CrossTown
Copyright © 2017 by Loren W. Cooper
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.
Book design by Selena Trager
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cooper, Loren W., author.
Title: Crosstown : a novel / by Loren W. Cooper.
Description: Pasadena : Red Hen Press, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017011703| ISBN 9781939096029 (softcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781939096012 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Time travel—Fiction. | Reality—Fiction. | GSAFD: Science fiction. | Fantasy fiction. Classification: LCC PS3603.O582665 C76 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011703
The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Aff airs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Aff airs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Amazon Literary Partnership, and the Sherwood Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.
First Edition
Published by XENO Books
an imprint of Red Hen Press
www.redhen.org
For my daughters, Isabella-Grace and Abrielle,
both just setting their feet on the Roads.
And for my wife, Jac—
a better traveling companion could not be found.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Acknowledgments
Biographical Note
INTRODUCTION
DEAR READER: What in the world are we doing here, you and I? Why am I writing an introduction to a novel that is perfectly capable of launching itself without one? Why are you reading this introduction, when you could just turn a page or two and start to enjoy Loren W. Cooper’s engaging story? What in the world compels you to read this false start when the real thing lies so near at hand?
Actually, I should be asking the question like this: What in the worlds are you doing here? In a parallel universe, you aren't reading this introduction, but have jumped right to the first page of CrossTown, or to the last page (since in that universe you always need to see first how a novel is going to end), or are thumbing through the middle pages to read random paragraphs so you can decide whether this feels like the sort of novel you will enjoy.
In one universe, you are reading this introduction because you are a compulsive completist and consider that if you have not read every word of a book, from the copyright notice to the designer’s note about the typeface, you have not read the book. Or in a different reality you are reading this introduction because you are riding the knife edge of possibility, unsure whether you are going to read this novel (thus ending up in a left-branching universe) or pass it up (a right-branching universe).
To the completist version of yourself, I make this promise: this introduction won't go on much longer. I want to hurry you along to the main event. But bear with me just a little longer while I address those versions of you that are on the cusp of reading this novel or not.
In some universes, you have opened to random pages to discover what sort of novel this might be, and you have found words that suggest science fiction: hard vacuum, nanotech, clone, radiation, actinic, supernova. But a random sampling of vocabulary has also yielded terms typical of genre fantasy: vampire, faerie, pooka, plate armor, sword. And in the midst of these you may have come across a word to confound all of your familiar genre associations, the word Brylcreem.
CrossTown is a fantasy novel, but it is a fantasy story played out on the largest possible setting. CrossTown encompasses all of space and time, but all the possible spaces and times, as well as all the impossible spaces and times of mythic imagination. It ranges from the territories where many possiblities converge—the thrumming capitals of existence—to the hinterlands and hinterwhens.
This is also a detective novel, with its fee-for-service hero who has a murder to solve. It is a novel about alien minds, a novel that tickles our sense of wonder, that succeeds in stretching the reader's perception and effing the ineffable, while at the same time being the story of a sorcerer whose ambition is to become an ever more powerful wielder of magic.
I have seen this novel develop over the course of many years, and I have always been impressed by how it manages to succeed simultaneously in so many existing traditions of storytelling while ordering reality in a new way. I mean, wow!
CrossTown is full of thrilling action, of hidden agendas, of narrow escapes. It is, in short, a lot of fun. But it’s also a new version of one of the stories we need to tell ourselves again and again: The hero, wearing one of his thousand faces, seeks the elixir, in one of its thousand forms, and ends up being surprised, elevated, bereft, and consoled. And we, as readers, take that same journey through heights and depths to arrive at contemplation. This is a novel that offers its own answer to the question of what we are to do with the gift, the privilege, of our human birth.
My advice, Dear Reader, in whatever universe you occupy, is that you read on.
—Bruce Holland Rogers
CHAPTER I
ACCIDENTAL TRAVEL happens all the time.
Vincent van Gogh had lived in CrossTown long enough to be familiar with the concept. “It must have followed someone home, Zethus. Caught someone’s coattails at a crossroad, perhaps. Came in like a fever, picked up off the street. The building never had a history of haunting.”
I studied the façade of the building from the edge of the road. Vincent stood next to me, shifting his weight uneasily from foot to foot. “If not the place, what about the people?” I asked. “Any budding warlocks in residence?”
Vincent shook his head. The motion exposed the scar of the wounded ear under the loose tumble of long red hair. “Nothing like that. The Old Woman wouldn’t have it. Not in her building. It might have chosen us as easy pickings. The ones who have already moved were the ones with children. I was the only one in the building who had any contact with a working sorcerer. I had to talk fast to get the Old Woman to agree to that.”
I looked at the violet will o’ wisps floating along the edges of the smooth asphalt lane. A light mist fell down through a pastel smear of sky and darkened the asphalt. The violet globes were a Wayshaper’s mark. Their presence assured that this Road had been tamed to prevent a resident short on power and knowledge from absently crossing into some distant possibility during a casual trip to or from the local grocer or bookstore. Such places hold a strong attraction for CrossTown residents needing security and safety in their travels.
Unfortunately, the markers provided no assurance as t
o what or who might wander along that Road. Particularly in CrossTown.
The brownstone looked, to the untrained eye, virtually identical to its blocky brethren on either side. Seen through the eyes of a sorcerer, the mark on Vincent’s building was obvious. Gusts of wind chased rills of moisture across the blacktop to the granite foundation of the apartment building, but the wind died before it touched the walls of the building. The water fell away to black pools standing at the base of the wall. A dull, oily sheen smeared the surface of the water where it trickled over the stone and pooled on the cement like runoff from a slaughterhouse floor. Rows of corbels brooded over darkened windows like heavy brows hanging over the empty sockets of a skull.
Vincent had called on me to hunt down the source of the mark on that place. “She could have invited a priest,” I told him. “Someone she had a better liking for.”
Vincent cleared his throat. “She doesn’t like any in the spirit business. But she’s desperate enough to let you take a shot, based on my recommendation.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Desperate enough to pay?”
“We all chipped in,” he said stiffly. “We share the burden of payment.”
“Price of a profession, Vincent,” I said mildly. “I should give my services away no more than you should give away your paintings.”
A pair of soldiers strolled by on patrol, horsehair crests nodding in the breeze, bone-hilted ritual daggers crossed in the smalls of their backs, bulky machine pistols slung at chest level over their ceramic armor. Vincent watched them cross to the other side of the street before they reached the brownstone. “You’ll have your silver,” he said without glancing away from them to meet my eyes. “Once the job is done. Once the building is clear. The Old Woman told everyone you would be cleansing the building today.”
That’s the bulk of my job. Call it spiritual pest control.
I stepped away from Vincent and turned down the walk to the front entrance of the building. I didn’t expect any more useful details out of him. Knowledge helps most in these situations, but what Vincent had told me was scanty and general. Nightmares. Oppression. Hints of madness. Signs of a psychic parasite, but not specific enough detail to narrow identification any further.
The door gaped open like a hungry mouth. The darkness beyond the doorway thickened, eating the light. I paused on the threshold, studying the doorway, and felt Blade rouse, the Legion stirring restlessly behind him.
Blade’s voice came to me like the rustle of steel sliding in a scabbard. “Strengthen the defenses?”
I considered the implications of waking my Legion of Bound Spirits before responding. “No. But stay ready. This one looks powerful but not subtle. Let’s see what he’s made of. Be prepared if he turns out to have unexpected depths.”
I stepped through the door’s shadowy mouth. The air took on a taint of decaying flesh. Miasma curled around me, heavy with a rotten strength, but Blade walked with me, stayed within the bounds of body and soul, and stood watch at every door of my spirit. No simple taint could make its way past the first Captain of my Legion.
I stepped across the threshold and onto thin gray carpet. I called the White Wolf out of the sleeping Legion. I loosed him enough so that he came to stand before me, his icy blue eyes burning into the artificial night. Only another sorcerer or a creature of the spirit would see him clothed in his hoarfrost fur, the arctic chill of his breath wreathing his head, his eyes like banked coals as he met my gaze and waited.
I nodded past him into the darkness. “Lead me.”
Lips edged in black curled away from icicle teeth. “And take him?”
“Not yet.” I cocked my head, listening to the whispering flow of power through the house. “Bring him to bay.”
A deep current ran through that place, heavy with the coppery scent of blood. A film of decay settled over everything within the building. I thought the blond wood panels covering the walls bore a layer of dust and filth until I stepped close enough to see light that should have reflected off the polished surface fading into the walls.
The power in that place hated life and order and cleanliness.
I felt that power tremble when my Wolf’s hunting call drifted down the hallway. As the current of power contracted and localized, the source drawing back to itself much of the strength it had built on a foundation of fear, I walked on down the hallway. Overhead, long fluorescent lights fought a losing battle against what from the corner of the eye appeared to be clouds of gnats. Only another sorcerer would have heard the whine of the alien power buzzing overhead or the baying of my Wolf trailing through that place, and only another sorcerer would have heard the White Wolf’s bay thicken to a deep, throaty growl.
He had found my prey.
I made my way quickly through a door and up an open stairwell. A hissing voice rose through the growl. I exited the stairs and started down a long hall toward the White Wolf. Baying, he reared at an apartment door. The power running through the place crested like a wave rising before it crashes down with all of its weight and strength. A sudden roar shook the floor under my feet as the door facing the White Wolf exploded outward and the White Wolf vanished in a cloud of debris.
I steadied myself with one hand against the rough plaster of the wall, not quite losing my footing as the building swayed. A rolling groan of stressed timber swept through the hallway like a vast exhalation. A cloud of dust and pulverized plaster choked the hallway. A sour, carrion smell rose with the dust. I covered my nose and mouth with my sleeve, breathed through my mouth, closed my eyes to slits, and waited for the dust to settle. After a few moments, once the visibility had lightened to a gray haze, the White Wolf emerged through the wreckage of the door and stalked back to where I stood waiting.
The building settled and steadied and the gathered power faded, leaving only the stench behind. I knew that the attack had been loud enough that even Vincent would have heard it from the street. From his perspective, it probably sounded as if I were demolishing the building.
I hoped it didn’t happen that way. I hoped the thing I hunted wasn’t that strong.
The sickly-sweet smell faded as the localized power thinned away to a trace. My quarry had escaped my hound. I set my hands on my hips and looked down at the White Wolf. “I’m disappointed in you.”
The White Wolf sat back on his haunches and gave me his best flat stare. “He was waiting. And stronger than you thought. Strong enough to shake my grip. Not terribly refined, though. And he seems tied to a physical strategy.”
I shook the dust from my long coat pointedly. “I noticed that. So did everyone else in the neighborhood with ears to hear.”
“There’s no need for sarcasm,” he snapped.
“Did you discover anything useful?”
“He was never human, but he’s using a corrupted human form.”
“Corrupted human? Corporeal?”
“Corporeal enough to give you problems. I’m surprised he hasn’t taken the fight to you directly.”
I shook my head, ignoring the wicked gleam in the White Wolf’s eyes. I had begun to develop a feel for the nature of my prey. The deliberate and heavy evocation of mood indicated a broad sadistic streak. “This one feeds on fear,” I said. “He has no interest in killing.”
“Not yet.”
I gave the White Wolf a stern glance, which he shrugged off with wolfish indifference. It has been my experience that the shackles of enforced service rest uneasily on nature spirits. “Have you caught the scent of any old trauma in the building?”
“Like a murder?” he asked, grudging respect audible in his harsh voice. “It’s a nice thought, but even though this thing is wearing a corrupted human form, it doesn’t have a human source.”
“So, what did it taste like?”
He laughed a wolf laugh, tongue lolling. “Corrupted flesh. Human flesh. But that was a mask. Underneath that … something wild. Something thriving on the lack of protection in this place. Something quite inhuman but fascinated by a
ll things human. A taint of the Fae.”
I rubbed my chin as I considered. “Nothing better than that?”
“He was fast, strong, and waiting, though he wasn’t ready for me. I managed to get a piece of him, but when he shifted out of there, he had plenty of power left to cover his tracks.”
The White Wolf turned, and I followed him down the third floor hallway. The floor gave under my tread, a soggy feeling like stepping on flesh. Jaundiced light bled from incandescent bulbs burning in yellowed glass globes set high on the walls in both stairwell and hallway. Shadows played around my feet like swarms of rats.
The door where the White Wolf had triggered the trap had vanished, along with a considerable part of the doorway. The force of the trap had pulverized the globe of the light on the wall across from the door. A crater opened in that wall at about chest-height, breaking through the drywall and into the timber and brick of the outer wall. Only traces of the door frame remained. The hole in the plaster across from the doorway gaped wide in a grimace filled with splintered studs like broken teeth. Had I been standing in that doorway during the attack, I would have become a large stain on the remaining wood and masonry.
The White Wolf turned through the splintered remnants of the doorway, but I hardly needed him to guide me. I could still see the overlay of power wreathing the place like dirty smoke. I stepped into the room. Through the past I heard the distant murmur of old voices. No furniture stood in the room beyond. Empty light sockets stared down at the bare hardwood floor. The sharp tang of cleaning chemicals hit my nose, and the gleam of freshly scrubbed wood met my searching gaze.
To my sorcerer’s senses, a sweaty perfume of fear lay heavy on that room, despite the efforts to scrub it away. I would have bet that the last tenants had moved for a good reason. I followed that scent of fear, and saw the White Wolf sitting in the middle of a large, empty room at the back of the apartment.
Cautiously, I opened my sorcerous awareness further. The shock of sudden images hit my mind—fear, and the sense of being small and vulnerable in a large and hostile world, alone, loved ones dead but still walking and talking with some other thing inside, features sloughing away from familiar faces like ill-fitting masks, skin rolling away from bodies like old laundry to reveal something jagged and alien underneath, and the voice of a dead man whispering words too awful to hear—and I pulled back instinctively from their fading strength.
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