“Oh shit, one of them,” Sam said, shaking his head. “Fucking honor. Nothing gets you killed faster on the street, man. Hey, remember when I met you? You used to be like that too, huh, Ballard? Only reason you’re still breathing is you wised up, bangabros.”
“You’ll do it?” I asked. “You owe me, Sammy.”
“Yeah, I sure do,” he said. “Okay, we’ll keep him occupied.”
“Watch yourself,” I said. “He’s Fae, an Elf. Knight to the House of Ankou.”
“You forget who you’re talking to?” Samnang said. “Like I said, we’ll keep him busy. You just play stupid and scared, and we’ll get you out of here quick. Take him out back behind the building. Give me five.” We bumped fists, and I headed back up to Vigil, slipping a cigarette between my lips as I did.
“Well?” Burris asked.
“He’s got a lead for me,” I said, lighting the smoke. “He’s meeting me in the alleyway. You stay put. He doesn’t like the look of you.”
“Can’t do that,” Burris said, like I was pretty sure he would. “Come on, I’ll be charming.”
We stepped out a large metal fire door with a sheet of yellowed paper taped to it that said: “Please keep door closed! Back lot is not a bathroom!!!” Behind the bowling alley, there were several large Dumpsters and rows of large plastic garbage cans, all of them overflowing. I saw a rat scuttle into hiding between them at the sound of the fire door clanging open. The night sky above was slate gray, no stars, no moon, only a diffused aura of light pollution that clung to the sky like thick, filthy cobwebs.
By the time I had tossed my cigarette, Samnang and the boys came through the fire door. Sam pointed to Vigil and spoke in Khmer. “Your unlucky day, phng dar,” he said and gestured to two of his larger men. They moved toward Vigil with arrogant smirks on their faces. Burris looked over to me, and I did my best to look surprised and ready to throw down. I didn’t get a chance to gauge his reaction, because the bangers were on top of us by then.
Both of Sam’s men came in on Vigil. One went high with a solid right, the other low with a kick that showed he had some Tae Kwon Do training. Vigil jumped straight up, using the guy’s incoming fist and arm the way a gymnast might use a vaulting horse. The other gang member’s low kick missed, because there was nothing there to connect with, and the first guy’s punch never got a chance to find its way to Vigil’s face. At the apex of his jump, Vigil snapped both legs out, kicking both of his attackers in the face. Both large men staggered back, crashing into the garbage cans, noses bleeding, lips split, and eyes swelling shut. Vigil came back down, assuming a martial arts stance I didn’t recognize. His face was serene, calm. His eyes were dead.
“This is going to end poorly for all of you,” he said. “Only warning.” Samnang barked a curt order in Khmer, and six more of his men charged at Vigil, joined by the first two injured bangers. They leapt through the air toward Vigil in defiance of gravity like something you’d see in a wire-fu movie, but this was no Hollywood trick. I saw Vigil’s stone expression shift ever so slightly in surprise, then he was too busy to do anything but fight.
I once dabbled in aikido when I was maybe fourteen. Surprise, surprise, it didn’t take. I didn’t have the patience for it. I had studied it in a little shithole dojo in a really bad neighborhood of Washington, D.C. I was trying to learn more about Chi, trying to find my way as a fledgling wizard. Each of us comes to the power a different way, most often by the philosophy of whoever discovered us and brought us into the Life. That would have been my granny; she was a West Virginian Wisdom, a kind of witch-woman, a healer. I was angry, childish, and pigheaded and fought her gentle way of using magic to serve life and protect beauty. Then she died, and I was on my own. I’m a magical mutt; I take and use from any system that works, and at fourteen, I wanted to learn Chi. The sensei gave us a demonstration once, taking on five of his best students. They were standing and surrounded him. He was kneeling with a serene smile of welcome on his face. He tossed all of them around the room like they were rag dolls, letting them do a lot of the work of taking themselves out. I now realized that one of the forms Vigil was trained in was aikido.
Vigil struck one of the gang as he began to land from his flight, driving the heel of his palm into the man’s temple, stunning him. He grabbed the stunned man’s forearm and swung him in a semicircle, smashing him into three of his fellow bangers as they too landed. With half of his opponents tied up in a tangle, Vigil shifted styles and went to work on the other four using tight, vicious close strikes. The knight was never where they tried to land a punch, already moving. Vigil still wasn’t sweating.
A hand grabbed my shoulder. It was one of Sam’s men. He smiled at me and winked. “Going up,” he said in Khmer. I saw Burris trying to reach me, but a few of the gangsters he had played bowling pin with were back in the fight and made a violent curtain between him and me. He took out two of them before he had to turn to deal with the ones at his six.
Samnang sent in his last five men to reinforce the five still standing. He shouted out in Khmer, “Let’s show this Fae bastard what he’s stirred up!” Sam and the others all began to
