by Tim Waggoner
“I appreciate the offer, but I’m trying to locate Varma, not perforate him!” I shouted.
“Suit yourself! Let me know if you change your mind! You might ask Fade, though. I saw her over at the bar not too long ago!”
Then Patchwork spun away like a cloth top and lost himself in the pounding beat once more.
I turned to Devona. She was watching Patch’s performance and bobbing her head from side to side in time with the music. Earlier, she told me she didn’t get out of the Gothtown much. I wondered if what she’d really been saying was she didn’t get out of the Cathedral often. It was quite possible she’d never been to a nightclub before. I felt the urge to start dancing with her, but I checked it. I knew we didn’t have time to waste on such foolishness…plus I’d never been the greatest dancer when I was alive, and my damaged and swiftly rotting zombie body wasn’t going to help that situation any.
I led Devona off the dance floor and we wended our way through the crowd and headed toward the bar. We found Fade deep in half-drunken conversation with a vampire named Ichorus. Outwardly Fade looked like a normal club-crawler-early twenties, petite, purple lipstick, dark green eyeshadow, long brunette hair past her waist, black combat boots, little black dress that fit her in all the right places, and a pair of barbed-wire hoop earrings that were almost as large as her head. Fade has a problem, however. She’s reality-challenged. For reasons she keeps to herself, her existence is so tenuous that if she isn’t careful to constantly reinforce her own reality, she’s in danger of vanishing into nothingness, hence her nickname. So in order to ensure her survival she had to make sure to see and be seen, which was why she spent almost all her time club-hopping. The more time she spent alone, without anyone around to validate her existence, the more she risked fading away completely. That’s also the reason she took a job as gossip columnist for the Daily Atrocity. Knowing everyone, whether they liked it or not, made her perfect for the job, and the more people that read her byline, the more anchored she was in reality.
She looked pretty solid right then. Descension Day was always a good time of year for her. Tons of people for her to interact with-and right now she was interacting with Ichorus.
One of the Accords that came out of the Blood Wars set limits on air travel in Nekropolis in order to make it more difficult for the Dark Lords to attempt sneak attacks across Dominion borders. No one is permitted to travel by air over Phlegethon, for example, and everyone-whether possessing the power of flight or not-has to use one of the Five Bridges to travel from one Dominion to another. Ichorus doesn’t just hate the restriction imposed on air travel; he utterly loathes it and does everything he can to fight it.
He’s a stereotypical vampire type: tall, lean, darkhaired, handsome. But what makes him stand out is the pair of huge ebon wings growing out of his back. The feathers are made of lightweight super-strong metal, and their edges are razor-sharp. Whether they’re magical or some kind of technological augmentation, I don’t know. Ichorus goes shirtless because he refuses to constrain his wings, so he wears only a pair of black pants. No shoes either, but I don’t know if that’s because it helps him fly or he just doesn’t like shoes. His chest is covered with dozens of criss-crossing scars, the result of numerous less-than-welcome receptions he gets from flying throughout the Dominions in defiance of the Accords. Since he’s a vampire and can heal any injury, his scars are a testament to how seriously the Darklords take anyone transgressing on their airspace-and how strongly they and their servants will fight tostop him. But Ichorus still flies on, undeterred in his endless quest to defy authority.
We approached the pair and asked them about Varma. Ichorus didn’t know him, but of course Fade did; she knew everyone, as a matter of self-preserva-tion, if nothing else. But she hadn’t seen him tonight.
“Go check with Shrike,” she said. “I was talking to him earlier over by the VR booths.” She gestured vaguely toward the other side of the club. I thanked her and reached out and briefly patted her arm. She smiled gratefully. Talking with people helps her maintain reality, but I knew that being touched helped her more.
Before Devona and I could walk away, Ichorus said, “I’ve got a big flight planned next week, Matt! I’ve heard rumors of an invisible moon that orbits around Umbriel, and I’m going off in search of it! Should be quite an adventure!”
Fade grinned at him. “Should make quite an article for the Atrocity.”
Devona looked at me and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Don’t look at me. I’ve never heard anything about a moon in Nekropolis, invisible or otherwise.” I turned back to Ichorus, shook his hand, wished him luck, and then Devona and I went off in search of Shrike. True to Fade’s word, we found him by the Mind’s Eye virtual reality booths.
Despite Shrike’s chronological age, which I had no way of knowing, he resembled a skinny boy in his teens. His hair was a wild tangle of black the same shade as his deliberately ragged t-shirt and pre-torn jeans. He was talking on his handvox, ever-present cigarette in his mouth. As he exhaled, he became transparent, solidifying again only when he took his next puff. Handvoxes have the same basic design as Earth cellphones, except they’re made-or maybe grown-from flesh. There’s an ear for you to speak into, and a mouth that relays the words of whoever is on the other end, and which speaks in their voice, too. I find the damned things more than a little disconcerting, especially when the person on the other end tries to make the vox’s mouth kiss, lick, or even bite you. That’s why I hardly ever use mine.
Shrike saw us approaching, shut his handvox, and tucked it into his pants pocket. He grinned, displaying his elongated canines.
“Matt!” He had to shout to be heard over the din. “What the hell are you doing here? This isn’t exactly your kind of scene.” Then he looked at Devona, ran his gaze along her body from foot to head, and back again. “Wow. Your taste in friends is definitely improving, my man.”
“Shrike, this is Devona Kanti. Devona, this is Shrike.”
“Lord Galm’s kid? Cool.” He took a battered pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and held it out to Devona. “Want one?”
Devona shook her head. “No thanks.”
I noticed the brand: Coffin Nails.
I nodded toward the pack. “The name’s a cute touch.”
He grinned again. “I like to think so,” and put the pack back in his pocket.
I don’t know why he carries the pack around. In all the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen his cigarette burn down, no matter how many drags he takes on it.
“What’s up, Matt? You’ve got to be working a case. I can’t imagine any other reason why you’d be here.” He leaned toward Devona as if about to confide a secret. “The man’s sense of fun is as dead as the rest of him.” Then he looked at me and frowned. “Say, you all right, Matt? You’re not looking too fresh, if you know what I mean.” He pointed to the wounds on my face.
If I was alive, I could’ve run my fingers over my cuts to check their condition. As it was, I’d just have to wait until I came across a mirror. But from Shrike’s comment, I doubted they looked very good. Injuries don’t hurt zombies, but they do tend to start rotting before the rest of the body.
“You’re not looking all that hot yourself, kid,” I said. “Maybe you should think about trying the nicotine patch.”
Shrike grinned. He always gets a huge kick out of my calling him kid. Probably because he’s a hell of a lot older than he looks.
He put an arm around my shoulder and addressed Devona. “If it wasn’t for this guy, I wouldn’t be here today. Hell, I wouldn’t be anywhere today! I love this guy!” and then he planted a loud, wet kiss on my cheek, despite its less-than-attractive condition.
“Get off of me, you lunatic!” I said good-naturedly as I shoved him away.
Devona laughed. “Another favor?” she asked me.
I nodded. “Shrike got himself into trouble over at the House of Dark Delights a while back.”
“One of th
eir girls accused me of making her Bloodborn without her permission. I was innocent, but it took Matthew to prove it. Good thing, too. Madam Benedetta was so mad, she’d sicced a Soulsucker on me.” He frowned. “Or was it Master Benedict who did it? Whichever. I still get nervous when I think about it.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, his hand shaking slightly.
Me too. Defeating a Soulsucker isn’t easy. I still have a few psychic scars left over from that battle.
“So what can I do you for, Matt?” Shrike said, cheerful again. “You name it, you got it.”
I removed one of the evidence envelopes from my jacket and handed it to him. “Know what this stuff is?”
He opened the envelope, stuck his finger inside, and brought out a couple of the white grains I’d gathered in Lord Galm’s Collection chamber. He smelled them, then took his omnipresent cigarette out of his mouth and gingerly touched his finger to his tongue.
His reaction was immediate. “Jesus Christ!” As soon as the holy name passed his lips, his mouth burst into flame.
I grabbed a beer out of the claw of a demon at a nearby table and splashed Shrike in the face, hoping to douse the fire. It worked: the flames died, leaving Shrike’s lips charred and his tongue blackened.
“I’ve told you before, kid, you’ve got to be careful what you say when you’re upset!”
The demon had risen from his chair, and was coming toward me, his leathery gray lizard hide turning battleangry red. I tossed a couple darkgems at him-her? it? who could tell?-to pay for another beer and that ended the matter.
“Do oo know what dis stuff is?” Shrike said as best he could with his ravaged mouth.
“No, that’s why I asked.”
He looked around to see if anyone was listening, then leaned forward. “It’s veinburn.” He leaned back. “Ashully, it’s prolly a good thin’ I swore. Maybe burned ou’ the shit ‘efore it got inna my shystem.”
“C’mon, Shrike, it was only a couple grains.”
He took a puff on his cigarette, and while his mouth didn’t heal all the way, it improved noticeably. I bet the Surgeon General would’ve been surprised to see that.
“It doesn’t take much to get you hooked.” His speech was a little clearer, too. “Where’d you get it?”
“Never mind. Is it new? I’ve never heard of it before.”
“New and nasty. It’s really strong and highly addictive-even for Bloodborn.”
Bingo. Sometimes I love being a detec-doing favors for people. “Who produces it?”
“I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dominari have a piece of that particular action.”
“Makes sense.” I said. “I’ve got another question for you.”
“Shoot.” Shrike’s mouth was almost completely healed now, just singed a little around the edges.
“You seen a vampire named Varma tonight?”
“Varma? You mean the one who’s Lord Galm’s bloodchild, right? Yeah, sure. He was out on the dance floor last I saw him. That was probably, oh, an hour ago, maybe less.”
“Think you could make a quick circuit of the club for me, see if he’s still here?”
“Sure. Be back in a minute.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, became solid, and blew out a long stream of gray-white smoke, his body turning transparent as the smoke left his lungs and then fading altogether until he was gone. The smoke Shrike had blown out wafted purposefully toward the dance floor.
“That’s his travel form?” Devona asked. “Interesting.”
“Yeah, Shrike’s got his own style, that’s for sure.”
She leaned close to me so I could hear her better over the music. “I’ve been thinking. I have an idea of how Varma might have been able to get into the Collection chamber and past the wardspell on the Dawnstone.”
“Go on.”
“Even though Varma isn’t biologically Lord Galm’s child, the transference of blood necessary to turn a human into a vampire makes him Galm’s son in a metaphysical sense. It’s possible that since the door to the chamber and the wardspell both are keyed to recognize and permit access only to Lord Galm, they could be made to recognize someone who shares the same blood-provided this someone had the right magical help.”
“Are you sure?”
“Remember, I’m no mage; I was taught only enough magic to monitor the spells on the Collection chamber. But from what I understand, it might be possible.”
The way things were going, the Dawnstone would be back in Lord Galm’s Collection before he returned from the Renewal Ceremony. Devona would hang on to her position and her dignity, and maybe, just maybe, she could convince her father to help me stave off my dissolution.
I should’ve known better. Life-and death-is never so easy.
“Matthew Richter?”
I turned around. “Yes?”
Before me stood a tall raven-haired woman in a red mini dress. She might have been pretty if her features hadn’t been so sharp, her expression severe. Her eyebrows met in the middle. A sure sign she was a lyke.
“My name is Thokk. Honani and I were littermates.”
Her dress ripped away as she began to change.
ELEVEN
Thokk was a mixblood, like Honani, but where he’d turned out a hodgepodge mess, whoever engineered her had done the job right. She was primarily lupine, the most common wildform for lykes. After all, as Waldemar once told me, the word lycanthrope comes from the Greek: lykoi for wolf and anthropos for man. But the term, and its abbreviated version, lyke, has become common parlance for any of the shapeshifters under Lord Amon’s rule. Still, Thokk displayed signs of other animals in her mixblood lineage too-her stomach was hairless and scaled, resembling a snake’s, and her gray fur held a greenish tint. Her eyes were reptilian as well, cold and staring, and when she opened her canine jaws, long, curved fangs sprang forward, glistening with venom.
“You killed Honani, zombie.” Her barely intelligible voice was a deep growl with a slight hiss to it.
I was aware of the club-goers around us abandoning their tables, having decided that being in my proximity at the moment wasn’t conducive to their continued good health. I didn’t blame them.
“Technically speaking, he’s not dead,” I pointed out. “His body’s still alive.” I was uncomfortably aware that I still was carrying the soul jar containing Honani’s spirit in one of my jacket pockets.
Thokk pulled her head back and in a single liquid motion, jerked forward and spit a stream of venom into my eyes. If I’d been alive, the venom probably would’ve started me shrieking, perhaps cause me to fall to the floor in agony and Thokk would’ve moved in to finish me off. But I felt nothing and calmly wiped the venom away with my tie. My vision was a trifle blurry, but it was nothing I couldn’t deal with.
“What good is the body if the soul is gone?” She swayed back and forth, her torso undulating bonelessly.
“According to some folks, zombies don’t have souls, and I feel just fine,” I countered. “Besides, Honani’s body does have a soul. It just happens to be a new one.”
For a second I considered offering to give Thokk the soul jar which contained her brother’s spirit, thinking it might placate her. But then I realized she’d probably attempt to return it to its original body, evicting Kyra from her new home. I couldn’t allow that.
“Your littermate was a killer, Thokk, and he got what he deserved,” I said. “End of story. Now why don’t you leave, unless you’d like some of the same?”
She hissed and came at me.
I reached under my jacket and drew the 9mm from my shoulder holster. The gun was loaded with silver bullets, but one would be all I needed to take care of Thokk. I aimed and started to squeeze the trigger.
But I was too slow. Thokk’s arm lashed out and she smacked the gun out of my hand, sending it tumbling through the air toward the suddenly deserted dance floor. The Phantom of the Paradise remained at his station, though, to keep the throbbing dance beat going, either because he was too ca
ught up in his work to flee or because he wanted to provide some appropriate background music for my battle with Thokk. Thoughtful of the bastard, wasn’t it?
I reached into my jacket, but Thokk was on me before I could pull forth anything from my dwindling supply of surprises, slamming into me and coiling her python-supple arms around my midsection, pinning my arms to my sides. She lifted me off the floor and began squeezing.
I felt pressure, but no pain. I couldn’t breathe, but all that meant to me was that I couldn’t pull in any air to make my voice work. Still, I was concerned. If she snapped my spine, I’d survive, but I’d be unable to walk. And after I was immobilized, it would be a simple matter for her to take my head in her hands and crush my skull. Once my brain was destroyed, no amount of preservative spells, no matter how powerful, could restore me.
I was wracking my dead excuse for a brain, trying to get it to come up with a brilliant plan that would, if not defeat Thokk, at least get me out of her clutches, when a gurgling sound came from deep inside me, and I remembered the beer that had been sitting in my dead stomach since I’d dealt with Honani at Skully’s.
You picked the wrong zombie to squeeze tonight, Thokk, I thought, and then a gout of sour-smelling fluid jetted out of my mouth and struck Thokk in the face.
The lyke roared with fury, but she didn’t drop me as I’d hoped. Instead she gripped me tighter and opened her mouth wide. I doubted she was going to try to eat me; most lykes can’t stand the taste of dead meat, unless they have scavenger wildforms. More likely she intended to get a solid grip on my head with her teeth and then rip it off my shoulders.
I watched helplessly as her mouth descended, and then she stopped, stiffened, and shrieked. Her arms uncoiled, dumping me to the floor, and I saw what was happening. Devona had leaped onto the lyke’s back and was tearing into the beast’s neck with her own teeth. Thokk’s arms curled over her shoulder, grabbed Devona, yanked her off, and threw her forward-into me, just as I was starting to rise.