Hunger Makes the Wolf

by Alex Wells

  Even so early in the morning, there were employees streaming into the building. She tucked herself into the crowd and let them carry her into the huge, echoing lobby of glass and metal. Ahead was a curving desk occupied by a fat man in Mariposa green, and behind him two sets of fancy wooden doors inlaid with silver – more elevators. The employees all took a left turn past the security desk, though, heading for a plain glass door. A line had formed there, people swiping their ID cards – no problem there – and then pausing at some sort of scanner that shone light in their eyes. A dim memory, from years ago when she was still on the rift ship, reminded her that was a retinal scanner. Not good. But she’d gotten plenty of places on her own with a bluff, and seen Old Nick do the same.

  Mouth dry, Hob sauntered over to the security desk. The security man looked supremely bored, leaning back in his chair, thumbs tucked in his suspenders. Hob gave him the sweetest smile she could and said in her best fancy accent the words she’d practiced all night just in case someone asked, “Got in a little accident last night, doctor says I have to keep my eye covered for a week or two.” She flashed him her badge.

  The man smirked. “Sometime you’ll have to tell me what poked you in the eye.”

  Hob smirked back at him. “Maybe if you buy me a drink.”

  He laughed. “Got yourself a deal. Get in line, I’ll buzz you through.”

  She gave him a flirtatious smile, since she still remembered what those felt like even if hers was rusty with intentional disuse, then got in line. She made idle chatter with the men and women in their blue suits until she reached the door – weather, talking about the weather was always safe. It felt weird after living her life on base, where idle chatter normally fell somewhere between target shooting bullshit stories and well-worn debates on the best way to sharpen a knife. She swiped her card, and then paused, forcing herself to breathe normally while the retinal scanner blinked and beeped urgently, demanding she lean forward into the beam. After a few seconds that felt like a damn eternity, a buzzer sounded and the lock clicked. Hob made sure to wave to the security guard and give him another painfully sweet smile, and then walked through into the hallway, her legs feeling half melted with relief.

  That was, she tried to remind herself, the easy part. Now time for the real challenge. The Bone Collector had only been able to give her a hazy idea of where to go: down, to a place where everything is made of cold, dead synthcrete. Not much of a help, since she’d wager the entire damn building was made of synthcrete everywhere it wasn’t glass.

  Shoulders tight, ready to hear a shout, someone asking her what she thought she was doing, Hob kept up the confident walk and pretended that she knew exactly where she was going. She found a building escape map posted on one of the walls, showing exit routes in case of fire. The map also showed the stairways, and only two went down below the ground floor.

  There was a door at the bottom of those sets of stairs, made of metal, and a place to swipe a card next to it. Hob tried Mary’s card, but the little light on the lock went red. She froze, waiting for the sound of an alarm, of running feet; nothing. She retreated into a corner of the stairwell, where she would be sheltered from the sight of someone going in or out of the door, and waited.

  Her feet ached fiercely, but she couldn’t afford to take off the shoes, put on her boots; they would be much too out of place. She chewed at her lip, counting the seconds as they passed by, and tried to stay calm.

  This was a ridiculous idea. She never should have agreed to it. She should have thought of some other plan. Like knocking on the front door and asking nice, or riding in with guns blazing, or… From any angle she looked, it was all stupid.

  The lock on the door snicked. She tensed, barely daring to breathe. The door opened, and a short man with a white coat over his blue suit walked out. She tried to time her steps with his as he went up the stairs; he didn’t look back as she caught the door and slipped inside. With one hand she held it just open as she double-checked that a card swipe wasn’t going to be necessary to get out – no, there was no card reader. Just to get in, then.

  As she let the door close, her ears popped. She yawned, making them pop again. The hallway in front of her was plain, just synthcrete walls, ceiling, and floor, lights in long strips along the top. But it felt odd, very dead, like sound could get no more than a few centimeters through the air.

  There was a little prep room, first thing off the hall. Hob ducked inside and grabbed a white coat of her own, then set off down the hall, trying to act like she did this every day. She felt eyes boring into her back at every turn, though she was alone. The clack of her heels echoed.

  The hallway branched several times; the first route took her to a dead end, more locked rooms. The doors were glass panes, which made no sense to her since she could just look inside. What was the point of even having doors, then? It was all computers and fancier gadgets that she couldn’t hope to understand, screens that covered entire walls. She made a point of opening her briefcase, pulling out a stack of flimsies and flipping through, then turned back the way she’d come.

  The next hallway: the locked doors were metal, and she could about smell despair seeping from under them, the shape alone screaming prison cell. Each door had two slots, one at waist height and one at face height, and a tag bearing a name and number. A few also had a sheaf of flimsies clipped next to the name tag.

  Mag’s name was on the third door, along with a number. Hob swallowed hard, fought to keep herself calm. Her instinct was to attack, to try to batter the door open. But the Bone Collector had a specific plan, and at the time it had sounded good. Now, she wasn’t so sure, but she knew it had to be better than a crazy charge in. She didn’t want it to be Mag’s blood sprayed across the ceiling for her bullheaded mistakes.

  She looked at the file clipped to the door. There was a schedule, indicating Mag had some kind of procedure scheduled for today. Hopefully that meant her getting taken out of her room. The pages of notes beneath didn’t make much sense, but she tried to memorize the words, on the off chance the Bone Collector might know what they meant: acute manifestation and unknown biomarker. One word did stand out: contamination, company speak for witchiness. How could that be possible? Mag had never walked out into the desert. Reading further, she found a notation that said Mag was “well behaved, but uncooperative with questioning.” That made Hob smile, a big, wolfy grin that she quickly hid with one hand.

  She checked furtively up and down the hallway, then squatted awkwardly so she could open the meal slot in the door and whisper through it. She hated herself for it, but she did her best to hide her accent, to speak softly so Mag wouldn’t immediately know who she was. There would be too many questions otherwise, and Mag might give something away by accident. None of them could afford that.

  “You’ve been good so far,” she whispered. “Don’t give up now. You’ve got friends, and we’re coming for you. Call for us when they next take you from your cell.” She heard Mag suck in a breath to ask questions – that was what Mag did – and she quickly snapped the slot closed.

  Hob walked to the far end of the hall, digging into the briefcase for the handful of red sand, letting it dribble from her handkerchief and onto the floor, the movement hidden. Then she went back the way she had come, leaving a trail of sand grains as she went, in case Mag’s appointment was that way.

  That was her task in its entirety: bring in a little sand, warn Mag something was coming, and get the hell out. The Bone Collector had said he needed something natural in there, something that could resonate with his blood. She’d swallowed that and let her questions fall away, because all they’d gotten was that damned floaty smile of his and no answers.

  Hob had never been one for simply trusting, and didn’t like the feeling of it now. Her hands itched, her head aching as she clenched her teeth against the desire to do something, see some kind of result. But she knew what happened when you ignored every warning, every bit of wisdom, and went off half cocked. She rem
embered melted silver buttons getting stuffed into her shirt pocket, the sound of Nick Ravani snarling in her ear, the hot spray of blood against her cheek. Never again. Stomach churning, she made herself turn and walk from the basement, the horrible shoes pinching at her feet with every step. Walking away was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

  No one stopped her as she left the building; she waved to the security guard as she went by, gave him her best copy of the flirty smile from earlier. She changed into her real clothes in an alley between two restaurants that were doing brisk lunch business. Habit had her hair out of that tight, brain-aching knot and back into the two braids she normally kept. She stuffed the woman’s blue suit into a dumpster, along with the stolen ID. No point in keeping that. Even if this worked once, she knew it would never work again so easily.

  Melting into the crowd of ordinary folk, she shoved her hands in her pockets and walked down the sidewalks toward the outskirts, where the buildings and synthcrete gave way suddenly to hardpan. The first few steps with her feet flat on the ground were almost an orgasmic relief, and then they began to ache fiercely, the pain traveling up her calves and toward her back.

  A few blocks away from the city’s end, the crowd thinned to almost nothing between the warehouses and silos. They had to store everything the miners and farmers produced somewhere, she supposed, while they waited for the next rift ship to arrive. Then behind, she heard the soft hum of an electric motor, and glanced back to see a black saloon car, shining and fancy, skimming smoothly over the street on some kind of hover field. It was the same sort she’d seen when first arriving here, that had carried a Weatherman from the depths of first class on the rift ship and across the landing field. She still didn’t know anything about Weathermen, only that Nick had called them the witchiest things of all.

  And right now was not the time to find out.

  Hob made her stride a little longer, trying to cover more ground without appearing to hurry. But the car pulled ahead of her and stopped, settled down against the sidewalk. The passenger door lifted up like a wing, and a man climbed out.

  He looked ordinary enough, the sort that would be otherwise lost in the city. He wore the same blue suit as every TransRift employee. His hair was dark and a little greasy, his face pale, nose slightly crooked. But something was wrong with his face, his expression: his jaw just a little slack, his eyes too wide. Scars laced his hairline, dead white and old, fine as a razor.

  And those eyes… all black, Hob saw in a glance, no difference between iris and pupil.

  He stepped in front of her. It was stop or run into him, and more than anything in the world, Hob didn’t want to touch him. Her skin crawled. There was something wrong, sick in the air like the outpouring of dust and bad gas from a mine collapse, or the sight of a broken bone bending a leg in half far from the joint.

  The man smiled. His voice was light, his words oddly stilted. “You weren’t easy to find. I’ve been looking since last night.”

  “Think you got the wrong person. Sir.” Company men always liked being called sir.

  The doors on the other side of the car opened: two security men in green, their belts weighed down with pistol, baton, who knew what else.

  The man smiled, shaking his head. “I’ve got it right, I’ve got it right. You will need to come with us now. Come with us. It will be all right. You belong with us.”

  Something in his voice was oddly compelling, whispering to Hob that yes, this was a thing that she needed to do. She felt strange, sleepy, and made the mistake of looking him in the eye. She felt like those eyes would swallow her, that they were actually real black holes that could warp time and make it slow to nothing.

  “Lovely,” he whispered.

  Someone grabbed her arm.

  She shook off the strange lethargy, twisting her arm to break free. The other security man made a grab for her, and she jammed her elbow into his gut. “Back the hell off,” she hissed.

  How often did this happen in the city, two guards showing up, overpowering someone, dragging them into the car? Probably more than she could know. There was a metallic hiss, a snap, as one of the men drew his baton and the springs snapped it to full length.

  Hob yanked her revolver from its holster and didn’t hesitate. Even as the first guard jerked up his hands, showing he was unarmed, she shot him. Without skipping a beat, she smoothly switched her aim to the other, shot him too, square in the chest. The baton rattled down onto the sidewalk.

  Blood decorated the car in a messy spray, dotting the shining building next to them, turning the sidewalk into something much more organic. Both bodies hit the ground within a few seconds of each other, a wet thump-thump.

  She looked at the strange man and he didn’t even seem afraid. With a face spattered red he smiled, open and filled with wonder, and held out a hand to her. He opened his mouth, and what came out wasn’t more words: it was music, strange and beautiful.

  The sound flowed into her ears, rooted her to the ground, promised her things with no name and wrapped her in love. Her hand dropped to the side, fingers popping loose. She almost – almost – dropped the revolver, but something was left in her, enough fire and anger to tighten her muscles a little and hang on. She’d earned her damn gun; like hell she was letting it go.

  She knew the music, somehow. It was the same song that the Bone Collector had sung to her on the way here, though this man was missing the words, and that note wasn’t right, that one was sour…

  Knowing the real thing, hearing what was wrong, broke the lethargy and gave her strength to raise her arm. Like she was drowning in ink and had gotten her head up to the air for one last time, she screamed, “No!” and leveled the gun. Her finger jerked, just enough to pull the trigger.

  The bullet made a shockingly tiny hole in the front of his neck. Then his face went slack and he fell to the ground, head slamming into the synthcrete with a damp crack. His mouth opened and shut with a faint gurgling sound, like a fish taken from water. He seemed to be trying to form words, to speak to her again. She took a step forward to stand over him, leveled her gun at his heart – don’t look in the eyes, she couldn’t risk looking at those eyes again – and pulled the trigger. The wet sound of his breath mercifully stopped.

  In death his face regained no humanity. His half-open eyes remained inky black, the strange slackness only worsened, like he was a mask of loose skin now abandoned. All that changed was the growing blood pool that spread over the sidewalk in a dark halo.

  Hob wondered if eagles would smell the blood from this distance and come. Probably not. As she breathed like a bellows, she felt there should have been regret in her heart for shooting three men, but she searched and found none. The men in green had tried to grab her, drag her away. And the man in blue… was no man at all, just wrongness somehow man shaped.

  The sound of more motors approached, a whining siren echoing between buildings. Hob lunged into a run, gun still clutched in her hand. The bright white of the hardpan ahead filled her vision, leaving her half blind. She threw herself from the sidewalk and out onto the salt crust with a scream of effort. As soon as her boots touched down, the ground flowed beneath her and she sank like a stone through water.

  Part Two

  Chapter Ten

  Hob surfaced like coming up for air. Hands pulled her from the ground by her shoulders, dragged her until she was flat. She stared up at the star-filled sky and gasped, trying to shake the feeling that she’d been drowning. Then the Bone Collector came into view, leaning over her with a hand planted on the ground either side of her face, his arms rising above her like pillars.

  “You smell like blood,” he whispered, his tone almost flirtatious.

  She laughed at him, a sound that came all the way from her toes and felt like a cough. “My favorite perfume. Shot three men on the way out.” A thought sparked in her brain, something important that had almost been lost in the confusion. “Mag?”

  “Your friend is fine. Though a little worse for wea
r. This is the first time she’s been underground.” He sat back, pulling his hands away to rest in his lap.

  Hob turned her head, not quite up to sitting. Mag was there, stretched out, her face gone a delicate green and her eyes shut tight. Hob grinned, just glad to see her alive and in one piece. “Did I look that pathetic?”

  The Bone Collector laughed. “More.”

  Mag responded to the sound of her voice with a little whimper, all sound and no words. She reached toward Hob, eyes still shut tightly, hand flailing like she was drowning and searching for help. Hob caught her hand and squeezed it tight. “It’s OK, Mag. We got you out of there.”

  Mag swallowed hard; her voice was soft, words slurred as she spoke through clenched teeth. “Thought I heard you, Hob.”

  It was like three years hadn’t passed at all, and it was like a million years divided them. Their hands felt the same together, but when had Mag grown so much? When had she broadened out in the hips and shoulders while Hob had just stretched taller and taller? When had her hair gone from its childish, mousy blonde to brown? Hob could barely breathe around the lump in her throat. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” Sorry I was selfish. Sorry I was an idiot. Sorry for everything.

  Mag didn’t say anything else, just squeezed her hand so tight that it made her fingers ache.

  “What men did you shoot?” the Bone Collector asked. “Were they in the building?”

  “No, in the street, near the edge of town. Two security guards and one other who… had eyes like… I don’t even know. Like black pits. Ink.” She covered her face with her free hand, squeezing her eye shut as she dragged her thoughts into line.