adult, without powers. I only discovered my Poker Boy super abilities later in life, after I had lived a fairly regular life until the age of twenty‑nine. Little did I know that someday I would put on the black leather jacket and the fedora‑like hat and become Poker Boy, savior of blind women, lost husbands, and dogs.

It was Christmas Eve, a holiday for me just about like every other one. I was home, alone, in my double‑wide mobile home that I had bought twenty years ago with the money from my winnings in a poker tournament. The green couch and chairs had come with it, and so far I had seen no reason to replace the perfectly good, but dog‑ugly furniture. As a national‑level poker player, I had more than enough money in a dozen accounts to buy a nice home and nice furniture, but since I was in poker rooms and hotels more than I was here, what was the point?

I was watching some lame Christmas program on television and eating a television dinner with fried chicken and the really good cherry desert. I had about two hours to get to the casino to sign up for the poker tournament, and I was enjoying the quiet, to be honest.

Then there was knock on my door.

As Poker Boy, I very seldom have the people who need help come to me, but there have been exceptions. And since I wasn’t expecting any company, I figured right off this was one of those exceptions.

I opened the front door of my double‑wide mobile home and saw my old girlfriend, Julie Down, standing there on the other side of the screen door. Of course, right at that moment I didn’t know it was Julie. All I could see was that it was some woman about my age with a nice smile and an overbuilt chest.

“Hi,” Julie said, smiling at me as I stood there, hand on the wooden door, staring at her though the screen.

Now I have a great memory for faces across poker tables. I can tell you the moment a person sits down if I have played with them before, the style of their play, and their poker tells. I won’t remember their names, but I know the important stuff and how to take their money.

With old girlfriends, from the life before I became the superhero Poker Boy, I am lucky even to remember going out with them, let alone things like their names or if we slept together. I assume that any old girlfriend coming to find me years later is someone I must have slept with.

On top of my bad memory, Julie didn’t look like the Julie of old. Granted, I’m forty‑nine, and Julie and I were an item back twenty‑five years before, when she was only twenty. But that said, she just didn’t look the same. Not even close.

Julie of old had long blonde hair that had touched the top of her butt. I remember I used to love lying in bed and watching that hair flow over her back as she walked naked around the bedroom. This Julie standing in front of me had tight, short graying hair, curled in a style that made her look older and very businesslike.

Julie of old was rail thin, with no real breasts to speak of, and no body fat at all.

This Julie had filled out, as all of us have. She wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t that light and rail thin either. And she had had a boob job at some point. Or one hell of a growth spurt focused only on her chest. The white blouse she now wore under her open suede jacket made sure that everyone could see the growth spurts and the lace bra trying to hold back the progress.

“Hi,” I said in return, at that point not yet knowing who the hell I was talking to. I wished at that moment that I had my black leather jacket and hat on and was closer to a casino. Then I could use my superpowers to help me figure out exactly what this woman wanted to sell me.

Or wanted me to do.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said.

Okay, I have to admit that those words are the worst words any guy can ever hear from some strange woman standing at his door. I didn’t have a clue who she was, yet she remembered me well enough to track me down.

A guy is never allowed to forget a woman.

Ever.

I glanced at her boobs, and since they were new since the last time I saw this woman, they didn’t help. And her face rang a sort of bell when I looked right at her, and into her eyes, but not much of a bell. Actually, sort of a faint ding, like an oven timer going off in another room.

If I hadn’t been a superhero, who didn’t lie unless it was to save a life, or rescue a dog, I would have just laughed and said, “Sure I do, come on in.” And then tried to figure out who she was through the conversation.

But she had asked me a direct question, and being a superhero, I couldn’t lie. So instead I said, “I can’t really see you very well in this light. Come on in.”

I honestly couldn’t really see her that well in the porch light and through the screen door, so I didn’t lie. I just bought a little needed time.

As I swung open the screen door to let her come inside, she let me off the hook.

“It’s me, Julie.”

For a moment, as she stepped past me, leading into the room with those new growth spurts on her chest, I couldn’t remember any Julie’s in my life either. Especially Julie with a chest the size of the Rockies.

“Julie Down,” she said, ending all torture.

“Oh, my god, Julie,” I said, “what a great surprise.”

Actually I sounded happy mostly because she had let me out of the trap, and not because I was actually glad to see her. The last time we had spoken, she had called me a lazy bum, said I would amount to nothing, and that I should get a life. Or at least a reason for living and breathing.

Actually, at the point she left me, I was a lazy bum, and I really did need a life, but I wouldn’t find that life until a number of years later, when I became Poker Boy.

In all, I think we dated seven months, or, more accurately, had sex for seven months. I don’t remember much else in the relationship with her.

After I gave her the required hug, with her growth spurts holding us apart, she stepped back and studied me, then my abode, like a meat inspector looking over a side of beef.

“You look like you’re doing well for yourself,” she said.

Even without my superpowers I knew that was a lie. I was living in an old mobile home, with old, ugly furniture and a half‑eaten t.v. dinner on the coffee table. I looked like, on the surface, the same guy she had gotten mad at twenty‑five years before. If I had not had my Poker Boy identity, and a lot of money in different banks from all my poker winnings, I would have been ashamed that an old girlfriend saw me living like this. But superhero status and large bank accounts tend to make a guy not care, and I didn’t really care what she thought.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m doing very well. Can I get you something to drink? Diet Coke and water are the options.”

She laughed, a high, soft sound I remembered from our past. Her laugh had been one of the things that had attracted me to her back then. That and sex.

Now I just wanted to know what she wanted. And the only way I was going to be able to do that with my superpowers was get my coat and hat on and get back into a casino.

My superpowers don’t work a great distance from a casino. They are powered by the energy of a casino, as a flashlight is powered by a battery. My black leather coat and hat seemed to focus the energy from the casino and make me into Poker Boy.

“Wait,” I said, “I have another idea. Let me buy you dinner and a drink at the casino.” I pointed to my partially eaten t.v. dinner. “That just isn’t doing it for me.”

“That sounds great,” she said.

No doubt she was relieved to get out of the old mobile home.

Fifteen minutes of very, very small talk later, we were seated in the fine dining restaurant at the casino. I had my leather coat and hat on and was in full Poker Boy power mode.

I knew with a quick scan with my Ultra‑Intuition Power that she needed help. Poker Boy’s help, actually, which was interesting that she had found me.

My Ultra‑Intuition Power is my most used power. With a focused glance, I can tell what a person needs, what they might say next, or even their next action. The information comes to me by “little voice messenger,” and I have learned to listen.

I could list all my superpowers right now, but that would be a dull monolog, not worth the time, since there are so many. Some of the powers I haven’t even named.

“Thank you,” she said to me after we were settled at a table and the waiter was off getting our drink orders.

“For what?” I asked.

“For being so welcoming, especially on Christmas Eve.”

“Poker players are never much for Christmas,” I said, shrugging. “The ones with the families miss days and sometimes weeks of play. The rest of us just continue on and mostly don’t notice.”

“You have no family?” she asked. “And you play poker for a living?” She sounded actually impressed about the second part.

“Right on both counts,” I said. “How about you?”

She sighed, and then for the next twenty minutes, through drinks, appetizers, and into the main course, she told me about her family, her parents being sick, her brother being stupid, her last two husbands being abusive.

I wanted to ask her when the growth spurt on her chest had happened, but refrained. Some things you just don’t ask a woman, I have learned, and that’s one of them.

Suddenly, she stopped talking, afraid to tell me about something. She had been fairly graphic about her past husbands, what they had done to her. Some of it I couldn’t believe she would just tell a stranger like me. Granted, we had a past, but after not seeing this woman for over twenty‑five years, I was still a stranger.

She studied her salmon, forked it a few times, studied it some more, forked it again, all the time trying to say something. Whatever was now stopping her must be really something. It was, more than likely, the reason she had looked me up.

I used my Ultra‑Intuition Power on her again, but I could see only blackness.

Deep, deep blackness.

Not good, not good at all.

I needed another superpower to help her out, get her to tell me her problem. I focused across the table at her, leaning forward, clicking my mind into a friendly, giving mode. A moment later I felt the superpower click on.

Empathy Super Power to the rescue.

I could make her feel better, I could make her trust me. My Empathy Superpower sort of radiated good feelings to another person, so it really wasn’t empathy, by the standard dictionary definition, but Empathy Superpower was the only thing I could think to call it. I had tried Feel Better Superpower, but that had seemed silly. And so did Trust Me Superpower. So until I could come up with a better name, it was called my Empathy Superpower.

She looked up at me, her gaze holding mine. “I just feel like I can talk to you, and that you’ll understand.”

Empathy Superpower working just fine.

“I will,” I said, easing my hand across the table between the water glasses and salt shaker to touch her hand.

Touch always made my Empathy Superpower even stronger.

“What’s bothering you?” I asked.

She looked embarrassed for a moment, then took a deep breath and blurted out her problem.

“Aliens are trying to steal my breasts.”

I knew there were no such things as aliens, at least at the moment on the planet. There had been in the past, and I am sure there would be again. They visited all the time. But right now they weren’t around and hadn’t been for at least five years.

But there were many, many other things that normal people confused with aliens. And there was an entire dark world that existed along with the light world we all lived in. It was against creatures from that dark world that I, and other superheroes, fought so often.

“Aliens?” I asked, keeping my touch on her arm and my super Empathy power turned on. “What do these aliens look like? Have you seen them?”

She nodded. “Gray, short, with long fingers and little round mouths.”

“Big heads?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, staring into my eyes. “Big for their bodies.”

I could feel my stomach twist. She was even more trouble than I had thought.

“And they want your breasts?”

She nodded.

I sat back, pulling my hand away and shutting off the superpower. “You’re not dealing with aliens. Those are Silicon Suckers, a very dark creature of the underworld.”

“Silicon Suckers?” she asked. “How do you know that?”

“I’ve had to deal with them a couple of times over the years,” I said. “They’re not a nice bunch, and you clearly have something they want, or they wouldn’t be showing themselves to you.”

I knew exactly what they wanted, but I was going to have to work into telling her what it was.

Silicon Suckers are a race of intelligent creatures that have existed on Earth far, far longer than human beings. They live in the deserts, burrow in the sand, and have the ability to change their appearance and blend with about anything. In this country, the Phoenix, New Mexico, and Las Vegas areas have the most trouble with them.

“Silicon Suckers?” she said. “My breasts are silicon implants.” She was clearly starting to understand what the little guys were after.

I almost said, “Really, I hadn’t noticed.” But I stopped myself before that gaffe and instead just nodded. Then I moved to the next question.

“Where have you been living?”

“Vegas,” she said. “I’ve been working as a blackjack dealer at Circus Circus for the last six years, since I left Bastard Husband Number Two.”

“Good for you,” I said, actually impressed. I knew how hard and how special it was to become a dealer on the strip. “When did you have the implants put in?”

“Twenty years ago,” she said. “I did it between Bastard Husband Number One and Bastard Husband Number Two. But I upgraded them six months ago, and that’s when the gray aliens started showing up.”

“Oh, oh,” I said.

“Oh, oh?” she asked, looking very worried.

And she should be worried. I didn’t know how to tell her what had happened. The fight between good and evil, between the superheroes and the dark forces is always tough to explain to a mere mortal, especially when it concerns a body part.

Finally, looking into her worried eyes, I decided to approach the problem by showing her I knew what had happed.

“Dr. Doubleday did the upgrade. Right?”

She looked at me as if I had lost my mind, then nodded. “How did you know that?”

Actually, I wasn’t reading her mind or using any other superpower. I had dealt with Silicon Suckers for a friend of a friend in Vegas five months before, on an adventure that also rescued three dogs. On that trip, I had discovered that Dr. Doubleday had been using a very special silicon mix taken from pure natural sand and then refined down into a very special silicon gel.

The problem was the sand he had been using was from a sacred Silicon Suckers burial site. Julie, my old girlfriend sitting across the table from me, had a real problem. She had dead Silicon Suckers for breasts.

“I know because one of the things I do is help people as I travel around the country playing poker,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve heard about you. Some people call you Poker Boy.”

Since she clearly looked as if she didn’t believe what she had just said, I let it pass and went on. “I helped a previous client of Dr. Doubleday. I assume you tried to go back to him after the Silicon Suckers started showing up and playing with your breasts. And I bet you found him missing.”

Now Julie was looking at me as if I were the alien.

I knew for a fact that Dr. Doubleday had given his life for trying to improve his craft and find the most perfect silicon implants. After what he had done to the Silicon Suckers’ sacred resting place, many of us in the superhero world thought he got off light by only being killed. His body will never be found. More than likely parts of Dr. Doubleday are tinting car windows everywhere.

“How did you know he wasn’t there?” she asked.

“Doubleday is dead,” I said. “Killed by the Silicon Suckers.”

She sat there in silence, first staring at me, then down at her salmon. Finally she said, “Let’s assume that I believe what you’re saying.”

“No weirder than thinking aliens are trying to steal your breasts.”

She shrugged. “True. So what do I do?”

I put another bite of steak in my mouth, savored the flavor for a moment. There was only one answer to her question.

“If you’re going to want to live, you have to give them your implants back.”

“I’m not going to do that!” she said, her hands going to the monsters on her chest as if to protect the big girls.

I kept eating, staying calm. “You have no choice. If you don’t have the money, I can pay for an exchange operation for the silicon implants you have now. All they want is those implants. They don’t want you to be flat chested.”

There was no chance at that point that the rest of her salmon was going to be eaten. She scooted the plate away and stared at me.

“I wasn’t flat chested before I had the implants,” she said. “You know, you’re totally nuts.”

I wanted to remind her that she had come to me for help, that she thought aliens were trying to take her boobs, but I didn’t. Instead I just gave her the rest of the information, calmly and slowly, keeping my voice level.

“The creatures you are having trouble with are not aliens, but they are after the special silicon Dr. Doubleday used in those implants. If you have the implants removed, I’ll be glad to help you give them to the Silicon Suckers in a special exchange ceremony. You give them back what they want, and you’ll always be an honored guest in their sand castles.”

She stared at me as if she were seeing me for the first time.

“Sand castles?”

“That’s what they call their homes. I’ve been in a few of them outside of Tucson. Big, but kind of dusty and dry.”

She stared at me again, then shook her head slowly from side to side.

“I knew better than to come to you,” she said. “Even with Suzy’s recommendation, I knew better.”

She stood and thrust her chest out so far I was afraid she was going to go head first into my steak. Somehow, she managed to remain standing, although she cast a very dark shadow over the table as her breasts pulled an eclipse on the overhead light.

“These are mine, and I paid good money for them,” she said, loudly, indicating what did not need to be indicated. “And I’m not letting any little gray alien suckers take them.”

The guy at a table against the wall choked, then coughed, clearly trying not to laugh.

“Your choice,” I said. “But I’m doing all right with money, and I would be glad to pay for replacements. Remember that. No strings attached. You can even make them bigger if you want.”

“I’ll give it some thought,” she said.

“Don’t take too long to decide,” I said, staring up at her over the monster mountain range between us. “Silicon Suckers are not creatures to be played with. The only way they know how to get into a human body is through the anus, and trust me, taking those silicon implants out that way will not be fun. And more than likely fatal.”

She sputtered, started to say something more, sputtered again.

I didn’t blame her.

Finally she managed to get those sacred and very dead Silicon Suckers on her chest turned toward the door. Then, with one last withering glance at me, she stormed out.

The guy against the wall was laughing so hard I thought he would go face down in his soup.

For me, it really wasn’t a laughing matter. She was in mortal danger.

I wanted to run after her and stop her, but I knew, for a fact, there was nothing I could do at this point. I certainly wasn’t going to force her to have an operation. A woman’s choice of what to do, or not do, with her body was not something a man, or a superhero, should get involved with. She was going to have to make that choice for herself.

For some reason that I didn’t completely understand, Julie’s entire self image must have been tied up in what the Silicon Suckers wanted back. And replacements might not be enough to matter to her.

I wished I understood Julie’s side. I did understand the Suckers’ side.

The guy against the wall finally coughed a few times, shook his head, and went back to eating. I stared at my steak for a moment, thinking over anything I might still do to help her. Without butting in on her rights to do with her own body as she saw fit, there wasn’t much.

She had come to me for help, then refused it. As those of us in the superhero business know, there are times you just can’t help.

I finished my steak and just barely made it into the poker room in time for the seven o’clock tournament.

I won the thing and put the money in a jar on my kitchen counter, saved for Julie’s operation. But I had a hunch she would never call me, because after the tournament, on the way home from the casino, I found a German Shepherd laying in the ditch beside the road. It had been hit by a car, but it was still alive.

I rushed it to the local vet, but the dog died on Christmas morning.

On good adventures I save people and dogs. I couldn’t save the dog, so I had a hunch I hadn’t saved the person either in this one.

But that didn’t stop me from trying some more.

I tracked down Julie and called her the day after Christmas with the hope of trying to convince her to change out the breast implants. She heard my voice and hung up.

I called a few friends I knew in Vegas who could be trusted to go talk to her. Both of them said she got rude and angry at them the moment they brought up the subject or my name.

Julie had made her decision, and by all the gambling gods, she was sticking with it.

Somehow, I had to convince her to change that decision.

I had to keep trying.

That’s what superheroes did, usually against all odds and at some cost and danger to their own lives. And trying to convince any woman to change her mind always had danger involved.

So throwing all caution to the wind, I jumped on a plane and headed for Vegas.

She wouldn’t see me and had me removed from the Circus Circus when I went up to her blackjack table and sat down. Even my Empathy Superpower couldn’t cut through the anger, although it made the guard very nice and apologetic for escorting me to the door.

Since the direct approach hadn’t worked, I headed out into the desert, to where I knew the Silicon Suckers had a pretty good‑sized village. It was impossible to see unless you knew exactly what you were looking for, and I did. The entrance to this one was hidden right under a billboard beside the highway.

The entrance led to a huge underground cavern cut out of the sand and rock and filled with castlelike buildings. I was welcomed into their castles, as I knew I would be, since I had helped them recover one of Dr. Doubleday’s mistakes.

The main leader of this band clicked at me in Silicon Sucker language, and I used what I called my Understand Most Anything Superpower to talk with him, asking him for more time to convince Julie to get their sacred dead off her chest.