Dead Reign

by T. A. Pratt

  “He’s got you there,” Rondeau said. “Want to mix us a couple more drinks, Pelly?”

  He glanced at Marla, who shook her head. “One’s enough for me. You can go make a drink for Rondeau, but don’t let him boss you around too much. Could you bring me up a pitcher of water, though? I’ve got some more reading to do. Rondeau, can you get him a cab over to my place? He can bed down in the apartment next to mine.” Marla owned a former flophouse not far from the docks, and lived in one suite of the place.

  “My place is with you, Ms. Mason,” Pelham said. “I will remain here as long as you do, if it pleases you.”

  “Okay, I’ll probably head home in a couple of hours. You’ll be in bed by dawn. Just hang out downstairs with Rondeau or something. Play with the goat. I’ve got work to do, and these books aren’t going to throw themselves across the room in frustration.” She shooed them away and returned to her studies, barely even noticing when Pelham slipped in to leave a sweating pitcher of cold water. Distant sirens wailed through the window, cracked open against the summer heat, but that was just background music to Marla.

  Her reverie was broken by the ringing phone. She picked up the receiver and grunted a hello, still reading.

  “Marla, this is Hamil.”

  “Mmm. Did you know the Samoan afterlife for evildoers is called O Le Nu’u-o-nonoa?” she said. “And the whole land of the dead is called Sa-le-fe’e? That’s kind of pretty.”

  “I did, and it is, though your pronunciation is atrocious. Marla—”

  “And there’s this story about a Zulu farmer named Uncama who chased a porcupine into its burrow and found himself in the land of the dead, where everybody talks backward and everything sucks. Supposedly a true story, not an ancient myth, passed down through the generations. Must have been a hell of a porcupine.”

  “It’s good to see you studying up on the subject, Marla, but you should know—one of my spies saw a man who fit the description of Mr. Death a few minutes ago.”

  “Yeah?” She closed her book. “You sure it’s him? He looked like an asshole who was missing some fingers?”

  “The rings on every finger and the smirk were the real indications, actually, and it appears he found a healer to fix his hand. Marla, he was seen in the company of Ayres the necromancer, and an unidentified dark-haired man.”

  “Huh. So Ayres is mixed up in this. I knew that old bastard was going to be trouble. Where are they?”

  “Downtown. A few blocks from the club. And coming your way.”

  5

  Y ou don’t have to come with me,” Death said. “I understand your desire to bask in my glory, but really, it’s unnecessary.”

  Ayres puffed a little to keep up with the striding god, and muttered a spell to make his knees stop creaking. His joints would ache terribly tomorrow in return for extra flexibility tonight, but magic was nothing but a series of uneven transactions, and Ayres was used to the trade-offs. “Marla is no friend of mine, lord, and if you don’t object to my presence, I’d very much like to see the look on her face when you deliver your ultimatum.”

  “Oh, I don’t care.” Death strode purposefully along the dark sidewalk, toward the seedy part of downtown, where Marla’s office was located. Ayres had expected him to teleport there or something, but apparently the Walking Death had earned his nickname, and preferred to travel on foot. John Wilkes Booth came along after them, hands clasped behind his back, gazing around at the tall buildings with awe. He’s like some ignorant hayseed, Ayres thought. The past is the functional equivalent of the middle of nowhere.

  “Nice rings,” said a young man, stepping from a shadowy alley to block the sidewalk. He wore a baggy sweatshirt, and he lifted the hem to show the pistol in his waistband. “I wouldn’t mind having me some rings like that.”

  Death didn’t even break stride, just walked on as if the mugger wasn’t even there. The man reached for his gun and tried to tug it out of his waistband, but it snagged on something, and Death just stepped right over him, kicking him almost incidentally as he passed, then stepping on his chest with his full weight when the man fell. The mugger started to sit up, cursing, and Ayres lashed out with his walking stick, cracking the boy in the side of his head. The lad groaned and lay still. Not dead, but no longer a threat. Death had nothing to fear from bullets, but Ayres was still mortal.

  Booth paused, knelt, and took the pistol from the mugger’s waistband, tucking it into his own belt.

  “Do you even know how to use that?” Ayres said peevishly. “Guns have come a long way since your day. What did you shoot Lincoln with? A flintlock? A musket?”

  “A .44 caliber single-shot Derringer,” Booth said coolly. “A fine weapon, when held in a sure hand. Your buildings may be taller than those of my time, and your weapons more complex, but the essentials are the same, and I shall adjust accordingly.”

  “Maybe I don’t want you to have a gun,” Ayres said.

  “I am happy to accompany you, and assist you in your business, but do not presume to tell a gentleman whether or not he should carry a weapon, sir.”

  “That’s it,” Ayres said. “I’m sending you back to Hell.”

  Before Booth could speak, Death paused in his forward motion. “No, no. Keep him, Ayres. I like having him around. He reminds me of home, and I like the contours of his mind.”

  “My lord, I must insist. He is insolent, disrespectful, troublesome—”

  “All words that could describe you, and the way you’re addressing me.” Death frowned, only slightly.

  Ayres bowed his head. “Apologies, my lord.” Inside, he seethed. Being dressed down, in front of Booth! The humiliation! He would raise another servant, a pliable servant, soon. If Death liked Booth’s company so much, let them stay together, then. Ayres’s nostrils suddenly filled with the unmistakable scent of decay, and his flesh began to itch, as if infested by beetles and maggots and grave-bugs. He squeezed his eyes shut and took shallow breaths, willing the hallucination away. His affliction returned to him in moments of stress and dismay, though he was always able to fight it back, thanks to his years of therapy. When the smell subsided, he opened his eyes, and Booth and Death were nearly a block ahead, side by side, talking. Ayres gritted his teeth and hurried to catch up.

  “They’re here.” Rondeau sat with his back against one of the club’s support pillars, a shotgun across his lap, barrel pointed vaguely toward the front door. He had a mild magical connection to the club, Marla knew, which allowed him to sense the ebb and flow of crowds, and it was sufficient to tell him when their visitors had arrived.

  “Oh, good,” Marla said. All the lights were on, and the club was bizarrely bright, looking far less spacious and cool with all its dirty corners and speckled floor tiles illuminated. Pelham was behind the bar, standing beside a row of mason jars containing live scorpions and mantids. They were sort of the magical equivalent of Molotov cocktails, already primed by Marla with long hours of enchanting, and they only needed to be thrown.

  Marla gestured, and the doors flung themselves open, leaving Mr. Death and his associates squinting at the light. Well, the associates anyway. Mr. Death didn’t appear to take any notice, nor did the doors flying open give him pause. He walked in, smiling and nodding. “Marla.”

  “I see you got your fingers stitched up. Want me to cut them off again? It could be, like, our thing.”

  Mr. Death held up his hand and examined it. “Flesh is a convenience for me, Marla. You can’t hurt me. I’m a god. I’m Death.”

  “Oh, yeah? Which Death? Sammael? Ankou? The Morrigan? The Shinigami? Mot? Am I getting close? Or are you just some kind of generic Death? Crazy Pete’s Discount Death God, like that?”

  Ayres and the other man started to come in, and Rondeau said, “Ah, ah, hang back there, fellas. This gun’s loaded with a lot worse than buckshot.” They paused just behind the threshold.

  “Those are old names, some of them,” Mr. Death said. “I have answered to all of them. Everyone has a personal
relationship with Death, Marla. Every culture sees me differently. Some as a savior. Some as a custodian. Some as a friend. Some as a monster.” He spread his hands. “I encompass all those attributes, and have been know to appear in many guises.”

  “Really? All I’ve seen so far is ‘smug’ and ‘overconfident.’” She nodded to Ayres. “So is he the real deal? You’re a necromancer, so I figure you’d know. Is that why you’re following him like a puppy?”

  “He is what he says.” Ayres was somber as always. “He is the Walking Death, the new god of the underworld.”

  Marla raised one eyebrow. Death looked annoyed. “New god? What, it’s an elected office now? He got three-fifths of the cemetery vote?”

  “Ah, the gods of death are, you might say, seasonal, or—”

  “Shut up, old man,” Death said wearily.

  “Ohhh,” Marla said. “The birth-death-rebirth thing? Like harvest gods and savior gods, shit like that? Out with the old and in with the new? The old god ages, and dies, and is replaced by new blood? So if I just wait long enough, you’ll croak, and get replaced by a new Death, who isn’t such an ass-wipe? So does the changing of the guard happen every winter or spring, or what?”

  “The seasons are long for my kind, Marla,” Death said. “Yet you still try my patience. I’ve come to ask you for the dagger.”

  “Oh, now you ask. How nice of you. Request denied. Piss off back to Tartarus. Eat dust or take a dip in the lake of fire or whatever it is you do there.”

  “You, too, will die someday, Marla Mason,” Death said. “You will enter my realm. Do you really want to be the sort of person I pay special attention to there?”

  “I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it. When I’m on your turf, we’ll see how it goes. But right now, you’re on my turf. And you’re not welcome.” She glanced at Pelham, who hefted one of the mason jars. “Neither are you, Ayres. Or you…who the hell are you anyway?”

  The stranger bowed. “John Wilkes Booth, ma’am.”

  Marla frowned. “The guy who killed Lincoln?” She looked at Ayres. “Ayres, you brought John Wilkes Booth back from the dead? I mean, I figured you’d disobey me and raise some corpse, but you raised the corpse of a racist presidential assassin?” She shook her head. “That’s fucked up, right there.”

  “Yes, well, there were circumstances,” Ayres began, and Booth was harrumphing something about Marla impugning his honor and how Lincoln was never his president, but Death cut them both off.

  “I came to offer you a deal, Marla. Give me the dagger peacefully, and I will leave your city.”

  “Because your daddy or granddaddy or whatever lost it in a card game with some sorcerer, is that why?” Marla said, drawing the dagger. “Because it used to belong to your family?” She held it up, letting the blade flash in the light, and watched Death focus on the weapon with all his attention. “That’s the rumor I heard anyway.”

  “All you need to know is that I want it,” Death said. “And that I am a god. Give it to me.”

  “You’re stupid for a god,” Rondeau said. “Can I shoot him?”

  “Give me the dagger, Marla, or I will take your city from you,” Death said.

  Marla cocked her head. “You shouldn’t make threats like that. You don’t know what it does to me.”

  “I cannot take the dagger from you by force, but I have powers you cannot begin to comprehend. I can banish you. I can make this city my plaything, and make you irrelevant. The dagger—”

  “Right,” Marla said. “The dagger. See, the thing about this dagger is, it can cut through anything. Hell, we saw what it did to your fingers. That got me wondering. Flesh may be a convenience for you, maybe that body is just a costume you put on, but there’s some essential you underneath…and I want to see if it bleeds.” She leapt, dagger in her hand, and Rondeau fired his shotgun at Death just as Pelham hurled two mason jars full of chittering ensorcelled insects over the bar.

  The shotgun was loaded with crystals that would freeze Death on contact and slow him down, so he couldn’t move with that horrible inhuman speed, and the jars with their insects were venomous bombs that would poison and weaken him, screw up his magics and leave him dizzy and confused and, soon, dead. Of course, those attacks wouldn’t work as well if he was really a god, which seemed more likely now than it had a few hours ago—at least, if Ayres could be believed. But Marla’s dagger shouldn’t care if he was a god or not. Marla’s dagger was a simple thing. It cut. Whatever touched the blade parted against it.

  Time slowed. The shotgun pellets held still in the air. The mason jars hung, unexploded, in mid-arc. Marla, too, was suspended, paralyzed, but still aware. Death walked toward her, hands clasped behind his back. “Sad.” He plucked a single hair from her head and twined it around his fingers, the wet follicle dangling. “Listen. I’m banishing you now. You will not be allowed into Felport until you agree to relinquish the dagger. I trust you’ll come to your senses quickly.” He tucked a little silver bell into her pocket. “When you’re ready to make a deal, ring that, and I’ll hear, and appear before you. But don’t bother ringing it until you’re ready to give in. I’ll be most unhappy if you summon me under false pretenses. You don’t want to make me unhappy. Do you know why? Because I’m a god, you stupid woman.”

  Marla couldn’t strike, couldn’t speak. He looked at the dagger in her hand longingly, sighed, and flicked his fingers. Everything went black, and the blackness moved around Marla with tremendous speed, and she was afraid.

  “Oh, sweet unholy fuck.” Rondeau stared at the spot where Marla had just been. He gestured at Death with the barrel of his apparently useless gun. “If you just disintegrated Marla, I’m going to break this gun off in your ass, pretty boy.”

  “Mind your tongue!” Ayres’s voice quivered with indignation or fear or some other emotion Rondeau couldn’t be bothered to puzzle out.

  Death chuckled. “Fear not, little man. I’ve just sent her to the time-out corner until she’s ready to behave. Only banishment, not execution. In the meantime, I’ll be running things here in Felport. I’m sure she’ll come to her senses soon, but until then, I’ll have to keep myself entertained somehow. First, of course, I’ll need oaths of loyalty from Marla’s former subjects. You may kneel before me here.”

  “How about you kneel,” Rondeau said. “I’ve got something long and hard for you to suck while you’re down there.” He grinned and hefted the shotgun. “I mean this, of course. I run a family establishment.”

  “But then again,” Death said, unruffled, “perhaps it would be better for you to swear fealty in a more regal setting. Where is Marla’s throne room?”

  “Throne room? Are you kidding? Do you believe this guy, Pelly?” Rondeau turned toward the bar, expecting to see the valet there, but Pelham was gone, or else hiding. Rondeau frowned. Pelly hadn’t struck him as the cowering type, more a stiff-upper-lip-in-the-face-of-adversity kind of guy.

  “Where did the other one go?” Death said. “The one behind the bar?”

  “He vanished as well,” Booth said. “I’ll investigate.”

  Rondeau lifted the gun. “Hold up, Mr. History. This is my club. You don’t want to go behind that bar without permission.” Booth paused and glanced at Death.

  “What’s to stop me killing you now?” Death said.

  Rondeau shrugged. “I’m not too worried.”

  Death approached, his movements somehow hypnotic, like watching a beautiful snake curl and uncurl. “Why is that?”

  “You’re the referee in a game I don’t play,” Rondeau said. He wasn’t exactly enjoying this—he was worried about Marla, and about Pelham, but he wasn’t worried about his own skin. “The whole death thing is something that happens to other people.” Rondeau nodded. “Ayres knows what I’m talking about. All the sorcerers have heard about me. I’m famous.”

  The necromancer cleared his throat. “This man is…more than a man, my lord.”

  Death leaned close to Rondeau and sniffed. “Really?
I smell flesh. Flesh is grass.”

  “If you think flesh smells like grass, you’ve been sniffing the wrong grass,” Rondeau said. “And sure, the flesh is weak, but the spirit is badass. Kill this body, and my mind will just meander on over to Ayres there and hijack his stringy carcass, and when he dies of natural causes—which could happen any minute now, by the look of him—I’ll just jump to another host.” Rondeau’s tone was jaunty, with more bravado than he felt. He didn’t want to give up his young, strong, familiar body for Ayres’s old one. The karmic and moral aspects of body-hijacking were troubling to him, too, but being an unkillable psychic parasite was the one strength he had here, and Marla had always taught him to play to his strengths.

  “It’s true, my lord,” Ayres said. “Or so I’ve heard. Rondeau is a sort of…psychic squatter, riding in that body.”

  “So Booth there’s a zombie, right?” Rondeau said. “And the nice slicked-back hair and such he’s got, that’s all illusion?” He pumped the shotgun and pointed it at Booth, who remained impassive. “In this bar, we shoot zombies in the head for free during happy hour.”

  Death yawned. “This is boring. Perhaps I can’t kill you, but you certainly can’t hurt me.”

  “Huh,” Rondeau said. “This is what you call a Mexican standoff.”

  “But surely you care for something other than yourself? Perhaps if I put this bar to the torch you’ll be more amenable to swearing loyalty?”

  Rondeau shrugged. “This is Marla Mason’s stronghold. Sure, burn it down, if you’ve got the mojo. It’d be tough to burn. But be prepared to reap the whirlwind when she gets back.”

  “You people are all very stupid,” Death said peevishly. “I’m a god. I’m Death. Threatening me is ludicrous. It’s like a snowball threatening the sun.”

  Rondeau shrugged. “They say there are only two certain things in the world: death and taxes. But I can’t die, and I’ve never paid a dime in taxes, so I call bullshit on that. The only thing I believe in is Marla Mason.”