7.4
“Listen,” Walker says, reaching over to turn the radio down. He’s been driving for the past two hours - insisted on taking over halfway through the trip, so Landis didn’t tire himself out. The road has stretched out through largely barren land for what feels like days, the visual monotony only occasionally broken up by a gas station, or signs for a tourist attraction some twenty-odd miles off. “I know you killed people before, because you can’t keep your mouth shut about it, and I know you fought that…witch or whatever, in Hell, but you gotta let me take care of these guys when we get there.”
Landis considers this, then says, “Bullshit.”
“I’m serious,” Walker says. “I get that you fought to the death with someone who was using her own blood to attack you, like, two months ago, but these people have actual guns. And they know how to use them. If Jenny can get a clear shot at you, you’ll be dead before you know there’s a bullet in you. You won’t see her, you won’t hear the gun go off, you won’t know to dodge. Just,” he smacks the steering wheel for emphasis, “bam. Dead. And I don’t even know about the other people she’s with - they could have powers, they could be snipers like she is. They could be fucking werewolves, or shapeshifters, or just about anything, really.”
It’s the most Landis has ever heard Walker say in one sitting. Landis stays quiet, listening, watching the speedometer creep from 70 to 80. He sounds scared. He was barely worried when we went to rescue Austin in the mines - or if he was, he didn’t show it - and he didn’t bat an eye when we ended up in Hell. This Jenny must be something else if she managed to shake him up so badly.
“Isn’t Jenny going to know you’re coming?” Landis asks, finally, shifting in his seat. “You said she talked to you at the diner. Assuming the people with her told her they left that note, she probably knows you’re the only one in town who’d actually come after Austin to try and get him back. I don’t think her and her friends are going to be expecting me - or Jeremy.”
Walker takes a moment to consider this, looking out at the road in front of them, and the decrepit gas station approaching on their right. Landis watches it from his window, catching a glimpse of rusted pumps and a skeletal, caved-in roof as they zip past.
“What’s your plan, then?” Walker asks.
“I don’t know,” Landis admits, “but I think you could use my help.”
There’s a sign up ahead advertising a motel. Landis checks the creased map in his hands for the first time in hours, to see if the motel is the one marked as the ending destination for Jenny and her crew. Surprisingly, it is.
“That’s the place,” he tells Walker as they approach the sign.
“You sure?” Walker asks.
“Yeah,” he says, pointing forwards at a road just beyond the motel sign, partially hidden by it. “Turn down there.”
Walker does so. The road turns out to be more of a driveway than anything, curving gently this way and that before spitting them out in a parking lot shared by a two-story motel, a gas station, a gift shop, and a twenty-four hour convenience store. The lot is sparse, with only a few cars that Landis would guess belong to employees, parked closely to the buildings.
At least there won’t be a lot of people to get caught up in this, he thinks, feeling a palpable sense of relief, while Walker picks a parking spot at random and pulls into it.
“I can check the rooms,” Jeremy says. He’s been quiet for almost the entire trip, as per usual, and the sudden sound of his voice makes Landis jump.
“You’re going to check every room?” Landis asks, twisting around in his seat to peer over the headrest.
“No,” Jeremy says mildly, “I’m going to go and see which room keys are missing from the lobby, and then I’m going to check the rooms for those keys, to see which one Austin is in. Unless you have a better idea.”
Landis shakes his head and settles back down in his seat, eyeing Walker. “Jeremy says he’ll check the rooms to see which one Austin’s in.”
“Well, he should be careful,” Walker says. He’s not wrong - it’s still well within the possibility that one of the people with Jenny is a medium like Landis and Austin. But Landis can’t think of a single reason why a medium would be on a kidnapping job.
“I’ll be okay,” Jeremy says.
“He says he’ll be okay,” Landis relays to Walker, glancing into the backseat again just in time to see Jeremy float up, and vanish through the hood of the car.
Walker nods, stiffly unhooking his seatbelt, contorting himself to look through the car windows and the rearview mirror. His movements are erratic, anxious, something Landis would expect more from himself than from Walker. Seeing Walker so visibly rattled is starting to make him nervous, too. He’s been staving it off for the whole car ride, focusing on the scenery - or lack thereof - instead, but now there’s no way to avoid the sinking feeling in his stomach.
“This feels like a trap,” Walker mutters.
“You think they lured you out here to kill you?” Landis asks, unhooking his own seatbelt.
Walker shakes his head. “Not Jenny’s usual M.O.. If she wanted me dead, she would have killed me when we saw each other in the diner.”
“Then why did they give us the address?”
“I don’t know,” Walker says. “It’s possible they’re not here, and just fucking with us to throw us off the trail. Or whoever Jenny’s with really doesn’t want things to get boring. Or,” he hesitates, grimacing a little before he continues, “this is part of their contract, and whoever is paying them off knew that I’d probably come after Austin.”
“Who would know that?” Landis asks.
“Well, I’m pretty sure where I’m assigned is common knowledge around the DPR by now, and I don’t exactly think these guys - or their employer - are above torturing people for information.” Walker shrugs. “It could be anyone, really. Someone with a personal vendetta against the DPR, or someone just looking to ransom Austin off for lots and lots of money. Considering how much of a bleeding heart Jacob is, I’d be surprised if they’re not trying to use Austin to get under his skin somehow.”
Landis opens his mouth to respond, but closes it when Jeremy abruptly pokes his head through the roof of the car.
“Austin’s in 103, on the first floor,” Jeremy reports in, looking a little perturbed. “They have him tied to a chair, but I think he’s drugged or something. He didn’t say anything when I tried to talk to him. There’s two guys in the room watching TV, and the shower was on, so I think someone else was in there.”
“Austin’s in 103,” Landis relays to Walker. “There’s two guys guarding him, but they’re watching TV, and Jeremy says someone else is in the shower. I don’t think they were expecting us so soon.”
“Good,” Walker says, suddenly sounding much more confident than before. “We can surprise them, especially if Jenny’s in the shower and doesn’t see us coming.”
He reaches across Landis to pop open the glove compartment of the car, and takes out a pistol. After sliding the magazine out to make sure it’s loaded, he twists the gun in his hand, offering the grip to Landis. Landis stares at him.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Take it,” Walker says, wiggling the pistol in Landis’s direction. “Your close-range shit isn’t going to work on these guys, if we’re ambushing them.”
“I don’t know how to use one,” Landis says, but takes the pistol anyway, holding it gingerly in his hands as though it might go off at any moment.
“It’s not that hard.” Walker pops open the driver’s side door, stretching as he unfolds himself from the car seat. “Just take the safety off, point it, and pull the trigger. People are big targets. You don’t have to be precise.”
Landis’s hand is already sweaty around the grip of the pistol. He follows Walker across the parking lot, squinting to read the room numbers. 103 is just on the corner of the building, in the shadow of an overhang that makes up the second floor walkway of the motel. Walker pads nearly soundlessly up to the door, pressing his ear to it.
“Shower’s still running,” he murmurs, then makes a shooing gesture at Landis. “Get behind the corner. I’ll lure them out here where they can’t fuck with Austin.”
Landis rounds the corner and presses himself to the side of the building, peeking out. He can’t see the door to 103 any more, but he can see Walker, backing up several yards into the parking lot, then suddenly standing very still. There’s a sharp rattling noise, and for a quick, breathless moment, Landis is sure that Walker is going to pick up one of the nearby cars and ram it into the side of the building. But then something huge flies towards Walker with a snapping sound so abrupt that Landis nearly mistakes it for a gunshot.
It’s the motel room door. It hovers in the air above Walker, ripped from its hinges. Perversely, someone inside Room 103 is laughing.
“Came to get your boy back, did you?” a voice - a man’s - with a clipped, posh English accent asks from somewhere within Room 103.
“No one has to get hurt if you just hand him over,” Walker says, his voice even and dangerous.
“No fun in that,” a different man in the room says cheerfully, with a different, somewhat more slurred English accent. “Though it’s a neat magic trick you’ve got there.”
The laughter returns - from both men, this time. Landis cranes his neck around the corner, but he can’t see inside the motel room from the angle he’s at. He clenches his hand around the grip of the pistol, his knuckles aching with the force of it. They don’t sound surprised at all. Maybe Walker was right - maybe this is a trap. Maybe we were supposed to think we had the jump on them, to let us get cocky.
“Walker -” he starts, but it’s too late.
A barrage of objects fly out of the motel room. Instinctively, Landis assumes they’re bullets, or some sort of projectile shot from a gun. But it isn’t until he sees them standing still, quivering in the door Walker slammed downwards just in time to shield himself, that he realizes they’re knives. At least ten of them.
These guys aren’t messing around, Landis thinks, a cold bead of sweat running down the back of his neck. If Walker hadn’t acted as fast as he did, he’d be dead.
“We’ve got a couple tricks up our sleeve, too,” the man with the posh accent says, stepping out into the parking lot. Landis can only see him from behind, but he’s tall and lanky, with a shock of dark red hair that sticks up at an angle. “Looks like someone didn’t do their homework.”
“Is that all you’ve got?” Walker asks from behind the door. It’s standing fully upright between him and the man, effectively shielding them from one another.
“Hardly,” the man says, and Landis watches in horror as the door starts to curl forwards. It folds like a piece of paper, its top and bottom edges straining towards each other as it slowly becomes concave.
Landis can’t see the man’s face, but it’s obvious that he’s concentrating on the trick. It’s a clear opening. Taking a few steps forwards, Landis lines up a shot at the man’s torso, and squeezes the trigger of the pistol. He fires again, then again, for good measure, the sound of his heartbeat in his ears nearly drowning out the sound of the gunshots.
With all the adrenaline flooding his system, it takes him a moment to realize that none of the bullets connected. Instead, they’re floating, suspended in midair, a good couple of feet away from the man bending the door in half. As Landis watches, his arms dropping down to his sides in shock, the bullets slam down towards the ground with enough force to bounce off the pavement upon impact.
“Aw, you brought backup,” the other man inside the room says, walking outside to join his partner. He’s shorter, and stockier, with brown hair pulled back into a little rat-tail at the nape of his neck. He looks at Landis, now out in the open, and flashes him a grin. “Cute.”
“Don’t you fucking touch him,” Walker growls.
“Don’t have to touch him to kill him,” the shorter man says.
Landis suddenly feels weightless, yanked up into the air like a balloon on a current. Against all better reason, he looks down, and feels his stomach turn as he sees the ground getting farther and farther away from his feet.
“Where’s Jenny, huh?” Walker asks, his voice lighter, a little more taunting. He’s changing tactics - has to be - but Landis doesn’t quite understand why. “How come she’s got the two of you doing all her dirty work for her while she’s in the shower? She doesn’t want to try and take me out herself? Or is she scared I’ll break her gun, like I did last time?”
Landis looks out over the parking lot, a good five feet in the air by now, and sees one of the cars, almost imperceptibly at first, start to lift off the ground as well. He nearly calls out to Walker before he realizes that it’s Walker’s doing to begin with. He must be trying to distract them so he can take them both out at once.
The taller man cocks his head curiously, propping a hand on his hip as he looks at Walker. “You government types really aren’t the smartest, are you?”
“What does that mean?” Walker asks. The car he has with his powers is hovering no more than half a foot off the ground. Landis watches as he starts to move it more to one side, to line up his shot.
“Anyone can turn on a shower, idiot,” the shorter man says, and then suddenly Walker drops to the pavement, face down.
Landis feels himself returning to solid ground, a little more quickly than he was raised up, and hears a small crash as the car is set back down as well. He nearly trips over his own feet running towards Walker, his heart hammering against his ribs, his breath sticking painfully in his throat as he sees small rivers of blood start to snake across the pavement.
Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be dead, he chants in his mind, kneeling down next to Walker and beginning to gingerly roll him over. To Landis’s surprise, Walker’s eyes are fluttering open and shut, his chest very obviously pumping in and out with breath as he groans in pain. The shoulder of his t-shirt is soaked with blood, centered around a hole about the size of a quarter. A bullet wound.
“That,” the tall man says conversationally, squatting down next to Landis, “was a warning shot.” There’s a scar on his face that runs from his left temple all the way down to his chin, a thin crescent, and his eyes glitter mischeviously as he grins. “No use in killing you if we’re not getting paid. Now take your friend, and don’t come back.”
He pats Landis on the cheek, and stands up. As he and the shorter man make their way back inside, Landis shoots to his feet, trying to catch a glimpse of the inside of the motel room. He can see someone slumped on a chair inside, head rolled down towards their chest as though sleeping.
“Austin!” he calls, but doesn’t get a response. The two men pull the ruined door back after them, unfolding it and effectively sealing the motel room shut.