I fiddled with the radio until I found Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.” I relaxed back against my seat, planting my feet on the dashboard. “Appropriate music achieved. Car chase away.”
The Trans Am darted down Powell Street. Rohan trailed it, keeping to just above the speed limit with deft surety. Our path took us past one-storey businesses painted in colorful murals from the yearly mural festival, Sugar Mountain tent city set up across from the sugar refinery, and a jumble of auto repair shops, light industrial factories, and the microbreweries popping up everywhere in town.
We turned left. Traffic slowed to a crawl, down to a single lane due to construction. I drummed my fingers on the door. “I could run after it faster.”
Rohan honked at the bus that cut in front of us, blocking our view of the Trans Am. For several tense blocks we couldn’t tell whether or not the car had turned off anywhere, but we caught up with it around the back of Playland.
Right before the Second Narrows Bridge, the driver cut across two lanes of traffic to the off-ramp. Rohan veered sharply and I careened into the door. “We’ve been made,” he said.
The Trans Am blew through a three-way stop, flying under an underpass and whipping down a narrow service road.
I pointed out the window. “à la peanut butter sandwiches.” I blew out one of the Trans Am’s back tires. The car fishtailed, but the driver regained control.
I fired again and he jumped a curb, drifting sideways into a parking lot and crashing into one of the trees planted in a semi-circle along the fringes. The hood crumpled with a hiss.
Rohan screeched to a stop. “Nice work, Mumford.”
“‘Amazing Mumford,’ thank you very much.” I grinned, happy he’d gotten my Sesame Street reference. Flinging my door open, I strolled toward the car and the driver scrambling out, who sported a Metallica T-shirt and a mullet. The haircut was evil, but he didn’t sprout horns or shoot fire and pestilence.
“You human?” I said.
“The fuck kind of question is that?” He stomped around his car, running a hand over his busted-up vehicle like he might cry. Rohan’s expression was pure sympathy.
Sheesh.
“You trying to get me killed, lady? Throwing nails or whatever is illegal.”
“Yeah?” I grabbed the navy backpack off of the passenger seat. “So’s couriering for drug dealers.”
He frowned. “Huh? I got paid to go to the park and outrun anyone who followed me. Sure as hell not getting my bonus now.”
I unzipped the backpack. Rolled up newspapers with the same weight as our stacks of cash spilled out. “Son-of-a-bitch!”
Rohan slammed the guy against the Trans Am’s door. “Who paid you?”
“Some dude. Came to the Go-Cart track where I work.” The man he described, white, average height, short brown hair, jeans, jean jacket could have been any one of a million people.
Rohan tossed him away. The driver fell on his ass, threatening lawsuits. Ro turned back with a cold smile. “You’re going to forget this ever happened or I will find you. Got it?”
The driver threw up his hands. “Yeah, man. No problem.”
I took my car keys away from Ro and tossed him my burner phone. “Call Drio.”
Soon as we were back in the car, Ro hit the speakerphone button. “What happened?”
“Guy showed up,” Drio said. “Walked over to the monument, stared at it a second, and left. Didn’t take anything with him, but the backpack was gone.”
“Any drugs?” I pulled out of the lot.
“No. Candyman must have found out about the wreta.”
“You headed for the airport?” Ro said.
“Yeah, you bastard.” Drio hung up.
“Glove compartment,” I said.
Rohan opened it and removed a small device. He turned it on. “Hello, Plan B.”
We’d gone in to the drop assuming a double-cross, which was why I’d sewn a tracker into the backpack. If Trans Am dude hadn’t taken the backpack, then Candyman must have portalled it out of there, confirming him as another demon. The blinking dot on the tracking screen showed an address not far from the wreta house, over by Boundary Road, the street delineating the border between Vancouver and Burnaby.
We hit the address up that night for maximum skulking.
In the daytime, this cozy cul-de-sac would have been filled with kids riding bikes or playing street hockey, overseen by neighborhood watch, but at 2AM, everyone was snug in their beds. We blended into the shadows in our all-black attire and black leather gloves.
The house was a cookie cutter replica of its boxy neighbors. If there was a ward on it, it was nothing we could sense and wasn’t designed to keep Rasha out. Rohan made short work of the lock on the back door, and we crept inside, flashlights on. The place was minimally furnished but someone lived here: there were a few dirty dishes in the sink, some cigarette butts in the ashtray in the living room, and a rumpled bed.
Glass shattered in the basement. We ran downstairs, flicking on the light, and jumping the stairs two at a time.
The single unfinished room with its concrete floor and exposed insulation between the joists was a disaster. Glass was smashed on the floor and boxes of corn starch were ripped open and strewn over the walls and floor like a Rorschach test.
The oshk was using its single human arm to rip apart a moonshine-type still with cattle prods attached to it. Shit, no. I was not being Tased like a side of beef.
Rohan and I rushed the demon. Ro executed a roundhouse kick, slicing its arm off, while I trapped it in a web of current, kicking the cattle prod into the corner out of its reach.
The oshk’s arm slithered back up the demon, reattaching itself in place. Where was the Humpty-Dumpty-couldn’t-put-it-back-together-again model of demon when you needed it?
It flowed its blobby body out of my magic net, keening in rage. My repeated strikes blew it back, but for every foot of ground it lost it jumped forward two more, pushing us back toward the stairs.
I glanced over my shoulder, calculating the distance before it had us trapped in that narrow space.
Rohan upped his assault, a blur of slicing and dicing. The demon slithered its body to surround him.
A glint of a blade, the wet plop of flesh hitting the ground, I couldn’t get a clean bead on the demon. Magic danced over my skin as I muttered “Come on,” over and over again.
The oshk rippled with a low bassy gurgle and blew Rohan back against the wall.
I heard his back crunch against a fat joist, but my vision was filled with the demon looming over me. I danced back a couple of steps, hit the bottom step, and fell backwards.
The demon bobbed up the staircase without touching me, its features contorted in fury.
“Uh, hello?” I blasted it in the back and it jerked, blowing out a stream of clear liquid that flew over my head to splash the ceiling, mostly absorbed by the exposed insulation.
I lowered the hands I’d flung over my face, and patted myself down, but I hadn’t been hit by its secretion. Had I been a couple feet deeper into the room, it would have been a different story. I hopped onto the first stair to follow and was tugged back into Ro’s arms. I struggled. “Don’t even think I’m staying–”