by Tim Waggoner
But before Devona had gotten halfway to the ghoul, Scream Queen noticed the woman waving her autograph book and, gracious star that she was, reached down to take it and quickly scrawl a signature before the next song started. She handed the book back with a smile and then gave a nod for the band to launch into the next number. The ghoul gave a strange smile, almost as if she were enjoying some private joke, before turning and beginning to head away from the stage. That struck me as strange. If you were a big enough fan to want an autograph, why would you leave after getting it, especially when you'd only gotten to hear one song? But Scream Queen looked unharmed as the band started in on another tune that had more in common with a ten car pile up than music and I began to wonder if Devona had been wrong about the ghoul. After all, she was heading away from Scream Queen, who was most decidedly not abducted, so she appeared to be no threat. Maybe her real interest in the autograph lay in its monetary value and she was eager to get on with the business of finding a buyer. As I said before, ghouls are gluttons and all the food they shovel down their gullets doesn't come free. But then Scream Queen opened her mouth to sing and I – along with everyone else in the club – realized that something was seriously wrong when no sound came out of her mouth.
Her fellow band members realized it too. They stopped playing and stared at Scream Queen with expressions of puzzlement that were rapidly edging toward outright alarm. The patrons in attendance were equally confused and shocked and the entire club fell quiet as everyone waited to see what would happen next.
Scream Queen drew in another breath and then opened her mouth once more. She squeezed her eyes shut and her neck muscles grew taut. She was clearly attempting to release a note with some real power behind it, but just as before, there was only silence. It seemed the Scream Queen had lost her voice. But that was OK: I knew where it had gone.
I started heading toward the ghoul.
TWO
I didn't get there first, though. Devona had telepathically broadcast her warning about the ghoul to the entire team and all of us were beginning to converge upon her. Scorch was faster than any of us with the exception of Tavi, but she was closer to the ghoul than the shapeshifter was. She became a blur as she wove swiftly through the crowd and she intercepted the ghoul before the creature was halfway across the dance floor.
Scorch said something to the ghoul, but I couldn't hear what. Even though Kakophonie wasn't playing right then, the confused audience were talking loudly amongst themselves, and even though I had a good view of Scorch and the ghoul, I couldn't read lips. Inwardly I was raging at Scorch for approaching the ghoul directly. We knew how dangerous Scream Queen's would-be abductor was and confronting her head-on was more than reckless – it was downright suicidal. And unlike Scream Queen's former bodyguards, Scorch only had one head to lose. But that was Scorch: she lived for fun and as far as she was concerned danger was just another flavor of fun.
The ghoul was taller than Scorch by a good head and a half and when she raised her right hand and displayed her claws she looked like a most formidable figure, one against whom a mere teenage girl wouldn't stand a chance. But in Nekropolis judging by appearances is never a good idea.
The ghoul pulled back her hand, no doubt intending to slash out with her claws and lay open Scorch's throat, but before she could move Scorch decided to show her opponent how she'd gotten her name. Bright orange flames erupted all across Scorch's body and the ghoul – not to mention those audience members in the immediate vicinity – took a startled step backward. Scorch's fire burned hotter and brighter, the flames completely obscuring her form, but she didn't scream, didn't so much as move a muscle. The fire expanded, the flames stretching outward, rising upward, and then just as suddenly as they'd ignited, they extinguished, and where a moment before a teenage girl had been standing, now stood a seven foot tall, powerfully muscled, red-scaled demon. Scorch's true form was that of an infernal monster from the old school: pointed ears, baleful yellow eyes, mouthful of wicked-looking fangs, curling ram's horns, a row of serrated scales trailing along her spine, and a sinuous reptilian tail complete with an almost delicate little arrowhead shape at the tip.
The ghoul, who no longer had the advantage of height over Scorch, quickly recovered and lashed out with her claws anyway. Only now instead of having a throat covered with tender girl flesh, Scorch's throat was covered with shiny hard scales, and the ghoul's claws skittered off them without doing any damage. In response Scorch gave the ghoul a truly disturbing fang-filled grin and slapped her own clawed hands onto the ghoul's bony shoulders. As soon as the demon's flesh came in contact with the ghoul's Scorch released her flame and fire spread out from her palms to engulf the ghoul.
"No, dammit!" I shouted, not that I figured Scorch would hear me. Too many people were doing their best to get the hell away from Scorch and the ghoul and they weren't being particularly quiet about it. I knew that Scorch could control the intensity of her flame – as a fire demon that was her specialty – and she wouldn't kill the ghoul unless she had to. But I wasn't worried about our suspect getting fried; I was worried about the autograph book she still carried. We'd been assuming that the ghoul's plan had been to abduct Scream Queen, but now it looked as if she'd only been interested in stealing part of the singer: namely, her voice. I wasn't exactly sure how the ghoul had accomplished it, but it seemed clear that Scream Queen's signature in the autograph book had been an integral part of the spell. And if Scorch's flames reached the autograph book and turned Scream Queen's signature to ash, maybe the spell would be broken and the singer's voice would be restored to her – or if the signature was destroyed maybe Scream Queen's voice would be lost forever. While the latter prospect didn't strike me as much of a loss to Nekropolis's music scene, Scream Queen was my client – well, technically she was Devona's client – and I was determined to protect the banshee's voice by whatever means I could. Unfortunately it looked like there was nothing I could do to keep Scorch from incinerating the autograph book.
However, the ghoul – or whoever was masquerading as the ghoul – was prepared. As demonflame spread across her ivorycolored skin she appeared to reach into her side, sliding her long clawed fingers bloodlessly into her flesh and withdrawing a tiny figurine resembling a white ape. The ghoul spoke a single activating word and the ape's mouth opened, unleashing a torrent of frigid air at Scorch. Yeti's Breath was a powerful spell – with an accompanying stench so rank that it would make a carrion imp retch – and within seconds Scorch's flame had been extinguished and the demon was encased in a thick shell of ice. As strong as she was Scorch couldn't break free of her frozen prison and all she could do was stand there, literally frozen in place, as the ghoul grinned and started running toward the exit, the autograph book – which was singed around the edges a bit but otherwise undamaged – clutched in her hand.
I saw a blur of movement on my left and heard more than felt a rush of wind as something moved past me at a high rate of speed. Tavi was a mixblood, a shapeshifter who'd chosen to have his natural abilities augmented by genetic engineering at Doctor M's House of Pain. In his case the enhancement was rather clever: the lyke was a hybrid of mongoose and cobra, though he steadfastly refused to tell anyone which wereform he'd been born with originally. Tavi still wore his Nehru jacket and pants, but his limbs had become lean and sinuous and his hands and face were covered with a mixture of mammal fur and reptilian scale. His head was shaped like that of a mongoose with a cobra's hood and fangs. The overall effect worked surprisingly well, far better than many mixbloods who look like something out of Darwin's worst nightmares. In his wereform Tavi moved with a liquid grace that was beautiful to see and which had no doubt served him extremely well in his former career as a thief.
Though much of the crowd had managed to get away from Scorch and the ghoul there were still enough audience members in the way that Tavi was forced to detour around them and while he did so with great velocity it slowed him down just enough to give the ghoul time to prepare for his at
tack. Once again she plunged her hand into her side, only this time she brought out a small black sphere and dashed it to the floor. The sphere was glass and shattered on impact, releasing a black liquid substance that rapidly spread into a thin coating about two feet wide and three feet long. Tavi was moving too fast to avoid the black liquid and he ran right into it. The instant Tavi's feet came in contact with the tar-like goo they stuck fast; unfortunately momentum carried the rest of his body forward. The sound of breaking bone cut through the air as Tavi's ankles snapped and the lyke screamed in agony as he pitched forward and slammed face-first into the floor. Lykes are tough and they heal damn fast, but they still feel pain and Tavi was suffering quite a bit of it then. Still, he raised his head, opened his mouth wide, and spat a stream of venom directly into the ghoul's eyes. I expected to hear the ghoul scream then, but all she did was reach up to wipe the venom from her eyes and then continued running toward the exit. Tavi tried to pull free of the black substance that had hold of him, but it was no use. He was stuck fast.
Two of our team were down and the ghoul – or whoever it was hiding behind a ghoul's guise – hadn't broken a sweat. The Midnight Watch hadn't exactly covered itself in glory so far.
I hadn't stopped moving toward the ghoul, but running isn't something my zombie body is good at. The best I can manage is a sprightly shuffle that, while more than a little embarrassing, manages to get me from point A to point B faster than walking. But the ghoul was running full out and she was running at an angle away from me. Devona was heading for her as well, but the ghoul was moving away from her too. Fortunately for our team the direction the ghoul had chosen led her directly toward Bogdan. The warlock's specialty was the materialization of physical objects and not just any object but precisely what he needed most at any given moment. When he'd first joined the Midnight Watch I asked him how he knew what objects he might need – and for that matter, where they came from – and with a smile and a wink he give me the same answer for both questions. "I don't know. I simply work my magic and trust in Providence."
Have you ever heard such crap?
Bogdan lost no time in appealing to Providence then. He gestured with his right hand and a metallic fan appeared in his fingers, each gleaming section sharp as a razor. With an unnecessarily theatrical flick of his hand Bogdan spread the fan out and then flung it toward the rapidly approaching ghoul. The sections of the fan separated as they flew toward the ghoul, becoming a dozen deadly missiles.
It was a neat trick and I might have applauded if the ghoul hadn't simply ducked and rolled beneath the blades. The ghoul came up onto her feet and continued running without breaking stride, leaving Bogdan's fan blades flying toward innocent bystanders. One of the blades flew in my general direction and I intended to ignore it until I saw that it was heading toward the verman server who'd spoken to me earlier, the one who was missing half of his left ear. Without thinking about it I flung myself forward and intercepted the blade. It thunked into my side just below my right armpit, slid neatly between a couple of ribs and stayed there. I felt nothing beyond a slight pressure – one of the advantages of being dead – and I managed to keep my balance and avoid falling, which was good. If I break any bones, it doesn't hurt, but it can impair my mobility and I needed to remain ambulatory if we were going to have any chance at stopping the ghoul from getting away with Scream Queen's voice.
The verman looked at me with an expression that seemed thoughtful, almost appraising in a way, but I didn't have time to deal with him right then. I had a ghoul to catch.
Bogdan had been thrown off by his miss and he'd stood gaping with horror as his fan blades struck several audience members. Given the fact that none of those wounded were human, the damage wasn't anything they couldn't heal sooner or later, so Bogdan was able to forget about them and refocus his attention on the ghoul. Unfortunately he wasn't able to do so in time to stop her from reaching him and delivering a solid punch to his throat. The warlock's eyes bulged, his face turned red, and his mouth opened wide but he wasn't able to breathe in. The blow had crushed his trachea. Gasping ineffectively, his red face already starting to shade toward purple, Bogdan fell to his knees and slapped his hands to his throat. He closed his eyes and his lips began to move soundlessly as he worked a healing spell. His specialty might be the conjuring of useful objects, but he knew enough basic magic to heal himself. But doing so meant he wasn't going to be anymore help in stopping the ghoul – not that he'd been much help as it was.
Sinsation's bouncer decided to enter the fray then and the monster surged through the crowd toward the ghoul, moving with a speed and grace that was shocking given his enormous size. His face sported a savage grin and there was cold delight in his eyes. He'd literally been born to bust heads and now he had another chance to fulfill his life's purpose. For one of the repurposed dead it didn't get any better than this.
I'm not territorial. If Frankie Jr could get the job done, more power to him. All I cared about was making sure that the ghoul didn't get away with Scream Queen's voice.
The ghoul noted the monster's approach – no big feat; considering his size, he was damned hard to miss – and she reached into her body and pulled out a tiny metal disk. With a quick flick of her wrist she sent the object sailing toward the bouncer. The disk struck him on the forehead, right on the scar line, and stuck to the flesh as if covered with glue. Crackling tendrils of electricity shot forth from the disk's metal surface, spreading outward to surround the monster's head in a cage of miniature lightning.
The bouncer stopped running toward the ghoul, his body spasmed several times, and then lines of smoke curled forth from his nostrils. His eyes rolled over white and for an instant the monster stood there, white-eyed and stiff-legged, and then the giant collapsed to the floor with a sound like a dozen bags of cement dropped from a half-mile up.
Frankenstein monsters are born of electricity and if you can overload the energy matrices of their central nervous system it's like flipping their off switch, a fact the ghoul was obviously all too aware of.
Four down and – since she's far faster than I am – it was Devona's turn at the ghoul.
Half-vampires aren't as swift as their full-blooded relatives, but they're a damn sight faster than humans, let alone a shufflegaited zombie, and Devona managed to reach the ghoul when she was within a dozen feet of the exit. Devona's stronger than a human, but she's not trained in hand-to-hand combat, and physical confrontation doesn't suit her personality. What she is trained in, however, is security magic. And that meant she'd taken the precaution of having a special enchantment placed on all of Sinsation's exits earlier that day, an enchantment she now activated by speaking a phrase in a language I didn't understand, but which I recognized as the ancient tongue of the Bloodborn. The edges of the main entrance began to glow and a red mist rose from the floor in curling crimson tendrils, rapidly rising upward to completely block the doorway. The spell was simple: the red mist would prevent Scream Queen from passing through. To anyone else, the mist would be nothing more than that, easily passable, but to the banshee singer – or to anyone trying to force her physically through the doorway – the mist would feel solid as rock. How do you keep someone from abducting your client? Make sure she's physically incapable of leaving the premises. Of course, the ghoul wasn't carrying Scream Queen, just her voice, but I assumed the principle would be the same.
Evidently the ghoul made the same assumption – or maybe she simply assumed the red mist would do something nasty to her if she tried to go through it – for she came to a stop and spun around to face Devona.
Devona might prefer to fight with her mind instead of her fists, but that doesn't mean she can't brawl when she needs to. She continued running toward the ghoul, fangs bared, eyes wild and blazing with a feral yellow glow. I felt a wave of psychic pressure and I knew she was using her telepathic abilities to broadcast negative emotions at the ghoul, more in an effort to intimidate her and keep her off balance than to actually harm her. The gh
oul, however, appeared to be completely calm as she once more reached into her side, this time drawing forth a small metal object. I recognized the object the instant I saw it and I started to shout a warning to Devona, but the ghoul moved too fast. With a flick of her wrist she sent the small silver cross flying toward Devona. The four tips of the cross were sharp as needles and the holy shuriken struck Devona in the left shoulder, biting through her leather outfit and sinking deep into her flesh.
Devona gasped in pain, stumbled, and fell to the floor. She clutched at her wounded shoulder, trying to grab hold of the cross and pull it free, but it had already sunk too deep. Holy objects and silver don't affect half-vampires as strongly as they do full-blooded vampires, but that just means their poisonous and corrosive effects are slower. Devona wasn't in danger of suffering any long-term damage from the cross, provided she could get it removed within the next half-hour or so, but the pain was excruciating and there was no way she would be able to continue battling the ghoul. It was all she could do to hold on to consciousness. This also meant there was no way she could concentrate effectively to use her telepathic powers against her assailant.
But wounding Devona wasn't enough for the ghoul. She plunged her hand into her side – right in the spot where I estimated a shoulder holster would be – and pulled out a 9mm handgun. She stepped forward, her ghoul disguise wavering as she did so and, by the time she knelt next to Devona and placed the gun barrel against her forehead, the ghoul illusion was completely gone. The voicenapper was revealed to be a humanoid of indeterminate gender and species encased in black body armor, just as had been reported.