Kill Baxter (26 page)

‘I feel it,’ Ronin says through the side of his mouth.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Nothing good,’ he replies.

Back at his apartment, we’re silent as we treat our wounds. I’m pissed off. I have the feeling that getting shot up with faerie poison was eminently avoidable if we had just thought about it before running head first into Scorpion Gully. A dark feeling of loathing runs over me like oil and I glare at Ronin.

‘You got something to say?’ he asks, returning the glare with interest.

‘I’m your partner, Ronin,’ I say. ‘I’m no longer that kid who hired you to find his girlfriend.’

‘Apprentice.’

‘What?’

‘You’re not my partner, you’re my apprentice.’

‘Seriously?’ I say. ‘You’ve got deep-seated psychological issues. You knew that waltzing into Squirrelskull like that was an invitation to get us fucked up, and you did it anyway. It’s like you’re trying to punish yourself for something and you’re dragging me into it with you.’

Ronin turns on me. ‘So I’m the one with deep-seated psychological issues? You’re fucking half Crow.’

‘Oh, now you’re a xenophobe too?’

‘Have you not been listening to me? I’ve always been a xeno-phobe when it comes to the Hidden. And unless it has escaped your attention, a Crow shaman was leading the attack on Hexpoort.’

‘You think I’m somehow in cahoots with that thing?’

Ronin pulls out a first-aid kit from under his kitchen sink and throws me some antiseptic and bandages. I grab them and start dabbing at my wounds, wincing as the antiseptic burns each tiny little cut.

‘No,’ he says. ‘First off because I’d never use the word “cahoots”, and second because I think you proved in our last little adventure trying to find your girlfriend that you’re not going over to the dark side. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t kill you when he had the chance.’

He has a point. The Tengu was there standing over me. It could have crushed me. But it didn’t.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘And I don’t like the fact that I’m half Crow any more than you do. So back the fuck off.’

The dark feeling rises, wrapping around me. I feel like I’m sweating hatred and malice. We stare into each other’s eyes like two animals on the brink of violence. And then before I know it we’ve both drawn our guns and are pointing them at each other. The Blackfish is centred on my chest and Ronin’s eyes bore into me. The gun in my hand feels warm and I visualise the odds of getting out of this alive. They’re not good.

‘Ronin,’ I say softly. ‘This is ridiculous. Something’s not right.’

‘I know,’ he replies, eyes not leaving me. ‘The city is … off. There’s something, something violent, in the air.’

‘So put down your gun,’ I say.

‘You first.’

We stand for a long moment with guns pointed before I sigh and show him that I’ve taken my finger off the trigger. I slide the handgun back into its holster. The Blackfish disappears beneath Ronin’s coat. We sit at the table in the kitchen and stare at each other.

‘Well that was weird,’ I say eventually. ‘What the fuck happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says, putting his hands to his temples and rubbing them. ‘We need to speak to the Blood Kraal. Whatever’s going on, they have to know what it is.’

‘OK,’ I say.

‘Oh, and sparky?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Don’t ever draw your gun on me again.’

‘
THIS IS A
bit touristy,’ I say as the boat ploughs through the waves towards Robben Island.

Ronin turns his back and walks away. I think I liked him better when he was a drunk.

I watch the island grow in front of us and look at my borrowed phone for the thousandth time today. No missed calls. No messages. Esmé and Kyle have both gone dark. I sigh and lean over the prow to look at the grey-green sea.

I deserve it. I deserve to be dumped. I deserve to be unfriended. I was so caught up in Hexpoort, like a fly in a spider’s web, that I put my old life on the back burner. I resist the urge to call either of them. I’ve left dozens of messages on both of their phones. They don’t want to speak to me.

The boat coasts around Robben Island and pulls in to a small dock. I follow Ronin down the gangplank and across to a small service building. There’s a piece of graffiti on the wall and he traces it with his finger, mutters a few words in Xhosa, and then places his hand against the door. It slides open to reveal an elevator. ‘Welcome to the home of freedom,’ Ronin says, as he steps inside.

The elevator drops rapidly below sea level and my stomach lurches. When it stops, we step out into a bright, high-tech bunker. The entrance is a huge bubble-like room with giant windows that look out into the sea. Fish, seals and the occasional shark swim into view and then disappear. Through the window I can see that the facility stretches beneath the island like a barnacle clamped to a rock. In the distance, submarines marked with red dwarven runes are docked against airlocks.

Ronin checks us through a security gate guarded by two uniformed golems and we walk along the main thoroughfare. I see two dwarves drag a man with a black hood over his head into an area marked with the Forked Tongue sigil.

‘Dwarven Legion black ops,’ Ronin whispers. ‘Probably brought that poor bastard in by sub from Somalia or the DRC.’

‘Who is this Malachi asshole anyway?’ I say. ‘He waltzed into the Poort like he owned it.’

‘He’s the Samnite that heads up the black ops unit. You’re right. He’s a real asshole. One of Basson’s allies, but when Basson went down, nothing could tie them together. I would have loved to have seen him rot in one of his own cells.’

‘Hey, sugars. You look a little roughed up.’

We turn to see Katinka lounging in a chair flanked by two stern sangomas in suits, white beads and dark glasses. She is wearing neon-pink hotpants that highlight the darkness of her skin, and her platinum hair is tied up in a side ponytail.

‘Obayifo,’ Ronin says, plucking at the bandages wrapped around his arms. ‘What’s a girl like you doing classing up a place like this?’

‘Protective detail.’ She flicks her head at the sangomas. ‘Naebril is on the warpath and only my head on a spike will satisfy her.’

‘Hey, Tinks,’ I say with a grin. ‘Yeah, I saw the esteemed leader of the Flock at Hexpoort. She looked pissed.’

Katinka rolls her heavily mascaraed eyes. ‘She’s always pissed. But once again she comes back to her favourite topic: killing the abomination that escaped.’

‘Cheer up,’ Ronin says, leaning down and giving her a kiss on the cheek. ‘At least you’ve got these two rays of sunshine to protect you and brighten up your day.’

‘Ugh.’ Katinka leans on her hands. ‘These two are about as exciting as a dialling tone. Aren’t you, boys?’ The sangomas stare straight ahead. ‘You better get in there,’ she says, nodding to a set of sliding doors up ahead. ‘The Blood Kraal are at each other’s throats.’

‘See ya, Tinks,’ Ronin says. ‘Here’s hoping the safe house they put you in won’t be too awful.’

Katinka blows us a kiss. ‘Shampoo and conditioner in one bottle. That’s the kind of savagery I have to put up with.’

We walk through the sliding doors. Inside is a dark antechamber with a glowing red omnidirectional camera on the ceiling, and a huge vault-like set of metal doors taking up an entire wall. Dwarven black ops guards move up silently to pat us down and remove our weapons. The
swwhuuuu
of a hand-held metal detector and my own breathing are the only things I can hear.

The guards indicate for us to wait on a line of low metal chairs.

‘You killed that faerie that you shot?’ Ronin asks and lifts a cigarette to his mouth. A dwarven guard gives a terse shake of his head and then goes back to looking intimidating. Ronin sighs and replaces the cigarette in his pocket.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I killed it.’

‘Then you should name your gun. It’s traditional to name a weapon after its first kill.’

‘Well maybe I’m not psycho like that,’ I say. I’m still freaked out about our whole stand-off in the kitchen. What the hell was I thinking? That tense, itchy feeling of violence hasn’t gone away. I feel it crawling over my body like insects.

‘Yeah, maybe,’ Ronin says, unconvinced. ‘It’s just something that agents do.’ He shrugs. ‘Suit yourself.’

I look at the handle of the gun sticking out from the pile of weapons on the floor in front of the guards. Name that gun! Something epic like Faeriesbane? So lame. How about something mysterious like Darkfyre? Jeez, I may as well just call it Ubernerd and get it over with.

Then I remember something from Magical Design about the Vodoun god of the crossroads. A trickster who played with the same forces of chance and uncertainty that I felt when the mother-of-pearl grip was pressed against my palm.

‘Legba,’ I say.

Ronin nods contemplatively and scratches his beard. ‘Good name, sparky. Good name.’

‘The Kraal will see you,’ one of the dwarves says in a low voice.

The huge doors unfold like metallic origami. We walk through into a circular chamber. A raised stone platform like a judge’s bench curves in a semicircle around one half of the room, a red pennant with a black leopard’s head over crossed spears hanging above it. Sangomas sit at regular intervals around the bench: I see the Red Witch, Tone, Malachi and many others I don’t know, thirteen in all, staring down at us like we’re the accused at Judgement Day.

‘Thanks for the warm welcome.’ Ronin turns his head to look at each of the sangomas. ‘Should I put my keys in the bowl?’

‘Agent Ronin,’ Malachi says. ‘Your reputation precedes you.’

‘Why you got to play like that, Mal? You remember me. The Border, ’82. You may recall the blood and screaming?’

‘Ronin,’ Tone says, his voice filled with iron. His grey cornrows have been pulled back and stuck through with two porcupine quills, and his suit has been replaced by an orange dashiki fringed with gold. ‘You will accord this kraal the respect it is due.’

‘Of course.’ Ronin dips his head comically.

‘What did you find out, Ronin?’ The Witch sounds tired, as if she’s been fighting a series of losing battles.

‘Squirrelskull are working for him,’ Ronin says. ‘And they’re not just ideological supporters. They’re producing some kind of narcotic, possibly to fund this rebellion he’s planning.’

‘What narcotic?’ Malachi asks.

Ronin reaches into his pocket and pulls out one of the small pink pills.

‘You snagged one of them?’ I whisper. ‘How?’

‘Strategy, sparky,’ he says. ‘But what the hell do I know about that, right?’ He looks at the sangomas. ‘We need to test what’s in this pill. We need to—’

‘What does it matter what drugs the Obayifo are peddling?’ Malachi interrupts. ‘They are rebelling. They will be stopped.’

‘It matters because it’s a fundamental break with their previous behaviour,’ Ronin says. ‘That adds them to the goblins and Crows who have given up their former ways to link with this madman.’

‘Goblins are mercenaries. They’ll fight for whoever pays them.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ Ronin says.

Malachi stands up and slams a fist like a hammer on to the stone bench.

‘Your insubordination will not be tolerated, agent.’

‘Perhaps we had best return to the matter at hand,’ the Witch says. ‘We will have the pill tested, but it is the least of our worries. There has been a dramatic rise in violence across the Western Cape.’

‘We’ve felt something,’ Ronin says. ‘Any ideas what it is?’

‘We believe it’s an egregore,’ Tone replies.

That shuts Ronin up. He grits his teeth.

‘What’s an egregore?’ I pipe up, my voice sounding reedy in the big chamber.

‘Every city has a common headspace, a sum total of all the thoughts, feelings and emotions of a group of people. This commonality has an effect on every individual member; think of it like psychic weather. It can be influenced by things like physical weather, group activities like big sporting events or concerts. Even architecture can have an impact,’ the Witch says.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘So if it’s always there, what’s the problem?’

‘An egregore is a conscious influencing of this group mind through magical means, and it can have disastrous results. Stock-market crashes, riots, massacres; throughout history egregores have been used to create terrible, unstoppable chain reactions in groups of people,’ the Witch says.

‘So what do we do?’ I say.

‘Creating an egregore is magically very taxing. In order to control it, he’ll need some item to focus it on. We need to destroy that item.’

‘What is the item?’

‘It could be anything,’ Tone replies. ‘A weapon, a piece of clothing or jewellery …’

‘The Tengu was carrying a staff,’ I say.

‘The Tengu,’ Malachi says. ‘This boy, hardly even an apprentice, claims that the Muti Man is the Tengu who led the attack on Hexpoort.’

‘Why would he lie?’ Ronin asks.

Malachi smiles, a nasty, smug little smile. ‘He’s part Crow himself. Crows lie. Questioning him would be the proper course of action.’

‘You mean torturing?’ Ronin says. ‘Not while he’s my apprentice, Samnite.’

They stare at each other like gunfighters ready to draw.

‘Put your dicks away,’ the Witch says with a disgusted shake of her head. ‘We’re at war and I refuse to let MK6 splinter at the first sign of opposition. The other Obayifo families have indicated that they are willing to help us track Slugmother Dogran Meptu. If we can monitor her meetings, we can find the Muti Man.’

Malachi looks at the two of us like we’re worms squirming underneath his raised boot.

‘When this is over, you will both be held to account.’

Ronin winks and gives him double-finger guns. ‘We’ll be there or be square.’