CHAPTER 37: DO IT YOUR WAY

  THE PINES—NOVEMBER 20th, 1992 | LATE AFTERNOON

  ?

  Cameron would be lying to himself if he said he wasn’t a little bit afraid.

  A single hand wrapped tightly around his Reign 18, which he carried idly at his side.

  Absent the guidance of Eisenhower and Arthur, there was an air of uncertainty that lingered around him with each step he took behind Leroy. He’d slain as many garou as he could’ve, but now, he walked through the Pines absent the white-ivory skin that made him fearless. Supposing one among the many that made up the horde followed them, he’d be forced to rely on his shit aim, Guts, or Leroy. At the moment, he wasn’t particularly thrilled with any of those options.

  Worse, Eisenhower had mentioned this section of the Pines had been unpatrolled for some time.

  A massive herd of failed werewolves was one thing. But there had to be other things here, worse things. Ghastly things. On their way there, Leroy had thrown around a few words that Cameron merely nodded his head to—banshee, wight, ghoul. He’d never seen any of those things before, and whatever he’d heard in the South End surely wouldn’t compare to the real thing.

  Not to mention the demons.

  “You’re sure this is the right way?” Cameron asked. In front of him was Leroy’s back, and to either side of his vision was fog, moss, and pine trees huddled around a rugged and stone-laden terrain.

  “Eisenhower said to take a left at the waterfall, which is what we’re doing,” Leroy said.

  Guts swished back and forth around Leroy’s head, and the baseball-sized sprite looked at him like the green-white will-o-wisp that it was. It didn’t blink, yet, but Cameron had the inclination that it was more aware, somehow, or more vigilant. It seemed protective. Cameron looked at his skin, and the lack of white-ivory that usually covered it, and then looked back up at Guts.

  “How much further do we need to walk, Leroy? We’ve been walking, what, twenty minutes? Thirty?” Cameron asked.

  Leroy glanced over his shoulder. “Both, or maybe none, or maybe more. Don’t know. We’ll see it when we see it, Kessler. What has you so spooked? Over at the waterfall, you seemed fine. More than fine. Hell, you were riding that high cause you offed a few of those garou.”

  “Just don’t want to keep my guard down, is all,” Cameron retorted.

  Leroy pivoted, and eyed him up and down. “When can you use your abilities again?”

  Cameron furrowed his brows. “I don’t know. It’s like I told you when we ditched Eisenhower and Arthur. I’m fresh out of juice, and I don’t know when I’ll get more.”

  Leroy exhaled. “Just what we need.”

  “What the fuck did you want me to do, Leroy? Run into a horde of wolf-human-zombie things and wait for them to get a taste? I didn’t have a choice,” Cameron retorted.

  “Relax. This is more a you problem than a me problem. Sooner or later, we’re going to need to.. I don’t know, sit down. Figure out what makes you tick, help you get a better idea of how to use your abilities.”

  “Yeah, fine,” Cameron said matter-of-factly.

  Leroy raised a finger in Cameron’s face. “And you can’t rely on them. Not all the time.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Camerons said, scoffing.

  “I know how to aim, and I’m not as young as I was, but I know how to fight.”

  Cameron pointed a thumb to himself. “You’re saying I don’t?”

  Leroy turned back around, and continued along the beaten path. “You do have a shit aim. We’re overdue for a visit to a shooting range. Sure, you know how to use your hands, I’ll give you that, but it’s all aggression, and most of the time? You’re doing it while you’re using your hexling abilities. Raw force is only reliable for as long as you can keep it up. And right now, you’ve got the same skin as me—minus the wrinkles.”

  Cameron looked at his hands. His palms were covered in calluses, and his knuckles were raw, even still, with bumps and scar tissue, a testament to the years of aggression that had served Cameron well in the South End. If Leroy was right, Cameron didn’t want to admit it. He took pride in the marks he’d earned, even if he’d earned them on the behest of a good-for-nothing, whose name he didn’t even want to dignify by thinking of it.

  “I’ve got Guts now.” Cameron watched the sprite. “And you didn’t see what he was capable of.”

  “He?” Leroy laughed.

  “Yeah, he,” Cameron said defensively. He caught up with Leroy, and rather than trial a bit behind him, he opted to walk to the side of him.

  Leroy shook his head, and a smile lingered on his face. “Guts have a pair of balls on him, and a prick to match it?”

  “No, but it feels—.. I don’t know. Wrong, you know, to call Guts it.”

  Leroy shrugged. “Well, that’s what sprites are. Its, drawn out from wherever they came from by bored witches who’ve run out of banes and curses to put on people. Look, I’m not tearing you a new one just for the sake of it. These questions I’m asking you, and these things I’m bringing to your attention, Kessler, it's important. Especially now.”

  Cameron exhaled. He felt another lecture coming, and braced himself. With a nod, a raised brow, and a face unabashed in its display of annoyance, he gestured towards Leroy with a nod of the head, and twirled a single finger as if to say get on with it.

  “Sooner rather than later, we’ll be at the Commonwealth Industrial Park, and when that happens, I’ll need to know that you can pull your weight.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “I can,” Cameron said.

  Leroy stopped, and pivoted. “Without using your abilities, Kessler.”

  “I’ll be fine, Leroy.”

  “I’ve already had to babysit you once, at Spectre. Don’t want to do that again.”

  Cameron stepped up to him, very nearly breathing into his face. “In and out is the plan, you said. We find where or how ether is being produced, and we stop it. Blow it up, you said. I’m good for it, but are you? How are we going to blow it up? What are we going to blow it up with?” Cameron pressed his own finger against his head, and tapped it over and over. “You’re over here telling me I need to do better, be better, and you’re still half-assing every fucking plan. I’m not the only one here who has something to learn, and I’m sick of you trying to tell me I am.”

  Leroy opened his mouth and closed it, and took a moment to inhale, and exhale. “It’s an industrial park, Kessler. All we need is some gasoline and a bullet. We find wherever the ether is being produced in their processing facility, lather it in oil, shoot it. Simple. Easy. Done.”

  “Yeah, and then it spreads, and blows up the whole facility,” Cameron retorted.

  “That’s not our problem, now, is it?”

  “There’s going to be workers in there, Leroy, people who have nothing to do with this whole ether shitshow. You remember what you told me? Want to, need to, or have to.”

  Recent memory took hold, and Cameron thought of the three of them—Gideon, Leroy, and himself—sitting along the sidewalk in the aftermath of what had happened in the Nightingale theater. Cameron remembered being angry, frustrated. Confused, even, at that moment, but now he felt more frustrated than anything else. Leroy had a habit of doing that. Saying one thing, and doing another when it suited him. Cameron almost understood it. To be an arbiter, he was starting to gather, requiring one to go back and forth on what was okay and what wasn’t, so long as it got a job done.

  “You—...” Cameron exhaled sharply. “It’s not a matter of can't, you know you can. It’s whether you should. Ruby Shakur wants this whole operation shut down. Fine. She’s paid us to put a stop to it. Fine. But there’s nothing in the arbitration contract that calls for the heads of whatever alchemists or processing workers are in that damn building, or the secretaries, or the custodians, or whoever.”

  Leroy paused for a long moment. “To be frank, Kessler, I’m not expecting to blow up the entire damn thing, alright? Just want to shut down whichever part makes the ether, destroy their supply, and have a word with Bluestein’s resident suit and tie to let him know he can’t make it anymore. But fine. We’ll do it your way. We get there, we split up. I’ll handle the sabotage, but it’ll be up to you to get everyone out of the building. Fair?”

  Cameron nodded. “Yeah. Fair.”

  They didn’t share many words after that, and continued along the footpath for what seemed like another twenty minutes or so, only to exit onto a small hill overlooking the Commonwealth Industrial Park. It had to be acres upon acres worth of land, a sprawling set of interconnected and disjointed factories and warehouses and processing plants. Water towers and industrial-grade chimneys stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Smoke and sawdust and chemical air trailed out from the various and looming structures, wider than they were tall, but all of them had an authority of their own.

  From this distance, it was difficult to tell in acute detail, but the Commonwealth Industrial Park seemed to be a borough in-and-of-itself, contained by a zig-zagging perimeter of stone walls retrofitted with a patchwork of sheetmetal, and, somewhere, Cameron presumed, sigilmasonry. In some areas, there were garage doors built along the walls themselves, numerous as they were large, that seemed fit for transport vehicles or shipping trucks or the like. Most, if not all of them were situated along the front entrance of the barricades.

  Clasping his hands over his brows, Cameron squinted, and honed in on what he presumed to be the front end of the Commonwealth Industrial Park, opposite of where they’d arrived in the back. The fog was dense, so dense that there were guard-tower lighthouses that illuminated a clear path into it.

  “Holy shit,” Cameron muttered. “This place is like a damn fortress.”

  “Money talks, Kessler, and Brinehaven’s titans of industry have the loudest voices of them all.”

  ?

  They stuck to the treeline as they advanced towards the rear barricades of the Commonwealth Industrial Park. Strangely, but perhaps expectantly, there wasn’t an entrance in the rear barricades given their proximity to the stony hills. There wasn’t even a path, and as they neared the walls, Cameron was surprised less and less by the lack of security. Within moments they were both up against the wall, and Cameron’s eyes scanned over the sigilmasonry that littered the concrete and sheetmetal like a patchwork of arcane graffiti. Guts did not blink, but stared in idle curiosity at the display, turning towards Cameron.

  Cameron went to press a hand against the wall. A low hum erupted along the sigils, and an invisible force prevented him from fully touching it. “No doors, and we can’t break through with these here.”

  “That’s why we’re going over.”

  “Over?”

  “Over,” Leroy said with a nod.

  “What about those lighthouses? Don’t they have, I don’t know, guards or something?” Cameron asked.

  The brand on Leroy’s neck began to glow a dim blue. “The towers are just that. Lighthouses, typically unmanned. They just stay on.”

  “And there’s no one up there?” Cameron asked, pointing a finger up to the top of the barricade.

  “Not that I know of. Look, the Commonwealth Industrial Park isn’t a fortress, as much as it looks like one from the outside. It’s like I told you over on the bridge, the founders of the Commonwealth made these walls, and sure, they are serviced every few years, but inside of them are plots of land owned by companies. Facilities, factories, processing plants. If they want security, they pay for it, but that doesn’t extend beyond what they own.”

  Ice began to gather around Leroy, pulled in from the surrounding fog. Cameron looked down and saw that a platform was putting itself together below their feet, and witnessed Leroy clenching his hand and twisting. He crouched down low, and with delicate focus, caused the platform to rise into a pillar.

  Cameron wobbled in place.

  Foot by foot, they ascended, and Cameron couldn’t help but look down. A deep and primordial fear erupted inside of him, a fear so distinct, so powerful, that it made demons, garou, and all other manner of fiends pale in comparison. Even if he still had his abilities active, the possibility of falling to the ground would’ve haunted him. Guts whirred and hovered over Cameron’s head, its singular green-white eye staring blankly at the ice.

  Just as they neared the top, Cameron slipped.

  A panicked shout escaped him.

  His breath steadied when he realized he wasn’t falling. He felt a hard grip against his wrist, and glanced over his shoulder to see that Leroy had caught him. With a sudden jerk, he was pulled back onto the platform.

  “Crouch down. You almost fell ‘cause your center of gravity is all out of whack, Kessler,” Leroy said.

  Cameron lowered himself, and the pillar grew taller. By the time they reached the top of the barricade, Cameron estimated that they had to have been at least 100 feet up, which meant the barricades were about as tall as a six or seven story building. Notably, the top part of the wall lacked any sigils. Leroy stepped right off the platform and onto the top of the wall, and urged Cameron to do the same.

  Below, the clamor of industry was as obvious as it was loud. Silhouettes of workers tending to their labor lingered between skeletons of steel that called themselves factories and workhouses, and there were properly paved roads between each of the lots, with trucks and cars and even motorcycles delivering supplies to various buildings. Smoke and cinder rose from chimneys, and the smell of oil and gasoline and metal was undeniable. It wasn’t a bad smell—just strong. Overbearing.

  He never would’ve thought a single step would take so much courage.

  When both of his feet touched the concrete, relief washed over Cameron’s features, and even Guts seemed less jittery in the way that it was moving around him. There were no railings, but the top of the wall was more than wide enough to walk along, and Leroy gestured towards one of the lighthouses. It had an access door.

  That was their way in, and their way down.

  When they reached it, Leroy entered first, and Cameron lingered with his hand on the rusted door lever.

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  GUTS

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