Infernal Affairs

by Jes Battis

The door opened, but the entryway was vacant. I shrugged and walked in. The passage broadened, until we were standing in a well-lit den. The walls of the chamber were largely organic, but full of alcoves that, in their turn, were full of random things. Some of the things I recognized instantly as dangerous, while others were literally pieces of junk. The ones that worried me were the only half-broken pieces that were still quite powerful. I hoped that he kept a good inventory.

  The Seneschal sat at a desk, which was new. He turned around in his Kirk-style chair. His eyes still resembled the blue of an acetylene torch.

  “Door’s automatic now,” he said. “Easier.”

  “What’s with the desk?”

  “Writing memoir.”

  I tried to keep my expression neutral. “That sounds fascinating. What language are you writing it in?”

  “Several.”

  “Good times. Well, we just came with a quick question for you. Something involving what you might call a broken treasure.”

  The Seneschal gestured for me to come closer. “Let me see. Not everything is treasure, you know. Some things only look.”

  “Why am I here, exactly?” Mia asked. “Not that here isn’t interesting. I just feel like a third wheel.”

  “You’re here so I can keep an eye on you.”

  “Really? After that whole You’re a capable woman speech?”

  “I suck. You did say it yourself.”

  “Deeply.” She began to walk around the Seneschal’s den. “This stuff is weird and interesting, though.”

  “Is sold if she breaks,” he whispered to me.

  I nodded. “Right. Here’s a reproduction of something that we found buried not far from here. It seems to be for holding something. Have you ever come across anything like this before?”

  I showed him a digital photo of the broken container. He stared at it for a few seconds, then handed me back the picture.

  “Don’t need.”

  “I’m not asking if you need it. I’m asking if you’ve ever seen one before.”

  He nodded. “Once. Was useless, though. Broken, like yours.”

  “What was it meant to hold?”

  “Memories.”

  I blinked. “Can you be more specific?”

  “For memories,” he repeated. “Don’t usually see them.”

  “Why not?”

  The Seneschal looked at me as if I were profoundly stupid. “Because they are on the inside of the body. That is where they reside.” He shrugged. “In general. But an accident might produce one like yours.”

  “You mean—” I frowned. “We’re looking at someone’s organ?”

  “Is more container,” he said. “But yes.”

  “Do you know what species it might be found in?”

  The Seneschal looked distant. Then he frowned. “I forget.”

  I sighed. “Okay. Well, if you remember, you know how to reach us.”

  He nodded. “Sure. You want something to take?”

  “What—you mean, like a present?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He gestured at the walls filled with alcoves. “Take something. But don’t let the girl take the box that she’s holding right now.”

  I ran over to Mia, who was fiddling with a small metal cube.

  “Hey, there. Let’s just put that back on the shelf.”

  “I’m not simple, Tess. I won’t make anything explode.”

  “Those are everyone’s famous last words in my business. You can browse with me, though. The Seneschal said we could take something with us.”

  “Cool. Like at the dentist.”

  “This might be a bigger payoff than mint floss, though.”

  We scanned the nooks and crannies filled with bizarre things, most of them in states of disrepair or shaky metamorphosis. We avoided the reptile shelf altogether. Finally, Mia spied what looked like a small brass teapot.

  “What’s that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I kind of like it.”

  “All right. That’s good enough for me.”

  “Wait, though. You must know what some of this stuff does. Isn’t there something much cooler than this teapot?”

  “Probably. But this is what you want. So it’s what I want.”

  She looked at me. “God, you’re so lame sometimes.” But she was smiling. She handed me the teapot, which I put in my purse.

  “What should we have for supper?”

  “I was thinking tacos.”

  She made a face. “Don’t let Derrick toast the shells. Make sure Miles does it. He toasts them so perfectly.”

  “I’m sorry; are you seriously asking me to cause a full-scale tempest in the kitchen? I’ll do no such thing.”

  “Aww. But they’re still good when Derrick toasts them.”

  “He’ll be happy to hear that.”

  We walked back across the parking lot. The car was exactly where I’d left it, which, although small reassurance, was still better than nothing. We got in, and I started the engine. I yawned.

  “I’ll drive, if you’re too tired,” Mia said.

  “You do a terrible job of hiding your eagerness.”

  “Well?”

  I hesitated. Then I handed her the keys. “I guess if I can trust you with vampires, I have to trust you behind the wheel.”

  “You totally can. I swear.”

  “Uh-huh.” I relinquished the driver’s seat. “But if we have to call roadside assistance, you’re definitely not getting that twenty bucks.”

  14

  It was Selena’s idea to take Ru for lunch. The thought of him being in such close proximity to Basuram made her nervous. Plus, we’d let slip that there were actually more varieties of hot chocolate than could be found in the vending machine, and he was eager to try something new.

  “I want the creamed whip,” he’d told me.

  “Whipped cream.”

  “Yes. That. Selena says it makes the drink better.”

  “It actually makes life better.”

  We settled on Caffè Artigiano, on Smithe Street, which stood in the shadow of the art gallery. Street kids gathered on the steps of the art gallery, smoking pot, laughing, and letting their dogs drink water from plastic thermos cups. At this time of day, Artigiano, and the sort of blissed-out yet caffeinated brusqueness of the environment, increased the turnover of customers. If anyone was going to try something in daylight, they’d have to think twice about engaging so many random bystanders, since foot traffic from Robson always choked up side streets like this one. The lab was still close enough to be reassuring.

  Really, we all just wanted to stretch our legs. Ru spent most of his time watching TV in a nice but empty room. Selena was cramped in her office, and I kept finding myself squashed behind the wheel of a car, shuttling someone somewhere. I dreamt about each of the routes, remapping them, as I found myself endlessly drawn back to the lab and everything it meant. Everything that CORE meant, or would mean. Because, not for the first time in my life, I was wondering if I belonged there.

  “How many languages are there in your world?” Ru asked.

  “Over six thousand,” Selena replied. “Lots of dead or dying ones, too. Plus, there’s machine languages, and other sign systems.”

  “What you do with your powers—is that like a language?”

  “It’s more of a chemical reaction, as far as we’ve ever been able to tell.”

  “But you’ve developed ways of communicating with the power. You can make it work for you. That seems like a language.” He looked around the café. “Most people here are speaking the same dialect.”

  “The city’s predominantly English-speaking,” I said, “with a significant infusion of Mandarin and Cantonese. Also French, Italian, and Spanish.”

  “English—is that what the language we’re speaking is actually called?” Ru laughed. “On Ptah’l, we learned it as High and Low Great British.”

  “That’s bizarre.”

  “It makes a lot of sense when it’s div
ided that way. Your sarcasm is difficult, as well as your words with humorous adjacent meanings.”

  “Puns?”

  “Yes. They are hard sometimes. We call everything like that Low Great British, so it’s easier to memorize the irregular words.”

  I’d been waiting for the right moment to ask Ru about the vessel. I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. I was pretty much relying on Selena to mention it, but part of me didn’t want her to. I just wanted us all to have hot chocolate in peace.

  Ru gestured to the people sitting around us. “It’s so easy to fool them. I don’t even have to maintain the shift in waveform that modifies my appearance. Nobody here notices anyone but themselves.”

  “It’s part of our charm,” I said.

  “But why haven’t they figured out that you exist? Your lab and your machines that analyze blood from demons. It seems so obvious.”

  “Because,” Selena said, “some of us are them, and some of them are us. A lot of it has to do with money, unfortunately.”

  “I like my chocolate, though. I think this is the best one I’ve had yet.”

  “It certainly cost the most. But the barista did make a maple leaf out of foam, and you don’t see that just anywhere.”

  “Ru,” I said, hating myself. “We discovered something buried. It was close to where we found you.”

  He looked at me. “What was it?”

  “We think it’s a container. Part of it’s missing, but we found a blue powder inside, which we’re analyzing.”

  “It was on my hands.”

  Selena looked at him. “What was on your hands?”

  “Blue. I noticed it, just before I lost consciousness. Something blue was on my hands. But when I woke up, it was gone.”

  “Dr. Rashid had already washed you,” I said. “Standard procedure in a morgue. It would have been rinsed away, along with any other trace.”

  Ru was silent for a moment. Then: “What does the container look like?”

  We’d thought about showing him the photo. But if it really was a kind of ossified organ, something that belonged inside another demon’s body, it seemed a bit obscene to produce a photo of viscera while we were having coffee. The consensus was that it would be easier on everyone to just describe it to him.

  “It’s this big.” I measured about four inches with my hands. “It seems to be made of bone, but it’s tensile. And we found blue powder inside with a high nitrocellulose content, which is a chemical that can be quite dangerous if handled improperly.”

  “Nitrocellulose,” he murmured. “An Aikon.”

  “A what?”

  His voice had changed. Quiet as it was, I could feel the anxiety creeping in as he spoke. “The Aikon is where we keep our life-text,” he said. “It’s an organ, below the heart. My grandsire’s Aikon had an infection, and he nearly died. But they managed to replace it with a new one.”

  “Is it a recording of your life?” Selena asked.

  “Not exactly. The word translates as ‘kitchen.’ It’s our kitchen, where all of our memories are gathered. It’s where we spend most of our time.”

  “How does it hold your memories?”

  Again, he looked uncomfortable. It must have been like answering questions about some stranger’s autopsied heart. “What you call ‘powder’ has viscosity during life. The memories swim in fluid. When we die, the medium dries up, like the rest of us.”

  “You remembered having blue on your fingers,” Selena said. “Is there some way that you might have come in contact with this . . . Aikon?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Do you remember touching something? Carrying something, maybe?”

  “You said it was buried. Do you think I buried it?”

  Selena shook her head. “Not as yet. It was close to the surface, though, and we didn’t find any implements for digging. We’re still trying to figure out exactly how the debris got there.”

  “Why would I bury someone’s Aikon? Would you bury a lung?”

  “Possibly. Under extenuating circumstances.”

  “Where do the memories go?” I asked. “When we die, our brains collapse, and everything that we were leaves us in a burst of electrical synapses. Do your memories just dry up and evaporate?”

  “Ideally, there’s someone with you when you die,” Ru said. “They salvage the individual Aikon, and its serum can be added to the Uraikon. The family Aikon.”

  “So your relatives get to watch your memories?”

  He laughed. “It’s not a projection, like what you call TV. The serum is a liquid medium for thousands of intermingling memories. When you’re with the Uraikon, you can see glimpses of past lives. But you can’t pick and choose. I got to relive several embarrassing memories from a great-cousin.”

  “The organic technology might be something that we can duplicate,” Selena said. “One of our technicians is working on passing alternating currents through the desiccated blue medium, in an attempt to unlock whatever may be recorded on it.”

  “Did you submit her overtime authorization?”

  She gave me an odd look. “I did, thank you very much.”

  “You have to destroy it,” Ru said.

  We both looked at him.

  “Destroy what?” Selena asked.

  “The medium. It’s the only way to release the memories. You can’t duplicate the conditions found within the Aikon. But if you pass negative energy through the powder, you’ll release what’s left of the recording.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The Ferid learned how to do it.” He stared at the table. “They would kill us, then watch our lives from the beginning. Looking for secrets.”

  I parked across the street from the daegred, which seemed like any other apartment block in this area. The door had a small vampiric glyph, but it was in the top corner, obscured by wear, paint, and dust. You had to know precisely where to look. I rang the buzzer. A few seconds later, the door opened, and a large vampire appeared. She looked down at me.

  “Yes? What do you need?”

  “I’m here to see Patrick.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tess Corday.”

  “Oh. You can come in.” She stepped aside. “He’s upstairs.”

  “Thanks.”

  A few young vampires were hanging out in the main room, reading or just talking. There was only one computer, and they had to sign a log when they used it. Even immortals had to relinquish the PC when their ten minutes were up.

  I went upstairs. Patrick and Modred were in the office. When they saw me, they both stopped talking.

  “Agent Corday.” Modred inclined his head. “How are you?”

  “Okay. Mind if I talk to Patrick for a second?”

  “Of course.” He looked at the Magnate. “We’ll continue our discussion when the timing is more agreeable.”

  He left.

  “What are you two scheming?”

  “Not scheming. More like urban planning.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “I really can’t.”

  I shrugged. “Understood. No fraternizing.”

  “We’re not really fraternizing, Tess. I live in your house.”

  “It’s your house, too.”

  “I know. I just mean—I trust you. But there are some things we can’t talk about with nonvampires. Those are the rules.”

  “I get it. I didn’t come to pump you for information. I really just wanted to see how things were going with you.”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “How’s life as Magnate? It must be stressful.”

  He frowned. “Tess, we could have talked about this at home. Why would you come all the way here just to shoot the breeze with me?”

  I sat down. “I made a promise to Mia.”

  “What sort of promise?”

  “To stop being so antivampire.”

  “You’re not antivampire. You live with a vampire.”

  “I know. But lately, she’
s been curious about that part of her. The vampirism that we’re suppressing with drugs. And I don’t want her to open that door, but I also understand that I don’t have a choice. I can’t force her to take the medication. If she wants to transition, I won’t be able to stop her.”

  “No. You won’t.”

  “What would you do? If you were me.”

  “If I was Mia’s mom?” He sighed. “Probably lock her up.”

  “I know, right? That’s always my first impulse. But teenagers don’t respond well to enforced confinement.”

  “If she does decide that vampire unlife is for her,” Patrick said, “I can help her through the change. But that’s all. She has to make the choice.”

  “I don’t want her to change, though.”

  He smiled. “Yeah. Me, neither. I love her the way she is.”

  “Do you have any idea what she might do?”

  Patrick shook his head. “You live with her. She’s a tough fortune cookie to read. I’ve been watching her pretty closely, but for now, I think she’s on the fence.”

  “Split evenly, or sort of listing to one side of the fence?”

  “Is ‘listing’ a verb?”

  “Yeah. It’s a nautical term.”

  “Okay. Well, at this point, I think she’s ‘listing’ toward not doing anything. She hasn’t figured out who she wants to be yet.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “But it could change. She could change, without any warning.” He met my gaze. “Look. I’ve spent a lot of time with her over the past few weeks. As far as I can tell, she’s been taking her shots. I’ve never seen her miss a dose.”

  I looked at him. “It was scary for you, right? I mean, waking up in a strange place, not knowing how you got there. And you must have been hungry.”

  “I was fed intravenously.”

  “Oh. Well—it still must have been traumatic.”

  He nodded slowly. “I do remember my old life. Bits and pieces of it. They say the memories come back as you get older. Right now, I can only see flashes. I don’t want Mia to have to know what that feels like. But she’s also different, right? She has the potential to channel materia, and that could change everything. I have no idea what it would feel like for her to transition.”

  “Maybe she’ll be a brave new vampire.”