The Man Who Crossed Worlds (Miles Franco #1)

by Chris Strange

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I snatched a coin and the half-full bottle of Kemia from my pocket, already knowing I’d be slower than Ugly. Luckily, I wasn’t alone.

  As far as I knew, Vivian had never met Ugly, but it seemed she recognized a gangster when she saw one. She kicked out a leg from the couch, catching Ugly in the back of the knee. He stumbled, his hand jerking away from the knife, and he opened his mouth to shout.

  Vivian’s hand flew like an arrow to Ugly’s throat, her hand closing around his windpipe and cutting the scream off. His cigarette dropped to the floor.

  A ripple went through his body, his fingers extending into claws and his mouth into a snapping dog’s snout. As long as he was in Heaven, he could turn his body into a weapon. But Vivian had bought me some time, time enough to splash Kemia on a coin and open a Pin Hole.

  When in Heaven, Pin Holes work a bit different. You open them roughly the same way, except it takes a slightly different frame of mind, more ordered, more focused. Only when you open it from this end, you’re tapping into our reality’s stability, rather than Heaven’s instability. You can do some nifty things by sticking some nice physics into Heaven and giving them a push to get them started.

  But right then, I just wanted to stop Ugly from tearing Vivian apart. His new claws raced to slice at her arm, but then my Pin Hole kicked in.

  The reality around Ugly shuddered and solidified, and his snout seemed to cave back into his face. At the same time, his claws retracted and his normal fingers reappeared. A couple of the others in the lounge had noticed the commotion, but no one had started shouting or screaming yet.

  Ugly didn’t waste any time. He gave up trying to remove Vivian’s hand from his throat and went for the knife again. I lunged and wrapped my hand around his wrist. It was taking half my concentration to keep the Pin Hole open and stop Ugly from growing claws again. The other half was engaged in a battle to not set the lounge into a panic and alert the gangsters, wherever they were hiding.

  Vivian got smart first. With a face that betrayed only a hint of violent effort, she stood and shoved Ugly back toward the bathrooms. I followed, snatching the Pin Hole coin from the table with a shaking hand. Ugly was going blue from lack of air and making little gurgling sounds, but Vivian kept a tight grip and pushed him backward, keeping him off balance.

  We shoved him through a door into the men’s bathroom, and Vivian slammed him up against the wall with surprising strength. I scanned the bathroom quickly, concluded it was empty, and kicked the door closed without removing my hand from Ugly’s wrist.

  Vivian released his throat and he sucked in air before bending over double and nearly coughing out his lungs. “Crazy fucking bitch.”

  She frisked him, took the knife from his pocket and tossed it to me. Damn, it felt good to have it back in my hands. Knives like that are hard to find. I flicked it open and aimed the point at Ugly’s face, giving him a good look, and let go of his wrist.

  “Who is he?” Vivian asked.

  “One of Andrews’ boys.”

  “Name?”

  “You know, I never asked. And here I thought me and him were getting to be fast friends.” I waved the knife in his face, trying to be menacing. “What do they call you?”

  The look on Ugly’s face was almost bored. He gave the knife a cursory glance, as if it were no more than a dessert spoon. “That don’t matter. I know what they’ll be calling you, though. The late Miles Franco. Dearly departed.”

  “Yeah? You going to cry when they read my eulogy?”

  He smirked. “No, but perhaps I’ll write you a nice obituary. Maybe it’ll teach others where they shouldn’t go sticking their noses.”

  Vivian glanced around the stark white bathroom, and back to the door. “That thing have a lock?”

  “No such luck,” I said.

  “Then let’s be quick about this.” She spun Ugly around and pulled a pair of handcuffs from her belt. “You’re going to tell us what you know and why you’re here.”

  “Am I?” Ugly said, a faint smirk still on his face even as Vivian cuffed his wrists behind his back. “Doesn’t seem like the sort of thing I’d do.”

  The door started to open. Panicking, I threw myself against it, earning a grunt and a Vei swear word from whoever was on the other side. “Occupied!” I yelled in Vei.

  “You know, I took you for a smart man, Mr. Franco.” Ugly’s voice curled around the words. “I thought you would’ve learned your place.”

  “You must be a poor judge of character. I never pretended to be smart. But somehow I’ve gotten wound up in all this, and I’m not going to sit here and let you and your buddies start a goddamn gang war over some drug.”

  His smile widened then, predator-like. “Is that what you think is happening? Oh, Mr. Franco, you poor fool. It isn’t us you need to be worried about.”

  Vivian glanced at me for a moment, and I had a feeling we were both thinking about the note pinned to the Silk Dragon. Chroma is Death.

  She shoved Ugly back against the wall again. “Tell us what you’re doing here.”

  “Maybe I’m visiting family.”

  Vivian grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the wall. He didn’t flinch. He shifted his eyes to me and grinned.

  A white flash ran through my head. I was on the wet concrete of the parking lot outside Andrews’ strip club, scrambling around in the puddles. Blood dripped from my lips, my cheek, my knuckles. Again and again Ugly kicked me, him and his buddies.

  The pain, Christ, the pain. Every organ in my body was on fire, even ones I didn’t know I had. I thought each blow would be the one to finally end me. I was wrong.

  There was always more pain.

  “Vivian,” I said quietly, banishing the visions. “Go out and keep watch.”

  She didn’t release her grip on his collar, didn’t even look at me. “What?”

  “I need to have a chat with him. We have a few things we need to hash out.”

  Ugly eyed me laconically, but I imagined I saw understanding run through him. Good.

  Everyone wanted me to play their game, from the cops to the gangsters. Well hell, maybe it was time I started playing for real.

  Licking her lips, Vivian shook her head. “Miles—”

  “Go.” I tested the heft of the knife. My hand trembled, but only a little. The real problem was the ache in my stomach.

  I wouldn’t do him any real damage. No worse than he’d done to me. But the son of a bitch was standing in the way of this being over. Christ, I just wanted to be free.

  Vivian’s eyes bored into mine, and for once I didn’t try to drop my gaze. Finally, she nodded. “Okay.”

  Something broke in Ugly’s expression. “You’re a cop, you can’t leave me alone with him.”

  “I’m out of my jurisdiction.” She shrugged and made for the door.

  “All right, all right,” Ugly said. “Let’s not play it that way. You want to know why we’re here? Check my breast pocket.”

  I took a deep breath, and my stomach unknotted itself. Still, I didn’t lower the knife. “This a trick?”

  “No trick. Have a look.”

  Vivian frowned at me, then reached into his pocket and pulled out something small, wrapped in a bit of brown paper. “What is it?”

  “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

  She passed it to me to open. I stared at it for a moment. It was about the size of my thumb, cylindrical, and heavier than it looked. Something about it looked familiar, but I couldn’t tell from where.

  “A gift,” Ugly said. “From our generous sponsor.”

  “Sponsor?” I unwrapped the paper carefully. I didn’t trust the bastard that it wasn’t a trap.

  “Yeah. Gift of goodwill. You’ve probably never heard of that, though.”

  “You must’ve kicked it all out of me.”

  He shrugged. I licked my lips, gave him one more long look, and finished unwrapping the paper. At first glance, it didn’t look anything spectacular. Just
a little glass vial with a gray lid. The liquid inside, though, that was interesting. I took it by the lid and turned it upside down, and the liquid sloshed with the same viscous consistency of Ink. Almost like blood. But this stuff wasn’t pitch-black, like Ink was. A white label clung to the front of the vial, with three letters written in cramped handwriting. Dr. D.

  “It’s Chroma,” I said.

  Vivian shot me a look. “You sure?”

  “I’m not a goddamn chemist, but I’ll give you good odds this is it.” I waved it in Ugly’s face. “Isn’t it? Why would Doctor Dee give you this?”

  He shrugged again. “As far as we know it’s the real deal. It seems he decided it wasn’t worth going to battle with the whole city. This is more mutually beneficial.”

  “So what?” Vivian asked. “He’s the manufacturer and you lot are the new distributors?”

  “You got it, dollface. So unless you want to try to arrest every gangster that’s waiting just behind those doors back there…” He gestured with his eyes. “…I suggest you get lost. There’s a lot of ways for a lady cop and her little pet to get popped in Heaven. And I don’t think your good friends at the police department will be too keen to stick their noses into your mysterious disappearance once they find their pockets getting mysteriously heavier.”

  Vivian shook her head, and pushed him against the wall harder. “How do we know that’s even what you say it is?”

  “You don’t. I ain’t even a hundred percent convinced. I was just on my way back to watch the test when you two decided to unlawfully detain me.”

  “Test?” The way he said it made the hairs on the back of my neck not only stand up, but dance as well. “The hell do you mean, test?”

  We were running out of time, and I got the feeling he was just playing with his food before the rest of the pack showed up. He grinned at me, baring his vicious teeth, and I reminded myself not to let my Pin Hole collapse. I didn’t want to see what he was like when he had full control over his body.

  “The good doctor’s letter suggested we’d get an extra special reaction if we used it on a Tunneler. It was a bit of a pain to find one on such short notice, but out of pure luck one came to us.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “‘Course, we figured you’d be the perfect candidate. Unfortunately, you weren’t at your apartment when we visited. But we met someone even better.” He ran his tongue along his teeth. “She was a feisty little thing, all claws and teeth. I was about to drop her when she started trying to Tunnel against us. Imagine that? Pretty little girl with mosquito bites for tits, and already trying to be a Tunneler.”

  My head spun. No. God no.

  “Tania?” I grabbed his shoulder and brought the knife to his throat. “Tell me her name isn’t Tania.”

  Ugly laughed. The noise clanged through me like tin pots against my skull. I was supposed to protect her. I’d promised to protect her, damn it! I wanted to take Ugly’s face and smack it against the wall. I wanted to kick him in the face until he couldn’t see from all the blood. I wanted to take my knife and stick it in his spine, make sure his little Vei dick never got hard again and he had to wear diapers for the rest of his miserable life.

  “Miles.” Vivian’s voice was calm, warning. I realized my lips were pulled back across my teeth in an animal snarl, my knife a hair’s breadth from his throat. “Don’t.”

  A girl’s scream drove itself deep into my skull. The back room. Ugly laugh turned to a snarl. “You’re too late, Mr. Franco.”

  Anger as hot as a nuclear explosion burst inside my skull. There were jeers and excited shouts coming from outside the bathroom. Those bastards. I’d kill them all. I could do it. I was Miles Franco, freelance fucking Tunneler, and they would know fear as they died.

  I drew back my knife arm and prepared to swing.

  “Miles!” Vivian shouted, loud enough to shock me still. Ugly’s gloating smile had turned to horror. He hadn’t thought I’d do it.

  He was wrong. I would have.

  My snarl faded under Vivian’s hard stare. God. What kind of man was I? I lowered the knife, folded it, and slipped it back into my pocket. Ugly’s face collapsed with relief, like it’d just worked a thirty-six-hour shift with no breaks.

  He didn’t see my sucker punch until it took him square in the chin. He didn’t even make a noise as he stumbled back against the wall and dropped to the ground. My knuckles stung like I’d hit a brick wall, but God it felt good.

  Tania’s screams stopped. I turned toward the bathroom door, ignoring the moaning Ugly on the floor. What was I doing, wasting time on petty revenge? Fuck, please let her be alive.

  The jeers faded. For a moment, there was silence. Then something exploded like it’d been hit by a bazooka, and new screams started.

  The floor shook beneath me as another boom ripped through the wine lounge. The fear on Vivian’s face reflected mine. Jesus. What now?

  We left Ugly curled up on the bathroom floor and ran toward the screams, which seemed to me the sort of counterintuitive thing people always do in horror films. But Tania was in the middle of all this shit—because of me, I might add—and I’d be damned if I was going to leave her there.

  The wine lounge was in chaos. The more sober patrons scrambled and fought to get to the exit, while the ones who were too wasted to run crawled along the floor. The air was thick with smoke and what smelled like burning flesh, and the doors to the back room had been blown outward like a tank had driven through them. I slipped my nightstick from my jacket, the weight more comfortable than ever before, and made my way toward the back room without looking to see if Vivian was following. The lounge shook, and I lurched to the side.

  Then the building dropped.

  Panic punched through my anger. I was falling, weightless. Then the building jerked to a halt, jarring my knees. I stumbled, righted myself, and broke into a sprint.

  The lounge’s back room had once been a classy affair, from the looks of it, all dark reds and polished wood tables imported from Earth. It would’ve fitted nicely in some rich guy’s mansion.

  But now it looked like something from the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident. Tables were overturned, couches were ripped in two, and a gaggle of gangsters were scattered about the room, more of them dead than alive. A small cluster of them huddled behind overturned tables and couches, knives and bats drawn while they peered through the smoke.

  It took me a moment to find what they were staring at. A small figure stumbled forward, clutching her head in both hands. Her clothes were torn half to shreds, and her skin and wavy blond hair were coated with white dust and something that looked ominously like blood. She looked much older than her sixteen years.

  “Tania!” I hurried into the room, my head pounding. “Tania, are you okay? We got to go.”

  Tania’s head swiveled around and finally focused on me, eyes wide and tongue rolling about outside her mouth in nervous jerks. God, what had they done to her?

  “Miles.” Vivian’s voice came from behind me, low and warning. “I don’t think—”

  Tania gnashed her teeth at me, more animal than human, and raised her hands.

  Reality shimmered. I sensed something below me, a solidity that didn’t belong in Heaven. The bone floor crunched beneath my feet, and I was moving before I could work out what was happening.

  I leaped to the side and the section of the floor I’d been standing on launched upward. It smashed into the ceiling with a sickening crunch. I hit the ground with a grunt, already rolling, when the shattered chunks of flesh-like substance rained back down, littering the ground.

  I dived behind a couch being used for cover by two Gravediggers, one missing most of his head and the other groaning from a shard of bone sticking out of his leg. At the same time, another blast ripped apart the floor behind me. My head spun, unable to process the situation.

  I could hear Tania babbling in her high-pitched voice, speaking much too fast for me to understand. I peeked back around the couch
to find Vivian still standing in the doorway, her hand groping under her jacket where her gun should be and her wide eyes fixed on Tania.

  “Vivian!” I shouted. “Get lost, damn it!”

  A woman on the other side of the room—a Silk Dragon, I think—made a break for it. Her red dress, all silks and enticing slits, flew behind her, catching the dust as she skittered along in stilettos.

  She didn’t make it halfway to the door. Tania tracked her across the room, mouth rapidly opening and closing, and then she flicked her wrist. The Silk Dragon suddenly flew sideways, screaming and flailing. She hit the corner of a table in a spray of blood and torn flesh. I ducked back down, my fists drenched in sweat and my heart pounding, while I desperately tried to impose logic on the chaos that surrounded me.

  Tania had gone fucking nutso. But that wasn’t the half of it.

  She was Tunneling without Kemia, or even a circle. To even call it Tunneling was an understatement to compete with the best of them. She seemed to be punching Pin Holes into being with little more than her will and a touch of insanity. She was manipulating the physics of the world around her like I’d never seen before. It just wasn’t possible.

  The whole lounge lurched again, gravity taking charge before being booted away again. I couldn’t see where Vivian had disappeared to. If she was smart she’d be halfway across Suron by now, but a sinking part of me knew she’d be more likely to do something stupid and heroic. And then she’d get herself crushed, and Tania would expend no more effort than it took to swat a fly.

  I crawled around the dead Gravedigger beside me, his blood and brains soaking into my trouser knees, trying to get a better vantage point. The room itself was pretty expansive, substantially more now that half of one wall was torn off. Bodies littered the floor—the ones that’d been caught in the open, presumably—while maybe twenty gangsters took cover, too far from the door to escape. The ones I could see had lost all tone in their faces, and they looked like the photos of shell-shocked men from the First World War. The ones with weapons in their hands held them slackly. If they had an ounce of sense remaining, they’d know how useless a knife would be.

  A flash of movement behind the bar at the far end of the room caught my eye. I saw a glimpse of Vei skin covered in scars and wrinkles. It brought back another flash of memory, and my head started pounding again. Fury and fear mixed in a flurry of emotion. John Andrews. What the hell had he done to Tania?

  Another gangster tried his luck at running and got crushed into an unrecognizable pulp for his troubles. I used the distraction to slip out from cover and dive toward the black countertop of the bar. Tania shouted something incoherent, but I didn’t explode, so I considered that a small victory.

  I scrambled to the side of the bar, my hands scratched from shards of bone and broken glass that covered the floor. Broken bottles leaked alcohol across the floor, the smell strong enough to overcome the burning flesh. I heard John Andrews muttering to himself on the other side of the bar, swearing in both Vei and English. I peeked around the corner, and my heart did its best to kick its way out of my chest.

  He stared at Tania over the countertop, a snarl on his face as he muttered. In his hand was a nearly-full bottle of top shelf vodka, with a barman’s rag hanging out of it. He flicked at a lighter with the other hand, and a flame appeared inches from the Molotov cocktail.

  “No!” I yelled, not caring if Tania heard me.

  Andrew’s head snapped toward me, recognition dawning on his face. The hand with the lighter shot under his tuxedo jacket.

  I launched myself at him. He turned, too slow by far, and I tackled him around the chest, my head slamming against his chin. Pain came screaming at me, but I just screamed right back. The vodka bottle flew somewhere, shattering and raining glass and alcohol down on us, and Andrews and I scuffled on the ground like animals.

  I slammed my fist into his scarred cheek, and his neck snapped back like a grotesque rag doll. I couldn’t see properly; red mist—or maybe blood—clouded my vision. I fought by feel and instinct and rage boiling over.

  A gleam of silver appeared to my left, and a sharp pain lanced through my upper arm. I rolled to the side as Andrews’ knife danced at me again, slicing a hole in my jacket and barely missing my chest. I drove my knee into his abdomen, earning a grunt that sent a visceral wave of triumph through me, and sunk my teeth into his wrist. He screamed and loosened his grip on the knife, enough to let me smack his wrist into a shelf of glasses and send the weapon flying.

  With a shimmer of reality, Andrews’ hand became a claw. He tore at my shoulder, but I ignored it. I drove my fist into his face once, twice, three more times, until his broken line of jagged teeth were coated in blood. His eyes rolled, and his attacks stopped.

  Another explosion and another wave of screams broke out on the other side of the bar, but I took no notice. Father Time had been messing with the clocks in my head; I must have entered the room only a couple of minutes ago, but it felt like I’d been there so long I should be able to apply for citizenship. I was on top of Andrews, one knee in his chest. His neck grew limp and lolled backward, so I gave him a slap across the cheek and enjoyed the satisfying cracking sound and the wide-eyed stare as he was shocked back to consciousness.

  I grabbed Andrews by the lapels of his jacket. It wasn’t quite so pretty now it was coated with blood. “What the fuck did you do to Tania?”

  He ran a tongue along his teeth, smearing the blood. I was aware that I’d never be able to get a Pin Hole open in time if he transformed himself, but right then I was too drunk on adrenaline and anger to care. Besides, the blows to the face I’d given him should slow him down. Heaven or no, you couldn’t change when you couldn’t think.

  I shook him back and forth, not caring that the back of his head smacked into the ground. “Answer me!”

  He spat a glob of blood to the side and focused spinning eyes on me. “This is nothing to you, little Tunneler. A drop of Chroma, and she goes wild.” His grin made me want to throw up and punch him simultaneously. “It seems this doctor isn’t my friend after all.”

  “This is all just Chroma? It isn’t possible.”

  He laughed. “You are in world of the impossible, Mr. Franco.” Tania screamed, and the room shook again. Andrews’ grin faded, and he fixed me with a look. “Since you do not want to watch me set this crazy bitch on fire, I suggest you leave. Go back to your little Earth hovel, and pray to your God I forget all about this.”

  “I’m not leaving without Tania.”

  “Then you are already dead.”

  His fist shot up and caught me in the gut. I rolled with the punch, falling to the side. Andrews moved like a sewer rat, darting up and scurrying away along the bar. He dodged a flying table, moving faster than I would’ve thought possible, grabbed a thick iron candleholder, and hurled it at Tania. She didn’t see it coming. It crashed into her head with a thump that sent a new visceral sickness running through me, and she staggered backward. Andrews sprinted from the room, along with a handful of other gangsters who took advantage of Tania’s disorientation.

  I pulled myself up and ran to Tania. Blood poured from a gash across her forehead. Her eyes swam in her head, half-closed and not seeing. A not-insignificant part of me was terrified she’d kill me as soon as she was no longer stunned, but I had to take the chance. Other figures dashed through the smoke, ghosts on the edges of my vision, but I pushed all thoughts of them aside and focused on Tania.

  I caught her before she fell. My heart pounded as I lowered her into a sitting position. Her face was coated in blood, but I didn’t know how much was hers. She looked like a Vietnamese refugee, half-naked with only torn rags remaining of her clothes. I had no way to describe the guilt that crashed around inside my skull, upturning memories and breaking windows. God, why hadn’t I got someone to protect her? Why had I been so goddamn stupid?

  The track mark in the crook of her elbow was the proof of my shame. I didn’t want to see it, but now that I had, it w
as all I could see. The hole where the needle had made its mark was surrounded by swollen skin, swirling with color even as I watched. I reached trembling fingers to the point where the Chroma had entered her body.

  I knew this wasn’t a dream. My mind could never imagine something this horrifying.

  Her eyes snapped open. For a moment, I thought there was recognition, and then her face was filled with madness. Everything slowed down like I was looking down the barrel of a gun, and I knew without doubt that she was going to kill me.

  An arm appeared around Tania’s throat. Her insane wrath gave way to shock, her eyes widening and rolling in her head.

  Vivian pressed her arm against the arteries in Tania’s neck. Her hair was coated with dust, making her look like she’d aged a hundred years. Maybe she had. I certainly felt broken and crippled as a weathered skeleton.

  “Easy,” Vivian whispered in Tania’s ear. “Just go to sleep.”

  Tania was too weak to struggle. It only took a few long, horrifying moments before her eyes closed and she slipped backward, breathing heavily. Vivian embraced her as a mother does her daughter.

  Right then, looking at the two of them, I’d never felt more alone.