Harvest Moon

by Mercedes Lackey, Michelle Sagara

  “It’s a really good spell,” she said, “but that’s not what I meant. How long did you think you could go around murdering people before you were called to answer for it?”

  “I don’t go around murdering people. If I have to kill a guy, he’s got it coming—”

  “Save it, Domino, I know the drill. It is what it is, no matter what you try to tell yourself. There are consequences.”

  “Oh, give me a fucking break. You’re a spell, okay? That’s it—just a spell. Don’t try to tell me this is about some absolute moral law handed down from on high. You can try to close the sale all you want, but I’m not buying.”

  She looked at me, and I thought there was a kind of desperation in her eyes. “Why, Domino. Why can’t you see?”

  I held her stare for a moment, then swallowed hard and looked down at my feet. I shrugged. “I’m a gangster,” I said. “I’m not apologizing for it. Maybe you, or Samael, or God Almighty don’t think much of what I am, but there’s worse things I could be.”

  “There are better things, too.”

  I stood up and started getting dressed. “Says who? I like being a gangster. Beats an office job.”

  “Sarcasm and denial won’t save you, Domino.”

  “Never failed me before,” I said, and pulled on my boots. “I’m outta here. You coming, or what?”

  “I can’t go with you.”

  “You have to stay out here? What will happen to you?”

  “I’m just a spell, remember? This manifestation will fade when you leave, and I’ll be unmade when my purpose is fulfilled.”

  “When I’m dead.”

  “Yes.”

  My self-righteous twin was a manifestation of the curse condemning me to death. Maybe I could think of something more useful than trying to destroy it or talking a little smack. I sat back down.

  “Tell me the curse,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Tell me the words, in English.”

  “Angels of destruction will hit you,” my twin recited. “You are damned wherever you go. Dark will be your path and God’s angel will chase you. A disaster you have never experienced will befall you and all curses known in the Torah will apply to you. I deliver to you, the angels of wrath and ire, Dominica, the daughter of Gisele Maria Lopez Riley, that you may smother her and the specter of her, and cast her into hell, and dry up her wealth, and plague her thoughts, and scatter her mind that she may be steadily diminished until she reaches her death. Put to death the cursed Dominica. May she be damned, damned, damned!”

  “Benny wasn’t fucking around.”

  “Like I said, it’s a really good spell.”

  “Samael isn’t just going to kill me, he’s going to drag me to hell? I won’t even leave a ghost?”

  My twin shook her head. “Samael can kill you, but he doesn’t have the authority to judge you.”

  “So what’s the bit about smothering the specter of me and casting me into hell?”

  “It’s a prayer for protection in the afterlife from the target of the death curse.”

  “And Benny needs protection because I’ll be dead but that won’t necessarily get rid of me?”

  “Even with death curses,” my twin said in a scolding tone, “violence never really solves anything.”

  “In the underworld, killing a man is just the beginning,” I said.

  “Right.”

  “Or a woman,” I said and laughed. I stood up again and started making my way back along the river.

  “What’s so funny?” my twin called to me.

  “I’ve got a plan,” I said, turning back to her.

  “What plan?”

  “I’m going to make someone an offer he can’t refuse.”

  Samael was waiting for me when I got back to the car. I ignored him and we drove in silence for a while. I thought about my next move. It was a gamble, but I was pretty sure it was the right play. The only other options Akeem had given me were dying and asking Shanar Rashan for help. Even with time running out, I wasn’t real enthusiastic about either one. I was also thinking about Detectives Meadows and Sullivan. I’d gotten them off my back, but I wasn’t convinced that was going to stick.

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Samael said.

  I kept ignoring him.

  “The cops, I mean. You’ll be pleased to know they won’t be bothering you anymore.”

  I glanced over at him with narrowed eyes. “Why’s that?”

  “There was another murder. Through shrewd police work,” he said and winked, “they were able to connect it to the tow-truck driver. They have a new suspect.”

  “What kind of shrewd police work?”

  He nodded, grinning. “A shoeprint with a distinctive wear pattern on the heel connected the two murders. Mud and fecal matter with a unique mineral, biological, and chemical composition connected the killer to the sewers below Chinatown. Maybe it was the MSG.”

  “You actually planted evidence at the first murder scene, the tow-truck guy?”

  Samael tapped his forehead. “He who fails to plan, plans to fail,” he said. “Did you think I was winging this?”

  “So who’s the poor bastard you’re pinning it on?”

  “No need for you to worry—it’s no one you know.” Samael laughed. “I have to admit, I thought about framing up your boss, but we don’t really have enough time to let that play out the way it deserves.”

  “Fuck you, who’d you pin it on?”

  “A ghoul,” Samael said, chuckling.

  “Couldn’t find a ghost or a goblin?”

  “No, a real ghoul. Haven’t you ever run across one?”

  I hadn’t, but I didn’t feel like admitting it, so I just clamped my mouth shut and stared at the highway.

  Samael nodded. “Well, there aren’t that many of them, so it’s not surprising. They’re similar to vampires, except, instead of gaining power by drinking blood, they get it from eating human flesh.”

  “Like a zombie?” I couldn’t help it—professional curiosity.

  “No, they’re not dead—or undead. At least, not at first. They start out human, as human as you or I. Well, you, I guess, not me so much. Anyway, they get some power from the cannibalism, like I said, but eventually it starts to change them.”

  “How?”

  Samael shrugged. “They start looking a lot like a cadaver.”

  “How nice for them.”

  “Yeah, but here’s the cool part. If they survive long enough, they begin another metamorphosis as their power continues to grow. They start to become incorporeal. Not completely, at first, but they can control it. Like maybe they can make parts of their body incorporeal. Then, later, they learn to phase out completely for a short time. Eventually, they become permanently incorporeal, like a wraith or something.”

  “And there’s one of these things in L.A.?”

  “More than one. Like I said, this one does most of his eating in Chinatown.”

  “And it murdered somebody?”

  “Right. It can survive just fine eating corpses—you know, ones that are already dead—but this ghoul doesn’t have any problem whipping up a fresh meal. It’s old and hungry for power, pun intended. It’ll soon be ready for its final metamorphosis.”

  “And you sent the detectives after this fucking thing?”

  “Yeah. I told you, they won’t be bothering you anymore.”

  I pressed the accelerator to the floor and kept it there. I made it back to the city just after dawn. Having screwed me again, Samael left me alone lying in the wet spot. Part of me said the detectives weren’t my problem and I had enough shit on my plate. There was something more than a little absurd about a gangster going to bat for a couple of cops.

  But I knew the detectives’ lives were on my tab. Samael knew it, too, of course, which is why he set them up. It’s not like he hadn’t warned me. Even if I couldn’t save myself, at least I could try to save Meadows and Sullivan before I checked out.

 
; Samael had fed me enough information that I could probably have found the detectives without divination magic. Beyond the contractual three days of torment, he clearly wanted to keep me busy until it was time to die. For that reason, as well as the obvious one, I didn’t want to waste any more time than necessary in the Chinatown sewage system, so I stopped by my condo and ran a standard finding spell.

  For necromantic divinations, I use FriendTrace.com. I was hoping the detectives were still alive, though, so I went with a popular mapping site instead. I typed their names in the input box, pumped juice into the spell and clicked the search button.

  “Gather up the fragments that remain,” I said, “that nothing be lost.” A bird’s-eye view of Chinatown came up with a red arrow pointing at a location off North Main. That meant either that Meadows and Sullivan were together, or only one of them was still alive. I grabbed my backup forty-five from the hall closet on my way out.

  In the movies, the sewers under any great city are vast, stinky catacombs of dark, claustrophobic, brick tunnels and chambers. The reality is that L.A.’s modern sewers are nothing more romantic than smooth-walled, concrete pipelines of varying sizes. Still, all but the largest interceptor lines are just as dark, claustrophobic, and stinky as the ones in the movies.

  I entered through a maintenance cover in a back alley. When I dropped down into the muck, the stench hit me like a linebacker blindsiding a quarterback. I staggered and would have fallen if I hadn’t caught myself on the slimy, curving wall. I bent double and retched. I’d been expecting a powerful stink, of refuse, and shit, and stagnant, filthy water. I hadn’t been expecting the overpowering reek of dead, rotting flesh. Based on Samael’s description of the ghoul, I supposed I should have been.

  I dropped a protection on myself to keep the toxic fumes at bay, and then I spun my nightvision spell. The magic seemed to penetrate the gloom well enough that I didn’t think I’d need a light. There were sounds in the tunnel—the metallic groaning of distant valves, dripping water, the animal noises of small vermin. Nothing that sounded like a ghoul or a detective in distress. I picked a direction and crept down the tunnel.

  As I advanced, the smell grew stronger. I had to flow more and more juice just to avoid adding the contents of my stomach to the sewage. Even with the juice, the hideous stench began to take its toll. My eyes, nose, and bare skin began to burn, as if from an extreme allergic reaction or exposure to toxic chemicals. My breathing became labored and fatigue numbed my limbs. I realized this wasn’t just the mundane unpleasantness of the sewers. It was magic.

  I’d gone maybe twenty feet when I stepped in the first pitfall. I dropped into the liquid filth, and though it was only about five feet deep, the fall plunged my head below the surface. I came up gasping and puking. I pulled myself out of the crude hole and hunched over, heaving until my stomach was empty. Then I heaved some more. Sludge clung to my skin and clothes and plastered my hair to my scalp.

  The shakes had mostly subsided when I heard the noise, a horrible symphony of splashing and chittering growing louder as it approached. I knew what it was before I could see it. A massive horde of rats spilled down the tunnel toward me like a roiling, black flood. My nightvision resolved the amorphous, writhing mass, and the hundreds of tiny eyes shone like bright pinpoints of white light in the gloom.

  I reached for the juice and it tasted foul as I drew it in. “A great flame follows a little spark,” I said, and a ball of fire exploded down the tunnel and burst over the horde of rats. The horrible smell of burned fur and flesh washed over me and drove me to my knees. Oily, noxious smoke filled the tunnel, choking me.

  The rats kept coming. The survivors swarmed over me before I could spin another spell. I lost my balance under the weight of the scratching, biting horde and toppled backward into the hole. I went under again, submerged in filth and a squirming blanket of rats.

  I’d drained all my combat talismans in the pointless duel with my evil twin. The rats pressed me down below the surface and tore at my flesh with their teeth and claws. With no air in my lungs and no strength in my body, I couldn’t spin a spell. I beat at the rats with my fists, but my feeble attacks had no effect. I was dying.

  Your life is supposed to flash before your eyes at the moment of death. Maybe it was delirium or a misfiring brain overloaded by abject terror, but I was spared the traditional recap. I simply panicked. I cast out mindlessly for the juice, sucking it in like fresh air, drawing into me all the magic I could hold, and then drawing more.

  Magic awakens something primal in the human mind. In its presence, humans become agitated, paranoid, and aggressive, and particularly strong magic can cause them to degenerate into an almost animalistic state. Turns out, it can have an even more dramatic effect on a horde of frenzied rats.

  There was a deep, electrical humming sound as the magic rushed into me, and my body began to blaze with an arcane radiance. I felt the smothering vermin freeze and begin to convulse, as if they were one organism. They went mad. Some of them turned and began to devour each other, others began to devour themselves. Some flipped and twisted spasmodically as if in their death throes, and others flailed in the water, churning it to a disgusting froth. Still others simply fled, exploding away from me down the tunnel in either direction.

  I crawled out of the hole and dragged myself to the side of the tunnel, smashing or swatting aside any of the repulsive creatures that came near. I sagged against the wall, struggling to breathe, still burning with the magical fire. I gradually regained control of myself and began spinning spells to bleed off the juice that threatened to consume me from the inside out. No fireballs this time—I wielded focused, precise force spells like hammer and scalpel, smashing and impaling the maddened rats one by one.

  When it was finished, I sat in the sludge amidst the floating rat corpses. I threw my head back, looked up at the low ceiling of the tunnel, and screamed. I didn’t care if the ghoul or anyone else heard me. The terror and revulsion felt like a living thing inside me, and I had to get it out.

  Time passed. Eventually, I marshaled enough strength to climb to my feet and get moving. I stumbled through the sewer in a haze of pain and exhaustion. When the tunnels branched I followed the stench, forging onward as it grew stronger, backtracking if it began to subside. There were more pitfalls, and I avoided some of them. In one of those I didn’t avoid, I discovered a crude tunnel leading away from its bottom perpendicular and several feet below the main line. I suspected there was a whole warren of tunnels down there that hadn’t been excavated by the Public Works guys.

  The tunnel brightened ahead of me and I saw that it opened up into a broad intersection of four trunk lines lit by an overhead electrical fixture. The ghoul had chosen this space for its lair. I might have expected a little decor, comparable to what a homeless person might cobble together. Some personal effects, maybe, or at least a pile of garbage for the ghoul to call its own. But the ghoul didn’t have anything like that. Instead, its lair was littered with bones, which I discovered when they began shifting and snapping under my feet, and with the partially eaten carcasses of its victims.

  I didn’t have much time to soak in the ambience, because I was distracted by Meadows and Sullivan. The detectives hung suspended from chains anchored to the roof in the center of the tunnel intersection. It was a crossroads, I realized, and I wondered if the ghoul chose this place to do its killing for the same reason I chose mine.

  Meadows was unconscious, beaten and bleeding, but I could see the rise and fall of her chest and hear her ragged breath. She was alive. Sullivan wasn’t so lucky—the ghoul had gotten busy with him. His right leg had been gnawed off a few inches below his knee. His abdomen was torn open, and the organs and entrails were exposed. His face was a mask of blood and ruin.

  Then his eyes snapped open and fluid sprayed from his mouth as he gasped. “Puhhh…”

  “Jesus Christ!” I yelled, and spun a spell. A blade of force sliced through the chain suspending his body and he collapse
d in my arms.

  “Puhhh…” he groaned.

  “Shut up, Sullivan,” I hissed. “Don’t talk.” I wanted to help him—stop the bleeding, cover the open cavity where his abdomen was supposed to be, something, but I didn’t even know where to start. Healing isn’t exactly my specialty, and I didn’t have any magic that could help him.

  “Puhhh…” he said again. Then he clenched his jaw and forced out a word. “Partner…” He tried to turn his head toward Meadows, but he couldn’t find the strength. He sank back and his eyes closed.

  “She’s okay, Sullivan,” I whispered. “You protected her.”

  Detective Sullivan sighed. A bloody air bubble formed on his lips and popped. Then he died.

  I released him and cut Meadows down. I cradled her, shaking her gently and patting her cheek. “Wake up,” I said. “Please, Meadows, wake up. I don’t think I have it in me to carry you out of here.”

  The lights went out.

  It wasn’t just the overhead fixture—the intersection was engulfed in a supernatural darkness. I could feel the magic in the air. I could taste it, as thick and nauseating as the stench. My nightvision was useless. I was blind.

  I heard a splash to my left. Then I heard an airy, wheezing sound in the darkness that I couldn’t identify at first. After a moment, I recognized it. Sniffing.

  I spun up a light spell, hoping it would neutralize the magical darkness. It didn’t. The spell came together like it should, but it didn’t produce any light. The ghoul had some juice, and he was pumping more of it into his spell than I was. I could power up my spell, probably enough to overcome the darkness, but then I wouldn’t be doing anything else. That didn’t seem like a winning strategy.

  I dropped the light spell and slowly stepped back, away from the sniffing. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten about Meadows and I tripped over her unconscious body. I went down in the disgusting soup, again, and the ghoul seized the opportunity to attack.

  There was no splashing to warn me, and I thought the creature must have leaped. One moment I was gathering my feet beneath me, and the next moment the ghoul was on me. We crashed into the water and rolled. My head plunged below the surface and smashed into the slimy concrete. I felt the thing’s claws dig into my chest, pushing me under, and then its teeth bit deep into my shoulder, pain lancing through me like a hot knife.