He howled. The windowpane cracked and out in the hall, Bradley sat up, about spurking time. I dropped my gun and clawed at the wall to steady myself. If he was mad enough to forget his fear of the Badge…

He was. He swooped at me with his long arms spread wide, but that’s exactly what I’d been banking on. I moved in and slammed into his legs below the knees, using all my strength, all my weight. He fell, scrambled to catch himself, couldn’t.

And landed face-first on the hot plate.

* * *

In the old days, it was said that there was a simple way to tell if your baby had been replaced by a changeling. You threw it on the fire. A faerie would reveal its true form, spin around and fly up the chimney cackling and giggling. Usually, at that point, the concerned parent would find the real baby had been left on the doorstep by the Fae, in what always struck me as a pretty good show of sportsmanship about the whole thing.

It makes you wonder though, about the parents who guessed wrong, doesn’t it?

* * *

The thing that had taken the place of Glenn Jackson wasn’t precisely a changeling, of course, but I was gambling that it was close enough for the same rules to apply.

And yes, it spun around – I was lucky to still be on the floor, or the scything swinging of his arms would have knocked me flat anyway. And yes, it laughed, although it didn’t sound amused.

It stopped, and looked at me. I saw its face all scarred from the heat, and I smelled burning leaves and burning hair.

And then it flew out the window like leaves in an autumn wind, swirling and twirling, and it was gone.

To Be Continued

I don’t know if noticing that is what made me snap back to full consciousness. Maybe a rush of adrenaline kicked in, or my system had just had time to bounce back. Whatever the reason, and despite being in a considerable amount of pain, I was pretty close to fully alert.

Close enough to find my badge, lying under the radiator.

I grabbed it and pushed myself off the floor into a sort of defensive crouch. The closest to it I could manage, anyway. Note to self – take that unarmed combat course you’ve been putting off, I thought.

At least I could see what was happening again, and there was a lot to see.

Bradley was out – of the fight, and of the room too. It looked like the perp had thrown him right through the door. Bradley was lucky the door wasn’t made of something more resilient, because I suspected he’d have gone through it anyway. As it was, he was in the hall, prone, and I couldn’t tell much more than that – like if he was conscious, or alive for that matter – because the perp was between us, his back to me, and making for Bradley.

I pulled my gun, and fired.

The shot went wide – I was shooting one-handed because I was not going to let go of my spurking badge one more time today, so of course the recoil was fierce. I was aiming for his head, and managed to hit his left shoulder.

Even at his size, the shot should have spun him off his feet and left him on his knees hugging the doorframe. Nothing that satisfying happened, but he did stop going after Bradley.

On the downside, he turned back to face me, and behind his matted grey hair and below his shaggy eyebrows, I could see cold rage burning in dark November eyes.

“I’ll have your guts for garters, Iron Badge” he hissed, then added, “Literally.” He started for me, the claws that catch raised in the air.

I held up my badge. He stopped, and drew back, just a touch.

“Are you going to come quietly?” I asked him, “Or do I have to get rough?” and I managed to keep my voice and hands from shaking. Mostly.

He smiled, showing far too much ivory for my liking. “You can hold me off with your little shield, woman. But you can’t hurt me with it.”

“Yeah? It seemed to get your attention before,”

He growled. “You got lucky,” he said.

I desperately wanted to look around, find something that might be more help than the gun, which was going to be mostly useless. But I didn’t dare take my eyes off him. Was there anything behind me I could use?

Nothing. Just a shelf with a single plate, a single fork, a chipped mug and…

A hot plate.

I reached behind me, still watching him, and set my gun down on the shelf.

He feinted to my left, then lunged from the right. I kept my badge held high and level. He backed off again, his fingers twitching and claws clicking with impatience.

I fumbled around until I found the dial of the hot plate, and turned it – to maximum if I was guessing right, to something less than that if I was screwed.

I reached and grabbed until I found my gun again, grabbed it and swung it around to bear on him – knocking the mug off the shelf in the process. It bounced off the radiator and landed somewhere off to my left.

“I think I chipped your mug,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“I’ll use your skull for a mug, bitch,” he snapped.

“Not while I’ve got this, you won’t” I said, shaking the badge at him.

It looked like an impasse, but it wasn’t, not really. We both had a way out of the standoff, but I was hoping to keep him busy enough that neither option would occur to him. Point for me: I had my cell phone in my pocket. Point for him…

“Fine!” he snapped, “If you won’t fight fair, maybe I’ll just see what your friend there keeps inside his insides, eh?”

Yeah, that was his impasse-breaker. He started to turn away towards Bradley, who still wasn’t moving.

I shot him in the balls.

I never said that my gun was totally useless. He was big, and strong enough that even the fairly specialized ammunition that I use had about the same effect on him as getting punched by a two-year-old. But just like everyone else who’s ever had to baby-sit a toddler, I knew that sometimes, where force is directed is much, much more important than how strong it is. Even the toughest guy on the block is going to react if he gets sucker-punched in the stones by a two-year-old.

So, mission accomplished. I definitely had his attention.

Yay?

To Be Continued

It was pure instinct. I ducked, and dove for my badge just as an unnaturally long arm sliced through the air where my neck had been only moments before.

I landed hard on the floor, just missing the fallen drawer. My hands slid on loose papers and slipped out from under me. I half-rolled in time to take it on my shoulder instead of my face.

I pushed myself up onto my knees.

He wasn’t stooped any more, and everything about him was longer – arms, legs, nose and definitely teeth. He stretched to the ceiling, seemed to fill the room, and he was very, very angry.

Badge, where the hell’s my badge? I thought. Papers all over the floor, but it should be on top of them.

“Hands up! Put your hands up!” Bradley was shouting. I didn’t have time to spare him a glance as Definitely-Not-Glenn-Jackson swung at me again.

Still kneeling, I grabbed the drawer, held it up as a shield.

The thing’s hand smashed through the cheap, old wood, but I’d thrown off his aim at least, because he just managed to clout me on the ear.

The old expression is wrong, by the way. It’s much more like seeing lightning than stars.

I fell again, but this time I didn’t feel it when I hit the floor. Everything seemed muted, like someone had turned down the volume on the world. I just barely heard what sounded like more shouting, and the boom of a gun, and I knew that Bradley had fired.

And then, in the weird, impressionistic way that unused senses and half-forgotten thoughts can suddenly become prominent when others go away, it suddenly occurred to me that I recognized the elusive scent that suffused Glenn Jackson’s bedding.

 Dry autumn leaves, I thought.

To Be Continued

I didn’t smell what I expected, but more on that in a moment. What occurred to me immediately, along with a rush of relief, was that certain smells were absent. What smells? Well, clearly Glenn Jackson wasn’t in the habit of using scented fabric softeners, or detergent, for that matter. But other smells were missing too, smells that you might have expected to be there.

Like alcohol, or stale pee, vomit, or unwashed body. Not even a hint.

I sat up quickly. Bradley, by now, could tell that something was up, and looked at me with eyes full of questions.

I glanced at Jackson, still down on his hands and knees peering at the papers on the floor. I thought of trying to express in gestures, Hold on, something’s very off here. Hang back and follow my lead. But ASL is not one of my languages, so I settled for holding up a hand, hoping he’d get that I wanted him to wait.

I know that I’m kind of dwelling on smells, or lack thereof, but there’s a reason for that. I had just consciously verified something that my intuition had noticed a spurk of a long time before I did: That nothing in Glenn Jackson’s little room smelled, except for him. And that just didn’t make sense, if he’d been in here for hours sleeping it off and being indiscriminate with his bodily functions.

It did make sense, though, if he was wearing that stench like a suit of armour… or a costume.

Now my intuition was telling me that something was worrisome about what I did smell in Jackson’s bedding, but I didn’t have time to think about that right away.

Because I looked down, and there, at my feet, in plain sight, were what looked to me like discharge papers from the Canadian Armed Forces.

But I’d seen him search that part of the floor already. He could be stalling us, I thought. But why?

The other possibility, of course, was that he had no idea what the papers he was trying to find actually looked like.

I stood up, reached into my pocket and palmed my badge. I cleared my throat.

Jackson stopped going through the paperwork, and looked up at me.

“Do you like living here, Mr. Jackson?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We can’t all live in a fancy condominium, eh? It’s crap here, but it beats the shelter, or sleeping rough. Ever tried living under a bridge this time of year? I’m dry, I’ve got a bed and a door that locks.”

“You’re awfully close to the Border, though,”

He stood up, grimacing – a bit theatrically, I thought. “Eh, I don’t bother the Little People, and they don’t bother me. Where’s the fun in troubling a broken-down old man with their tricks, right?”

“Some of the Little People aren’t so little. And not all of them care much who they play tricks on… or what they eat, for that matter. I noticed that you don’t even have a ward on the door, like your neighbours do.”

“Used to, used to,” he said, not meeting my eyes, “But I lost it.”

Then, “You don’t ask a cop’s questions, Officer MacAvoy.”

“Sorry,” I said brightly, “I should have introduced myself. Officer Roberta MacAvoy,”

I held out my hand. Reflexively, he clasped it – clasped my hand, where I was still concealing my Iron Badge.

“Borderland Guard.” I added.

He screamed, in pain and in rage at the touch of cold iron, shoved me away. I flailed as I fell and dropped my badge.

And he staggered back, clutching his hand to his chest as though it burned him.

And he changed.

To Be Continued

Bradley sniffed as he entered the room, just behind me. “Maybe time for a little spring cleaning, Mr. Jackson?” he asked.

“Oh, surely,” Jackson said, with a mucusy chuckle, “I’ll just be telling the maid to get to it, before the Queen arrives for tea, eh?”

I looked around. Bradley had been talking about the smell, but the odd thing was that, aside from that, the room really wasn’t all that badly in need of cleaning. It was cramped, dingy and run-down, but it was tidy. No clothes lying around, no dirty dishes next to the hot plate, and the grime on the tiny window was on the outer pane, not inside. It didn’t look like anyone had been stumbling around it in a drunken stupor.

Either Glenn Jackson was the world’s neatest drunk, or he’d retained more habits from his days in the army than was otherwise obvious, or…

“You were going to show us your discharge papers?” I said gently.

“Oh yes. Yes, yes.” he nodded, and turned to a beat-up dresser that would have been laughed out of the Goodwill. “Right here.”

He pulled at the top drawer. It rattled, but seemed stuck. He tugged again, making more noise, but without managing to open it.

Bradley shook his head, and turned to a shelf beside the door. He picked up what looked like some pieces of unopened mail and flipped through them.

“Do you need a hand, Mr. Jackson?” I asked.

“No. No thank you, I’ve got it.” he said, then muttered, “There’s a trick to it, I remember…”

I was curious to see how his papers were arranged, so I moved a little closer – not quite breathing down his neck, but so I could look down into the drawer when he opened it. The room was, like I said, really organized, and the state of his paperwork would corroborate the “kept up his habits from the army” theory. Or not.

He tensed up at my approach, and half-turned to shoot me a look that was all suspicion and daggers.

“I said I’ve got it,” he snapped, and then he pulled hard on the drawer and lifted it a bit at the same time – and it slid open and kept going, somehow not hitting Jackson on its way through the air towards me.

I didn’t have time to swear, let alone dodge, just lifted my arms to shield my body and head and block it as best I could.

It hit my crossed forearms and damn but it hurt, then bounced off. It spewed paper like leprechaun after St. Patrick’s Day then hit the floor with a clatter

Bradley was already moving for Jackson, who held up his hands to placate and gave us a simpering smile. “I’m real sorry, real sorry.” He said quickly. “It was an accident.”

Ow spurk me ow, I thought.

Then, So much for seeing how his papers were organized.

And then, How did he get out of the way?

“It’s okay,” I said, more to Bradley than Jackson. Bradley nodded and stepped back.

“Why don’t you find your papers,” I told Jackson, “And… that took a bit out of me. Do you mind if I sit down?” I pointed at the bed.

“Um, you might not want to do that, Miss,” he said. Bradley, understanding, wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“Please,” I said.

Jackson shrugged helplessly, and crouched to go through the papers that littered the floor. “Well, be my guest, then.”

I sat. Jackson was looking down at the floor as he combed through a life’s worth of errant documents. He didn’t see me lean down into his bedding and – with some trepidation – inhale deeply.