Tesser: A Dragon Among Us (A Reemergence Novel) (6 page)

Alan discovered my lack of English knowledge very quickly, and provided me with the one item that Bitch required me to have to enter their establishment: shoes. Alan gave me an old pair of what appeared to be sandals, which fit perfectly after I readjusted the size of my foot to be a little larger. Sandals on foot, Bitch could no longer kick me out of the coffee shop.

Today, inside the shop, I sit attentively in front of a magical device called a 'television.' It apparently receives mass messages in both visual and auditory formats. While not truly magical in the ancient, primordial sense, the images that play across the device are remarkable. Alan adjusts the television to play images that are clearly designed for children for several hours a day, and provides me with small books that have only a few pages.
 

I have seen far more complicated books at small shops in the city, so I know that these too are likely made for children to learn. They will be perfect for my first few days of learning.

At night, I relocate to another food establishment that is open very late into the night. Immersion into the human culture is key. This business serves round, baked food covered in sauce made of tomatoes and topped with cheese and various meats and vegetables. The painted sign on the front of the business calls this food "pizza."

With my bag of clothing in hand each night, I sit in the far back of the pizza shop, watch more television, and listen to the younger people come and go, buying their pizza. I've noticed that at all of these places where things are served, they exchange small slips of green fabric-paper for the goods and services they want. A strange form of barter. I think I'll try and obtain some of the green slips of paper.

The owner of the pizza shop, or at least the man that everyone else seems to listen to, has a strange obsession with stories that center around two men. One man is tall, with long blonde hair he wears underneath a winter cap, and the other is shorter, fatter, and has long brown hair and a beard. He too wears a hat, but it has a brim facing to the rear. Because they have set their television to show the words that are being spoken, I've been able to learn many of the words.

Apparently the words ”shit,” “fuck,” “ass,” “bitch,” and “stoner” are common in the English language. I've used them a few times in awkward, minimalist conversations to no good effect. Clearly, I don't know enough. I'm also trying to decipher how the woman's name at the coffee shop is also a word in regular use.

It confounds me, but I've already got a working vocabulary of perhaps a hundred words that I am sometimes able to use in very short sentences.

"Hello?! Are you the dude in that video?" A rail thin blonde dressed in a tight mini skirt and halter-top bleated not five feet from where Tesser sat in the back of the pizza parlor.

Shit. See, I'm learning already.

Tesser turned slowly, unsure of what she'd said. He understood that hello was a greeting.

"Hello," he returned in a friendly but deadpan voice. He forced a smile that was only slightly awkward.

"Nissa, this is the guy. Come look." The blonde grabbed her friend by the arm and dragged her from the line of people trying to buy a slice of pizza at the late night shop. The brunette friend stumbled over, angry at first, but when she laid eyes on the still disheveled Tesser, her eyes widened.

"Oh my god! I think that
is
him. Get your phone. Look up the video!" The brunette stared at Tesser in a way that Tesser had seen before and it confused him. She thought she knew him. She thought she'd seen him before.

Shit.
He continued to smile, still sitting in the bright orange booth in the corner near the television.

The blonde held up her phone and tapped on the screen rapidly, bringing up a YouTube video. Before long, both girls were squealing with delight. They had recognized Tesser from the ATM video.

"Is this you?" The blonde thrust her phone practically into Tesser's face. The dragon had to lean back to prevent one of her bright red nails from scratching his skin.

Tesser watched on the tiny screen as images of his alleyway altercation played out. His face stayed solemn as he watched his own violence. His nakedness caused a tiny, edge-of-mouth smile. It amused him and startled him that his image had been somehow captured, and captured without his realizing it.

"It's him," said the brunette seriously. Both women were oddly star-struck in Tesser's presence.

Tesser watched until the video finished playing, then smiled and nodded. He wasn't sure what the words were to agree with the girls.

They squealed again and squished into the booth with him.

Tesser sighed.

Well, at least they are attractive.

Chapter Eight

Sergeant Henry "Spoon" Spooner

They aren’t opening up.

Henry's adrenaline surged. His muscles were taut from head to toe as he stood in a breaching stack with the rest of the SWAT team. Everyone in the line with him was wearing full ballistic armor for the raid. Helmet, full ballistic plate, lap and groin protectors, kneepads and shin guards were the order of the day. Some guys wore more. It was miserably hot in the armor.
 
It was early in the morning, far too damn early to go kicking in some drug dealer's door in Dorchester, but they needed the extra body and Henry was available. SWAT wasn't his gig anymore, but he said he'd help.

"Go," said the Sergeant in charge of the breaching team. The warnings had ended.

Let's do this.

The man at the head of the stack held a battering ram, and in the dark hallway, he looked the size of a medieval ram all on his own. He brought the steel crash bar back to hammer into the closed front door of the apartment they'd come to raid. Some of these SWAT guys dwarfed Henry. He'd always been the runt of the litter.

Henry smiled.

The goliath carrying the battering ram brought the steel cylinder into the door right at the knob with a powerful underhanded swing. The sturdy wooden door burst inward, splintering the doorframe and cracking in half as it fell completely off the hinges. It was as if the door had been made of glued-together toothpicks.

Shit, Paul, that door sleep with your wife?

The man dropped the ram and stepped aside to let the rest of the men in the breaching stack pour through the doorway past him.
 

The first man into the apartment started yelling immediately, "Boston Police! Search warrant! Face down, hands on your heads!"

Henry's thumb twitched reflexively on the safety of his M4, moving the selector to fire. His index finger hovered over the trigger guard, ready to retract and send a high velocity round into anyone who threatened his life or the lives of his fellow officers. The tension was incredible. Delicious.

"Clear!"

"Clear!" The SWAT officers barked out as they moved into the apartment and fanned out, checking rooms for signs of life. These early morning raids were almost always successful at catching the suspects in their underwear asleep in bed, and in the first thirty seconds of this raid, it was looking good.

Henry's assigned job on this raid was the ass end of the stack. He was to push deepest into the apartment with one of the more experienced officers on the team and arrest the person in the last bedroom. Surveillance indicated that there was only one person in the apartment, and that's where they were supposed to be.

Henry and his teammate moved into the apartment quickly, past the other officers as they covered movement in every conceivable place. Like Henry, all the men on the breaching team had military experience, and he felt comfortable with them.

However, anything could go wrong.

The officer in front of Henry raised his leg and snapped it out in a powerful kick at the closed bedroom door. The cheaper interior door was hollow, and the kick well placed, causing it to blast inward on the hinges and bounce off the wall of the bedroom. The two men were moving into the room before the door had a chance to come back at them.

Their perpetrator was in the bed.
 

There he is.

The leading officer yelled as he slung his M4 and grabbed at his cuffs, "Boston Police! Hands where we can see them!"

That's the point where something went wrong.

The suspect was curled on his side in the fetal position facing them, and as the other officer went to grab the man's arm, he launched a kick out and it struck the cop straight in the groin.
 

Fuck.

The lead officer let out a whimper and collapsed, bouncing off the edge of the mattress before hitting the floor.
 

The perp leapt up like a ninja in the darkened bedroom and launched his entire body at Henry. He screamed and spread his arms wide like some insane, drugged-up bird of prey.

Henry might've been the runt of the litter his whole life, but one thing he had was speed.

Henry stabbed his M4's barrel out as a reflex, and caught the man square on the jaw as he came down on him. Henry felt and heard the man's jaw break, but could do nothing but fall as the now unconscious drug dealer's body fell on top of him, pinning him to the floor. Henry let out a grunt as all the dead weight squished him down against the dirty, smelly rug. Henry's finger never moved over the trigger.

Another officer stepped into the doorframe and saw the situation and laughed. "Shit, Henry, you're supposed to be on top of him."

"Kiss my ass, Ethan. Check on Lawrence; he got hit in the junk," Henry said as he pushed the drug dealer off of his chest.
 

Ethan stepped over Henry and checked on the downed officer, Lawrence. Henry cuffed the scumbag with the broken jaw and left him lying on his side. He moaned in pain as Henry started to walk away. He'd need to be checked by the EMTs before he was moved.

"What happened?" the team leader asked as Henry passed him on the way out of the apartment.

Henry put his weapon on safe and dropped the magazine as he replied to the sergeant in charge of the team, "He kicked Lawrence in the balls then tried to jump on me. I barrel-struck his face."

The sergeant laughed. "I'll need a report, Henry. Fucker's lucky you didn't just put a round in his face. Thanks for joining up last minute man. Always glad I can call on another Rakkasan in a pinch."

Henry grinned. "You betcha." The two men shook hands. Henry left the ratty apartment, went down to the SWAT truck to have a seat, and let the narcotics team enter to search the property. He grabbed a bottle of water off the bumper of the truck and watched as the neighborhood came out to see about all the commotion.

From his duffel bag in the back of the truck, Henry heard his cell phone ring: his department phone, not his personal phone.

"This is Sergeant Spooner," he answered after picking up.

"Hi. Is this the detective investigating that naked vigilante thing? I saw this number on the news," said a young woman's voice.

"Yes, this is he. Do you have some information you could share on the case? Anything said would be anonymous." Henry felt a rush. This was his first major case since being promoted to
Detective
Sergeant. A break this early in the case would be huge for his career in the BPD.

"Well, yeah sort of. My girlfriend and I met the naked guy a few nights ago at a pizza parlor near Fenway. That late night place?"

"Yeah, I know the place. Slice and a Coke for three bucks right? Best deal in town." Henry grabbed his small notebook and started to jot down the woman's statement.

"Well, I don't drink soda, but yeah, that place. Hey that guy was like foreign or something. He spoke like next to no English. Super nice though, and he was wearing like used Abercrombie stuff. Like, dumpster used. He wasn't naked at all."

She's an idiot.

Henry smiled. "Well, that's good news. Does he go there a lot?"

"Dunno. But I saw the news thing online and thought like you guys might be able to ask him some questions, maybe with like a translator or something."

Henry nodded and watched a young black boy of maybe ten years of age watch him from the steps of the building across the street.

That kid should be asleep. Where are his parents? He’s got school in a few hours.

"May I ask why you're calling me at this hour? It's sort of an odd hour to phoning the police about a case."

The girl giggled.

She's drunk.

"My girlfriend and I just got back in from a night dancing and we were talking about the guy. You know how HOT he is right? Like smoking, manly hot. If you were gay, you'd be wicked into him. Anyways, we were thinking like it was like socially responsible to call. Plus, maybe he could use some help here in America? Maybe he can lead you guys to the other dude who was trying to rape that girl. It takes a village, you know?"

Henry sighed. "It takes a village. Yeah, for sure."
Complete with the idiot.