They argued over music because JT refused to play anything written this century. They argued what direction to take into town because Austin thought it was more dramatic to come to the rescue via the Golden Gate rather than the Bay Bridge. Comfortable arguments, an easy rhythm to fall into.
They came in by the Bay Bridge listening to nothing. JT activated the truck’s transponder and the Bay Area Traffic Net added the vehicle to the millions it managed. JT had old override codes tied to emergency response vehicles and VIPs, but they would splash the system when activated and someone would be bound to notice the waves. Best hold them until needed. “I haven’t kept this software up-to-date,” he said. “I really hope those codes still work.”
Austin shrugged. “You’ll figure something out. Always do.” Austin stared out the window and JT did also, just as much a passenger as Austin now that BATN had taken over the truck. The Embarcadero glowed multihued through a thin fog, and the half-lit office buildings of downtown were a patchwork of blue-green blocks and streaks against black. Near the north edge of downtown, the Sorcerer’s Tower, five hundred meters high, twice the height of the graceless pyramid it had replaced, shimmered like water. Its rainbow of arcane sigils floated up its sides, broke away, and drifted like clouds written over the city. Some people said a dragon lived in its pinnacle. JT thought that was bullshit. Most of the time.
The city was beautiful.
JT’s desert was more beautiful still. And Dante and Duke and the others, they were all there. All there was here was Buzz. And the dead.
“Where you been living?” JT asked, afraid to ask because so far they’d skirted around things like that.
“Wherever I’m sleeping.”
“The City?” The way Austin had been after Roan’s death, it was easy to imagine him lingering in SF, obsessed like a ghost. That had been the path Austin had been heading down, hadn’t it?
“Sometimes,” Austin said, obviously as unwilling to have this conversation as JT was.
Pylons and cabling slid by. They were nearing the end of the bridge and BATN was requesting a destination update.
“So where is Buzz holed up? How do we find him?”
“He said he’d put up markers. City Netspace, I suppose.”
“And we’re just supposed to drive the streets looking for Netspace markers? We might never find him.”
City Netspace was a virtual reality that overlaid the city’s real space. Anyone with VR glasses or networking implants could access it. In its early days, it had carried tourism and historical information, making the city a museum of itself, including superimposed archival images dating back to the eighteen hundreds. All that information was still there, hyperlinked to academic papers and documentary footage. But after endless vandalism by hackers and virtual artists, the city administrators had thrown up their hands and opened the network to the public. The result had been a palimpsest of virtual graffiti that had begun the Fog City Renaissance back in the fifties. It was a part-genius, mostly-useless chaotic mess of graphics and animation wrapped ghostly over real-world space, perfect for artists, activists, and criminals.
JT accessed the Netspace and winced as the city went lurid with gang tags, one hundred meter adverts for every damn thing and then some, pornography, and Escherian trompe l’oeil architecture. He looked back at the Bay to see if Godzilla was still there, and he was, splashing around. Godzilla had always been there and always would be. No hacker ever messed with Godzilla. And if JT could have seen the ocean from here, no doubt there’d still be the water-walking Gundam battalion endlessly invading Pacifica.
He searched for a 3djinn tag—an asterisk made from three crossed scimitars—and found nothing.
“There,” Austin said, but Austin couldn’t even see into Netspace, so how he knew— “There,” Austin said again and pointed. The mark wasn’t in Netspace at all, and it wasn’t a 3djinn tag.
There was a monarch butterfly on the windshield, except monarchs were extinct. Roan, he thought. He said her name aloud before he could stop himself, and heartbeats of silence passed. Then he said, “That’s not real. That’s magic. Buzz has a wizard?”
Austin shrugged. The butterfly fluttered away.
They followed it through the Financial District, skating right past the Tower (“You think a dragon really lives up there?” “How should I fucking know?”) and into North Beach, where the butterfly’s route became erratic.
“I can’t tell BATN to follow a butterfly.”
“Park. We’ll follow on foot.”
“You sure?”
Austin shrugged.
JT put in the request to park and ten minutes later they were on the top level of a garage on Broadway. He blackened the windows, and Austin suited up, tying himself up in velcro straps and nylon string, bow, arrows, knives, and magic stones all where he wanted them, hands moving like getting dressed was some stage magician’s trick.
“Jesus, JT, do I have to tell you? Check your pistol.”
“What do I need a pistol for?”
“To kill things before they kill you?”
“There’s a pistol under the seat.” JT had never needed to use it. If something came after him that could punch through this truck, he’d need more than a pistol to stop it.
“Under the seat won’t do you any good when you’re out there with me.”
“Out there with you?” JT laughed, then stopped abruptly. “Are you fucking serious?”
“What the hell did you think I got you for?”
“Maybe you don’t remember, Austin, but I’m a glorified getaway driver. That and the bots—that’s all I do. Grayson had your back, not me.”
“Grayson’s dead. You aren’t. And you’re coming with me.”
“We don’t know where that bug’s going to take us. We get over the hill, I’ll lose the truck signal and we lose the drones.”
“Figure it out.”
“I don’t know the first thing about feet-on-the-ground work.”
“Time to learn.” Austin went for the door handle, but there wasn’t one. “Door, please?”
JT took the pistol from under the seat and slaved it. He took two clips from the glove box and stuffed them in the pocket of his jeans.
Jeans. Look at Austin in his military ninja costume looking like some anime hero. Now look at JT in his blue jeans and sleeveless flannel looking like he didn’t know what. All I ever wanted to do was fly planes. Look at me now.
JT popped the doors and climbed down out into the cool night air of San Francisco, as ready as he’d ever be, which was hardly at all.
Once Telegraph Hill had been high-class. Not anymore. The alley here was tight and filled with sodden litter and rubbish bins. Over the door, an old incandescent bulb sparked like it was about to explode. Beside the door was an old vid panel. The camera on it glowed red like the eye of a pissed-off orc to show it was on. On top of the panel an extinct monarch butterfly fanned its wings.
JT had dropped one land-bound bot as a repeater to strengthen the signal between himself and the truck. Four airborne drones—not much more than cameras and assault guns on toy helicopters—circled the rooftops and scanned alleys. A second land-bound bot stood beside JT, a sturdy four-legged spider, waist high. People always thought controlling drones was like watching a battery of monitors. It wasn’t like that at all. Drones were like removable hands and eyes, and it had taken years of training, a hundred thousand dollars of software, and a dangerous amount of black market neuropsychoactive drugs to make JT’s brain into something that could process multi-ocular vision for sustained periods of time without suffering a breakdown. With six drones and the truck slaved to him, JT felt immense, spread out, cloud-like, fog-like, and that runty green body was only the smallest part of what he was.
He watched the streets and rooftops and alleys all at once. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, and that made him edgy because it seemed far more likely that seeing nothing meant he’d missed something, not that there was nothing to see.
The door clicked open. Stairs, so JT left the bot behind. The butterfly led them up two flights, then down a corridor, past several doors, to the door at the end.
The butterfly vanished as the door opened. Beyond was a sorcerer’s apartment. He could tell from all the weird shit. There were enough lava lamps to light a disco, though what bubbled in them wasn’t wax, and the blobs in the one on the coffee table looked remarkably like an orc and an elf standing in a doorframe. The walls were covered in so many hand-painted arcane symbols they overlapped one another. There were even symbols on the ceiling. The paint had been slopped on too thick or too quick and had run in places like the walls were bleeding. A mobile made from the skeletons of small animals hung in the corner of the room. Its tiers spun lazily as the skeletons ran or flew or crawled on the air. And there wasn’t a bit of digital technology anywhere; even the clock was pendulum-powered.
The wizard sat cross-legged in the air next to his oracular lava lamp. He wore pajama pants and a red plush bathrobe, open to show his scrawny chest. He had long straight black hair and that mix of features and skin tone you got when you threw five different ancestries into the West Coast blender. His eyes were silver, actual silver orbs engraved with writing. Blue-violet plasma arced from one hand to the other, a spell he was just waiting for an excuse to throw at them.
And that was okay, because Austin had an arrow nocked, and one of JT’s drones aimed its cannon though a window at the wizard’s back.
Then there was Buzz. Buzz was an Irish human. Not black-haired Irish like Austin, but the other kind. He was shorter than JT, had curly ruddy-brown hair that would have shown copper in the sun, and big brown eyes. They were red-rimmed and bruised like he hadn’t slept in days. He was a bit on the stocky side; it showed in his freckled cheeks. He was just short of painfully cute.
JT couldn’t help but smile. He’d made the right choice by coming here, and he and Buzz—
“What’d you bring that animal here for?” Buzz said to Austin.
“Animal? What—”
All the warm happy glow died out of JT. “Hi, Buzz,” he said with a tone that meant Fuck you.
“Victor,” Buzz said to the wizard. “That orc comes after me, you can zap him.”
Austin shifted his aim from the floor to the wizard. “No! No, Victor, whoever the hell you are, you cannot zap the orc.”
JT shrugged helplessly. “Buzz, come on . . .” He’d barely even moved, but Buzz honestly flinched like JT was on the attack, and shouted, “Keep away from me, you cannibal!”
The plasma in Victor the Wizard’s hand snapped in warning.
That worked JT’s nerves. “It’s not cannibalism if you ain’t the same species, Buzz. It’s just dinner.”
Five meters away, and JT felt that plasma go hotter.
“Everyone stop it!” Austin put up his hands, arrow in one, bow in the other. “Everyone put your weapons down!” Austin slowly put his bow and arrow down on the battered parquet floor. “You, Victor, get rid of that whatever it is you’re doing there with that light. Get rid of it!” The plasma dimmed to violet, but didn’t go out. “Good enough. Excuse us. JT, can I have a word with you?” Austin didn’t wait for an answer. He hauled JT into the hall. “What the hell is going on?”
“I might have bit him.”
“You ‘might have bit him’?”
JT shrugged. “I might have been worked up. You get an orc worked up, you know things might happen.”
“Worked up? Oh my God, you slept with him?”
Well, no, they hadn’t quite gotten that far, but JT didn’t like the judgmental tone. “And what’s wrong with that?”
“It’s Buzz, that’s what’s wrong with that.”
“He’s a nice guy.”
“He’s Buzz.”
JT’s startup business had required credit, and credit required an official history, something neither JT nor Austin had ever had. They’d both been born off the grid and had stayed off the grid, using stolen IDs when they needed temporary legitimacy. So when JT decided to leave his old life and build a new one, Buzz had been the natural choice to turn the fictional Jason Taylor into a real person, a person who could take out loans, sign legal papers, and pay taxes. Buzz was an artist. It had taken him six weeks to plant the evidence of a life lived: not just birth records and a SIN, but traffic tickets, a college degree, a master’s thesis, tax forms, annual employee reviews, even a student loan default. And when all those databases had been hacked and signatures forged and it was done, the two of them had sat on Buzz’s old beat-up couch and watched a holo of JT’s new record—Jason Taylor—turn lazily in the air, and celebrated.
Out of nowhere, Buzz had stolen a nervous peck of a kiss, and JT had turned to him high as a kite and so damn grateful, and Buzz was so damn cute, all redheaded Irish, and who’d say no to that? Not anyone sensible. Seconds later, shirts were off, JT had Buzz pinned beneath him, and Buzz’s mouth had tasted like pot, and his sweet eager fear of JT had been a cologne that sent JT higher than any weed.
“I didn’t sleep with him, okay? But I would have. If I hadn’t bit him first. And he hadn’t kicked me out. It really didn’t bleed all that bad.”
“That’s why you said yes to this job. You got a thing for Buzz.”
“I don’t have a thing. We have some history. I wasn’t gonna let him get killed.”
“History,” Austin said and let the word hang there between them like it had some significance. “I wish I’d known that before. I wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of getting that car. Let’s get this over with so you can get back to that nice, quiet, real life of yours.” He turned and went back into the apartment, leaving JT alone in a hallway that had just gone very, very chilly.
“JT Jameson,” Victor the Wizard said, using a name JT hadn’t gone by in years, with a greasy awe that JT didn’t trust one bit, “and Austin Shea. Legends in the flesh.”
“And who the hell are you?” Austin asked.
“Victor the Wizard, Transmuter and Bearer of the Silver Eyes of Horus.”
Austin rolled his eyes. “Right. Buzz, what’s he here for? We didn’t talk about bringing in a wizzy on the job.”
“I prefer the full term ‘wizard.’”
They were all sitting around the coffee table as if they were best friends planning a night out, except that Victor was still floating and watching his magical lava lamp, and Buzz was bouncing one leg like he was going to vibrate it off. The room was still chilly, and JT rubbed his arms.
“I did it, Austin.” Buzz smiled so broad and proud, it made one dimple show.
“I know you brought him in, Buzz. I want to know why.”
The windows weren’t open. It was Austin’s glamour making JT shiver. He leaned toward the elf. “Why are you pissed at me? What did I do?”
“I ain’t pissed at you, JT.”
Buzz leapt up from his chair and drew a crystal data block from his shirt pocket with a flourish. It went iridescent with refracted lava light. “No, I mean, I did it. I stole the Blue Unicorn just like you said.” He bounced in place like he’d just made the winning goal, one hand in the air waiting for the onslaught of high fives.
Everyone stared at him and didn’t say anything. No one jumped up to high-five him. Buzz’s excitement ebbed, and he stopped bouncing. He scowled at them all. “I know that wasn’t the plan. It’s called improvisation. Thinking on your feet? Adaptability? It’s considered a strength.” And his hand went up again, giving everyone a second chance at high fives.
They all leapt up shouting, none of it congratulations. Austin shouted curses. JT shouted at Austin, “You told Buzz to steal a data block from the Triad?”
“I told him to wait until you and I got here.”
“You told me you were hiding from a gang, not a triad,” Victor said to Buzz.
“You told me this was a rescue operation,” JT said to Austin.
“A triad is a gang.”
“This is a rescue operation.”
“You were not candid with me, Buzz,” Victor said.
“You lied to me, Austin,” JT said.
“I may have meant to, but as it turns out, I didn’t.” Austin rounded on Buzz. “I told you to wait!”
“You would have done the same thing!” Buzz said.
“You’re not me. You could have blown the whole fucking thing!”
“I was just—”
“You’ve put me at risk, Buzz!” Victor said.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Leave him alone!” JT bellowed and stepped in front of Buzz. “Both of you leave him alone!” The room was too small for an orc to be bellowing. It rattled the mobile with its little skeletons and they ran/flew/crawled faster until they tangled themselves in a mess. JT’s heart pounded like a war drum. He was running dangerously hot, so huffed a couple of deep breaths to calm himself down, but that just showed how much muscle there was to him, like a bull snorting in the ring. Even Austin shut up and took a step back. The anxious tension in the room was too much, too distracting, and he couldn’t hold on to his drones like this.
It was Austin’s glamour, Austin’s glamour fanning JT’s orc blood into a wildfire. “Your glamour, Austin. Move farther away.” Austin did and the hot edge of JT cooled like a newly forged blade hitting oil. Deeper breaths. Deeper. “We need to be on the road. We need to be on the road now.”
He went to the window.
“Where are you going?” Austin said.
“Fire escape. Roof. I’m going to call the truck and I’ll get a better signal up there.” And I’ll be farther away from all of you.
JT didn’t have to be anywhere near his truck to drive it as long as he had a good signal, and with the Traffic Net there was even less to do: power up the truck, give BATN a destination, wait. Five minutes was the ETA BATN gave, which seemed like a goddamn long time, considering, but JT was still unwilling to try the emergency responder codes. They’d just have to wait.
And he was going to wait up here, alone, watching the fog, everything quiet. Sweet goddess, he loved the quiet. It was always surprising how quiet the City got at night with the fog. Like the desert. Or like the desert had been until Austin showed up with his damn car and his glamour and his lies.
JT heard climbing on the ladder and said, “Austin, I really don’t want to talk to you right—” Before he flipped a camera there and saw it was Buzz. “Oh. You probably shouldn’t be out here.”
Buzz hesitated, then came up the rest of the way anyway. Buzz leaned against the parapet that surrounded the roof, a safe meter between him and JT, and they watched the streets fill up with fog. He said, “Thanks for that down there.”
“You shouldn’t have listened to Austin.”
“It wasn’t his idea. It was mine.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was Austin’s. He’s good at making you think his ideas are yours.”
“No, it really was mine.”
JT sighed and shook his head. “You’re welcome.”
Even the rooftop wasn’t far enough away. JT still felt the tug of him. He felt Austin the way a planet felt the sun, that same inescapable running-away and falling-in that only ended when you burned up.
“And look, I shouldn’t have said . . . about the whole cannibal thing . . .” Buzz winced. “Austin didn’t tell me he was bringing you in, so you surprised me, was all. I suppose I should have figured it, but I guess I didn’t think you’d come after I . . .” He shook his head and looked uncomfortable, and JT kind of liked that and wasn’t about to interrupt him. “I’m not used to orcs—I mean look at you. You’re huge and you’ve got tusks and your eyes glow red and—”
“I get it, I’m scary.” He was still angry and didn’t want to be, and he blamed that on Austin’s glamour too.
Buzz looked away, guiltily, down into the fog. “I don’t want to be that guy anymore. I’m tired of working in the background. I’m tired of being safe. I want to be the one people talk about.”
This was Austin talking, not Buzz. This was how Austin did it. Always the lies. Always his glamour messing with everyone’s head until no one knew what they really felt about anything. Once was a time JT actually thought he’d been in love with him, crazy as it sounded. Well, fuck Austin. Fuck him. JT wasn’t gonna let Austin mess with him anymore.
“Kiss me,” JT said.
“What? Are you sure? This isn’t a good time, is it?”
They were alone—all clear for six blocks. They had four more minutes to kill, and Buzz needed to get his damn priorities straight. “You want to prove you’re not afraid, then kiss me. Right now.”
“Okay. Yeah.” Buzz laid his left hand against JT’s chest, slowly, like he was petting a dangerous dog, and cussed at how rock-hard the muscle there was. He cocked his head up, JT ten centimeters taller than him. JT closed his eyes and didn’t move, not wanting to scare him.
A drone turned and watched as Buzz kissed him, featherlight, as sweet as the kiss Buzz had stolen eighteen months before.
Buzz leaned in closer, right hand on JT’s biceps, grip barely covering the one muscle, and kissed JT again, firmer, longer. Buzz’s lips parted. His hands slid down JT, chest to waist, biceps to forearm, forearm to JT’s hand, fingers intertwining. There was something about handholding more than the kiss: the honesty of it, the simplicity of it (things Austin could never give). And JT couldn’t keep still anymore. His arms went around Buzz, and Buzz stiffened, afraid, then relaxed and let it happen.
Last two years, JT had stuck mostly to orcs, and it was so nice to hold a body smaller than his, not hyper-muscled or elven perfect. For once JT didn’t have to be special. He was just an everyday orc holding an everyday guy that he liked to hold—a quiet guy, a nice guy, a guy like the fog or the desert.
So JT held him tighter. He nuzzled his tusks against Buzz’s freckled cheek, down his neck to his shoulder, careful not to hurt him, not even a scratch. But Buzz’s fear came anyway, and it went straight to JT’s head. He went a bit dizzy. His cock thickened, and JT could feel his pulse down in his balls. Through a drone’s eyes, he could see his own eyes narrow, hungry, and fleck with red. This was how it had all gone pear-shaped last time.
He pushed Buzz away, one oversized hand against Buzz’s cheek.
“No,” Buzz said. Buzz’s eyes were dilated wide and dark. He turned his head so JT’s black-nailed thumb lay across his lips, then he sucked the thumb into his warm, soft mouth, and JT laughed, it felt so good. Buzz smiled at him, goofy looking with an orc’s thumb stuck in his mouth.
JT let his other hand slide down to Buzz’s crotch. Good and hard, same as JT. “What color’s your hair down there?”
Buzz grimaced. “Orange.”
JT grinned, all tusks and fangs. “We’re gonna look like an Irish flag when you fuck me.” He pulled Buzz in and held him around the waist. Their cocks rubbed through denim, and JT felt the cool damp of pre-come in his shorts.
The Electric Dragon Triad opened fire from a kilometer away.