and somebody is in here, sitting on my couch, drinking my beer, and reading my copy of Swank.
“’Bout time you showed up,” he Brits, “Hope you brought something stronger than this here piss,” he taps the bottle with his pinky.
My costume is hidden in the crawl space (the apartment’s main selling point; you can hide all types of stuff in a good crawl space) but I figure I can take this guy without it. I’ve got probably six inches and 100 pounds on him.
“Come on, then. I don’t have time for your faff. Close the door so we can get down to business.”
I come in and drop my bag of take out Chinese food, “Business?”
“Yeah. Got a job for you, Shrike. You need to stuff yourself into the birdy suit so we can leg it over to GothMetropolis. Dark deeds being committed tonight.”
I keep talking to this guy even though I should be pulling his head off, “My name isn’t Shrike, it’s Bob Smith.”
“Don’t be feeding me porkies. You call yourself Killer Shrike. You’re a gormless super villain who can’t even do a simple bank job without the whole thing going pear shaped.”
“Tell me who you are before I kill you,” I move towards the couch.
The scrawny guy grins and stands up, “Name’s Con Johnstantine, and before you toss a wobbler, I got a question for you: ever heard the word geas ?”
“Buddy, I don’t know half the f****** words you’ve said.”
Johnstantine swigs down the rest of my beer, “It’s a spell. Forces a bloke to act a certain way, or do a certain thing, until it’s lifted. You’re under a geas right now.”
I’m trying to raise my hands to throttle this guy, but nothing’s happening, “What did you do to me?”
He walks past me and picks up my take out bag. After fishing out an egg roll, he answers, “Not me. I’m merely reaping the benefits of the mess you’re in. Somebody’s screwed up your karma. Had a spot of good luck lately? Got something you didn’t deserve?”
“How did you know?”
“I read chakras. Little trick I picked up in boarding school. The universe gave you some kind of break, and now it’s time to collect.”
Then it dawns on me, “The Jones Brothers.”
“Atlas and Census?”
“Yeah. You know them?
“They’re retired servants of the old Shaper of Worlds. It’s in their natures to pull a diddle like this,” Johnstantine finishes my egg roll and now he’s off to the kitchenette to eat the rest of my dinner.
“So how’d you find out about me?”
“Weeell,” he smiles, “I was chatting up this bird, not a bird like you, understand, but a bit of skirt, and she’s going on and on about how she helped this poor prat of a super villain by loaning him some money. Ring any bells, Shrike?”
“Yes,” he’s talking about the waitress who gave me her tip money the day my powers went all haywire in front of the bank.
“So my second sight kicks in, and I can see your chakra, and the bird’s chakra, and I realize you’re under a geas. You owe this woman.”
“She gave me 200 bucks. It was no big thing,” but I start to get the feeling it might be.
“Doesn’t matter. Did you settle your debt?”
“No.”
He keeps smiling that s***-eating grin while stuffing his face, “Did you even agree on how you would settle your debt?”
“No.”
“Then, case closed. End of story. Bob’s your uncle. You abdicated responsibility for payment, so now you’ve forfeited any claim to how you can break the geas.”
This reality must be getting to me, because what he’s saying is making sense, “But why would I owe you anything?”
“Because I bought part of your note. On the sly, of course. 100 dollars American.”
“So, wait, I owe you $100?”
“Yep. And I’m here to collect in labor.”
Finally I hear some good news, “Great. My flat rate is a grand an hour. So that means in like six minutes I’ll be able to kill you.”
Johnstantine belched, grinned, and shook his head.
I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
Later, after we get in his beat-up VW bug (“The Jag’s in the shop,” he tells me, “I’m just borrowing this from a friend of mine”) and drive across the river to GothMetropolis, Johnstantine tells me what to expect from our partnership.
“People say I’m just a blagger, but truth is that I walk with the angels. Well, most of the time. I keep watch for the hinky things that can go on in the universe when the other blokes in the white hats aren’t looking. When I find them I try to set things square. Sometimes I need a little muscle to do it. You’re the muscle.”
“Right,” I mutter, nearly bent over double in this s*** can of a car.
“Count your lucky stars I have need of your talents. Otherwise I’d turn you over to some hero who doesn’t appreciate the fact that sometimes it’s useful to have a rabid dog around,” he is bringing me to some run down street near the water. We park in front of an abandoned three story home which was worth something maybe forty years ago.
“Here’s the deal: a hundred deeds for the hundred dollars you owe me. Hundred’s a nice round number. And don’t waste your breath trying to skive your way out of this. You can’t.”
“Fine.”
“Don’t get stroppy. You’re not going to be on call 24 hours a day. There will be time for you to do what ever it is you costumed window lickers do in between stays in the chokey.”
“Speak f******* American, m***********!!”
“Belt up, wanker-“
Arrgh.
“-she’ll hear you.”
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
“Ixtab, the goddess of suicide. We’re here to kill her.”
Johnstantine goes on to explain that Paradopolis/GothMetropolis is built on some type of nexus point, and that all types of weirdness are drawn here. Ixtab is a Mayan death goddess, an avatar. She resettled in GothMetropolis to try to recoup some of the power she lost when the Mayans were destroyed. I point out that even an eighth grade drop-out like me knows that the Mayan civilization got torched 500 years ago. So why is Ixtab making her play now? He tells me not to think so much. Dirt bag.
He says Ixtab was seen as a benevolent goddess in Mayan religion, bringing those who hang themselves and other noble spirits to paradise. She doesn’t realize cultural mores are different here and what she’s doing is considered wrong.
“What’s she doing?” I ask after Johnstantine finishes his lecture.
“Ixtab’s using her powers to redirect callers to a suicide hotline to her number and goading the poor blighters to off themselves. Then she consumes their life force.”
“How does a Mayan death goddess get a phone hooked up in an abandoned mansion?”
He looks at me like I have three heads, “Don’t be dim.”
“It’s a valid question!!”
“We’re dealing with ruddy magic here! Stop arsing about trying to find a logical answer! Hamlet, Act I, Verse 166!”
So now the guy is quoting Shakespeare to lord his smarts over me. I push open the door and unfold myself from the car, “Fine, whatever. Just tell me where this thing is so I can kill it.”
“There’s an arboretum behind the mansion. She’s in there. But-”
Tired of listening to Mr. Chips, I fly off. I started my career as a monster killer. I can handle some strung-out goddess of a civilization wiped out by a twenty Spaniards.
I crash through the arboretum’s ceiling. The entire place is overrun with weeds and scrub brush. The half a dozen trees that were planted here have long since died. Hanging from the gnarled boughs of the largest is a woman. She’s got long black hair, rotted cheeks, and wears the tattered remnants of a ceremonial shroud. One of those phone head sets sits very anachronistically on her head.
“Jane, I will have to call you back. Remember what I said: sometimes there is only one way out. Greetings, stranger,” she acknowledges me through closed eyes.
Not going to waste time here. I charge up my shock blasters and hit Ixtab with 70,000 volts. My attack doesn’t even scorch her dress.
“Lashing out at me won’t take the pain away. Yes, I know you are suffering,” she keeps droning.
I hit her again. Nothing. I charge, but Ixtab raises her hand and I smash into some type of force that knocks me to the ground. She keeps going with her sales pitch.
“You see yourself as a failure. A middle-aged fool who will die unloved and unremembered. Even this fresh start has borne nothing but bitter fruit.”
Ixtab’s putting the whammy on me. I can actually feel it working. She’s right: nothing has worked for me here. Just like the other world.
“Perhaps the problem is not where you are, but who you are.”
Yeah, maybe. Then I see Johnstantine skulking into the arboretum. He’s got something wrapped in burlap. Ixtab doesn’t spot him.
Johnstantine takes out the ax he’s hiding and walks up to the tree.
“Oi! That man still owes me, you barmy cow!” he shouts, and strikes a deep blow into the trunk.
Ixtab stiffens, and screams. Whatever hold she had on me disappears. I fly up, cut the rope that holds her to the branch, and watch her tumble to the ground.
Johnstantine’s trying to pull the blade from the side of the tree. Ixtab’s getting up, hissing like a million pissed off cobras.
“Step aside,” I tell the struggling Johnstantine. I yank the ax free and drive it into Ixtab’s chest. She curses in some language I don’t recognize (though I’m guessing it’s Mayan) then just sort of fades out.
“Rest in peace, darling,” Johnstantine pulls a flask out of his trenchcoat’s pocket and takes a swig. He looks at me, “If you waited for the rest of the gen on Ixtab, this job would have been a doddle.”
“Shut up.”
He points at the ax, “The blade there’s made from some of the weapons that Pizzarro and company used to wipe out her people. It’s like poison to her.”
I glare at him, “So the job’s done? One task down, ninety-nine to go.”
Johnstantine caps his little nippy bottle and stows it. He gets that I’m smarter than you look again, “We’re done for now. Hope you don’t mind flying home, boyo, because old Con here is off to see if he can get a little of the rumpy pumpy,” he leaves, stranding me.
I silently vow to look up all the names he called me, and if any of them question my manhood, geas or no geas, that limey is a dead man.
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