Hunting Mink Read online

  Hunting Mink

  An Ultrahuman Novel

  By Niall Teasdale

  Copyright 2016 Niall Teasdale

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Contents

  Part One: When Gangs Go to War

  Part Two: Another Year Older

  Part Three: It’s a Riot

  Interlude

  Part Four: Whispers

  Part Five: Blood, Fire, and Darkness

  Part Six: Novelty

  Epilogue

  Part One: When Gangs Go to War

  New Millennium City, MD, 26th July, 2014.

  ‘What do we have?’ Cygnus asked into her headset.

  Twilight’s voice came back almost immediately. ‘What we have is a full-scale war. Svetilo’s in Friendship helping deal with an apartment block someone demolished. We think that was one of the ex-Tonaldo groups taking out another one. I’ve got reports of Fire Bug in three different locations. There are fires in Downtown and Friendship, so he’s probably trying to help at the most serious ones. Skadi’s in Churchton trying to keep the low-level thugs from shooting civilians.’

  ‘And us?’

  ‘There’s a major build-up of troops in Deale, around Dock Twelve, and there seems to be something big brewing around an amusement arcade in Fairhaven.’

  Cygnus turned in the air, looking out across her city, the one which had decided to make her its official protector. She was not sure how good a job she was doing, but she could not find fault with any of the individual steps which had got to where they were now. Here, a couple of thousand feet above Downtown, she could see some of the fires her partner had mentioned, and those were only the visible signs. It had started with the destruction of the Tonaldo crime family by a woman calling herself Diamond, and then the removal of Diamond from the scene by Cygnus and Twilight. The remaining fragments of the gang had begun fighting over territory, but they had kept it out of the public eye, mostly. Then some Russian gangs had moved in and begun trying to grab ground, and things had begun building. And now, it seemed, the lid had finally blown off the pot and a lot of burned stew was pouring out.

  ‘How about I take Deale and you handle Fairhaven?’ Cygnus suggested.

  ‘Works for me,’ Twilight replied. ‘June says to be careful. If you get hurt, she’ll berate you with a rolling pin.’

  ‘Uh… Shouldn’t that be “beat me?”’

  ‘She said “berate.” I’m not going to argue with her; she’s holding a rolling pin.’

  ‘Right. You be careful too.’

  ‘Huh. I’ve got backup. You’re doing this solo.’

  ‘Yeah… See you soon.’

  Cygnus looped north, heading for the docks. She was still not sure she really liked Twilight’s ‘backup,’ but she had to admit it was effective. They would not have managed to keep such a good handle on the various gang activities without it for one thing. Red Huntress had her sources, and Svetilo had been helpful when the Russian contingent had moved in, but Twilight’s new friends were… accomplished at uncovering secrets.

  The fact that there was definitely something going on at Dock Twelve was made abundantly apparent as Cygnus began her descent toward the pier. Something exploded. Debris was blown into the air and she heard screams. It had been a relatively compact explosion, which suggested a grenade and not anything bigger, but… They were using fucking grenades! She was guessing at the Russians, mostly because the locals were low on heavy munitions. Maybe Russians hitting the ex-Tonaldos.

  It turned out to be even worse. One group was holed up in a warehouse unit and it looked like another, who did look more Russian than anything, seemed to have come in on the seaward side in an attempt to catch them off guard. And then the police had rolled in to try to stop the shootout and they were now under fire from the building. The men on the pier had less cover, but they had enough and were holding their own. The cops, pinned behind their vehicles, were not doing so well. One car was on its roof, on fire. Cygnus could see at least one wounded officer.

  All right, first things first. Focussing her will, she prepared something she had been working on for a while, just in case. Sucking power out of her physical strength, she redirected the energy into a different form and then dropped toward the dock. Hitting the tarmacked surface with a resounding thud right in the middle of the Russian gunmen, which caused several of them to look around in shock, Cygnus straightened up and raised her arms, and a pulse of white light burst out from her body. Around her, twenty-five gangsters collapsed on the spot. Thirty or so yards away, inside the building, the same happened as the energy burst passed through the walls and kept going.

  One man fired a burst of bullets at her from one of the windows and there was still a lot of fire coming from the far end where the police cruisers were still pinned. Cygnus rearranged her powers again as she lifted into the air and glared at the surviving gunman until he ran away. Then she flew down the building until she came to a halt in front of the windows being used to hit the cops from.

  ‘Oh shit! It’s Cygnus.’ The sound came from inside the building and Cygnus saw the aim of the guns changing.

  ‘That’s right, it’s Cygnus,’ she yelled back. ‘It’s a really pissed off Cygnus. First man who shoots at me gets to spend the first six months of his sentence in traction. Who wants to be first?’

  ‘She just took out all the Russians in one go!’ That was yelled from somewhere at the back and, because she was supposed to be mad, Cygnus had to concentrate to keep from grinning.

  ‘Well?’ she shouted.

  For some reason, no one wanted to be first.

  ~~~

  July, Twilight mused, was not the best of times to be the Avatar of Shadow. Eight in the evening and it was not even starting to get dark.

  ‘Still plenty of shadow,’ Andrea commented from the back of their mind, ‘and they’re fighting it out inside the arcade. Looks like at least half the lights have gone.’

  Twilight scanned the interior through one of the windows and nodded. ‘Yeah…’ There seemed to be more light coming from muzzle flashes than there was from the few bulbs still hanging on. Except for the carrousel in the middle which, for some reason, had been started up and was revolving around with most of its multicoloured lights still on, and its field of wooden ponies rising and falling as they mock galloped. Some of the horses were galloping along with missing heads or tails or legs, or chunks blown out of them, which made the effect even more disturbing.

  ‘Damn shame,’ Andrea commented. ‘Rides like that are just about antiques and these assholes are shooting it up.’

  ‘Zombie ponies,’ Twilight said. ‘What will they think of next?’ She located an area of shadow near the front, opened the door, and slid in, yanking the darkness toward her as she went. The sound of gunfire was deafening, but in shadow she was as safe as houses: nothing these men had could get to her. ‘I don’t really think we need the backup. Not if we can get to that carrousel.’

  ‘Agreed, but isn’t that the main junction box? Over on the back wall to the right. Be easier if this place was darker…’

  ‘And this is why we have each other. You’re the cautious one, and I’m the loon.’

  ‘You’re not a loon, Twi. You’re just… enthusiastic.’

  ‘Sure.’ Twilight dropped through the shadows around her, emerging in near darkness, which was as bright as day to her, at the back of the room. ‘I’m thinking this lot are all Russians. We know they’ve been making heavy inroads into Fairhaven. I’m thinking this is a treaty negotiation gone bad.’ Despite wearing stiletto-heeled, thigh-high boots, she moved silently across the floor and reached up to the box on the wall. No one seemed to notice the moving darkness, not that it would have mattered much if they did.

  ‘That does
seem like a reasonable supposition.’

  ‘Not that it makes much difference.’ Popping the cover on the box, Twilight smiled a little maliciously at the big lever switch she found and pulled it down. The entire room fell into darkness.

  There were a few more bangs and then… ‘What happened to the lights?’

  ‘Dunno… Is it… Is it getting darker?’

  The only light was coming from the windows at the front, and they were all east-facing. And the light from that end of the room did seem to be fading, which it was given that Twilight was enveloping the whole room in her darkness.

  ‘What was that?! Is there something in here?!’

  ‘There’s nothing here but us, you– Oh shit!’

  And the room dissolved into chaos. There were a few sounds as though men were slumping over, but they were largely drowned out by the shrieks and sounds of running feet and the cries of ‘where’s the door?’ from various people who had a sudden, massive desire to be somewhere with light in it.

  ‘If you gentlemen will put your guns down,’ Twilight called out from the, now silent, carrousel, ‘I’ll turn the lights back on and you can give up quietly. Otherwise… Well, I have some friends who haven’t fed on anyone’s guts in days.’

  There was a loud clatter of guns, almost overshadowed by one, presumably hardened, gangster wailing ‘No!’ at the top of his lungs.

  San Francisco, CA.

  The girl in the grey hoodie shuffled more than she walked. The hood was pulled up, but there was a fringe of short, black hair just about visible under it. She wore a lot of dark eyeshadow around her brown eyes. Her lips looked pale, thin, a stark contrast to her tanned skin. The hood was up, but the zip on the garment was not pulled up all the way, so you could see a tattoo which spread wide wings out under her collarbones and above the low, off-white tank top she was wearing. There was a short red pleated skirt as well, thick black thigh-length socks, and a pair of block-heeled boots which were not laced up properly. Another tattoo was visible on the exposed skin on her right thigh: something tribal.

  Billy Hung took all of this in as the girl shuffled toward him down the sidewalk, because he had never seen her before and she looked like she was heading his way. Billy had a regular spot on Sutter Street which he had held for the past four years without trouble because he could always spot a cop, and he could always spot trouble. The girl did not look like trouble. She looked pathetic, but not troublesome. He could see the symptoms: she shuffled, hunched, and had the expression of a depressed cat, but she was also wired and twitchy.

  ‘You Billy?’ she asked as she shuffled up. Her voice was rough. She probably smoked the stuff.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘Friend said you could help me. Set me up.’ Brown eyes looked up at him, pleading. ‘Please, you gotta.’

  ‘I don’t gotta do nothing. I don’t know you.’

  ‘Linda. I’m Linda. I just moved down from L.A. I got no contacts, man. I need–’ She stopped, clamming up and looking around quickly before lowering her head. ‘I gotta have some,’ she mumbled.

  Billy made her wait, watching her shuffle and fidget. ‘One bag, thirty. You want more, you come back tomorrow.’

  He saw her fists clench in the pocket at the front of the hoodie. Her legs twisted together. ‘Okay,’ she said, finally. She pulled ten-dollar bills from her pocket and counted out three.

  Billy pulled a small bag from his pocket and the exchange was made quickly and efficiently, and the girl turned and hurried away. Billy smiled as he watched her leave. That one would be back. Soon. The new stuff had them coming back pretty quickly. Most of them.

  ~~~

  The girl in the grey hoodie walked four blocks, over Market Street and down 2nd, until she got to an expensive-looking black sports car which she climbed into. There, she pulled a small box from the glovebox, opened a cover on it, dumped the contents of her precious plastic bag inside, and closed the cover again. Then she started the car, checked her mirror, and pushed out into traffic.

  A minute later, she checked the box. It had two indicators on it, white circles cut into the black plastic. One of them was now blue and she smiled.

  Okay, so Billy was selling the new opiate, and she knew where he had picked up his product, because he always got it from the same place and had done for four years. Selling heroin on the streets was bad, but stop him and another would spring up without a gap. If the cops could not be bothered, neither could she.

  But this new stuff… It had about twenty times the potency of standard diamorphine and that would have been okay if the producers were cutting it more, but they were not. The addiction was faster, the withdrawal worse, and the fatalities were starting to add up. Overdoses tended to result in people just stopping breathing. The stuff was poison and it needed to be stopped.

  And that meant that Mink would be paying a visit to someone that night.

  New Millennium City, MD.

  Twilight stepped out of the darkness and immediately saw the midnight-blue town car and the two people crouching behind it. There were police cruisers parked up with the Ultrahuman Investigation Division vehicle, but Twilight headed for the town car.

  ‘Hey, Jacob, Heather. What are you two doing here?’

  ‘Huh,’ Jacob said, ‘we’re just warm bodies. The mayor is considering calling out the National Guard. We have manpower, so we offered the help.’

  ‘You’re better than the National Guard.’

  ‘We’re not enough,’ Heather said. ‘They’ve got a damn grenade launcher in there, at least one light machine gun…’

  Twilight looked up at the apartment block. She could see at least three barrels sticking out of windows, one of which had the distinctive shape of an M60 machine gun. ‘What are they doing in there?’

  ‘Best anyone can tell, one group hit another one,’ Jacob said. ‘Some Russians trying to push out a bunch of Tonaldo’s men. And then the cops turned up and the victors turned on the men and women in blue. We’ve got SWAT on the way.’

  ‘Can you cut the power to the building?’

  ‘Huh. They did that. We think someone dropped a grenade in the wrong place.’

  ‘Tell SWAT to find someone else to play with.’

  ‘Wait, you– Damn it!’

  Heather looked around at the space Twilight had been occupying. ‘What are you worried about? You’re dating some sort of dark goddess.’

  Inside the building, someone screamed. ‘Yeah, I wasn’t necessarily worried about her.’

  ~~~

  Skadi dropped into an alley off Avenue N in Churchton, turned, and let an arrow fly. It began to glow a dull green just before it hit its target, a man with a sub-machine gun standing near the end, and exploded into a flare of brighter green as it hit. The man sagged, fell to his knees, and crumpled forward onto the tarmac, deeply asleep.

  Beside him, his partner turned, looking for the source of the light burst, and Skadi reached for another arrow. She blinked and looked down at her hip where her quiver hung. It was empty. Had she been out here that long? Or was it just the volume of thugs she was having to take down?

  Looking up, she saw the barrel of an Uzi rising to aim at her… And then it was obscured by something bright red which reached out and grabbed her, pulling her in as the sound of automatic weapon fire echoed down the alley. The sound stopped and the figure in red uncurled from around Skadi, turned, and fired a bolt of white light. There was a scream and the clatter of a gun hitting the ground, and then running feet.

  Skadi looked up into blue eyes which glowed. Right now there was an element of ferocity behind that glow. ‘Thanks, Svetilo,’ Skadi said.

  ‘You are not hurt?’ the Russian Ultra asked. She turned and started down the alley, her red high-heeled slingbacks clicking as she went. Her red dress was a latex tube which barely covered her behind.

  Skadi followed her. ‘I’m fine, aside from being out of ammo. I still can’t believe you go out fighting crime in outfits like that.’


  Svetilo stopped beside the sleeping thug, but she flashed Skadi a grin before looking down. ‘It is an affectation, da? And I do not normally hunt criminals. I am only here because Red asked me to check on you, which was not a bad thing. This vyrodok I recognise.’

  Looking down at the thick-jawed man with a day’s growth of beard, Skadi frowned. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Oh, this I cannot remember, but I have a good memory for faces. He was one of KGB trainees at American familiarisation facility when I was training.’

  ‘He’s KGB?!’

  ‘Is not an absolute certainty, but it is a good chance. Both me and Red thought there might be some involvement in this from SOP or KGB.’ Grabbing the man’s jacket, she lifted him and slung him over a shoulder with no apparent effort. ‘You pick up the guns. There is politsiya precinct two blocks down. We will drop this one off and have FBI brought in, and then I will fly you back to Red’s place for more arrows, da?’

  Skadi grabbed the fallen weapons and set off after the Russian woman. ‘Okay. Sounds like a plan, but no groping.’

  ‘You are no fun. Little groping?’

  ‘Maybe, but if I get shot because all I can think about is sex, Red’ll never let you play with me again.’

  ‘Chjort! You make valid point.’ There was a short pause and then, ‘Only very little groping then.’

  ~~~

  Uptown was playing host to a car chase involving two SUVs with armed thugs blasting away at each other with automatic weapons. There were also a couple of police cruisers. The latter seemed to be there primarily so that their sirens cleared out the civilians from the line of fire, though with all that was going on, only the stupidest of New Millennium’s residents were out on the streets.

  Cygnus had made her name in the city, right back at the beginning, by stopping a car chase. She had stolen Ultranova’s thunder that day and, thinking back on it as she lost height to intercept, that might have been the reason that he had started hating her guts. That and the fact that the robbers in the car back then had been working for the secretly criminal hero of the city. Well, today it was just thugs and there was no one else around to do the job.