A .38 revolver is a pretty small gun… unless it's pointed at you, then it seems a whole lot bigger. The little barrel swelled until it seemed I was about to fall into it. I could practically hear my ex-girlfriend’s finger tighten on the trigger.
“Holy shit Kris! It’s me! Tom!” I squeaked in a way that was entirely unbecoming of a secret agent and held my hands up in surrender. I could see her eyes narrow dangerously over the revolver’s simple sites and felt sure she was more likely to shoot me now than before.
“Thomas Winter? What are you doing here? And why did you tackle me like a werewolf in mating season?” She ground the words out through clenched teeth. Maybe because she was angry, but her German accent came out stronger than I remembered; ‘werewolf’ came out with Vs instead of Ws.
“Believe it or not, I did it to protect you.” One of her eyebrows sketched a skeptical arc upwards. “Really,” I insisted, “I didn’t smuggle myself into this hellhole just to assault my old college girlfriend.”
“Then why did you smuggle yourself into this “hellhole”?
“It’s better that you don’t know. I’ve got some bad people chasing me, if they think I attacked you rather than going to you for help then you’ll be safe.”
“You need my help?” her gun lowered fractionally towards the ground. I could see a little more of her face now that it wasn’t being obscured by a firearm. She still looked good. A little more careworn and a few more laugh lines around the eyes, but she still looked like the beautiful, foreign art student that I had been lucky enough to date for a few short months back when the world was a simpler place. Her dark blue eyes though, were as hard as river stones as she glared at me.
“Yes, I need a place to stay for the night or two. Then I’ll be out of your hair. I don’t like bringing you into this but I’m desperate.”
She held the gun on me for a few long seconds before dropping it entirely. “I think I could probably save myself a lot of trouble if I just shoot you. But we were friends once.”
“I would like to think that we were more than friends,” I said with my best ingratiating smile.
“Don’t remind me,” she growled, raising the gun once more but only as far as my genitals this time.
“Sorry, sorry,” I resolved to keep that smile in my pocket for the next few days. “Didn’t know you were still sore about that.”
“Do not talk about it. Now help me up, scheissekopf.”
Like the rest of the building, the apartment would have looked very trendy and modern ten years ago. Just the sort of place an aspiring artist in Europe would live. It’d been “improved” for the modern age by the addition of a wood burning stove, a wreath of garlic over the door and a couple of handily placed silver butter knives from someone’s heirloom set. It was also small, cramped and packed full of Kris’s worldly possessions. I thought that the European standard of living left something to be desired before the Resurgence and things had only gone downhill from there.
“Wow Kris. Your place looks… good.”
“Shove it. It is a crap hole just like the rest of this country,” she snapped irritably as she swept her paltry load of groceries off the floor and deposited them on the counter.
“Yeah,” I replied, gamely trying to steer the conversation towards some flattery. “It has your artistic touch though.”
She rewarded me with a snort of open derision. “Please, I left those silly dreams behind me years ago. There is little room for abstract art in this world. Unless you are commissioned to chisel out a frieze or statue to the glory of one god or another there is very little work for any artist.”
“So, what do you do?” I already knew, I had made a point of looking Kris up when I first started working in Dresden a few months before; but she didn’t need to know that. She actually did paint heroic murals on one of the temple complexes that Wotan had ordered be built in his honor.
“I survive, that is all that matters.”
“And your parents, are they ok?” I had met them briefly when we dated. Her dad had been oddly huggy for a German and I’m pretty sure her mom had hated me.
She looked down and to the side with a wince, an expression which I echoed. A lot of people had lost someone over the last eight years. It was a bit callous of me to ask, but I needed to reestablish our relationship as quickly as possible if I wanted to survive the next few days.
“I think they are dead,” she finally replied. “I can’t know for sure. But they were in a plane, flying to holiday in Spain when the surge happened…” She trailed off and I didn’t need to ask what had happened. Airliners fell from the sky when a burst of raw magic ripped through the world like an EMP burst. Military aircraft had generally weathered its effects, but civilian airliners hadn’t been sufficiently hardened.
“What about your parents?” Kriss asked after the silence between us had drawn on for a bit too long.
Stolen story; please report.
“Mom is alright,” I replied. “She still lives in SLO off the alimony that my dad’s still paying.”
“So, they both lived? That’s lucky.” Her observation carried a truckload of bitterness with it.
“Yeah, well you know my dad and I were never on the best of terms. Even the end of the world couldn’t stop me from being a disappointment to him. He keeps trying to bribe me to come work for him in Texas. At least here I can’t get his letters.”
“Yes, I’m sure it’s terrible that your rich father wants to give you a job.” Her face hardened and she fixed me with a glare. “Enough pleasantries. What do I get out of this? For helping you?”
“Come on Kris, it doesn’t need to be like that.”
“It most certainly does need to ‘be like that.’ I can barely feed myself as it is and now you ask me to hide you? That sounds risky. If you want my help, you will need to pay for it. Otherwise, go and pester someone else.”
I gritted my teeth. I had the clothes on my back, a few silver coins in my pocket and little else. Kris and I may not have broken up on the best of terms, but the girl I knew had possessed a kind and generous soul at one time. I guess that had along with very idea of human rights.
“Look Kris, I really am in deep trouble here. I don’t have anything right now. But if you give me a couple weeks…”
“Ha!” She loaded that one syllable with a lot of skepticism and derision but very little humor. “Even if I did trust you, I would not do that. You could be dead in a couple weeks; drained by a vampyr, eaten by a verevolf, sacrificed to an Ancient One or some other horrible thing. No, you pay me now or walk out that door.”
She had me in a bit of a bind. No question I had to pay her. The alternative was being forced out into the monster infested dark beyond her threshold. Only I had nothing to trade besides my association with the Central Intelligence Agency. I could practically hear the palms of a hundred intelligence professionals slap their wrinkled foreheads in stupefied outrage. “Die like a spy!” they would scream. “Unknown and unsung! It’s one thing to compromise yourself, but another to compromise the Agency!”
Hey, the Agency screwed the pooch here, not me. Spies back in the good ole days didn’t have to worry about having their souls consumed by beings of unknowable evil, either, I did.
“I don’t have much that I can pay you with right now…” I began again.
“Out!” Kris demanded raising her gun.
“…but I can get you to America.”
I saw another demand to leave die on her lips. “How?” She cocked her head to the side. “Do you have a ship stashed away that can sail across the ocean and avoid Neptune, Poseidon, Mannanan mac Lir as well as the Leviathans, Krakens and Serpents?” Despite her obvious sarcasm, I knew that I had her interest.
America was that one place in the world where humanity still ruled, where the wonders of technology triumphed over the wonders of magic. Where a person could still leave their home after dark without abject fear. Beset by all sides, yet it still standing; a beacon of electric light in the mythical darkness. That meant a lot to people like Kris didn’t have electricity.
“Better than a ship, I have a sub. A nuclear powered, fast attack Los Angeles class submarine with four torpedo tubes and upgraded stealth and battle sonar.”
“That is not possible. You would have to have the backing of the American government.”
I raised my eyebrows suggestively. “Something like that.”
“Nein. Not this time.”
“What?”
“You cannot just give me that knowing smile and expect me to believe you. If you want my help you have to tell me everything.”
“Kris,” I protested with a hurt tone of voice, “when have I ever led you wrong?”
“Let me think…” she mockingly put her hand under her chin in a pose of deep concentration. “There was the time you said that you and Esmerelda were just friends…”
“We were.”
“…and that Psych 101 was an easy, blow-off class…”
“You got a different professor.”
“…and that you were still good to drive after Saint Patrick’s Day…”
“Scooter crashes don’t count.”
“… and you said that Transformers 2 was a good movie.”
“You got me there, it really was pretty awful.”
“Then why did you tell me that it was not?”
“Because I really didn’t want to watch that German flick with you instead.”
“What’s wrong with German film?”
“I don’t understand it.”
“But you speak German?”
“Yeah, that doesn’t mean that I understand it.”
“Shut up! You are trying to distract me from my point. I have ample reasons not to trust you. If you do not tell me everything Thomas Winter, or give me something more substantial, I will shoot you.” She once again aimed her gun at me just to make her point.
“Fine…” I figured by that point I’d be lucky to live long enough to get fired so… what the hell? “Can we at least talk over some food? I am starving.” Just to mollify her further I slapped the few silver coins I carried onto her kitchen counter.
She complained, but I managed to cajole my way into a hot plate of sp?tzle and smoked bratwurst. Sadly, there was no beer, which is just about the only thing that makes German cuisine edible in my opinion… at least when Kris cooks it. I was wise enough not to say that though.
“Now,” said Kris as she skewered a piece of sausage with her fork, “you will tell me how you have a submarine.” She was looked at me as if I were a bug crawling out from under her toilet.
“Simple, I work for the CIA.” Kris glared at me for a few disgusted seconds before breaking out into hysterics.
“You…” she snorted between guffaws, “…working for the CIA…” more laughter, “…that has to be the weakest line of Schiesse that I have ever heard from you.”
“It’s true,” I protested.
“You are the stereotypical American slacker,” she said, merriment draining from her face. “You drifted around college from major to major for how many years?”
“Well…”
“That was rhetorical. You drifted around college for six years before graduating in a bullshit major. I know you liked to pretend that you were some sort of academic, but you really just wanted to drink, screw girls, play those silly intramural sports and spend your daddy’s money. How could you possibly be working for the CIA?”
I didn’t dispute her characterization of me in college, because she was absolutely right. I was a bit of a party boy and thoroughly enjoyed my college years on my bastard of dad’s dime. I even went back for grad school just because I didn’t want it to end.
“Fair enough,” I began, fully aware that I was trying to spin my wasted youth into a lifesaving argument. “But you left out a few things. During that time I got pretty good grades, maintained a high level of athleticism and proved that I am good with people which is like half of what a spy does. Also, do you know what I eventually majored in?”
“That was after I came back to Germany, but I am guessing Drinking and Philandering,” Kris replied with a smirk.
“No. It was actually a major in Ancient History with an emphasis on mythology and pre-Christian religions. That’s right,” I said to Kris’s suddenly sober face. “This slacker suddenly became an expert on the end of the modern world.”
