Exceptions to Reality Read online

  She spun around to confront the smirking Colombian. “‘War-Fetter’ to you, blackguard.” Raising a hand, she gestured at her watchful companions. “These are my sisters. That’s Sigrdrifa. Next to her are Hrist and Róta. The tall one behind them in the evening gown is Skeggjöld.” The “tall one,” Red Larson noted, towered over his son, who stood six-foot-one in his stocking feet. “When in his misery and desperation a true scion of the Old Believers called out to us”—she indicated David Larson—“we came as soon as we could. The others would have come as well, but they are presently occupied.” She glanced enigmatically back at the confounded captain. “We are wiring Asgard, you know. Being on another temporal plane creates problems that most installers cannot imagine.”

  “War-Sister is too modest,” declared Róta. “In this plane she works for Nokia, you know.”

  The one called Sigrdrifa nodded. “Having companies like hers and Ericsson right in our ancestral backyard has helped immensely.”

  Hrist was shaking her head slowly. “Between battles, Odin insists on being online. And Freyja is simply impossible.”

  It was a tentative Gunnar Larson who stuck his head around Herfjötur to inquire cautiously, “You’re not…?” Beneath bushy brows his eyes grew a little wider. “By my grandfather’s honored soul, you are, aren’t you?”

  The spectacular blonde who was resting an elbow on David Larson’s shoulder essayed a divine smile. “Don’t you recognize us? Of course, we have to adopt our dress to the present time, or we would draw the stares of the meddlesome curious while living and working among them.”

  As if you don’t draw stares as you are now, the old captain mused.

  With a polished fingernail painted fire-engine red, Skeggjöld flicked one of the long earrings that dangled alongside her neck. It took the form of a pendulant hatchet fashioned from rubies and diamonds. “These sign my name, fisherman. Can you know it?”

  Larson struggled to remember the old tales his grandmother had told him over hot cocoa beside crackling fires on midwinter New England nights. He nodded. “Yes, I know you, ‘Wearing-a-War-Ax.’”

  Skeggjöld shrugged exquisitely. “I do what little I can with what contemporary fashion allows.”

  Cruz, who had been watching and listening to the meaningless wordplay, was interested in only one thing. Well, two things. But matters of paramount importance must perforce come first.

  “How did you get on this ship?” He glanced through a port. Outside, it was now black as the inside of a deserted Bronx tenement. “I didn’t hear or see another boat pull up alongside.”

  “We did not come by boat,” Róta informed him coolly. “We flew.”

  “Low,” Hrist added. “You have to, these days, to stay under the coastal radar.”

  Cruz frowned. A glance at the stupefied Sandino showed that no plane or copter had been observed approaching. The smuggler was not entirely displeased with the attempted subterfuge. It would be a pleasure to pull the truth out of liars as attractive as these.

  “I don’t know why you’re telling me these loco stories. You’ve been on the Mary Anne all along, haven’t you? That’s it!” His gaze narrowed, and the false veneer of good humor vanished. “I could almost think you were agents, planted here for purposes of entrapment. But why only women? And in such clothing?”

  “Maybe,” Sandino rumbled from beside the starboard doorway, “they’re hiding something.”

  “Seguro…sure.” Cruz’s smile returned. Sandino was a good man. Dedicated, loyal. It was time to reward him. “Why don’t you have a look and see? But pick on one your own size.”

  A wide, wicked grin of realization slowly oozed across the face of the muscle. Advancing, he unhesitatingly extended a hand in the direction of the bodice of Skeggjöld’s elegant evening gown. As he did so, she reached down and lifted the hem of the exquisite dress, in the process exposing more leg than Cruz or both Larsons or Nick Panopolous had ever seen in their lives.

  She also revealed, running from hip to knee, a custom-fitted leather scabbard on which was embossed the cognomen GUCCI. From this she drew a mirror-bright short sword with bejeweled pommel. Bringing it around and down in a single incredibly swift, smooth arc, she hacked off the impertinent approaching forearm of the shocked Sandino. Screaming like a baby, he staggered backward, clutching at the stump of his arm as blood fountained across the bridge. Some of it spattered Róta, who brushed at it in obvious displeasure.

  “For damn! This has to be dry-cleaned.”

  All thoughts of mastery of the situation and any ancillary activities fled from Cruz’s mind as quickly as his balls shriveled inside his scrotum. Fumbling for the pistol he always kept holstered beneath his weather jacket, he shouted for help. In moments the interior of the bridge became bedlam.

  Clutching his AK-47, Truque came hurtling through the rear door. As he tried to bring the weapon to bear on Skeggjöld, Róta (“She-Who-Causes-Turmoil”) removed from the violin case she had been holding a double-bladed ax that could have done duty in a television commercial for men’s razors. Her howl of battle reverberated through the enclosed space as she leaped into the air, kicked with both feet off the chart table as a stunned Panopolous fell backward out of his chair, and brought the ax down blade-first.

  “Skull-splitter eats!” she screamed, in a piercing but not unattractive soprano.

  Falling from Truque’s suddenly limp fingers, the automatic rifle fell to the floor. It was followed by a substantial portion of his brains. Behind him, Weatherford came barreling in, a pistol clutched in each hand. One blew a hole through the center foreport just as Red Larson dove for the deck. The other dropped from the big man’s fingers as he felt himself lifted off the floor in Hrist’s astonishing grasp. Long ago Weatherford had played a couple of seasons of semi-pro football, before finding out that he could make a lot more money in a game with far fewer rules. He weighed well over three hundred pounds.

  Hrist banged him headfirst into the ceiling, then rammed his flailing form into the nearest port. The thick, storm-resistant glass did not give. Not right away. When it finally did, Weatherford was already unconscious, his skull crushed by “The Shaker.”

  Of Cruz’s people, only Lowenstein had enough sense to avoid the furious cataclysm that filled the bridge. It did him no good. Perceiving the advent of most welcome sea change aboard the Mary Anne, members of the long-quiescent crew chased the terrified computer specialist twice around the ship, finally cornering him on the bow. There was no need to weight the screaming, kicking passenger when they threw him overboard. It was over a hundred miles to the nearest landfall, and even in the tepid Gulf Stream, the open Atlantic at night is not a kind place to weak swimmers.

  Though he held his pistol tightly, Cruz had yet to fire a shot. The fight had ended so quickly and so spectacularly that he had been stunned into immobility. Shocking enough it was to see his handpicked, street-hardened professionals disposed of by a bunch of tall blondes (and one redhead), but the manner of their dispatch had been so brutal as to scarcely be believed. He felt as if he were partaking of a bad dream from which he would soon awaken.

  Something hit him in the middle of his back and pushed him forward. Behind him, teeth clenched, Red Larson had taken out six years’ worth of frustration in that single shove.

  “Paid off,” the captain growled. “My debt is paid, Cruz. Go back to New York. Tell your people to leave me and my family alone.” His eyes glistened as he regarded the five women: all beautiful, all breathing hard, and all drenched in the blood of his enemies. Behind them he could see concerned members of his crew, good friends all, bunching up in the ship’s corridor as they tried to steal a glimpse of the bridge.

  Cornered in the center, Cruz had nowhere to turn. That these women were rather more than what they appeared to be was now brutishly self-evident. That he could not fight them, when experienced killers like Truque and Sandino had failed, was equally apparent. But he had not survived in his chosen profession for as long as he had
by turning pussy in the face of adversity. Whirling, he stepped behind the old captain and put the pistol in his right hand against the other man’s temple.

  “All right now! I don’t know who you are or what you are, but I have a cargo to deliver.” His voice was threatening, steady. “Don’t think you can frighten me, because there are people I work for who are more terrible than you can imagine. If I fail, they will kill me slowly. So—put down your weapons and back out of this bridge, now. Stay below, out of my way.” He pressed the muzzle of the pistol harder into Larson’s temple, so that it forcefully dimpled the flesh. “Otherwise this man dies before you can do anything to me.”

  Exchanging glances, the women did as they were told. Ax followed sword in clattering to the floor. Cruz started to relax a little. Whatever these bitches were, they were not omnipotent. He only had to stay awake until they made port. Another day and night. He could do that. He had done similar things before, on other desperate occasions, and had always survived. Did they have any idea who they were dealing with?

  One by one, the women started to file off the bridge. David Larson would not go with them, would not leave his father. That was fine with Cruz. Two hostages were better than one.

  A sudden coldness brushed the smuggler’s face, chilling his skin. It was unusual to feel such on the bridge, which was always kept warm in defiance of the sometimes brutal cold outside. Taking his eyes off the doorway for just an instant, he glanced upward in the direction of the breeze.

  The needle-pointed icicle that fell from the ceiling—it had been flash-frozen by Sigrdrifa, alias “Victory Blizzard”—went right through his left eye.

  Staggering and screaming, he stumbled away from old man Larson, who perceptively fell to the deck as several shots from the agonized smuggler’s pistol rang out wildly. They hit nothing but a framed antique chart on the wall and a surprisingly sturdy metal purse that Hrist thrust forward to shield the younger Larson. Striding over to the wildly sobbing figure that was now rolling about uncontrollably on the deck, Sigrdrifa dispatched the half-blinded Cruz with a single swift, quick slice of the sharply curved blade she took from her elegant attaché case. The drug-runner’s legs kicked out violently several times before quivering to a halt.

  “So perish all enemies of good fisherfolk.” Turning, she ululated a victory cry that was taken up and amplified by her sisters. The Mary Anne shuddered with the force of it, and members of the crew who were used to hauling in longlines in howling Atlantic gales found themselves covering their ears.

  Reassembling on the bridge, with the wide-eyed crew once more crowding as close as they could to the gore-soaked scene of battle, the quintet of bloodied blondes (and one redhead) confronted Red Larson and his son.

  “We have to go now,” the indifferently blood-soaked Róta informed them.

  “Yes.” Hrist checked her Patek Philippe chronometer. “I have a meeting in Zurich tomorrow at nine, and with the time difference I will get little enough sleep as it is.”

  Sigrdrifa nudged Cruz’s body with a high-heeled shoe. “Sorry about the mess. It was not exactly Ragnarok, but it is good to still be able to do battle on behalf of a noble cause now and then.” Raising her stained short sword, she sensuously licked blood from the flat of the blade. “Keeps a girl in shape.”

  Red Larson swallowed hard. “I hardly know what to say, how to thank you…”

  Herfjötur smiled. Stepping over Truque’s body, she put a reassuring hand on the captain’s shoulder. “Thank your son, who, in a moment of desperate need, had the foresight to call upon those of us who have watched over your tribe for millennia.” Leaning forward, she gave him an encouraging peck on the cheek. The old man did not blush, but he was glad his wife was not present.

  As for David Larson, he was the dazed recipient of kisses from every one of the women. It was enough to make a weaker man succumb, but David had been toughened by years of hard work on the Mary Anne. Still, when she bent him back to buss him most soundly, Skeggjöld nearly sprained his spine. Her ax earrings fell forward, tickling his cheeks as he felt the salt of her tongue slide into his mouth. The salt, he knew, came from the blood she had licked off her sword. This realization somewhat mitigated his otherwise complete enjoyment of the moment.

  Too awestruck to talk among themselves, the crew gathered on the stern’s deck to watch as, one by one, the women mounted their snow-white steeds. With a kick and a leap, they soared away from the Mary Anne, calling out boldly to one another as they rose into the night sky. Most prominent among them was the beauteous Herfjötur, who was still upset that in the heat of battle she had broken the heel of one of her handmade Spanish pumps.

  “We’ll have to get the bridge cleaned up before we make port,” a soft-voiced Panopolous whispered to his captain. “The stains don’t look like fish blood.”

  “At least we have the supplies to do that.” Red Larson looked and felt better than he had in a decade. The curse that was Cruz and his business had been lifted. The mysterious disappearance at sea of the smuggler and his henchmen should be enough to keep any curious fellow dealers away from the Mary Anne. And if it was not, Larson mused, why, his son could always put in a call for help to an escort service the likes of which was not to be found in the Providence Yellow Pages.

  High overhead, the aurora borealis suddenly flashed to life, filling the night sky above the steadily chugging fishing boat with shimmering luminescence.

  “You know what they say causes the light of the aurora, David?” Larson had an arm around his son’s tired shoulders. “It’s the flickering of light off the shields of the Valkyries.”

  The younger Larson nodded. “From designer-branded armor I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

  The Killing of Bad Bull

  I have been fortunate enough to have journeyed far and wide over this isolated little ball of dirt and water we call home. My travels have provided me with inspirations for entire books. East Africa for Into the Out Of; Peru, Papua New Guinea, and Australia for Interlopers; the South Pacific islands for The Howling Stones; and most recently India for Sagramanda.

  I’ve also used memories of people I have met as the basis for characters. I have transposed and transmogrified places I’ve visited into alien worlds. Mamirauá in Brazil for Drowning World, Namibia for Carnivores of Light and Darkness, Peru again for Catalyst.

  But sometimes—sometimes you don’t have to travel very far in search of inspiration. There are days when you find it waiting for you right around the corner. That’s the case with Bucky’s Casino on the Yavapai-Apache Indian reservation, which is engulfed by the city limits of my hometown of Prescott, Arizona. It’s much like the Nevada gambling meccas of Laughlin and Las Vegas, towns that are close enough to be neighbors. Loud and flashy neighbors, ever calling, ever enticing.

  These modern-day temples of temptation are powerful enough to lure visitors from all over the globe. Are they strong enough to attract mutant powers? In such places would strange abilities be used for good or for evil? Or would they just be—used?

  The saddest thing about it was that it was his own people who were trying to kill him. The rest of humanity didn’t give a damn. Of course, the rest of humanity did not know about him. Which was the reason his own people were trying to kill him.

  A quick stroll around the casino revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Here in the great tropical metropolis of Salvador, on the north coast of Brazil, the men and women sitting like sphinxes in front of the slot machines and laughing as dice ricocheted around the craps table were nearly all locals, with only a smattering of foreigners. Being Pima-Cheyenne made it easier for him to pick out strangers, since the local Indians were considerably smaller of stature than their more robust North American cousins. This was important, since strangers might be looking for more than just entertainment or the chance to make a quick dollar.

  They might be looking for him.

  They had chased him clear across the United States, from Vegas, to the riverboat casinos of t
he Mississippi, to the enclosed gambling palaces that ringed the Great Lakes, and finally to Atlantic City. Then through Europe, where he had barely managed to give them the proverbial slip. Upon reaching South America, he had begun his run in Rio before moving on to São Paulo, and now found himself here. For the well-traveled Bull Threerivers, Salvador was a comparative backwater, big city or no.

  He took only one carry-on bag with him. It contained a few items of personal interest, one change of plain clothing, one of exceedingly expensive custom-tailored attire, and little else besides his passport and a dozen bankbooks held together with rubber bands. The bankbooks tallied accounts listed under half a dozen aliases in Switzerland, the Caymans, and the Cook Islands. Cumulative numbers in those books reached seven figures. When they reached eight, Threerivers would stop. That was the goal he had set for himself. That was when he felt he could safely cease working.

  The people who were after him wanted him to stop now. He had been warned. Ignoring the warnings, he had fled eastward from his home in Los Angeles. Twice, they had almost caught up with him. Once in Connecticut, and months later in Monaco. Both times he had slipped away, though not before taking a bullet in the shoulder before leaving France. He’d had it removed and had waited for the wound to heal in a rented private residence on the borders of the souk in Casablanca. Money bought speed and silence.

  He did not know if they had been able to track him to Brazil. Logic dictated a move on his part from Europe to South Africa or Australia, where the casinos and the pickings were bigger. By recrossing the Atlantic, he hoped he had finally thrown them off his trail. His confidence had been buoyed by his successes in Rio and São Paulo. From Salvador he intended to move on to other major South American cities, then to Australia, concluding his odyssey of personal financial enhancement with a visit to the fleshpots of Asia. As to where he would retire, he found his present surroundings more than congenial. Though he hailed from another continent, his Indian features allowed him to move easily among the locals, and he had discovered that both the food and climate suited him.