Back from the Undead

by DD Barant

  “You okay?” I ask him.

  “Yeah. Sure. No problem.”

  “Take it easy. It’s just a meeting, not the Apocalypse.”

  “Uh-huh. Right. No problem.”

  “Eisfanger, you won’t even be in the room. You and Charlie are getting parked outside, remember? The only thing you have to do is sit down.”

  “I know. But—you’re going to be diplomatic, right? Because these are gods.”

  “Diplomacy is kind of the point.”

  “And don’t sneeze. That could be seen as a sign of disrespect. That’s all it takes, you know—gods can be very touchy. One little sneeze, and you know what happens next? They sneeze. But when a god sneezes, the effects are very different. One Achoo! from them and you’re a used Kleenex in the waste basket of the cosmos.”

  “You have no idea how glad I am I have a trained shaman to explain these things to me.”

  He looks at me with pleading in his eyes. “Just—try not to be you for a while, okay?”

  “Hey! I’m a little insulted, here.”

  “Sorry. Sorry.”

  I clap him on the shoulder. “It’ll be fine, Damon. Or, you know, it won’t. In which case I’m sure you’ll be close enough to the epicenter that your death will be quick and painless.”

  Charlie drives. We don’t talk much on the way there; I’m focusing on what I’m going to say, Charlie knows better than to interrupt my concentration, and Eisfanger’s too overwhelmed to do anything but stare out the window and fret quietly to himself.

  We park in an underground lot that looks a lot like Hemo’s. We ride up in an elevator that’s all brass fixtures and walnut paneling. We get out on the twenty-third floor, which is dedicated solely to the offices of a firm called Interfutures Trading. The receptionist is a brisk young thrope with an expensive haircut who checks his computer and directs us down a hall.

  The place is decorated in the sort of bland corporate chic that suggests people with a lot of money who are too busy to worry about style: spot lighting, a few tasteful pieces of sculpture, a painting or two. Darkly polished hardwood flooring, large, heavy doors with brass handles set into walls painted an eggshell white.

  There’s a little waiting area just outside the conference room, with a few comfortable chairs, a low-slung glass table, and a nook with a coffeemaker. I pause outside the door. “Wish me luck,” I say.

  Eisfanger says, “Good luck, good luck.” Charlie just gives me a nod and tugs on the brim of his hat.

  I open the door and walk in.

  I’m not fond of giving presentations, but I’ve done my share; working for the FBI, you get used to it. It’s all about conveying information in the clearest way, minimizing problems and maximizing solutions. I know that sounds like mindless business jargon, but it’s just shorthand for trying to figure out a plan without getting in one another’s way. Even when everyone in the room has a different agenda, there’s almost always some kind of common ground to stand on.

  The ground I’m currently standing on is rocky, windswept, and uneven. It’s shaped roughly like an oval the size of a two-car garage, and there’s a large conference table of highly polished mahogany standing in the center of it.

  Beyond the edges of the oval, there’s nothing but black, empty space. Above and all around unfamiliar constellations glimmer, billions of miles away. I glance behind me and see that the door is still there, which is somewhat comforting. I resist the urge to step back through it, and close it instead.

  There are two beings here with me, one at either end of the table. They’re both standing; there are no chairs.

  The one to my right must be Inari. My research tells me she can appear in many different forms—male, female, young, old, even in groups of three or five—but the one she’s chosen today is that of a young Japanese woman. She’s dressed in a flowing kimono of vermillion, her hair pinned back. She has a sickle in one hand, and a coiled whip hangs at her hip.

  The other is just a man-shaped silhouette that looks like it’s made of rippling, multicolored silk with lights behind it. No, more like a hundred flickering candles seen through a veil. Or maybe the aurora borealis trying to mate with a rainbow and a sunset at the same time …

  I wrench my gaze away with an effort. Right. Don’t look at Tawil At-U’mr for too long. “Hello,” I say. I approach the table and stop, very carefully, at precisely the halfway point between the two. “I’m Jace Valchek.”

  There’s a pause, and then Inari speaks first. “Welcome, Jace.” Her voice is rich and soft at the same time. “I am here at your behest. Speak your mind, please.”

  “Thank you. I’m here because of an arrangement between Yog-Sothoth and a vampire named Isamu.”

  A voice issues forth from the humanoid kaleidoscope. “The dealings of the gods are not your affair.”

  When I answer, I try to keep my eyes fixed on a spot just to his left. “Respectfully, Most Ancient and Prolonged of Life, this is not just about gods. If it were, believe me, I wouldn’t dream of interfering. But there are innocent children involved, children taken and used against their will. That is my affair.”

  “Yog-Sothoth knows all and sees all. These are not your children. This is not your country. You have no reason to involve yourself.”

  “He is correct,” Inari says. “How do you justify this?”

  Oh, great. I’ve barely started and already I’ve got my own advocate ready to switch sides. “I don’t,” I say. “I’m not here to argue who is right and who is wrong. I’m more interested in practical matters—matters I believe Yog-Sothoth will also be keenly interested in.”

  “Your beliefs mean nothing. Yog-Sothoth does not care what lesser beings believe or feel. Yog-Sothoth dwells in eternity, where such things are meaningless.”

  “I misspoke. I know Yog-Sothoth will want to hear my proposal.”

  Tawil pauses. “Proceed.”

  I’ve got his attention. Now let’s see if I can get his interest, too.

  “First let me tell you what I want. Destruction.” Always lead with a hook—and from what I’ve seen, if there’s one thing that tends to whet an Elder God’s appetite it’s the possibility of some large-scale carnage. “I want Isamu’s shiny new Happy Place, sometimes known as Hereafter Two-Point-Oh, demolished. Crushed, smashed, turned into cosmic smithereens. I want it gone, and all the souls it holds back where they belong.”

  Tawil doesn’t mess around with the whole that’s-a-tall-order-ma’am-I’ll-have-to-take-it-up-with-management bullshit. For him, this is business-as-usual god stuff. “What do you offer in return?”

  Here goes—time to lay my cards down and see if they’re worth as much as I think they are. “The one and only thing Yog-Sothoth is really interested in: new information.”

  “Impossible. Yog-Sothoth sees all and knows all.”

  “Yeah. No offense, but—that’s not strictly true, is it?”

  I hold my breath and wait for the cosmic thunderbolt to turn me into a little wisp of black smoke.

  “Truth is irrelevant. Knowledge is all. Yog-Sothoth knows and sees throughout all space and time; this shall not be disputed.”

  “Because it isn’t true? So what, if truth is irrelevant?”

  The silhouette’s shifting glow gets brighter. I think I’ve just pissed him off …

  “Hold!” Inari says. Her whip is in her hand, and it seems to be on fire. “This woman is here under my protection. You will not destroy her on a whim.”

  There’s a long, tense moment of silence. The little voice inside my head is saying, Well, as long as it’s not on a whim …

  Finally, the glow subsides back to what it was. When Tawil speaks, there’s no anger in his voice. “Proceed.”

  “Let’s say—hypothetically—that Yog-Sothoth’s reach isn’t quite as all-reaching as he claims. Let’s say that ‘all time and space,’ while technically accurate, refers to one specific universe. The whole universe, don’t get me wrong … but both he and I know there’s more than o
ne out there.”

  I pause, waiting for a reaction. There isn’t one from Tawil, or at least one I can read. Inari’s smile seems a little wider, though.

  “So let’s say someone from one of those other universes visits this one. That person would bring a little bit of that place with her, encoded into the very essence of her being—her spiritual DNA, so to speak. Her experiences, her knowledge—every little thing she’d ever done or come into contact with in her own universe would have left psychic traces of its existence on her and in her. And none of it would be known to Yog-Sothoth.”

  I can’t look at Tawil, so I look at Inari instead. She gives me a barely perceptible nod to go with her smile, and I start to think I might actually get away with this.

  The key to catching subjects using a criminal profile always boils down to one simple factor: What do they need? Killer or rapist, arsonist or thief, at the root of all serial offenders is a deep-seated compulsion to act the way they do. Often it’s an outlet for rage or frustration, sometimes it’s a sexual psychosis, occasionally it even comes down to boredom—but there’s always some void that needs to be filled. Figuring out what that void is and how the subjects try to fill it will inevitably lead you to a place where they’re vulnerable. I call it the lion-at-the-watering-hole approach … but the lion in this metaphor isn’t the perp.

  It’s me.

  “Proof of this offering would be required,” Tawil intones.

  I untie the cloth charm around my wrist that Eisfanger made for me. “Sure. Here’s a taste.” I toss it at the silhouette, where it promptly vanishes like I just threw it down a well. A little disrespectful, maybe, but I’m not getting anywhere near Tawil himself. He might just decide to swallow me the same way and save himself the trouble, Inari or not.

  I wait. I honestly don’t know if this will work. Cross-universe communication is difficult, but the NSA managed it; if Isamu has shamans on his payroll with access to HPLC, I might even be offering Yogi something he already has. I still don’t know exactly what the Yakuza offered him in the first place, other than the chance to move from the cosmic IT department to management.

  It seems to take forever. Gods, of course, don’t experience time the way us mere humans do. For some reason I thought his decision would be more or less instantaneous, working on the assumption that power equals speed—but it could be just the opposite. It might take years for him to mull it over, years that mean nothing to an immortal. And of course, this being some sort of mystical realm, I wouldn’t be allowed to do anything as mundane as die from starvation or dehydration. No, I’d get put on the metaphysical equivalent of hold, standing at this damn table as the decades grind past and I slowly lose my mind …

  “Yog-Sothoth is undecided. You will both provide additional information to support your offerings.”

  “Both?” I say.

  And suddenly, there’s someone standing on the other side of the table, across from me.

  Isamu.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Isamu looks at me with cold hatred in his eyes. I have no doubt that the one thing he wants to do right now more than anything is to rip my head off with his bare hands.

  “I thought these talks were closed,” I say mildly.

  “Nothing is forbidden to the gods.”

  Sure. That’s the thing about omnipotence, it makes you arrogant. Rules are what you make, not what you follow. I don’t bother arguing the point. “Fine. I’ll gladly concede the opportunity to have my competition make a counteroffer. But in order to bolster my own proposal, I need to bring in someone else as well.”

  “Proceed.”

  “Stoker?” I say loudly. “You can come in now.”

  For a moment there’s nothing but silence, and I wonder if I’ve guessed wrong. Then the conference door opens and Stoker steps inside.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he says. “I miss anything important?”

  He joins me at the table—closer to Inari than Tawil, I notice.

  “Not much,” I say. “Isamu is about to explain why his deal is better than mine. You’re going to explain why he’s wrong.”

  “Ah. I see.” He stares at Isamu with a slight smile on his face, then turns and whispers to me. “How’d you know?”

  “Eisfanger found the tracking charm you slipped on me in the change room. I knew you couldn’t stay on the sidelines.”

  “So Charlie and Eisfanger—”

  “Knew you were there the whole time. Believe me, if you’d tried to slip past them without me giving the go-ahead, you would have woken up with a concussion and a new pair of bracelets.”

  “Enough!” Isamu snaps. “My claim is the valid one. What can this pathetic mortal proffer that I cannot? Whatever she says she can deliver, I can do the same—as well as what I am already giving you.”

  “She has offered knowledge of another realm. Her own universe.”

  “Nice,” Stoker whispers. “What else do we have?”

  “You do know you’re whispering in front of an all-knowing being, don’t you?”

  “I can do the same!” Isamu says loudly.

  My heart sinks. This is what I was afraid of.

  “I have already given you a new realm of your own,” Isamu says. “Not just to observe, but to rule! Is that not infinitely superior to secondhand knowledge from a single individual?”

  “It is not. All that enters your created domain is already known to me.”

  Isamu scowls. He’s having a hard time understanding a being that’s more interested in knowing than ruling. “Then I will acquire another such as her, or an artifact. Such things can be done.”

  “Yog-Sothoth is not interested in vague promises. He desires only that which he does not possess.”

  Isamu’s eyes flicker to Inari. I know what he’s thinking: If she weren’t here, I’d give this infuriating human to you right now. “Surely an eternal being thinks of more than immediate gratification. Should you choose this woman over me, you would doing more than rejecting my project—you would be terminating an alliance. She has one thing to offer you, and her laughably short life span means she’ll never have the chance to offer you another. I, though, am immortal, and an important member of a powerful and ancient organization. Can you not see that ultimately I am the better choice?”

  It’s a good argument. Tawil At-U’mr doesn’t say anything for a moment, and I know I have to come up with a counterargument or I’m dead in the water. I turn to Stoker and whisper urgently. “We need more. Where’d you get the gunpowder recipe?”

  “I stole it from Ahaseurus,” he whispers back.

  “How’d you know what it was? Or that I needed it?”

  “I didn’t know what it was, not then.” He hesitates. “And I knew you needed it because I bugged your rooms. Technology, not magic.”

  Damn. I was hoping for a little extra cross-universe mojo, some kind of connection Stoker had made across the dimensional divide that we could throw in to sweeten the deal. My ace-in-the-hole just turned into a three of flubs.

  “Any alliance is based on trust,” Isamu says, his voice raised. “These two mutter and plot, while I make you an honest offer. They are not trustworthy.”

  “Sticks and stones, Isamu,” I say.

  “Her ally is an international terrorist—and no friend to you, either. It is known, in certain circles within the Japanese government, that he tried to bring an Elder God of his own to Earth. You know, of course, of Ghatanothoa?”

  And now that sinking feeling in my gut goes right through the floor and into the yawning abyss below my feet. It never occurred to me that Isamu might be well connected enough to know the details of that operation.

  “Ghatanothoa is known to me. He opposes Shub-Niggurath.”

  Who just happens to be Yog-Sothoth’s mate.

  I wait for imminent annihilation … but it never comes. And after a second, I realize why. None of this is news to Yogi; he already knows. He knows everything. Everything that can be known, that is—he can’t know
something that hasn’t happened yet.

  He just doesn’t care.

  He’s a god, with a god’s concerns. A hairless monkey tugging at the coattails of one of his associates—friend or enemy—means nothing to him. Yogi’s not even really here—this avatar he’s manifesting is just a sliver of his consciousness, a flicker of his attention. We’re barely worth noticing. So why is he even bothering?

  Because even gods have needs. And I know what Yog-Sothoth’s are.

  “While we’re on the subject of reliability,” I say, “let’s not overlook your own failings, Isamu-san. You said once you would hunt me to the ends of the Earth—but I’m still here. You’re big on threats, but kinda short on follow-through.”

  Isamu glares at me. “I have not forgotten what I promised you, Jace Valchek. It will yet come to pass—”

  I interrupt him with a laugh. “Sure it will. You’re all kimono and no katana, Isamu. Even that little stunt you tried to pull to block me from Hereafter Two-Point-Oh isn’t going to work. When this is over, I’m going to bust you. Then you and I are going to have our own negotiation session, and I’ll crack you like an egg. You’ll roll over so fast you’ll leave skid marks on the floor.

  “The first thing I’m going to get from you is a way to neutralize that harmonics spell. Then I’m going to march right in to your little fake Heaven with a squad of NSA combat magicians and clear the place out—every single soul you co-opted is going back where it belongs, and that includes Roger—”

  Isamu slams his hand down on the table hard enough to crack the wood. Even I jump a little. “No,” he snaps. “You will not. You know nothing about me, Jace Valchek. My will is iron. You will never beat me, you will never cage me. Even if you did, a thousand years of torment would not be enough to bend my spirit. My word is unbreakable, my purpose unwavering.”

  He turns to Tawil At-U’mr, and doesn’t flinch from the sight. “Know this, Most Ancient and Prolonged of Life. I am as unswerving in my aim as an arrow in flight. No punishment or inducement would alter that. This woman will suffer at my hands, and she will never set foot again in the domain I created for you. This I swear.”