7.7
“So,” Naberius says, leaning forwards, his elbows on the table. He takes a bite of hamburger, before continuing with his mouth full. “What do these mercenaries want with Austin, of all people? And what would you have me do to them?”
Walker leans heavily against the wall, looking out the large window next to the cramped booth. He hasn’t eaten since this morning, at the diner, but all the smell of fast food is doing for him is making his stomach churn. Maybe the painkillers are wearing off. It’s been a couple of hours since they left the apartment with Naberius - must have been three hours, actually, because this is the last possible rest stop before getting on the long stretch of desert road that will lead them back to Jenny and the two hitmen.
“Don’t they feed you in Hell?” Walker asks, reaching over to steal a fry from Naberius’s tray. His shoulder throbs as soon as he moves his arm, and he drops his hand back down to the table, deciding against moving for the time being.
Naberius narrows his eyes. “You should consider yourself lucky that I am doing you such a large favor in exchange for a simple meal.”
“He’s right,” Landis says quietly, from his spot in the booth next to Walker. “And we don’t have a lot of time to lose. Can we talk strategy?”
Walker stares out the window again, considering the rest stop parking lot. It’s evening, now, and the sun is in the tail end of setting, the sky splashed with bruise-purples and bloody reds. Landis is right, of course - this is their last chance to catch up with the mercenaries and snag Austin. After tonight, Jenny and the others will be moving on to wherever their next stop is. Maybe it’s their final destination, a meeting with their employer, or maybe it’s some other motel in another city. Either way, Walker doesn’t think they’ll be leaving another helpful clue behind.
“I could just kill the mercenaries for you,” Naberius says mildly, through another mouthful of hamburger. He doesn’t look particularly bothered by the concept, but, Walker reminds himself, demons probably kill a lot more frequently than humans do. They’re demons, for God’s sake.
“You could kill all three of them,” Walker says flatly, just to confirm. “At once.”
Naberius shrugs. “Not all at once, but in fairly rapid succession, yes.”
“Do you have to see them to do it?” Landis asks.
“If they have any shred of magic, I should be able to sense them. Otherwise, yes, I do need an idea of where they are.” Naberius nods, polishing off his hamburger and wiping his hands delicately on a paper napkin.
“Well,” Walker says, “that’s not gonna fly. Jenny doesn’t have magic or powers or anything, and she’s always going to be out of sight.” He catches Naberius looking at him curiously, head cocked to one side, and decides to backtrack a bit. “She’s a ranged weapons specialist. A sniper. At best, she’ll be hidden on a rooftop nearby. At worst, inside a building.”
“Ah,” Naberius says, thoughtfully biting a french fry in half. “That does pose a problem.”
“Also…I think our priority should be less killing the mercs, and more saving Austin,” Walker says slowly. Landis and Naberius both give him an odd look, so he elaborates, letting a strategy form in his head as he goes. Talking through problems has always helped him - it’s just that usually, he talks to himself in his apartment, instead of an actively listening audience in a fast food restaurant. “If we go and fight them there, we’re walking into their turf, into a situation they’ve set up to give themselves the best strategic advantage over us. Now that they know I have at least one other person with me, they’ll probably be preparing for at least one of us to come back tonight.” He steals another fry from Naberius’s tray, holding it in front of his face and staring at it, thinking, before stuffing it into his mouth. “I think our best play is for you two to do that whole demon teleport thing inside of the motel room, grab Austin, and get out, while I draw fire from Jenny and the other two.”
“You’ll just get shot again,” Landis protests. Walker shakes his head.
“As long as I can see where the bullets are coming from, my powers can stop them. The only flaw being, again, that Jenny’s always out of sight, and we have no idea where she’s situated.”
“But you’ve fought her before, right?” Landis asks. “On the phone - your boss said you’d already survived her once, or something. So how did you do it?”
He’s too observant for his own good. Walker unsticks the side of his face from the booth window and massages his temples with a hand. The only reason he survived Jenny, back before they broke up, was because she killed the guy next to him first. After that, it was easy to tell what angle the bullets were coming from. But it’s embarrassing to admit that he hadn’t even considered the possibility of an assassination attempt on the criminal he had been assigned to escort, and hadn’t particularly bothered to search the surrounding area before walking right out into the open. The only reason I didn’t die was because I surprised her, and got close enough to see her rifle and snap it in half. She won’t let that happen again.
“I got lucky,” Walker says, resigning himself to the thought that it might actually be better to tell the truth for once. “I figured out where she was at, because she didn’t shoot at me first. I mean, I could do laps around the parking lot until she fires, but she won’t be giving out warning shots this time.”
Landis frowns, his eyebrows furrowing together as he considers something. “That lot really isn’t that big. It can’t be hard to figure out where she’s set up. Look -”
Landis starts to rearrange the table, taking his own tray and tearing off a chunk from the corner of the placemat, making it into a fat, upside-down L-shape. He places two used ketchup packets side by side in the upper right corner, then a small, unopened container of honey mustard on the left side, just above the torn-off chunk. Finally, Landis folds a straw wrapper a few times and places it along the bottom part of the placemat.
“This is the parking lot,” he explains, gesturing at his tray. He points at the straw wrapper. “This is the motel, and you were standing about…here.” Landis taps his finger near the right edge of the straw wrapper. “You weren’t hit from behind, so it wouldn’t make sense for her to be on top of either the gift shop or gas station.”
He gestures to the two ketchup packets. Walker leans over the tray - he can sort of see where Landis is going with this, and it is pretty logical. There’s only two buildings she could have shot from - the motel or the convenience store. The convenience store is on an angle from the motel, but Jenny probably could have made the shot. He looks down at his shoulder to confirm, picking up his sleeve. The bullet hole is skewed slightly to his side, not enough towards the front of his body that it would be completely impossible for it to have come from the direction of the convenience store’s roof. If she shot from the second story of the motel, she would have had to been aiming nearly straight down at me. But again, Jenny’s good at what she does. She could have made the shot from either place.
“So the shot came from here or here,” he says, pointing at the straw wrapper and honey mustard container.
Landis nods. “Yeah. It should be pretty simple to find out which one, right?”
Walker considers the makeshift model on Landis’s tray. I’ve still got a few tricks that Jenny’s never seen me use. If I throw her off guard with one of those, I could probably catch her dead to rights. Assuming being injured doesn’t interfere with my powers more than it already has.
“Maybe,” he concedes. “But I’ll have to do it without her seeing.”
“Jeremy says he can scout ahead again when we get there, if you want,” Landis says, looking off slightly to the left of Naberius, who has been silently munching on fries, watching the conversation unfold. “He can at least find out if she’s on any of the rooftops.”
“Sounds good,” Walker says. He’ll take any edge he can get over Jenny and her partners, especially if it means getting to surprise and humiliate them.
Landis looks back towards Naberius. “Are you okay with that plan? Popping into the motel room and getting Austin?”
“Child’s play.” Naberius smiles deviously. “And if the plan falls through, my offer to kill the mercenaries still stands.”
“We’ll think about it,” Walker promises, with no intention to actually do so. He shifts in his seat, the ache in his shoulder slowly throbbing back towards colorful intensity, and thinks about the bottle of painkillers in the car’s glove box.
“We should get a move on,” Landis says, sliding out of the booth, standing up, and stretching. “It’s getting dark.”
“Right,” Walker says, and stands as well, careful not to move his shoulder too much on his way out of the booth. He watches as Landis crosses the room, dumping the parking lot model in the trash. “Time’s a’wasting. Let’s go save Austin.”