Nylon Angel

by Marianne de Pierres

  * * * *

  We walked south, almost the way I'd come, toward Mueno territory even though I itched to be going east into the heart of Shadoville. We kept on the major walkways. It was dangerous in the open but more dangerous using the cover of back alleys.

  "Have you got a weapon?" I whispered, fearing for her as the weight of watchful eyes traveled with us. The Remington, rescued by the ferals and back in my hands, didn't fill me with great confidence.

  She nodded, pointing to a tiny pouch around her waist.

  "Rasta virus," she whispered back. "Killing radius of a hundred meters. The… potency weakens after that." She seemed disappointed at the thought.

  No wonder she moves with confidence, I mused. She was a walking biobomb.

  We barely spoke again until midday, when the building facades displayed gaudy threadbare banners, bundles of feathers and roughly made dream catchers. Silent, knifed-up Muenos began to mark our progress—whether as protection for them, or for us, I could only guess.

  Without hesitation she took me to a door smeared with dried blood.

  "Pas thinks chicken blood wards off evil spirits," said Tina.

  "What do you think?"

  "I think it's a waste of food."

  Her pragmatism almost made me smile. Almost.

  * * * *

  We spent a day and a night with Pas. He was less obese than he had been and more confident. An energy of purpose seemed to rage through him as he flicked his long hair about.

  "Topaz strays from our ways," he spat. "He is like this with Mondo from the Stretch." He made a rude gesture with his fingers.

  "How does he stray, Pas?" I asked, curious.

  He lowered his voice. "I have heard, at night, he takes a woman's form."

  Shape-changing? I didn't know whether to laugh or be troubled by Pas's words.

  "No matter. Oya is our true leader now." He stopped short of prostrating himself before me, but I could sense his impulse to do it.

  I thrust the image away before it got me shaking. "This fighting must stop, Pas. You must tell the Muenos to resist it. Secure your territory. Mondo wants this fighting to spread something evil. Much blood will mean much evil. More than Oya can stop."

  "There is nothing Oya cannot stop."

  This whole conversation was ridiculous. I'd come here to convince Pas to keep feeding the ferals and wound up acting as the Muenos' favorite godhead again.

  Next thing there'd be an anointing ritual.

  * * * *

  An hour later I was perched awkwardly on something that felt and looked like bones, with a swathe of chicken feathers on my head.

  I should have split when Pas started filing his men past me for benediction, but I couldn't bring myself to crush Tina's wide-eyed belief.

  Pas recited the Mueno faiths, including the legend of Oya. I learned that Oya was a powerful female voodoo deity. A witch who invoked great changes. By the look of all the hundreds of Oya dolls cluttering Pas's living room she also had some bad-hair issues.

  Where was the likeness?

  Truthfully, the Oya association scared the jeesus out of me. Not only was I hallucinating Angels, but now half of The Tert reckoned I was a femme voodoo warrior. I'd thought to use it, but it was getting way out of control.

  After the litany, the room filled with shaven-haired Mueno women bearing dirty trays of food. Tina ferreted whatever she could carry into her robes.

  Confined to my bone throne, the heat of the bodies and the overwhelming smell of blood made me dizzy. The graininess of a vision threatened.

  I fought it with every ounce of self-control, and lost…

  Angel. Slitting throats, dancing in blood. Scalps piled on my body. Suffocating me…

  I came back, draped indecorously across the bone throne with fifty Muenos prone before me. The sight nearly blacked me out again, yet my behavior seemed to be what they expected.

  * * * *

  Tina told me, as we made our way back west at daybreak escorted by a small Mueno guard, that I had glowed. She related it matter-of-factly, as if it was something Oya would naturally do.

  I tried to hide my shaking hands from her and didn't ask any more questions. At least Pas will keep feeding the ferals, I thought.

  I insisted the Muenos leave us on the edge of their territory, feeling relieved when it was just Tina and I again.

  The weight of being a savior made me totally nauseous.

  * * * *

  We reached the fringe of Shadoville by late afternoon, dodging skirmishes as we went. Tina led me to an inconspicuous building sandwiched between a semicircle of villa units. It was only two stories high and about one room wide. I couldn't remember ever seeing it before.

  She pointed to the building: her pale eyes filled her face.

  "Don't kill any children," she said simply, and turned and left me standing.

  Don't kill any children!

  What had my life become?

  Chapter Twenty

  I stepped toward the narrow building in a hurry to get under cover and off the street.

  The front door wasn't barricaded and I moved cautiously amongst the lower rooms observing the sparse furniture and bare kitchen. A noise above drew me to the stairs. The Remington lay loose in my grip, comforting.

  I flicked away a crawling sense of foreboding as if it were an insect and squeezed my finger against the trigger.

  Upstairs was more typical of a spirit house: symbols painted along the staircase, the scent of incense drifting down. It reminded me of Mei, and I wondered if she was still alive. I hoped for Sto's sake that she was.

  The last door at the top of the stairs was shut. I hesitated, balked by a sense of foreboding.

  I had to go on, but what if the shaman, Vayu, couldn't give me answers?

  I was running out of options and into lunacy.

  I flashed on the face of the mongrel woman, and the disfiguring, black whorl. What the hell had caused that?

  I reached out for the door handle a second before it opened. A slight woman with a weary expression stood there. Her beaded red hair fell almost to the floor.

  "Come in, Parrish. We've been waiting for you."

  I should have been surprised. But to tell the truth, I was beginning to think there were no more surprises left for me.

  "Vayu?"

  She nodded briefly in acknowledgment.

  I stepped inside.

  Candles littered the perimeter of the room, and holo statues for warding off bad spirits. Cross-legged on the floor sat a group of people—a mixture of races and ages, but similar in other ways. A wave of energy coursed around them as if I'd somehow stumbled into the swirl of an electrical storm. My body hair stood on end.

  Vayu glided around behind me and took her place in the circle. She beckoned me over to sit by her side.

  "Put your gun away," she instructed in a quiet voice. "We won't harm you."

  I believed her—most shamans are pacifists—but shook my head anyway. "Sorry."

  She sighed heavily and nodded.

  I sat next to her, leaving the Remington loose in my lap. It seemed a crude gesture on my part. But heck!

  They sat in an intense, heavy silence, waiting for me to speak, but the words stuck in my throat.

  In the end Vayu took pity on me. "Mei is still alive."

  I nearly asked How do you know? but that would have been stupid and pointless. So I settled for, "Good news. I'm glad."

  She smiled then, a beautiful, shining thing that made me feel stained.

  "I don't know that we can help you, Parrish Plessis. The creature growing inside you is already strong."

  "Can you explain it to me?"

  "Perhaps. But first you must tell us what you know. We can sense the earth's energy flows are changing, transforming in ways we have never seen before." She shivered.

  I began telling my strange story. "I went to Mei Sheong for help. I'd been having visions—of an Angel. We both took a drink. Mushroom, I think. Then I had the
vision. I spoke to it. It's—it's a parasite feeding from my body. It's somehow been trapped by my immune system but now it is free."

  "How so?"

  "I'm not sure. I know a man who has modified genes in locals…"

  "I've heard talk of him. But Parrish, what do you think this parasite seeks?"

  "It told me we would evolve into something else."

  Vayu paled. The others shifted and whispered among themselves in grave, low voices.

  "We feared something, but not this. What can we do? It's outside our understanding, our capabilities," she said.

  It wasn't what I wanted to hear. "You mean it's not a hallucination? This creature is real?"

  "Yes. True shamans have always been able to contact the spirit plane with the assistance of hallucinogens. What you have encountered on your pathway to meet with the spirits is different. An interloper—a parasite you call it. But others have come to us with similar stories. To those unaffected by the visions it may seem like madness. But we shamans see further than the material world. We see energy."

  Vayu's revelation floored, terrified and relieved me all at once. I wasn't crazy but I was possessed. I don't know that it made me feel any better. "But how did this happen? Where is this creature from?" I gasped.

  "We don't know," Vayu said.

  "Why is it in me and not you?"

  She shook her head helplessly. "You must find the answer to that."

  "What can you do?"

  She hung her head in ready defeat. "We can only wait and watch."

  My bewilderment quickened to anger. "You mean you've given up already!"

  A ripple passed through the group—embarrassment, perhaps? Enough, hopefully, for me to prick their guilt, not combust their fear.

  I homed in on the opportunity. "I can tell you this much. It's some type of information creature, feeding off the epinephrine—the adrenaline—in our bodies. You deal in energy, don't you? Isn't information energy?"

  "Energy trapped within flesh? But how can this work?" Vayu's eyes widened.

  I shrugged.

  "For a human body to confine such energy, the creature must be providing some mechanism to protect the flesh. If we knew what that was, perhaps…"

  She looked intently around the circle at each shaman. One by one they nodded briefly in unspoken agreement.

  She took a breath. "Parrish Plessis, the others have agreed to try another journeyback if you are willing? Perhaps with more of us we will be stronger and can learn more. But it will still be dangerous."

  I grimaced. "What's a little danger between total strangers?"

  No one seemed to share my humor.

  They joined hands and began a low chant accom-panied by precise but fluid movements, similar to the ones Mei had made.

  I knew what to expect this time and prepared for the rush as I swallowed from the receptacle Vayu passed me.

  This time, though, the rush was gentle: a slide into a white haze…

  I floated above the stream of unformed images, buoyed in the air on the wings of a large, brown eagle. I nestled in amongst the feathers, conscious of nothing but rhythmic movement and the exhilaration of freedom.

  We covered an endless, featureless distance before the eagle dived slowly toward the ground. The river course it had been following changed slowly from a thin black line to a dull brown and—as we swooped closer and closer—a viscous red. Blood. My blood.

  Without warning the sky darkened from the cast of a huge shadow. Something attacked the eagle from behind, viciously ripping its tail feathers apart. The eagle wheeled, raising its talons in defense, but it foundered like a vessel without its rudder.

  The attack came again, an intangible enemy, tearing flesh and bone.

  Underneath me the eagle's solid back shredded, scattering into single, tiny flames, souls who together had formed something solid but independently were snuffed out, sucked away into darkness. One flame flickered brighter, lasted longer. Vayu. I felt her reach for me with a brief, impassioned thought.

  "Stop the change. Stop the man who seeks the change."

  Then the shadow grew as if gorging on her light until I could see nothing, feel nothing…

  Consciousness found me on the floor in Vayu's room, on my knees, hands outstretched. Around me the shamans lay—lifeless. I crawled frantically from one to the other listening for heartbeats. The only one I heard was my own; wild, frightened and confused.

  When the door was flung wide open and bodies crammed through, I was thumping Vayu's chest and screaming at her to breathe.

  Dreadlocks and incisors dripping saliva answered me instead. A slight figure followed them in, wearing its snake smile. Eager for me.

  Jamon.

  "Well done." He stroked the lead 'goboy on the head. "You were right." Then he addressed me, a sweeping gesture taking in the bodies of the shamans. "Parrish, what have you been up to?"

  I stared at him, incapable of speech.

  "My 'goboys have been tracking you for a while," he said conversationally, holding up the remnants of the Beach Boys T. "I hope your friend doesn't want this back?"

  Teece's shirt. What happened to the Slummer who wore it?

  "Take her home!" he instructed with a twitch of his tattooed cheek.

  I staggered to my feet, swinging the Remington up, firing. The first shot took the closest 'goboy, but it ended there. The magazine was empty.

  I swung the barrel as a bat.

  But Jamon knew not to risk his men in hand-to-hand combat against me. They shot me with a paralysis derm from a few meters.

  I ducked sideways to avoid it. Two more were already on their way. One struck me in the hip. In a matter of seconds I collapsed, unable to move my legs.

  "Excellent," he said. "The effects remain localized to your legs, Parrish. It will fade. In a few days."

  A few days! He might as well have shot me in the head.

  They came then and bound my hands, touching me all over with the eagerness of grave robbers. They bore me back to Jamon's rooms like a trophy, through the confusion and craziness crippling Torley's.

  Everyone I saw was armed. Many were bleeding or staggering hungry. I glimpsed familiar faces, and they me. No one spoke or offered help. I didn't blame them. They were too busy surviving.

  Jamon's villa was unchanged—the polished table and scores of heavily scented candles; hand-cut crystal glasses on the sideboard—except for a large rectangle of clear plastic that stood against one wall. It was shrouded in a velveteen cover with only the edges jutting out. I wondered at its size, as Jamon's hounds dumped me on his sofa.

  He followed my gaze with a strange, almost dreamy, expression. "You ran away, Parrish. You shouldn't have done that," he said.

  Then he swung and punched me.

  A direct uncontested hit that rattled my teeth and sent a hot skewer of pain across one cheekbone.

  Hate consumed me. I twisted away, spitting blood from my mouth. But my legs flopped uselessly, like dead meat, and I slid sideways on the sofa.

  Through the doorway the babble of his comm network mocked my uselessness. In the middle of a war, tied up and semiparalyzed.

  Like Loyl, Jamon directed his fight from a screen. And yet he had left his comm to come and get me? And they say there's nothing like a woman scorned!

  Blood trickled from my mouth, staining the silk covers.

  "I'm not yours to have to run away from, Jamon," I whispered hoarsely.

  "Brave words," he said, "but that's all they are. You see, now Stellar is gone you'll be living here with me."

  He was right. They were brave words. In truth he terrified me. But live with him? Not in this hell or any other!

  He smiled again. "Now make yourself comfortable, Parrish. I have business to attend. If you attempt to escape, they will stake you for my pleasure."

  Stake me. I knew what he meant. The image of it mushroomed in my brain. I stared across at the door. The same four 'goboys that had paraded me through Torley's were posted outs
ide it.

  Jamon disappeared into his comm room, leaving two more guards watching his back. Even paralyzed, with half my face shattered, he was taking no chances.

  I was flattered. Enough to tear him limb from limb. If only I could feel my legs and feet. And if only my face didn't hurt like someone had scraped half of it off.

  Time spiraled.

  I lay helplessly on the couch, in a strange world of numbness, pain and despair.

  Eventually I dozed, woken again by Jamon's restless prowling and a change of guards. They squeezed tubes of water into my mouth, and held me laughingly over a bucket to pee. Once they bothered to turn me so that my view rotated between the plaster wall and the candle-strewn mahogany table.

  When I was awake and lucid, I listened to the incoming accounts of the fighting. It helped distract me from the throbbing in my cheek and the depressing reality of my predicament.

  Even though the reports were conveyed in a kind of panting 'goboy shorthand, I gleaned enough to know that although Jamon had enlisted Topaz's support against Daac, the Muenos weren't cooperating.

  A furious Topaz wept repeatedly over the comm to Jamon. "My hands are tied, Señor Jamon. The Muenos won't fight for me. One of my men, Pas, is leading a revolt. My informants say they are waiting for word from someone they are calling Oya."

  Reports also filtered in, that small groups of Jamon's 'goboys had been set upon by feral children armed with bioweapons. One attack in particular had claimed more than fifty. The feral, a girl about ten years old, had released a quick-acting virus in the barracks while one whole shift of 'goboys slept. The girl was found dead near the entrance.

  Tina!

  I wept then—unashamedly. Like never before in my life. Until my soul was dry and hard.

  Then came the strangest of all the accounts.

  Jamon's right-hand 'goboy had vanished at the same location as Teece's business, west of Torley's. He'd been on a night scout, disappearing near an uncovered manhole. Search attempts underground had only revealed scores of hostile canrats.

  Underground? The canrats? Or could it possibly be Gwynn?

  An ember of hope ignited in my chest; and resolve. The Muenos, the ferals and now Gwynn. I couldn't let them down.

  Occasionally I heard Daac's name mentioned. Jamon wanted him bad.