Black Blood

by John Meaney

  Van Linder chuckled as easily if he were in an elegant club, mixing with businesspeople and political supporters.

  “I find it amusing,” he said, gesturing to his own face, “that your young friend Kelvin used these exact features to get you inside.”

  “Keep laughing, fuckface.” Donal kept the rifle aimed.

  Pull the trigger.

  But he couldn't. Van Linder was amused without a hint of ner vousness. Something had to be wrong with Donal's simple plan.

  “Poor Kelvin. He's suffering, you know. I thought I might reconfigure his neural patterns, bring him over to our side, but he resists so nicely.”

  Van Linder reached inside his pocket, and pulled out what looked like a locket. With his thumbnail, he drew out something like a fragile, three-dimensional snowflake, colored amber. It might have been spun sugar, so easily broken now Van Linder had removed it from its protection.

  “If you try to harm me,” said Van Linder, “I'll drop this or crush it in a muscular spasm. Call it a deadman switch.”

  “So what?”

  Beyond the platform loomed the rows of reactor piles. Could Van Linder have set up some device to trigger an explosion?

  “So nothing just yet. Oh, but what's this?”

  Donal lowered his Lucifer VII and looked down to his right. The landing he stood on was set into a virtual cliff, one side of the main cavern. Farther down, a long walkway was set into the rock, but open to the cavern. Two figures were running along it: Harald and Ruth.

  They were nearing the detachable section under which a large freight car could stand, ready to receive a fresh load of processed bones for the reactor piles. But the freight car was standing off to one side, and Harald and Ruth were walking on thin metal, hanging above a fatal drop.

  “And this is such a pretty device.”

  In Van Linder's hand, the amber snowflake began to glow.

  He's been bluffing.

  Donal brought the rifle back up, just as a metallic squeal sounded, and the walkway down below tipped through ninety degrees, spilling Harald and Ruth into space.

  Yellow light flared.

  Donal did not fire.

  It's a stasis field.

  He lowered his rifle once more.

  “That's right, Donal Riordan. Because you value their lives, don't you?”

  Van Linder was projecting the field, a long yellow cone of light, down toward the collapsed walkway, holding Harald and Ruth suspended in midair. The field softened to a scarcely visible amber overlay of the image beyond: hard stone, and a long drop to the cavern floor, where metal rails and scattered equipment lay ready to break any human bodies that might fall onto them.

  “If it flares up once more,” continued Van Linder, “I'm afraid that means time has begun to flow inside the field again, entropy breaking the symmetry. Or do you have any idea what I'm talking about, Riordan?”

  “It's an illusion. You couldn't have known they'd be there.”

  He meant Harald and Ruth, their limbs outstretched, hanging above the fatal drop.

  “Oh, but I did. Kelvin's mind held such a bright picture of your plans. It was a pleasure to tear it out of him. He really does squeal prettily inside.”

  Donal squatted down, laid his rifle on the flagstones, and stood up.

  “Why this trickery, Van Linder? If you're so powerful, you'd have just killed us.”

  “I'm going to, of course. And the city will be outraged, at a zombie-led attack on the Energy Authority itself.” Van Linder gestured toward the dark space containing the reactors. “People hate to think about how these things work, but threaten them with a life of no warmth, no transport, and no food in the shops—That's all we need.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Behind Van Linder, the image of Malfax Cortindo moved, distorted by the convex glass.

  “Kill him now.” Cortindo's voice came from a speaker below the glass.

  “Oh, but I think I'll make him love me first.”

  Then Van Linder's features grew liquid, rippled as if shaken, dissolving and shivering into a new configuration, a face that Donal recognized.

  “Gelbthorne.”

  “Well. The real Van Linder died last night. Before that, he did in fact dream of becoming Mayor of Tristopolis with our help.” He looked at the fragile amber snowflake on his palm. “I like to think I'm keeping the spirit of our bargain.”

  Then he stared at Donal.

  No.

  Stared, with eyes that seemed to shine with a pale, icy blueness that Donal could not turn away from.

  Close your eyes.

  Donal tried.

  Can't.

  Gelbthorne's gaze was everything, encompassing the world. All the anger Donal had, that he had used, was useless, his strength abandoned, despite the memories of suffering, the things that had happened to Laura, to the children here. None of it mattered as trance enveloped him.

  Donal was lost.

  Kelvin groaned, his face against the hard floor, smearing his own blood, knowing he had failed and cost everyone their lives. For Donal, the price was even worse.

  Adam sat slumped against a stone wall, his rifle in his lap, his chin down on his chest, feeling cold with blood-loss. The ache in his leg was distant, held at bay by trance. His clothes were sticky and stained with blood.

  “Yo, soldier. You taking a nap down there?”

  The voice was gravelly.

  “Hey …”

  Big hands helped Adam to his feet.

  “You got a job to do, my friend. One that our mage friends don't know about.”

  Gelbthorne's soft, deep voice, uttered in a rhythm to match the neural activity of Donal's mind—Donal knew that, somehow—became everything there was, and everything there had ever been, filling the universe that Donal inhabited. All the old, bad feelings became ephemera that he could let go of. Peacefulness now was the way of surrender. Gelbthorne asked the final, pivotal question.

  “Will you obey me now, in everything?”

  Donal opened his mouth—

  A massive explosion blew out the wall beneath the stasis field, spilling a thousand, two thousand corpses into a ghoulish scree slope, formed of tangled, lifeless limbs and the staring faces of the dead.

  From his vantage point on the cavern floor, where he stood with a heavy gray hexzooka in hand, Viktor judged the angle, noting how the corpses lay beneath the suspended, floating figures of Harald and Ruth.

  “Good work, young Adam,” he murmured.

  Then he swung the hexzooka to his shoulder, raised his aim to the platform high above, and pulled the trigger.

  “Shit.”

  His aim was good. Stone and dust burst from the platform as the hex-dense shell exploded, and Gelbthorne's bloodied figure fell. Perfect. But Viktor had felt the hot exhaust blast go across his back, and he knew without looking that his leather coat was ruined.

  “Bastard.”

  —and said: “No!”

  Donal's right hand whipped inside his jacket and came out with his Magnus. He followed Gelbthorne's fall from the walkway with rapid aim, firing shot after shot, silver-crossed chitin-piercing rounds tearing into the bastard's body as he dropped to the stone floor.

  Already mutilated from the hexzooka round's blast, Gelbthorne took every hit from Donal, and smashed skull-first onto flagstones some eighty feet below.

  Almost certainly, any one of those factors would have killed him. But Donal grinned when he realized that Big Viktor was taking no chances.

  A second round from the hexzooka blew Gelbthorne's body into shredded fragments and hot red vapor.

  Donal turned around. On the half-destroyed platform, the screen that had displayed Marnie Finross's image was gone. The other, though cracked, showed Cortindo, his mouth moving in a curse Donal could not decipher. Then that screen toppled, fell down to the cavern floor, and smashed apart into a white spray of shards.

  “Got the fuckers,” Donal said.

  When Viktor pulled Harald an
d Ruth from the pile of corpses, they were bruised and sore, having been tangled on top of each other. They helped each other to stand upright on the cavern floor.

  “After that,” said Ruth, “we have to get married.”

  “Er …” Harald looked straight in her eyes, and swallowed.

  Then Ruth swallowed.

  Viktor looked up at the ruined wall. There was a gap through which Adam Obsidian, bomb trigger in hand, was visible. Adam looked at Harald and Ruth, and his expression shut down.

  “Good man,” Viktor called, then looked up at the high walkway. “You okay, Donal?”

  “Oh, yeah. Can you see any phones down there?”

  “None in sight. I'll go look.”

  “And I'll do the same up here.”

  It took less than five minutes to make the calls they needed. When help began to arrive, the various teams were already regrouping. Mage Kelvin was under sedation, wrapped in a blanket that Fleming had found.

  When Jo Serranto came—with a police escort, and written orders from Captain Sandarov granting her entry to the Complex—she was accompanied by a photographer plus a white-skinned man in a black coat: Dr. Thalveen. Donal smiled. Thalveen gave an impassive nod.

  The term zombiefucker hung unspoken between them.

  “This is amazing,” Serranto was saying. “Get another shot of the body. ‘Mayor Replaced by Dark Mage.’ What a headline.”

  To one of the uniformed cops, staring around the damaged premises and the slope formed of spilled corpses, Donal said: “You guys got a spare ride? I need to get to HQ.”

  The biggest man spat.

  “Wish I'd been here with you, Lieutenant. And yeah, Captain Sandarov said come in when you want. Reinstated.”

  “Awfully nice of him.”

  At approximately the same moment, Captain Craigsen paused in the letter he was writing to the mayor's office, accepting the offered post of Commissioner of Police. He looked up at the door to his office, reading the reversed gold lettering that gave his rank, imagining Captain replaced by Commissioner. Of course, when it happened, he wouldn't stay here: he would need a suitably imposing office, new furniture, and perhaps that blond female clerk from Surveillance to be his secretary.

  Bulky shapes in uniform were standing outside the door. One of them opened it.

  “Haven't you heard of knocking?” said Craigsen. “Why don't you go back out and—”

  Behind the uniforms, a lieutenant named Higgs waved a sheet of paper.

  “This is a warrant for your arrest, Craigsen. You are charged with twelve counts of child kidnapping, more counts to follow, with accomplice to homicide as one of the additional counts.”

  Craigsen could only stare as Higgs came in.

  “Further, conspiracy to commit political assassination, complicity in ensorcellment without victim's consent; eight known counts, with more to follow, and additional charges to be appended once you are incarcerated.” Higgs lowered the paper. “Also, Captain Sandarov sends his regards, and says, ‘Fuck you.’ ”

  “No.”

  But Craigsen scarcely struggled as the uniforms hauled him from his chair and snapped on the cuffs.

  “And if I may say something else, sir.” Higgs raised his hand, and the officers held Craigsen in place. “You're very careless, as regards health and safety. This floor is highly polished, and someone could slip, you know.”

  “What—?”

  Higgs ripped an uppercut punch that started low, about knee-height, and rammed into Craigsen's groin. Craigsen folded over, his chin coming up, and Higgs smashed his knee into his face.

  “Take this piece of shit to the cells.”

  “You got it, Lieutenant.”

  Higgs stared toward the outer office. There, officers turned away, suddenly busy with paperwork. Higgs nodded. They understood.

  It was too soon for the city's mood to have changed. Several pedestrians, seeing a zombie in the back of a police cruiser, grinned, or cursed with an upraised finger. Donal did not react.

  At HQ, they dropped him off in front, and he climbed the steps between two groups of deathwolves that he did not know. When he went into the huge foyer, he found an outlined rectangle on the floor where Eduardo's granite block had stood. Sooty marks scraped in the direction of the exit. Some twenty uniformed and plainclothes officers stood around.

  “What happened?” Donal asked a grim-eyed detective.

  “Bastards took Eduardo away, don't know where.”

  “Hades.”

  “But we'll find out, Lieutenant. Like we heard you got Alexa Ceerling back safe. Good work.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  So it was a beginning. Donal was almost smiling as he reached the elevator shafts, paused in front of number 7—still empty—then took another, and asked the wraith to take him deep into the vaults.

  It descended without a word, carrying Donal in an impersonal grip.

  Soon he was standing in front of a seventeen-sided door on which runic equations burned and glowed. To reach the chamber, he had passed through scanfields that hurt, causing him to dry-heave and stumble, but they had allowed him to enter.

  “Per Vera veritas,” he said.

  Equations shifted and rearranged themselves, matrices re-formed, and graphs assumed new configurations. The door appeared to pulse, but did not open.

  Blue brightness grew on the floor behind him.

  *Don't do it, lover.*

  The wraith that billowed over Donal was big, shining with energy.

  “That sounds like the old Gertie. But I know you're not.”

  Aggie's form twisted in the air.

  *No. I know, as Gertie and Xalia knew, how dangerous hypergeo-metric vaults can be.*

  “Yes.”

  *Commander Bowman dropped dead right where you're standing. He collapsed midbreath.*

  “Good job I don't breathe.”

  *This is not a joke.*

  “I've given it the password.”

  *It takes more than that. The vault is attuned to—*

  “Commissioner Vilnar, I know. It'll be all right, Gert—Aggie.”

  Donal stepped forward and placed both pale hands upon the door.

  *No!*

  But the door was opening, and the energies that blazed beyond had not destroyed him.

  “You want to give a hint here? On how to work it?”

  For a moment, sapphire brilliance flared through Aggie's wraith form.

  *Hold a question in your mind. Damn you!*

  “All right.”

  Donal stepped forward, into coruscating light.

  *No …*

  And screamed with pain.

  As he awoke, he groaned, trying to hold on to the memory of what he had experienced. He failed. White light and pain were all he could remember …

  “Donal?”

  … along with the dry facts answering the question he had posed.

  “He's coming around. Good work, Aggie.”

  *Good work would have been stopping the silly bastard before he went in.*

  Harald and Viktor were standing over him. They were in an outer chamber of the vaults, outside the agitated scanfields.

  “There's something … Ugh … Give me a hand, will you?” Donal, supine, raised one arm, and Viktor tugged him to his feet. “Thanks.”

  “You okay to walk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then let's get out of this place.”

  Donal began to feel better as they moved. When they reached the bank of elevator shafts—number 7 being empty still—he had a thought.

  “Let's go to the gun range. Get some extra advice from Brian.”

  “Is this relevant?” growled Viktor.

  “Marginally. We could get the information from a few phone calls.”

  “Perhaps,” said Harald, “we should check that Brian's doing all right.”

  Donal remembered the marks on the foyer floor where Eduardo's granite block had stood.

  “Gert—Aggie?” He looked at th
e empty opening of shaft 7. “Could you take us all up at once?”

  *My shaft is still empty, lover. Are you desperate for a ride?*

  “I'd like that. You're not going to work the elevator gig anymore, are you?”

  *Can't let the warmbloods have all the fun, can we?*

  Her bright form enveloped him, carried him into the shaft, and began to ascend. Her partially materialized grip was all around him.

  “I'm still mostly Donal. You're still mostly Gertie.”

  *Don't be too sure, darling.*

  “That's the way Gertie always talked to Donal.”

  They rose for a time in silence, slowly. Then they came to a halt, floating in midshaft, and odd fluorescent sparkles danced across Aggie's wraith form.

  *Perhaps there are things that the other part of me always wanted to say to the other part of you.*

  While Donal was trying to parse the sense of that, Aggie shot upward, carried him out into the reception chamber of the firing range, whirled around, glowing, then flew up into the ceiling and was gone.

  Donal stared at the blank stonework.

  “What was that about?” asked Viktor.

  “Um … Nothing. Is Brian here?”

  “Harald's talking to him around back. He's fine.”

  They walked through, past the trays of target sheets and the shelves of ammunition, into the storage room that still served duty as Brian's bedroom. Brian and Harald were drinking purple tea from tin cups.

  “Hey, Lieutenant.”

  “Brian. You've been okay here?”

  “Kept my head down. And I've got a lot of friends …” Brian gestured to a bookcase whose shelves contained handguns. “… to keep me company.”

  “Things are going to get better in the city,” said Donal. “Soon.”

  “Sandarov will move fast.” Harald picked up a .39 Zak, checked the balance, and replaced it. “He's motivated.”

  “Captain Sandarov?” Brian's skin went a shade darker blue. “He treats me all right.”

  “Commissioner Sandarov, if things go the way they should.” Donal looked at the handguns. “Is that a GA over there?”

  “Sure. You want to take a look?”

  Donal picked up the handgun, checked the sword-blade logo embossed on the grip, and showed the weapon sideways-on to the others.