Dying Bites

by DD Barant

  “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

  We face back down the corridor, then take our first, unsure step backward. I’ve never felt so horribly vulnerable in my life. All I can think of is how incredibly, idiotically exposed both of us are. If Ghatanothoa has any kind of nasty, otherworldly guard dogs—hell, if he has a poodle with a bad attitude—we’re wide open to attack.

  The glow gets brighter as we round the corner. No, that’s not right—it gets stronger but darker. More illumination but less light, like seeing by X-rays. That’s the best description I can give.

  We continue our careful, reversed walk. Just around the bend the tunnel empties out into a chamber filled with the pulsing blue nonlight, a chamber I can only see one wall of. I crane my neck upward as I step backward, like a tourist gawking at a skyscraper, and realize just how big this space is; the wall above the arch we just backed through goes up and up and up, raw craggy blue-lit rock like the surface of another planet. I have the terrible compulsion to turn around.

  Dr. Pete stops. I back into him, almost turn around to apologize, and manage to stop myself in time. “I think we’re here,” I whisper.

  “Yeah. . . .” His own voice sounds far away and dreamy. I wonder if I’m going to wind up looking after him instead of him after me.

  I’m not doing that well myself. The room is utterly silent, no sound of water dripping or rock creaking or anything but our own breathing. My own sounds funny, erratic, like my lungs can’t quite remember the rhythm.

  And, of course, there’s a god right behind me.

  The sense of its presence is overwhelming, and yet I’m sure it doesn’t know we’re here. It would be like an elephant noticing a flea . . .

  A flea that’s about to bite.

  I look down at the scroll in my hands. The words on it are now illuminated in little flickering blue flames, which doesn’t surprise me at all. I begin to read, my voice hoarse and faltering at first, but growing stronger as I continue. The words themselves don’t make any sense—the first few sentences are basic instructions on where and how the scroll should be used, but beyond that it’s all f’tagh this and klaatu that. I just hope I’m pronouncing them right.

  About halfway through I feel my heart stop.

  Odd kind of feeling. Not painful at all. I keep reading for another full line before I collapse.

  Dr. Pete catches me before I hit the ground. He checks the pulse on the side of my neck, then fumbles in his pack for a syringe. I know what’s coming; I’ve seen Pulp Fiction five times. Never thought I’d OD on alien god brainwaves, though. . . .

  Dr. Pete, thankfully, is a trained doctor instead of a freaked-out junkie hit man. He slips the needle in expertly between my ribs, as opposed to stabbing me in the sternum. I feel the epinephrine kick-start my heart, and my head clears a little as fresh blood surges through it.

  I don’t bother getting to my feet. I just grab the scroll from where I dropped it, prop myself up on my elbow, and start reading from the last word I spoke.

  I get all the way to the end before anything really bad happens.

  I utter the last word on the scroll. I stop, feeling like I’ve just run a marathon, my nerves jittering with the artificial adrenaline Dr. Pete’s pumped into my system.

  “Jace,” he says, “you have to keep going—”

  “I’m done. There isn’t any more—”

  And then there’s the noise.

  It’s the sound of a frustrated deity that’s just been told the all-you-can-eat buffet is now closed. It’s eerie and terrifying and very, very pissed off. The blue light isn’t pulsing anymore; it’s just getting steadily brighter.

  “Time to go,” Dr. Pete says.

  Here’s the part where we dash out of the tunnel as it falls down around us, narrowly escaping death, emerging into the sunlight as the entire temple collapses for no good reason. That doesn’t happen. What does happen is that Dr. Pete transforms into half-were form, slings me over his shoulder, and runs like hell. We make it up to the antechamber in about thirty seconds, and he more or less throws me out of the hole, then leaps after me.

  Nothing blows up. Nothing collapses. Nothing happens at all except the endless, ululating howl that follows us, the howl of something ancient and hungry denied. If I ever survive to be an old lady with Alzheimer’s, I’m sure that long after every single memory I have has decayed away to nothing, the recollection of that awful, inhuman howl will still echo in my ears.

  Charlie’s waiting for us outside the temple. “Someone doesn’t sound happy,” he says. “That’s good, right?”

  I nod wearily. “We’re good.”

  And then the island begins to sink.

  It’s hardly noticeable at first. The beach simply and slowly gets smaller. Without a word, the three of us begin to climb.

  The howl chases us. It grows fainter, but we can still hear it.

  We manage to gain a few hundred feet in altitude before the terrain becomes too steep and slippery to go any farther. We huddle on a rocky shelf and wait.

  When the water fills the mouth of the temple, the sound finally stops—on an audible level, anyway. I swear I can still feel it reverberating through the rock itself and into my bones.

  The water creeps higher. When it reaches our plateau, Pete and I dog-paddle and let it carry us up, past the steep slope above us, until we can scramble ashore once more. Charlie stays where he is until we haul him up with a rope. Golems don’t swim—but fortunately, they don’t breathe, either.

  This time, we reach the peak.

  There’s no place left to go.

  “Always wanted to ride a lost continent to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean,” Charlie says. “Must be my lucky day.”

  “Too bad we didn’t bring an inflatable boat,” I say. “We could use you as an anchor.”

  Dr. Pete’s fiddling with the walkie-talkie they gave us. “Hang on,” he says. “I’ve got something—yes, hello? . . . This is, uh, the scroll-reading people?”

  The speaker crackles, then replies, “The Valcheck team?”

  “Yes! We’re—we’re on top of a mountain, and it’s sinking. I mean, the island we’re on, it’s not going to be an island much longer—”

  “We understand. We’re coming to pick you up, just hang on.”

  I scan the sky, but don’t see a thing. “Looks like we may be treading water while waiting for them, Doc. Charlie, how do you feel about scuba diving?”

  “The same way an anvil does.”

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “We’ll tie the rope around you again, and feed it out as long as we can.”

  “And when you get to the end of your rope?”

  “That’s where I live, Charlie.”

  “I noticed. I’m not going to drag you under, Jace.”

  “You won’t. I’m going to haul you up.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s against the laws of physics.”

  “So is this whole world. Screw the laws of physics.”

  Dr. Pete interrupts us. “I don’t think any of us are going to be visiting Davy Jones’s locker. Look.” He points—not to the sky, but the ocean.

  And there, goggling at us like a nosy sea serpent, is a periscope.

  Mu sinks. We’re not on it.

  The submarine is U.S. Navy. It picks us up and takes us home. We get the good news in transit; the scroll did what it was supposed to. The paralyzed are all, slowly, beginning to move and speak and de-mummify.

  But it isn’t over.

  Both Dr. Pete and I are given a thorough checkup, first by the sub’s medics and then by stateside physicians. They seem a little worried by what they find, though they won’t tell me squat. It can’t be too bad, though, because they let us have visitors after the first day and only hold us for three.

  Dr. Pete is descended upon by his family, who fuss over him, bring him huge amounts of food, and engage in a running battle with the nurses as to how many candles they can light.

  I get less attention, but one surprise vi
sitor is Alexandra. She’s dressed in jeans and a leather jacket but isn’t wearing the corpsing fetish; she’s actually quite pretty when her face isn’t rotting. “Hey,” she says.

  “Hey yourself.”

  “I tried to send you some stuff, but it kept bouncing. Government firewall.”

  “Oh. Sorry about that.”

  “No prob. Thought I’d bring ’em by personally.” She fishes a flash drive out of her pocket and hands it to me. “Three albums’ worth—it’s all I’ve got. But I put some other stuff on there I thought you might like.”

  I smile. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “Yeah.” She pauses. “You know, sometimes I kinda feel like I’m from another world. And it sucks.”

  “Yeah. Not all the time, though. Helps to have friends.”

  She smiles back. “I guess. You think maybe we could, like, go for coffee or something when you get out of here? And talk about where you’re from? Unless that’s, you know, top secret or something.”

  “I think I can get you clearance.” I nod. “Sure. That’d be great.”

  “Okay, then. Bye.” And she practically runs away in that awkward, too self-aware way that teenagers have.

  Cassius doesn’t come to visit me, but Gretchen does. She’s moving a little stiffly but otherwise seems fine. I ask her what the experience was like; she says it felt like being trapped in a meeting that never ended. Her tone is light, but I see something in her eyes that disturbs me: the faintest echo of the scream that chased Dr. Pete and me out of that tunnel, that insane, eternal howl . . .

  Or maybe I’m imagining things.

  As soon as they discharge me, Cassius asks to see me in his office.

  I go in with my head held high. If he’s looking for an apology, he’s going to need a flashlight, a proctologist, and yoga lessons. I’m not proud of everything I did, but I don’t see any other path than the one I chose.

  He’s sitting on the sofa when I come in, the same one I sat on when I was brought over the dimensional divide all of a month ago.

  “Yes, sir?” I ask, stopping in front of him.

  “Don’t sir me, Jace,” he says. “Not yet, anyway. Sit down.”

  I sit down next to him.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  “Not a problem. I mastered sitting a long time ago.”

  “Not for that. I mean, thank you for risking your life to save a world that isn’t your own. One that hasn’t treated you very well, either.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. The hospital food’s been top-notch.”

  He winces. “We received a message for you, from Aristotle Stoker. The tech boys have cleared it; there’s nothing encoded. You should take a look.”

  I nod. He pulls a tiny remote from his pocket, hits a button. The monitor on his desk, angled to face us, now shows Stoker’s face.

  “Hello, Jace.” He looks grim. “I don’t know how I feel about your survival. Part of me wants you to die for killing Selkie. Another part thinks you’re still capable of replacing her.

  “I have some bad news for you. It is possible to reverse the Ghatanothoa effect, but it’s only been done a handful of times and in every case the revived subject was found to be hopelessly insane. It was assumed this was the result of long years of paralysis, the mind slowly buckling under the sheer horror of total helplessness. As it turns out, this assumption was false.

  “Your employers may not have told you this, but exposure to HPLC can cause mental deterioration—and not just in human beings. My research indicates Ghatanothoan paralysis results in some degree of latent mental instability in virtually all exposed subjects, regardless of how long they were immobilized. About ten percent show signs of advanced psychosis. And every single subject showed biochemical changes at the genetic level.”

  He pauses. There’s an elevator in my stomach, and it’s going down.

  “Maybe I didn’t accomplish what I set out to do—and maybe I did. Maybe I just wanted the immortals and the indestructible to know what it’s like to have a human weakness.” He shakes his massive head. “They’re not so perfect now, are they? Now they can suffer just like we can. Schizophrenia, irrational phobias, multiple personality disorder . . . I’ve opened up a big can of mental worms, and they’re burrowing right into all those supernatural brains.

  “Ten percent of one and a half million pires and thropes. That’s an awful lot of dangerous crazy people, Jace. I think your schedule is going to be a little full for a while.”

  The message comes to an end. He doesn’t say good-bye.

  “I’m sorry,” Cassius says. “But as long as he’s free, you still haven’t fulfilled the terms of your contract. Yes, you saved the world—but we can’t send you home just yet. We still need you.”

  Yeah. He’s got a hundred and fifty thousand reasons to keep me around, now. I sigh. “Okay, but I want my own office. I’m tired of being summoned in here like some kind of low-grade demon.”

  “You may have some demon in you, but it’s definitely not low-grade.”

  “Plus some plants. And someone to do plant things to them, so they don’t die.”

  “I’ll see what I can arrange.”

  “And a title.”

  His eyebrows go up. “Duchess, maybe?”

  “You know what I mean. Something that generates a little respect.”

  “As opposed to a demeaning nickname?” His voice tells me he knows something I don’t.

  He’s wrong. “Yeah, I know what the other agents call me. The Bloodhound.” I shrug. “Considering all that’s happened to me in the past month, it doesn’t seem to matter much. Hell, I’m just glad they’re not calling me lunch.”

  “If you don’t care what people call you, why ask for a title?”

  I head for the door. “Because it looks like I’m going to be here awhile—and it’ll look good on my résumé.”

  I stop with my hand on the doorknob. “Oh, and I’m still not going to follow a single damn rule I don’t agree with.”

  He sighs. I smile, and leave.

  But I’ll be back.

  Read on for an excerpt from the next book by DD Barant

  Read on for an excerpt from the next book by DD Barant

  DEATH BLOWS

  Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  “Okay,” I say. “This is new.”

  The crime scene is a penthouse in a high-rise overlooking the bay. From the heavily smoked windows I deduce the occupant is a pire, from the furnishings an extremely wealthy one.

  The body’s draped over a treadmill in the middle of the room. The vic’s dressed in a head-to-toe red outfit with yellow boots, the kind of thing pires wear during the day to shield themselves from sunlight. No goggles, though, and the face mask doesn’t cover the mouth. So far, it doesn’t rank that high on my weirdness scale.

  All that’s left of the body is a skeleton, not unusual for a pire. But this guy’s skeleton is green—and giving off what seem to be little arcs of electricity, sparks flickering in the empty eye sockets of his skull, glinting off the polished emerald of his teeth. Just to make sure we get the point, there’s a lightning bolt emblazoned on the chest of the suit and little lightning designs around the wrists and waist.

  And then I recognize him. Of course.

  Cassius is standing next to the body, dressed in his usual black business suit. He nods at Charlie and me as we come in, but doesn’t say anything. Damon Eisfanger is examining the body without touching it, but looks up and waves when he sees me. “Hey, Jace.” Damon’s a thrope with both Arctic wolf and pit bull in his lineage, so he’s as pale as an albino and square as a linebacker, with ice-blue eyes and short, bristly white hair. He’s about as geeky as forensics shamans usually are, which is to say, a lot. “Pretty bizarre, huh? Know why the skeleton’s green? I think all the calcium in it has been changed into copper. Good conductor, though gold would have been better.”

  “Maybe the killer was on a budget. And all the sparks?”

 
“Lightning. I mean, I’ve only done some preliminary readings, but this is not house current we’re talking about here. This is actual lightning, magically directed. It wants to leave, but there’s nowhere for it to go; the treadmill isn’t grounded.”

  “Gretchen was the one who found the body,” Cassius says. “She’s in the bedroom, composing herself.”

  “I’ll talk to her in a minute,” I say. “Okay, Eisfanger—even I recognize that costume, and you’re about seventeen levels above me when it comes to geekdom, so go ahead and spit out whatever clever pun you’ve been holding in for the last twenty minutes before you explode.”

  Eisfanger looks a little taken aback. “I’m afraid I don’t, uh, have anything to say. I mean, I guess I could say something about this being shocking, but that seems really obvious—”

  “That’s all you got? You’ve got a dead superhero named ‘The Flash’ on your hands and you can’t come up with a single punchline?”

  “A what?” Now he just looks confused.

  “The Flash. Guy in a red leotard, runs really really fast. I think he had a TV show, too. Come on . . . ‘He’s been Flash fried.’ ‘I’ll be back in a Flash, but he won’t.’ ‘My camera doesn’t work ’cause the Flash is dead.’ You’re really disappointing me here.”

  “A superhero? What is that, a really big sandwich?”

  I frown at him. “Really disappointing.”

  The expression on Eisfanger’s face has gone from confused to bewildered, and he turns to Cassius to see if he gets the joke. Cassius frowns too, but at me.

  “Jace. Neither Damon nor I have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  I stare at them and blink. Something punches me, very softly, in the pit of my stomach. When I first got here—this world, I mean, not this room—that punch would have been a lot more solid. It landed every time I’d been lulled into a sense of normalcy about this world and something abruptly leapt out at me and screamed that I was very, very far from home. You know, like reading the ingredients on a bottle of soda pop and learning it was full of gerbil’s blood, or seeing a commercial for a waterbed that lets you literally sleep underwater—handy for those who neither breathe nor prune.