Firewalkers

by Chris Roberson

  “Ignore Izzie,” Patrick said. “Seriously, I work in a city office and had no idea. But the mayor’s office doesn’t have the same degree of oversight and control over the Recondito PD as he does the departments that are run out of city hall, so maybe it just hasn’t hit us yet. But knowing that Parasol wrote the code that controls all of the city’s cameras on the streets . . .”

  “My theory was that they might have put in some kind of backdoor,” Daphne went on. “Something that would allow Parasol to get into the system without the city knowing about it, and get rid of any footage that they didn’t want to be recorded.”

  Patrick was about to reply when his phone’s alarm went off. It took him a moment to remember why he’d set it in the first place.

  “Stew’s almost done,” he said, standing up from the couch, “so I need to go put the rice on the stove.”

  He started toward the kitchen.

  “You guys just hang out here and I’ll let you know when . . .”

  He trailed off, and glanced back over his shoulder, eyes narrowed suspiciously. Sure enough, Izzie and Daphne were already leaning in closer to Joyce, and looked at him with slightly guilty expressions.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to talk about me behind my back when I’m in the other room?”

  “Maybe,” Joyce said. “But probably not as much fun.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Izzie wasn’t sure whether it was just because she had been so hungry, or was due to the glasses of wine she had while waiting for dinner to be ready, but after the first bite of Patrick’s beef stew she was prepared to state categorically that it was the best thing she had ever tasted. Not that anyone was asking. They were all too busy eating. It was clear that she wasn’t the only one to have skipped a meal that day.

  All except Patrick, of course, who seemed never to miss a meal if he could at all help it. While the rest ate, he picked at his plate while summarizing the results of his online investigations into Martin Zotovic’s background, and his theory about the possible effect of a Taser on one of the Ridden. He talked for far too long, hardly touching his food. For a while Izzie wondered if he’d simply lost his appetite. But then while she caught everyone up to speed on what she had pieced together from revisiting Roberto Aguilar’s journals about the history of the Mayan daykeepers, Patrick proceeded to work his way through a second helping. And when Izzie asked whether he would be able to file the necessary paperwork with the Recondito Police Department to back up the “extended stakeout” that she and Daphne were using to justify their absence from the Resident Agency offices, Patrick said that he didn’t think that would present any significant difficulty, all while serving himself a third helping of the beef stew and rice.

  Along with what Joyce had told them earlier about the lab results on the Campbell sample, and the information that Daphne had supplied about the city’s new computer systems, it seemed to Izzie as if everyone had been brought up to speed on what the others had learned that day.

  The question remained: Where should they go from here?

  After helping clear away the dishes and opening another bottle of wine, Izzie led the others back to the living room.

  “Okay, let’s see where we stand.” She turned to Daphne, and gestured to the duffel bag that they’d brought with them from the RA offices. “What do you think about unpacking the gear, just so we can get a good visual check of what we’ve got to work with?”

  “Seems as good a plan as any,” Daphne said, and knelt down beside the bag. Unzipping it, she pulled out the two tactical shotguns and boxes of shells, and arranged them on the floorboards along the far wall.

  “I grabbed a few things on my way out of the 10th, too.” Patrick stepped into the kitchen and returned with a hard-sided gun case that was about the height and width of a businessman’s briefcase, but two or three times as thick. Setting it down on the floor, he worked the combination locks to pop open the latches, and then lifted the lid. He reached inside and pulled out a stun baton in one hand and a Taser with a pistol grip in the other. “Like I said, I wondered whether they’d work on one of the Ridden, so I figured I’d bring along a couple from the precinct armory, just in case they came in handy.”

  He put them back in the case, but left it open on the ground beside the tactical shotguns.

  “I’ve got my service weapon and ammo, of course,” Patrick went on, patting the holster at his side. He turned to Izzie and Daphne. “I’m assuming you two have yours, as well?”

  “Naturally,” Izzie nodded, speaking for them both.

  “I picked up one last thing, too.” Patrick reached into his pocket, and held out his hand. There were two small glass vials on his palm, which Izzie recognized immediately.

  “The ilbal,” she said. It was the drug that Nicholas Fuller had taken, which he believed helped him to “see” the Ridden for what they really were.

  Patrick nodded, and then bent down to put the vials in the gun case along with the stun baton and Taser.

  “But weren’t you the one worried about taking evidence out of the station without permission?” Izzie chided.

  “Well, none of this is exactly by the book, is it?” He shrugged. “But it was slated to be destroyed anyway, right? And I figured maybe it would come in handy at some point.”

  Izzie chewed her lower lip, casting a glance at the vials.

  “What, is no one going to ask the medical examiner if she came armed?” Joyce adopted a tone of mock outrage. Leaning heavily on her cane, she walked over to where her leather jacket hung on a hook by the front door. “Shows what you know.”

  She reached into the pocket of her jacket, and pulled out a small case. It looked almost like the kind designed for eyeglasses, but was narrower and more squared off than most that Izzie had seen.

  “Come at the queen of the underworld—” Joyce gave Patrick a sly look, and then snapped open the small case and held it out for their inspection “—you best come correct.”

  Izzie and the others leaned over to see the interior of the case, in which a dainty-looking long-handled blade rested on a lining of purple silk.

  Joyce looked from face to face, and saw the confused expressions that Izzie and the others wore. “What don’t you get?”

  She reached in and plucked the blade from the case, holding it up in front of her with the handle pinched between her thumb and index finger.

  “My grandfather gave it to me when I graduated from med school,” she explained. “It’s an antique, dating back to Victorian England.”

  Izzie was trying to follow what Joyce was saying, but was sure that the confusion on her own face was as evident now as it had been a moment before, and glancing at the others she saw that she wasn’t the only one.

  “Look.” Joyce sighed. “The blades of most surgical scalpels these days are made out of steel. But back in the olden days, they made them out of silver.”

  “Ooooh.” Izzie nodded, the realization of what she was hearing slowly dawning.

  “I mean, it’s not much,” Joyce said, shrugging, “but if silver introduced into the body of one of the Ridden does disrupt the possession, I thought this would be a useful thing to have on hand.”

  Izzie thought about the long, curved blade that Nicholas Fuller had used in the Reaper murders, sitting now wrapped in plastic in a box back in the 10th Precinct station house community room. Would that blade be a useful thing to have on hand now, too? It felt gruesome to consider using a serial killer’s favorite murder weapon for their own defense, but if it meant the difference between surviving an encounter with one of the Ridden and living to see another day, she could cope with feeling a little bit gruesome.

  “Probably more useful than a silver spoon in a sandwich bag,” Patrick said, then turned to Izzie and quickly added, “No offense.”

  “No, I think you’re completely right.” Izzie walked over to the coffee table. “Those bags I gave you this morning were a long shot to begin with, I’ll be the first to admit. Which is why I
think we need to come up with something a little more reliable.”

  Izzie picked up one of the shopping bags that she’d brought in from Daphne’s car.

  “What do you have in mind?” Patrick asked.

  “Like I said . . .” Izzie upended the bag, and the contents spilled out onto the surface of the table—necklace chains, bits of wood and metal, a soldering gun, costume jewelry, carving knives, jars of paint, and more. She looked up, taking in Patrick and Joyce’s confused expression and the slight smile on Daphne’s face. “Arts and crafts.”

  Izzie tossed the empty shopping bag to the corner, and then emptied out the other one she’d brought on the table, as well. Spools of string rolled out, along with bits of leather and fabric, containers filled with crystal beads, scissors, and the like.

  “What . . . what is all this?” Patrick looked at the chaos sprawled out across the surface of the coffee table.

  “It’s amazing what a little motivation and a couple hundred bucks can get you at a crafts supply store,” Daphne said, dropping into a chair.

  Izzie turned to face Patrick and Joyce.

  “Mawmaw Jean didn’t just take a gris-gris bag with her everywhere she went, she also made all sorts of charms. She thought they protected her from evil spirits, or invoked the aid of good ones. And that got me thinking about the marks that your great-uncle made, Patrick. If that’s really what’s keeping the Ridden out of this neighborhood, what if we made portable versions that we could take with us when we leave? What if we carried that protection wherever we go?”

  Patrick turned back to look at the table, his eyes narrowed.

  “I don’t know,” he said, thoughtful. “I mean, it could work . . . but . . .”

  “Didn’t your great-uncle teach you how to make them?” Izzie pressed on.

  Patrick raised his eyes to meet her gaze, a somewhat stricken expression on his face.

  “No! I mean . . . not really. He was going to, but . . .” He lowered his eyes, trailing off, and when he continued a note of sadness crept into his voice. “There wasn’t time.”

  Joyce reached over and rested her hand gently on his arm, a comforting gesture.

  “Well,” Izzie said, plowing ahead, “in that case we’ll just have to copy the ones that he left behind.”

  She started toward the stairs to the second floor.

  “Where are you going?” Patrick asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Izzie glanced over, hand on the rail and already several steps up the stairs.

  “I’m going to get my jacket,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She pulled out her phone and held it up. “I’ve got some pictures to take, and it’s cold outside.”

  “What?” Patrick stepped forward, holding up his hand for her to stop. “You want to go outside now?”

  Izzie stopped on the third step up, leaning back and looking over the railing at them. “Why not? We’re wasting time if we don’t, I figure.”

  “But . . .” Patrick glanced over at Joyce.

  “Don’t look at me,” Joyce said. “You two are the mumbo-jumbo experts around here. I’m the science one, remember?”

  With a sigh, Izzie went back two steps on the stairs so she could see everyone in the room more clearly. “Look, we need to be able to move freely around the city without worrying all the time that we’re going to get caught too far away from this neighborhood when the sun goes down. And there’s no way of knowing if we’re still not exposing ourselves to risk when the sun is up, since some of the possessed people can still walk around in daylight. So if there’s a chance that a charm—or amulet or whatever you want to call it—with those markings on it is going to keep us safe out there, then we’re wasting time not doing it right now.”

  She looked around the room at the three of them.

  “Besides, the markings will keep us safe here, right? So, I’ll do it by myself if I have to, but we’d be done a whole lot quicker if I had help.”

  By the time she came back downstairs with her jacket, the rest of them were already wearing their own jackets and coats.

  “All right, then,” Izzie said with a grin, heading for the door. “Let’s get to it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the four of them were in the alley behind Patrick’s house, using their phones to take pictures of the markings on the various houses on either side of the alleyway. In the distance they could hear the low murmur of the nightlife on Almeria a few blocks away on the other side of Mission, the low thrum of the music from the bars, the susurrating murmur of people talking and laughing as they walked down the sidewalks, or gathered to talk in small groups beneath the eaves. Though the air stirred with a faint breeze, the skies overhead were cloudy, and the light from the houses and streetlights below suffused the clouds, so that it seemed as if the four of them were moving through the shadows of the alley beneath a dimly lit ceiling far overhead.

  Izzie had already snapped off a dozen or so high-definition images of the spiraling whorls etched high up on Patrick’s house, both with the flash and with what little usable light reached this far down the alley from the streetlight on the corner. Now she was a few dozen feet further down the alley behind another house that had been marked with the sign of the old man’s protection.

  “This one is different,” she said, as she carefully framed the spiral markings in the shot. “I mean, it’s pretty similar, but it’s not identical.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at Patrick, who was standing in the middle of the alley with Joyce, looking uneasy.

  “It was an art, Uncle Alf always used to say,” Patrick answered, glancing from one end of the alleyway to the other, warily. “Knowing just what mark to put in a particular spot, to get a particular result.”

  “Mmmm.” Izzie brought up her phone’s photo gallery and swiped through the images that she’d captured so far. “Tied to a specific geographic location, maybe?”

  She looked back at Patrick, who was still shifting his gaze all around them, his eyes narrowed.

  “Maybe,” he answered, sounding preoccupied.

  Izzie put her hand on her hip, head cocked to one side.

  “Listen, Lieutenant,” she said, tone dripping with sarcasm, “I thought the marks kept us safe from the Ridden here, even after dark. That was the whole reason that we all came back at your place tonight, right? So what’s got you so spooked?”

  “I’m not sure.” Patrick spared her the briefest of glances before continuing to scan their surroundings. “Something doesn’t feel right. It’s like we’re missing something.”

  Izzie noticed that Patrick’s hand was hovering near the handle of the semiautomatic holstered at his hip, and that he kept shifting in place, as if trying to remain between Joyce and whatever threat he imagined out in the darkness.

  “Too many shadows,” Patrick added, looking down the alley. Then he turned his attention back to Izzie, and added in a low, urgent voice, “Let’s wrap this up and get back inside.”

  Izzie gave him a curt nod, and went looking for another spiraling mark that she could photograph. The shadows grew larger and more diffuse the farther away she moved from the mouth of the alley.

  “Hey, Izzie,” she heard Daphne calling from the shadows ahead of her, “is this what we’re looking for?”

  Izzie turned and looked in the direction of her voice, and saw that Daphne had already gone another thirty or forty feet further down the alley, using her phone’s flashlight function to scan the backs of the houses. At the moment, her attention was on a spot illuminated by her phone’s light on the rear exterior of a house five or six doors down from Patrick’s.

  “I think it is. . . .” Daphne turned from the spot overhead to glance over in Izzie’s direction. “But I’m not sure.”

  Izzie walked down the alley toward Daphne, conscious of the audible crunch of her boots stepping across broken glass and rock on the alley’s tarmac. The sounds of the revelers over on Almeria grew fainter and fainter the deeper into the alley she mo
ved, almost as if the noise were being swallowed up by the shadows themselves. She couldn’t help but think of the dream she’d had that morning, briefly dozing on the couch in Patrick’s living room, and the way that the surrounding darkness had seemed like a solid medium through which she had struggled to move. Before the shadow had begun to consume her flesh bit by bit, that is.

  “It looks like one of the markings,” Daphne said when Izzie reached her side. “But it’s got vines or some kind of brambles growing over it, so . . .” She trailed off, shrugging. “I can’t be sure.”

  Izzie looked up at the spot illuminated by Daphne’s phone light and squinted. It did look like one of the old man’s marks might be hidden beneath the foliage, but it was hard to say for certain.

  “It probably is. Must be a lot of them in that state, I’d guess. Patrick said that his great-uncle used to pay him and his cousins to keep the marks clean and clear.” Izzie turned to glance back toward the mouth of the alley, where Patrick was huddled protectively near Joyce. They seemed to be talking to each other, but the sound of their voices was little more than a dull murmur from this distance. “Every weekend, he’d be out here pulling crawling vines off the ones on the walls, or sweeping away dirt or trash from the ones on the ground. Sounds to me like . . .”

  “Wait,” Daphne interrupted, reaching out to touch Izzie’s elbow. “Did they have to?”

  “I suppose not.” Izzie looked back at her, and lifted her shoulders in a faint shrug. “The old guy paid them a quarter each for it, so it doesn’t sound like he made them do it.”

  “No.” Daphne’s tone was more insistent now, and she took hold of Izzie’s upper arm, squeezing tightly. “Did they have to keep the marks clean and uncovered? For them to work?”

  Izzie’s eyes widened as the implications of what Daphne was saying sunk in.

  “Come on,” she said, taking hold of Daphne’s hand. “Let’s get back inside, okay?”

  They turned to head back toward the mouth of the alley.

  But the shadows in front of them had grown so thick that they could barely see the mouth of the alley.