Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman

by Duncan Eagleson

  “George Frederic Adams?” I asked loudly.

  The reply from the speakerphone was indistinct, scratchy, as though the connection was bad, torn by interference.

  “It’s all I know,” a voice said.

  I looked at Gage. He was staring wide-eyed. I knew he could feel a tingling throughout his body, as if the room were filled with static electricity, just like I could. Your heart begins to race, and it gets hard to draw a breath. Your palms are sweaty, and the coppery taste of adrenaline is in your mouth. It hits everybody that way, every time, but the first time was always a real bitch. I felt for him.

  George Adams was dead. Gage had seen his bloody, mutilated body in this very room, had seen it again at the autopsy, and with other guardsmen he had carried the casket containing that body in solemn ceremony to the funeral pyre, watched it reduced to ash. And now he was hearing the man’s voice issuing from a speakerphone—a disconnected speakerphone in a darkened wardroom. I wanted to remind him that if this wasn’t Chief George Adams, his friend and mentor, it was some fragment of him, and there was nothing to fear from the Old Man. But I knew his body would not be convinced. His body knew this was just wrong, unnatural, a cause for flight or fight. I waited, watching Gage. He forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply. That was good.

  The voice spoke again.

  “I’m dust in the wind. French Canadian bean soup.”

  Gage made a choked sound that might have started life as a laugh. I exchanged glances with Rok and Morgan. We were none of us so jaded we were unmoved by the voice of the dead, but this wasn’t terra incognita to us as it was to Gage. The guardsman did seem to find some reassurance in the three strangers’ calm, “business as usual” outer demeanor.

  “We need your help,” I said to the shade.

  After a moment, there was a whine-like feedback from the phone, and the voice came again. “She told him father would be proud. The evil one is not for you, not yet.”

  I frowned. Was the Chief telling us we couldn’t catch the Beast? Or that we couldn’t catch him yet? That something else was fated to happen before we could hunt down the killer? I found myself staring unseeing at the opposite wall, where the bloodstains had been scrubbed off and the wall repainted. The bloodstains were back now, and fresh; I could see the drops crawling slowly toward the floor.

  “Can you tell us about your killer?” I asked.

  The lights flickered on, then off again. A burst of static crackled from the speakerphone, and the tone sounded once. I felt a clammy chill on the back of my neck.

  “Andy wasn’t there,” the speakerphone crackled. “The clothes are in a rucksack. Kindly take my shoes off.”

  Gage shook his head. “Andy’s the guard station janitor,” he whispered. “It’s was true he wasn’t there the night of the Chief’s murder.”

  I tried again. “Who killed you?”

  “There is no self to know.” Another loud burst of static. Suddenly we found ourselves blinded, as if we were surrounded by a storm of electric snow. Every hair on my body stood up. Distantly, I heard the Chief’s voice say, “Mother knows best.” I gasped, shook my head, and my vision cleared as the speakerphone rasped, “Memory is gone, on a work release.”

  I wondered if Gage had experienced the same weird static storm we had.

  “Did you know your killer?”

  “The sun is set, set on it. A boy has never wept, nor dashed a thousand kin.”

  Behind the voice, I thought I could hear the sound of a baby crying. Despite the closed doors and window, a definite cold breeze moved through the room.

  “How did he get into the wardroom?”

  The television in the corner flickered, uttered a scratchy burst of music, a vague, snowy image of face appeared on the screen—not Adams, but a thin blond man’s face, animated, apparently speaking or singing. It vanished, appeared again, became what looked like Adams’s face for a moment, and then turned to snow. Another short burst of music came from the speakerphone, and it stuttered, “Ch-ch-ch-ch” as this time the dead chief’s voice came from the television. “Turn and face the strange. It’s changes; it’s the training, y’know,” it said.

  The screen lit up again, this time showing a black and white image of a man with hair growing rapidly over his face. This was replaced quickly by a color shot of a corridor, where a large suitcase quickly morphed into a strange, pasty-faced man in a uniform I didn’t recognize, before the television died again. The microwave gave forth popping noises, as if someone were trying to cook something foil-wrapped in it; then there was a bang as its door flew open. “Don’t make any bull moves,” the speakerphone urged.

  “Can you tell us anything about the Beast?”

  “It’s duty, to serve and protect.” The voice was fading now, overtaken by staticky white noise.

  “George?” I said more loudly. “George Adams, can you hear me?”

  We could barely make out the reply.

  “I was once, but I can’t talk long. Move on, Mamma.”

  The quality of the static changed, and there was a buzz, almost like a dial tone on a normal phone. I looked at the brazier. The paper was now completely ash. On the wall behind us the bloodstains were gone again. I took a deep breath, sighed, and turned the speakerphone off.

  I collapsed into a chair, scrubbed my hands over my face. Morgan looked up at Rok, then left his side to walk to the table, where she sat down before the computer.

  “New shielding hold okay?” I asked.

  “Puh-lease.” Morgan rolled her eyes.

  “So did we get it?”

  She nodded. “End to end.”

  “You were recording it,” Gage said suddenly. “But what’s the use? It doesn’t really tell us anything much.”

  “Well,” I said, “it does tell us a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like for one thing, your killer is a shapeshifter, and I think possibly a professional assassin, trained for this sort of work.”

  “I didn’t hear him say anything like that.” Gage looked at each of us in turn.

  Rok smiled. “You gotta know how to listen to a shade,” he said.

  6. THE CAVE

  He sat in the cave, staring into the darkness. The morning’s meditation had not gone well. His mind kept sliding back to the mistake he had made last night.

  It was not a huge, horrible mistake. It had not affected the outcome of his mission particularly, but the implications worried him. He stood, moved forward, and began his basic katas. Block, step, punch, block, kick... The familiar patterns and movements brought some relief from anxiety. Here, within the realm of physical flow, attack and defense, he was in his element, completely in control. He moved through the pitch black of the cave with utter assurance, not because he could see, although his eyes could pierce the darkness far better than human eyes, but because he knew without seeing where every flat place and steep pitch was, every boulder and stalactite, every rock and stone. Still, as he moved through the forms, the questioning face of the man from last night still arose before his eyes.

  He had been approached on the street by a laborer, who had posed a question, and he knew not how to answer. He glanced up and down the street—they were virtually alone. He considered killing the man just for the fun of it, slashing his throat first so he could not scream, and then… But no, that would have broken the pattern, and the pattern was important. He had recovered by pretending he could not speak, using sign language to suggest he was in a hurry to get somewhere, and the man went away. No real harm was done. Still, it was worrisome. When he had been in Santa Brita, he had known the city and its people, the rhythm and melody of their language, their slang, their accents. He had remained an outsider, of course, and did not fully understand what all their various interactions really meant, but he was a careful observer, and an excellent mimic.

  Though he had grown up in this cave, not far from Bay City, and he knew his way around the city streets, he had never lived among its people. H
e did not feel in his bones the throb of the city’s heart, did not know the dialects of the various social realms, the music of their speech, the way he had in the brief years he had lived in Santa Brita. He would not allow himself to feel any nostalgia. To wish for a time that was gone was a pointless indulgence, a weakness, a way of turning your face from what is; and facing that which is at every moment was crucial to his survival and the success of his mission. Still, it had been easier in Santa Brita.

  Finished with the kata sequence, he shifted to what he thought of as his true killing form. Teeth grew into fangs, hands became claws, skin thickened and hardened to horny plates. He was proud of this form. He had worked hard at developing it over the course of several years, and it had not been easy. The hide had to be thickest and hardest where it protected vitals, and where arms and legs would be used for blocking, yet it had to be flexible enough in the right places to allow him a full range of movement. The claws had been the most difficult task, and it took him months to perfect them. He could never tell when he might need dexterity in his hands, and not have time to change. The claws had initially made it difficult to use his hands for anything other than rending and tearing. Over time, however, with practice and experimentation, he arrived at a claw design that he could manage quite well. A big breakthrough came when he realized claws did not have to be needle-sharp to be deadly. By slightly roughening the very tips, he discovered he could employ them like tweezers or forceps, and eventually he was able to manipulate the tiniest objects far better than blunt human fingers could. And they could still disembowel a human with a single slash.

  The shift of form finished, he moved into his own unique kata series, which he had devised especially for this form. His killing form did not move exactly as a human body would. Now, after years of practice, he was as fluid with these kata as with the others. He had not revealed his killing form to the Ravagers at first; his human form was more than adequate to their purposes. After he had traveled with them for several months, he had ensured that he could trust them to keep his secret by the simple expedient of killing all those he did not trust, either by engineering accidents or picking fights with them. He was careful to make sure that when their raiding was done, no one was left alive to recount tales of a monstrous creature that traveled with the Ravagers. He did not want rumors reaching Bay City until he was ready to reveal himself there.

  When the time came, he had watched with interest as the guard destroyed the remnants of his Ravager band. In company with the guard had been two strange men, not guardsmen but members of some other brotherhood. Each wore a long, black coat, and a tattoo over one eye. Each carried about him the aura of the Otherworld, the scent of magic and mystery, and each fought with a spirit and discipline beyond even the best among the guard. He had heard tales of the Railwalkers, but he had never seen them before.

  When it was over, in solemn ceremony, he sang to their spirits, and ate their brains.

  7. WOLF

  Like most of the city’s government, the guard had their headquarters in the City Administration Tower, the same building we’d landed on. The CA Tower, as it was known, was the largest building in the city, and within its precincts were not only many offices and conference rooms, but also suites for visiting dignitaries and for city officials who might be working overnight. The tower pre-dated the Great Crash, though what it might have been in those days—corporate office building, expensive apartments, or civic offices—was no longer evident, given how thoroughly it had been revamped and redecorated many times over the years.

  The suite we’d been assigned was not exactly palatial by city standards, but it was far more luxurious than any of us were used to. There were three bedrooms and a common room with armchairs, couch, and DV unit. On the table was a bottle of moderately expensive hooch and an invitation to the Bay City Summersend Festival, with a note from Roth asking if I would give the Harvest Blessing. Of course, in a city, the Harvest wasn’t so much corn and grain as the city’s economic index, but they’d use produce to stand in for that. The idea was the same.

  Preoccupied with the murders, I’d forgotten the festival was so close. It was traditional for communities to ask any visiting Railwalker to give the Blessing, and I’d done it plenty of times, though never for such a large crowd as would probably be assembled at this event. I told myself I’d get through it fine. What I really wasn’t looking forward to was the reception afterward. Diplomacy is part of the Railwalkers’ job; you had to do the meet and greet. But just now I begrudged the hours away from the investigation.

  Morgan sat down at the table, swept the bottle and invitation to one side, opened up her portable unit, and started to work on the recording. Rok and I knew what she’d be about. Shades are disconnected from the normal flow of time. Frequently they answer questions backwards. Morgan would be taking the responses from George Adams’s shade and re-ordering them, so that his first answer would match my last question, his second my next-to-last, and so forth, until his last answer matched my first question. Hopefully at that point the whole thing would make much more sense. She’d also be running the recording through a battery of tests, enhancements, filters, and analysis, slowing it down, speeding it up, running it backwards, to see if anything other than the obvious voices turned up.

  “What do you think?” I asked Rok.

  “Well,” he said, “Gage is alright—a straight arrow, not real long on imagination, but I think we can trust him. The other guy, Auden... He’s gonna be trouble.”

  “You think so? I dunno. He resents our being here, yeah, but I don’t think he’d actively interfere. Seems to me he wants the Beast stopped as bad as anyone. He may grumble about us, but I’d bet on his cooperation.” Rok shook his head skeptically.

  “He’s a dick,” Morgan said, her eyes still glued to the screen, where multiple windows showed various waveforms and charts.

  “Didn’t say he wasn’t,” I said. “But I don’t think he’ll cause us a problem.”

  “Coyote’s balls,” said Rok. “Will you look at all that paper?” The stack of files on the table was a good three inches thick. “I’ve never seen a city use this much paper.”

  Morgan said, “Hemp paper. There are huge hemp farms to the northeast of Bay City. Acre of hemp produces as much paper as ten acres of trees, and you get a new crop every four months.”

  “So Bay City doesn’t care how much they use,” said Rok. “Amazing.” I joined him as he opened up the sheaf of files. Here was Auden’s report on his encounter with the Beast, the one eyewitness we had so far, aside from the fragmented testimony of the shade of Chief Adams.

  Auden’s description said the Beast was over six feet, two hundred pounds or so, very powerful, unnaturally fast. Bald, with the mark he’d left at the scenes on his forehead—whether tattoo, birthmark, or paint, Auden hadn’t been able to tell. With claws, and something odd about the eyes. Auden had speculated that he might be a mutant. I had thought mutants were barred from the city, but Gage had informed me they were only required to register themselves.

  The muties lived mostly out in the zones. That’s where they came from, after all. In the Great Crash there had been a nuke dropped, and there were areas beyond the zones where it still wasn’t safe for any living being to go; you’d die of the burning sickness. Scientists said that same energy changed human genes so they’d produce mutants, which was why they mostly appeared in the zones.

  You hear ancient legends of mutants with strange powers, but I haven’t seen that very often. Mostly, muties are just shaped weirdly, or missing something, or have some strangeness about them that cripples or disadvantages them. Occasionally it gives them advantages as well, but generally mental ones—they’re outstanding at mathematics or pattern recognition or something. Usually there’s some physical problem to go along with it. Very rarely, it gave them some physical edge: great size or strength, night sight, claws, whatever. I’d only seen that sort of thing a few times, but of course those were the types of things th
at got people talking, telling stories; so that was the popular impression of muties in the cities, where they weren’t seen as often.

  Some folks pity them, some despise them. Me, I figure they got dealt a lousy hand, but they’re mostly like the rest of us on the inside. Unfortunately, I’ve seen the insides of enough of them to know.

  The Beast Auden had seen, with his size and claws, could have been a mutie, but if so he was a rare one. Something the shade had said made me think the Beast was a shapeshifter, instead. Shifting your shape was an acquired skill; shapeshifters were made, not born. It wasn’t one of those apparently occult powers that muties were sometimes born with. A shapeshifter was a magic user, which could possibly imply other uses of magic as well, though that wasn’t a given. Changing shape was a major operation. To do it well took lots of training, will, determination; it occupied lots of your time, so most shapeshifters I’d encountered weren’t exceptionally skilled at other types of magic. They tended to be specialists.

  Patrolling the streets, Auden had come across the Beast at his work—killing a professional harlot named Suzi Mascarpone. It was the first time anyone had seen the killer. The investigator had been certain he had hit the Beast with all three rounds, yet the killer had jumped up again, disarmed the investigator, and then run off. It wasn’t likely an experienced investigator would be wrong about hitting his target. It was possible the killer could recover quickly from wounds by shifting just the flesh around them, but it would take enormous energy and concentration. More likely the Beast had been wearing body armor, or the shape he’d shifted to might have had its own built-in armor: thick, tough hide covering its vitals.

  Reading between the lines of the report, it seemed almost as if the Beast were playing with Auden, taunting him. The fact that he’d done that, and refrained from killing the investigator when he probably could have done so fairly easily, along with the leaving of a mark near each victim, suggested a definite agenda. The harlot, Mascarpone, had been his intended victim and the investigator had not; the Beast had killed only his target.