Nekropolis n-1

by Tim Waggoner

  “Will it work on me?” I asked. “However my brain functions, I’m sure it’s not the same as a living man’s.”

  “I don’t know, Matt. We’ll just have to try.”

  I didn’t like the idea of anyone invading my mind, no matter who it was. But it didn’t look like I had a choice. “Okay. But we’d better hurry before Amon attacks again.”

  Without another word, Devona reached out with both hands and placed her fingers lightly on the sides of my head. I wondered what her touch felt like.

  Nothing happened at first, and I was afraid that my zombie mind wasn’t capable of linking with a living one, when all of a sudden a warm, bright light flashed behind my eyes. And then I felt Devona inside me.

  There are moments in every person’s life when they feel close to someone else. It could be something as simple as a shared look, a moment when you exchange glances and know that each understands the other perfectly. Or it could be a joke that you share, one that always makes the two of you break up even though no one else around you ever seems to get it. Holding hands while walking at sunset; running your fingers slowly, gently along each other’s skin after making love; hugging each other tight, bawling like babies as your hearts are breaking.

  Being linked with Devona was all of these things and more.

  It had been so long since I had felt this close to another person-no, I had never felt this close to another person: not any of my friends, not my ex-wife, not even my partner Dale. And I didn’t know whether to feel joy at this sharing of souls with Devona, or sadness because I had never allowed myself to experience it before.

  And then I looked to the far side of the glen, and although it didn’t appear any different than before, somehow I could tell that it wasn’t very far away at all. Only a few minutes’ run at most.

  Race you, Devona said in my mind.

  Not with the hunk Amon took out of my leg, I responded. How about a fast walk?

  You’re on, she thought playfully, and we set off.

  Together.

  I expected Amon to attack just as we reached the other side, but he didn’t. We stepped out of the glen, through the trees, and then the night sky and stars vanished, to be replaced once more by Umbriel and the featureless gray-black sky it hung in.

  And there, not more than fifty feet away, lay the Obsidian Way and the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures, the crossing point from the Wyldwood to the Sprawl. We’d done it.

  Without thinking about it, Devona and I hugged each other. Linked as we were, the gesture was automatic and completely natural, a physicalizing, however imperfect, of the closeness that we shared.

  And then the link dissolved and one became two again.

  Devona stepped back. “I’m sorry. I was so excited to see the bridge, I lost concentration.”

  “That’s okay. The link had served its purpose anyway.” I had never felt more alone in my existence. I felt like half of my soul had been ripped away. And yet, an echo of Devona remained inside me, the merest trace, like a memory of shared laughter, or a kiss that lingers on the lips long after your lover has departed.

  I reached out and took Devona’s hand. “Let’s get out of here before Amon comes after us.” I led her toward the bridge.

  “But he said we’d be free if we made it across the glen.”

  A guttural voice came from behind us. “I lied.”

  I whirled around to see a massive yellow-eyed grizzly bear standing on all fours at the edge of the glen. Amon roared and charged. I raised my gun to fire, but before I could pull the trigger, the bear was upon us.

  With a powerful blow of his huge paw, Amon knocked the 9mm out of my hand. It flew through the air, struck the ground, and discharged. It would have been nice if the bullet had happened to strike Amon, but it went flying off into the trees, wasted.

  One bullet left.

  Devona leaped onto the bear’s back and grabbed double handfuls of its coarse brown fur. She then bared her fangs and sank them into the beast’s back, using them like knives, slashing and tearing at Amon’s ursine flesh.

  Amon bellowed in pain and reared up on his hind legs. He tried to shake Devona off, but she clung to his back as if she were the world’s largest and most determined tick. Amon then tottered toward the bridge in the stumpy-legged gait bears have when walking erect.

  I ran-well, given the state of my chewed-up right leg, I half-ran, half-hobbled-toward my gun. I retrieved it, and galumphed toward the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures.

  Amon had crossed onto the bridge, and technically Devona and he were no longer in his Dominion. But he didn’t show any sign of stopping his attack, and I didn’t expect him to.

  Devona continued ripping away at Amon’s flesh. Her face was covered with blood, and she looked as savage and wild as the bear she battled. It was hard to reconcile this Devona with the one I’d so recently been linked to. But I didn’t have time to think about that. Amon had backed up against the iron railing and his form began to shimmer and change.

  So far he had only come at us in one shape at a time, and although that had never been spelled out as part of the deal, I’d assumed it was. Looked like I was wrong.

  His interim form resembled a blurry amoeba, and Devona was having a tough time holding on. In a flash, I understood what he was going to do: he intended Devona to lose her grip on his fluid transitional form and fall into Phlegethon. If the river’s mystic green flame didn’t kill her, the Lesk which swam within it surely would.

  “Devona, jump!” I shouted as I raised my gun and fired.

  The last silver bullet struck Amon in the chest-or rather where his chest would have been if he’d been solid-just as Devona launched herself up and over the Lord of the Wyldwood. Devona landed easily on the bridge as the amoebic Darklord pitched backward over the rail and plummeted soundlessly toward Phlegethon’s fiery green embrace.

  I tucked my empty gun into my shoulder holster and hurried over to Devona. She was covered with blood, but it was impossible to tell if any of it was hers.

  “Are you okay?”

  She wiped a smear of blood from her mouth and nodded. “Do you think it’s over?”

  “It’s possible Amon is more vulnerable in his transitional state and the last silver bullet did him in.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I believe Darklords are very hard to kill. Let’s get out of here before-”

  A gigantic reptilian head rose up before us, fiery green water trickling down its black-scaled hide.

  “Too late, zombie.” The voice of Amon’s British hunter guise, the one that annoyed me so much, boomed out of the Lesk’s serpentine mouth. I’d never seen one of the great beasts close up before, only the black lines of their backs as they plied the waters of Phlegethon. The creature was far larger than I had imagined, and looked something like a snake encased in black armor. Its brow was spiked, and it had a row of bony serrated triangles running down its back. And of course it possessed Amon’s feral yellow eyes-eyes full of fury and hunger.

  “Let us go, Amon!” I shouted. “We played by the rules of your challenge and beat you, fair and square!”

  Amon laughed, a harsh, brittle sound, as of a thousand bones breaking.

  “The Hunt has only a single rule, little man: victory belongs to the strongest and swiftest.” He hissed and his jaws opened wide in preparation to devour us.

  “What of Honani, Darklord?” I yelled.

  Amon paused and narrowed his basketball-sized eyes.

  I reached into my jacket and removed the soul jar. “This container is what I used to draw Honani’s spirit from his body. Honani remains inside. All I have to do to release him is pry open the lid.” I gripped the lid in my fingers. “If I do, his spirit will be set free to wander Nekropolis for eternity. Or maybe he’ll end up in the Boneyard as one of Edrigu’s servants.”

  Amon’s head swayed slowly back and forth as he regarded me.

  “You told us earlier that despite being a mixblood, Honani was stil
l one of your subjects-one of the family, as you put it.” I gave the jar a shake. “Well, here he is, Amon. Are you going to abandon him just because his body now belongs to another?”

  Amon hissed softly. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “How did you know it when you pretended to be Arleigh?” I countered.

  Amon considered. “Very well,” he said at last. “Place the jar on the bridge and you may go.”

  “Nothing personal, but I’d rather keep it with us until we reach the other side, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Amon laughed again, and I was surprised to hear no malice in it. “Go on, then!”

  We backed toward the Sprawl side of the bridge, keeping our eyes on Amon the entire way. When we reached the far side, Amon touched his serpent’s nose to the bridge and flowed into his English hunter body.

  I set the jar on the bridge and Amon gave me a little salute. “Well played, Mr. Richter. Well played, indeed. I haven’t enjoyed a Wild Hunt this much in decades.”

  “I’m glad you liked it,” I said wryly. And Devona and I turned and hurried into the Sprawl before the lord of the shapeshifters could change his mind.

  From now on Amon would have to add a corollary to his rule about the Hunt: sometimes victory doesn’t go to the strongest or swiftest. Sometimes it goes to a desperate dead man with deep pockets.

  NINETEEN

  “So that’s the infamous House of Dark Delights,” Devona said, sounding less than impressed.

  The Sprawl’s best-known brothel was located on the southeast end of Sybarite Street, and the Descension Day celebrating was a bit more subdued here, mostly because by this time a majority of partiers lay on the sidewalks, in the gutters, and in the alleys, unconscious or worse, robbed of whatever darkgems they’d had in their pockets, and more than likely missing several pints of bodily fluids and an organ or two. At least it was easier to get around in this neighborhood for those us who remained ambulatory-if you didn’t mind stepping over all the bodies, that is.

  The House sat between a casino called, ominously enough, Bet Your Life, and a soul-modification parlor (slogan: When you’ve done everything to your body that you possibly can) called Spiritus Mutatio. The House of Dark Delights was a pleasant-looking three-story building painted white, with green shutters and matching shingles. There, the dark is all on the inside.

  The facial lacerations Amon had given Devona were almost completely healed by now, after snacking on a couple blood-ices she’d purchased from a street vendor along the way.

  “It doesn’t seem very well protected-especially for this part of town,” she said. “No fence surrounding the place, no bars on the windows…”

  “You’re good with wardspells, right?” I said. “Try checking out its magical defenses.”

  Devona closed her eyes and concentrated. A few seconds later her eyes snapped open, and she looked at me with an expression of shock. “The spells protecting the building are almost as strong and complex as those warding my father’s Collection!”

  I smiled. “Bennie doesn’t like to take any chances.”

  “Bennie?”

  “The owner and operator,” I said. “I just use Bennie. It’s makes things easier.”

  Devona gave me a puzzled look, and I told her she’d understand soon enough. As Devona had pointed out, there’s no fence around the House of Dark Delights, and we strolled up the front walk, onto the porch, and I knocked on the door. The first time I’d come here, no one had warned me to knock first. I made the mistake of reaching for the doorknob, and as soon as my undead flesh came in contact with the metal, I found myself blasted across the street and through the front window of Les Escargot, a gourmet restaurant run by giant snails. The food’s supposed to be great, but you wouldn’t believe how slow the service is.

  The door opened, and an extremely large and muscular mixblood lyke was glaring down at us-one that I knew well. After all, I’d seen him, or at least his body, walking out of Skully’s only several hours ago.

  “Lyra?” I said hopefully. I was thinking of how I’d traded the soul jar containing Honani’s spirit to Amon for our freedom. Had the Darklord used his powers to force out Lyra’s essence and return Honani to his rightful body?

  The mixblood glared at us for a moment longer before dissolving into a fit of giggling. “Darn it! I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face!”

  I started to sigh in relief, but Lyra scooped me up and gave me a vicious hug, squeezing the rest of the air out of my lungs. When she put me down, I half expected to collapse to the porch in a mass of dead flesh and shattered bone. But luckily my skeletal system had withstood Lyra’s affectionate embrace, if only just.

  “What are you doing here, Matt? And who’s your friend? She’s cute!” Lyra turned to Devona and started to smile, but she frowned instead. “Hey, didn’t I see you at Skully’s when I walked out? I was kind of muzzyheaded from the transfer into this body, so maybe I’m wrong, but I could’ve sworn-”

  “I was there,” Devona confirmed.

  “After you left Skully’s, Devona asked me to help her out with a problem, Lyra. We’re here because I think Bennie might be able to help us.”

  “Sure-come on in!” Lyra stepped aside so we could enter. When we were inside, Lyra closed to the door and even I, without any mystical training whatsoever, could sense a battery of defensive spells activating.

  “So you decided to return to your old, uh, stomping grounds?” I asked Lyra.

  Lyra grinned with Honani’s mixblood mouth, and though she displayed a truly intimidating array of teeth, she still somehow managed look cute.

  “More than that, I’ve got a new job! Bennie made me a bouncer!” Lyra flexed her right arm, and her new mixblood muscles bulged impressively.

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Perfect!”

  “I know! Bennie’s the best, aren’t they? They also offered to get me an appointment with Dr. Moreau at the House of Pain to see if he might be able to give my new body a sex change, but I think I’m going to keep it as is for now. I always wanted to see how the other half lives, and I now I’ve got my chance!”

  Devona looked at me. “They?”

  “It’ll all make sense soon. Trust me.”

  Lyra led us through the foyer and into the lounge which, as usual, was filled with customers waiting for appointments to begin, restocking on fluids between assignations, or bragging about their performance to their companions afterward. The lounge was decorated like a tasteful upscale neighborhood tavern back on Earth: black lacquer tables and chairs, a small kitchen which served appetizers and snacks, and-instead of flat-screen TV’s-giant Mind’s Eye devices were mounted on the walls, the orbs broadcasting news coverage of Descension Day activities throughout the city. But the heart of the lounge was undeniably the large circular bar in the middle of the room. The bartenders on duty could mix any type of drink you wanted, but every one of them was Arcane and their true specialty was potion-making. They could create any manner of aphrodisiac or performance-enhancing substance imaginable, and many that were beyond imagination, even in Nekropolis.

  Every table in the lounge was taken by men and women representing all the races the city has to offer-Bennie doesn’t believe in discrimination when it comes to love, or the reasonable facsimile on the menu at the House of Dark Delights-and it looked like Devona and I were going to have to stand. But Lyra escorted us over to a table where two vampires I recognized were playing a holographic game of bloodshards.

  The male looked up as we approached, his holo-eye implants switching over to normal vision, and he groaned when he got a good look at us, or more specifically, at me.

  “Not you again! My sister and I just want to be left alone to play in peace!”

  “And that’s all you’ve been doing for the last four hours” Lyra said. “This lounge is reserved for paying customers, Reshem. I let you slide because of the trouble Matt and I caused you at Skully’s earlier, but now I have to ask you to
take your game elsewhere.”

  The female vampire switched her implants over to regular vision then too, and the holographic game pieces vanished. “But this is the only place we’ve able to find where a fight hasn’t broken out within ten minutes of our arrival,” she protested. “We figured it would be safe to play here because the customers aren’t interested in fighting.”

  Her brother grinned. “Because they have other activities on their mind.”

  Lyra put her large clawed hands onto the table and went into her pissed-off mixblood routine, teeth bared, brow furrowed, growl rumbling deep in her throat.

  The male vampire sighed. “All right, we’re going. Come, Halina, let’s try the restaurant across the street. We should be able to get in at least a dozen games before the server arrives to take our drink orders.”

  The vampire siblings left, and Lyra gestured to the now empty table. “If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll go find Bennie and tell her you want to talk to her. I’ll have someone come over and get you something to drink while you wait.” Lyra gestured to one of the servers, gave us a last smile, and then turned to go.

  We sat and watched Lyra make her way back to the foyer, everyone in her path stumbling over one another to get out of her way. Lyra acted as if she didn’t notice, but I knew she loved every minute of it.

  “I think that girl has a bright future ahead of her in the nuisance-deterrent business,” Devona said.

  I couldn’t help but agree.

  While waited for a server to come over, Devona glanced around the lounge, taking everything in. She frowned. “All these people…the place hardly seems large enough to accommodate them all. As big as the lounge is, I don’t see how they have any space left over for rooms.”

  “That’s because only part of the House of Dark Delights is aboveground,” I said. “There are seven levels beneath us, each more, ah, intense than the last.”

  Devona raised an eyebrow and I hastened to add, “Or so I’ve been told. I’ve never actually had the opportunity-or the desire-to explore beyond the lounge.”