Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(83)
According to a source in the NYPD, the thieves were almost certainly a gang using high-tech equipment, improvised explosive devices and some kind of ultra-light airborne craft, a gyrocopter or delta plane. Around midnight last night, an explosion shook the Javits Center and the thieves managed to navigate the craft into Level 3, smashing through the famous 150-foot “crystal palace” lobby, alighting in the exhibition hall and evading several alarm systems to make off with the gem. The police believe the thieves took flight by way of another controlled explosion, fleeing through the Javits Center’s western fa?ade, out over 12th Avenue and the Hudson River, where police suspect they rendezvoused with a small ship headed out into the Bay, across to Weehawken or upriver to …
God knows where. Ben scanned the story, plucking the meat off printed bones. The details were sketchy at best. Between the lines, he summed them up. No fingerprints. No leads. No fucking clue.
The bar held its breath as he slapped the Times back down. No one spoke, no one chewed peanuts, no one selected songs on the jukebox. The rain drummed against the window. Four-wheeled fish swam past outside.
“Clever,” Ben said. “But what does this have to do with me?”
“More than you’d like.” Fulk grinned again, yellow dominoes lost in a rug. “You’re reading your own death warrant.”
“If this is a joke, I don’t get it.”
“No, you don’t, do you?” The man in black shook his head. “I’ve travelled halfway around the world to face my nemesis, and all I find is a washed-up worm feeling sorry for himself in a bar. Is it because of your woman? Is that why you returned? She won’t take you back, you know. Your kind and hers never mix well.”
“You came here to advise me on my love life?”
Fulk laughed. “You’re asleep, Red Ben. You’ve been asleep for centuries. The world holds no place for you now. You’re a relic. You’re trash. I only came here to sweep up the pieces.”
“Yeah, your glorious quest.” Ben rolled his eyes at their audience, the men sat in the booth, the guy with a palm full of peanuts frozen before his mouth, the one shuffling slowly away from the jukebox. “You need to get over it. Mordiford was a very long time ago.”
A storm rumbled up over Fulk’s brow, his deep-set eyes sinking even further into his head. Obviously it was the wrong thing to say. The ages-long river of bad blood that ran between Ben and House Fitzwarren was clearly as fresh to the man in black as it had been to his predecessors, perhaps even to the original Fulk, way back in the Middle Ages.
Muscles tense, Ben sighed and stood up, his stool scraping the floorboards. Despite his height rivalling the slayer’s, he still felt horribly slight in Fulk’s shadow. The whiskey could make you feel small too.
He didn’t need this. Not now. He wanted to get back to the Jack and his heartbreak.
“It was yesterday to us,” Fulk said, the claim escaping through gaps in his teeth. “We want our castle back. And Pact or no Pact, when we have it, your head will hang on our dining room wall.”
The bartender, cringing behind the bar, guarded by bottles and plastic cocktail sticks, chose this moment to pipe up.
“Look, fellers, nobody wants any trouble. I suggest you take your beef outside, or do I have to call the—”
The sword Fulk drew from the scabbard on his back was a guillotine on the barman’s words. The youth scuttled backwards, bottles and cocktail sticks crashing to the floor, panic greasing his heels. He joined the customers in a scrambling knot as they squeezed their bellies out of the booth, tangling with the other guys pushing past the jukebox to the fire exit at the back of the bar. In a shower of peanuts and dropped glasses, they were gone, the fire exit clanking open, a drunken stampede out into the rain.
Ben watched them leave in peripheral envy. He grimaced and rubbed his neck, a habit of his that betrayed his nerves. Then his whole attention focused on Fulk. Fulk and the ancient sword in his face. There was nothing friendly about that sword. They had met before, many times. Ben was on intimate terms with all fifty-five inches of the old family claymore. Back in the Middle Ages, the Scots had favoured the two-handed weapon in their border clashes with the English, and while this one’s saw-toothed edge revealed its tremendous age, the blade held an anomalous sheen, the subtle glow informing Ben that more than a whetstone had sharpened the steel.
“Who’re you having lunch with these days? The CROWS? That witchy business has a nasty habit of coming back to bite you on the arse.” Ben measured these words with a long step backwards, creating some distance between the end of his nose and the tip of the sword. “House Fitzwarren must be getting desperate.”
“We are honour-bound to slay our Enemy.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re delusional, Fulk – or Pete or Steve or whatever your real name is. Your family hasn’t owned Whittington Castle since the time of the Fourth Crusade, but you dog my heels from Mayfair to Manhattan, hoping to win a big gold star where hundreds of others have only won gravestones. And as for this,” Ben nodded at the gleaming blade, “tut tut. Whatever would the Guild say?”
“I told you, snake. The Lore is broken. The Guild is over. And now, so are you.”
The sword swung towards him, signalling the end of the conversation. The step Ben had taken came in handy; he leaned back just in time to avoid an unplanned haircut. The blade snapped over the bar, licking up the tumbler and the bottle of Jack, whiskey and glass spraying the floorboards.