Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (23 page)

I laughed and buried my head into the sink, but there was nothing funny about my condition.

“You look like a crazy person,” Claire said.

“I should be dead,” I said, looking at her through the reflection in the mirror. “Hell, maybe I am.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, getting off the bed and walking over to me. “I will make you handsome again.”

“Not sure how you’re going to do that,” I said, scratching my heavy stubble.

“Turn around,” she said, placing her hands on my shoulder and using them to spin me around.

I hadn’t noticed it until that moment, but her face was pristine, no longer marred by the vicious injury that she sported through our exodus from Utopia prison. She was all the more beautiful, her features immaculate, brown eyes holding me like a mother would a child. She was a tiny, delicate creature beside me, thin and slight, and I couldn’t help but hunch over, dwarfing her.

Her hand rose and took my cheek with a gentle caress.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said and closed her eyes.

“Trwy nerth y benglog llwyd,” she said, her voice deep and powerful, stronger than I could have envisioned coming from her thin frame. A soft, greenish glow began to emanate from her hands, at first encompassing only my face but soon spreading through the room, casting a deathly pall.

“A gan y bydd y henafiaid,” Claire continued, and a cold gust of wind swept through the room, whipping up to gale force. The only thing keeping me from soaring off was her hold on me. Everything in the room was caught up in the heavy winds, but instead of being smashed into the walls, her dinner plate, the sheets and pillows, odd knick-knacks, even picture frames danced about the room, carried by the gusts, as if lending their witness to Claire’s magical spell.

“Plygwch y pwerau tywyll i fy ewyllys,” she said then began to shake, the greenish aura reflecting off me, unable to take hold. Claire pressed her hold over the magic, but it had a will of its own and lashed against her, spiraling out of control.

“What’s wrong?”

She released my face, and that instant the winds died, the anima faded, and all the floating items crashed to the floor. She dropped her hands in frustration, a film of perspiration forming on her brow. Shaking her head, I could see that she knew what was troubling her, as if it was some inside joke.

“J’emploie le forme fausse de magie,” she said, her eyes still closed.

“Huh?”

“Wrong kind of magic,” she translated with a forced smile to conceal her failure. I could sense the raw fear coursing through her shaking body as she steadied herself and tried once more.

Again she placed her hand on my cheek, but this time, when she spoke her magical incantation, a blue-white aura formed around her hands and the words had a softer edge. With this new magic, her skin turned violently red, splitting into boils and pustules, her body visibly rippled in agony. I tried to reach for her, but she shook her head, wincing to hide her pain.

“Don’t interrupt me,” she snapped.

“D-dduwiau llesiannol o natur a bywyd,” Claire began, struggling through the words.

“Gwrando fy ngweddi ar gyfer y dyn da.” The energy that came so easily to her before was now an uphill struggle, and the forces barely responded other than lashing at her. I wanted to stop it all, but she had asked me to trust her.

“Wella ei glwyfau a thrwsio ei enaid,” she continued, now exerting her will upon the magic. It was like trying to corral someone else’s unruly child in the playground, the mother nowhere in sight. The tendrils of raw energy surrounded me, bathing me in the aquamarine glow, and I felt a comfort and warmth settle over me, in particular in and around my wounds, but her pain seemed to intensify.

“Ac ar gyfer pob drwg ei fod wedi dioddef yn fy llaw.”

What had been a howling wind that threatened to tear the shack from its foundations was now a calm breeze, healing my face, chest, and knees. I felt the bones and ligaments in my right hand popping as my injuries from Hashima Island mended themselves. Throughout my body, every old wound and scar healed, leaving almost no trace, and across my face and cheek I could feel the skin inching back over the horrible wound, closing the hole and leaving me as I had been before the gunshot.

“Efallai y byddaf yn colli blwyddyn o fy mywyd yn talu,” she finished, exhausted and struggling over the last words. She let go of me, unable to control her weeping and cradling her burning hands toward the sink.

“What did you do?”

She shook her head, opening up the faucet gingerly and pouring cold water over her wounds. It didn’t help much, the sting of water mixing with blood and making her cringe.

“Tell me, dammit!” I yelled, turning her to face me. The flow of tears was unabated, the pain too much for her to bear, but she managed to whisper a reply.

“I cleansed you,” she said, bringing her elbows in to shield herself from me.

“Why is this happening to you?”

She lay back against the wall, and slid to the floor, curling in a ball. The injuries on her hands were getting worse, her skin was becoming necrotic, and the dark charring was spreading up her fingers and toward her wrists. In a few minutes, her fingers would be dried and desiccated.

I knelt beside her, exasperated. “Tell me what is happening.”

“Go, please. I don’t want you to see me!” she cried, but I wasn’t going to leave her like this. I looked around the room for anything I could use to help. Maybe Bruce had a knife I could use to cut off the limbs, keep the gangrene from spreading. I ransacked the place but found nothing.

“I beg you to go,” Claire said, but I returned to her side.

“I’m not going anywhere. You understand? Not until you explain to me.”

Her eyes blinked away the tears, and she steeled herself against the pain. “I used a healing spell on you.”

I nodded, “Okay. What’s so wrong with that?”

She grew impatient, biting her lip as a wave of pain coursed through her.

“I am not allowed that kind of magic,” she said.

“Why the hell not? Isn’t that what you used to heal yourself? You looked like shit the other day and now you’re perfect.”

“Healing, is the magic of life. It is magic I cannot access without paying a heavy price.”

“This is the price for healing my face?” I said, bewildered. “Then take it back. I don’t give a shit about having a few scars.”

“I can’t. I offered to pay a price for daring to use it and whomever I negotiated with has a sense of humor. I gave a year of my life to heal you, Blackjack, and it seems that this was the last year of my life.”

“No,” I said growing angrier by the minute. “No.”

She nodded, crying again. The rotting was now growing across her arms; her fingers were corpse-like, and they cracked and split when she moved the dried digits.

“Why is this happening to you? This makes no sense.”

She made an effort to touch me, but seeing the horror of her hands, recoiled and turned away.

“Just go,” she wept. “It will soon be over. I don’t want you to see me.”

“Can it be reversed?” I said, desperation and panic lacing my words.

She blinked, wincing in pain, each breath becoming more labored as the affliction spread across her shoulders to her torso.

“Claire,” I yelled, shaking her to keep her lucid. “Is there anything that I can do to help you?”

“I can’t,” she said softly.

“Yes dammit! Do it!”

Swallowing hard, she looked up at me, “I can only endure if I take from others. If I take life from you.”

“Then take it!” I said without hesitation, understanding what she meant.

Her face softened, confused. “You would give it to me?”

I smiled. “I haven’t used it for much, trust me. Just do whatever it is you have to do. Don’t worry about me.

“Hurry,” I snapped, “that shit is spreading.”

Claire placed her ruined hands on my chest and stared at me for a moment.

“Mon bel homme,” she said, then began an incantation that I recalled from before. The words were in the same language, but her voice and pronunciation were darker, rougher, like the magic she had attempted at first, the magic that had failed to heal me. The greenish aura spread through the room, the winds picked up as they had, but it was over in a moment. Compared to healing me, this was an easy bit of magic for her. When she separated from me, her arms, hands and fingers had returned to normal; her form was once again flawless but still she wept.

I was surprised to still be alive, but other than the chill of the dying winds, I felt no different. Trying to comfort her, I moved closer, but Claire shook her head and held me off with an upraised palm.

“I thought I was going to die there,” I said.

She smiled, then laughed through her tears. “I didn’t need it all.”

I nodded and threw myself against the opposite wall.

“Are you going to be ok? I mean knowing that you die in the next twelve months....”

Claire laughed.

“It doesn’t work that way, Dale.”

I smiled, pleased that I had been able to help.

“I can’t die, Dale,” she added.

“But what about the whole rotting thing??”

Spreading her delicate fingers, she watched them for a second before replying.

“If I lose the life force that maintains me, then I will become a corpse, but that’s not dying. Not for me. You see, I’m already dead.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Undead,” she said, clarifying, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “I am not fucking kidding,” Claire snapped.

“I bet I’m still back in that mind machine at Utopia, and the guys are having a huge laugh at my expense.”

She watched me, confused.

“Let’s throw some undead chick and see if he fucks her,” I laughed, doing a shitty version of a lab tech’s nasal voice. “He’ll fuck just about every other damned thing.”

Claire smiled, “This is true.”

I checked my laughter, “Huh?”

“I said it’s true,” she repeated.

“I don’t–” I struggled, wondering how she knew.

She wiped her nose with her sleeve. “You fucked that bitch Apogee, no?” she said, catching me off guard. “I fucking hate that bitch. Always pushing her fake tits into the camera, like if–”

“They’re real,” I said.

“Oh, now I really hate her.”

“And they’re amazing,” I pressed, twisting the dagger.

She scowled at me and I laughed. “It doesn’t matter, I never did anything with her.”

“Like I’m going to believe that,” Claire sneered, coming to her feet and walking to the faucet.

“I’m serious,” I said, staying on the floor as she washed her face clear of tears. She looked at me in the mirror.

“You never...?”

I shook my head.

“You’re not ... you know....”

“Nope,” I said. “I guess I’m just a gentleman.”

She laughed. “The gentleman fucks the gentle lady. That’s how God made it, you know?”

I chuckled. “I know.”

“Oh, could it be....” she said, turning to me and extending her index finger up in the air, before slowly deflating it, implying I had some problem with my pipes. “You just take a little pill and...,” she said extending her finger out.

“I killed her friend,” I said, still with a stupid smile on my face, not sure why I was sharing. “I’m sure she likes me some, but ... I don’t think she’ll ever like me enough.”

“Ah,” she said, still watching me. “She is very pretty. I thought…you know.”

I nodded.

“I won’t lie. I kind of fell for her.”

“What was the name of her friend? Pulsewave?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“Why did you kill him?”

I shrugged. “It was an accident, kind of me being irresponsible.”

“An accident? Really?”

“Not an innocent accident.”

“What is the difference?” she said, grabbing a toothbrush and cleaning her teeth.

“I guess nothing,” I answered after giving it some thought. “I mean, it’s my fault. I did it. I fired an explosive arrow that knocked him off a building. But it was more me being stupid than evil or anything. I was careless.”

“Right,” she said spitting out some toothpaste. “It still makes no difference. You killed him.”

Again under attack from her, for no reason, just moments after I had saved for life for the third or fourth time.

“What’s the point?” she said

“Well, you do this whole thing with being nice and decent and everything. And it’s bullshit, you know? It’s stupid.”

“Like what?” I said.

“Like trying to be a gentleman, and always saving women.”

“I like being a gentleman.”

“It’s bullshit.”

“No, it’s not,” I snapped. I like holding a door for a woman. I like paying for a meal. I’m not trying to exert some sort of dominance, or anything, I just think it’s a nice gesture.”

Claire ‘pffted’ with a mouthful of toothpaste and had to wipe the glass to clean her mess. She spit out the paste before continuing.

“You know how old I am?” she started shaking her head as if there was no point in explaining things to me. “I have known gentlemen. Real gentlemen.”

“What, some powdered wig, face-painted effete that knows how to dance to the latest Baroque clavier tunes? That how old you are? Those guys didn’t strike me as particularly manly.”

Claire spun around and watched me, a sliver of a grin forming on her face.

“All that powdered wigs, and the dances, they were there so you could then go and fuck. You know? Those effete guys, as you call them, were fiends. Et les animaux dans le lit.”

She smiled, seeing I hadn’t understood the last part.

“They saw a woman they liked, and they went for it. They didn’t buy drinks, or pretend to be interested in her stories, or what she was wearing. Well, no, they did. They did all that, but they did it so they could get you in the bed. It was all to fuck. And my goodness, there was a lot of fucking.”

I laughed.

“So you’re saying I’m the unmanly one because I haven’t just jumped up and thrown you into the bed, plowed you like a field.”

“You plow everything else,” she said, nonchalantly waving the toothbrush to seem indifferent, but I could see her peeking at me from the corner of my eye. “Plow the field,” she continued, unfamiliar with the term. “I think I like that. It means to do it hard, no?”

I stood.

“That’s the second time you say that,” I said, straightening.

She was confused.

“What?”

“That I’ll have sex with anything.”

Claire smiled, but I could tell she was hiding something.

“Well, you’re Blackjack, you know? Big as you are, I figured you–”

“No,” I interrupted. “It wasn’t an assumption. You said it definitively. You said ‘you plow everything else.’ I remember clearly.”

“If you think you’re still in the machine back at Utopia–”

“I want to know what that’s supposed to mean. And don’t give me the whole, ‘he’s Blackjack, he has to fuck lots of chicks’ thing, because I’ve been with one girl in the last two years. That’s it.”

She winced. “That’s it?”

“What do you want me to do? And no one knows I was with this girl.”

“Apogee, right?”

I shook my head. “Some girl called Serpentis, a friend of a friend.”

Her mouth parted slightly, as if coming to some sort of realization.

“I want an answer,” I said, snapping her out of her momentary reverie.

“Or what?” she said. “I’m Lady Vexille, Blackjack. I can send you to the time of the dinosaurs with a single spell.”

“What do you know that you aren’t telling me?”

“Nothing,” she said, trying to move past me. I held onto her arm softly, in fear I would harm her thin frame.

“Let go of me.”

“Tell me.”

She smiled.

“I’m tired of games, Claire. I’m tired of it.”

I let go of her but made sure my bulk would preclude her from moving past.

She noticed my positioning and was tense for a moment, then finally smiled. “I’ll be honest with you, if you can do the same with me. Is that too hard for you? To be honest?”

I shrugged, taking a half step back.

“You want me to be straight? Okay, I’ll be straight. Of course, I want to fuck you. Oh, my God, do I want to. You’re beautiful, a Persian princess. I want to throw you onto that bed and plow you ‘til we bring the roof down. Is that what you want to hear?”

Claire smiled, enjoying the direction of the conversation.

“But I’m scared, okay?”

She moved closer, intertwining me with her arms, saying, “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“Oh, but there is. See, that guy Doctor Zundergrub, he’s a real bad guy. I know you’ve done some bad shit and made a dark pact or something, but this guy, he wants to kill every single person in the world. And I’m scared that while I’m here playing the French Revolution with you, as nice as it would be, he’s out there, trying to hurt Apogee, or maybe he’s–”

“Oh, to hell with her,” she snapped, pushing me off.

“You don’t understand,” I started, but she jumped all over me.

“What, that you love her? So what? Where was she when you were in trouble? Where was this woman you love when you were about to die at Utopia?”

She paused, letting her accusations settle.

“Where was she when you were on trial? Why didn’t she talk in your defense?”

How did she know all of this? How could she possibly have access to such personal details? Did she have some sort of telepathic power?

“They didn’t let her,” I snapped defensively.

“Let her?” she mocked. “Let her? She’s fucking Apogee, the biggest super heroine in the world. She can go and do whatever she wants.”

“No, there’s procedure in a courtroom. She couldn’t just–”

“Blackjack, she’s Apogee. She’s saved the world a hundred times. If she wants to talk in some court and say that you were the hero at Hashima, then she says it, and that’s it. She’s like the Pope: no court can refuse her. No one. If she wanted to help you, she would have. Did she even come to see you after Hashima?”

She was right, of course, and on a roll, but she had given herself away. She had gone too far. This wasn’t conjecture or theory, these were my inner thoughts.

“How the fuck do you know all this?” I snapped, feeling my anger churning like the boiling caldera of a volcano on the verge of erupting.

Claire paused, realizing her mistake. In her eagerness to badmouth Apogee, she had revealed a level of knowledge that she couldn’t possibly have gained on her own. She knew my thoughts, my desires. She knew me.

Cornered, Claire looked past me, at the door, but there was no way she was going to make it there, nor would I let her get more than a few words of that pig-Latin magic off before her whole head was wrapped in my hands.

“Answer me!”

She flinched, fear flashing across her face.

“I was–” she started, but lowered her head, avoiding my gaze. “I was in there, with you.”

“What?”

“At Utopia,” she said, waving her hand.

“I don’t ... I mean ... I thought,” I stammered. “How?”

“The mind thing didn’t work on me. No matter how hard they tried. I just didn’t believe it. So they put me in a regular cell.”

She paused, her gaze settled on my navel.

“But if it didn’t work, then how did you...?”

“I was there a long time. A long time. After a while, if you behave, and I did ... they let you play a little.”

“You mean, they put you in with me? In my dream?”

She nodded, feeling suddenly relieved when I stumbled back a few feet and sat on the bed.

“It allowed them to keep an eye on you. I was a confidential…what is this word?”

“A confidential informant?”

“Yes, that. I would tell them things about you…and about others,” she added, trying to reduce the weight of it all. “But you were more fun. It was like living a Jules Verne novel.”

“The devil girl,” I said, suddenly seeing Claire’s features in the demonic imp’s face. From her elegant nose, her oval face, and her regal chin to her eyes, which subtly transformed from dark brown on the inner edge of the iris to light brown, almost green at the far edges, all were similar enough for me to recognize.

And Dalmeria, the orc maid. She had the same nose and cheeks, the small, high breasts, the stern jawline and full lips. Even Aryani, the Vershani goddess, bore striking similarities. Though her body was more similar to Apogee, more voluptuous, Aryani’s face was the spitting image of Claire’s. She had thrown herself into my dream world and jumped in my bed every chance she could.

She saw me going through the motions, putting it all together, still worried for my reaction and sitting on the sink as if it was the only safe place in the shack.

“No wonder you’re so familiar with me,” I said.

Claire said nothing.

“It’s ok,” I told her.

“It was just a little bit of fun,” she said, almost breathlessly. “I didn’t mean any harm. It just made the time go by faster. And ... it was pleasurable, non?”

I smiled and stood.

“Please don’t be mad,” she pleaded.

“I’m not,” I said, going toward the door. “I’m just going to go for a walk.”

Claire rushed me and grabbed my arm.

“Dale, please don’t be mad.”

I lifted her chin up and kissed her forehead.

“I’ll be back,” I said, and walked out.

“Ground control to Blackjack,” the little voice said.

It was like a whisper in the wind that drifted in once I had cleared the structures of Rabbit Flat. I would have thought I was going mad, if not for the real life madness I had lived the last few months and years.

But it was only Haha, making his presence felt from my wrist. He had survived the Hashima explosion, powered by what few electric joules he could drain from my body.

“Haha?” I spoke to my wrist.

“The one and only,” he said with a tinny, small, crappy speaker voice. “Sorry I’ve been offline for this long, but it did take me some time to pool what little excess power I get from you so I could fire up audio.”