Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman

by Duncan Eagleson

  Could the Beast have been his own son? I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to think that. Hell, I didn’t want to think that the madwoman who had raised that monster, had engineered this campaign of killing and revenge, might be my mother. Was the Beast my half-brother? And I had killed him? Gods damn. Maybe I could form a club with Auden.

  “Thank you for your candor, Boss Roth,” said Gage. He shook himself, and turned to me. “We should get moving.”

  Auden and I departed the tower with two uniformed guards, in a full-sized auto. On the way, the questions screamed in my mind. What did Morgan’s discovery mean? The photos were both clearly my mother, and looked exactly like the picture in my crane bag, like that spirit that had saved my life several times. Yet if my mother had become Helena Hebat, and then married Wendell Crichton, who or what was the spirit I’d seen? Not a sending from a living woman, surely, for a sending appears the real age and appearance of the sender, while my ghostly visitor had never aged. If my mother was dead, and my visitant truly was her spirit, who was this Helena Hebat Crichton, who had become Hannah Caine? Why was my mother’s picture on her ID?

  Since I couldn’t construct any logical answers to these questions, I slowed my breathing and silently repeated a chant for a while, giving the whole question over to my unconscious, hopefully leaving my conscious mind free to focus on the solvable problems of here and now: pursuing and capturing the woman responsible for all this violence. It worked. Mostly.

  Across the Fourth Street Bridge, we entered the south side. Shorter buildings, adobe brick and plasteel, strip malls. It wasn’t as grim as Alphabet City, but it had its own gritty, depressing charm. The Accord Hotel was one of the taller buildings, a full six floors, built in the Velasco style, which was popular eighty years ago. The adobe bricks were tinted a rust red, the plascrete ornamentation around doors and windows and the edge of the roof a dull gray. The metal frame on the wire-reinforced plasglass door was probably dark brown originally, though now it was a muddy non-color where it wasn’t chipped and rusted. Graffiti edged around the corners from the alleys on either side.

  Knowing the skills of the Beast, and what abilities this woman had shown, I had to go first. None of Gage’s men would have stood a chance. And my Bear wasn’t with me, except perhaps in spirit. I’d have to be my own Bear now, as many other Bricks had done before me. I drew my gun and stepped through the door. Auden followed right behind me.

  The carpet in the lobby was sticky. I advanced on the cowering desk clerk, keeping him covered. “Where’s Caine?” I demanded.

  His eyes got even bigger, if that was possible. He caught my eye for just a moment, then stared down the barrel of the gun.

  “P-p-penthouse...” he stammered.

  We left Rogers to cover him and rode up to the top floor. We burst through the door, guns at the ready, to find ourselves facing an empty suite. She’d been here. Bloodstained clothes littered the place. Some power bar wrappers and a couple of empty water bottles. And nothing else.

  Auden and I looked at each other.

  “Where?” I asked.

  Auden shook his head, shrugged. “She must have places that aren’t on the books, or are in some other name.”

  Auden’s radio buzzed. He answered it, and cursed roundly. Then he said, “We’re just clearing up here. No, nothing. Yeah, meet you there.” He switched the radio off and turned back to me. “Rochelle Roth is missing.”

  “Caine’s got her.”

  He nodded grimly. “That’s Gage’s assumption. Turns out the girl had a lesson this morning and never came back from it.”

  “If she’s not going to kill the girl immediately, she’ll have to stash her somewhere.”

  “Why not kill her now?”

  “I’m sure she’d love to kill her, but she’s more valuable as bait for Roth than as a body. It’s Roth she really wants. She can always kill the daughter later. Or better yet, in front of Roth.”

  “You really think this bitch is that sick-minded?”

  “Auden, the Beast was her idea, her creation. What do you think?”

  We stood in silence for a moment, considering.

  “What about Crichton’s old properties?” I asked. “Maybe a remote estate, a summer house, something like that?”

  “No,” he said. “Crichton’s estate was razed. There’s a factory there now.” He sighed. “Shit,” he said, his head coming up sharply. “Cali Isle. Come on!”

  Trusting his instinct for the local scene, I followed him out of the hotel. “Kali Isle?” I asked, once we were under way. “As in the Death Goddess?”

  “No, Cali as in ‘Hot Cali.’”

  I looked at him and waited.

  “There’s an island a couple of miles or so to the south,” he said. “Supposedly haunted. Fishermen avoid it like the plague, but every so often some teenagers row over to it and scare the bejeezus out of themselves. I guess it was part of the mainland at one time. There was a luxury hotel out there, the Hotel California. Supposedly owned by a famous band who were into some demonic cult, back before the Crash. Somehow it survived the quakes of the Crash, but there was a lot of damage, too, and the sign lost some letters. So now it says ‘Hot Cali.’ Used to be people called it ‘Hot Cali Island,’ but it’s just Cali Isle these days.” He glanced over and trailed off, seeing my angry expression. “What?” he asked.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and we hustled into the auto.

  “What?” he repeated as Guardsman Rogers gunned the engine.

  “You’ve got a supernatural killer on your hands, and a reputedly haunted island a stone’s throw from the city, and you didn’t see fit to mention this?”

  “Didn’t think of it.” He shrugged.

  “So what made you think of it now?”

  “Crichton owned it. Had part of it cleaned up and refurbished at one time, but somebody died at one of his parties out there or something and he closed it down again. If Caine is really Helena Crichton...”

  “She’d know the place,” I finished for him. “And it would make a perfect bolt-hole.”

  48. THE ISLAND

  She walks through the corridors of the ruined hotel. The cavernous room she enters holds many ancient treasures, all, she thinks, valuable to others for their monetary worth, but their true value meaningless to any but her. So this, she thinks, is what her life has come to. A final stand, in a rotting building amongst the meaningless trappings of former glory. She could kill the Railwalker, probably, and may yet. But what would that avail? The tyrant Roth is without honor. If the Railwalker dies, he will send another mercenary, and then another. She might kill them all, one by one, but what will that mean? Eventually they will come in force and drag her down by sheer numbers. She is old now, beyond her prime, and there will be no others like Varger, her favored son.

  It was the Railwalker, she thought, who had done this. And he her own blood, too. Without him her plan would have succeeded. Roth would be beneath her heel, and she would be the true boss of the city, returning it to its former glory. Now that glory would never happen.

  It was infuriating. If she had only broken free when she was younger, rid herself of that small-minded, conventional bitch she had been earlier in life, she might have made the Railwalker hers as surely as Varger had been. Instead he had grown up to become her nemesis. Galling.

  Ah, well, she could not have done, in those days. The boy was born several years before she had made her way to the Mayacan mountains of the south, performed the needful rituals. When she had cast off those useless parts of herself, expelled them forever, her conscience, her empathy, her compassion, she had seen them personified briefly, retreating before her new self’s fierceness. And the freedom that followed its dispersal...

  And it was dispersed, she was sure. The twinges she’d experienced since, the momentary convictions that the little bitch was looking over her shoulder and judging her, or that she was out there, somewhere, doing... something. That had all been nonsense, a natural anxiety provoked
by the seriously dangerous nature of the game she was playing.

  At the other end of the corridor a form appears. The vision is a woman, young, elegant, in a white blouse with the collar turned up.

  Be gone, ghost, she tells this vision. You are long dead, and have no power here.

  The figure vanishes, leaving her alone in the dank hallway.

  49. WOLF

  Cresting the hill on the deserted coast road, Rogers slowed and our auto rolled down the other side of the hill, the electric motor only a quiet purr. Before us stretched the salt marsh, a field of fog with stands of reeds and cordgrass punctuating it. On the horizon, the dark shape of an island, which became less prominent as we descended, finally fading into the fog. Rogers extinguished the headlights and turned on dim yellow fog lights. Auden sat forward in the shotgun seat, peering into the darkness and fog. “Slow,” he said, though Rogers was already proceeding slowly. “I see him.”

  Ahead, a flicker of orange light. The auto pulled over near where a man stood lighting a cigarette. Behind the man a runabout was visible, a trailer linked to its tail with two boats lashed to it. The man nodded as Auden got out of the car, then turned back to the trailer and began unlashing the boats.

  We had agreed that a frontal assault, driving to the island in a guard launch, would accomplish little. Hannah Caine would have an escape hatch arranged, and if she knew she was being raided she might kill the girl. Our only alternative was to approach with stealth. Auden had called a man he knew, a fellow who owed him a favor, and arranged to have two flat-bottomed punts brought to the edge of the salt marsh. We’d be approaching the hotel and the island from behind.

  The boats were set afloat in the shallows of the salt marsh creek. Auden walked to the trunk of the auto, then returned with a sword, which he held out to me.

  “You might be wanting this,” he said. “A little better quality than the standard guard issue.” He was right. I’d been feeling half naked without Windsteel, and had requisitioned one from the city guard armory, but they were mass-produced blades, nowhere near the quality I was used to.

  I took the blade, drew it partway from the sheath. It was a Sierra blade, more than a century old, unless I missed my guess. It might not have been Windsteel, bonded to me in ceremony, but it was a superb blade, beautifully balanced.

  “It’s called Mist Razor,” Auden said. “Been in the family a long time. It’ll do more good in your hands than on my mantelpiece. Just take good care of it, will you?”

  I groped for words, but there didn’t seem to be any appropriate to the moment. I nodded.

  He turned toward the boats, and I removed the guard sword. I placed it in the auto and slid the Sierra blade into my back rig. We climbed into the boats. Auden’s guy returned to his runabout and settled down with another cigarette, a flashlight, and a magazine.

  We slipped into the fog, floating down the channels between ranks of tall cordgrass and reeds, and within seconds we could no longer see the shore or the glow of the man’s cigarette.

  The channels of the salt marsh were like twisting corridors, walls of tall cordgrass looming up out of the fog on either side. The scent of low tide stung our noses. The water was shallow, and once or twice there was a shudder and a low shushing sound as we glided over a barely submerged sandbar. A couple of times we had to use our oars like barge poles to move forward. Then we were out into the deeper channels, and began to make better speed.

  I heard a faint splash and turned, just in time to see a large, dark form explode from the water beside the boat following ours. It sailed over the boat, snatching Rowlands up on the way, and disappeared into the water on the other side with a louder splash.

  “Fuck!” Auden gasped. “Bay gator!”

  Gator? The thing had jaws like an alligator, but its body had been more dolphin-like.

  “Get down!” hissed Rogers from the front of our boat. As I turned back to him, another dark form surged from the water. This one didn’t have the force or momentum of the first, but it grabbed Rogers in its maw and fell back, trying to drag him with it into the dark water. Rogers braced himself, and the two of them hung half in, half out of the boat.

  I’d never seen or heard of a creature like this. The thing was like a cross between a dolphin and a crocodile, with slick, dark-gray skin, a torpedo-shaped body, and a long snout full of nasty teeth. I couldn’t see its back end, which was underwater, but its front had vestigial limbs with sturdy claws, with which it grabbed at Rogers as well. In one movement I drew the blade Auden had loaned me and lurched forward, slashing down at the thing. My cut mostly severed the head from the body, and its jaws opened in a silent scream, letting Rogers fall back into the boat. It hung for a moment, body in the water, head in the boat, a raw strip of flesh and muscle connecting them across the gunwale. Rogers kicked at the head and the whole creature vanished into the black waters.

  I turned back to look at Auden as the first creature surged up again. Auden took aim with his oversized gun. I heard a sound like that of an arrow, and the bay gator’s head exploded. The remains fell back into the water and silence descended again.

  Auden raised the pistol. “Old Silent but Deadly... Air powered, loaded with hollow points.” He shrugged. “I thought we wanted to be quiet.” He scanned the water as if seeking other targets.

  “Pairs,” Rogers muttered. “Bay gators hunt in pairs.”

  His arm was shredded, pumping blood into the bottom of the boat. He had taken his uniform belt off and was fumbling at making a tourniquet of it. I stepped to his side, knelt, and finished the job, using an oarlock to leverage it tight.

  Auden had pulled his boat alongside. “He needs help,” he said. He was right. Rogers wouldn’t survive without medical attention, and soon. “We’ll have to take him back. Backup will be here in a few minutes.”

  “You take him back,” I said. “I’m going in.”

  “Alone? All due respect, Railwalker, I’ve seen what you can do, and it’s impressive, but...”

  “Rochelle Roth is in there alone,” I said. “She’s only twelve.”

  “You said Caine wouldn’t kill her yet.”

  “I was guessing. What if I was wrong? We can’t take that chance.”

  It was true I’d just been guessing about Hannah Caine’s motives. For all I knew the girl was already dead. But I was like a man riding a bull; the gate had been opened, the bull released, and there was no letting go at this point. I had to go on. Had to meet whatever was waiting for me on that island.

  Finally Auden nodded. We both glanced at Rogers, and then Auden stepped over into my boat, and I took his. It was easier than trying to move Rogers.

  “Take this,” said Auden, holding out the air gun. I took it, and he held out a hand.

  “Good hunting, Railwalker.”

  We shook.

  “Take good care of Rogers,” I said. As Auden maneuvered my boat around, I took the oars of his and struck out.

  50. WOLF

  Soon the air freshened a bit and I realized I was nearing the estuary. I backed the oars and brought the boat to a halt. Before me the reeds fell away. The fog hung above an expanse of open water between me and the island, a dark shape rising out of the fog. Beyond the island I could hear surf.

  I would have to be even more careful now. The fog would help, but I would no longer have the cordgrass for cover. I examined the air gun. I hadn’t used one like this before. A compressed air canister jutted from the handle like an extended magazine, while the actual magazine was mounted in front of the trigger. Two rounds were already missing from the magazine. I wondered how much air it had. I was guessing one canister powered one magazine’s worth, and probably it was full before Auden used it tonight. But that was two guesses, and I wouldn’t want to bet my life on them if I had a choice. The thing looked cheaply manufactured. No telling how reliable it was.

  The island was an elongated teardrop shape, nearly a peninsula, as the southern point of the teardrop nearly reached the mainland.
Crichton had built a causeway off the southern point to connect to the mainland, which still stood, though it was seldom used. The estuary and the marshes spread out to the east, and to the north the estuary deepened, then joined the ocean in the west. On the horizon clouds were gathered, and I didn’t like their bruised purple color. There was scaledust incoming, and quickly—even as I watched, the clouds grew larger and closer. I crossed the open water as quickly as I could.

  Auden had mentioned two possible landing points on the landward side, but if the investigator knew of them, Caine would too, and she’d have them watched. The northern extent of the landward side was cliff and rocks. I headed for that. Normally I wouldn’t take a boat in among the rocks like that, but the estuary chop was minimal, and I was in no danger of being smashed on them. Coasting through the fogbound rocks was like sailing through one of those Chinese paintings, where the mountains rear up out of fog banks.

  I found a spot where there was a foot or so of shingle between the rocks and beached the boat. I was about to tie off to a rock when a scuttling noise made me turn, drawing the blade.

  Facing me was one of the strangest mutants I’d ever seen. It had a body like an enormous centipede, fully eight feet long, armored with shell-like segments. Half of its length reared up like a cobra about to strike. At the top, its head looked like a crab, its last pair of legs, closest to the head, like huge crab claws. It hissed at me like a leaky steam fitting and lunged.

  I sidestepped and brought the sword down, catching the crab claw leg at the shoulder joint and severing it. The thing whipped around, scary fast, and slashed my leg with the tip of its other claw, though it didn’t catch a grip. It hissed again and reared back, and I lunged after. I drove the sword into its throat and levered hard, nearly severing the head. Black blood gushed from the wound, and the thing collapsed. I collapsed as well.