by Tim Waggoner
I wished Honani hadn’t been too proud to accept the aid of one of Bennie’s potions when he’d visited Lyra. If he had taken one, she’d probably still be alive and in her own body.
I went on. “To put it simply, Morfran, you can’t get it up anymore-or whatever it is males of your species do. And you won’t be able to until you receive the antidote. If you cooperate and answer a few questions, I’ll make sure you get it. If not, you’ll miss out on the final week of your mating season.” I’d learned from Shrike that Morfran’s subspecies of demon was mindlessly driven to copulate during this time, and the potion Bennie had created for Morfran was a cruel one: it removed sexual functioning, but actually increased desire, making it all the more effective when it came to convincing delinquent customers to make good on outstanding debts.
Morfran’s carapace edged toward black now. “It doesn’t matter. I have quite a bit of money; I can easily afford to purchase an antidote from a witch somewhere else.”
“You could try. But Bennie’s enchantments aren’t easily removed. It’s true you might find someone who’ll hit on the right formula to remove the spell eventually, but it could take some time. Easily a week.”
“Oh, much more than that, I think,” Devona said. “He might still be looking this time next year.”
Morfran’s shell had gone completely black now. I wondered if it was a sign of anger, or maybe fear. Whichever, it was clear we were getting to him.
“You don’t understand,” he said quietly, with an edge of desperation. “The people I work for would be most displeased if I told you anything.”
“By ‘people’ you mean the Dominari, right? I sympathize with you, Morfran old bug, but all I can tell you is to ask yourself which is worse: talking to us and maybe having the Dominari find out, or going the rest of this year’s mating season desperately needing to have sex, but without any lead in your pencil.”
Morfran regarded me for a moment, his head tilting back and forth slowly this time. Finally, he let out an edgy buzz of a sigh that already sounded tinged with the beginnings of sexual tension and frustration. “Very well. What do you wish to know?”
We asked the demon some questions, and he answered them clearly, quickly, and concisely. I was fairly certain that he had nothing directly to do with Varma’s death-it was clear the Red Tide vampires had been responsible for that-and so when we were finished, I had Lourdes bring over the antidote. Morfran practically inhaled the potion, and then scuttled off back to the more carnal sections of Bennie’s establishment, no doubt intending to make sure the antidote worked as advertised.
And so Devona and I said goodbye to Lyra, who I wished well in her new profession, and Devona alone (as she insisted) thanked Lourdes. Bennie gave us both kisses on the cheek-despite the nasty condition of mine, Dis bless her/him-and we left the House of Dark Delights to follow up on what we had learned from Morfran.
We headed for Skully’s.
TWENTY
The bar was still busy as hell, and there were a few new suspicious-looking stains on the floor since the last time I’d been here, but the atmosphere seemed calm enough now. But considering why Devona and I had come back, I doubted it was going to stay that way for long.
The juke box was singing “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” when Devona and I walked in, but as soon as the trio of heads caught sight of me, they stopped. The middle one said, “Not you again!” and all three shut their mouths tight and closed their eyes, as if they were little children who thought they could make me vanish by pretending I didn’t exist. I noticed none of the patrons complained about the performance being interrupted.
Devona and I walked over to the bar and took a pair of stools suddenly vacated by a couple lykes in human form who wrinkled their noses in disgust as they left.
“What did you expect, roses?” I muttered as they walked off.
Skully was busy at the other end of the bar filling a mug of beer for the pierced warlock I’d seen the last time I was in here. The Arcane man still seemed somewhat familiar to me, and while he waited for his beer, I studied his face, but I still couldn’t place him. When Skully handed him his beer, the warlock noticed my scrutiny, but instead of looking upset, he merely gave me a nod and walked over to sit at the same table he’d been at when I’d fought Honani earlier. I wondered if he’d been sitting there alone drinking the entire time I’d been gone. Maybe he was just a solitary type who wanted a relatively quiet place to hide out from the Descension Day madness. Still, there was something about the man that bothered me…
My thoughts were interrupted as Skully came down to our end of the bar.
“Hey, Matt! I’m surprised to see you back so soon-and with your arm reattached, I see. Business?” He nodded to Devona, and from the tone in his voice he would have smiled if he’d possessed the lips and facial muscles to do so. “Or pleasure? Wait, let me guess. Has to be business, as bad as you look. You shouldn’t be in here: you should be over at Papa Chatha’s getting some more work done.”
“This is my new friend Devona. Her father lost something-something very important-and I’m helping her look for it.”
“Oh?”
“Her father’s name is Galm, and the object is called the Dawnstone. Sound familiar?”
Skully shook his fleshless head. “No, should it?”
“Yes, because according to my source”-who was at that very moment most likely expending a great deal of fluid, as he’d put it-“you’re responsible for its disappearance from the Cathedral. Or at least your bosses the Dominari are.”
Then something happened which I’d never seen before. Tiny pinpricks of crimson light began to blaze deep in the cold darkness of Skully’s eye sockets. “I think maybe you’d better leave, Matt, and take your new friend with you.”
He started to turn away, but I grabbed his pudgy, hairy wrist and stopped him. “I know there’s a Dominari-run lab upstairs, Skully. A lab that’s been awfully busy lately cranking out veinburn.”
Skully yanked his arm away. “Your mind has finally rotted through, Matt, you know that? All that’s upstairs are my quarters and some extra storage space.”
Skully and I looked over the bar at each other for a moment. I knew his silver broadaxe wasn’t far from his reach.
“If that’s true, then you won’t have objection to my taking a look, now will you?” And before Skully could respond, I jumped off my stool and ran-limped as fast as I could toward the iron door located the right of the bar.
Head aside, Skully has a fully fleshed body. A little too fully fleshed, and I thought given my current state, we’d be evenly matched with it came to speed. But even with his bulk, Skully was able to grab his axe from behind the counter and leap over the bar and come after me before I made it halfway to the stairs.
He shouted my name, and I turned in time to see him raise his axe over his head, the silver glinting even in the bar’s dim light. “Don’t make me hurt you, Matt. Please.”
Everyone in the bar watched us play out our little drama, not only to see what would happen next but also to help them decide if they should bother taking cover. But no one observed us more intensely than the pierced warlock.
Where the hell do I know that sonofabitch from? I thought.
“If you really don’t want to hurt me, Skully I have a suggestion: put the axe down.”
“I can’t do that, Matt,” he said sadly.
The irony inherent in the situation was so thick you could cut it with Skully’s axe. It was like a replay of earlier in the day, only instead of a murdering lyke, I now faced a friend. A friend who was about to bring a very large, very sharp weapon down on my head, but a friend nonetheless.
“I can’t let this one go,” I said. “It’s too important.”
“And I can’t let you reach those stairs.”
Stalemate. I had little in the way of surprises left in my pockets, and nothing that would take care of Skully. Hell, I wasn’t even exactly sure what sort of creature he was, and I
didn’t have the first clue as to what sort of weaknesses he might possess.
“So what do we do now, Matt?” he asked.
“I figure you can just stand there, and I’ll watch as Devona cracks you over your bony noggin with a chair.”
“Come off it, I’m not going to fall for-” The chair connected with his skull with a sharp crack! and a shower of splintered wood. Skully dropped his axe, which hit the concrete floor with a loud clang, and a second later, Skully himself crashed down beside it.
I quickly examined him. He had a tiny jagged fissure in his skull, and the lights in his socket had been extinguished.
Devona held only a pair of chair legs in her hands now, and she let them clatter to the floor. “Is he unconscious?”
“Who can tell? But he’s not moving right now and that’s good enough. Let’s go.” I continued toward the stairs, this time with Devona at my side.
Skully’s patrons didn’t know what to do at first. They merely sat and stared. Then one particular Einstein among them shouted, “Hey, free drinks!” and a stampede for the bar commenced. I hoped Skully wouldn’t get stepped on too badly, even if he had been prepared to turn me into filet-o-zombie.
The iron door that led to the bar’s upper level was locked and-as Devona had figured it would be-it was protected by some seriously powerful wardspells. But Shrike had managed to borrow some magical lockpicks for us from a thief he knew, and using the knowledge Devona had gained from years serving as guardian of Galm’s Collection, she was able to bypass the wardspells and open the door in surprisingly short order.
“I’m impressed,” I said. “If you decide to stop working for your father, you can always take up a career as a cat burglar-or maybe I should say bat burglar.”
She grinned, and we hurried up the stairs as fast as my bum leg would allow and exited onto the second floor. The short hall had only three wooden doors, all closed. I turned to Devona and touched the side of my nose. She nodded and inhaled.
“That one.” She pointed to door number two.
“That one it is, then.” I took out my 9mm, which was now loaded with purely ordinary bullets, stepped to the door, and was about to try the knob when Devona stopped.
“Let me see if it’s warded.” She waved her hands over the door’s surface, careful not to touch it. “It’s clean. I guess the Dominari figured the wardspells on the door downstairs were enough protection. Idiots.” She tried the knob, but it wouldn’t budge. “At least they weren’t too stupid to lock it.”
“As a macho type, I’d ordinarily kick the door in myself,” I said, “but seeing as how you’re somewhat stronger than I am…”
She smiled, leaned back and executed a swift, powerful kick to the middle of the door, which exploded off its hinges and flew into the room.
Devona stepped back and I moved past her into the room, fighting the urge to shout, “Police!” Instead I said, “Nobody move!” Hardly as satisfying, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. At least it fulfilled my quota of tough-guy talk for the day.
There was no one in the room. I kept my gun out, though, just in case. Inside sat a table filled with chemical apparatus: copper tubing, black rubber hoses, beakers, vials, the whole junior chemistry lab bit. Next to that lay a stone altar upon which rested various flowers and herbs, along with the sliced-up body of a dead lamb and the rune-engraved obsidian knife which had done it in. Science and magic, working together to create a better world, or at least a more profitable one-for the Dominari, that is.
“So Morfran was telling the truth,” I said. Even with the motivation we’d provided him with, I still hadn’t quite believed what he’d told us. You can never trust drug-pushing scum, regardless of species or home dimension.
“And I’ll make damn sure the bug pays for it, too.”
I recognized the voice coming from behind us, and though I was dead, it sent a chill through my roomtemperature blood. We turned to see the voice belonged to the shaven-headed punk warlock from downstairs. His piercings-multiple rings in the outer curves of his ears, across his bottom lip, in both nostrils, along his eyebrows, down both sides of his forearms, and who knew where else beneath his ratty jeans and A is for Anarchy T-shirt-pulsed with a silvery energy that wreathed his body in a shimmering argent aura.
I might have been a zombie, but right then I felt a fury inside me as strong as any emotion I’d ever experienced as a living man. I fought to keep my voice calm as I said, “Hello, Yberio.”
The warlock smiled, displaying metal-encased teeth. “Surprised to see me back from the dead, Richter?”
“Are you kidding? This is Nekropolis. Half the people you meet here are one kind of dead or another. You’ve changed a bit from when we last met.” I looked him up and down. “The new look suits you. What does Talaith think about it?”
Devona’s jaw dropped. “Wait, this warlock is the one who created the Overmind for Talaith, the one who-”
“Killed Richter’s partner,” Yberio finished. “Indeed.”
At that moment, I was painfully aware that I still held my 9mm in my right hand. It was down at my side, and I calculated my chances of raising the weapon and getting a shot off before Yberio could do anything to stop me. My reflexes would’ve been slow even if my undead body had been in its peak condition, but as beat-up and decayed as I was right then, I wasn’t in danger of being crowned fastest gun in the Sprawl anytime soon. Yberio must’ve guessed what I was thinking-or perhaps he literally read my mind-and he evidently thought more of my threat potential than I did, because he made a small gesture with his hand and tendrils of silver energy flowed forth from his aura, snatch the gun out of my hand, and tossed it into the corner of the room with contemptuous ease.
“Not that I couldn’t stop a bullet if I wanted to,” Yberio said, “but I’m more conservative in my use of power these days, seeing as how I don’t wield quite so much as I used to. But then again, what’s the point of possessing power if you don’t enjoy it from time to time?”
The warlock stretched his hands toward us and before we could react, two gouts of silver energy blasted forth, slamming us backward into the table holding the chemical and mystical apparatus used for creating veinburn. Vials and beakers shattered, noxious chemicals spilled, the dead goat went flying, and the table broke from the force of the impact. Since I couldn’t feel pain, I wasn’t stunned, and I immediately tried to sit up. But before I could manage to do so, Yberio gestured again, and two more tendrils extended from his aura, the tips shaping themselves into large silvery hands as they came at us. The energy hands smashed into our chests and pressed down like iron weights, pinning us where we lay.
Yberio laughed softly. He sounded pleased, but also a bit sad. “You know, there was a time when I could’ve destroyed both of you far more elegantly than this. I was a Demilord once…but that was before you came to town, Richter.”
I managed to wriggle my right arm free enough to reach up and attempt to clutch the wrist of the silvery hand holding me down. It remained attached to Yberio by an umbilicus of energy, but while it felt solid enough on my chest, when I tried to grab hold of it, my hand merely passed through as if it wasn’t there. I felt a distant tingling sensation, as if I’d come in contact with a strong electrical field.
“Don’t you mean before you decided to start killing people in my jurisdiction back on Earth?” I countered.
“Details, details,” Yberio said.
I turned my head to check on Devona. She appeared unharmed, and while she too struggled to free herself from the grasp of Yberio’s argent energy, she met with no more success than I had.
“Matt checked your pulse after the Overmind was destroyed,” she said. “You didn’t have one.”
“I did,” Yberio said. “It was just hard for him to feel it-especially since he’d become a zombie and wasn’t used to his newly deadened sense of touch. I wasn’t dead, merely in a deep coma as it turned out, and I spent a number of months in that state as my mind and
body worked desperately to heal themselves. Talaith helped as much as she could, but she’d suffered her own injuries from the Overmind’s demise and needed the bulk of her magic to heal herself. And when I finally awoke, I found myself…diminished. I still had my knowledge of magic, but I was only capable of accessing and channeling a fraction of the mystic energy I once could. It seemed the psychic backlash caused by the destruction of the Overmind had burned out a portion of my own mind, and I was no longer a Demilord, but merely an ordinary warlock.” He paused, and his tone grew bitter, “And not a particularly strong one at that.”
I couldn’t reach any of my pockets, and even if I could, I didn’t have anything that I could use against Yberio. I looked around at the wreckage of the lab table that I was lying amidst, hoping to find something, anything, I could use as a weapon. My gaze fell upon a half-broken beaker that still contained several ounces of a yellow-green chemical. Not veinburn itself, but one of its ingredients. The beaker lay just outside of my reach, but if I could manage to stretch a bit…
“That’s why you wear all those rings,” Devona said. “They augment your natural magical abilities.”
“Very good,” Yberio gave Devona an appraising look. “You’re half vampire, right? Perhaps you have a bit of Arcane blood in you on your human side. But you’re correct. My rings help me absorb, store, and channel the mystic energy, all of which I can no longer do on my own. In human terms, it’s the equivalent of replacing a lost limb with a prosthesis or using a wheelchair if one can no longer walk.”
I saw Devona give me a quick glance. She understood what I was trying to do, and she looked back to Yberio and tried to keep him talking.
“I bet Talaith wasn’t happy about that,” she said,” considering how she feels about technology.”
“My rings aren’t technology in the strictest sense, but you’re right. Talaith considered them to be the same thing. At the very least, she thought them…unnatural.” Yberio let out a dark, bitter laugh. “As if there could be anything more unnatural than the likes of us! But she was angry with me for talking her into creating the Overmind, and she blamed me for the injuries that resulted in her loss of power. Darklords aren’t known for their forgiving nature, but one thing they can never forgive is anyone who causes them to lose strength or, even worse, face.”