by Tim Waggoner
"Why would they listen to you?" I said. "You're not one of them anymore."
Bennie Hyde frowned. "What are you–" He grimaced, convulsed violently, then slumped down onto the bar and lay on his side. A moment later he sat up shakily, face pale, skin slick with sweat, but fully human once more.
"What… happened?" he said, rubbing his temples as if he had a terrible headache.
"I'll tell you in a minute," I said. "But first do me a favor: take a deep breath and let it out."
Bennie frowned at me. "What are you talking about?" Then she – for the gender switch had occurred again – noted the lounge full of Hydes surrounding us, all of whom began to snarl and step forward. "Oh, right."
A couple exhalations was all it took to begin spreading the Hyde antidote – which like the Hyde plague had become an airborne virus inside Bennie's body – and all around us Hydes began returning to normal, and in turn passed the cure on to any Hydes standing near them.
As waves of transformation rippled through the lounge, Vampire Matt grinned at me. It was more than a little disconcerting to see my mouth stretch into a wide smile and display a pair of very sharp-looking fangs.
"Not bad," he said. "Almost as good as I could've done."
"I'm not the one who managed to get himself caught and tied up in bondage rope," I pointed out.
Zombie Devona looked at both of us. "Play nice, you two."
The two Hydes who'd been guarding our counterparts had changed back to themselves – a pair of Bennie's Arcane bartenders – and they quickly began untying their former prisoners. A couple moments later, our others selves were free and had come around from behind the bar to join us.
Everyone on the lounge had been returned to normal by that point. Quite a few people had been wounded during their time as Hydes, and those who weren't wounded saw to their care. A number of the cured headed outside to begin spreading the antiHyde virus to the rest of the city. I had no idea how long it would take before this Nekropolis was entirely free of the Hyde plague, but given how rapidly the virus had spread, I figured it wouldn't take more than a day or two.
Bennie climbed down from the bar and joined the five of us – Darius, both Devonas, myself and my vampiric doppelgänger.
"Thank Mother Kali that Darius was able to reach you!" Bennie said before giving both Devona and me a hug. "And when you get home, tell my other self that they're every bit the chemist our ancestor was!"
"We'll do that," I said. "And speaking of your other self…" I reached into my jacket pocket, took out a flash drive, and handed it to Bennie. "This contains the formula for the antidote that my Bennie designed to work on you. Just in case you ever need it again."
"Thank you." Bennie took the flash drive and tucked it into his pants pocket. "But after this, I'll never mess with my ancestor's formula again. It's simply too dangerous."
Vampire Matt and I exchanged looks. That might be how Bennie felt now, but Bennie was nothing if not an unabashed hedonist, and he/she was all too willing to take a chance if it meant experiencing new realms of pleasure. I took another flash drive out of my pocket and handed it to my other self.
"Again," I said, "just in case."
Bennie scowled at me, but – now female – she didn't protest. Vampire Matt nodded and put it in his inner jacket pocket.
"I'd ask you and your Devona to stay and visit," he said, "but I'm afraid our Nekropolis won't be in much shape for sightseeing for a while. We're going to have a lot of cleaning up to do."
"Besides," Zombie Devona said, "you two have your own lives to get back to." She gave my Devona a knowing smile, and I had to wonder if she somehow knew her other self was pregnant. My Devona might be half-vampire and the other a zombie, but they were both still women, and it seemed they possessed that special brand of telepathy that members of their gender shared.
My Devona gave her other self a smile, but there was something strained about it, and I immediately feared something was wrong.
"We do need to go home," she said. She placed a hand on her abdomen as she turned to Darius. She suddenly looked paler than usual, and her voice quavered when she spoke. "If you could take us right now, I'd appreciate it. I…" She took in a hiss of air and her face scrunched up in pain. "I think I need to see a doctor. Now."
THREE
"Quit pacing, Matt. You're making me nervous."
I stopped and turned to look at her. "I'm making you nervous? You're the one lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a bunch of machines."
Devona smiled and patted the edge of the bed. "Come sit with me."
If there's one thing I can't stand to do when something's wrong, it's nothing. And pacing, useless as it might be, was still something. But I didn't want to make things any worse for Devona than they already were, so I went over to the bed and sat. She took my hand and gave it a strong squeeze, and I squeezed back.
"Everything's going to be all right," she said.
I nodded noncommittally. Even before I died, I knew things didn't always work out for the best, and being a zombie working in a city full of monsters hadn't done anything to change my mind about that. But I wisely kept my mouth shut – for a change.
The hospital room was small and sterile: white walls and ceiling, white-tiled floor, white curtains over the windows, white sheets on the bed. Devona wore a white hospital gown, and even the furniture – a stool on rolling casters and a couple uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs – was white. The medical scanners were encased in white plastic, and the wires that stretched between Devona and the machines were also white. The IV bag hanging on a metal stand next to the bed made a startling contrast to the room's color scheme. It contained a dark red liquid that flowed slowly through a tube into Devona's left wrist. If this had been a hospital back on Earth, I might've thought she was getting a transfusion, but for a vampire – even a half-vampire like Devona – blood was more effective than the usual intravenous fluids.
A Mind's Eye set was mounted in the corner of the ceiling, and it was one of the healthiest I'd ever seen, certainly in better condition than the old rheumy-eyed set in the apartment I shared with Devona. The skin wasn't discolored, the iris was light blue with tiny gold flecks, the lashes were long and clean, the white of the eye was pure ivory, and its capillaries few and unswollen. Mind's Eyes telepathically broadcast their programs directly into your mind when you gaze upon them, and this one was currently showing an image of a reporter who looked human but had tiny black spiders crawling over every inch of her exposed skin. She was standing on a Sprawl street corner in front of a large building I didn't recognize, a serious expression on her face, mouth moving silently.
Mind's Eyes don't come with remote controls; they're not necessary. All you need to do to change the channel or control the volume is think about it. And since the information is transferred directly into your brain, two people can look at the same set and "hear" different volumes, even view separate programs if they wish. So I concentrated, putting a little extra effort into it, since Mind's Eyes have trouble transmitting to my zombie brain, and after a moment I could hear the sound.
"… at Magewrights' Manor refuse to comment on the reports that magic-users have been disappearing throughout the city over the last several weeks. The Darklord Talaith has also declined to make a statement on the matter."
It was hard watching the woman talk as spiders scuttled in and out of her mouth every time she opened it. It looked damned uncomfortable to me – wouldn't those little spider legs tickle her tongue? But she didn't seem to notice, let alone care.
"The official word from the Nightspire on the situation came to us today from First Adjudicator Quillion."
The picture changed to display the sharp-featured face of a man in his seventies who was completely hairless – not only was he bald, he had no eyebrows or eyelashes. He wore a crimson robe as sign of his office and projected an aura of haughty disdain. He gave a cold, thin-lipped smile before speaking.
"While it is true that certain
members of the thaumaturgical community have gone missing recently, there's no reason to suspect their disappearances are connected. As we all know, magic is a high-risk profession, and there are any number of ways its practitioners can come to unfortunate and untimely ends – ones that don't always leave physical evidence behind." His smile widened a touch at that. "And not to put too fine a point on it, there is no shortage of predators in the city. At this time, there is simply no evidence to link the disappearances. If such evidence ever does come to light, I assure you my office will conduct a complete and thorough investigation, but until then I consider the matter closed."
I scowled. To say I'm not Quillion's biggest fan would be a huge understatement, considering that not long ago the sonofabitch sentenced me to Tenebrus, Nekropolis' subterranean prison. I'd escaped and later been pardoned, but Quillion still had it in for me, and I felt just as much antipathy toward him.
The image switched back to the spider-covered reporter who continued talking, but I concentrated on tuning her out and both the picture and sound faded from my mind. I wondered if there was something to the rumors about magic-users disappearing. I dismissed Quillion's disavowal of the story. He might be an Adjudicator, but he was just as much a politician as he was a combination of judge and jury. Of course he'd say the disappearances weren't linked. I hadn't heard any rumors on the street about the disappearances, but then I'd been too busy lately to visit my usual – you'll pardon the expression – haunts. Between helping Devona with the Midnight Watch and looking for a new place to live (because Devona didn't want to raise our child in a squalid little apartment that, despite all her best efforts, still looked too much like a bachelor's home) I hadn't been making the rounds and touching base with my network of contacts and informants. There'd been a time when I'd have known about the disappearances long before the media did. Now I was finding out the news the same time as any other average citizen, and the realization disturbed me for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on.
"Did you hear me, Matt?"
I turned to Devona, feeling bad for having taken my attention off her, even momentarily. "What is it? Is something wrong?"
"No. I said I'm feeling better, and I am." When she saw the doubtful look on my face, she added. "Really."
I restricted my comment to a muffled hmpf. What I wanted to say was that I'd known Devona shouldn't have come with me to that other Nekropolis, and that if anything happened to her or the baby, it would be my fault for not making her stay behind. But saying all that wouldn't make her feel any better, so there was no point in it. Keeping quiet twice in one day? It was a new personal record for me.
When Darius returned us to our Nekropolis, we appeared in Bennie's lounge. Bennie – our Bennie – had been waiting for us, eager to learn whether or not we'd been able to help his/her other-dimensional counterpart. When Bennie saw Devona was in pain, he/she made a hand vox call to the Fever House and ordered an ambulance. I told Bennie to skip the ambulance but to let them know we'd be coming. Then I helped Devona outside where Lazlo was waiting for us. I have no idea how the demon cabbie always knows when I need a ride, but he's never let me down. I helped Devona into the backseat of Lazlo's nightmarish conglomeration of a vehicle, and he rocketed through the streets of the Sprawl toward Gothtown, where the Fever House was located. Lazlo got us to the hospital so fast that I suspected he may have broken a few laws of space and time to do so. He was sitting in his cab in the parking lot now, waiting for me to call him with news of Devona's condition, not that I had any to give him yet. Beyond a quick examination from the nurse who'd hooked Devona up to the medical equipment when we first got to the room, we hadn't seen anyone.
A soft knock sounded at the door then, and I thought our wait was finally over.
"Come in," I said, feeling a strange mixture of relief and tension. I wanted to get this show on the road, but at the same time, I was afraid of what a doctor's examination might ultimately reveal. But I needn't have worried. The person who opened the door and poked his head into the room wasn't a doctor.
"Is it all right if I come in?"
He was medium height, thin, with long brown hair tied in a pony tail and a neatly trimmed beard. A tie-dyed T-shirt, jeans, and sandals completed his bohemian look, and his pale skin and elongated canines marked him a vampire. Most Bloodborn – especially the older ones – tend to disdain technology, especially when it's used in body modification. Vampires are more than a little fanatical about maintaining the purity of their blood, and they view cybernetic enhancements as a corruption of the body. Not so the younger Bloodborn, though. Varney appeared to be in his mid-twenties, and while I had no idea how old he truly was, the fact that he possessed a pair of cybernetic implants told me he was relatively young as vampires went. Both his left eye and left ear had been removed and replaced with electronic devices: a camera lens and a miniature directional microphone, respectively.
I got off the bed and started walking toward Varney, making sure to keep myself between him and Devona.
"You'd better not be recording right now," I said in what I hoped was a threatening voice.
Not threatening enough, evidently, for Varney slid the rest of the way into the room, though he did raise his hands in a placating gesture. "It's cool, man. My camera's off. I totally respect you and your lady's privacy. Besides, this isn't the kind of footage my producer's looking for." He glanced at Devona. "No offense." He turned back to me. "Now if it was you lying injured in that bed, Matt…"
It took all the self-restraint I had not to let out a series of extremely offensive words. Not long ago, I'd had a run-in with a gorgon named Acantha, host of a live interview program called On the Scene. She'd tried to interview me while I was working and I was, shall we say, less than gracious about it. Since then Acantha had done her best to go out of her way to give me bad publicity whenever she could – and not just me: she made sure to include Devona and the Midnight Watch in her petty vendetta. So for Devona's sake, I'd gone to the Eidolon Building where the city's major media outlets – Mind's Eye Theatre, the Tome, Bedlam 66.6, and the Daily Atrocity – are housed and tried to make peace with Acantha. She responded to my overtures about as well as you might expect (gorgons can carry grudges for centuries), but her boss, a demon named Murdock, overheard our conversation and pulled me into his office.
You want Acantha to lay off you and your woman? he'd said. I can arrange that. And then he'd smiled that smile demons give you when they're about to make you an offer you know you really should refuse. And when I heard his proposal, I turned him down at first. Until I spoke with Devona later.
I think it's flattering that Murdock wants to make a documentary about you, she'd said. You have to admit, you've become something of a celebrity over the last few months, and it's only natural people would want to know more about you. And if people get to know you – the city's only self-willed zombie – a little better, it might change their attitude toward the reanimated dead. And then she'd added the kicker. Besides, the publicity would be good for business.
So I called Murdock and told him I'd be honored to let him make a documentary about me, which is how I got saddled with Varney, the one-man – or maybe I should say one-vampire – film crew. With his cybernetic enhancements, all he had to do was follow me around and anything he saw and heard would be recorded. Every night he transmitted the day's footage to the Mind's Eye studio via the Aethernet, where it was reviewed and edited by his producer. Varney had been tailing me for five days now, and my patience with him was wearing more than a little thin. Despite the fact that he'd told me when we met that he'd "be as invisible as Casper, man," while I worked, Varney had a tendency to get in the way, and I'd begun looking for opportunities to ditch him whenever I could.
Varney went on. "I don't mean to intrude, but I just wanted to check in with you guys and see how things went in the other Nekropolis."
Varney had been waiting for us in Bennie's lounge when Darius brought us back, but I'd rushed Devona out o
f there so fast that he hadn't had a chance to talk to us – or get in Lazlo's cab and ride along to the hospital – which is just the way I'd wanted it. I figured he'd catch up to us sooner or later. Unfortunately, it hadn't been later enough for me.
"This really isn't a good time," I told him. "How about you go back to the Eidolon Building, and I'll give you a call later?"
"Matt…" Devona said in that tone she uses when she thinks I'm being unreasonable. But the last thing I cared about right then was helping Varney with the stupid documentary. All that mattered to me was Devona and the baby's health.
Varney smiled. "Don't sweat it, man. I got it covered." He held out his hand and a small silver object about the size of a thumbnail crawled out from beneath my jacket lapel. It looked a little like a mechanical ant, except it had a miniature camera lens in place of a head. As I watched, wings slid out of tiny panels in the artificial insect's back, and the creature took wing. It buzzed over to Varney, and the vampire opened his mouth, and the bug flew inside. Varney then closed his mouth and grinned.
"That's icky," Devona said.