CHAPTER 15: HOWEVER LONG

  GARLAND HEIGHTS—NOVEMBER 18th, 1992 | LATE MORNING

  ?

  Ice splintered against his forearms.

  Cameron leered at Leroy from behind the waxen, ivory rivets of his arms, teeth gritted in an anger that was just barely tamed. Last time, he was reckless. Too headstrong for his own good. But anger was a tool, just like anything else—and like any good tool, it could be made into a weapon with enough focus.

  Leroy knew him as a hammer. Strong, but unwieldy. A tool for breaking. Today he would be more than that. Today, he would be a battering ram; undeniable and made for breaching, not a weapon, but made into one by sheer persistence.

  Cameron planted a foot into the ground and sprung forward, his steps heavy in the dirt.

  A moment prior, Leroy had thrown one of his waterskins into the air and shot it. Cameron’s skin rejected it. But that ice, Cameron knew, could be reused, and he still had two more waterskins, and whatever gun he held had more bullets to fire.

  Battering ram.

  Cameron charged and kept his forearms crossed in front of himself. A bullet ricocheted off his shoulder. Another bounced off his forearm.

  Leroy was a few steps away, barrel pointed in Cameron’s direction, face drawn into a tired frown.

  Cameron swung wide and heavy, but only after getting close enough to justify the haymaker.

  Leroy propped his forearm against Cameron’s own, and used his opposite arm to brace, white-knuckling his hefty handgun.

  The hit didn’t land, but the force of Cameron’s swing did. There wasn’t a snap or a pop—only the sound of an impact that sent Leroy flying a few feet to the side, and old skin that was likely black and blue in contusions under the sleeves of his turtleneck. It was enough of something to make the old man’s face contort in displeasure; a look that Cameron savored.

  Leroy was about to hit the ground and everything became slower.

  Cameron planted his back leg and pivoted. He thrusted himself forward and reached. A bullet fired into the palm of his hand. Only a slight dent emerged, if that. Cameron grabbed hold of Leroy’s equipment harness right before he could could fall.

  As soon as he did, realized his error. His hand was wet. Cameron’s eyes widened; he broke one of Leroy’s two remaining waterskins.

  “Too eager. Take it down two notches, and try again,” said Leroy.

  Leroy clenched.

  A dim blue poured out from the symbol on his neck, and that same blue outlined the water on Cameron’s hand.

  A block of ice formed around his fist. Leroy’s clenched hand opened, and he whisked two fingers towards Cameron.

  The previous shards and splinters of frost all zipped towards the block, like coins to a magnet, and melded into it. It was larger. Heavier; not heavy, per se, but heavy enough to set Cameron off balance just enough so that he’d tip forward.

  Something cold pressed into his chest. It wasn’t ice.

  It was the barrel of a gun. Leroy emptied the entire clip, point-blank. Cameron didn’t count the bullets, but enough of them at such a close proximity put more than a dent in his ivory, metallic skin.

  Bullet after bullet jammed into one another and gunsmoke flowed into Cameron’s nostrils. Pieces of Cameron’s skin shed from his body, and he watched in blatant surprise as the waxen material flew outward.

  None of the bullets had pierced him, but the impact of all the bullets sent a shockwave through his torso. Air left his lungs, and he heaved as he stared down. There were breaches in his armor; small holes, surrounded by cracks. He felt the heat of metal against his skin, beneath his armored layer, where the tips of the bullets just barely broke through to touch Cameron's body.

  “Your problem, Kessler,” Leroy pistol whipped Cameron in the face and shoved him back with a heavy shoulder, “is that you think you’re invincible. That shell of yours might be tough as nails. But wood rots, metal rusts, and even the tallest mountain eventually finds itself carved by the rain. Try again.”

  The shove only sent Cameron a few inches back before the weight of the ice block pulled him straight forward. Cameron didn’t allow himself to fall, not fully. He propped himself up on a single knee.

  His opposite hand clobbered down into the ice block and shattered it. He sprung forward again.

  But by now, Leroy was further away, if only by a few feet. There it was again. That clench. Something was coming. His eyes shot down toward the shattered icicles. A dim blue glow encased them, and within seconds, they formed into a disc of ice; sharp and serrated like a rotary cutter.

  It flew toward Cameron and he gritted his teeth. No more battering ram. He had to be a different tool entirely. He had to be a vice-grip. Cameron opened up both of his hands and clasped them down around the disc. He leaned onto his back leg, and with a heave, twisted, and threw it towards Leroy.

  He could re-use it. No, he would re-use it. Shape it into something different. A wall, or a spike—something dense enough to stop Cameron. But there would be a brief window of time, however small, that it would take for the ice to stretch and reform.

  Dim blue encased the disc. It began to reform into a wall, but before it could fully create a barrier between them, Cameron cocked his arm back and launched a fist forward, damn-near throwing himself into it.

  Blood—Leroy’s blood—spattered onto Cameron’s face and neck. Cameron hit him square in the collarbone. And this time, there was a crack, and a pained look on Leroy’s face to match. The arbiter skidded across the ground, and the only reason he didn’t fall was because his back was against the wall of the construction site’s trailer that lingered behind them since the start of their bout.

  “Holmes,” Leroy began, breath heavy, mouth caked in blood. “Time?”

  Cameron’s head swiveled to the side. Captain Holmes sat on a cluster of wooden palettes, and drew down the sleeve of his black, uniformed jacket to check his wristwatch. “Three minutes in.”

  “You do what you need to do, Kessler?” Leroy asked, groaning as he took a step forward.

  “No,” Cameron said. “I haven’t.”

  “Two minutes on the clock. Think that’ll be enough time, Holmes?” Leroy walked slower now, but wore a half-smile on his face.

  “Just get on with it, Leroy!” Captain Holmes yelled from afar.

  “It—.. however long it takes. Three minutes, five minutes, ten, forty, fucking—.. I don’t care if it takes days, or weeks, or months, or years, Leroy. But with the way it’s looking, I’ll only need the two.”

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  Leroy nodded his head, an uninterested look plastered on his face. “See, that’s what you said before. Three minutes. Now you’re saying it could be years, or, that it’ll only take two more minutes. Which is it, Kessler?”

  Cameron sauntered onwards. “However long it takes.”

  “Good answer. ‘Cause it’s not happening today.”

  Cameron charged.

  One or two more solid hits and he’d have his revenge.

  As soon as Leroy was within arm’s reach, the arbiter ducked and reloaded in record timing. And in the heat of the moment, he threw his last remaining waterskin—and Cameron didn’t notice until it broke against his chest. Cameron’s eyes widened.

  Crouched down on a single knee, Leroy whisked two fingers to the side.

  A dim blue emerged around the water that had been splashed on Cameron’s chest, right where Leroy had emptied his previous clip of ammo to create a breach in the ivory-like exoskeleton on Cameron’s body. Frost gathered around his chest. It seeped through the fissures and cracks of the breach, spreading like a frigid infection.

  “For what it’s worth, you lasted longer than I thought you would. And you’ve got one mean jab, Kessler.”

  Cameron looked down.

  Leroy clenched.

  Spikes of ice grew between cracks of Cameron’s ivory-skin and expanded. They cut through lungs, muscle, and tendons, but couldn’t cut clean through the skin on Cameron’s back. Sharpened frost lingered in Cameron’s body and struggled to exit out the other end. Leroy clenched again. The spikes size and in strength until they violently jutted out through his back, first denting, then cracking, and finally breaking his hardened skin.

  The spikes weren’t blue, or red, but a burgundy soaked in splotches of skin and viscera.

  Cameron fell forward onto his knees.

  Leroy pointed the gun against Cameron’s forehead.

  The metal was colder than the ice in his body. His skin began to pale, and if there was any fire inside of him churning for vengeance, its cries of protest were numbed by a sharp chill. Cameron’s vision blurred

  The arbiter cocked the hammer of the gun back and readied his trigger finger.

  “That’s five minutes, Leroy." Captain Holmes emerged next to Leroy, tapping his wristwatch.

  Leroy lifted his gun and crouched down. He leaned the handle of the gun on Cameron’s forehead, and used it to tip him backwards. Ice and blood jettied out from him, dispersed by the command of the man who wielded both. “You aren’t quite dead, Kessler. Congrats. You pass.”

  ?

  He woke to a vile taste in his mouth; like rotten food in liquid form. Pasteurized demon blood.

  Cameron’s stomach twisted into knots and he lurched forward to vomit, dry heaving over the side of the car seats. Bandages covered his upper torso and wrapped around his back and shoulder, and the simple black shirt—one half of the temporary fatigues he was made to wear in Sterling Yard—was no longer on his chest.

  “Fuck,” Cameron winced.

  The Drychus metal cuffs were back on his hands, and their familiar sting soured his expression. Leroy’s black SUV was empty, save for Cameron, who took a moment to correct his posture. Outside, the fog was dense, the sky was gray, and whatever parking garage Leroy had moved the car into was damn near filled to the brim. Then it all set in.

  He lost.

  Again.

  Twice; to the same man. Cameron settled into that feeling of quiet defeat and didn’t make any effort to stop himself from smiling. 0-2. He’d gotten further in the second round than in the first. He could only fall upwards. He reminded himself of what he told Leroy: days, weeks, months, years. Eventually, he'd find a way.

  “However long it takes,” he muttered to himself.

  Cameron shifted between the seats and saw that somebody was leaning against the hood of the Cadillac. Blonde-silver hair, a flat cap. Leroy.

  He inched towards the door and banged his head against the glass. “Hey!”

  Leroy turned. He had a newspaper in his hands that he’d been reading, and promptly folded it under one arm and made his way towards the backseat of the car. He opened the door and Cameron stepped out, shirtless, and cold.

  “Could do with more protein in your diet, Kessler,” Leroy stated. “Some more compound lifts too. Bench, deadlift, squat. Doesn’t need to be complic—”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Just saying you could put on a few pounds,” Leroy said plainly. “Far as I can tell, you only get a boost when you activate your abilities. When that timer runs out, you'll need something better than your lanky limbs to dish out some pain. Am I wrong?”

  “No, but—”

  Leroy slapped Cameron’s chest with the newspaper and turned. “Come on. We’ve got an appointment.”

  “My shirt.”

  “Go without it. You’ll be getting your old clothes back soon enough anyways. Pick up the pace. Esme’ll add ten bucks for every minute we’re late.”

  Leroy paced along the parking garage and Cameron followed suit.

  He briefly glanced out the window and saw that they were likely on the third or fourth floor. Godfrey Tower loomed in the distance, and around it, a patchwork of smaller, nondistinct skyscrapers and old brick buildings. A sheet of fog washed over all of it, and he wondered what time it was. Mornings and afternoons seemed to blind into one canvas of gray dew no matter what the day was.

  They made it to the access stairwell and began their descent. No windows, old lights, the lingering scent of piss and booze. It reminded Cameron of home. Leroy took to the front and Cameron followed behind him. Every step he took filled his body with aches and tremors, and he could still feel the dredges of the cold from where Leroy’s spikes had pierced into him.

  “You got lucky, you know," Cameron said.

  Leroy continued down the steps. Cameron couldn’t see it, but knew he must’ve been grinning to himself. “Am I?"

  “One more solid hit and I would’ve—”

  “But you didn’t.”

  Cameron gritted his teeth. “Next time.”

  “Sure,” Leroy said, shuffling further down the steps.

  “You fed me pasteurized demon blood.”

  “Yup. One for me, one for you. A parting gift from Captain Holmes. That and the bandages on your chest,” said Leroy.

  “I don’t need that shit,” Cameron retorted.

  “That shit, Kessler, is the reason you’re alive. Tough guy act doesn’t work all that well when you’re talking to the one who kicked your ass. Twice.”

  Cameron set his jaw.

  By the time they reached the bottom of the stairwell, Leroy opened up an access door and nudged Cameron out.

  They found themselves on an open sidewalk cramped between rows of buildings, framed by the occasional tree or patch of greenery. Streetlamps illuminated their path forward, and the handful of pedestrians regarded Leroy and Cameron with caution, some more shocked than others. There were a few times where Leroy begrudgingly showed off his arbiter’s license to quell the nerves of some mundies who had no idea what he was doing; who rightfully probably assumed he was some sort of kidnapper. Not that such a thought was very far off.

  Leroy tugged him back before he could walk any further, and pivoted towards the facade of a shop.

  It was a slither of a store, really—the end all be all for hole-in-the-walls that you’d miss if you didn’t look out for it. Exterior brick walls, a thin, spotless window that doubled as a display glass. Trinkets, wares, odds and ends, all sat on a display shelf with price tags. All of them expensive. All of them polished. Cameron’s eyes trailed towards the vertical sign bolted into the facade.

  ALLURE ARTIFICERY & REPAIR

  “It’s your lucky day, Kessler. We’re getting fitted for a pair of rings. Couples discount,” Leroy joked, shoving him closer to the door.

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  CAPTAIN HOLMES

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