Daac’s people began tracking me as soon as I left the gaudy Mueno rugs and stink of mesa spice behind. His patch was a portion of The Tert where the villas ceased to run in concentric semicircles and stood in rows like tenements. Tower Town. Inside the buildings most of the walls were smashed down to give space to large collective rooms, biz and one well-equipped medi-lab.
Stolowski Ree and Mei Sheong had a tiny pied-à-terre in amongst it all. A place where she sat on the window ledge like a disdainful feline, sniffing her incense, sipping psylocybin tea and being worshipped by Sto.
Some women don’t know a good thing when it lived with them.
Sto would die for her.
But Mei . . . looked after Mei. And when he wanted it . . . Loyl Daac.
My escorts picked me up a few steps into the tenements. Without speaking, I let them steer me in and out of conjoined buildings until a long stair climb clued me to where I was being taken.
Daac waited for me on the roof, amongst the sleeper cocoons and mic dishes. The view from the top was something I didn’t get to see very often, filthy and beautiful in one sweep of the eye. At midday the sky promised blue and delivered less. In the far west the sea slubbed grey along the coastline; to the east, the oily brown sliver of the Filder River was a more tenuous landmark, its poisons eating into the side of The Tert.
Daac like to come up here, a legacy from his days as press-ganged labour out on the Bitter Plains. It might have seemed like claustrophobia but for Daac it was a reminder of why he was on a one-man crusade to bring The Tert back to its rightful ownership.
His gens.
His place.
He had a databank of bloodlines longer than the Filder. They were the ones who would triumph. According to his plan. Now the register was in my possession and he wanted it back. I just as surely wanted to keep it as a safeguard. What you might call precarious negotiating ground.
I squinted into the sun, tense and aware that I stank with stale exertion, and located him standing close to the edge of the roof as if he might walk off into the air.
He probably thought he could.
Of course one little push and . . . the snipers that guarded him from all points of the compass would turn me into a sieve. I could have scried them out but I didn’t bother. I wasn’t going to kill Daac. Not right now, anyway.
‘Parrish?’
‘Loyl?’
He turned and my gut flipped about like a suffocating blowfish. How did he do that to me? Was it the ’zine cover face? Or the too-white teeth? Or the smooth, dark skin? Or the restless energy that crackled around him?
Or maybe it was that damn evening in Viva when he’d barely needed to pleasure me. A few simple caresses and I’d prematurely orgasmed and he’d walked away from me knowing my barefaced desire for him. Body chemistry sucked. The memory sent flushes across my skin.
‘You’ve got something of mine. Did you bring it?’ He didn’t smile.
I shook my head. ‘I think it’s safer with me.’
A dark flush of anger warmed his skin and I rushed on, not wanting to send him too crazy straight off.
‘Actually, I’ve come to talk,’ I said. ‘We may have a problem.’
‘We? There will never be a we while you keep what is mine.’
I gave him a deceptively airy smile. ‘And I will destroy your bloodlines register if you don’t listen.’
OK. OK, so much for no antagonism.
He became dangerously still. ‘Come, stand over here, Parrish.’
The roof looked rotten and splintered near his feet. I doubted it would bear our combined weight.
‘What in this universe makes you think I would do that?’
‘Don’t you trust me?’ he asked.
Never! ‘It depends.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘On?’
‘What’s in it for you.’
We eyed each other.
‘But I can see you’re not interested in what I’ve learned. So I guess I’ll just go then,’ I said.
I didn’t wait for his reply, but retraced my steps down into the building. If that didn’t get him talking to me then nothing would.
I went looking for Stolowski, giving my provocation time to boil.
My two escorts tagged along with me. From their faintly awed expressions, I guessed they’d got the gist of my conversation. I doubted anyone round here ever stuck it to the boss.
I strode up and down levels and in an out of doors, acting like I owned the place - until I found a room I recognised.
Medilab! Last time I’d been in there, Sto was in it recovering from exhaustion, dehydration and sore feet on account of me dragging him halfway around The Tert with no shoes.
‘I’m in real estate. Looking for an apartment,’ I told the lab’s door guards. I let my hands fall meaningfully to my holsters.
One of them aimed a semi-auto at my chest. ‘Cute,’ he said.
‘Your boss won’t be too happy about you blowing me out the side of the building. I’ve got something precious of his. Check with him.’
The door guards exchanged uncertain looks with the trailing escort. Somewhere in the silent communing they agreed not to kill me.
I strolled on through without a quiver.
The lab had gotten larger. More internal walls demolished. Now it took up most of the floor. Before I got to even twiddle a test tube, Daac burst in.
‘Parrish!’ His warning rang clear as the Vivacity water. ‘Don’t touch anything.’
‘See you’ve got all the comforts of home,’ I said innocently.
‘Out!’
I shrugged and shouldered past him into the corridor. He hussled along behind, breathing down my collar.
‘Whatever you want to say, make it quick. I have guests,’ he said.
Guests, eh? I heard some chanting from down the corridor on the other side and started to walk towards it.
‘You can’t go in there.’
Can’t go? Bad choice of words.
He might have been stronger and prettier than me but I was quicker in a straight line, and a whirlwind down a dim passage. I’d run the few steps, shoved the door wide open and inhaled the pungent smell of mushroom tea before he could swallow.
Shaman Mei was in session wrapped in a coat of many-fingered feathers.
I thought it a better look than her usual fluoro hiphuggers and high heels, until she casually shrugged it off on to the floor. Underneath it she was smeared in paint and oils and clothed only in a pair of grubby, woven sandals. Dimply butt, hard nipples and knowing smile.
She stared at me and snorted with laughter. ‘Your jacket get a fright?’
I scanned the room, resisting the urge to reach out and smooth the crinked and curling edges of the leather fringe.
Stolowski squatted next to her alongside two scrawny femmes about Mei’s age and a guy with long, beaded and boned plaits.
Against the window frame stood another femme - windows in the tenements, unlike the rest of the villas, still functioned - clad in a crimson headscarf, faded gypsy skirt over pants and scuffed combat boots. A spell pouch hung from her waist. Expensive face tattoos and a load of dangerous jewellery completed the effect. Deceptively fleshy, I decided. She could move quickly when she needed to.
She stared outside, shoulders slumped like the weight of her thoughts was crushing them.
I had a compulsion to see her face and stepped closer, stopping just short of Mei.
She, Sto and the young ones faced each other over a portable burner and blackened pan. The guy toked on something that smelt like weedkiller.
‘Hi, Parrish. Good to see you.’ Sto gave me a genuine smile.
I returned it in kind. I had a more than sizeable soft spot for him.
The femme by the window stiffened at the sound of my name and turned.
‘Those visions driving you crazy yet?’ asked Mei.
‘No more than everything else.’ I scowled, feeling the parasite stir inside. Maybe it remembered her attack.
‘You got yourself some new friends, Mei?’
Daac stepped up close behind me, uneven breath like he had a case of dirty sparkplugs.
‘Jenn, Lila and Crow-Call,’ Mei said curtly.
Crow-Call gave a lop-sided, cheerful grin, wagging his finger. ‘Heard all about you, babe. They say you gotta a bad rep-u-tay-shun.’
He was kinda cute, which stopped me from cuffing him. An innocent like Sto.
‘You forgot someone,’ I said.
The femme at the window stared openly at me now. The line of her body, the way she held herself, made me antsy - a don’t-fuck-with-me aura. I recognised it as easily as if she was wearing my face.
Mei picked up that we were facing off. But then Mei picked up on everything.
‘Leesa Tulu,’ said Mei. ‘Meet Parrish Plessis.’
Tulu! The name was like a blow to my body.
In three large steps I crossed the floor and knocked her flat, my knees pinning her chest. Her head banged down hard, but not hard enough to knock the malice and the tiniest sliver of satisfaction from her face. The woman was pleased to see me - in the ugliest kind of way.
In my cornersight Loyl lurched forward, the door guards took aim, and Mei pulled a knife.
I didn’t care. This woman was stealing shamans and making voodoo dolls of me and I wanted to know why.
‘The muscle you sent after me was damn cheap. And the coffin . . . was way too small,’ I said.
She gave me a smile - the kind that froze your heart and then smashed it with a sledgehammer. With startling strength she wrenched one arm free and gestured a violent sigla in the air. Her face contorted hideously. Eyes bulging, top lip curled back.
‘Orisa!’ she spat.
The world dimmed. Blackness came through my skull like an axe.
The Angel reared, enormous; a giant figure of screaming data. ‘Don’t let her in here, human. You will pay for it with your life.’
I came to from the blackout with a dry throat and stilettos tap dancing on my dendrons. I stared up into a face full of Loyl Daac, bent over and prodding at me like I was road kill. A quick glance told me I was tied to a bed.
Not any bed.
His bed.
‘For freak’s sake let me up,’ I bellowed.
‘You’ve annoyed me again, Parrish.’
Is that so?
He went on before I could spit my thought out. ‘Leesa Tulu is a powerful, respected shaman. She is my guest.’
‘Reach into my pants pocket,’ I told him.
He stopped short and stiffened. I never gave him invitations like that.
‘It’s not booby-trapped. There is something in there you have to see.’
Cautiously he felt around my pants.
I couldn’t stop an involuntary wriggle. His breath fanned me and his eyelashes were altogether too close for rational thoughts. I forced myself to breathe shallowly, not to get muzzy on his scent, and looked about for my pack. With a tiny wave of relief I saw it dumped by his comm.
Like Jamon’s place . . . my place . . . Daac’s comm cache took up a fair chunk of his room. Unlike mine there was not much room for anything else. A narrow cot in one corner, a tiny cooka and frij and a built-in with no door. Boots, socks and underwear tumbled out on to the floor. I felt embarrassed at the sight of them, like I was spying into his mind.
Finally he stood back.
I risked a glance.
He stared blankly at the crumpled dolls, connected obscenely by their genitals. ‘What - who are they?’
‘You and me. I just came from the Muenos. You ever hear of Dalatto?’
He nodded. ‘Mueno shaman. Doesn’t practise much any more. Bad stuff.’
‘Well she just came out of retirement. Briefly. See, she had a guest too, same one as you got now. Only together they invoked some evil bitch called Marinette who likes flesh to eat. End result: Dalatto disembowelled, tasteless little dolls of you and me in bed together.’
His face tightened. ‘You’re saying Leesa Tulu made these?’
I nodded. ‘Leesa Tulu made these. I just don’t know why. Now untie me and let me get my hands around her throat.’
He hesitated. ‘But she knows where Anna is.’
I took a steadying breath and tried to locate the logic attached to that piece of information.
Dr Anna Schaum, aka Loyl’s most devoted admirer (that’s if you didn’t count the three thousand or so disciples who ate, slept and copulated at his word) and part-time grrl, was the scientist who’d accidentally unlocked the Eskaalim parasite. His precious, pale, pedigreed princess had then panicked and bared her guilt-ridden soul to Io Lang. Lang’d stolen the research and nobody had seen Schaum since.
If Tulu knew where Anna Schaum was, did that mean she knew who was behind Io Lang? Connections met and married in my brain.
‘Have you asked yourself how she knows where Anna is?’
He studied me before he answered: liquor-black eyes without a trace of fanaticism in them, warm and drinkable, I’d been suckered by them before. ‘She’s clairvoyant.’
‘Sure. Or maybe she’s just a homicidal liar.’
Mouth grim, he abruptly loosened my bonds. ‘You’d better be wrong, Parrish.’
I wasn’t.
Mei’s crew of spiritualists were out cold in an untidy circle around the billy. Too much weedkiller: not enough real caapi. If they were communing on a higher plane, I was a . . . a hottie.
Stolowski was gurgling face first in a puddle of blood that I hoped wasn’t his.
I rolled him on to his side and wiped his airways clear while Daac bellowed up the corridor for help. He then tried to rouse Crow-Call.
‘Where’s Mei?’ he demanded.
Crow-Call crawled on to his knees and vomited a little.
I stretched my leg out and poked one of the others with my foot. Jenn or Lila? I didn’t know. ‘Where’s Leesa Tulu?’ I demanded. My voice wasn’t quite steady.
Her eyes stayed closed. ‘N-not sh-shure. S-she put some shit ’n the tea. Said it was g-good for the spirits. Thatsall I ’member,’ she whispered thickly, and drifted out of it again.
Daac hauled Crow-Call upright out of his own sticky mess. ‘Did she force Mei to leave with her?’
Crow-Call made a choking noise and went slack in his grasp.
Dead. Like that.
Overdosed.
Forget the weedkiller, this was something else.
A minute later a couple of medics were on the floor at my feet, working to revive Sto, Jenn and Lila.
I got up and stared at the bones in Crow-Call’s hair, feeling pissed off at the cold injustice. The harmless ones always got it. By turning up here, I’d unwittingly forced Tulu into making a move. Crow-Call had gotten in the way. So had Sto.
Daac wrapped his prosthetic fingers around my wrist like a handcuff. ‘If you know something, Parrish, now’s the time to speak.’
‘Ditto.’
‘I’ve told you all I know.’
‘Friends called by, said their shaman had disappeared. I asked around and it got a few people messily dead for it. When I followed the messy dead trail it led me to Dalatto. The dolls brought me here. I wanted to warn you. Looks like I got bonus points.’
‘Who are you out hunting missing shamans for?’ he asked sharply.
‘I’m not being paid.’ It was true. I was the one paying. Paying off a debt. ‘Remember, Loyl, I also have a vested interest in the spirits.’
He unlocked his fingers and I rubbed the circulation back into my arm.
The stench of vomit and blood made me claustrophobic so I moved to the window and watched as his people combed the alleys below. I also couldn’t look at Stolowski lying there grey as death.
Minute later the medics pronounced Jenn a survivor. Lila would live as well, but with brain-fry. Sto was still only a maybe.
Two out of four for Tulu. If Sto made it three, I’d hound her beyond sanity.
I helped stretcher the bodies to the medi-lab and waited
until one of Daac’s men came back to report. He narrated a bunch of sightings, and plenty of speculation. I sidled around the edge of the lab as he talked.
Daac’s eyes had begun to kindle with something I hated to see. Fervour. Fanaticism. Mr Mild and Conciliatory had gone walkabout. Mr Sombre and Merciless had come to call.
When somebody messed with Daac’s gens, they brought themselves a problem. It was the one thing he and I had in common. Loyalty.
Except mine didn’t depend on racial birthright.
Time to move. There was only one thing I needed to know and I’d heard straight off. Tulu had Mei with her. And they were headed south-east, towards Dis. I was down on the tenement pavements and running before Loyl could swear.
I’d never been as deep in The Tert as Dis, and to tell you the truth I rattled at the thought. I didn’t even know how to get there, exactly, so I set my compass implant to record my movements and altered my direction slightly more east.
All up, The Tert sprawled over a hundred or more klicks from north to south if you could do the straight-line thing. But you couldn’t. Apparently, the closer you got to the centre, the worse the crazies.
Whereas Torley’s, Plastique and even The Slag relied on some outtown trade - it had to be halfway safe for the punters to try and buy - Dis was another story, and, if the rumours were true, another world. I had no idea who lived there or how they survived. Up until now I hadn’t really cared.
I ran on until my chest got heavy and tight. Until my skin slicked with sweat. Then I walked, cooling down, and scried for a half-decent place to eat.
The straps of my pack ate into my shoulders. The darn thing had gotten so heavy and I couldn’t figure out why. I knelt down to rearrange the balance and scared myself half to death.
The forgotten four-and-a-half-pawed canrat was snugged up and dribbling on my spare duds. The shaft of daylight woke it up and it licked its wrinkled chops hopefully.
I tried to dump it out on the pavement but it scrabbled back in, legs working like paddles. I went to grab its neck but it bared its remaining teeth and growled.
Damn!
I didn’t fancy being bitten by anything quite so fetid, so I closed the flap and ordered shawarmas with extra meat shavings on the side from a vendor on the edge of the tenement spread. Then I found myself a quiet corner to eat.
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