by Pratt, T. A.
“Don’t make me persuade you,” she said, too weary to put much menace in her voice.
“No,” he said hurriedly, “I can’t. You see... this place is mine, now. Juliana appointed me her successor.”
Marla stared at him. She hadn’t thought about that, about who would take over custodianship of the eighth room. She’d assumed... Well, not Rondeau, anyway. “Were you lovers?”
“I don’t know that love had anything to do with it. We were close. I can’t leave here.”
Marla nodded glumly. The eighth room’s custodian received certain benefits, most notably job security, but he could only leave the vicinity during the dark of the moon, when the eighth room lost its power for a single night. The custodians were privileged slaves.
She pushed the chair back and stood up. “I’ll go, then.”
“Good luck,” he said, staring down at his chips. Coming to terms with his new position, she thought. He might choose to pass the custodianship on soon. Few people could bear it for long, Juliana being the exception. She’d had only one urge to gratify, and it was one she could obtain perfectly well underground.
Marla trudged through the bar with her head down, passing through several rooms, trying to decide what to do next. She hadn’t heard Artie’s ghost whispering yet, but if she didn’t avenge him soon, he’d begin to plague her.
“Hiya,” someone said. Marla lifted her head, startled, and the smell of ozone and half-digested food hit her like a fist. She staggered, catching a glimpse of pockmarked cheeks and greasy black hair. Her hair stood on end, crackling with sparks, and the strength ran out of her limbs like water from a broken pot.
I’m dead, I’m dead, she thought, trying to flip her cloak, but her numb mind fumbled the command. Dead, and she’d never know why, or what future the killer would read in her steaming remains.
Blackness came. Then, like bright flashes penetrating her closed eyelids, brilliant geysers of pain.
#
Not waking, she knew, but aware, drifting not in a white space but a dead one, a tuned-out space, the surroundings hissing and newsprint-confetti colored, like static on a television.
Marla thought, with piercing clarity: Reality is a series of well-tuned channels, every channel a different world, and now I’m between stations.
Her sense of insight faded, replaced by uncertainty. Did the Thrones come from another channel, another universe? Or did they run the television, switching at will?
Perhaps summoned by her thought, presences manifested, coalescing out of the static, focusing and fading as if tuning themselves in, finally hanging before her, substantial.
Thrones. Three of them. Identical, derelict men, with narrow faces and fright-wig hair, dressed in cast-offs: suspenders, untucked flannel shirts, cotton pants fraying at the seams. They hovered, bobbing slightly, electricity crackling around them, eyes wide and luminous. They wore their human bodies badly, unable to conceal the light inside, and seemed indifferent to their own poor fakery. They appeared as humans only as a formality, Marla thought, or perhaps to spare her a dangerous glimpse of their essential shapes.
They spoke in concert, haltingly, not like a trio of Metatrons but like foreigners uncertain of the language: “You... Death... His death...” Repeating Juliana’s last words, and Marla felt a rush or relief so potent as to be nearly orgasmic. This was no vision at all, but a twisted dream, perhaps a last firing of synapses before the Belly Killer finished her off, but even that possibility relieved her, seemed better than facing the Thrones and understanding their words.
Then the Thrones inhaled, together, and spoke clearly, dissolving Marla’s relief. “You must help us. Our agent has slipped from our control. We gave him power, set him to act as our instrument, but instead he kills for his own reasons, lost in madness and vanity.”
Marla stared. The Belly Killer belonged to them? She would discover that now, with her guts surely unspooling on Juliana’s floor, revealing a future she’d never see.
“We can only observe your kind until...” A pause, a clicking sound like a bolt sliding shut. “... a later date. We chose a champion to act for us on Earth, since we cannot intervene directly, but he no longer heeds us. Once given, our powers cannot be withdrawn. You must stop him.”
Marla sensed a note of desperation. Did the Thrones report to a higher power? If so, were they trying to cover up their mistake, throw her at the problem, hoping for the best? She tried to say “Piss off” but to her surprise couldn’t make a sound, as if her mouth and tongue didn’t work properly.
The Thrones exchanged glances, understanding her anyway. “You can stop him. If you help us, you will be... absolved.”
A chill rippled through her. The Thrones judged, everyone knew that, it was one of the oldest tenets, a truth mentioned in holy texts so ancient the religions that wrote them were forgotten now. The Thrones judged in life, and after death, there were consequences... but even if she lived, if the Thrones somehow interceded to save her, how could she fight the Belly Killer, if he had such power?
Give me your gift, she thought greedily. Then I’ll fight him.
“We cannot trust you,” the Thrones said sternly. “You would use our gift irresponsibly.”
Like the Belly Killer does?
The Thrones didn’t look offended, but their voices held that note of panic again, like teenagers who’d wrecked their father’s car. “Mortals make poorer vessels than we supposed. You lack pure motives. Given strength, our agent killed recklessly. Given the knowledge of divination, he became obsessed, focused on merely personal matters.”
What does he divine? she wondered. Stock market trends? The outcome of horse races?
The Thrones continued, no longer bothering to move their mouths when they spoke, evidently forgetting even so basic a detail of camouflage. “We will give you a small gift. Not strength, not power, but... something.” They flickered, fading out. “Stop him, and we will absolve you.” They blended with the static, finally disappearing entirely.
That’s it? Stop him? She didn’t know how to proceed, how to get back to her body, much less what to do when she got there. The Belly Killer hadn’t left any survivors so far.
The static darkened to black. Then pain, and light.
#
She woke to bloody agony, coming from an unexpected part of her body. Not her stomach, which felt whole, but her face. Music thundered nearby, muffled by thick walls. Night already, then. She’d survived a long time.
She pushed herself up, nearly blind from pain, and saw the eighth room’s gas lamps, and a bloody sheet in the corner, presumably covering Juliana’s remains. Black spots swam before Marla’s eyes like gorged flies.
Rondeau ducked in through the curtain, pulling a dark-skinned young woman in a silver miniskirt after him by the wrist. She seemed half-annoyed and half-bored, until she saw Marla, and then her eyes widened and she covered her mouth.
Marla tried to say Rondeau’s name, but when she moved the muscles to open her mouth nothing happened, her tongue flapping sluglike, heavy and worthless. She looked down at the blood puddling on the concrete floor and moaned, low in her throat.
Her cheeks hung in flaps and her tongue dangled. The Belly Killer had taken her jaw.
Rondeau grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, his face filling her vision. Dead I’m dead, she thought, twice in one day, a bad way to go. The dark-skinned girl trembled in the background, hugging herself.
Rondeau plunged a hypodermic needle into Marla’s thigh. She tried to scream, and swallowed blood instead, convulsively.
Rondeau let her head drop, and the drug knocked her out before her forehead hit the floor.
#
Marla woke to a view of the water-spotted ceiling, feeling more irritated than anything else. Why couldn’t she die? Even facing judgment, robbed of her chance for absolution, would be better than this intermittent suffering.
Except she didn’t hurt so badly now. Her jaw ached, a lot, but --
She sat up abruptly, t
oo fast, and her head swam. She leaned against the wall, breathing hard, and touched her chin.
But not her chin, she felt that immediately. She had a noticeable cleft in her chin, and yesterday a small cluster of pimples had erupted under her lower lip, and she didn’t feel either of those things. She ran her fingers over her lower teeth and gums, discovering a retainer bar. She’d always had perfect teeth.
“The color doesn’t match,” Rondeau said, his voice exhausted. Marla jumped a little, then narrowed her eyes. Recently injured or not, she shouldn’t have let him surprise her. He sat against the far wall, the dark-skinned girl laying face down beside him, her hair a black pool spread around her.
Marla opened her mouth gingerly, moving the dark-skinned girl’s jaw, expecting pain. It ached, but even that faded. Rondeau had attached it cleanly, better than she could have. It surprised her that he’d gone to so much trouble on her behalf -- mystified her, even. She thought about thanking him, but didn’t know how to go about it.
My jaw! she thought, overwhelmed with dismay. Taken, used! The Belly Killer could be questioning it right now, keeping track of her every thought, rifling through her secrets! She realized Rondeau must feel the same way, and a rush of shame suffused her.
A new concern overwhelmed her jaw-worries. She touched the pin at her throat, surprised to find her cloak still attached. Rondeau could have taken that for himself, or sold it to the highest bidder. No one could use it as well as she, anymore than someone untrained in sword fighting could wield a katana like a master, but many would have liked the opportunity to learn.
Marla gathered the cloak around her, bunching the soft white side in her fingers, letting its healing energies fill her. She’d lost a lot of blood, but as the cloak worked, she felt her strength return. If I’d had my purple turned, I’d have eaten him for breakfast, she thought, knowing it wasn’t true, comforted by her anger anyway.
“You’ll be going after him,” Rondeau said. “I just want you to know, I’ll help you.”
She nodded absently, looking at Juliana’s corpse, covered, in the corner. She felt an overwhelming urge to tear the sheet away, to look at Juliana’s body. More than an urge: A compulsion, or a mandate handed down by forces unseen.
She crawled on hands and knees across the room and tugged the sheet aside. Juliana lay sprawled, her intestines lying beside her, a meaningless spill of gray like the alphabet disarranged.
But only disarranged. She could read the alphabet, just not the mussed message.
“The cameras,” she said suddenly. “We have to go upstairs, to the office, and looked at the surveillance tape.”
“You’re the boss,” Rondeau said.
#
It took some doing, but Rondeau finally isolated and enlarged a clear frame showing Juliana’s corpse. “It’s a good thing I got her to invest in such high-quality equipment,” Rondeau said, clearly uncomfortable looking at Juliana’s death-image on film. “I told her, the usual protections are all well and good, but times are changing, and the eighth room, it needs all the security it can get, so we put these cameras right outside...” He prattled on. Marla ignored him, staring at the screen.
The Belly Killer showed up indistinctly on the film, shimmering with auras that obscured him, an arm or leg occasionally appearing clearly. In the frame just after he stepped away Marla could see Juliana’s intestines undisturbed in their original, portentous configuration.
What’s more, she could read the portents. The Thrones had given her the gift of divination, allowing her to read clues that eluded everyone else.
She looked at the intestines, the message revealed clearly, and didn’t know what to make of it. Could the portents be wrong? “According to this, I’m the Belly Killer’s only chance at survival. Except I know I’ve got every intention of killing him.”
“You can really read the intestines, like a haruspex?”
She nodded.
“That explains why he didn’t kill you, at least. Why kill his one chance at survival? It might explain why he took your jaw, too. I’d want to keep tabs on you, if I were him.”
Marla rubbed her chin, her sense of violation returning. The Belly Killer could find out anything she knew. Of course, he had to ask the right questions. The jaw wouldn’t offer any information, and would respond as cryptically as possible. The Belly Killer didn’t strike her as a particularly subtle questioner, either. He might not even know to question it. As a mortal madman gifted with power, his understanding of the unseen world must be sketchy at best. Still, she didn’t want him to have her jaw. It belonged to her.
“You know,” Rondeau said, apropos of nothing, “I can still feel my jaw.” He pointed northwest, in the direction of Marla’s apartment. “I could walk straight to it, I bet.” He grinned.
Marla stared at him, then concentrated, trying to feel... There. To the east.
Marla grinned back at him.
#
The next day, after sleeping in Juliana’s office and recovering her strength, Marla used her pet policeman to look at the crime scene photos, to see the undisturbed guts and read what the Belly Killer had. She ran her policeman deftly, like a professional driver in a high performance machine.
After a long morning poring over photos with her pet’s eyes, Marla sat back in Juliana’s (but Rondeau’s, now, she remembered) office chair, rubbing her eyes. She was both disappointed and relieved by what she’d seen.
“So what does the future hold?” Rondeau asked, straining for casualness. “Cataclysm? Alien invasion? Are hemlines dropping this spring?”
Marla shook her head, her own hopes for a grand revelation already gone. The killer was interested in the merely personal, as the Thrones said. “The Belly Killer doesn’t care about that. His divinations have one purpose: To find out the details of his own death.”
Rondeau gaped. “That’s it? He killed Sorenson and Mann and Chandler to find out how he’s going to die?
“What else matters?” Marla asked.
#
Marla flew over the city, her cloak fluttering white, angel wings in moonlight. The Belly Killer read the future, and those readings spelled out a multitude of possible deaths. He’d seen futures where he died at Sorenson’s hands, Chandler’s, Mann’s, all his victims’, and still more who hadn’t been killed yet, who the Belly Killer would surely target soon. Artie Mann’s entrails named Juliana as a threat, and so the Belly Killer took steps to remove her. Marla couldn’t imagine Juliana hurting anyone -- unless they tried to get into the eighth room without her leave. As custodian, even someone as dissolute as Juliana couldn’t stand for that. If, at some future time, the Belly Killer tried to enter the eighth room, Juliana might have mustered enough last-ditch power to stop him. That situation would never come up, now.
The Belly Killer did what no ancient priestly haruspex ever had. He attempted to change the future, eliminating risks and reading the new future in the guts of the old.
The sorcerers all wanted him dead now, because he’d been killing their kind. If he’d never murdered in the first place, would anyone want to kill him, would his future hold such executions? Had the killer caught himself in a snare of recursive causality? Certainly Marla wouldn’t be after him if he hadn’t killed Artie.
As an agent of the Thrones, though, he would have frightened or angered the sorcerers, probably sooner than later. Attempts on his life were assured from the moment the Thrones chose him. He never had a chance.
The Belly Killer could die, the futures agreed on that. He could, he would, he didn’t want to -- and according to Juliana’s unwilling prophecy, only Marla could save him.
She didn’t plan to do so. She would treat him like a rabid dog, killing him without magic, from a distance. She hoped his prodigious powers of self-defense wouldn’t activate, that she could blow his head apart before lightning sheathed him and the air filled with the stink of ozone and curdled blood.
She flew over the city, a sniper rifle clutched to her chest, homing i
n on her missing piece, her torn-off jaw broadcasting like a communications tower engaged in the transmission of pain.
#
She found the killer in the parking lot of a long-closed supermarket. Newspaper covered the building’s windows and half the letters in the store’s sign were missing. A single shopping cart lay upside-down in the center of the yellow-lined parking lot like the skeleton of an exotic dinosaur. A scrap of paper fluttered forlornly along the asphalt. The big mercury lights didn’t work, as defunct as the store itself, but Marla’s eyes could do wonders with the moon and starlight.
She settled, invisible, on the arm of a lightpole, sitting easily as an owl on a branch. The Belly Killer stood in the center of the lot, hands at his sides, Marla’s bloody jaw tucked carelessly into his back pocket like a boy’s slingshot.
Marla lifted her rifle, confident of her aim at this range.
She heard a motor approach and sat still. What now?
A black limousine purred into the lot. The front doors opened and two goons emerged, shuffling their feet awkwardly. Demons, fresh off the boat, Marla guessed. Effective enough protection, but who were they protecting?
The limo’s back door opened, and a stout, well dressed man got out. Marla recognized him instantly. Sauvage. The oldest sorcerer in the city, a man with a reptile’s patience and no tolerance for fools. Marla had read his name in the remains of Sorenson’s corpse.
Marla sat still. Sauvage would be able to see through her invisibility, but if she sat quietly, he might not notice her.
“Let’s see it,” Sauvage said.
The Belly Killer nodded and took the jawbone from his back pocket, holding it up.
Mine Marla thought fiercely, leaning forward and almost falling off the pole. Why would Sauvage want her jaw? She was a mercenary, a woman of some status in her peculiar community, but not important enough to merit Sauvage’s notice.
“That’s not Cochran’s jaw,” Sauvage said flatly.
The Belly Killer giggled and wiggled the jaw.
A trick, Marla thought, a lure, just bait because Sauvage couldn’t easily be found. Cochran was his chief rival, of course he’d come personally for the jaw, and who would dare lie to him? Not Marla. Only a madman, or someone with the power of a Throne.