by Tim Waggoner
"Goddamn deader," a genetically altered Lyke growled as I approached. She looked like a cross between a leopard and an alligator, and she snarled and elbowed me hard in the side as I passed her. The blow didn't hurt – I hadn't experienced pain since the day I became a zombie – but the force of it sent me stumbling sideways into an alley. I tried to keep my balance, but even when I'm at my freshest, I'm not exactly the epitome of grace, and I stumbled and fell into a pile of trash – which wasn't difficult to do since the alley was crammed full of the stuff. Besides the usual crumpled fast-food wrappers, discarded newspapers, cardboard boxes, and empty beer bottles, there were chunks of meat, splintered lengths of bone, and various disgusting-looking pools of liquid spread about that, one way or another, had probably been inside a body at one point. The stench had to have been horrendous, but my sense of smell is as dead as the rest of me, and I was rarely as grateful for that as I was right then.
I rose to my feet with a series of stiff, jerky movements and brushed the worst of the muck off my gray suit as best I could. I contemplated going back out onto the street, tracking down the leopard-gator, and showing her just how much I appreciated her elbow to my ribs, but tempting as the thought was, I'd come to Ruination Row to do a job, and I didn't want to get distracted.
Several weeks back I'd had a run-in with an ancient Bloodborn named Orlock who, it turned out, fancied himself as a sort of Darkfolk version of Noah. He'd spent the last few centuries gathering one-of-a-kind objects, animals, and in some cases people, and adding them to his already vast collection. Orlock viewed himself as a preservationist working to protect the Darkfolk's culture and history. I viewed him as a senile old vampire with more than a few screws loose, and I was determined to free those beings he'd imprisoned in his collection. Orlock was too powerful to take on directly, so I made a deal with him: I'd retrieve artifacts that he wished to add to his collection, and he'd pay me by releasing some of the people he'd captured. The number of people he'd let go each time depended on the rarity of the object I brought him, and I often had to haggle with him over my "fee". Of course, I reserved the right to pick and choose which jobs I'd take. I wouldn't acquire an object for Orlock just because he coveted it. But more often than not, the artifact he desired was insanely dangerous and in the possession of some less-thanupstanding citizen who intended to use the device to commit appalling acts of mayhem.
Case in point: the Argentum Perditor.
Silver is a controlled substance in Nekropolis. It's highly poisonous to any number of Darkfolk, but especially to Bloodborn and Lykes, and the only ones who can use it legally are those Arcane who need the metal as a spell component. But you can buy anything on the streets of Nekropolis that your black little heart desires – if you have the darkgems to pay for it, of course. There are any number of silver suppliers in the city, but the most wellknown is a man who calls himself the Silversmith. His true identity is a carefully guarded secret, and he only deals through intermediaries. Not even Orlock knew who he really was. But the ancient vampire knew one thing: the Silversmith was in possession of the Argentum Perditor, a mystic weapon that was like King Midas' touch, turning its targets into solid silver. And Orlock wanted it – bad.
As far as I was concerned, Nekropolis would be better off if a weapon that powerful was locked away in Orlock's collection, and I'd spent the last few hours making inquiries around Ruination Row to see if I could get a line on how to contact the Silversmith. I wasn't sure how I was going to get the Argentum Perditor away from him once I found him, but I figured I'd worry about that later. Improvisation has always been one of my strong suits.
So as much as I wanted to go after Leopard-Gator and put a few dents in her scaly hide, I was going to have to let her insult pass. Not only am I the city's only intelligent, self-willed zombie, I'm also its only private investigator – and once I accept a job, I keep at it until it's done.
I started toward the mouth of the alley when I heard a loud buzzing behind me. I still have emotions, but I don't feel the physical effect of them, so I didn't experience a sick surge of adrenaline upon hearing the sound, even though I was pretty sure what it was causing it and the thought terrified me. I turned to see a cloud of small creatures the size of gnats rising from the trash, and I realized I'd must have disturbed them when I'd landed in their midst. The mass of creatures was so thick it looked like a black smoke, and my worst fear was confirmed: I was facing a carrion cloud. The cloud was the larval form of carrion imps, nasty little creatures that scour the alleys of Nekropolis on a never-ending quest for dead flesh to devour. The imps perform a useful function, I suppose, but considering that I am dead flesh, you can see why I prefer to avoid them whenever possible.
But as bad as carrion imps are, their larval form is far worse. Carrion clouds are absolutely ravenous and they move fast as lightning when they sense a food source is near. Once they begin to feed, they can strip away every bit of meat from the bone within seconds. Even if I was at my freshest, I wouldn't have been able to outrun the cloud, and given my current condition, I knew I wouldn't be able to take more than a single step toward the street before the larvae were on me. There was only one thing I could do, and without pausing to consider the ramifications of my actions, I reached into my pants pocket and gripped an ancient copper coin, its features worn smooth by the long passage of time. I willed the coin's magic to activate and closed my eyes as the buzzing swarm of larva rushed forward to engulf me.
A jolt of what felt like electricity surged through my body's dead nervous system, startling me. Normally all I can feel is pressure, as when someone or something is pushing against my body, but this level of sensation was so intense that it momentarily stunned me. I collapsed to my hands and knees, the carrion cloud still swarming around me, and as the electric sensation gave way to a gentle tingling all across my body, I wondered if what I was experiencing was the feeling of being eaten alive by thousands of ravenous insects. But then the buzzing sound grew fainter, and I risked opening my eyes.
The carrion cloud had moved away and was slowly heading deeper into the alley. I stared at it for several moments because something seemed strange about the cloud, about the whole alley, really. Everything appeared sharper, colors richer, lines more distinct. It was like I'd been viewing the alley through a hazy sheen that had been lifted, and now I could see it clearly.
As a zombie I don't need to breathe unless I want to speak, but right then I inhaled through my nostrils, and instantly regretted it as stench so thick you could take a bite out of it burned my nasal passages like acid. I was wracked by a sudden coughing fit so violent that I ended up retching, and if there'd been anything in my stomach to bring up, I'd have spilled it onto the alley floor and added to the noxious muck coating the ground.
After a few moments, my coughing fit subsided, and I rose to my feet. My body moved with unaccustomed ease, and I felt so unbalanced that I nearly fell. I reached out to place a hand against the wall to steady myself, and I gasped as my flesh came in contact with brick. It felt cold and rough and solid, and the sensation was so intense that for a several seconds all I could do was gently rub the my fingers against the brick and marvel at how it felt. It was then that I knew for sure that the coin's magic had done its job. I was alive again.
Magic isn't uncommon by any means in Nekropolis, but magic this powerful was rare indeed. The coin had once belonged to Charon, the ferryman who carried spirits to the afterlife in Greek mythology. It had been given to me by Lord Edrigu, master of the dead, as a reward for a service I'd performed for him. The coin could restore the dead to life for a period of twenty-four hours, but it was a one-time offer. Once the coin's magic was spent, the holder could never be granted life again, not from any source. So I was human again, and the clock was ticking.
Keeping one hand on the wall to maintain my balance, and trying to breathe shallowly so the stench of the alley wouldn't induce another round of coughing, I reached into my jacket pocket and removed my hand vox and dia
led Devona. Like a lot of homegrown machines in Nekropolis, voxes are flesh-tech, devices fashioned from organic material, and now that the nerves in my hands functioned normally, I was repulsed by the warm, soft feel of the vox. I could feel it throbbing gently, as if blood circulated through it, and I felt an impulse to drop the damned thing. But I held onto it and waited for Devona to pick up. But she didn't. Instead, I got her voicemail.
"This is Devona Kanti, owner and proprietor of the Midnight Watch. I'm sorry to miss your call. Please leave your number, and I'll call you back as soon as I'm able."
Once the vox's tiny mouth was finished recreating the sound of Devona's voice, it said, "Beep!" The vox's mouth exhaled gently as it spoke, and the feeling of its warm breath on my ear made me shudder.
"It's me. I had to use Charon's Coin. I'll explain later, but I'm human now, and I'm on my way home."
I disconnected and tucked the vox back into my suit jacket, glad to be rid of the thing. Devona was my partner, both personally and professionally. Normally she'd have come with me to Ruination Row to help search for the Silversmith, but she was a security expert, specializing in both the mundane and mystical aspects of the craft, and today she was helping to overhaul the wardspells for Diamonds are a Ghoul's Best Friend, one of the largest jewelers in the city. It was a huge account, and landing it had been quite a coup for her business. She was determined to do an excellent job for her new client, and I knew from experience that, like me, once she got her teeth into a job, she didn't let go until it was finished. So it was no surprise that she hadn't picked up when I called. She'd no doubt set her vox to silent mode, but she'd get my message eventually. And once she did, I knew she'd be thrilled.
Devona and I had been together for a while now, and she longed to start a family. But as a zombie, I'm not exactly fully functional in certain key anatomical areas, if you know what I mean. Hard to father a child when there's no lead in your undead pencil. Another problem is that Devona is half vampire, half human. Normally her kind is sterile, like mules back on Earth. But with twenty-four hours of human life granted to me – along with the aid of a fertility charm created by Papa Chatha, the houngan who provided my preservative spells – we had a chance to conceive a child. But though I'd had Charon's Coin in my possession for a while now, I'd been hesitant to use it, and I'd only done so now in order to avoid becoming a meal for several thousand hungry imp larvae. So even though I'd just called Devona and told her I was headed home, I had mixed feelings about it.
It wasn't that I didn't want to have children. I just wasn't sure that Nekropolis was the best environment to raise them in. Four hundred years ago, Earth's Darkfolk – vampires, shapeshifters, magic-users, demons, and the like – had decided they'd had enough of humanity and emigrated to another dimension where they built a vast city called Nekropolis. Here they could live openly, without the need to remain concealed from the humans who were increasingly outnumbering them. But as you might imagine for a city filled with monsters, Nekropolis can be an extremely dangerous place, and the idea of bringing innocent new life into this world made me uncomfortable, to say the least. Devona and I weren't even sure what our child might be. She was half human, and I'd be all human when we conceived our baby. As best as Papa Chatha could figure, that meant there was an excellent chance our child would be completely human, or close enough to it. Some humans did live in Nekropolis. The Darkfolk maintained magical passageways that led back to Earth, mostly so they could continue to import goods and services, and a number of humans found their way here every year. That was how I'd originally come to the city, chasing a warlock who'd committed a series a murders in my hometown of Cleveland. According to the laws of the Darkfolk, it's forbidden to prey upon humans, but so many of the Darkfolk are predators by nature, and they consider that law more of a guideline than a firm rule. Add to this the fact that Darkfolk outnumber humans by at least ten to one, and the reality is that humans, for all intents and purposes, live as second-class citizens in Nekropolis.
Zombies, intelligent or not, are considered to be lowest form of life in the supernatural food chain, and I knew firsthand how the Darkfolk treated those they viewed as lesser beings. Given all this, I wasn't sure bringing a child – and a potentially human child at that – into this world was the most responsible thing to do. So I'd been conflicted about using the coin. But now circumstance had forced my hand, and I was human again, but only for a single day. I didn't have any more time to wonder if having a child was a good idea. If we were going to try to get pregnant, we had to get started as soon as possible. I didn't want to disappoint Devona, and besides, even with the fertility charm, Papa Chatha had warned us there was no guarantee we'd conceive. So maybe my worries would turn out to be for nothing in the end. But either way, I decided I needed to get home to my love.
That settled, I stepped back out onto the street.
The Sprawl is the most urban of Nekropolis' five Dominions. Even at its best, it normally looks like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch fever dream, but Ruination Row is in a nightmarish class by itself. The streets look like they're made from the craggy gray hide of some rhinoceros-like creature, and the distorted buildings look like they're constructed from a bizarre mix of insect chitin, bleached bone, and pulsating discolored organs. The traffic roars by at lethal speeds, the vehicles ranging from mundane cars imported from Earth to more outré machines like meatrunners, carapacers, and ectoplasmonics. The sidewalk was crowded with pedestrians, most of them Darkfolk, in search of the foul, debased pleasures that can only found in Ruination Row.
I'd originally come to Nekropolis as a living man, but I'd only been in the city a few days before I'd died and been resurrected as a zombie. That was several years ago, and in that time I'd forgotten how overwhelming the city can be on a sensory level. Standing there, my newly restored living senses were inundated with an ocean of sensation – sights, smells, and sounds – and the sheer amount of data was too much for me to process. All I could do was stand in the middle of the sidewalk, frozen in place, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if I drooled a little. I swayed, dizzy, gray nibbling at the edges of my vision, my mind threatening to shut down to protect itself from the overwhelming sensory onslaught. I fought to hold onto consciousness. Passing out on the streets of Nekropolis is not an effective long-term survival strategy.
A tall thin being – I couldn't tell if it was male or female – wrapped from head to toe in strips of moldy gray cloth came toward me. Perched on his or her shoulders was a large bird with multicolored plumage and a wickedly hooked beak. The mummy paid no attention to me as it walked past, but the pharaoh's eagle riding on its shoulders glared at me with disconcertingly intelligent eyes, let out an annoyed squawk, and snapped at me. That hooked beak came within an inch of slicing into the flesh of my cheek, but the eagle missed. The bird glared at me one last time, but it didn't leave its perch to attack, and eventually it turned around to face forward again as its owner continued walking down the street
The eagle's near miss shocked me back to full awareness. As a zombie, I don't have to worry about getting hurt. Minor cuts and bruises mean nothing to me, and broken bones are merely annoyances to be tended to later. Even losing a limb or two or being decapitated isn't a major concern. All I need to do is gather up my pieces and pay Papa Chatha a visit. He always sews me back together.
But I was alive again, and that meant not only could I be hurt, I could be killed. And though I wasn't one hundred percent certain how the magic of Charon's Coin worked, I had to assume that if I died during the next twenty-four hours, I'd stay dead. This meant I needed to do something I hadn't done in years: be careful. If I got cut, I'd bleed. And if a pissed-off monster tore my arm out of its socket, it would be more than an inconvenience. It would likely be the end of me. So the best thing I could do was head home, keep my mouth shut, and avoid making eye contact with anyone along the way.
I put my hands in my pants pockets, lowered my gaze to
the sidewalk, and started heading east, in the direction of the apartment I shared with Devona, but I only got a few yards before someone walked up to me and said, "Matthew Richter?"
The voice was a smooth, warm baritone, and I felt a strange pull when I heard it. Even though I wanted to ignore whoever it was and keep going, I stopped and raised my head to look the man in the eye.
He was a demon. His kind can vary widely in physical appearance and ability, but they all have several things in common. Their eyes contain multicolored flecks which rotate slowly around the pupils. All Demonkin, regardless of type, have those flecks, and they remain no matter what form a demon assumes. Another aspect they share is the almost hypnotic quality of their voices. As a zombie, demon voices have no effect on me, but as a human, I felt the power in this one's words. It was like I was compelled to listen to him, whether I wanted to or not. Demon voices can be resisted, but it takes effort, and I'd been out of practice for the last few years.
This demon was humanoid for the most part, bald, with dusky red skin, pointed ears, serpent scales beneath his eyes, a thick black soul patch on his chin, and slightly pointed teeth that were so white they almost gleamed. Despite all this, he was handsome enough, though he probably didn't get too many gigs as a male model. He wore a black turtleneck, black slacks, black shoes, and – naturally enough – black socks. Normally, I would have made a smart-ass remark about his lack of sartorial imagination. I mean, wearing black in a city full of monsters where the sun never shines? How much more cliché can you possibly get? But I was still struggling to adjust to my newly restored senses. Everything was too bright, too loud, too much, and I felt almost as if I was drunk. I felt sick, too. My throat was dry and sore, there was an uncomfortable gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach, and I kept hearing a strange thrumming in my ears. After a moment, I realized that I was thirsty and hungry, and the thrumming I heard was nothing more than the beating of my now living heart.