Soul Jar: A Jubal Van Zandt Novel

by eden Hudson

  The skin down the back of my neck and spine crawled at the thought of who or what might be watching.

  Odds were that any access to the upstairs was closed off thoroughly enough that they wouldn’t see the brief flash of light. That would explain why it was so dark. Three people wouldn’t just sit around silently in the pitch black, even if one of them was a centuries-old antisaint. The other two would need a little light to get ready for bed—a wristpiece screen, a candle, something. The door or lift to the upstairs had to be shut. Even if it wasn’t perfectly sealed off and someone did happen to be looking in that direction, a split-second flash of low light from my wristpiece could be written off as a visual hallucination, or maybe a reflection from the street. It had to be done if I was going to get upstairs sometime tonight.

  As I reached for my wristpiece, I felt a prickling sensation across my scalp. My hair is too well-behaved to do something ugly like stand on end, but in that second it wanted to. I hovered my finger over the screen. Held my breath.

  I gave the wristpiece a quick double tap. The light strobed. On. Off.

  A bright yellow jolt of panic flared in my stomach as my mind processed what I’d seen. My heart thundered. My brain signaled my bladder to jettison everything, but I belayed that order just in time to avoid firehosing urine everywhere.

  Marinette. She was standing ten feet in front of me. Smiling.

  I tried to swallow around the coarse grit sandpaper in my throat. I had to make sure she was really there. My hand shook as I double tapped my wristpiece again.

  On.

  Marinette’s smoke-stained grin and cancer-black eyes popped up less than a foot from my face.

  Off.

  A bright yellow afterimage of her smile floated in front of my eyes.

  I forced myself to swallow again. The first time I tried to speak, I couldn’t. I touched my throat as if I would find a pin obstructing my vocal cords.

  Hot breath tickled the short hairs on the back of my neck.

  I swallowed. “I’m glad you could meet me here on such short notice.”

  “Yis dat soo?” she purred over my shoulder.

  It took my brain a full second to grasp what she had said. Is that so? The total darkness blacked out every visual cue I usually relied on, and her accent didn’t correlate to any dialect or language I’d ever heard before.

  “Men, lyettel wan, wdeed you wan ta spyek wit me?”

  Men, little one, why did you want to speak with me? came the translation, a heartbeat later. My glorious gray matter was catching up.

  “You’re the Bwa Chech?” I said.

  This time my brain understood her answer in real time: “I be de Bwa Chech, yeah.”

  “The original?”

  “Orijinal la. What you want, t’ief?”

  “If you’re the original Bwa Chech, then you already know why I’m here,” I said.

  She breathed. The tip of one cold, hard finger traced the edge of my ear. “You cyame here to take back the soljah’s soul.”

  “That’s what I told him, sure.”

  “An’ what will you tell me?” she asked.

  “That I came to discuss business.”

  I felt her breasts brush against my arm as she moved to my side. They were shriveled and hard as ironwood, as if she had been mummified alive. I got the sensation that her eyes were studying my face in the dark.

  “De spirits tell me dat you want to be free, get rid of de plague.” She chuckled. “Dis is my specialty, t’ief, freedom.”

  I shrugged. “Sure, I could ask you to cure my PCM, but I’d still die in my sleep somewhere down the river. You’re standing here alive more than nine centuries after the end of the world, Bwa Chech. That’s not even counting however long you lived in First Earth times.” I turned my head to look where I could feel her standing. “I don’t want a cure. I want what you have. The next best thing to immortality.”

  “You cyan’t have it.”

  “Not for free,” I agreed.

  A creaking like old leather.

  “No, not for free.” She was smiling. I could hear it in her voice. “But you also cyan’t pay for it.”

  “I’m not dumb enough to walk in here throwing money around, Bwa Chech, not when I know you deal in souls.”

  “An’ you want to give me a piece of yours?”

  I cackled. “Yeah right! I’m not the middle management type, sister. Besides, we both know I’d have your job in a month. What I want is to speak to your supervisor.”

  “You cyannot speak to him at de moment, but maybe we cyan talk a little.”

  “Let’s do it somewhere with a light,” I said. “My eyes are starting to devolve into vestigial organs down here.”

  That creaking leather sound moved away from me. “Come, t’ief.”

  I clicked on my wristpiece light and risked life and limb to follow the antisaint up a set of rickety basement stairs that clearly hadn’t been built with someone heavier than a stick woman in mind. It took all of my superior agility to make it to the first floor without breaking through any of the rotted steps. The stench of mildew and the sound of trickling water faded as we left the basement behind.

  Now obviously, I’m nowhere near retarded enough to make a deal with any witch, vocor, cleric, craft-worker, saint, antisaint, or being claiming to be a demon, angel, or deity. Making a deal with anybody who has more power than you is a losing game, no matter how carefully you word your terms and conditions. Marinette, for example, was already giving me the used vehicle dealer runaround by suggesting that we jaw a while instead of just giving me what I asked for, thinking she would wear me down or talk me into believing what she was selling.

  Fortunately, that wear-down tactic was exactly what I wanted. My wristpiece had been sending Nickie-boy nav markers every three minutes from the time I left to tail Marinette. I’d been in one nav location for so long now that Nick had to have realized I’d found Marinette’s hidey hole. He was bound to be on his way soon, ready to bust in and disregard my specific instructions. All I had to do was kill time until he showed up.

  Marinette stepped into the room ahead of me. Tall candles made from human spinal columns and black wax blazed to life, their flames casting a strange red light.

  The storefront’s first floor was one large room decorated in opulent blacks and reds. Every inch of the walls and ceiling were hung with thick curtains, probably both to stop light from getting in or out and to negate the chill coming off of the crumbling brick. Heavy, elaborately decorated seating pillows lay around the floor next to half-full bottles of dark liquor and overflowing ashtrays. With the exception of the stained altar in the corner, the headless black rooster stepping and scratching amongst the pillows, and the narrow staircase along the wall, which seemed to be functioning as her random crap storage rather than a viable route to the second floor, the place could’ve passed for a set from one of those old harem holos or the later nostalgic ultrapornos based on them. Marinette’s man-pony and umbrella holder were nowhere to be seen.

  I scraped the sludge from my sneaks onto her plush red carpet. “Not bad if you don’t mind living on top of a mildew factory.”

  Marinette’s teeth flashed in a mocking smile. “De…mildew? It don’ bother me.”

  “Is that part of your contract with Ol’ Catch?” I said. “Exemption from all worldly diseases and maladies?”

  “What do you call it?” Marinette said. “It is not part, but it come along wit’?”

  I wandered over to study her headless rooster. “A fringe benefit.”

  “Wi, a fringe benefit.”

  “Interesting. And how long are you required to serve the Fallen One?” I asked, reaching out to touch the feathered stump of the rooster’s neck.

  Marinette slapped my hand away from her pet. “You say you are not middle management, t’ief, men what you ask for is de same. Me? I am middle management. Maybe I can give you a better option.”

  Here came this week’s special offers and the Don’
t Tell My Manager Buts. I grinned and turned toward the staircase she was using as a shelving unit.

  If I was a soul fragment, I would be in that army of glowing, fat little glass jars taking up the second, third, and fourth stairs. On top of each jar’s metal lid was a scrap of LabelTape with a one-word epithet written in a spidery script. In the few seconds my eyes ran over them, I recognized the First Earth words for doctor, speaker, reader, runner. The rest I burned into my brain to mentally search while we talked.

  “What could be better than all the time I want?” I asked.

  “All de time in de world is no good when you are alone, t’ief. For you, I cyan get her.”

  “Pfft. I can get her myself.” I leaned in close to the eighth step and tapped a soda bottle full of tadpoles with my fingernail. They frenzied like a swarm of rabid apostrophes before settling back down. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “You cyan get her, but you won’t,” the vocor said. “De fear your papa put in you is too strong.”

  “Wrong.” I picked up a rusty tin can holding a few dozen human teeth and shook it. “Oh, that’s got a nice rattle to it. Listen.”

  Marinette’s skeletal hand snatched the noisy can away from me and set it back on its overcrowded step. “She’s de reason you cyame here tonight, t’ief. De reason you put up with de soljah—you want to have her.”

  “Wrong again.” From behind the tin can, I scooped up a knot the size of my fist made entirely of braided purple-white hair. “I put up with the siltbrain because I can use him to mess with her.”

  “Dis is de only way you t’ink cyan have her—taking her attention, forcing her reactions. I cyan give her to you in body, in mind.”

  “What’s the matter, Marinette, can’t think of anything else to offer me? That shows a serious lack of imagination.” I backed up against the fourth step, shoving soul jars out of the way with my butt until I had room to sit. A few fell off the edge and tinkled across the tops of the jars on the third stair. I wiggled a little to get comfortable and was rewarded with the sound of more glassy clinking. “I’m an easy guy to please. All I want is boatloads of adoration, money, toys, and my rightful place in history as the best thief in…well, ever.”

  Marinette waved a skeletal hand at me. “I cyan give you dese t’ings you t’ink you want, wi.”

  “But so can your boss.” I massaged the knot between my fingertips, working loose the tension on the internal tangles.

  “Wi, but you cyan’t pay his price.”

  I picked at a couple of the tighter loops. “Come on, Marinette, I can’t balk at how steep the cost is unless I know what you paid.”

  “My master,” Marinette said, “he demands eternal servitude.”

  “Always the same with these heaven and hell types, ain’t it?” I found the end of one loop and teased it out. “All right, sister, wow me with your bargain basement deal.”

  Leather creaked as her smile stretched and stretched. It didn’t stop stretching until I had a perfect view of her worn and smoke-stained molars. “You get de freedom you want from de plague, and all you must give me is de blood of a sacrifice and one hundred years.”

  “Sounds reasonable.” I disentangled one beaded braid and threaded it through a loop so I could slip it out of the knot. The rest collapsed in on themselves.

  “You would live dem hundred years plague free,” Marinette said in a voice that was meant to be tempting. “My pets never get sick and dey never tire.”

  “Don’t you worry about my stamina, sister,” I said. A couple gentle pulls and I separated out three more braids. The knot fell apart in my hands. “There.” I gave her the fistful of braids. “I fixed it.”

  She tossed the braids across the room. The headless rooster ran over and started scratching as if it had somehow seen or heard the braids hit the carpet, but was too stupid to realize they weren’t worms.

  “You don’ die, and I maybe call on you two, t’ree times de whole century,” she said.

  I leaned back and braced myself on my hands, shoving more jars off the step I was on. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one labeled watcher thump down the last few stairs and roll under the altar.

  “And all you want is a sacrifice and a few shots at ordering me around,” I said. “Could I get that in writing? ‘The Bwa Chech will call on me no more than three times in the century I serve her.’”

  “Men wi, anyt’ing you want.” She walked her thin fingers across the tops of the soul jars on the second stair. “I cyan even have a … you call dem lawyers now?”

  I nodded.

  Marinette tapped the LabelTape of a soul jar with the First Earth word for lawyer scrawled on it. “I cyan even have a lawyer mediate the contract.”

  “As sure as I am that she would be a neutral third party with both of our best interests in mind, I’m gonna have to pass,” I said, shooting Marinette a finger gun.

  Before she could respond to that, my wristpiece vibrated with a notification. I opened my messages.

  NB 01:45:16 If you’re inside, shut your eyes and cover your ears.

  “But here’s my sacrifice now.” I hopped down from the step and crouched behind the altar. “Have at him.”

  Behind the thick black curtains, wood splintered. Marinette whirled toward the sound. I turned my head away, squeezed my eyes shut, and crushed my ears flat with my palms. Something heavy hit the back of the curtain and dropped to the floor with a metallic thud.

  An oscillating, undulating pulse filled the room, equal parts sound and sensation. It resonated in my bowels and scraped across my teeth. Through the backs of my eyelids I could see multicolored lights flickering.

  An incapacitator. I’d read about them, but never encountered one firsthand before. I make it a habit to stay too many steps ahead of my enemies for disorientation devices to be practical.

  The aural-visual-tactile strobe only lasted six seconds, but if I hadn’t been prepared for it, I would’ve been puking and shitting myself into unconsciousness right about then. Even with two of my three assaulted senses muffled, that deconstructed sea dragon and oysterlusk stew I’d eaten earlier was pushing up the back of my throat and knocking at my back door.

  The incapacitator stopped. Glass broke. Wood cracked. Boots stomped.

  I opened my eyes to hulking suits of black-and-blue Crystebon Enforcer armor and standard issue LanceRifles.

  “Get on the floor!” a voice boomed from inside one Enforcer’s helmet. “Face down, hands behind your head!”

  That didn’t sound like Nick.

  Another Enforcer, a woman, repeated the command in the other two most common languages spoken in the city. The last Enforcer was too narrow-shouldered to be Nick.

  This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how Nick was supposed to disregard what I’d told him to do.

  Marinette seemed to realize at the same time I did that she couldn’t use her soul fragments to save herself from this. Her skeletal hands twisted into claws as she scraped a handful of chalky powder from a pile on the bottom step.

  “Drop it!” the female Enforcer boomed. “Drop your weapon!”

  Another Enforcer yelled, “Target confirmed by RW!”

  “Get on the floor and get your hands behind your head or we will open fire!”

  Marinette blew the powder at their faces. It bit into their poly-alloy armor, eating its way toward flesh.

  All of their LanceRs went off at the same time. Chainshot flew through Marinette, rocketing out the back of her head and ribcage without taking any organ tissue or bone fragments with them. The rounds sure did a bang-up job on Marinette’s stair-storage, though. Wood splinters, shards of glass, twisted metal, and human teeth exploded in all directions.

  I wrapped my arms around my head. I didn’t need any teeth I hadn’t grown myself embedded in my skull.

  These goons were shooting at a demon-bound First Earth antisaint; she’d probably gone incorporeal as soon as the incapacitator went off. What they needed was a priest, not a raid
team. But since one of them had said “RW”—meaning Remote Witness—I could guess which siltbrain had given them the tipoff. He was probably watching the raid right now via live holocom from the safety of the Crystebon City Enforcers HQ.

  The Enforcers kept shooting as Marinette raised her arms, screeched, and leapt at them. Her body twisted, shrank, grew feathers. She screamed again, beating her newly grown wings. She had turned into an owl. The Enforcers tried to track her with their LanceRs, but she banked right at the wall and disappeared through it. Flap, swish, gone.

  I stood up behind the altar. I felt my sneaks scrape across the debris on the floor, but I couldn’t hear it.

  Floating next to me was my flame kigao. “The electricity is about to go out.”

  “Now you show up?!” My voice sounded muffled and watery. My eardrums were probably perforated. “Damn it! Hearing damage is cumulative, you know.”

  The Enforcers swung around to face me.

  “Don’t move!” The shout just barely registered in my ears. “Stop moving!”

  “Then point those fucking rifles somewhere else!” I yelled back, my vocal cords straining to compensate for my impaired hearing.

  “Get your hands where we can see them!”

  They were fanning out, trying to corner me. Two kept their LanceRs pointed at my chest. The third was pulling out a pair of shackles.

  I threw back my head and cackled. That cockless, nut-less, flapping sac Nick had thrown me under the barge.

  With a twitch of my thumb, I triggered the capsule I keep in my wristpiece band next to the throat pin. It dropped to the hard stone surface of the altar and cracked. I couldn’t hear the bubbling hiss of the chems mixing, but thick black smoke billowed up from the broken capsule. In the space of a couple heartbeats, the room was so full of smoke that I couldn’t see the ventilator covering my nose. I dropped to my stomach behind the altar, then started lizard-crawling up the stairs, scattering soul jars and random crap from under hand and foot as I went.

  LanceRs boomed and brick chips fell like rain, but the shot had been aimed at where they’d last seen me, not where I was now. I stifled a giggle in case their hearing wasn’t as damaged as mine and kept crawling