by DD Barant
I jump down off my own gravestone and take a step backward. “Hold on there, funnybones. First of all, I thought you were here to help me. And second—no offense, but you’re not exactly terrifying.”
“Oh, two-part question. Gashadokuro hates those, but will be doing his best to answer. First part, with the helping? Yes, absolutely, but please to replace help with bite. Is easy.”
He takes a step toward me. His posture straightens from a partial crouch to something more upright, making him seem taller. “Second part. This part is better showing than telling, I am most sure…”
He’s definitely taller than I first thought. At least six foot two, maybe three …
Four. Six. Ten.
I scramble backward as he takes another lengthening step forward. Seven feet. Nine. Twelve. The truncated tennis racket replacing one of his thigh bones is now the size of an ax handle. He stares down at me with eyes the size of glassy baseballs—and he’s still getting bigger.
“You see, Jace Valchek? Is all being a matter of proportion. Even tiniest mouse is being fearsome when size of lion, am I not honestly true?”
His voice is getting bigger, too, booming through the quiet of the graveyard like a drunk in a library.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” I say. “No need to get all shouty.”
I draw my scythes. A single smooth, cross-handed action, practiced hundreds of times, from two specially designed holsters sewn into the lining of my jacket. Eighteen inches of solid ironwood in each hand, tipped with a steel cone sheathed in silver. Good for taking down pires, thropes, or even lems.
Giant talking skeletons, I’m not so sure.
I lunge forward. His knee is about level with my chest now. I smash his patella with a hard, right-handed swing, fragmenting his kneecap into dozens of yellowing shards. In a human opponent, that would be a crippling, agonizing wound; the effect it has on Boney G is to make his lower leg fall off.
He doesn’t fall down, though, just shifts his weight to his other leg and balances on that. He puts his hands on his hips and glares down at me indignantly from a height of at least twenty feet.
“What did you be doing that for?” he demands. “Now I’m needing new knee!”
“Maybe you can get a deal on a pair,” I say, and go for the other one—but he’s ready for me this time. He kicks me with his stump, the end of the femur slamming into my chest and tossing me backward. I smack into a crypt, taking a hard shot to my skull and making the world go a little wobbly. I shake my head, trying to clear it, as an irate, Jurassic Park–size Halloween novelty takes an experimental hop toward me.
“Is no use trying for the escape. I am Gashadokuro! I am to be biting off your head!”
I struggle to my feet, feeling dizzy and leaning against the crypt for support. “Why?” I gasp.
“Why am I to be biting off your head? Well, is trap, I suppose. Gashadokuro not bother with details—am big-picture guy.” He chuckles, a sound like gravel rattling in a tin can. “Pretty funny, yes? Big picture!”
“No, I mean … why bite anyone’s head off?”
“Am not following.”
“You don’t have a stomach. You don’t have a throat. You don’t, as far as I can tell, even have a tongue. So what’s the point in eating anything—including my head?”
He puts one hand on the roof of the crypt to steady himself and studies me. “Hmm. Is good point. Interesting conundrum is being for sure. Except, of courses, for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Is not so much about the eating, Jace Valchek. Is about the biting.”
He lunges for my head. I dive and roll to the left, hearing those big teeth chomp together in the spot I just vacated. The sound is oddly muffled, but I don’t have time to think about that now—I leap to my feet and run.
It’s a decent plan. Sure, he’s big—in the sense that water is wet—but he’s down to one working leg. And really, how fast can a gigantic pile of bones hop?
As it turns out, he doesn’t have to be fast. He covers so much ground in a single jump that he can take his time, aim carefully, then come crashing down right on top of me—or at least where I was a second ago. It’s like being chased by an anorexic Godzilla on a pogo stick.
He hops, I scurry. Darting between tombstones, behind mausoleums, around statuary, trying to put anything I can between me and him. If I can just get out of his line of sight, maybe I can sneak away.
A moment later I see my chance. There’s a stand of pine trees at the base of a low hill, and once I’m in it the branches will obscure me for a few vital seconds.
I run for it. Behind me, Gashadokuro bellows, “Ha! And now for the biting!”
I expect to feel a huge, bony foot stomp down on me any instant … but I make it to the trees. I immediately skid to a stop, then duck behind the largest trunk and wait, trying to quiet my breathing. He may not have ears, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hear.
I hear him thump down at the edge of the trees. They’re too tightly spaced for him to fit easily between, so he’ll probably hop around them. Whichever way he goes, I go the other way.
Except he doesn’t do that. I hear the creak of bones, and then I hear his voice again, a lot closer. At the same level as my head.
“Jace Valchek?” He must be bending down, like a guy chasing a mouse peering under a bed. “I am knowing you are in there, Jace Valchek. I am even seeing you—that tree is being skinnier than you, you know.”
I sigh. What I wouldn’t give for a fully loaded handgun right now. I’d blast that idiotic grin right off this overgrown, underfed zombie wannabe in about two seconds …
But that’s not an option. What I have are my scythes and my brains, and that’ll have to be enough.
And then I see the enormous, floating albino spider.
It’s his hand, of course. He knows where the mouse is and figures he can just reach in and grab it. Well, there’s a reason that’s generally a bad idea: Mice bite.
It’s the hand with three fingers. I look for older, cracked or yellowing bones, and find one proximal phalange on the index and a metacarpal on the thumb. I step out from behind the tree as he gropes for me, and deliver two precise and very hard blows, shattering both bones, then dart behind another tree.
“Kind of hard to grab something without a thumb,” I say. “Of course, you still have one left. Wanna try again?”
“Why are you making of this so difficult?” he complains. “Why not just be giving up? There is nothing stopping you.”
“Guess I’m just difficult that way.”
I’ve bought a moment to think, anyway. Should I keep running, hope that putting the stand of trees between us will buy me enough time? Or would it be better to stay put, hope he decides to cut his losses and leave?
“I am not doing the giving up, Jace Valchek!” he shouts. “Gashadokuro is being very, very patient!”
Great.
So it’s a standoff, me versus a giant, hopping skeleton with bad grammar. I love my life, I really do … but I’m a little short on patience myself. “Hey! Bone boy!”
“Yes, toothy morsel?”
“I don’t have time for this. How about we—”
I don’t finish my sentence. Instead, I dart out from behind my tree and take off at a dead run.
Straight toward my adversary.
Gash doesn’t seem like the sharpest bone blade in the drawer, and it’s considerably harder to maneuver on one leg than two. The element of surprise, better overall dexterity, and his lack of a lower leg means I can dash right under his dangling stump before he can effectively react. I snap the blades of the scythes out as I run, two gleaming, eighteen-inch-long razors that lock at a forty-five-degree angle.
“Whah—sneaky! But you are not doing the escaping—”
Wouldn’t dream of it, Gashy old boy. I stop and spin around once I’m behind him. Now, let’s see; the anklebone’s connected to the … knee bone … which is about three feet above my head.
; I jump and swing both scythes, but I’m not trying for impact this time; I hook one blade over the top of the fibula on his good leg, where the bone juts out a little before butting up against the femur, and the other around the joint and over the kneecap. I’m wearing good shoes with grippy soles, and I scale his tibia easily.
“What? That is not being of the fair, Jace Valchek!” He tries to brush me off with his stump, but misses. I climb higher, hooking the blades behind his femur and walking up the bone like a logger using a belt harness and spiked shoes to zip up a tree.
“Stop! You are girl, not squirrel!”
“That’s good, because you’re sadly lacking in nuts,” I mutter, and swing a scythe right through where they’d be if he had any. I hook one blade through the obturator foramen, a round hole in the pelvic bone that muscles and nerves feed through, pull myself a little higher, and get the other on one of the lower vertebrae.
He’s swatting at me now, trying to dislodge me without losing his balance, but I’m in an awkward spot. One bony hand does make contact, though, slamming into my thigh and knocking my feet loose. I hang on grimly, pulling myself up with my arms, getting my feet on top of the pelvic girdle.
“No! No! No!” Gash shouts. “Is being all wrong, Jace Valchek! You are making the nicks and scratches! You must be gettting down, nasty girl!”
Oh, I’ll show you nasty. I’ve got him right where I want him now, and I clamber up his spine and rib cage as easily as using a ladder. He can’t even reach me anymore—I’m at that precise spot you develop a burn when you go to the beach alone, because you can’t quite get to it with the sunscreen.
“Hey, Gasho? What do you say we stop flailing around and have a conversation, yes? Or, you know, I could just chop your head off.”
He stops trying to hit me and freezes in place.
“Yeah, I thought that might get your attention. See, while solid bone might be difficult to hack through, plastic is not. And that’s what your enormous skull is still made of, right?”
“I … am guessing you wouldn’t be believing me if I say no.”
“Not so much. Now, a real skull is connected to the spine with all sorts of muscles and tendons and nerves, but a fake skull? Not only are all the fleshy parts missing, but the basic structure isn’t even the same; I’m pretty sure your head is perched on top of your spinal column like an apple balanced on a fencepost, with the only thing holding that sucker on being magic. And magic doesn’t tend to hold up to silvered blades real well, does it? I’m thinking one good swipe at the base of your noggin and the whole thing will pop right off. Want to see if I’m right?”
“No, no, that is not being neccesary.”
It might seem like I’ve won, but this isn’t over yet. I’m still perched far too high off the ground, and if Gashy figures out I can’t decapitate him without dooming myself, he’s not only going to call my bluff but probably just keel over backward and let gravity take care of me. I do not want my tombstone to read CRUSHED BY A GIANT PLASTIC SKULL.
“Let us everybody be calming down, Jace Valchek. There is no need for the violent behaving! We can being discussing this like the clever rationals we are.”
“Okay. Let’s sit down and hash this out, all right? And by sit down, I mean slowly.”
I’ve got one blade hooked around a cervical vertebra and the other poised to strike if he tries anything. If I’m going down, it’s going to be on top of a headless pile of bones—which actually sounds a lot worse than just hitting the ground.
But Gashy doesn’t figure it out. He squats down carefully into a cross-legged position, making no attempt to shake me off. Guess he’s not used to his prey biting back.
“Hokay. Am doing the sitting. Now please to be not knocking off my block, yes?”
“We’ll see.”
Well, at least I’m a lot closer to terra firma than I was a minute ago—a fall from here is definitely survivable. As long as I don’t hit one of the gazillion headstones down there, of course. “What’s the deal, Gash? Who was that monk, and why did he send you to kill me?”
“I am telling you for the last of time, Jace Valchek—was not for killing. Was for—”
“—the biting, yeah, yeah, I know. Answer the question.”
He sighs. “It was…”
“Yes?”
“The fishies.”
“The fishies.”
“Yes. They are being most angry with you, Jace Valchek.”
He sounds sincere, but I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about. “What fishies? And why?”
“For the murder, Jace Valchek. For the murder, and all the eating.”
“What?”
“Salmon. Shrimp. Yellowtail. Mackeral. And tuna, Jace Valchek.” His voice is still dead serious, almost mournful. “All the poor, slaughtered tuna … especially the spicy ones.”
Sushi. He’s trying to tell me this is about sushi.
“That’s why they are coming to me, Jace Valchek. Because you are to be punished for your terrible, terrible hunger—and I am knowing about hunger. Gashadokuro is being all about the hunger.”
“Yeah, sure, Big Bones. You’re trying to tell me you were hired by what, a consortium of fish ghosts from all the sashimi I’ve every eaten? Do I have GULLIBLE tattooed on my forehead or something?”
“Do not be laughing, Jace Valchek. Is very, very serious. Spirits are being in everything—fish, also. And fish have gods, too…”
What he’s saying—though still ludicrous—almost makes sense. The basic principle of animist magic is that everything does have a spirit inside it, and who’s to say that some of those spirits wouldn’t band together for a little revenge …
I shake my head. “Let’s say there’s some grain of truth to your story. How’d they contact you? What name did they refer to themselves as?”
“I can’t be telling, Jace Valchek,” he whispers. “Oh, no. Gashadokuro is being much, much too frightened of them. Worse things than having your head cut off, yes…”
He leans backward abruptly, twisting at the same time. He catches himself with his elbows at the last second before he hits the ground, but my scythe slides off his vertebrae and I’m thrown off.
I smack into earth a lot softer than I thought it was going to be, though it still knocks the breath out of me. I’ve been lucky enough to land on the fresh dirt of a recently filled-in grave—but with a giant skeleton about to use me as a breath mint, lucky is not how I feel.
Except Gash isn’t pressing his advantage. He’s scrambled to his feet—well, foot—and is hopping away as fast as he can go, shrinking at the same time. The combination makes it look like he’s moving twice as fast as he actually is, receding into the distance at an amazing rate. Guess I put the fear of Jace into him.
Or maybe it was the fear of fishies.
I get up slowly. “Well, that was a fun evening,” I wheeze. “I think I’ll find a nice sharp stick to poke in my eye and then I’ll call it a night.”
Which is when I hear the sirens.
* * *
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say.
“Nope,” the cop replies, and keeps filling out the ticket.
I’m in the back of a radio car. Not in cuffs, but still being detained. Neither of the two patrolmen—a blank-faced pire with freckles and a yellow sand lem—that pulled up in it seems terribly impressed with my NSA credentials. The lem even asked me what they stood for.
“It’s illegal to be in a graveyard?” I repeat.
“It is when it’s closed,” the lem replies. I’ve never seen a lem with a gut before, but I think this one spends so much time sitting that he’s started to spread out. “Posted hours are right on the gate. Not open at present.”
“But—when are all the pires supposed to visit their dead relatives, high noon?”
The freckle-faced pire turns and looks at me with professional neutrality. “You’re not a hemovore, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious. But I really don’t
understand what the problem is here; I mean, it’s not like any of the residents are going to complain that I was stomping around on their rooftops. Or am I mistaken? Is there some kind of back-to-basics movement I’m not aware of, with graves in style again? Pires trying to get closer to their roots, or maybe just closer to roots in general?”
The lem grunts. It’s a noise he seems fond of, and makes often.
“No, no, I see what it is,” I continue. “This is the pire version of camping, right? Go down to the local boneyard, sleep out under the freshly turned earth, sing a few songs around the old funeral pyre—”
“Pires don’t camp in graveyards,” Freckles says. He seems to have had his sense of humor surgically removed.
“Ah. Well, thanks for clearing that up.”
A cell phone trills. The lem pulls his out of a shirt pocket and answers. “Yeah? Well, why didn’t you just—oh. Yeah. That’s right, Valchek. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, you’ll have to make it right with dispatch, because this is already—yeah? You can? No, no, I got no problem with that. Have to be quick, though. Yeah, he’ll be all right with it. Yeah, I’m sure. Okay. Okay, we’ll get right on it. Later.”
He hangs up and leans over to his partner. Whispers something I can’t hear. Freckle-face stops writing, glances back at me, then puts his ticket pad away.
“What?” I say. “You guys get a little yank from the chain of command? From somebody over your heads who’s actually heard of the National Security Agency?”
The lem doesn’t answer, just starts the patrol car. Freckle-face turns to look at me and actually smiles.
“Somebody’s definitely heard of you,” he says. “Matter of fact, we’re bringing you to him right now. Can’t guarantee how glad you’ll be to see him, though…”
FIFTEEN
The cops bring me to what I assume is the ritzy part of town—if the carefully manicured hedges and tall metal gates blocking every driveway are any indication—and right up to the front door of a very large house with a red, pagoda-style roof. They don’t take me inside, though, instead marching me around the side of the building and down a meandering, pebbled path lit by waist-high Japanese lanterns made of stone. They ignore all my attempts at finding out who I’m about to meet or why, though they do talk to each other: