Shadows Down Under: Shadowrun, #8

by Jean Rabe

  “I barely noticed the pain.” Barega-the-boy showed his arms with long fresh scars. Ninn felt the Adoni-child she resided in shiver.

  “I painted with my blood, brother,” the boy continued. “I painted lines and circles upon my arms and legs, and I painted symbols that came to me in a dream. And while my blood was still wet I pressed leaves against it and felt myself moving ever closer to the earth. I dropped so close and then I flew. I was walkabout, brother. I do not know how long I was gone.”

  “Days and days and days and days.”

  “I found the Rainbow Serpent, and he introduced me to my totem spirit, the galah. The Rainbow Serpent was wise and powerful, and he drove me down into the sky while he drank all of my blood and ate my flesh and then returned life to me and brought me back to this world. I learned new songs and met spirits. My heart sings a melody, brother. It sings that the world will be mine. I traveled through the hills and into the belly of the land where I rested on a bed of fire opals and listened to my heart.”

  Ninn felt the sun on her shoulders and the earth rough and dry against her bare legs. Her imagination couldn’t be this vivid. This was indeed a dream…but it was so much more.

  Adoni laughed. Ninn caught the sound of his voice, so like Ella Gance’s, but not as rich or perfect as the adult version. More pure, though. “You make up stories, Barega. Father will scold you for running away. Heart sings a melody. Ha! Father will—”

  “—understand.” Barega’s old-man face had superimposed itself over Barega-the-child. “I will tell him of the Great Ghost Storm that I swam through. I felt the anger of the Rainbow Serpent gathered in the beautiful, horrible, most magical clouds, brother. I ran with the rain.”

  Ninn thought she heard thunder, but the sky here was clear and blue. Ninn-Adoni stood and their shared mouth dropped open to see a galah circling slowly on an updraft.

  “I am no longer a child, brother,” Barega said. “I am talmai, mekigar, wirringan—”

  “Koradji,” Ninn said in her own voice, eyes locked on the galah. “I believe you. Koradji.”

  “Yes, and I can dream,” Barega said. “And so can you, Nininiru Tossinn. You are koradji, too.”

  Ninn awoke to discover she was flat on her back on the tile floor of the body stash, shadowed by the extended drawer that held Ella’s body. Barega kneeled next to her. Tarr leaned over her, fretting, reaching down and grabbing at her good arm.

  “We need to be leaving,” the dwarf said. “Half-hour’s up. More than a half-hour. They called my comm, said I needed to scoot scoot scoot.” She pulled Ninn to her feet, then shoulder-checked the body drawer to close it. “Don’t want to be pushing my privileges. This place helps me earn a good living. I’d told the techs a half-hour was all I needed. I’m gonna have to make this up to them.”

  The dwarf ushered them out of the room, motioned them down the hall and paused to use her wires to restart the surveillance system.

  Ninn hadn’t imagined the thunder. It was storming again, and thunder gently rocked the ground. The rain was steady and straight, no wind to speak of.

  “Good thing you opted for the raincoat, ya ken, Keeb?” Mordred had surfaced in her mind. “So where’d you check out to? You really zoned out there.”

  “I found a beast,” she said, picturing the monstrous, inhuman face of the Cross Slayer.

  “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, 2016, screenplay by J.K. Rowling.”

  “We part company here,” Tarr said. “I’ve got to get some of these parts in my jars before they spoil.” The dwarf hefted a duffel bag Ninn hadn’t seen her bring to the morgue. “Next time you need some work done, look me up, ya ken?”

  Ninn nodded and watched Tarr toddle away. She and Barega cut across the parking lot.

  “Koradji, eh?”

  “Shaman. Yes, Nininiru. The galah told me we were kindred. Your totem is the galah, too. It is why you rented an office above the Rosy Parrot. Without knowing it, you followed your totem. My galah led me to you. My galah told me you would awaken like the land awakened. My galah told me it was time.”

  Ninn didn’t want to believe him, but after what she’d seen in morgue, she had to consider it a possibility. She’d heard voices on and off for years. Had they been spirits trying to talk to her…not drugs making her hallucinate?

  “So if this is true, Barega, why did it take until now for me to—”

  “Awaken?” The old Aborigine smiled slightly. “I suspect as a child you knew the secret…imaginary friends…faces on butterflies. But you lost your way as you grew. An old proverb of my people says ‘Those who lose dreaming are lost.’ You were lost, Nininiru Tossinn, and now you are found. But it will be a difficult path.”

  She raised a snake tattoo eyebrow.

  “It’s all that metal inside you, wires, the plastic and other bits. All of that suffocates your magical mind, your essence. I will teach you how to let your essence breathe.”

  “Guess that means no nose filter, ya ken?” Mordred cut in.

  Ninn shuddered. Indeed she’d had imaginary friends as a child. And she’d heard voices, more often since coming to Australia, figured it was just the alcohol and slips, had never considered it might be something else.

  “I saw things,” she said. “When we were in the morgue. I saw your sister…brother…Adoni…Ella.”

  “I saw them, too. We dreamed together.”

  “I saw a monster.”

  “Through my brother’s eyes you saw a monster. Adoni’s slayer. It is a very bad man we hunt, Nininiru Tossinn.”

  “Ninn,” she corrected. “Call me Ninn, remember? Yeah, a very bad man.”

  Seventeen

  Basset Hounds and Other Strangers

  The raincoat worked, at least keeping part of Ninn dry. Her head and neck were soaked, though, and her feet kept slipping in the high-fashion sandals, threatening blisters.

  “Go catch some sleep. I’m going to the harbor, Barega. I want to poke around the docks. See what I can find. There was saltwater—”

  “I am an old man, Nininiru.” Barega lagged slightly behind as they cut across the parking lot toward the street, the rain coming down steady like a sheet. His clothes were plastered to him, looking like a second skin. “I am tired, and need to catch that sleep. My legs are trees so heavy. They grow roots and do not want me to move. My feet hurt. I believe all old men’s feet hurt. A few hours of sleep, then we will go to this place. My feet will be ready again.”

  There was a faint siren, then a second, blocks and blocks away. Always, Ninn could hear sirens if she listened for them. A city so big, someone always needed saving or catching. It was a police siren; she could tell the difference between the lumpers and the firemen.

  “You rest, Barega. I’m going now.” She’d lost too many hours to her drug and booze stupor, and needed to make up for that. Ninn worked better alone, anyway. The sensation of rain against her bald head wasn’t unpleasant, no sodden hair clinging to her neck and shoulders. Maybe she’d keep it shaved. But she’d ditch the nanite tattoos if…when…she cleared herself of the fire. “You can drop off for a few hours—”

  “And so can you, rest. Dreams can be exhausting.”

  Music blared from a Nissan Coda that glided past, a summer jingle. It was a food van of some sort, the sign on its side briefly illuminated by a flash of pink lightning: SoyPro Frozen Treats. Odd for it to be out so late, and during a mana rain. Maybe it was an AISE surveillance unit; food trucks worked great for that, blend into the neighborhood. Folks only got suspicious if they didn’t have anything to sell.

  “Me? Tired?” Ninn shook her head. But she was indeed fatigued, like she’d run a marathon. Maybe just a few hours wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. Maybe that would give her enough of an edge so she could think clearly, do a better job. Yes, she worked better alone…or thought she did. But maybe she shouldn’t leave this old man who’d messed with her mind with all this dreaming and galahs and dancing with a dead singer. He had opened her up to a n
ew world and new abilities—which she didn’t yet know if she would embrace. Maybe she should be grateful to him. A Milton quote tickled through her head: “Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”

  The morgue and the spirits had definitely been an epiphany.

  “We are in this, koradji. The galahs brought us together for a reason. To find you and to find this. My hotel room is in the Cross, and that is too many blocks away for my sorry feet.” There was a glass and steel boxy building with YMCA flashing in yellow-orange lights. Through the rain, it looked like an impressionist’s cubist painting. Overhead, pink lightning flickered in the clouds to add to the effect. The weatherman had been correct with his fifty percent forecast.

  Ninn didn’t mind the rain; you couldn’t mind the rain and live under the mana cloud. But she didn’t like the pink lightning.

  “The Y looks high-end, but it’s actually a cheap flop, Barega. And it smells bad, sweat and air freshener. If I gotta spend this opal, it’s gonna be on better accommodations.”

  “I was not pointing to that building.” Barega gestured again.

  There was a vacant building next to the Y, a furniture store that had a Going out of Business sign stretched across the front window, maybe the oldest building in this part of the city. It looked beaten down and out of place. But it would have fit in the Cross.

  It took Ninn only a few heartbeats to pick the lock on the side door. It didn’t seem to have any security, as if the owner was saying: “I’m retiring, and if you won’t buy my furniture, come and take it.”

  The offerings inside were pretty picked over—a half-dozen couches remained, scattered rocking chairs, a few end tables, mostly it was empty places where furniture had been. The place hadn’t sold all its mattresses, though; there were several at the very back, which suited Ninn just fine. Nice and dark, not a bad place to nap.

  “The spirits of the dead are not easy to conjure, Ninn. They taxed you…I can see that on your face.”

  “In the space between the tattoos?” She laughed.

  “Clearly you have great potential. You saw many dead in the morgue. You shared my brother’s lingering essence.”

  Ninn snorted. “There were plenty of spirits in the morgue. Too many. The trick was how not to talk to them. Guess there is no heaven…no place for them to go after the bucket’s kicked. Guess they stick around in a misty limbo—

  “In time you will understand that some spirits are tied to something…my brother’s spirit was tied to his perfect body.”

  “That he’d spent so much time and nuyen to gain,” Ninn said.

  Even cocooned by the building, they heard the sharp crack of lightning, followed by a rocking boom of thunder.

  “His spirit was not ready to leave that perfect body. Other spirits there…they were also tied to something, but perhaps we can help some of them move on by bringing their killer to justice. Perhaps stopping the Cross Slayer will let them find peace. I pray that is the case with Adoni. The spirits of the earth—”

  “Earth. Are there other spirits? Beyond dead people?”

  “The Dead, 2010, zombie flick set in Africa,” Mordred cut in.

  “Many. Spirits in the earth and the rain, in fire. Spirits are everywhere, Ninn. In the bricks of this old building. In the wood of this old floor. Sometimes they want to be called; sometimes they want no part of us and this world. Sometimes they are helpful, imparting information, performing tasks. Sometimes they bind to you. Sometimes…ah, this mattress is wonderful. Most of the time they are benign. Most of the—”

  Ninn took off the raincoat and stretched out on a mattress three away from Barega; she wanted some space. The old man was sound asleep, his last words a mumble about this being the softest thing he’d ever lay down on. Then he was snoring. She set Mordred next to her, needing the weapon within reach. Ninn yawned; maybe a quick nap would do her good—if she could sleep without thinking about Talon’s crispy body and the slashed entertainers in the coroner’s file cabinets. She would have liked to take a look at Cadi’s body.

  Of course, as she tried to drift off, Mordred started chatting. “What do you smell, Keebs?”

  “Furniture polish.” She stared up at the light fixtures, domed things with metal rims and knobs in the center; they looked like breasts. “And something musty, dusty. This place has got some age to it.”

  “Think you need to do better than that. Still angling for that nose filter? Or are you gonna listen to the Koori and lay off the body additions?”

  She shrugged.

  “So, is he right? You a booga-booga? You going all shaman on me? Shaman, 1996, original title Chamane, starring Spartak Fedotov, Igor Gotsman, and Igor Gotsmanov. It had a budget of—”

  She turned off the smartlink and felt her surroundings. It was an old, old building with a painted tin ceiling. The tin panels were probably worth a good deal and would be sold when the rest of the furniture was moved out—probably worth more than the furniture or the building proper. The floor would likely be snapped up, too, a dark walnut that dipped in places from the decades; it could be restored. The building would be gutted for its antique treasures before some developer came in and modernized everything. Cookie-cutter condos, maybe. This’d be a good spot for middle-income accommodations; people who could afford high-end stuff wouldn’t live next to the Y. Most of the buildings in this block had been reworked to modern tastes and to meet rigorous building codes. They looked shiny, just like the Y next door.

  She liked the Cross better. It was outdated, yeah, but it was real and earthy. Unfortunately it would have a couple of brand new shiny buildings soon, courtesy of that magnesium fire.

  Ninn listened to the shush of traffic out on the street, muted by the building, a faint siren hinting at an emergency somewhere, a whisper of creaks…was this old furniture store groaning with its years? Or was something trying to talk to her?

  Focus, Barega had told her, so that’s what she did, shutting down her audial receptors and listening with her own ears. Definitely a whisper, with a pattern to it that suggested conversation.

  Focus.

  The whispery sound grew more distinct and she imagined pulling it to her. Ninn’s fingers worked like she knitted something in midair, dreamed she was fashioning a big spider web to catch whatever was making the persistent sound.

  Dream, right? Barega told her to dream.

  She felt a tug on her mind, a fisherman having caught something. Now it was just a matter of reeling it in.

  She sat up, swung her legs over the side of the mattress, and put off the idea of a nap. She peered into the shadows. Only faint light crept in through the windows far to the front of the showroom. Flashes of pale pink from the worrisome mana lightning intruded. But way back here it was all a collection of blacks and grays.

  Whisperwhisperwhisper…

  “Where are you? What are you?” Whatever she’d snared in her imaginary web didn’t feel like the dead spirits she’d danced with in the city morgue. “Who—”

  The thing that materialized at her feet looked as if it had been pieced together from broken furniture. It had four legs like a dog, though none matched the others and so it was crooked, even with its straight wooden legs; likely from footstools, the right front one having a claw and ball foot with an embedded roller.

  The body that rested on those was a small bolster corduroy pillow with stuffing spilling out along a seam. The neck was a woodworking tool, a curved gouge lightly rusted, and atop it sat an inverted kantharos vase, the handles resembling a basset hound’s droopy ears. As she watched, a tail sprouted, a long whippy thing composed of nails, staples, nuts, and bolts. The collar that appeared around its neck was an antique light cord, tied in a bow, with the plug dangling down.

  The creature growled softly and wagged its tail.

  “What the hell?” Ninn said.

  “Fetch?” asked the creature. “
Fetch fetch fetch fetch fetch.” Its tail wagged faster.

  “What?”

  “I’m a good dog. Good dog. Good dog. Gooddoggooddoggooddogfetchfetchfetch.”

  “Uh…”

  “Benzo,” the collection of parts said. “I’m Benzo, a good dog good dog good doggie doggie dog. Throw the ball.”

  “Uh…”

  “B-E-N-Z-O. B-E-N-Z-O. B-E-N-Z-O, and Benzo is my name, oh!”

  “Benzo.”

  “Want to play? Want to play fetch? Throw the ball. Throw the ball. Throw the ball ball ball ball.” The tail wagged so fast a couple of nails flew off into the darkness.

  “I don’t want to play.”

  The tail drooped.

  “Maybe later.”

  It gave a low wag.

  “Talk to me, Benzo.” Ninn was at the same time amazed and guarded of the thing. What had she done? Had she created this? She’d been trying to pull the whispers to her. Why the hell was she practicing with her newfound booga booga when Barega was sleeping?

  “Fetch. Want to play fetch? I can teach you.”

  “Persistent, aren’t you—” This was indeed a spirit, right? Again she wondered why she was playing with this stuff without the Aborigine. What if she’d called up the essence of angry broken furniture? Or the sense of conciliation…something that had fed on the negotiations that had taken place in this store, and was now ravenously starving? A dog? Really?

  Something else popped up behind Benzo, a mound of leather swatches with chair posts poking out of it. “Moooooo,” it said, and then revealed that in life it had been a cow, the skin of which had been stretched across an easy chair.

  Next to it was a swirl of dust that looked like a miniature tornado.

  Focus!

  “Benzo. Just Benzo. Please! Only Benzo!”

  “B-E-N-Z-O. And Benzo is my name, Oh!”

  The mound of skins and the swirl of dust vanished. There was something else moving, another spirit…she could sense that…but it hung back where the shadows were thickest. And she didn’t like the feel of it.