It was at that point that something else that had been bothering me—along with all of the other things that had been bothering me—suddenly jumped the queue and rushed to the front of the line. I looked down at the discolored patch of skin on Volpea's wrist where I had grasped it a moment before. I could still see remnants of my handprint.
I looked at her hand now firmly enclosed about my own wrist. "Doesn't that hurt?" I asked.
Her lips quirked into a smile. "Define 'hurt.'"
Fenris and Volpea had been briefed, of course, about the silver deposits in my body. A couple of silver bullets from January's assassination attempt had dissolved in my bloodstream before they could be removed. As a result, my touch was more than a little uncomfortable to silver-sensitive creatures like lycanthropes. Lupé had found my embrace unbearable and my lips on her forehead had produced blisters. Just another of the several causes for our present separation.
"There is a very thin line, at times, between pleasure and pain, Domo Cséjthe," Volpea said breathily, moving my hand to her side and holding it to the curve of her waist. "There are those who season their food with dabs of catsup while others prefer quantities of Tabasco." She moved my hand so that my fingers trailed across her belly, leaving reddish streaks across her bronzed skin. "And there are ways, for those who choose them," she said as my fingers brushed her belly ring, "to build our tolerance—even our enjoyment—of intense stimulation."
I took a closer look at reddened interception of flesh and jewelry. "So you're saying this isn't the standard stainless steel setting?"
She shook her head with a sly smile. "Silver alloy. As is this . . ." She pulled her top open, exposing her right breast. A more elaborate ring spiraled about and transfixed her engorged nipple with a ruby clasp.
She stepped back and tugged on my hand. The red streaks across her finely muscled abdomen were already beginning to fade. "Let's go back to your cabin and I'll show you the others . . ."
Others?
As in more than one others?
I started to do a mental inventory as she pulled me toward the steps leading down to the deck below.
Compromises, I told myself; you knew this would likely involve compromises. Everything has a price.
The question was, was the price too high?
Chapter Five
The question of price got postponed before we reached the cash register.
Mama Samm and the Gator-man arrived just as I was starting to resist Volpea on the public side of my cabin door.
At least I'm pretty sure I was starting to resist.
I did end up losing my clothes and getting a thorough going-over. Just not the one I had been promised a few minutes earlier. In fact, Volpea departed early in the process with a look that said we had unfinished business.
I spent the better part of the next two hours out in the salon getting poked and prodded and asking when I could get dressed again.
The Gator-man was a Cajun traiteur—a backwoods "treater"—who had performed preternatural surgery on Lupé and myself when we had been shot six months back. Since Lupé was a werewolf and I was—what? Growing less human every month? We couldn't very well present ourselves to the local ER. Imagine trying to join an HMO and having to list preexisting conditions. So my health-care options were severely limited. The arcane properties of my necrophagic virus kept me away from traditional doctors and these untold millions of microscopic machines in my bloodstream screwed up any hoodoopathic alternatives.
Even the preternatural options available via the demesne system were severely constrained. I was lucky to have worked out an arrangement between Pagelovitch and Laveau for the use of Dr. Mooncloud's services but I couldn't actually visit any existing clinics, myself.
Staying healthy was going to be a very iffy proposition from here on out.
The Ggator-man couldn't "read" any conjure marks on me from my stay at the underhill Hilton. "But I do not know if these Hillfolk are kin to the mound dwellers that I know, me," the old Cajun said.
"How about the silver load levels, Alphonse?"
He shook his head and his ivory moustache bristled as he pursed his lips. "You got more, you. Should be less but metal is not leaving your bones."
"Wait a minute," I said. "How can I have more silver now than I did when the bullets first dissolved in my body? I think I'd know if somebody shot me again."
"Obviously his body is hoarding all of its Ag atoms so it can create defensive weapons when he's under attack," Mama Samm mused. "Could these tiny machines be building Ag atoms out of junk protons and electrons?"
"Have you touched or handled anything silver, you?" Alphonse asked me. "Maybe you be absorbing silver molecules through skin contact."
"What? The nanos are sucking silver out of my pocket change and off of my grandmother's flatware?"
The traiteur lifted my arm to show me. "Look, you: skin is more dark, yet shiny. And eyes . . ."
I sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Mirrored sunglasses would be redundant. But what does it mean?"
The outer door flew open and Camazotz stood in the entryway with an armload of containers. "It means," he announced in a shockingly girlish voice, "that his nanobots have kicked into high gear and are now running new programming and subroutines!" He stepped into the salon and then we could see that it was Dr. Taj Mooncloud, standing behind him, who was speaking. "And, if we don't find a way to reverse the process, he'll develop a full-blown case of Argyria!"
* * *
It was like tag-team medicine in sudden death overtime now. Taj and Alphonse were both short, round, and brown. She was both a shaman and a medical doctor with long black hair, a heritage from her Amerindian father and East Indian mother. He was a Cajun homeopath whose coloring hinted of exotic Creole bloodlines that dramatically set off his white bristle of a moustache and shock of ivory hair. Between the two of them they poked and prodded, consulted and argued while mutually lecturing me on aspects of depression, latent death wishes, and self destructive tendencies.
Argyria, I learned, was a condition where silver compounds deposited in body tissues reached critical levels. One of the side effects was a transformation in skin pigmentation to blue or bluish gray.
No wonder I was feeling a little "blue" of late.
Except: "I'm not turning blue, I'm turning brown," I protested.
"Once you go 'black,'" Mama Samm called from the galley, "you won't want to go back!"
"Black and shiny," Zotz commented, passing through with a spool of wire, "super-fly!"
"No one says 'fly' anymore," I grumped. "And Ron O'Neal would roll in his grave."
Mooncloud chuckled. "I'd say the nanites are augmenting his melanin to provide extra protection—if not invulnerability—to solar radiation. I wouldn't be surprised if they figured out a way to turn his skin green if it meant saving his life."
I groaned.
During this time Fenris arrived and left again, taking Volpea with him. Zotz made multiple trips around the boat, trying to install the transducers for the fish finders without damaging the hull. More than once he tracked bilge water across the carpet and gave me a look daring me to say anything about it. In the end, he picked up the phone and bribed someone from the marina to come out in the morning and do a professional install.
He wasn't off the hook. Shortly after getting the new gear stowed, the spear guns cached, additional weapons cleaned and checked, and a quick rinse in the semi-operational shower, he was pressed into mess duty under Mama Samm's watchful eye. By the time I was allowed to put my clothes back on, the sun was down, and Zotz was getting instruction on how to properly clean fish in the galley. Regular fish, that is; not the giant mutant bipeds we tussled with earlier.
"How's he coming along?" I asked as Mama Samm came toward me, wiping her hands.
She sighed. "All too well. Apparently 'skinning' and 'disemboweling' are second nature to demons." She turned her attention to Dr. Mooncloud's latest row of colorful concoctions in the test tube rack on th
e table. "How about him?"
"There's not a whole lot I can tell without an electron microscope or an x-ray machine," Taj answered. She stared at the latest color change wrought by reagents in a small flask bubbling over a portable Bunsen burner. "But there's little doubt that the nanobots have activated in his body."
"They weren't wholly dormant before," I pointed out.
"True, but there's a vast difference between tissue repair, silver reprocessing on a passive, background level and then jumping up the process to redistributing mineral and bone deposits—perhaps even migrating, replicating, and daisy-chaining in sufficient quantities—to create projective claws and arm blades."
"But not out of silver," I argued. "Whatever popped out of my fingertips was hard enough to slice through limestone substrate. Silver's too soft."
"I'm sure your nanites are working with a number of different molecular source materials, producing alloys to fit whatever tasks they deem necessary," Mooncloud mused.
Now that was creepy on more than one level. "At this point we've entered the comic book realm," I said, repressing a shiver.
"The preferred term is graphic novel," Zotz called from the galley.
"A rose by any other name and no way I'm gonna wear spandex," I growled.
"And you never found any scuba gear that would account for your underwater revival?" she continued, ignoring that last comment.
I shook my head. "But someone was helping me down there. Someone who looked a lot like Suki."
"One mystery at a time," she said. It was the third time she had changed the subject when I had invoked the Asian vampire's name. Apparently when the Doman of Seattle says that someone is "dead to him," he not only means personally but everyone who works for him, as well.
"For now, I want you to consider another theory," she continued.
"I'm not going to like it, am I." It wasn't really a question.
"The blood and tissue samples we took just after your return from Colorado by way of New York—before all the Domans agreed to place you on joint quarantine status—showed evidence of an evolutionary trend in your nanite technology. There were several different types of nanomachines found in your tissue samples. Yet, they fell into two functional classifications. Those that repaired damaged tissues on the cellular level. And those that repaired and replicated the other machines.
"Over the course of time we observed that some of the nanites evolved into machines with different functions as the tissue samples aged and withered. The very nature of their purpose was challenged as a piece of tissue removed from its larger component no longer functions the same—if at all. The machines seemed to adjust their programming to deal with changes in environment, oxygen levels, hormonal flux—"
"You're saying that these itty-bitty bots built me some kind of breathing apparatus? An artificial gill? In a matter of minutes? That's nuts!"
"I dare say," she replied calmly, "along with vampires, werewolves, demons, and fish people."
"But how do they know—?"
"You want a wild guess? Or should I dress it up fancy and offer it as a theory? Maybe these things are programmed as a collective consciousness, a sort of hive-mind. And their cybernetic imperative seems to be to sustain life. Even to proactive extremes, it would appear. When you were threatened with physical violence, they improved your abilities to defend yourself. When you were denied oxygen, they found another way for you to extract it from your changed environment. In fact I'd be surprised if they're not already working on two fronts: separating oxygen molecules from your CO2 and recycling. They're adjusting your parameters so you can evolve as your circumstances change."
The thought of a million microscopic machines inside me made my skin crawl. Sadly, that was probably more than just a metaphor. "So what are they doing now?"
She shrugged.
"What got them activated? How do I turn them off?"
"As to the first question, has anything happened to you that falls outside of your normal routine, recently?" she asked.
I considered my recent stay at the Fairyfield Inn and the weird tingle from Fand's miscast spell. "Maybe," I allowed. "How about 'I've got you under my skin, part deux'?"
"Turning them off?" She looked nonplussed. "Why would you want to? Mengele obviously programmed these microscopic machines to keep their host hale, healthy, and hearty under the most extreme conditions—in other words, your typical operating environment. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?"
She had a point. And I knew that my reaction was largely emotional rather than rational. "But these things have been practically dormant for the better part of a year," I argued. "One little run-in with Tinkerbell's big sis and suddenly I'm Christopus of Borg—I will be assimilated! Every six months or so I run up against something far more scary than a faery faux shrink! Tell me this isn't going to go somewhere dark or disgusting down the road."
She just sat there and stared at me impassively. Perhaps not the most descriptive of terms as there was something at the back of Mooncloud's eyes that was anything but passive. "What do you think I can do? All of the medical facilities best equipped to diagnose these latest changes to your physiology are now off-limits. Why? Because you've pissed off every Doman in the known demesne system." The impassive look became a glare. "Do you realize they may not let me back into the New Orleans enclave because I have had contact with you?"
"Not to worry," I answered as Fenris and Volpea made a return entrance. "The Wonder Were-twins are here to make sure all returnees are Cséjthe-free ere they depart."
"And we depart tonight," Fenris announced abruptly. "We've been recalled." He turned to Mama Samm. "You must be ready to leave with us within the hour if you still wish to visit New Orleans with Laveau's blessing."
Mama Samm looked at me. "Olive will need help with Jamal while I'm gone."
I nodded. "Don't dawdle and I'll baby-sit nights." I turned to Zotz. "Think you can manage the day shift?"
He nodded solemnly. "I do not sleep. And the boy is better company than some. . . ." He cast a meaningful glance back at his nemesis.
"Fine," Mama Samm said, ignoring him. "Then I am ready to go, now. My bags have been packed for days and are out in the car."
Fenris turned to Dr. Mooncloud. "You must depart, as well, Doctor. How long before you are ready?"
Taj considered the sprawl of equipment. "Ten . . . fifteen minutes, tops."
"Please begin packing up. It is imperative that we return as soon as possible." He turned to me. "Domo Cséjthe. No disrespect to you is intended but we have our orders. We must ensure that you have no opportunity to infect any of our charges. I must ask that you return to your cabin and remain there until we depart."
I flexed my hands, my fingers, willing my battle claws to pop out. Just as well they didn't: taking him down wouldn't have accomplished anything beyond scratching an itch.
And New Orleans' security would just ramp up to impossible levels.
* * *
With apologies to E.A. Poe, suddenly there came a tapping—as if someone gently rapping. But not upon my chamber door.
I crossed my cabin and peeked behind the blackout blinds covering the window (I refuse to call something that isn't completely round a "porthole") over my bed.
Volpea stood on the narrow side deck running the outer length of the boat. She put a finger to her lips and gestured for me to open the window.
"Still want to go?" she whispered as I knelt on the bed and slid the glass aside.
I hesitated then nodded. The catch on the window was easy; the catch on this deal might be a lot more difficult . . .
"If I give you access to my body, do you promise to leave me in control and respect the privacy of my own thoughts?" she asked.
The "access to my body" phrase started to trigger that other voice in the back of my head but I told it to shut up and let me think.
I don't like to make promises I can't keep. So I generally avoid making them to people I don't know who have motives I don'
t fully fathom. Volpea took a half step back when I didn't answer: my window of opportunity was narrower than the physical casement I had just opened. And it was going to close in another moment.
"I promise," I said too quickly to sound anything like sincere.
She gave me a searching look. "I'll have to trust you. And hope that you will not betray me."
Ditto, I thought as she stepped forward and reached through the small window. Cupping her hand behind my head, she leaned in and kissed me. Deeply. Hell, she tried to tickle my tonsils with her tongue! Which—big surprise—seemed to have a piercing of its own.
And then I tasted blood.
She had bitten her own tongue to give me my opening.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the "gateway."
Leaving my own body and entering another's through their blood is always a bit disorienting. A little more so this time, as I hadn't had time to prepare. I suddenly found myself holding on to my own body!
We had a hold of me by the collar.
Slowly, we lowered my body onto the mattress. I don't know if the solicitude was for my unconscious comfort or an attempt to prevent the thump of a collapsing body from alerting Fenris. I did know that somebody needed to cut back on the doughnuts. In any event, my carcass ended up sprawled on its side, looking less asleep than passed out at the end of a three-day drunk. A certified Kodak moment.
Unexpectedly, I began to snore.
Lovely.
* * *
The next ten minutes were a blur as Volpea hurried back around to finish loading Dr. Mooncloud's medical supplies and keep Fenris distracted from the sounds of a slow-motion buzz saw originating from my bedroom.
I was working very hard on not doing anything.
It's very disorienting to find yourself in a whole new body.
Even more so when your arms and legs are moving and engaged in tasks that you have nothing to do with. Imagine your own reaction if your body suddenly took off of its own volition and began doing things without your say so. It's sort of like having a very organized seizure: the urge to take back control of your limbs is overwhelming.
Dead Easy Page 10