19
Swordchucks
Experienced.
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I fumbled the phone to my ear and mumbled the groggiest of hellos.
"Danny, please tell me ya know somewhere uptown I can hide out!"
Sherrel. The voice on the other end of the line was Sherrel. I looked down at my phone and realized that I'd picked up dad's by mistake. Given that they were almost identical, it had been a natural mistake.
"Sherrel?" I asked. My brain was still catching up, but the tone of her voice was making it hurry. Dad was fumbling for his glasses and turning on the light. "What's wrong?"
"Uh, Taylor! Can ya put ya dad on?" she asked, her voice coming just a little too high pitched and fast to be natural, even for her.
"Taylor?" dad mumbled as he swung his legs over the side of the hotel bed and sat up.
"Here he is." I shrugged and handed the phone over. Dad put it to his ear.
"Sherrel?" he asked after a moment. "Calm down. You're where? Harlem? And who is after you? But why? I can call the police- okay, okay, I won't call the police. I'll… I'll figure something out and call you back."
He ended the call and clenched his eyes closed for a moment before opening them again and trying to look more awake.
"Dad? What's going on?" I asked. Dad was clearly reeling.
"Sherrel's in Harlem. She was apparently doing some street racing for a friend of hers - their car, not her truck. She won, but the other guys tried to rob her instead of paying up – I think. I'm not too clear on that part. In any case, there was a fight and her car got trashed. Now she's on the run. There's apparently a gang involved."
I was a little surprised at how not surprised I was. Sherrel was trying to reform, but I doubted she really knew how to reform. Street racing for cash fit her skillset perfectly, and while it wasn't exactly legal, it wasn't supervillain stuff, either. The fact that it ended badly also fit everything I knew about her perfectly, too.
"I've got the phone numbers of a couple of Wards, but I don't know them well enough to ask them to help her without also calling the police," I admitted. "Same for the Protectorate numbers, I guess."
Dad frowned. "She really didn't want us to call the cops, but the problem is that it's at least forty miles from here. It'd take a long time in the middle of the day, but the trains barely run at night, so it'll take forever to get there that way."
I considered it. Forty miles would take me more than an hour - maybe two - with a combination of web swinging and just flat-out running. The biggest problem with that plan was that I wouldn't exactly have a way to transport Sherrel when I got there. Plus the whole 'outing myself as a cape' thing.
"Did she say where her truck is?" I asked.
"No, but probably not too close or she would have mentioned it." He ran his hands through his hair nervously as he considered our limited options for helping. "I guess… well, we don't have a car, but your Gram does."
I frowned. "That's… Dad, it's the middle of the night and she's like seventy."
"She's not that old. And… if you make the call, I'm sure she'd agree to come help."
I hesitated. "Are you sure this is a good idea? We could still just call the cops. Isn't street racing just a ticket and a fine or something?"
Dad shifted uncomfortably. "Sherrel might have a couple of warrants out there."
It was my turn to sigh heavily. "Of course she does." I fumbled for my phone. "This is a terrible idea."
I made the call anyway, and Gram seemed surprisingly eager to help. I didn't want her getting into any danger, so getting me close enough to Spider-Taylor the rest of the way would be good enough. With that in mind, I put on my costume and covered it with my winter coat, just like I did back home. When spring hit, I was going to have to find a different technique, but for now it worked great.
Gram made surprisingly good time, and she pulled up in front of our hotel in a dark sedan much faster than I would have thought possible. I hopped in the front seat and gave her a quick hug.
"Thanks, Gram. We didn't know who else to call."
The older woman gave me a small smile. "You can always call on me when you need help, Taylor. No matter what it is. Absolutely anything." Then she turned back to the car and put it into drive. "Now, where are we going?"
Gram was a fast driver but not in the same way that Sherrel was a fast driver. Sherrel was wild and reckless while Gram was almost as fast but in a very controlled way. She took turns using the handbrake and I found out that 'drifting' felt a lot more disconcerting than movies and video games led me to believe. I had to force myself to let go of the armrest when I heard it creaking under my grip.
In the back seat, dad stayed connected with Sherrel via cell phone. She had to stay on the move because the area had been blocked off by gangs that were hunting her.
As we went uptown, the city started to gradually change from the shining downtown area to something that might have been more at home in the Bay - just taller. As we crossed 117th street, we were nearly run over by a car doing a hurried three-point turn in the middle of the street and going back the way we had come. As it got out of the way, it was easy to see why. The road ahead had was blocked by trash and cars, which were now a burning barricade. There was a gap in the middle big enough to put a car through, but it was guarded by a couple of men with obvious weapons in hand. They looked like they were on their way to an edgelord convention with all of the spikes and hooks they could possibly sew to their leather clothing.
"Oh, dear," Gram said as she peered over the wheel. She didn't sound particularly upset, just mildly annoyed. "Looks like the Teeth are back in town."
My heart sank at the mention of one of the most notorious street gangs in New England. The Teeth were violent, aggressive, and transient - which was, in some ways, their worst trait. They used to menace Brockton Bay before they got run off years ago. Now, they nipped at the fringes of New York and Boston. They showed up, menaced an area for a while, then moved on. The fact that they didn't try to hold territory for long made stamping them out very difficult.
"You can just drop me off here, Gram. I think I saw a way around them I can take, but it'll have to be on foot." I didn't want Gram getting hurt, and it would be relatively trivial to climb a building and evade them. I could pick up Sherrel, carry her out, and meet back up with the car somewhere safe.
"Nonsense! Taylor, get in the glove box and get me my nine."
For a long beat, I stared at Gram, not quite comprehending what she'd just said.
"Come on. Not the revolver, the semi-auto one."
Moving on autopilot, I opened the glovebox. Indeed, there were two guns inside the glove box, along with a wicked knife about the length of my forearm and a couple of spare magazines loaded with ammunition. I picked up the requested gun and ignored a weird feeling in the back of my head as I passed it over to Gram.
"There we go," she said as she checked the weapon over with a practiced ease. "I'd rather have a shotgun for something like this, but that's really awkward while you're driving. Now, let's ask the nice young men to get out of our way."
//\\o//\\
"Taylor, honey, hold the wheel steady," Gram asked as she rolled down the window and popped her seat belt.
"I thought you were going to ask them to move?" I asked as I put my hand on the wheel as requested.
"I am, but this is the kind of question you don't ask with words." She twisted around so that she was leaning half out the window and still somehow managed to get her foot on the gas pedal. The car lurched forward with a squeal of tires, and about halfway to the barricade, Gram's gun barked four times.
Audacity did have its place on the battlefield because I barely felt a tingle of danger from the gang members as we barreled toward them. I was a little too focused on keeping the wheel steady and my head down to see exactly what happened, but the bright light of fire went past our windows and we were clear.
Moving almost casually, Gram settled back into the driver's seat and took the wheel as she eased off the gas and I dared to look in the sideview mirror. I didn't see much interesting except the retreating roadblock, still blazing in the dark.
"I hate being old. I don't think I got a single one of them," she grumbled as she took a sharp turn and then turned into an alleyway, shutting her lights off and putting the car into park. "Back in my prime, it would have been headshots all around."
"I thought you were just trying to scare them out of the way," I admitted.
"You never shoot to scare someone, Taylor," Gram told me seriously. "Well, not if they have a gun of their own. If you're going to shoot someone, it's always to kill."
I hoped she was joking, but Gram didn't really joke and I was too afraid to ask more questions.
"Now, where is this friend of yours hiding out?" She changed the subject so naturally that I somehow doubted what I had just seen with my own eyes.
It took dad a few seconds to recover enough to spit out the last address he got from Sherrel. "Said she's on the top floor, front side, and they're going door to door looking for her."
"Not too far, and we're even in the right block. I guess I'll get to break out the fun stuff, after all," Gram said with a smile as turned off the car and climbed out. Some frantic mania made me follow her out and around to the trunk.
Inside, there were a couple of black cases, each long enough to hold a rifle. "You do much shooting, dear?"
"No," I said as the surreal situation just kept getting more surreal.
"Here you go, then," she popped open one case and pulled out a matte black pump-action shotgun with a shoulder strap. She produced another box and started loading ammo into it. "This one packs a bit of a kick, but you don't have to be that practiced to use it. Just make sure you want to kill whoever is in front of you if you pull the trigger and keep the safety on until you do."
"I don't need a gun," I said, a little desperation creeping into my voice.
"Nonsense," Gram declared and pressed it into my hands. "Teeth are anarchist vermin, dear. They would happily murder you and everyone you love if given half a chance. Exterminating them is practically a public service."
A part of me - the part of me that knew I was capable of murdering a baby if it was the right thing to do - had a moment where it realized where I got it from. Amy was going to have a field day with this information if I ever told her about it.
"Okay," I said numbly, not intending to actually use the gun but also not wanting to argue with Gram. I felt that tingle again. Those strange memories wanted to pour forth, but I was pretty sure that letting them in would make me end up naked. Again. I pushed them back down.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" dad asked, finally making himself known outside the car. He looked pale and I could tell that his hands were shaking.
"No one is forcing you to come with us," Gram said, the kindness she'd been showing me wilted in an instant, replaced by an icy coolness. "It'll be a nice chance for my granddaughter and I to bond."
"No, I'll go," dad hurriedly declared, though I could tell he wasn't sold on the idea.
"I suppose you're useless with a gun?" Gram asked in that same cold tone.
"I used to target shoot," dad defended weakly. I couldn't remember the last time he went and I didn't even think that there was a gun in the house anymore.
"Then get that revolver out of the glovebox and come on," she declared. Her own handgun vanished into a holster at her side as she opened the other case and pulled out a compact rifle with a forward-curved magazine and a thick barrel. It looked like something out of a movie.
"Like it?" she asked when she saw me eyeing the weapon. "We started seeing these just before I had to come back stateside, then I got pregnant with your mom and had to give up field work. By the time I got back into fighting shape, things were different and they turned me into a desk jockey. So much paperwork." She sighed as her hands ran over the gun. "Things are so much easier when you can just put your problems into a shallow grave."
"Are you sure about leaving the car?" I asked as we started down the alley. Apparently, we just needed to go down and cut through a cross alley to be behind the building Sherrel was in.
Gram shrugged. "It will be fine. It's stolen, anyway."
I stumbled. "Stolen?"
Gram shot me a look, but then directed a colder one to Danny. "Your mother didn't teach you how to hotwire cars? I know it's getting harder with the new security systems, but every girl should learn."
Danny seemed to wither under her gaze. "Annette and I agreed to wait until she was sixteen before we had that conversation. We tried to teach her how to make a Moltov cocktail when she was twelve, but she wasn't interested."
It was my turn to give dad a wide-eyed look. I didn't remember that. Wait, no… I sort of did remember that. We'd spent a day at the boat graveyard and I'd been too distracted by the fact that Emma had her first modeling gig to pay attention. What else had I missed?
"Always a rebel," Gram mumbled. "Even when her rebellion was being a square." She sighed again and stood up straighter. "Well, enough of that. Let's go kick some Teeth in."
When did Gram get witty one-liners? Today was so confusing.
//\\o//\\
The gun was heavy, not that it weighed me down very much with my newfound strength, but it had a kind of metaphorical weight to it. In some ways, my bare hands were more dangerous. Actually, in most ways my bare hands were more dangerous. Even my webshooters could be more deadly if I used them in the right ways.
However, there was just something about the purity of purpose in a gun that made it feel like a bigger deal. Unlike my hands and webs, the shotgun I was cradling in my arms was meant for only one thing, and that was propelling a person-destroying bit of metal - or multiple bits of metal, depending on what Gram had loaded it with - at high speed into someone or something with the intention of destroying it.
Dad and I had pretty much given Gram the lead in this operation when we'd been forced to call her. Even with the complications of needing to follow the roads, we'd made it to Harlem in half the time it would have taken me on foot. Given what else I'd seen, I had a feeling that she'd also probably have a good idea of how we could get away at the end.
My brain still hadn't entirely caught up to the reality of Gram being… whatever she was, though. She'd mentioned a desk job and shallow graves. That wasn't a combination that normally went together.
As we got to the last corner, Gram peered around it and then pulled back to us.
"There's one sentry, watching the fire escape." She turned her gaze to me. "Do you hear anything, Taylor?"
I strained my ears, but I did pick up on something. "Yeah, banging. Yelling, too. They're knocking in doors, maybe?"
"That's what it sounds like," Gram agreed and favored me with a small smile. We were apparently bonding. "And what does that mean?"
I thought about it for a second. "Well, possible collateral damage if shooting starts," I said. That was my main worry. I was carrying the gun as a peace offering to Gram - as ironic as it was that a gun was a peace offering - but I really didn't want to kill anyone with it. "And it means they're pretty sure they know which building she is in but not where, exactly?"
"See? You have good instincts." Gram smiled wider. "Now, how do we get to our target knowing the inside is crawling with Teeth and there's a sentry on the fire escape?"
I had a sinking feeling I knew where this was going as the answer was almost certainly not 'climb straight up the other side of the building'. "Neutralize the sentry."
Dad made a small, helpless noise as Gram smiled and nodded. "That's my girl. Now, your old Gram doesn't have as much dexterity as she used to, but I think I can still manage this. What you want to do with a sentry, is come up behind them and get your hand over their mouth, nice and tight. Then," she produced a knife from somewhere. It wasn't the oversized monstrosity from before, but a narrower blade. "You jam a knife like this into their abdomen, just under the ribs and go up. You want to pierce a lung or his heart. If you don't get it on the first go, you just give it another try. Then hold on with your other arm till they stop moving."
My eyes must have been huge with the idea that Gram was planning to execute a guy for the crime of watching an alleyway. Well, he was also a member of the Teeth, which was a group that didn't really have any innocents in it, but he was just the lookout. "I have a friend that made me some Tinkertech," I blurted instead of what I was really thinking. Outing myself to Gram, even a little, was better than watching her murder a guy.
"Oh? Disintegration ray? Immolation beam?" Gram guessed, looking quite interested.
"N-no, it just makes sticky stuff, but I can use it to tie him up," I supplied.
Gram looked disappointed. "Well, do you think you can pull it off? The other Teeth aren't exactly listening, but if he starts shouting, it's going to turn into a fight."
"I can do it," I declared with more confidence than I really felt. Well, I did have some confidence that I could subdue the guy without killing him. It was the part where I stopped him from yelling – or actually killed him – that I was more concerned with.
Gram nodded. "Then show old Gram how it's done, alright?"
"Okay," I said as I sidled around her. I hesitated and then pushed the shotgun into her hands. I would feel better without it, if only because it would stop that buzzing of foreign memories from poking at me.
I glanced around the corner and caught sight of the guy. He leaned against a dumpster with a cigarette in his hand as he kept an eye on the fire escape much more dutifully than I would have expected, though I supposed that gang members in the Teeth that didn't follow orders didn't stay in the Teeth for long. Or alive.
I took a steadying breath as I waited for him to take a drag on the cigarette. I started moving, as quiet as a ghost. My spider-instincts came with a heaping helping of stealth skills, after all.
He let out the breath, making a bit of a shape out of the smoke plume. It also marked the point when he had the least breath in his lungs. I scuffed my foot enough to make a noise. He turned to look at me only to get his mouth plastered in webbing a second before I grabbed him and hauled him bodily back around the corner. I then webbed him entirely to the wall.
He had barely managed to make a sound and was definitely out of the action for a few hours.
I turned to find Gram watching me with slightly narrowed eyes. "Just a friend with Tinkertech, eh?"
I shuffled my feet uncomfortably as I realized that I'd just hauled a guy that had to weigh at least half-again as much as me down an alleyway with one arm and then held him against a wall - with one hand - while sticking him there with the other.
"Not the time for this," Danny said, becoming the voice of reason one more time. "Unless you want to have to kill the witness."
Or, maybe, the insanity was catching.
"Danny, please tell me ya know somewhere uptown I can hide out!"
Sherrel. The voice on the other end of the line was Sherrel. I looked down at my phone and realized that I'd picked up dad's by mistake. Given that they were almost identical, it had been a natural mistake.
"Sherrel?" I asked. My brain was still catching up, but the tone of her voice was making it hurry. Dad was fumbling for his glasses and turning on the light. "What's wrong?"
"Uh, Taylor! Can ya put ya dad on?" she asked, her voice coming just a little too high pitched and fast to be natural, even for her.
"Taylor?" dad mumbled as he swung his legs over the side of the hotel bed and sat up.
"Here he is." I shrugged and handed the phone over. Dad put it to his ear.
"Sherrel?" he asked after a moment. "Calm down. You're where? Harlem? And who is after you? But why? I can call the police- okay, okay, I won't call the police. I'll… I'll figure something out and call you back."
He ended the call and clenched his eyes closed for a moment before opening them again and trying to look more awake.
"Dad? What's going on?" I asked. Dad was clearly reeling.
"Sherrel's in Harlem. She was apparently doing some street racing for a friend of hers - their car, not her truck. She won, but the other guys tried to rob her instead of paying up – I think. I'm not too clear on that part. In any case, there was a fight and her car got trashed. Now she's on the run. There's apparently a gang involved."
I was a little surprised at how not surprised I was. Sherrel was trying to reform, but I doubted she really knew how to reform. Street racing for cash fit her skillset perfectly, and while it wasn't exactly legal, it wasn't supervillain stuff, either. The fact that it ended badly also fit everything I knew about her perfectly, too.
"I've got the phone numbers of a couple of Wards, but I don't know them well enough to ask them to help her without also calling the police," I admitted. "Same for the Protectorate numbers, I guess."
Dad frowned. "She really didn't want us to call the cops, but the problem is that it's at least forty miles from here. It'd take a long time in the middle of the day, but the trains barely run at night, so it'll take forever to get there that way."
I considered it. Forty miles would take me more than an hour - maybe two - with a combination of web swinging and just flat-out running. The biggest problem with that plan was that I wouldn't exactly have a way to transport Sherrel when I got there. Plus the whole 'outing myself as a cape' thing.
"Did she say where her truck is?" I asked.
"No, but probably not too close or she would have mentioned it." He ran his hands through his hair nervously as he considered our limited options for helping. "I guess… well, we don't have a car, but your Gram does."
I frowned. "That's… Dad, it's the middle of the night and she's like seventy."
"She's not that old. And… if you make the call, I'm sure she'd agree to come help."
I hesitated. "Are you sure this is a good idea? We could still just call the cops. Isn't street racing just a ticket and a fine or something?"
Dad shifted uncomfortably. "Sherrel might have a couple of warrants out there."
It was my turn to sigh heavily. "Of course she does." I fumbled for my phone. "This is a terrible idea."
I made the call anyway, and Gram seemed surprisingly eager to help. I didn't want her getting into any danger, so getting me close enough to Spider-Taylor the rest of the way would be good enough. With that in mind, I put on my costume and covered it with my winter coat, just like I did back home. When spring hit, I was going to have to find a different technique, but for now it worked great.
Gram made surprisingly good time, and she pulled up in front of our hotel in a dark sedan much faster than I would have thought possible. I hopped in the front seat and gave her a quick hug.
"Thanks, Gram. We didn't know who else to call."
The older woman gave me a small smile. "You can always call on me when you need help, Taylor. No matter what it is. Absolutely anything." Then she turned back to the car and put it into drive. "Now, where are we going?"
Gram was a fast driver but not in the same way that Sherrel was a fast driver. Sherrel was wild and reckless while Gram was almost as fast but in a very controlled way. She took turns using the handbrake and I found out that 'drifting' felt a lot more disconcerting than movies and video games led me to believe. I had to force myself to let go of the armrest when I heard it creaking under my grip.
In the back seat, dad stayed connected with Sherrel via cell phone. She had to stay on the move because the area had been blocked off by gangs that were hunting her.
As we went uptown, the city started to gradually change from the shining downtown area to something that might have been more at home in the Bay - just taller. As we crossed 117th street, we were nearly run over by a car doing a hurried three-point turn in the middle of the street and going back the way we had come. As it got out of the way, it was easy to see why. The road ahead had was blocked by trash and cars, which were now a burning barricade. There was a gap in the middle big enough to put a car through, but it was guarded by a couple of men with obvious weapons in hand. They looked like they were on their way to an edgelord convention with all of the spikes and hooks they could possibly sew to their leather clothing.
"Oh, dear," Gram said as she peered over the wheel. She didn't sound particularly upset, just mildly annoyed. "Looks like the Teeth are back in town."
My heart sank at the mention of one of the most notorious street gangs in New England. The Teeth were violent, aggressive, and transient - which was, in some ways, their worst trait. They used to menace Brockton Bay before they got run off years ago. Now, they nipped at the fringes of New York and Boston. They showed up, menaced an area for a while, then moved on. The fact that they didn't try to hold territory for long made stamping them out very difficult.
"You can just drop me off here, Gram. I think I saw a way around them I can take, but it'll have to be on foot." I didn't want Gram getting hurt, and it would be relatively trivial to climb a building and evade them. I could pick up Sherrel, carry her out, and meet back up with the car somewhere safe.
"Nonsense! Taylor, get in the glove box and get me my nine."
For a long beat, I stared at Gram, not quite comprehending what she'd just said.
"Come on. Not the revolver, the semi-auto one."
Moving on autopilot, I opened the glovebox. Indeed, there were two guns inside the glove box, along with a wicked knife about the length of my forearm and a couple of spare magazines loaded with ammunition. I picked up the requested gun and ignored a weird feeling in the back of my head as I passed it over to Gram.
"There we go," she said as she checked the weapon over with a practiced ease. "I'd rather have a shotgun for something like this, but that's really awkward while you're driving. Now, let's ask the nice young men to get out of our way."
//\\o//\\
"Taylor, honey, hold the wheel steady," Gram asked as she rolled down the window and popped her seat belt.
"I thought you were going to ask them to move?" I asked as I put my hand on the wheel as requested.
"I am, but this is the kind of question you don't ask with words." She twisted around so that she was leaning half out the window and still somehow managed to get her foot on the gas pedal. The car lurched forward with a squeal of tires, and about halfway to the barricade, Gram's gun barked four times.
Audacity did have its place on the battlefield because I barely felt a tingle of danger from the gang members as we barreled toward them. I was a little too focused on keeping the wheel steady and my head down to see exactly what happened, but the bright light of fire went past our windows and we were clear.
Moving almost casually, Gram settled back into the driver's seat and took the wheel as she eased off the gas and I dared to look in the sideview mirror. I didn't see much interesting except the retreating roadblock, still blazing in the dark.
"I hate being old. I don't think I got a single one of them," she grumbled as she took a sharp turn and then turned into an alleyway, shutting her lights off and putting the car into park. "Back in my prime, it would have been headshots all around."
"I thought you were just trying to scare them out of the way," I admitted.
"You never shoot to scare someone, Taylor," Gram told me seriously. "Well, not if they have a gun of their own. If you're going to shoot someone, it's always to kill."
I hoped she was joking, but Gram didn't really joke and I was too afraid to ask more questions.
"Now, where is this friend of yours hiding out?" She changed the subject so naturally that I somehow doubted what I had just seen with my own eyes.
It took dad a few seconds to recover enough to spit out the last address he got from Sherrel. "Said she's on the top floor, front side, and they're going door to door looking for her."
"Not too far, and we're even in the right block. I guess I'll get to break out the fun stuff, after all," Gram said with a smile as turned off the car and climbed out. Some frantic mania made me follow her out and around to the trunk.
Inside, there were a couple of black cases, each long enough to hold a rifle. "You do much shooting, dear?"
"No," I said as the surreal situation just kept getting more surreal.
"Here you go, then," she popped open one case and pulled out a matte black pump-action shotgun with a shoulder strap. She produced another box and started loading ammo into it. "This one packs a bit of a kick, but you don't have to be that practiced to use it. Just make sure you want to kill whoever is in front of you if you pull the trigger and keep the safety on until you do."
"I don't need a gun," I said, a little desperation creeping into my voice.
"Nonsense," Gram declared and pressed it into my hands. "Teeth are anarchist vermin, dear. They would happily murder you and everyone you love if given half a chance. Exterminating them is practically a public service."
A part of me - the part of me that knew I was capable of murdering a baby if it was the right thing to do - had a moment where it realized where I got it from. Amy was going to have a field day with this information if I ever told her about it.
"Okay," I said numbly, not intending to actually use the gun but also not wanting to argue with Gram. I felt that tingle again. Those strange memories wanted to pour forth, but I was pretty sure that letting them in would make me end up naked. Again. I pushed them back down.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" dad asked, finally making himself known outside the car. He looked pale and I could tell that his hands were shaking.
"No one is forcing you to come with us," Gram said, the kindness she'd been showing me wilted in an instant, replaced by an icy coolness. "It'll be a nice chance for my granddaughter and I to bond."
"No, I'll go," dad hurriedly declared, though I could tell he wasn't sold on the idea.
"I suppose you're useless with a gun?" Gram asked in that same cold tone.
"I used to target shoot," dad defended weakly. I couldn't remember the last time he went and I didn't even think that there was a gun in the house anymore.
"Then get that revolver out of the glovebox and come on," she declared. Her own handgun vanished into a holster at her side as she opened the other case and pulled out a compact rifle with a forward-curved magazine and a thick barrel. It looked like something out of a movie.
"Like it?" she asked when she saw me eyeing the weapon. "We started seeing these just before I had to come back stateside, then I got pregnant with your mom and had to give up field work. By the time I got back into fighting shape, things were different and they turned me into a desk jockey. So much paperwork." She sighed as her hands ran over the gun. "Things are so much easier when you can just put your problems into a shallow grave."
"Are you sure about leaving the car?" I asked as we started down the alley. Apparently, we just needed to go down and cut through a cross alley to be behind the building Sherrel was in.
Gram shrugged. "It will be fine. It's stolen, anyway."
I stumbled. "Stolen?"
Gram shot me a look, but then directed a colder one to Danny. "Your mother didn't teach you how to hotwire cars? I know it's getting harder with the new security systems, but every girl should learn."
Danny seemed to wither under her gaze. "Annette and I agreed to wait until she was sixteen before we had that conversation. We tried to teach her how to make a Moltov cocktail when she was twelve, but she wasn't interested."
It was my turn to give dad a wide-eyed look. I didn't remember that. Wait, no… I sort of did remember that. We'd spent a day at the boat graveyard and I'd been too distracted by the fact that Emma had her first modeling gig to pay attention. What else had I missed?
"Always a rebel," Gram mumbled. "Even when her rebellion was being a square." She sighed again and stood up straighter. "Well, enough of that. Let's go kick some Teeth in."
When did Gram get witty one-liners? Today was so confusing.
//\\o//\\
The gun was heavy, not that it weighed me down very much with my newfound strength, but it had a kind of metaphorical weight to it. In some ways, my bare hands were more dangerous. Actually, in most ways my bare hands were more dangerous. Even my webshooters could be more deadly if I used them in the right ways.
However, there was just something about the purity of purpose in a gun that made it feel like a bigger deal. Unlike my hands and webs, the shotgun I was cradling in my arms was meant for only one thing, and that was propelling a person-destroying bit of metal - or multiple bits of metal, depending on what Gram had loaded it with - at high speed into someone or something with the intention of destroying it.
Dad and I had pretty much given Gram the lead in this operation when we'd been forced to call her. Even with the complications of needing to follow the roads, we'd made it to Harlem in half the time it would have taken me on foot. Given what else I'd seen, I had a feeling that she'd also probably have a good idea of how we could get away at the end.
My brain still hadn't entirely caught up to the reality of Gram being… whatever she was, though. She'd mentioned a desk job and shallow graves. That wasn't a combination that normally went together.
As we got to the last corner, Gram peered around it and then pulled back to us.
"There's one sentry, watching the fire escape." She turned her gaze to me. "Do you hear anything, Taylor?"
I strained my ears, but I did pick up on something. "Yeah, banging. Yelling, too. They're knocking in doors, maybe?"
"That's what it sounds like," Gram agreed and favored me with a small smile. We were apparently bonding. "And what does that mean?"
I thought about it for a second. "Well, possible collateral damage if shooting starts," I said. That was my main worry. I was carrying the gun as a peace offering to Gram - as ironic as it was that a gun was a peace offering - but I really didn't want to kill anyone with it. "And it means they're pretty sure they know which building she is in but not where, exactly?"
"See? You have good instincts." Gram smiled wider. "Now, how do we get to our target knowing the inside is crawling with Teeth and there's a sentry on the fire escape?"
I had a sinking feeling I knew where this was going as the answer was almost certainly not 'climb straight up the other side of the building'. "Neutralize the sentry."
Dad made a small, helpless noise as Gram smiled and nodded. "That's my girl. Now, your old Gram doesn't have as much dexterity as she used to, but I think I can still manage this. What you want to do with a sentry, is come up behind them and get your hand over their mouth, nice and tight. Then," she produced a knife from somewhere. It wasn't the oversized monstrosity from before, but a narrower blade. "You jam a knife like this into their abdomen, just under the ribs and go up. You want to pierce a lung or his heart. If you don't get it on the first go, you just give it another try. Then hold on with your other arm till they stop moving."
My eyes must have been huge with the idea that Gram was planning to execute a guy for the crime of watching an alleyway. Well, he was also a member of the Teeth, which was a group that didn't really have any innocents in it, but he was just the lookout. "I have a friend that made me some Tinkertech," I blurted instead of what I was really thinking. Outing myself to Gram, even a little, was better than watching her murder a guy.
"Oh? Disintegration ray? Immolation beam?" Gram guessed, looking quite interested.
"N-no, it just makes sticky stuff, but I can use it to tie him up," I supplied.
Gram looked disappointed. "Well, do you think you can pull it off? The other Teeth aren't exactly listening, but if he starts shouting, it's going to turn into a fight."
"I can do it," I declared with more confidence than I really felt. Well, I did have some confidence that I could subdue the guy without killing him. It was the part where I stopped him from yelling – or actually killed him – that I was more concerned with.
Gram nodded. "Then show old Gram how it's done, alright?"
"Okay," I said as I sidled around her. I hesitated and then pushed the shotgun into her hands. I would feel better without it, if only because it would stop that buzzing of foreign memories from poking at me.
I glanced around the corner and caught sight of the guy. He leaned against a dumpster with a cigarette in his hand as he kept an eye on the fire escape much more dutifully than I would have expected, though I supposed that gang members in the Teeth that didn't follow orders didn't stay in the Teeth for long. Or alive.
I took a steadying breath as I waited for him to take a drag on the cigarette. I started moving, as quiet as a ghost. My spider-instincts came with a heaping helping of stealth skills, after all.
He let out the breath, making a bit of a shape out of the smoke plume. It also marked the point when he had the least breath in his lungs. I scuffed my foot enough to make a noise. He turned to look at me only to get his mouth plastered in webbing a second before I grabbed him and hauled him bodily back around the corner. I then webbed him entirely to the wall.
He had barely managed to make a sound and was definitely out of the action for a few hours.
I turned to find Gram watching me with slightly narrowed eyes. "Just a friend with Tinkertech, eh?"
I shuffled my feet uncomfortably as I realized that I'd just hauled a guy that had to weigh at least half-again as much as me down an alleyway with one arm and then held him against a wall - with one hand - while sticking him there with the other.
"Not the time for this," Danny said, becoming the voice of reason one more time. "Unless you want to have to kill the witness."
Or, maybe, the insanity was catching.
I'm off on vacation next week and probably won't be posting more parts of this story till the week after. I have a couple more in the can, but in anticipation for my trip, I've moved writing over to a different project because this story takes too much research to do without internet access.