A Route of Wares: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure: Hollow Island Book One Read online

  A Route of Wares

  Hollow Island Series Book 1

  Daniel Coleman

  Dedicated to EmmaKaite

  a dreamer, an artist, an adventurer

  who like Nash, will change the world

  Contents

  A Gray Eye …

  1. Spits and Fizzles

  2. Stupid Overpowered Ranger

  3. First Lesson

  4. En Tête a Tête

  5. Pass or Fail

  6. Never Befriend the Oppressed

  7. 60 Seconds

  8. The Trouble with Routines

  9. A Fair Fight

  10. Blood Flows like Tomato Juice

  11. Blood and Bodies

  Also by Daniel Coleman

  About the Author

  A Gray Eye …

  < A gray eye is a sly eye,

  And roguish is a brown one;

  Turn full upon me thy eye,--

  Ah, how its wavelets drown one!

  A blue eye is a true eye;

  Mysterious is a dark one,

  Which flashes like a spark-sun!

  A black eye is the best one.

  - William R. Alger, 1857 >

  1

  Spits and Fizzles

  << 1) No Electricity

  2) No Escalation

  3) No Emigration

  - First Three Laws of Hollow Island >>

  Nash was not ready to be a hero.

  Yet here he was on Hollow Island, a real-life Ranger, posed alongside his trainer for a possible fight against a Wizard and a Snakeman.

  Hollow Island. It was hard to believe.

  Nash looked over both shoulders to take it all in, but the deep green leaves of a mango tree blocked most of his view while offering cover from whatever his trainer was waiting for. To the left was the iconic San Juan Market, through which immigrants—some modified and some unmodified—poured in day after day. The sounds of vendors barking and people haggling mingled with a mandolin player singing clever lyrics about her lover, a Thief who had stolen her heart. The aroma of grilled meat made Nash wish his trainer had given him time to grab a bite.

  A pair of voices rose over the market noises, and Nash could see two men shoving each other between some stalls of the market. He took a step forward, resting his hand on his gun. If it turned into a fight, it was a Ranger’s job to break it up … at least he thought that was the right thing to do. In training they’d told him to rely on his trainer to learn the specifics of the job.

  “Easy, there,” said John Wayne, his trainer, who didn’t take his gaze from the market entrance.

  Nash stepped back into the shade and let out a breath. Apparently the Wizard and Snakeman were the priority right now. He went back to scanning everything he could see. It was so familiar, yet suddenly tangible. The 3-D holographic views he’d been watching since Hollow Island was founded ten years ago didn’t do the sights, sounds, and smells justice.

  On the far side of the intersection in front of the market was Immigration House, a welcome stop for any new arrival who needed help getting their feet under them in their new home. Nash had seen it from this angle on the hollows a million times, yet he’d missed so many of the details of the building—the solid appearance of the wooden front door, the peeling paint on the fascia in the nearest corner, and a pair of lavender eyes peeking through a curtain on the second floor.

  Speaking of eyes, Nash wondered if he could find any of the cameras pointed at the front door of Immigration House. Most of his life Nash had watched the hollows as lucky people from all over the world walked off the ferry, through the market, and onto the streets of the island. One angle that they showed over and over was the exact angle he was seeing now. Nash had seen a few obvious cameras, or eyes as they were called here, in the market, and it was his understanding that the whole island was covered by at least one pair of eyes.

  He leaned out of the shade, looked over his shoulder, and stared straight into a pair of lenses the same diameter as his pinky finger. They were mounted in the stucco of a wall a meter behind him, as clear as day.

  “Tryin’ to get famous?” asked John Wayne.

  Nash felt his eyes widen as he realized he was staring straight into the eyes of millions of viewers around the globe staring back at him, watching him blush furiously.

  Nash let out a chuckle as he receded to the shade again. So much for not looking like a complete newie on his first day.

  Who was he kidding? Millions of people were not watching an unproven Ranger who was as likely to trip over himself as he was to take in a bounty. At the moment, he hoped no one was tuned in through those eyes, seeing him make a fool of himself.

  How’s that for being a badass? Nash thought, imagining his buddy Army falling off his couch laughing at him right at the moment.

  Nash had a long way to go before anyone besides Army would call him a badass. Starting with the men they were waiting for.

  “A Wizard and a Snakeman?” Nash asked.

  “That’s right, pilgrim,” drawled John Wayne. “Snake. Snakeman. Take yer pick.”

  It had taken Nash a few seconds to wrap his mind around a Chinese John Wayne, complete with full cowboy attire and country twang to his accented voice. Wrapping his mind around a fight against a Wizard and a Snake less than an hour after immigrating was proving much more difficult. On an island where technology could turn a human into just about anything the mind could conceive, he was going to have to get used to a lot more than that.

  Sweat was pooling along Nash’s collar and armpits, and it was from more than the sticky Caribbean air. “A Wizard with a pet Snake,” he mused, trying to break the tension. “I wonder if they do party tricks.”

  “Laugh now,” said John Wayne, with a smirk. “In two minutes, talking won’t get you anywhere, unless you talk with that gun.”

  Two minutes? Nash wanted two weeks before being thrown to the wolves. That’s how long he had with his trainer, and he wouldn’t mind that whole time to learn the ropes before proving what he was made of. What if he didn’t have what it took to be a Ranger? He could be killed in a fight at any time, he understood that, but right now his bigger fear was failing. Would Hollow Image Projections, the corporation who ran the island, take away his gun and his eye if he wasn’t good enough? Would he have to live out the rest of his life as a one-eyed, unmodified failure? So much for making a difference in anyone’s life if that happened.

  Nash rested his hand on the butt of his gun, and took a deep breath. It didn’t do any good to go down that path. The metal fit his hand perfectly since it was made for him. On Hollow Island, only Rangers carried guns. Other people used swords, bows and arrows, blowguns, and other primitive weapons. They also used magic—the ones who had been engineered or modified, anyway. And that certainly included a Wizard. Nash hoped hot lead gave him enough of an advantage to get past this test, if it went that far.

  “Why that low-down, dirty son of a rusted gun,” growled John Wayne.

  “What is it?” asked Nash, peering through the leaves of the mango tree they were staged behind. A dirty, head-bobbing drunk stumbled up to the gate of the market and plunked down against a beam, then started begging.

  “That waste of human life is going to learn a lesson starting right—” He froze, midstride through the leaves, his face contorted in anger that Nash didn’t fully understand. “Pigsquirmy! Gembel is gonna have to wait. Take a gander.” He stepped back into cover and nodded toward a woman leading a horse out of the market. She wore mustard-colored pants and a brown leather shir
t with cloth sleeves.

  Resting his gaze on her, Nash waited for her bio to come up. His right eye, the titanium one, operated seamlessly. It not only gave him regular vision, but also supplied information on anyone he scanned. It did all that silently, with the exception of a tiny tink, tink when he blinked. After three seconds, the woman’s bio appeared in the lower right corner of his vision.

  Chiel Leatherwood, formerly Felisha Monroe, was born in New York of all places, just like Nash. Twenty-two years old, so a little older than him. Unmodified. Married to Viktor, no surname, who was a Viking.

  Nash tried to remember where Vikings ranked in relation to Marauders and Privateers on the Pirate scale, but he came up blank. With everything new he’d seen since disembarking half an hour ago, his brain was overheating.

  The woman left his field of view before he could finish reading the rest of her bio.

  “Ready to earn your paycheck?” John Wayne asked.

  Paycheck? Nash had assumed his income here would come from bounties, but the thought left his mind quickly. Chiel was obviously in trouble so Nash started forward. His trainer put out an arm to hold him back and kept his eyes on the street.

  A man in a long duster coat detached himself from the shadows in front of Immigration House and walked in the direction Chiel had gone. Another man had stepped out—no, slithered out—from somewhere Nash hadn’t noticed. They fell into stride without looking at each other.

  The tall man with the duster coat had long, slicked-back hair. Cruel lines creased his face around his eyes and he walked confidently across the open space. The other man, shorter by twenty centimeters, wore a gray cloak that covered most of his body and obscured his face entirely. His movement was smooth and animalistic, like an eel sliding through water. Actually, the figure moved with such grace, Nash wasn’t sure it was a man. He was, however, confident that this was the Snake his trainer had mentioned. And that made the grease head the Wizard.

  John Wayne wasn’t punking him then. There was a woman in trouble and two dangerous-looking men who had been waiting for her so they could … what? Rob her? Kidnap her? Kill her? It could be anything. It even crossed Nash’s mind that they were complicit with her in a scheme, and for some reason, she wanted them to keep a distance.

  As soon as the men were out of sight, John Wayne stepped out of the shade of the mango tree and walked nonchalantly in the same direction.

  Nash stayed at his side. “What’s the plan? What are we going to do?”

  “Follow my lead,” said John Wayne. “And watch out for the Snake. I hear he spits.”

  That didn’t help a lot.

  “Spits and Fizzles,” said Nash, his nerves coming out through his mouth. An image of the tall man in the duster standing over a cauldron, mixing potions had fixed itself in Nash’s mind.

  John Wayne gave Nash a sideways look.

  “If the Snake spits, what does the Wizard do?”

  “No saying. They’re new to these parts.”

  As he and John Wayne trailed the men who trailed the woman, every scene Nash had ever witnessed on the hollows flashed through his mind in images and blips of video—mostly Rangers going up against Pirates, Titans, Vamps, Scouts, Ninjas, and plenty of unmodified people. Never a Wizard or a Snake, though, not that he’d seen.

  Anything could happen today.

  Nash ran his fingers along the rough cement wall of Immigration House as they walked. In Nash’s mind, it held the wonder of the Sydney Opera House or the rebuilt Notre Dame Cathedral. And since he’d never see either of those buildings in real life, they were more fairy tale than this iconic Hollow Island building.

  Everything here was for real. These weren’t holographic images he could watch from his foster parents’ couch any more. As of thirty minutes ago, he was inside the fish bowl. Inside the hollows.

  Nash glanced up at the sky, then around at the buildings. No sign of any other cameras, but he knew they were there. The rest of his life would be captured and broadcasted.

  It was hard to believe that with one step off the ferry, he’d gone from the outside to the inside. He now lived in a fantasy world with monsters, victims, villains, heroes, and everything in between. Unscripted and high stakes, which was why people all over the outside world gathered around their holodais to watch what happened next on Hollow Island.

  Fear wrapped Nash’s chest like a giant spider, squeezing and making it hard to pull in a full breath. The stakes were enormous—not just his life, but the life of everyone else involved. If only he knew more, he might be able to make better decisions, and actually help someone who needed it today. His vast ignorance made the fear of failing flood through him.

  A larger web of that fear-spider spread in every direction, every fiber tingling with excitement. While he felt unprepared, Nash wasn’t about to back down. He just wished he had more time to learn before going head first into a fight with creatures he knew nothing about.

  They still had almost half a block to talk about it. “Are we going to spread out? Or stick together? Draw now, or wait until we’re provoked?”

  “Easy, pard. I know you’re new, but I think you can figure out follow my lead.”

  Maybe it wouldn’t come to a fight at all, and Nash could talk down the situation. He’d seen quick-tongued Rangers on the hollows diffuse situations with witty banter. Ronan O’Reilly, for example, could talk a snake out of its skin. Or a capital-S Snake if it was called for. That could work today. If it kept him from having to use his gun, it would be a win. And if Nash could figure out how to get clever quick.

  They went around a corner just in time to see the two men turn onto a smaller street, maybe an alley. This part of San Juan was lined with two-story buildings—shops on the bottom floor and residences above them. The streets of what used to be the capital of Puerto Rico before everyone on the island was tragically nuked off the face of the planet, still showed the bright colors of buildings that had withstood the Hour War and the two decades since. Whatever these businesses had been back in the day was no longer apparent, as they had been filled in by tailors, a silversmith, a candle maker, and such. Nash couldn’t wait to have a chance to explore everything including taking a closer look at the people walking up and down the street.

  As they approached the intersection, Nash heard a woman cry out from the side street the Wizard and Snake had taken. It cut off suddenly.

  Nash started jogging forward, but John Wayne put a hand on his flatpack, pulling him back to the same slow pace.

  “You’re not listening,” said John Wayne. “I said easy, pard.”

  “If we’re going to do this, we should hurry,” said Nash. Someone needed help. He was ready to pull free of John Wayne’s grip and rush forward, then reminded himself he was here to learn and ease into his new life.

  John Wayne came to a complete stop, holding tight to the strap over Nash’s shoulder. “You’re going to listen to me, piker, before I take one more step.” Even his speech was slow and unhurried. “This isn’t make-believe. You run into something bigger’n you here and you won’t walk away from it.”

  Nash’s hands were fisted in frustration. “I didn’t want to come to this fight in the first place,” said Nash. “Give me a few days to figure out life here before throwing me into the fire.”

  “I’m gonna give you about five seconds to figure out that you do this my way or you can hit the highway.”

  A man’s voice came from around the corner, but it was too low to make out the words. “Fine,” Nash said. “Let’s go.”

  “You going to listen to me?” asked John Wayne, making it obvious he wasn’t going anywhere until he was ready.

  If Nash refused to listen to John Wayne, did that mean they would leave and try this again another day? Nash wanted nothing more than to step back and figure things out. Of course that would mean ignoring whatever was going on around the corner. Could he really abandon someone who needed help just because he was new?

  Leaving now would mean faili
ng before even trying. He’d come here to help people. There was no way he could turn his back now, even on a stranger. He simply said, “Fine.”

  “Say it, pilgrim.”

  “I’ll listen to you,” said Nash.

  “Guns up, then.” John Wayne put a hand on his gun, but kept it holstered as he sauntered around the corner.

  About ten meters ahead of them, the two men had detained Chiel. An odd-looking, lanky man was pulling things from her saddlebags and discarding them carelessly. He had a shirt on that looked like snake skin—no, he wasn’t wearing a shirt. The cloak he’d worn earlier now lay across the horse’s back. The man’s upper body and arms were either completely covered in a full chest and arms tattoo or those were real scales. In the shadow where the man stood, it was impossible to tell. The man was completely bald and had a tattoo of a hooded cobra on his head.

  The man in the duster was tall with slick, black hair and dark tan skin. One of his hands rested lazily on the curve of Chiel’s neck as he watched his partner ransack her things.

  Chiel stood a few feet in front of her horse. She had a frantic look in her eyes, pupils dilated all the way in terror, but everything else about her was calm, almost hypnotic. If Nash had to guess, he’d say the Wizard had somehow paralyzed her, maybe with forced hypnotism.

  Nash wanted to pull his gun, but he kept a hand resting on it instead, following his trainer’s lead.

  John Wayne rested a toothpick between his lips and said in a drawl, “I’d take it kindly if you men unhanded the lady.” He rotated the toothpick to the other side of his mouth and said, “And I use the term men loosely.”

  Both men startled and turned to look at them. Nash’s fingers wrapped around the grip, but he kept his finger off the trigger. The last thing he wanted to do was blow off his foot while drawing, as he’d seen a Ranger do once. The gun had two settings: Lead, which was regular bullets, and Barbs, which only worked on certain Castes such as Vamps and Wares. He had set it to Lead earlier, and resisted the urge to take his eyes away to check.