by T. A. Pratt
Rondeau got up and prodded the supine figure on the ground with his foot. The dead vampire was Danny Two Saints again, providing his adeptness as a quick-change artist, though he'd gotten the SUV into position as soon as Jason honked the horn before their transaction, so all he'd needed to do was pull on the cloak, mask, and gloves. Rondeau tugged at the cloak, and a gout of smoke rose up, along with a stink like rotten eggs, and he stumbled back, gagging. “Shit,” he said. “Definitely a vampire, all wrapped up for daylight shenanigans.”
“That smoke—” Cam-Cam said.
“They don't do so well with sunlight,” Jason said. “They burn. Leave him, Rondeau, and move that fucking SUV out of the way.”
Rondeau went to the vampire's ride, did a neat three-point turn, and squeezed past the pickup on the narrow road. He came back and hopped into the pickup's bed again, just in time to hear Cam-Cam say, “—thought they, I don't know, dissolved into dust?”
“This isn't a TV show,” Jason said. “Vampires aren't much like they look in the movies. Stakes work, crosses work, sunlight works… but they aren't sexy, and their bodies don't just vanish when they die. They rot fast, though. Won't be much left of that guy by morning. I'd strip him and let him burn up, but that stink doesn't come out of your clothes or your hair for weeks.”
The stink, Rondeau had to admit, was a nice touch. The smoke bomb concealed in the cloak had been Danny's idea, but the stink bomb was all Jason's.
“Let's get back to your place, Mr. Campion,” Jason said. “And hope this vampire was just following the dealer, and not specifically looking for us.”
“We'd better take precautions anyway,” Rondeau said.
“Better safe than exsanguinated,” Jason agreed.
“Viscarro!” Marla yelled, hitting the buzzer at one of the many doors to the subterranean sorcerer's catacombs. “This is Marla! Tell Bulliard I want to talk to him!”
After a moment, a speaker crackled. “I, ah, that is, I don't know anyone called—”
“Come on,” Marla said. “Is our visiting country bumpkin that dumb? I obviously know he's here, so he may as well talk to me.”
Another pause, then a voice that was not Viscarro's: “Come in.”
The door swung open, and Marla entered, B following. They went down a few hundred yards of twisting brick-lined hallways before reaching the central vault.
Marla noted with interest that Viscarro had installed a concrete bunker. Possibly he'd been motivated by the same desire for increased security that had led her to beef up the protections at her own apartment. Viscarro stood near the bunker, beside a young disheveled-looking man who seemed vaguely familiar, and…
“Bulliard, I presume?” she said.
The mycomancer was a big bastard, with a serious wild-man-of-the-woods vibe, though it was hard to tell where his long beard left off and drooping fronds of hanging moss began. His clothing might have been animal skins, or vegetation, or simply layers and layers and layers of filth. He wore a faded pink plastic pig snout, which should have been funny, but wasn't. “Marla Mason,” he said, and flung out his hand.
Something hit Marla's cheeks and sizzled. She laughed, wiping at her face. “Nice try, fungi. But impolite. I came to talk, not fight, but—” She nodded to B, who stepped forward and flung a tiny rock at Bulliard.
The stone hit the sorcerer in the chest, and he staggered back and slammed into the concrete bunker, hard. B had chipped the tiny stone from a much larger rock in Fludd Park and bound them together with sympathetic magic, so the pebble hit Bulliard with the force of a thrown boulder. The boulder in the park had almost certainly flown through the air, too, but it was next to the duck pond, so the only possible casualties were unwary waterbirds.
“Now that the pleasantries are out of the way,” Marla said. “How about we talk business? You're here for some spores, yeah?”
Bulliard straightened, wincing and rubbing his chest. “I am.”
“Too bad. They aren't real. So sorry Bye-bye.”
“You lie,” Bulliard said.
“No, I don't. Where did you hear this crap about the spores anyway?”
“Him.” Bulliard nodded to the nondescript young man, who was trying to fade into the background.
“Okay, where did he hear it?”
“Can't say,” the guy said. “Confidentiality The magical kind.”
A light went on in her head. “Oh, hell, you're the courier, I've seen you around. You've done work for me, yeah?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“And now you work for him?”
“It's not a job so much as it's slavery,” he said. “If you could maybe kill him and get rid of these mushrooms growing into my brain stem, I'd appreciate it.”
“You really can't tell me who gave you the message about the spores?”
“Not without my head exploding.”
Marla considered. “Would your head explode before you finished telling me, or after?”
“Before. Definitely before.”
“Hell. You'd say that either way”
“Enough,” Bulliard said. “The Mycelium has authorized me to… negotiate.” His mouth twisted in distaste.
“Because you know I can squish you like a dung beetle, no doubt. There's nothing to negotiate for.”
“We can offer hundreds of kilograms of Tricholoma magnivelare,” Bulliard said. “The American matsutake. Its value varies, but it often sells for ninety dollars per kilogram in Japan.”
Marla snorted. “You're talking about less than a hundred grand. For the Borrichius spores? That's not even close to a reasonable offer.”
“You misunderstand. The Mycelium offers this as an annuity, in perpetuity. The mushrooms are rare and valuable, but it is trivial for us to produce them. Will you accept this offer?”
Jason probably would, she thought—but while it was possible to trick someone like Cam-Cam, she couldn't deceive Bulliard, not when it came to spores. He practically was spores. She sighed. “Look, Bulliard, you've been had. There are no spores. It's a lie. A trick. A scam.”
“I don't believe you,” Bulliard said. “The Mycelium doesn't believe you. The spores are valuable. Of course you would lie to protect them.”
“Sure. I'm not, but I would, you've got me there. But, either way, you're not leaving here with them. You can pack up your shit and leave town, right now—after you release Viscarro and the courier here from whatever nasty control you've got—or you can stay and get turned into mulch. Totally your choice.”
“There is a third option,” Bulliard said. “I could make you into fertilizer for the Mycelium.”
“All right, then.” Marla unsheathed her dagger of office. “Let's dance.”
Bulliard rushed them, and so, improbably, did Viscarro, moving with spidery speed. Marla planted one foot and whirled for a roundhouse kick at Bulliard's face—aiming for that stupid pig-nose—but he dodged aside with surprising dexterity Viscarro was tangling with B, and Marla felt for him—fighting that guy must be like fighting a mass of living coat hangers, and Viscarro couldn't feel pain—but he appeared to be holding his own okay. B was armed with a length of pipe wrapped in gaffer's tape to make a grip, and Marla had laid some inertial magics on it, so the pipe hit hard. Marla slashed out at Bulliard with her knife and sliced into something, though whether it was flesh or fungus or clothing she couldn't tell. Her hands were sticky from the fungicide, but it didn't hurt her grip on the knife, and even though Bulliard was big and fast, she knew she could take him. Kicking ass was what she did, while the mycomancer probably depended a lot more on shoving mushrooms into people's brain stems. She darted forward to make another strike—
Something exploded against the back of her head, and everything went black.
B saw Marla go down. The courier simply walked up behind her and smacked her in the back of the head with a heavy ceramic pot. B cursed, swung his pipe at Viscarro's knee, and heard a satisfying crunch. Viscarro went down, and tried to stand up again, but the knee wo
uldn't support him, and he gave up—or, rather, Bulliard gave up on puppeting his body around. “Damn it, Bowman,” Viscarro complained. “I'm dead, I can't heal from that kind of injury, I'll have to take the leg off and get a prosthesis.”
“Sorry,” B said automatically, and backed away Bulliard and the courier were approaching him, trying to flank him, and Marla wasn't moving. Was she dead? She couldn't be dead. He'd seen her take much harder hits… but only when wearing her magical purple-and-white cloak, which could heal nearly any injury. She didn't wear the cloak anymore, fearing the cost of its magic, and he didn't know how much of a beating she could soak up on her own.
At the moment, though, B had to worry about his own skin. “Bye-bye, birdie,” he said, and turned into a pigeon just as Bulliard dove for him.
As he spun and flew toward the high domed ceiling, he saw Bulliard stumble, and the messenger looked around in confusion. The change had been quick enough that B wasn't sure they'd even seen him become a bird—they might think he'd disappeared. He flapped over the courier and cooed, wishing he could crap on cue, but apparently birds didn't have sphincter control. The courier looked up, cursing, and B changed back into human form, dropping all his weight onto the man's head and knocking him to the ground, where his crumpling body conveniently broke B's fall. B rolled off him just in time to see Bulliard looming over him, reaching out with hands the size of cast-iron skillets—
B took a breath. Focus, Focus, Focus, he thought, and time slowed. He carved up space-time, opening a hole in the inches between Bulliard and himself, a gulf, a chasm, a tiger pit… a portal. Real time reasserted itself, and the mycomancer lunged… and vanished, disappearing into the floor. B didn't have the skill with manipulating space to create a pocket-dimension to hold him, though such a pinched-off prison would have been wonderful at the moment—but he could do something almost as good.
Bulliard had fallen into the floor, but he fell out of the ceiling, tumbling from vaulted space above, bouncing off the bunker, and landing in an ungainly and unmoving heap on the floor.
B stumbled toward Marla. He'd tired himself out before they even came here by making a sympathetic connection between the little rock and the boulder in the park, and now, in addition to that, he was disoriented from being a bird, and his head pounded from cutting up space-time. He knelt by Marla, nearly pitching forward on his face in the process, and shook her.
Marla's eyes opened, and she groaned. “Anybody get the street address of that building that hit me?”
“Thought. You. Dead.” B's vision was blurring a little at the edges.
“My head's harder than that.” She sat up and looked around. “Damn, B. You did this?”
“Yes.” He slumped over, yawned mightily, and closed his eyes. I'll just rest for a minute. Just for a minute.
After easing B down to the ground, Marla went to Bulliard, knelt, and checked for a pulse. There was none. She rolled his body over—he was lighter than she'd expected, much of his bulk made up of layered clothes and caked-on grime—and pried open his eyelids. Pupils were nonreactive. No sign of breath from his nostrils. No rise and fall of his chest. She poked the point of a dagger into the fleshy part of the sorcerer's thigh, and not only did he remain unmoving, the wound didn't bleed much—barely even oozed.
She went over to Viscarro, who was sighing long-sufferingly on the floor. “All right, corpsy, let's get those shrooms out of you.” Hold still.” Marla cut at Viscarro's neck with her dagger of office. “This knife is sharp, it'll decapitate you if you aren't careful. That wouldn't kill you, but I bet you'd hate being a head on a shelf somewhere. You never struck me as the Orpheus type.”
“Just hurry, before Bulliard awakens!”
“I wouldn't worry about that. There.” She held the tiny mushrooms, caps and stems, in the palm of her hand, where they sizzled and withered on contact with her fungicide. “You sure this is all of them? I could…” She shuddered. “I could strip your carcass and check the rest of you, see if you've got mushrooms hidden in more delicate places.”
“That won't be necessary,” he snapped. “I'm keenly aware of my own body and all the parasites attached thereto.” Viscarro rubbed the back of his neck, which was nicked and gouged. “Damn it. I need a new leg, and there are holes in my neck.”
“You're welcome. I didn't sever any nerves, so quit your bitching.” Marla was no surgeon, but Viscarro didn't feel pain or bleed, so cutting out the mushrooms was easy She looked at the unconscious courier. She didn't dare try to cut the mushrooms out of him—he was living flesh, not a lich, so he would bleed, and she'd kill him, likely as not. She'd have to get Langford to work on him under anesthesia. “You got a prison cell for these two?”
“Oh, yes. A torture chamber as well.”
“Eh, Bulliard looks dead, so I'm guessing torture is probably moot.”
Viscarro cursed. “Your apprentice made Bulliard fall from the ceiling. Drat. I'd planned on paying him back for his rudeness.”
Marla looked up. That was a good thirty-foot drop. He'd probably snapped his neck on impact. B would feel guilty for killing the man, probably, but she'd make sure he got over it. If the mycomancer really was dead. “I'd rather be safe, though. I've known a few sorcerers who were quick even though they looked awfully damn dead, present company included. Put Bulliard's body somewhere secure, would you? Just in case he's playing possum. I'd hate for him to open his eyes and come at me like the end of a cheap horror movie.”
“I'll find a nice deep hole for him, don't worry”
“Even if he's really dead, I want Langford to check him out, make sure he's not carrying some kind of bio-hazard on his skin or anything. And don't steal the pig nose. I know magic when I see it, but I want to get it checked out before we do anything with it.”
“Can I have it when you're done?” Viscarro said.
“If it's not anything I need. Can't you show a little gratitude for us saving you and ending your enslavement?”
“I'm one of the city's sorcerers,” Viscarro snapped. “Saving me is your job. I don't thank garbagemen or dogcatchers, either. I'll have my apprentices put these two away.”
“Okay. No torturing the courier. He's no more responsible for his actions than you are.” Which didn't stop her from harboring just a little bit of resentment toward the guy herself. He'd hit her hard, and she was a little worried she had a concussion.
She went over to B and nudged him with her foot, but he only snored. Poor kid had tried to do six impossible things at once, and that would take a lot out of even a seasoned pro. “You mind if B keeps snoozing here? He pushed himself hard, without enough training, and he's going to have to sleep it off. He's apt to wake up ravenous, too. Can you feed him?”
“I suppose my apprentices eat, so there's likely food somewhere. I'll make sure they see to his needs. You're paying for my new prosthetic leg, by the way”
“Take it out of next month's tribute. And give me a receipt.” She looked around, making sure she didn't have any double vision, and decided she was probably capable of soldiering on.
“Where are you going?”
“Couple errands.” She sighed. “I was going to have B call up an oracle for me, so I could find out who told Bulliard the Borrichius spores were in Felport. But B's down for the count.” She chewed her lip thoughtfully “Still, he's not the only source of otherworldly information in town, is he? I've got other options. Shit, I need to call my brother, too, tell him to finish up his business with the spores tout suite, just in case there are any other out-of-towners coming—”
“So the spores are real?” Viscarro said.
“No, never mind, it's complicated. Take care, Viscarro. I'll come back in a couple hours to see how B's doing, and send someone to work on saving the courier and autopsying Bulliard.”
“Oh, good,” Viscarro said sourly. “More visitors.”
The messenger woke in a dim place, and sat up, groaning. His head hurt, his back hurt, his shoulders hurt, his teeth ached
, and at some point he'd bitten his tongue. Now he was in a dim cinder-block cell with a metal door, and Bulliard was beside him, sprawled inelegantly on the floor. The messenger crawled, wincing, to Bulliard, and prodded him. “Hey, mossface, look at the fine mess you've gotten us into now.” Bulliard didn't move, and the messenger grinned. “Are you dead, Bulliard? Gone to the great honey mushroom colony in the sky? Well, if you're not, let me take this opportunity to make sure you are.” He reached out for Bulliard's throat, intending to squeeze until he felt the windpipe collapse—but he couldn't even make himself touch the mycomancer's skin. “Oh, fuck,” he said. The mushrooms in his brain stem were still controlling his movements. Was it just really good magic? Or was Bulliard less dead than he appeared?
“The Mycelium will not be pleased.” Bulliard opened his dirt-colored eyes. “Hmm. A cell. I had hoped they would simply bury me, or place me in a less secure room, upon finding me dead.”
“You don't sound dead. I know how dead sounds, and it doesn't sound like you.”
“Fly agaric,” Bulliard said. “A beautiful mushroom. Amanita muscaria, beloved of shamans, bringer of visions. The Norse used it to incite berserker rages—I have used it for that myself. But it can also cause unconsciousness, and symptoms that mimic death.” He sat up. “I was not sure I could win the fight directly. So I chose to deceive our attackers and bide my time.”
“Great plan. Now we're locked in a cell.”
“Yes. But I was not dead. I was still, but I was listening. Marla Mason said that she wished to warn her brother. She was afraid he might be in danger, if others came looking for the spores.”
“Oh, shit. You think her brother has the spores? I didn't even know she had a brother.”
“I have no doubt he is a great magician,” Bulliard said. “But he will not expect me to come for him. People seldom expect attacks from the dead.”
“Great. But how do we get out of here?”
“Like this.” Viscarro opened the door. He leaned on an old-fashioned wooden crutch. “There's an escape tunnel here to the right, it will lead you to the surface.”