Dead Man Rising dv-2

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Given my druthers, I would have continued doing so.

  Fog was rolling in off the bay and the lake, a thick soupy fog that glowed green near the pavement and orange between the streetlights. With the fog came the smell of the sea—thick brine—and the smell of fire, burned candle wax, and ash. Or maybe the smell of a burned, smashed life was only mine, rising from my clothes.

  I paced up Sommersby Hill, my bootheels clicking, and saw with a weary jolt of surprise that the Sommersby Store was still open.

  While I was at the Hall, the Store was where all the kids went in our infrequent free time. We bought cheap novels and fashion mags about holovid stars, candy bars to supplement the bland Hall food, and synth-hash cigarettes to be smuggled on campus. The Store used to have a counter that sold tofu dogs and ice cream and other cheap fare, but I saw that part of the building was boarded up now. With Rigger Hall gone, most of the Store's customers would be gone too. It was a miracle that even the main part was still there.

  For a few minutes I stood, my hands in the pockets of Jace's coat, the sword thrust through the loop on the belt of my weapons rig. I watched the front of the Store, its red neon blurring on the dirty glass. The newspaper hutch standing to one side of the door was gone, a paler square of the paint of the storefront marking where it had stood; but the slicboard rack was still there. The boarded-up half of the storefront was festooned with graffiti, a broken window on the second story blindly glared at me. I stared at the glass door with its old-fashioned infrared detector, the plasticine sign proclaiming Shoplifting Will Be Prosecuted still set above the door's midbar, dingy and curling at its corners.

  I finally slid my sword out of the loop on my belt. Holding it in my left hand, I crossed the street.

  I'm about to be swallowed by my own past. It wasn't a comfortable feeling. After all, my past had teeth. And what would I become when it finished digesting me?

  Will you stop with the disgusting thoughts? Please, Danny. You're even irritating yourself.

  The motion detector beeped as I stepped into the warm gloom. It looked dingier and even more rundown, but there was the same ice machine and rack of holovid mags, shelves of crisp packets and junk food in bright wrappers, and a plasilica cabinet holding cheap jackknives and datband add-ons, gleaming like fool's gold. The floor was still white and black squares of linoleum, dirt and dust drifting in the corners. Memory roiled under my skin. I expected to look down and see my scabbed knees under a plaid skirt, feel the stinging weight of the collar against my vulnerable throat and scratchy wool socks against my calves.

  "Help ya?"

  The voice was a rude shock. Even more of a shock was the man—fat, almost-bearded, dressed in a stained white T-shirt, oily red suspenders, and a pair of baggy khaki pants. I let out a breath. My left hand, holding the sword, dropped. "Hi." My eyes adapted to the gloom. Red neon cigarette-brand signs buzzed in the windows. Tamovar. Marlboro X. Gitanes. Copperhead. "I'm here for a pack of Gitanes. Make that two. And that silver Zijaan, in the case." I picked up a handful of Reese Mars Bars—my favorite during school years. I rarely had any money left over from my state stipend after it was applied to tuition and my uniforms. Even though Rigger Hall was for the orphans and the poor, the kids with families usually had a little more pocket change.

  A psion was state property, their upbringing supposed to be overseen by trained professionals, the family just an afterthought—nice if it was there, but not terribly necessary. Had I missed my family? I'd had beaky, spectacled, infinitely gentle Lewis, and my books. The pain of that first loss seemed strangely sweet and clean to me now, compared to the sick, twisting litany of grief and guilt caroling under the rest of my thoughts. I'd had Roanna, my first sedayeen friend, the gentle ballast to the harshness of my nature even then. And my connection with my god had sustained me; I had always known, from the moment I read my first book on Egyptianica, that Anubis was my psychopomp. Some Necromances reached their accreditation Trial without knowing what face Death would take, I was lucky.

  The library, the hall where we were taught fencing, a few of the teachers that weren't so bad… there had been good things too, at the Hall. Things that had sustained me. I hadn't missed the mother and father who had given me up at birth. I hadn't known enough to miss them, and still didn't.

  I shook myself out of memory. Couldn't afford to be distracted now.

  What else? I cast around.

  There, on the rack, was a holovid mag that showed a picture of Jasper Dex leaning against a brick wall, his bowl-cut hair artistically mussed. It was a retrospective issue; memory rose like a flood again. I pushed nausea and memory down, trying not to gag at the smell of unwashed human male.

  Mrs. DelaRocha had been behind the counter in my younger years, balefully eying the collared kids from the Hall, suspiciously peering at you, following you down the two aisles of the store, breathing her halitosis in your face when you asked for cigarettes. I squashed the guilty idea that if I turned around I would see her right behind me, her skirt askew and her cardigan buttoned up wrong, lipstick staining her yellowed teeth, her hook nose lifting proudly between her faded watery hazel eyes.

  I laid the candy and the magazine down on the counter. He looked at me curiously, but got the cigarettes and the lighter for me. "The Zijaan's full-up. You want lighter fluid?"

  "No. Thank you." I paid with crumpled New Credit notes instead of my datband, because that's what I would have done as a kid. He pushed everything back over the counter at me, glowering as he counted out my change—three single credits, everything in the store was priced in whole numbers and the Hegemony never indulged in the antique custom of sales tax like some of the Freetowns did. They had other ways of getting your credits.

  The candy and the magazine went into my battered messenger bag. My emerald glittered, a sharp green spark crackling in the dimness. The man jumped nervously. The sight of all that blubber quivering made a completely reprehensible desire to giggle rise in my throat. It was suppressed and died away with no trouble at all. His T-shirt was filthy and barely covered his hairy chest; stub-ends of cigars lay in a plastic ashtray shaped like a nude woman with her legs spread. No doubt a commemorative item, the ashtray was half-pushed behind a stand-up holoshell calender.

  Today is (blank spot). The last two digits of the year blinked—75. I shivered. The calendar was a good twelve years slow.

  The extra pack of Gitanes went into my pocket. I opened the first pack, took my change, and stalked out of the store, ignoring his sarcastic "Havva good evenin'."

  It's extremely unlikely I'll have anything of the sort. I stepped out into the fog-laden street. My hands shook only slightly as I clicked the Zijaan with my free right hand and lit the first Gitane. The smell of synth hash rose up, nearly choked me. I blinked. My eyes watered. I walked across the street again, head down, dawdling like I used to do on the afternoons when we were free to leave school grounds. Then I glanced back at the Sommersby Store.

  A chill ruffled my spine.

  It was dark and boarded-up, no neon in the windows. Abandoned like all the rest. No sign of lights, of neon, or of the fat hairy storeowner.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  My mouth went dry, and the gray of shock fuzzed around the corners of my peripheral vision. I forced it away, bent over, my right hand twisting into a claw once again. The red eye of the cigarette taunted me. I inhaled smoothly, down into the pit of my belly as I'd been taught.

  "Holy shit. I just bought Gitanes from a ghost." My voice sounded high and childish even to myself. Did this mean that the gods were with me? Or was I hallucinating again? Both were equally likely.

  I re-crossed the street. If anyone was watching, they would probably think I was a lunatic. I poked at the boards over the shattered glass door I'd just walked through whole, went on tiptoes to peer inside the cave of the store. A heady brew of wet decay and other garbage-laced smells poured out; my demon-sharp eyes caught sight of a magazine rack upended, a few holomags scattered, drifts
of trash on the floor. The plasticine counter was shattered too, and I saw a scraped-clean circle off to one side and a blackened scorch mark on the floor. Probably a fire some transient had made inside the abandoned building.

  I dropped the smoking cigarette, then opened up my bag. The magazine was gone, and the candy, but one pack of cigarettes was there. I fished the other pack out of my pocket and stared at them, turning the unopened one over to read its warning label; there was a sweepstakes to win a free hover blazoned on the back.

  I crumpled both packs in my fist, feeling the sticks break inside, and dropped them heedlessly. Then I drew the silver Zijaan from my pocket.

  The breath left me in another gasping rush. The lighter was battered and scratched with hard use, and etched into one flat side was a cursive C wreathed with another cursive M.

  I blinked. Flipped the lighter open, spun the wheel with a click, and orange flame blossomed. I snapped it shut. I ran my fingers over the carved letters.

  For once in my life, I was completely at a loss. I looked up at the boarded-up storefront again, smelled decay and that strange, indecipherable scent.

  CM? Christabel Moorcock?

  "Christabel?" I said, tentatively, my voice echoing against the soggy shredded interior of the abandoned store.

  No answer. Except the memory of the scraping awful scream—remember, remember. The lilac smell of terror clinging to pale-pink paper as Christabel wrote her last message. The memory of her bed, neatly made; her bookshelves religiously dusted, her kitchen and bathroom spotless… Everything in its place.

  In all my years of dealing with Power and the strange logic of magick, I had never come across anything even remotely like this. I held up the lighter. Swallowed dryly.

  Then I slipped the lighter in the breast pocket of Jace's coat. There's a circle being closed here. Just like a Greater Work of magick.

  It was vaguely comforting. It meant some other agency might be working with me to bring Mirovitch and Keller down. Maybe Christabel was helping out another Necromance. Who knew?

  Or perhaps it meant I was to be offered as a sacrifice. That was a little less comforting. I blew out a long breath between my teeth, a tuneless whistle that fell flat on the foggy air. I backed away from the store, finally hopping down from the sidewalk and into the street. I decided to go up the Hill and—

  "Valentine! Hey, Valentine!" A girl's voice, light and young, and the patter of quick, light, running feet on concrete. My ears tracked it, the footsteps sounded as if someone was running up right behind me. My neck prickled.

  I gasped, whirling, my hair fanning out. Sommersby Street yawned, the abandoned buildings and boarded-up houses mocking me. The concrete pavement was cracked and pitted here, and no hovertraffic lit the sky. Without the Hall, this district had probably gone into slow decline.

  A perfect place to hide.

  My own voice caught me by surprise. "Christabel?" Okay, that's it. I have had enough of this. Everyone out of the swimtank. No more voices, no more illusions, no more delaying. I straightened, my jaw set, my right hand cramped around the hilt of my sword. When I could walk without staggering, I continued up the middle of the street in defiance of any streetside hovertraffic, my bootheels clicking on the pavement. Winter had come early here up on the Hill, and frost rimed the darker places where the sun didn't reach during the day. Under trees and in shadowy corners, winter was creeping in without the benefit of the rest of autumn.

  I continued up Sommersby and turned right onto Harlow. At the end of Harlow the gates rose up, wrought-iron with plasilica panels, an R done in gothic script on one half, an H on the other. On the top of the gates, dagger-shaped finials lengthened up like claws.

  I stopped in the shelter of a doorway, looking at the gates. Be careful, Danny, Jace's voice brushed my cheek. It only looks quiet. Don't trust nothin' in there.

  "You don't need to tell me that," I muttered.

  The first illegal job I'd gone on had been as a result of Jace's tutelage, a few months into our relationship during a dry period. I'd complained that I didn't have enough to make my mortgage even with the apparitions and bounties I worked on, and he'd looked at me, his head propped on the headboard of my bed, and said, How would you like to make some real money, baby?

  I'd done bounties and I'd tracked down stolen objects, but I'd never done corporate espionage or thieving before. I'd never even thought of doing mercenary work, but the money was good and Jace and I were a fantastic team. At the time I hadn't wondered at it, but no doubt Jace's Mob Family connections had come in handy. Under his tutelage, I'd become so much better at tracking bounties it wasn't funny, spending just half the time it normally took to bring them in.

  The memory was strangely fuzzy, even the sharp sword of pain at the thought of Jace was oddly muted. I stared at the gate I'd seen for years in my nightmares, and my hand tightened on the scabbard once more. My heart thundered in my chest.

  "Okay, Christabel," I murmured. "You're still leading the dance. Let's go."

  Chapter Thirty-three

  I wondered why the geography of a place I'd tried so hard to forget was burned so deeply into me that I had no trouble calling up a mental map of the entire complex. Behind the gate, the driveway would curve up the gentle hill, the pond to the right, the shack of the boathouse just visible on the other side. The main house, with classrooms, the cafeteria, and the gymnasium, would rear up in front of the driveway. An ancillary road would curve off to the left, leading to the four Halls, each one shock-shielded and stocked with supplies for practicing the standard Magi disciplines, intranet security and an automatic fail-safe on each one.

  Behind the main building were the dormitories, two for girls, one for boys (since the X chromosome carries Talent far more often than the Y) and the fencing salle/dojo, the swimtank building, and, in the very back, the Headmaster's House. Further up the hill and also to the left was the Morrow building, containing the Library, more classrooms, and a fully stocked alchemical lab, as well as hothouses for the Skinlin trainees closed around a courtyard that held a co-op garden for the Skinlins and hedgewitches.

  The only thing missing was the stink of childrens' fear—and, of course, the tang of Power as well as the glimmer of a security net: deepscan, magscan, and a full battery of defensive measures. Not to mention the chain-link fence, six foot tall and topped with razor wire Mirovitch had erected inside the older, more aesthetically pleasing brick wall.

  Who did that to you, Danny? Jace's voice, harsh with anger, during one of our old fights. Who made you think you were worthless? Tell me who. Goddammit, who did that to you? And he'd turned in a tight half-circle, jerking away from me as if the offender might be hiding in the living room.

  "Jace," I whispered to the empty, foggy street. "I don't want to go in there again."

  Whether I was caught in some magick of Fate or just too stubbornly, exhaustedly determined for my own good, I was called upon to finish it. And who, after all, was left to finish it if I couldn't?

  My right hand throbbed and ached. I dropped it, touched the pocket holding the spade necklaces. If I was right—and I goddamn well hoped I was—Keller would be tracking me now. I would draw him like a lodestone draws iron filings, like a broken-down hover in the Tank District draws techstrippers. Like a fight in Rio draws the organ harvesters.

  Thinking of this, I reached down into my pocket and drew out four necklaces, leaving one behind. I cupped them in my palm, examining them closely. There was no thread of Power I could detect. But of course, if it was only a passive charm keyed to Keller I might not be able to see it at all, even with a demon's acuity. When it came to tracking spells, passive usually meant weak, but it also usually meant invisible.

  I closed my right hand into a fist, the sharp pricks of the spade charms digging into my skin. The trickle of Power slid down my wrist like a razor, heat welling up under my skin. It pooled in my palm, melting, swirling, straining to escape.

  I stared at my hand, the trickle of supe
rheated Power making my fingernails glow.

  Memory rose.

  Crack. The worst thing about the whip is not the first strike, laid hot against the back. For the first few microseconds it is almost painless—but then the red-hot fléchette, fueled with Power, scorchsplits open every nerve, and the entire body becomes the back. Not just the back, but the entire world becomes the lash of agony. The scream rises up out of the deepest layers of the body, impossible to deny. No matter how much the will nerves itself not to scream, the body betrays begging, pleading, breaking.

  I opened my fist.

  Valentine, D. Student Valentine is called to the Headmaster's Office immediately.

  The fléchette gleamed in my hand, long and thin and razor-sharp. Made of Power and the metal in the necklaces, it rang softly as I touched it with a forefinger. I blew a low tuneless whistle between my teeth and looked up toward the gate.

  It was open slightly, fog wreathing through the bars. Come into my parlor, said the undead Headmaster to the wary ex-pupil. The lunatic singsong sounded a little bit more like me. I grabbed at the thought, sucked in another breath, and dug in my messenger bag. I had no sheath that would fit the fléchette, so I wrapped a supple piece of plasilica around it and stuck it in my pocket with the last spade necklace.

  I don't think I'm going in through the front door. I melted out of the shadow of the doorway to vanish into the fog.