"Practice." I'd been practicing since I was tall enough to keep my swords from snagging on the ground.
"It looks impressive."
"That's mostly the point. This is the style of bladework used when you're knocked off your horse and surrounded by enemies. It's designed to let you carve your way out of the crowd as quickly as possible. Most people will see you doing this and decide they should be somewhere else."
"I don't doubt it. What if it's one super swordsman guy that jumps in front of you?" Barabas asked.
I raised Slayer and drew a horizontal eight with the sword, rolling my wrist.
"Infinity symbol."
"Butterfly." I sped it up and added the second sword below. "One butterfly higher, one butterfly lower, switch arms, repeat as necessary. Throat, stomach, throat, stomach. Now he isn't sure what to guard, so either you kill him or he gets out of your way, and you keep walking until you're out of the crowd. Did you want something?"
"Curran is here."
I stopped.
"He came in about an hour ago, stood here for a while, watching you, and went upstairs. I think I heard the roof door. I thought that perhaps he would come down, but it's been a while, so I thought you might want to know."
I put the saber down, grabbed Slayer and the sheath, and went down the hallway to a short staircase. The first landing led to our private quarters, the second to the roof. The roof was our sanctuary, a place we went when we wanted to pretend we were alone.
I pushed the heavy metal door open and stepped outside. The roof stretched before me, a wide rectangle of stone, bordered by a three-foot wall. In the distance, at the horizon, the skeleton of Atlanta rose against the backdrop of moonlit sky. Haze shrouded the ruined buildings, turning them pale blue, almost translucent, and the husk of the once-vibrant city seemed little more than a mirage. The night was almost over. I hadn't realized so much time had passed.
Curran crouched in the center of the roof, on top of some cardboard. He was still wearing the same gray T-shirt and jeans. In front of him a black metal contraption lay on its side. It resembled half of a barrel with long metal bits protruding to the side. The long bits were probably legs. The other half of the barrel waited upside down to the left. An assortment of screws in small plastic bags lay scattered around, with an instruction manual nearby, its pages shifting in the breeze.
Curran looked at me. His eyes were the color of rain, solemn and grim. He looked like a man who was resigned to his fate but really didn't like it. Whatever he was thinking, he wasn't in a good place.
"Hey there, ass kicker."
"That's my line," he said.
I made my voice sound casual. "What are you building?"
"A smoker."
The fact that we already had a grill and a perfectly fine fire pit about ten feet behind him must've escaped his notice.
"Where did you get it?"
"Raphael's reclamation crew pulled a bunch of these out of the rubble of an old home improvement store. He sent me one as a gift."
Judging by the number of parts, this smoker was more complicated than a nuclear reactor. "Did you read the instructions?"
He shook his head.
"Why, were you afraid they'd take your man card away?"
"Are you going to help me or just make fun of me?"
"Can't I do both?"
I found the instructions, flipped to the right page, and passed him the washers and nuts for his screws. He threaded them onto the bolts and tightened them with his fingers. The bolts groaned a bit. If I ever wanted to take this thing apart, I'd need a large wrench to do it. And possibly a hammer to hit the wrench when it wouldn't move.
Curran lined up the hinges with the top of the smoker. They didn't look right.
"I think these hinges are backward."
He shook his head. "It will fit."
He forced the bolts through the hinge holes, tightened the screws, and tried to attach the top to the bottom. I watched him turn it around about six times. He threaded the bolts in, attached them, and stared at the mutilated smoker. The lid was upside down and backward.
Curran glared at it in disgust. "To hell with it."
"What's bugging you?"
He leaned against the wall. "Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Europe?"
"No."
I came over to stand next to him.
"When I was twenty-two years old, Mike Wilson, the alpha of Ice Fury, came to me with an invitation to the Iberian Summit."
Mike Wilson ran a pack in Alaska. It was the only pack in the United States that rivaled ours in size.
"Wilson's wife was European, Belgian, I think, and they used to cross the Atlantic every couple of years to visit her family. She's his ex-wife now. They had a falling out, so she took their daughter and went home to her parents."
Considering that home was across the Atlantic Ocean, she must've really wanted away from Wilson. "Mike didn't fight for his kid?"
"No. But ten years ago they were still together. They stopped in Atlanta on their way to the summit, and Wilson invited me to come with them to Spain. He made it sound like a deal for panacea was on the table, so I went."
"How did it go?"
"I expected it to go badly. Turns out I was overly optimistic." Curran crossed his arms on his chest, making his biceps bulge. "Things in Europe are different. The population density is higher, the magic traditions are wider spread, and many structures are old enough to stand through the magic waves. The shapeshifters are more numerous, and they started hammering out packs and claiming territory early on. There were nine different packs at the summit, nine sets of alphas, all of them strong, all of them ready to rip my throat out at any minute, and none of them honest. It was all big smiles to my face and claws at my back the moment I turned around."
"Sounds fun. Did you kill anyone?"
"No. But I really wanted to. A werejackal from one of the packs approached me to make a deal to sell panacea, and the next day we found his corpse outside with a rock the size of a car tire where his head used to be."
"Fun."
"Yeah. I brought ten people with me, some of the best fighters in the Pack. I thought all of them were solid and loyal. I went home with four. Two died in 'unfortunate accidents,' three were lured away by better money, and one got married. The Pack was still young. Losing every single one of them hurt, and there wasn't anything I could've done about it. It took months for the power vacuum to sort itself out."
Old frustration laced his voice. He must've spent weeks thinking it over, dissecting every moment looking for what he could've done differently. I wished I could reach through time and space and punch some people.