[stmercy2020]

Chapter Seven

The Backstage Theater was a fairly small theater, with room for about four hundred people in the audience.  The atmosphere was cozy, with the seats placed in a semi-circle around the stage, but only five rows deep.  The walls were wood panel, and the ceiling was fairly low for a concert hall at a mere fifteen feet.  The carpet was old and well-worn, but clean.  In all, Drifter felt that this would be a good venue for Cheshire’s slightly folk-rock sound.  He had been trying to score a concert in Ann Arbor’s famous The Ark Concert Hall, but, as yet, had been unsuccessful.  Still, there would be some promoters from The Ark here tonight, he’d heard, and someone from Columbia House Records was supposed to be in attendance.

Drifter checked the position of the microphones, made sure the wires were all taped down securely.  His instruments- his drums, his keyboard, his guitar- were all in place on the stage.  He felt a twinge of pain between his shoulder blades, unreleased stress that he hadn’t been able to work out all day.  Preconcert jitters, he told himself, and almost believed it.  He always got a little nervous before a concert.  He never ate much, and he always seemed to develop a little bit of a headache as the tension of feeling like he was just not-quite-ready mounted.  It never mattered how much he practiced, how smooth he was, he always felt that little bit of apprehension before a show.  He had gotten so that he almost relished it, he realized, as if it were a perverse measure of how well the concert would actually go.

Something about this felt wrong, though.  Part of it was the jitters, of course- they never felt right, after all- but he was feeling this differently than usual.  His muscles ached and cramped as if he had been using them hard and then failed to stretch them properly afterwards.  And that tightness he’d been feeling…  It seemed as if he’d been feeling that tightness for days now, but he couldn’t pin down a source.  If it doesn’t go away soon, I’m gonna have to see a doctor.

Nicole was a little distance away, adjusting the straps on her double-neck Gibson.  As he looked at her, she stepped slightly into the glare of the footlights, giving her a halo and making her look somehow ephemeral.  Drifter thought back over the past several months.  They’d been closer, better together somehow since she told him about her encounter with Dicey.  It was as if some last vestige of her somewhat reckless nature had finally found peace- and, specifically, peace with him.

Drifter’s musing was interrupted by the entrance of a man from the lobby.  He stood a bit under six feet tall, and seemed to be slender, but Drifter couldn’t make out any more than that from where he stood.  Hopping off the stage, Drifter started towards the newcomer.  “Hey, I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t be in here right now,” he said with a deprecating smile.

“Sorry for that,” the newcomer said.  “The door was open, so I thought I’d go ahead and get me seat a mite early.  D’you mind?  I’ll stay quiet, I promise.”

Drifter looked the young man over.  Drifter saw that he pretty much dwarfed the man, physically, standing probably an inch taller and about a foot wider.  The young man was black- dark black- and his teeth were very white as he grinned easily at Drifter.  His accent marked him as foreign, although his fluency bespoke a native English speaker.  As a Tennesean, Drifter was wary of how easy it was to allow someone’s accent to color your perceptions of them, but he still found himself relaxing into the easy rhythms of this man’s speech.

“What the hell,” Drifter decided.  “Go ahead and make yourself comfortable.  I’m Drifter and that’s Nicole up on the stage.  We’ll be pretty busy doing soundcheck and whatnot, but you can let me know if you need anything.”

“Right, mate.  Name’s Berihun- Berry.  I’ll be quiet as a church mouse, you’ve my word.”

*****

Philémon Boudreaux was looking forward to the end of his workday.  Customers had been thick today, in more ways than one.  One woman had actually tried to insist that he should have the new Harry Potter book in stock.  He had to explain that Title Wave was a used book store- they didn’t get new books until after the libraries retired them.  And then his grandmother had called, asking after Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, a medieval grimoire which was widely regarded as one of the most unholy books ever published according to the Holy Church.  He knew that her researches had turned up a copy in Hebrew decades ago, and that her copy had been destroyed in a fire.  He didn’t know why she was asking him to find her a new copy, though.  Still, it was something he was good at, so he promised that he would try.

When 5:00 finally rolled around, Phil was quick to lock up the shop, flipping the sign to closed as he stepped out onto the sun-drenched street.  He decided that he wanted a little time with his girlfriend this evening, even if it meant forgoing his usual training.  He wasn’t really in a good mood for training anyway, he told himself.  He felt just a little too agitated after the irritations of the day, and that was never a good mental state to be in when what you were practicing was genuinely dangerous.  Maybe I’ll practice some kata, later, he told himself, but even then knew that he just wasn’t in the mood.

The streets were unusually empty of pedestrian traffic as he headed for the car park.  It was eerie, and it almost felt as if he were the only living thing for miles.  He shook himself.  That was ridiculous, of course, especially in the heart of Portland.  He’d just stepped out during a momentary lull. 

The air seemed to turn cold, the sun, while still bright, now seemed glaring without providing even a hint of warmth.

He saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and felt his body tense involuntarily.  All of his senses seemed preternaturally alert.  He calmed his breathing and scanned the area, letting his ears and nose work as hard as his eyes.  There was a light skittering nearby, and the shadows of the parking garage seemed slightly wrong.  Turning, he saw just a hint of something very large disappear behind a cement column.  Scowling, Phil walked cautiously towards the figure.  He could smell it, now, an odor of decaying meat and dried sweat, the foul stench he associated with the breath of a large, vicious dog.

It was fast.  It was on top of him before he had a chance to fully raise his guard, powerful claws hooking into the loose fabric of his shirt, turning and slamming him into the pillar.  He struggled, got a hand between its jaws and his face, felt immense fangs and short, bristly fur on a flat-nosed face that seemed not quite human and not quite animal.  Shoving hard, he felt the grip loosen and he brought his knee up to widen the gap, pushing the monstrous figure back.  Recovering his balance, Phil went into a defensive stance, keeping his long arms out in front of him and his weight evenly distributed between his feet.

It was hideous.  If it stood straight it would be nearly seven feet tall and broad shouldered, but it was hunched over and crouched on thick legs and arms with vicious looking claws.  It was a hideous mockery of human form, a gorilla with human intelligence hidden behind cold, blue eyes.  It’s teeth were jagged fangs, none matching, in a mouth that formed a cruel slash across a jaw so broad and flat as to be a parody of the natural structure.  Where the skin showed through the patchy grey and brown fur, it was dark and almost soft looking.  Saliva dripped from its hideous maw and a low, throaty growl escaped its lips as it faced Phil.

If not for his many years of training, Phil would likely have been paralyzed right there.  As it was, his reactions felt slow to him, and the creature sprang before he had time to form a single coherent thought.  Phil rocked back, using his hands to meet the creatures arms before they could fully close on him again.  He used the things momentum to swing it around, giving it a savage twist that tumbled it head over heels onto the pavement.  Still holding an arm, Phil tried to step in to kick it in the ribs, but it turned and grabbed his leg.  Falling, Phil flailed his arms and caught something hard in his right hand.  The impact with the ground knocked the breath from him, but he kept his grip and was rewarded with a loud cracking sound.  The thing howled and brought all of its weight against Phil’s prone form.

“Mab say stay away,” the thing growled.  In shock, Phil almost stopped struggling.  He had never expected that this thing could talk.

“What?” he managed, weakly.  The thing was impressively heavy and strong.  He couldn’t budge it with pure strength, and that was about all he had left.

“Mab say stay away,” it repeated, then backed off of him and bounded into the shadows and vanished.  Getting to his feet, Phil noticed that he could hear the sounds of traffic once again.  Somehow, the sun seemed slightly closer and warmer, but he didn’t feel reassured.  Looking down at the thing in his hand, he saw that it was a long tooth, fully as long as the palm of his hand and a good half-inch thick at the base.  Shaking his head, he made his way to his car.

*****

Flit considered her quarry.  He was not, she decided, the stuff of which heroes were made.  That was good, though, because she was not the sort of imp that could best heroes.  She knew what she was and she wasn’t proud.  She was a tweener, a faerie that was neither one of the dark, warlike goblins nor one of the wise, ethereal sidhe.  A commoner among her people, lucky to have been noticed by their queen and chosen for this mission, however valueless it was.  It must be without value, she thought wryly, or they would have given it to someone much more capable.

She had been following this Vincent Ras for nearly a year of his time, and was shocked to discover that she actually liked him.  The Fair Folk were not supposed to have feelings for mortals.  The Fair Folk were not supposed to have feelings at all.  She considered that she might be defective, and she had considered trying to have this fault in herself corrected, but she was afraid that the queen would hear and have her erased.

Forcing herself to focus again, she considered Vinnie.  He always seemed so melancholy to her.  He seemed to carry more than his fair share of worries all the time, although he hid it from his friends behind his gentle humor.  She wondered if any of his friends had any sense of the time he spent worrying about how to keep their internal tensions from tearing them apart or how he struggled to keep the external pressures from crushing them.  Sadly, she doubted they did.  And then he would come home at night and play his piano and sing his beautiful melodies for her and her alone, and she loved him for it.

She often visited him in dreams, coaxing him to write more, to express himself through his music, and he obliged her like no mortal had before.  Now she sat before him on his piano, unseen, her legs crossed and her tiny face in her hands as he worked out his grief on the keyboard, his voice a wordless, haunting wail.  He had been alright when he came home, but in the process of going through his mail, had turned suddenly, painfully sad.  She wished that she could read the scratchings that mortals called writing so that she could know what was troubling him, but at the same time was afraid to know too much.

She really hoped the queen wouldn’t demand his death.

*****

“Look, Jodi, you know I’m pretty strong,” Dicey began.

Jodi nodded.  Dicey had proved again and again that she was a lot stronger than she looked, and that was impressive, given that she looked like an off-season fitness competitor most of the time.

“Well, I want to show you something, and then I want a favor.”  Dicey seemed unusually nervous as she led Jodi up the stairs to the NCRB’s heavy weight room.  She had arranged with Drifter to have a couple hours here on her own- something he wouldn’t normally have done, but she promised him a special composition just for him and Nicole if she could just have this one request.  Unlocking the door, Dicey led Jodi into the darkened room and flicked on the lights.  It was immediately apparent that this was the weight room used by the hardcore powerlifters and other athletes of their ilk.  The whole room very nearly reeked of testosterone and machines were set with weights that looked positively unreal.  As strong as she was, Jodi knew that she would have trouble with even single reps with most of the machines as they were currently set.

Closing the door behind them, Jodi quickly stripped down to a loose tank top and sweat shorts.  Jodi was impressed yet again.  When they had first met, Dicey had seemed large, but large in the way an off-season athlete is large.  Now, her muscles seemed to be coiled just beneath her skin.  It wasn’t that she was particularly cut or lean, but there didn’t seem to be much wasted fat anywhere on her body.  “I see you’ve been working out some,” Jodi remarked.

“Yeah, a bit,” Dicey admitted, flexing her right arm lightly, causing her bicep to jump suddenly, “but this really isn’t nearly as much as I can do.”

Jodi cocked her head slightly, confused.  Dicey sighed and walked over to one of the machines.  The cable crossovers had been left with the pin placed at 200 pounds on each stack.  Jodi was shocked when Dicey removed the pin and then replaced it at the bottom of the stack, adding 100 pounds to each side.  Slipping her feet into the brace designed to keep lifters on the floor, Dicey smoothly drew her arms together.  As Jodi watched, Dicey’s shoulders and chest seemed to explode into jagged relief.  It was as if her shoulders doubled in size and her chest deepened by a solid inch.  Looking at Dicey’s face, Jodi was even more surprised to see that Dicey was still breathing evenly- easily- and her gaze was clear and utterly untroubled.  Jodi watched as Dicey slowly lowered the weights and then drew them back up.  And then repeated the process for twelve reps.

“Wow,” Jodi muttered, stunned.

“Yeah,” Dicey agreed.  “Look, this isn’t really even very difficult for me anymore.  Right after I got in that fight with the Motorheads, this would probably have been difficult, but I think I could have done at least a couple of reps like this, and it’s been getting easier.”

Jodi shook her head, uncomprehendingly.  “How can you be that strong?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  I truly don’t,” Dicey admitted, “but I’ve noticed that I seem to be able to control it better if I keep working out.”

Jodi shrugged.  “Okay, so what’s the problem?”

“There’s two problems.  First is that I’m so strong now that people are starting to notice.  I can’t get any sort of a decent workout unless I’m using massive weights that even the most ‘roided out freaks have trouble with, and I really don’t want the attention that I’m starting to get.

“Second problem is that even if I do max out the machines here, it’s starting to be a case where I simply need more weight.”

“Jeez, Dicey, just how strong are you trying to get?”

“That’s not the point.  I have no idea how strong I could get.  The thing is, I think my strength is increasing whether I exercise or not.  The difference is that I have better control at the lower end of my strength as long as I keep pressing my limits.”

Jodi was clearly not quite understanding what Dicey was getting at.  Dicey took a deep breath, let it out.  “Look, as strong as I am now, I could easily hurt someone-bad-purely by accident if I wasn’t careful.  Hell, I did hurt those gangbangers badly.”

“You don’t feel bad about that-“

“No, I don’t.  I was surprised, but they were trying to hurt us, so I don’t feel sorry about what happened.  But I would feel bad if I hurt someone just because I was excited or not paying attention.  That’s why I need your help.”

“Okay, I guess I can see that.  What do you need from me, though?”

“Well, you understand the body a lot better than I do.  I need help designing a workout, for one thing- something that will actually push me, because this,” she gestured, indicating the surrounding weight room, “isn’t really doing the job.”

[KeithXZ]

This is coming along really really well StMercy!  I've just read parts 3 through 7, after being away for a while.

I really like the complexity of the plot and the pace at which you are developing it and developing the characters.

Your story is really letting me get into it.

Thank you very much, and I hope to read more of it soon!

[Author]

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