A Flash of Hex by Jes Battis

Author:Jes Battis [Battis, Jes]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780441017232
Publisher: ACE
Published: 2009-05-26T04:00:00+00:00

14

It was quiet on the corner of Hastings and Columbia, where Duessa had told me I might be able to find a loose community of hoppers, slingers, scammers, and other undesirables who hung out with Patches the Hex dealer. You could get anything on this corner from crystal meth to black tar heroin and joints dipped in embalming fluid (not a smart choice, even for vampires). Hex was still a bit tricky, though. As a hybrid drug, it was a thorn in the CORE’s side, and our vice division patrolled the neighborhood ruthlessly looking for buyers and dealers. I marked more than a few agents under cover, dressed in grubby clothes and carrying bulging wallets with flash rolls: wads of cash that seemed authentic at first glance, but were actually fake once you got past the first couple hundreds on the top. Sometimes, if the operation was particularly involved, an agent would get authorization to carry scads of real money. Enchanted, of course. We may deal in occult crime, but we’re still a business, and the CEOs like to make sure that their money always comes back to them.

Duessa had coached me a bit on my story, reminding me that Patches wasn’t exactly a valedictorian, so it couldn’t be too complicated. Obviously, if I managed to reach the supplier, the story would have to change. He (or it) was apt to be a lot smarter, and far more dangerous.

A diverse group was milling around the entrance to a run-down apartment building. Slingers, soldiers—the muscle—kids, sex workers, and various other hangers-on who didn’t have anyplace else to go. I heard a variety of calls:

“Spider bags! Spider bags for twenty!”

“Cabello!”

“Mosquitoes! Got Mosquitoes!”

“Real tops!”

“Blue bags! Looking for Blue bags?”

“Bin Laden! Bin Laden hey!”

“DOA!”

“Elbows!”

“Christmas tree baby!”

“Scootie! Shabu!”

It was like eavesdropping on a kindergarten playground with its own bizarre slang, only these kids weren’t talking about G.I. Joes and Transformers. The one thing I’d learned about drugs over the years was that people will eat, drink, smoke, snort, or inject just about anything if they think it’s going to get them high. You can make crystal meth in a dirty bathtub with starch and Drano. You can grind up heroin with children’s cough medicine, or mix it with ketamine (which makes you puke like Linda Blair in The Exorcist), or drink it with Strawberry Quik. People will do anything to get high, because when you’re high, you don’t have to think about how shit-caked and fucked up your life really is. At least for a little while.

Magic was about getting high, too, if you pared it down to the most basic level. Materia could get you high—it could release you from your body, make you feel like you were soaring across the universe on a trail of hot sparks. It also came with its own price, in the form of week-long hangovers, illness, and even death by overdose. The CORE was a dealer of sorts, and sometimes, I couldn’t help but think that we recruited kids in the same way as these hoppers and slingers.

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