by M. R. Forbes
“You’re saying you can’t help me? You fucking started this.”
Maybe it was dangerous to push him. I didn’t care. I had died once already and come out of it okay. What could he do?
“I’m sorry, Conor. I’m not as strong as I once was, and I have more to protect now. I will provide you with the funds you need. That is the most I can do until this is over.”
I clutched my cell so hard I could feel the edges digging into my hand. He had allied with the other Houses, and now he was just going to leave them to rot, including House Red? Jin had trusted him with her family, and he was breaking that trust at the first sign of adversity. I was an idiot to think he gave a shit about anything other than himself. He wasn’t sleeping down in that mountain.
He was hiding.
I hung up on him without another word, and then threw the phone against the wall, satisfied when it shattered on impact.
The noise drew Frank into the kitchen, and he looked down at the remnants. “Good talk?”
“I fucking hate dragons,” I said.
“Mr. T seemed like a good enough guy for a giant reptile.”
“He’s bailing on us. Mr. Black is owning him.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“What do we do now?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t sure. Without a place to go, it was only a matter of time before Black caught up with us again. Without Tarakona offering resistance and distraction, he would be able to send a literal army at me.
My thoughts turned to Sandman. Stolen from her parents at birth, raised in solitude and treated like some kind of caged animal. She didn’t even have any clothes. I had always thought Black was a monster for the way he treated Danelle.
I hadn’t known the half of it.
I wasn’t going to let him have her. I wasn’t going to let him win. I was sure of that much. If I was the only one who could free her, then I was going to free her. Black be damned. Tarakona be damned. Fucking cancer be damned. I’d been letting everything around me control my fate for too long.
“I’m going for a walk,” I said.
“What?”
“A walk. Outside.”
“I’ll come with.”
I tapped my ring. “Black can’t find me as long as I’m wearing this.”
He looked at me for a few seconds before the light went on. “Oh.”
“Make sure Myra gets home safe, okay?” I had softened up to her after she had confided in me. Maybe there was still some sense of humanity left in my sick old bones.
He looked like I had punched him in the gut.
“Yeah, okay. If you say so, pal.”
“Good luck with Shika, too. I’m starting to think I was wrong about your chances with her.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“She touched your puss.”
“True.”
We both laughed. It was the most awkward moment I had experienced in a while. I never thought saying goodbye to Frank would be hard, but he had grown on me in the few days I had known him.
“Take care of yourself, Baron,” Frank said.
“He’s going to come for you again,” I said. “Make sure his team knows I’m not with you anymore, and he should leave you alone.”
“Sure. Or we can keep killing them.” He smiled.
“Don’t be a hero, Frank. It isn’t worth it. Just get Myra home. You and Shika. Tell her that’s her job now.”
He put out his hand. “It was good meeting you, Conor. I hope we get the chance again.”
I took his index finger and shook it. “You too, Frank Dobson. You’ll know whether I lived or not if the world doesn’t turn to shit. Stop by my place whenever.”
“I will.”
I patted him once as high up on his arm as I could reach before walking out the back entrance to the kitchen. It let me circle to the emergency stairwell without being seen.
Or at least, I thought it had.
Shika caught up to me as I reached the first landing.
“Baron. You’re leaving.”
“I have to finish this alone.” I showed her the ring. “Mr. Black can’t track me as long as I’m wearing this.”
“I understand.”
“Be careful, Shika. Tarakona isn’t everything he seems, and I don’t want you to get caught in the middle.”
“Why do you care what happens to me?” she asked.
“Because Frank is my friend, and that means a lot for someone who doesn’t have any others. And he likes you.”
I could swear she blushed as she looked demurely at the floor.
“I appreciate the caution, Baron. I signed a contract, and I must remain loyal to it.”
“Of course. No offense, but if Tarakona sends you after me at some point, I hope I win.”
She bowed to me. “It will be as nature intends.”
“Help Frank get Myra back to Vegas, will you?”
“He has not instructed me to stop following your direction.”
“Thanks. Goodbye, Shika.”
“Sayōnara, Baron.”
I turned and continued down the steps.
I’d spent the last six years since I was diagnosed wandering aimlessly, trying to avoid dying and find some kind of meaning to being alive. I still wasn’t sure I had found meaning, but I had found a purpose.
I made my way out of the hotel and into the street. I wasn’t the kind of guy who blended in anywhere. It didn’t matter.
I didn’t intend to disappear for long.
44
Elusive Illusion
I didn’t really know where I was going. I knew I wanted to get out of Tokyo, and that was good enough. I flagged a trike a couple of blocks from the hotel, climbing in the back and passing over my payment card. I was worried for a few seconds that Tarakona would decide to renege and cut me off.
He didn’t. He still wanted me to finish the job. Did he also still think I would bring Sandman to him? I didn’t think so. He was older and smarter than that.
The driver didn’t speak English, but "airport" is a pretty easy thing to mime. We headed off, with the driver chatting incessantly even though I couldn’t understand a word he said while I kept my eyes peeled for signs of Black’s people.
I wasn’t sure where I was going to buy a ticket to once I got there. I wanted to go back to the States, back to Jersey or Chicago or somewhere familiar. I also didn’t want to wind up too far from wherever Sandman told me I needed to go.
I regretted smashing my cell. I had lost the list of locations, so I couldn’t even make an educated guess.
“Is there a hotel near the airport?” I asked.
“Eh?” the driver replied.
“Hotel.” I mimed sleep. He laughed and nodded, giving me the thumbs-up.
Black might expect me to grab a room near the airport. I was okay with that. He would have to search every room to find the one I was in, which was wholly inefficient. Better to post guards outside to look for me.
I touched the mask. I could work with that, too.
The trike stopped thirty minutes later outside a tall glass monolith. I thanked him, leaving him a nice tip on the way out. Why not? It wasn’t my money. The lobby of the place was upscale and polished. I felt out of place and thankful that I hadn’t gotten any blood on myself.
I was in a room fifteen minutes later. The rep had looked uncomfortable the entire time he was booking it until I had handed over Mr. T’s card. Then I got the royal treatment as something in the computer identified it as special. I assumed the location belonged to House Red.
I had been forced to insist on no upgrades, and a room on the ninth floor. It was three floors above the reach of the fields, far enough that users wouldn’t be able to ambush me, close enough that I could get down to it if needed. There was a chance it would make me easier to pinpoint, but I thought hedging my bets was the safest route.
I settled onto a bed that was so soft it had to be infused with magic, feeling my limbs relax as
soon as they touched it. I stayed like that for a few minutes before taking off my trench and finding the meds and injector. I removed my shirt and shot myself up, using two of the pills.
If they were making me stronger, I needed all the strength I could get.
Then I returned to the bed. I was asleep before I knew it.
I was awake before I knew it, too. My eyes snapped open, a cold sensation tickling my entire body.
I sat up, looking around the room. I felt off. High? My head started to throb, just like the last time. What time was it? I checked my watch. I had been sleeping for an hour. It felt like seconds.
“It is almost complete.”
The demon’s voice was a whisper that echoed across the room. It didn’t frighten me. It was almost soothing.
I glanced at my trench, hanging from the foot of the bed. “What is?”
The laughter was soft, like it knew I had a headache and didn’t want to fuck me up too badly.
“The time is coming. The power of a soul for the power of a soul. A bargain made and kept.”
“The time for what?”
More laughter, slightly louder. I slid off the bed to my feet. I felt shaky. Weak. And at the same time strong. I heard something else. Magic. Death magic. The fields weren’t reaching me here.
I was reaching them.
How?
My heart beat faster at the revelation. I was doing the impossible. Or was I?
“The power of a soul for the power of a soul,” the demon repeated.
I sensed it now. There was a dead mouse in the wall, another one a floor down, another one a floor down from that. I wasn’t feeling the field. I was feeling their life force, using it like a signal boost. That was new.
And very, very cool.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“The bargain made and kept. Necromancer.”
It spat out the word. I walked over to my trench and picked it up, finding the mask in my pocket and holding it in front of my face. We had made a deal when we had met.
“I’ve given you dozens of souls and only asked for a few. You owe me, not the other way around.”
The mask was cold in my grip, but the laughter in my head grew loud enough to hurt.
“You agreed to the bargain. You should have read the contract.”
Contract? “You never showed me a contract.”
“You never asked to see it.”
I wasn’t sure if I was awake, or if this was a dream brought on by the meds. Either way, I got pissed. I was strong now. I didn’t need the demon and its bullshit. Tarakona had told me to be wary of it, and now I knew why. This wasn’t a balanced relationship. I had always known that but had dismissed it out of fear. I had died once, and I realized at that moment that I hadn’t been too afraid. Because I knew I would survive?
“I don’t need you anymore,” I said, dropping it on the bed and finding my shirt. I would bring it and the dice to the rooftop and hurl them off. Let someone else have them; they didn’t work for anyone but a necromancer anyway.
My body froze against my will, and I fell onto the floor. My heart stopped again, seizing this time, and I fought for breath. It was going to kill me before it would let me get rid of it. I struggled for air, the fear I had moments ago dismissed returning full-force.
“Do you want to be free?” the demon asked.
“Yes,” I croaked out.
The pain vanished. My heart started beating again.
“The power of a soul for the power of a soul.”
I got back on my feet. I stared at the mask.
Control.
It was still an illusion.
45
When you gotta go
I spent the next three hours sitting up on the bed, ready to go at a moment’s notice. I held the spellbook in front of me, flipping through the ancient pages, scanning the incantations. I couldn’t read them in the sense of individual words. Once my eyes had passed over an entire passage, I would have this sensation of understanding that still amazed me. I knew what every spell in the book could do, and at this point I was convinced I could cast every single one of them.
The meds had always been a painful necessity. The only option in a life without options. I took them to stay alive, not because it was fun to poke holes in my gut and leave myself in fiery agony. Xenoxofril. It was an innocuous name to something that had the capability of changing the world. It was a drug that turned people into monsters today, and would be able to turn them back into people tomorrow.
I laughed. Had the meds left me as I was because I was already a monster? I had taken two doses and once, and after my little fever-dream with the demon, I felt healthier, and more powerful than ever. I could hear the magical fields pulsing three floors below me; the signal carried up through the remnant life force of the dead. More than that, I could pull it along, bring it into me, hold it at levels I could barely believe.
Worse than that, I wanted more. More of the meds. More of the power. More of the magic. The drugs had been a necessity in the past. I was pretty sure those days were over. I was becoming addicted.
I wanted to go back to Jersey to get the rest of my stash. I wanted to take them all at once, even knowing that it would leave me without. Black had to have more somewhere, and I would do whatever it took to find them.
Being a necromancer had always felt like a curse. An affliction. A dying man’s joke.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.
I turned the page of the book, scanning the incantation. It seemed the book was organized in order of power, or maybe the value of the effect. I had tried the spell I was looking at a few times but had never been able to do it. It was near the back of the tome, a linking spell that would supposedly enable me to control more than one soul at a time, assuming I had the magic to do it.
I paused on it, considering giving it a try. There were enough dead rodents hidden in the walls for me to play with, to see if the Xenoxofril had made me strong enough. I decided against it. I didn’t want to waste my health or my power on something frivolous. I still had a job to do.
I slid off the bed and to my feet, walking over to the window and pushing aside the curtain. It was almost noon. The sun was out. The light of it bothered my eyes. I was about to push the curtain closed again when I noticed the vehicles pulling into the parking lot below. Six of them. By itself, nothing out of the ordinary.
That they were all identical, and that they all arrived at the same time? That deserved observation.
I watched them pull into adjacent spots. The doors opened a few seconds later, but nobody got out.
The phone rang.
I didn’t have my cell. It was the room phone. I glanced back at it, over by the bed and out of reach. I looked back out the window. The doors were still open. Nobody was climbing out.
The phone rang again.
Something told me I had been lingering here too long.
The phone rang a third time.
I dropped the curtain and hurried over to it.
“Can I help you?” I said.
“Conor,” Sandman replied. “Berlin, Germany. I’ll call you when you get there.”
“How the hell did you know I was here?”
“I waited for Black to find you. Now go.”
Those were the words I didn’t want to hear. I dropped the phone, letting it clatter to the floor. I rushed back to the window. The cars were still there. The doors were closed.
Amos’ fat ass was easy to spot, sauntering toward the lobby with the rest of Black’s team.
I dropped my hand into my pocket, running my fingers over the mask. I couldn’t be rid of the thing, but I had told it I didn’t need it anymore. That meant not using it.
I went back to my door, sliding it open and peering through the crack. The hallway was clear. Berlin. The airport was only a quarter-mile away. I could make that if I could get out of the building unseen.
That should be easy enough. They could
n’t track me.
I put my hood up and drew in a deep breath, using my new talent to draw the death magic up from below and into me. I could hear the cacophony of it as a subtle thrumming in the back of my mind.
I slipped out into the hallway, putting my hand against the wall and whispering one of the spells. I felt a thread of my power snake out along the surface to the camera in the corner. It dissolved the wiring, knocking it dead.
I walked down the hall, doing the same thing to three more security cameras. I was quick but cautious as I moved, knowing that dropping the surveillance would lead the team right to me. I was okay with that for now.
I didn’t head for the stairs or the elevator. Instead, I retreated to my room. I went into the bathroom, closing the door and kneeling on the floor next to it, bringing my gun to my hand. I put my other hand on the ground and whispered the linking spell as I reached out to the walls.
One hundred veins spread from the first, reaching out and finding the corpses in the walls, latching onto them and calling their souls back from wherever. Within seconds, the vague understanding of one hundred simple minds rested at the edge of my consciousness, held like a web within the grasp of the death magic.
The door to my room opened.
“Hey, Baldie! You in here?”
I was as still and silent as I could be, focusing instead on bringing my miniature army together. I could hear the scraping in the walls. I was sure Amos could, too.
“Place could use a good exterminator,” I heard him say, as his heavy feet moved around the room.
“I’m alone in here, Conor,” Amos said. “Mr. Black wanted me to talk to you, to end things friendly, you know? We were sort of friends once, and I don’t want to hurt ya for Dannie’s sake.”
I still didn’t say anything. I would have to be stupid to fall for that crap.