“My mother is dead.”
“Well,” she said, “I suppose in some sense that may be true. Certainly I am not that innocent, confused young girl who gave birth to you. She did truly die, many years ago. And I can’t even truthfully say that she ever lived in this body. After all, science tells us that our sense of bodily continuity is mistaken. Every cell in the body dies and is replaced over the course of seven years. So this is, what? The fifth new model we’ve each occupied since you came into this world as a squalling babe?
“Even so, your very newest cells contain my DNA. There is some continuity after all, isn’t there?” She held a hand up before her. “These seven-years-new hands bear the same fingerprints the old ones did, unless I make a point of changing them. I’ll bet that just like that baby, you have the same little mole under your left arm, and the same crook in the ridge of flesh that runs from your arsehole to your balls.”
I was trying to keep my expression neutral, but I must have shown some reaction to this. Or she wanted me to think I had; I truly wasn’t sure which.
She smiled. “What, you didn’t think I’d washed your arse, rubbed the sleep gum from your eyes, wiped your spittle and snot and puke? You were too young to remember, of course. But you’re a Railwalker now, and a Brick at that. You could reclaim those memories, if you chose to.”
It was true. We were taught a technique for recovering lost memories—any memory, no matter how deep or clouded over. We can even work this technique on others. Not that it was something I felt inclined to use here and now, about this subject.
She looked down again at the body. “Tell me, Railwalker, are shapeshifters born, or are they made? I suppose that nature versus nurture debate is old hat to a sophisticated Railwalker like you. But then, you aren’t really a shapeshifter yourself, are you? Oh, I’m sure you’ve become a wolf on occasion, maybe even done crow a time or two. They all do. It’s probably a requirement these days. But that’s just borrowing another creature’s shape. True shapeshifting, creating your own new and original shape, crafted to meet your needs, that’s an art even the Railwalkers haven’t mastered.”
“I am what I am,” I said. “It suits me.”
“And that’s all what you am? ‘What I am’? Not ‘that I am’? You are too modest, crow son. Besides, Popeye, are you not also the manifestation of Soul-Are?”
“For that matter, so are you,” I said. “So was your son the Beast. Didn’t stop me from killing him. Won’t stop me from killing you, if you force me to it.”
She smiled. “I suppose you could try,” she said, and stepped away from the body, her sword raised.
I raised my borrowed sword, and a youthful voice cried, “Stop!”
To my left stood Rochelle Roth, pointing the air-powered gun at me. “You’re not going to hurt my teacher,” she said.
I stared at her. We’d thought her kidnapped, but it now seemed she had gone willingly. She couldn’t think this was a field trip. Had her teacher brainwashed her? Turned her against her own father?
“You don’t understand—” I started.
“Put down your sword,” she demanded.
Hannah Caine glided to her side. “Best do as she says, son,” she said. She turned to Rochelle, taking the weapon from her hand. “That’s all right, Rochelle, you did well. I’ll take that.” She pointed the weapon at me. “Put it down.”
I slowly placed Auden’s family sword on the floor.
“Kick it away.” I did. “Good. Now, the guard must have given you cuffs of some sort. Put them on.”
They had. The guard used plastic handcuffs that were similar to cable ties, and Auden had given me several of them. I wasn’t going admit this to Caine, so shook my head. To my surprise, this caused her to lower the gun. Then I realized that she was casually pointing it at Rochelle Roth’s leg. Rochelle didn’t seem to notice.
“Come, Railwalker,” Hannah Caine said with a smile. “We wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
With a sinking feeling in my gut, I slowly reached into my tunic pocket. The fabric was like sandpaper on the raw skin of my hand, but I refused to let that show on my face. I brought out a pair of cuffs and placed them around my wrists. I left them loose enough that I could still slip out of them, though I didn’t expect that would fool Hannah Caine for long.
“Good,” she said. “Now lie on the floor, hands out in front of you.” As I complied, she turned to Rochelle. “Go wait in the parlor, there’s a good girl. I’ll be along shortly.”
With a last glance at me, Rochelle left the room. Hannah Caine walked to where I lay on the floor. With the gun to the back of my head, she put one knee on my back, and then leaned forward and jerked the cuffs tight. The tightening of the plastic against my scaledust-burned flesh was agony, and I nearly screamed. She stepped away from me. I tried to get up, and she stepped forward and delivered a kick to my midsection. I fell, tumbling into the shards of glass from the shattered door.
“You should have been my Varger,” she snarled, “should have been the instrument of my vengeance. In-stead you killed him, destroyed my work, and would destroy me if you could. You, my own blood, a whimpering hireling for Micah fucking Roth.” She delivered another kick. “You are beneath contempt.”
Groaning in pain, I rolled over, holding my burned hands away from her. I grabbed one of the glass shards, hiding it with my body as I applied it to the cuff. The glass cut my fingers but I didn’t care; it was less than the pain of the plastic on my burned wrists.
“They’re coming, aren’t they?” she asked. “Gage, Auden, your partner, and a whole phalanx of city guard with prodigious firepower.”
“Yeah, they’re right behind me.”
“Nonsense. My creatures would have warned me.”
Her creatures? Did she mean the bay gators? Or the centipede crab thing? Was she somehow in control of them? Or at least in communication with them? Or were there other creatures as well?
“We have half an hour at least before they arrive,” she went on. “What should I do with you in the meantime, my prodigal? Perhaps I should take your arm, as you took my Varger’s arm. Let you bleed to death, as he did.”
I was through the cuffs; my hands were free. I kept them together, showing no sign, keeping the plastic cuffs draped across my wrists. She stepped toward me again and raised the air gun. I tensed, then rolled to my feet. Pain shot through my wounded leg. I refused to believe it wouldn’t hold. I kicked out at her just as she pulled the trigger.
I wasn’t fast enough. She would have killed me, except that instead of firing, the gun made a popping noise and exploded. A spring and the upper casing flew up and the air canister shot down out of the grip and ricocheted off the floor as my kick connected with her arm and sent the rest of Auden’s broken gun flying.
Hannah Caine barely flinched. Before the remains of the gun had even left one hand, the other was bringing her sword around at me. I dove under the strike, fetching up against the table, where the drapery lay. I grabbed the cloth and spun it toward her like a matador’s cape, then let go as I stumbled and fell within arm’s reach of the sword I had earlier kicked away. She batted the drapery aside, but I’d gained my feet, sword in hand, and we both froze, eyes locked. I could feel the blood running down my leg and soaking my boot. That wasn’t good. Blood loss would weaken me quickly. My face and hands burned from the scaledust. My breathing was painful, and purple spots roamed through my blurry vision. Dammit, I had inhaled some of the scaledust. How much, I wasn’t sure. Probably it didn’t matter; I’d never heard of anyone surviving inhaling even a little. In any case, I wasn’t going to be much good for very long. Get this over as fast as possible, I thought.
She leaped across the intervening space between us, her sword flashing out in a flurry of cuts that drove me back against the wall. Sloppy of me letting her surprise me like that. For a moment I’d gotten arrogant, thought of myself as the warrior, and her as an old woman, a pencil pusher and a bureaucrat. She must be what, seventy? B
ut I should have known better. Now, as before, I was entirely on the defensive, without a split second to riposte. The Beast had amazed me with his speed, but his mother was even faster. One moment she was bearing down on me with cut after vicious cut, and the next she was standing across the room again, with barely a flutter of her robes to suggest she’d ever moved at all.
She nodded slowly. “You’re almost as good as my poor Varger. Better by definition, I suppose, since you killed him. It’s a shame I didn’t take you away from Doc when you were still young, suggestible, malleable. I could have molded you into such a weapon.”
I thought again about what she’d done to the child who became Varger Caine, the Beast. “What are you?” I asked.
“I am that I am.” She laughed. “Poor little Wolf, you want to codify and define. You want to put me in a little box, a pigeonhole with a neat little label.”
But her eyes answered my question. They looked like the eyes of the Old Ones I’ve met, like Wolf, or Crow or Coyote. She was no longer human, but something primal. A spirit, even a goddess, perhaps: Kali, Baba Yaga, Roggenmutter, the devouring mother, vicious and angry and mad as only the gods can be mad. And I had killed her son and avatar. Oh, boy. Lucky me.
“Oh, fuck this,” she said. And she began to change.
I’d never seen a shapeshifter change so quickly. It wasn’t instantaneous, but it was quick, like watching time-lapse photography on fast forward. Her form was similar to the Beast’s: large, muscular, with horny plates standing in for armor. Where he had been bald, however, she had a mane of white fur.
She charged, drove me back, her cuts coming so fast and fluid it was like a dozen swords coming at me at once. I parried like a madman, retreating, but one got through, then another, stinging pain and blood springing from my forearm, now my thigh. Then I could feel the wall was behind me. I dove under her next cut to roll to my feet behind her, but she had already spun about. I backpedalled, bleeding from both of her cuts and the gator bite. My head was throbbing again. I was getting intermittent flashes of light. I felt cold and tired, probably from the blood loss. My face and hands burned, and her shape was becoming blurrier. This was no good. I couldn’t afford to lose this one.
She charged again with an overhead cut. In parrying, the force of it drove me to the floor. When she reversed her blade to come down with a thrust, I risked everything on a dicey move sensei had shown me once. As her blade came down I rolled into her, against her feet. She stumbled over me and her blade point hit the floor. I rolled forward again, snapping the blade out of her hand and bringing my own blade up. Her momentum carried her forward, impaling her on it. She screamed and straightened, taking the blade with her, out of my hands. I rolled away, grabbing up the sword she’d dropped. It quivered with battle fire energy.
I rolled to my feet to see the creature that had been Helena Caine kneeling, impaled by Auden’s blade. She reached up and grasped the blade, and began slowly to pull. I gaped. Her breath was an extended growl, her face a rictus of pain, as inch by inch, like a man pushing an auto up a hill, she drew the blade out of her body.
Then I realized what she was doing. The dying Beast had tried to heal his severed arm, and his mother was now healing her wound around the blade as she withdrew it. If she had pulled it out quickly she would have died of blood loss like her son, unable to heal the wound fast enough. Withdrawing it slowly, the blade itself prevented the torrent of blood, and she could seal and heal the wound behind it. For a moment I could do nothing but stare, amazed by the audacity, the determination, and the force of will involved in such an effort. Her face was a mask of pain and concentration, her knuckles white, blood running freely from her fingers where she grasped the razor-sharp blade.
My trance broke when I noticed the smoke rising from the metal. Her blood on the steel was hissing and bubbling like acid, and where the blade had been inside her body, the razor edge was now corroded, uneven. Her own words had warned me. She was no longer human. There was no word for what she was now.
Before she could get Auden’s blade free, I shook myself, stepped forward, and slashed with the Osoto. The ancient sword sliced through the muscle and tissue of the creature’s throat, stopping with a chunk as it bit into the spine. Her growl became a hiss. Bubbles appeared in the blood that gouted from the wound. I drew the blade back and slashed from the other side, cutting upward now. This time it passed through all the way. Her head toppled and fell to the floor with a thump. Blood sprayed into the air as the body slowly collapsed.
It seemed like an eternity that I stood frozen in place, sword still extended in the follow-through from the cut. I had killed Hannah Caine, I had killed a monster. Two monsters, my mother and my half-brother. Blood will tell, my Pa had said. What kind of son kills his own mother? My childhood fears were confirmed. I was a monster, just like them.
I lowered the sword. Some part of my mind half expected to see her hands begin groping toward the head. Some atavistic fear whispered that I could cut the body into small pieces and each piece would still live, still creep after me, reaching out to claim revenge. But it did not happen. The body lay still, spilling a torrent of blood out onto the wooden floor. Slowly the torrent became a pulse, and then a trickle. The dark red pool spread across the dusty floorboards. Oddly, it didn’t seem to eat the wood as it had the steel.
When I looked up I saw for a moment the image of the spirit I had always thought of as my mother. “Who or what the hell are you?” I cried. “Are you my mother? Or was she?” The figure simply spread her hands, shook her head, and vanished. I was left staring at a paneled wall. What the hell did that mean?
My legs were shaking. I fell to my knees. My head pounded, and the lightning flashes were back. My back ached. My arm and thigh throbbed from Caine’s cuts, as did the bay gator bite on my lower leg. My skin burned from the scaledust, and every breath was a labored bellows feeding a hot furnace. I looked down to see one arm and one leg soaked in blood. The leg was near useless. I tried to focus through the haze. I should bind up the cuts Caine gave me. How much blood had I lost? Was I going into shock? I wasn’t shivering yet. I couldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t relax into a nice, oblivious shock state. Not yet. There was more to be done still. For a moment I couldn’t remember what.
I knew I had promises to keep. What had I promised? I had promised I would look after Auden’s family sword, right. I already blew that one. That sword lay now with only its tip inside the creature’s chest. Most of the blade was now corroded through. I looked at the Osoto in my hand. It, too, had begun to sizzle from the blood. Small pieces dropped from its edge as it corroded. I wiped it on Caine’s robe, careful not to get her blood on myself; if it dissolved metal, what would it do to flesh? Even the pressure of wiping it proved too much for the blade. Its temper and integrity had been undermined by the creature’s caustic blood. It snapped off halfway down. I wiped the broken end again and held it up. The blood seemed to have stopped eating the metal.
Promises to keep, right. And miles to go before I sleep, or something like that. What promises? Roth’s daughter. Of course. I was here to get Rochelle Roth. Using the broken sword like a cane, I struggled to my feet. Fortunately, the blade held my weight. I turned, swaying, to see Rochelle Roth standing in the doorway, staring at me. I wondered that she didn’t run screaming away. My face and hands must have looked like raw hamburger; I was dirty, disheveled, and bleeding. Surely I looked more like a monster to her than her Hannah Caine had.
“You killed my teacher,” she said. “Will you now kill me, too?”
“No,” I said, “of course not. I’m here to take you home.”
“Ah, yes,” she said. “The hero come to rescue the princess. Just like in the fairy tales. I suppose you expect to marry me, and rule my father’s kingdom.”
“What?” I said, none too brightly. “No. But I think your father will be here with the city guard soon.”
Hannah Caine had been right. It was about a half an hour.
53. WOLF
We went to all the funerals, of course. Gage wouldn’t hear of a mass funeral, and Roth didn’t fight him on that, so it took days. We performed the Chant for the Dead, and the Passage to the Crows, where the soul of the dead is offered into the keeping of the Crows for transport to the Land of the Dead. Morgan said she’d be okay doing the Passage for Robles, but I did it myself. I felt like I owed her that, at least. We’d already done the ceremony for Rok, although there would be another one when his ashes arrived in New Frisco.
A lot of this I passed through in a sort of a daze. And I was avoiding anything stronger than aspirin, since my natural state of shock was altering enough. One of the things you learn as a Railwalker, and as a Brick especially, is to manage to seem normal and attentive when you’re actually in an altered state. Falling down with your eyes rolling up may be impressive in a shamanic healing, but it doesn’t encourage confidence in your order if it happens in a public ceremony like a wedding or funeral, or a Blessing of the Crops. So you drill, and you learn to present as normal when you’re far from it. I was like a zombie, going through the motions, but only the closest ones—Morgan, Roth, maybe Weldt—realized this. Morgan knew what was up with me, of course, but I had not told the city boss or his advisor what killing Hannah Caine had really meant to me. Hell, I wasn’t sure myself.
And of course, that face kept appearing in shadows and reflected in windows, and overlaid on the faces of people who looked nothing like the spirit I had believed was my mother’s.
I’m not given to a lot of wallowing in guilty feelings. I’ve done things I wasn’t proud of. The earliest ones were done out of youthful stupidity, the later ones out of the belief that it was somehow for the greater good. In my career as a Railwalker I’d killed a number of men, a couple of women, some animals, and several creatures not entirely of this world, some of which weren’t even in the Concordance Monstrum. I remember all of their faces, even those of the animals and the unknown creatures. I remember all their names, at least all the ones that had names that I heard. Their souls are passed on and any shades have been dispersed, so when they do haunt me now I know it’s not coming from them, but from inside my own mind.
Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman Page 34