Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Daniel and I sat at the base of a building across the street from Mac’s place, dressed in layers of mismatched secondhand clothes, and watched the traders in the little bazaar.
It was a cold day, but this part of town was still without power and living by the weird values of that temporary between-time of an emergency.
Despite the cold, most of the traffic was on foot.
There were more people about than usual, even with the reduced population.
Daniel took a sip of hot chocolate from a battered old thermos and watched the people across the street with haggard eyes. He bowed his head and rested it against his wrist for a moment.
“Nice,” I said. “You look like an old drunk that way.”
“Hah,” he muttered.
“You sure you should be out here?” I asked him.
“God’s blood,” Daniel said quietly. “Given what’s been going on, I damned well should be.”
He offered me the thermos, and I took some chocolate into my own cup. His hand shook, pouring. After getting out from under the curse, he’d been in rough shape. Probably needed a few more rest days before he hit the gym again.
I sipped some chocolate. The sun was going down, and the air was beginning to bite. I found it pleasant.
Daniel shivered and drank more hot chocolate.
“What I mean is,” I said, “are you sure you’re up for this?”
“If I’m not, I shouldn’t be leading the Brotherhood,” he said firmly. His eyes looked past me and locked on something beyond me. “We’ll know in a minute.”
I didn’t lift my head, just my eyes. I could see a group coming down the sidewalk toward the bazaar.
I couldn’t see faces with my peripheral vision, but it pretty much had to be Carl and crew.
I could read in their body language the focus upon the bazaar as they approached, the intention in their tension. They were looking for trouble.
The folks in the bazaar saw them and started scurrying.
Which told me most of what I needed to know, right there.
I glanced aside at Daniel. The young man was looking hard at the members of the Brotherhood people were fleeing from. He was a soldier and had his mother’s eyes. He could do a good hard look.
“From this point,” he said quietly, “you’re an observer from the magical community. I want a witness they’ll believe. Don’t interfere.”
Then he stood up, squared his shoulders, and stalked forward to intercept the group of men.
Whether or not I interfered would depend a great deal on what happened, but what the hell.
The kid wanted to solve the problem on his own—which was a right instinct.
It would work better if it was an internal thing within the Brotherhood, and since he was their head guy, it was his job to clean house.
I’d let Daniel take the lead, see where it went.
If things got physical and went bad for him, well.
Physically, at least, I was in pretty good shape.
I went after Michael’s son, a step behind and to one side, where I could watch his back for him.
Daniel walked straight up to Carl. I couldn’t see the kid’s face, but when Carl turned from saying something to one of his cronies to see Daniel walking toward him, there was a certain amount of alarm that flashed over his features.
He came to an uncertain halt, his four companions almost piling up behind him.
“Carl,” Daniel said calmly. “I’d like to speak to you.”
“About what?” Carl demanded.
Daniel extended his hand toward the sidewalk past them, an invitation. “We can discuss that privately.”
“What’s the wizard doing here?” Carl spat.
“He’s a witness,” Daniel said quietly.
“Then these are my witnesses,” Carl said, gesturing back at the men with him.
Daniel’s head tilted and he shrugged one shoulder. “Very well. I have reports that you and the men with you have laid hands on your fellow citizens on patrols you have led. Is that true?”
“They aren’t like us,” Carl said. “They’re with that occult crap, is what they are.
You saw what came of having them among us.
City’s been wrecked, hasn’t it. Things eating people.
Eating people. And here they are, bold as brass, selling their occult crap in broad daylight, maybe getting ready to do it to us again.
They been striking at us all week, you included. What’s gonna stop them?”
“I am,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, you,” Carl scoffed. He turned back to Daniel. “These attacks can’t go unanswered. You know that.”
The attacks were answers, from where I was standing. But I didn’t know everything that had happened. Mileage could vary.
And from the perspective of someone whose belief in the supernatural had suddenly been abruptly reversed in the most traumatic way possible by the Battle of Chicago, yeah.
It might be difficult to tell the difference between one terrifying supernatural thing like Ethniu and the city-destroying Eye of Balor, and a curse that would merely torture one to death over days.
Daniel took a slow breath. There was nothing at all yielding in his stance. “Our mandate,” he said quietly, “is to protect our families and neighbors from supernatural threats in extraordinary times. It is not to beat and frighten those very same people.”
“See?” Carl said, partly over his shoulder. “What they say about his family is right. Maybe they’ve become a little too friendly with the unnatural.”
Daniel went still.
Carl met his eyes and lifted a defiant chin.
“Very well,” Daniel said quietly. “I accept your challenge.”
Carl blinked. “What?”
“You’ve defied my authority, Carl,” Daniel said.
“You’ve leveled an accusation that could only result in my removal as brother captain as well as blacken my family’s name.
I accept your challenge to my authority and choose trial by combat, as is my right beneath the Brotherhood’s charter.
” He nodded and started shrugging out of his jackets.
“We’re going bare-knuckle. I’d strip down a bit if I were you. ”
“Wait, what?” Carl demanded.
“Would you prefer swords? I don’t recommend that. I’ve studied with my father.”
“Jesus,” Carl blurted.
“His name is Michael,” I pointed out matter-of-factly.
“See,” Daniel said, “the way I see it, Carl, you’ve gotten to thinking that if you’re strong enough to do it, you have the right to,” he said.
“And your actions are a direct challenge to my authority.” He got down to a hoodie and pushed up the sleeves.
“I’ll come toward you. We’ll settle this your way.
” He squared up, fists held loose and lower than I would have.
“How about you come tangle with someone your own size?”
“There’s one of you,” Carl said. “There’s five of—”
And before he could say “us,” Daniel shuffled up, laid a long right cross through the chin of the guy on Carl’s right and dropped him to the ground like a bag of lawn clippings.
Then Daniel twisted into a left hook, throwing the punch as much with his hips and legs and abs as his arms, and drilled a shot into Carl’s left side that dropped him to the ground with a breathless gasp of pain.
Daniel took a step back, his eyes flashing left and right at the other three. “All right. Who’s next?”
Carl made a retching sound on the ground, curling into a fetal position.
Liver shot. Ow. I hadn’t had the pleasure myself, but Murph had talked about how debilitating they were.
Daniel Carpenter was a large man, a soldier, a professional at violence, and evidently a trained boxer.
The punches had all been real ones, thrown with his whole body.
He wasn’t functioning at a hundred percent, but apparently fifty percent plus a sucker-punch approach was more than enough for those two.
Maybe there was a lesson for me in there.
On the other hand, getting away with two quick punches wasn’t the same thing as going toe-to-toe with three guys who were ready. I closed one hand into a fist and waited to see what would come next.
The other three men, none of them near Daniel’s size, glanced at one another, then showed their palms and took half steps back.
Daniel nodded and lowered his hands. “Fine.”
One of the others looked unhappy as he spoke. “Cap,” he said quietly, “Carl ain’t smart. But he ain’t all wrong, either. We can’t stand around doing nothing while they’re coming at us.”
“I’m not here to have a debate with you,” Daniel said firmly. “You signed on to work together, which means obeying orders. You men don’t come back to this block, ever. You don’t rough people up, ever. Anything about that you don’t understand?”
The man looked away from Daniel and said, “Naw, Cap.”
The guy Daniel had sucker punched stirred and slowly pushed himself to his hands and knees.
“You three take these two back to the chapter house and take care of them,” Daniel told the man who was speaking. “I’m not going to have this discussion again. You read me?”
“Yeah, Cap,” he said.
The other two fully conscious ones affirmed their agreement on the point as well.
“You guys go on. I’ll be there directly. We’re going to sit down with my father and Father Forthill and have a long talk in a couple of hours.” Daniel walked over to the bazaar, where the little makeshift stalls were empty.
“I apologize for what has happened here in my absence,” Daniel said, speaking loudly, so that anyone in the building who was listening or anyone out of sight nearby might hear.
He held up a card and then put it down on the ground, weighing it down with a stone.
“If there’s been harm done, expenses incurred, property damaged, contact me here.
I can’t make the hurt go away, but perhaps I can make part of it right. It won’t happen again.”
Then he turned and walked over to me.
Carl’s crew were helping him to his feet and beginning to stagger away. I watched them, bemused.
“Not sure your father would have been that, ah, direct,” I said. “He’d probably have let them swing first.”
Daniel shrugged a shoulder. He’d picked up his discarded jackets and was getting back into them, shivering. “He doesn’t feel as terrible as I do. And it was five to one.”
“Two,” I said.
“I told you not to interfere,” Daniel said, his tone either amused or annoyed.
“Did you? Well. I’m getting older. Hearing isn’t so good.”
“You’re a wizard. You live to be a zillion.”
“Eh?” I said. “Speak up there, kid.”
Daniel cracked a smile and shook his head wearily.
“Look. Some things need to get said in other ways for some people to understand it,” he said.
“Carl’s scared. He isn’t bright. He might even mean well.
But he can only think as far as his knuckles, and there’s only so many ways to think about problems and solutions with those.
I had to lay it out in terms he would understand on several levels.
And do it loud enough the others heard it clearly, too. ”
“If it matters,” I said, “I would only have come in if the conversation hadn’t gone the way you planned.”
Daniel thought about that one for a second and then nodded, bemused. “It does matter. Thank you. For letting me handle it.”
“Sometimes the best way to help somebody is to step back and give them room,” I said. “Glad this was one of those times.” I paused and added, “ ’Cause if they’d shot you or bashed your face in, I’d have had to explain to your mother and your wife why I let it happen.”
Daniel burst out in a quick, low laugh. “You would, wouldn’t you.” He tilted his head as we began to walk back toward his car. “How’d you know it was the right time for that?”
I put my hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Experience, kid. I’ve done well trusting Carpenters.”