Dead Streets

by Waggoner, Tim

  She could have been lying, but my instincts told me she was telling the truth. But I didn't have to rely on my instincts alone.

  Devona?

  I don't sense any subterfuge on her part, but she could be shielding her mind from me. She's certainly strong-willed enough on her own, and she could also be using some kind of magic object to help conceal her thoughts.

  So Overkill might've moved to the bottom of my suspects lists, but she wasn't officially off it yet.

  "How did you manage to get past Orlock?" I asked. "He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who willingly give up something once he's collected it."

  "He's not, but I have my ways." Overkill smiled grimly. "I'm carrying a magic object that temporarily traps Bloodborn in their travel forms. Right now Orlock is stuck as a dozen or so shadow rats scurrying around his bookstore, unable to put themselves back together."

  I had to admit, the woman was good.

  "He's not going to be too pleased with you once the spells wears off," Devona said.

  "Maybe, but he's nothing if not pragmatic. Once I collect the reward on Matt, I'm going to start looking for Osseal. If I can find it and bring it to him, there's a good chance he'll forgive me for freeing you two. And if not…" She shrugged. "There are plenty of other people in the city willing to pay for my services."

  "I don't suppose it matters to you that I'm innocent," I said.

  "Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. Orlock seemed to think you are and he's usually right about things like that. But I don't care. Guilty or innocent, you're still worth five hundred thousand darkgems to me."

  I was racking my brain, trying to come up with a way to convince Overkill to let us go or, failing that, a way that we could escape her, when Devona decided to take matters into her own hands.

  She bared her fangs and hissed as she sprang toward Overkill. Devona is only half-vampire, but she's still fast as hell and she was almost on top of the mercenary before the woman could tighten her finger on the trigger of her P-90 and release a burst of gunfire. Devona managed to avoid being struck by any of the bullets, and they flew on, hitting various displays around us, taking chunks out of rare and valuable objects. Orlock would have a fit once he finally managed to pull himself together and come down here and saw the damage.

  Devona wasn't fooling around. She fastened her teeth on Overkill's neck and bit down. The momentum of Devona's leap sent both women falling to the floor, and the impact caused Overkill to lose her grip on the P-90, and the strap slipped over her shoulder. The weapon skittered away from her, coming to stop over by the Frankenstein experiment display. I started toward it, doing the half-shuffle, half-run which is the fastest way I can make my dead body move.

  As I went for the gun, Overkill hit Devona in the temple with a solid left cross, dislodging her teeth from Overkill's neck in a spray of blood. But Devona had a firm grip on Overkill's shoulders and she managed to hold on. Devona tried to bite Overkill again, but the mercenary brought up a forearm to block her. I saw Overkill reaching for her dire blade and I knew I had only seconds to reach the P-90. A single strike from a dire blade is fatal, as I'd demonstrated to Lycanthropus Rex in Tenebrus, and if Overkill managed to draw her blade, Devona was as good as dead.

  I reached the P-90 and was bending down to pick it up when I became aware of movement. I looked at the metal framework containing the severed limbs of Dr. Frankenstein's early work and saw that every one of them had become fully animated and was thrashing about wildly. I glanced at the hand crank generator. No one had touched the crank and the machine wasn't active. No electricity was reaching the limbs, so how were they moving? What could make a bunch of dead arms and legs suddenly –

  Then it hit me.

  I turned to Devona and Overkill, who were still fighting on the floor. Devona had straddled the mercenary who'd managed to draw her dire blade. Devona had hold of the other woman's wrist, preventing her from using the dagger, and from the look of fury on Devona's face, I figured Overkill had only a few seconds before her wrist snapped like kindling.

  "Ladies!" I shouted. Then again, louder. "Ladies!"

  That time I got their attention. They stopped fighting, though Devona kept hold of Overkill's wrist. They focused their gazes on me and I pointed to the rack of thrashing limbs behind me.

  "We've got a problem," I said. "I think someone just started playing Edrigu's flute."

  FIFTEEN

  Once Devona and Overkill stopped fighting, the mercenary applied first aid to her throat wound – a powerful anticoagulant to stop the bleeding and a patch of plaskin to seal the bite and begin the healing process. Both items were developed by the Bloodborn physicians at the Fever House, undisputed experts in treating injuries sustained during vampire attacks.

  I hated to leave the others who were trapped in Orlock's stasis domes, but there wasn't time to free them all and besides, Overkill hadn't brought enough demon piss to do the job. But after what Devona and I had experienced in that bastard's virtual fishbowl, I was determined to return one day and free Orlock's prisoners, even if I had to kill the sonofabitch to do it.

  The three of us then returned to Nosferatomes and walked outside, where we saw my worst fears confirmed.

  Fighting had broken out in the street and not the usual sort of brawling that can happen anytime in the Sprawl. This was a serious toe –to toe, tooth-and-claw struggle for survival, complete with shouts of alarm, screams of agony, and lots of the red stuff being spilled. At first it was hard to come to any specific conclusions about the combatants because the fighting was so fast and furious, but after a couple moments it became clear that they could be broken into two separate camps: the dead and the living. A huge Frankenstein creature wearing only ragged jeans – the better to show off the jagged scars covering his obscenely muscled body – stood outside Matango, strangling a ghoul with one hand while he tore the arm off a lyke with the other. I recognized the man as Jigsaw Jones, one of the most popular professional wrestlers in the city and the sport's current champion. From the bleeding cuts on his flesh and the restaurant's shattered front window, I guessed Jones had been dining there when he'd flipped out and started killing people. I pictured him killing several of his fellow diners before leaping through the window and attacking the first people unlucky enough to be in his way.

  In front of Hemlocks, Baristastein stood in the midst of carnage, a half-dozen bodies in various states of disembowelment spread out around her on the sidewalk. She currently had both hands wrapped around the throat of a toad-faced demon with overlarge insect eyes and was slowly squeezing the life out of him. No longer was her face expressionless. Now her features were contorted in savage joy as she throttled the struggling demon.

  Ferdinand approached her, confused sadness in his eyes.

  "Sandy, something's happened to you – something bad. Please… let me help you!"

  Baristastein snapped the toad demon's neck with a single quick shake and then tossed his body aside. She then started walking toward the minotaur, her gaze glittering with hungry anticipation.

  Any thought I'd had about getting even with the bull man for making me drink the Sprawlicano vanished when I saw the danger he was in. "Get away from her!" I shouted.

  But either Ferdinand didn't hear me or he was in too much shock to listen, for instead of turning away from the approaching Baristastein and running like hell in the opposite direction, he opened his arms wide to welcome her.

  I didn't want to look, but I forced myself to watch as Baristastein rammed a hand into her boyfriend's chest and yanked out his still beating, bloody heart. Ferdinand bellowed in pain, and as the life quickly fled from his eyes, he looked upon the object of his adoration uncomprehendingly, and then his body went limp and he collapsed to the ground. Baristastein looked at the grisly object clutched in her hand for a moment as if she didn't quite understand what it was, then she hurled it aside, roared in fury, and stomped off in search of new victims.

  I might have made a joke about how ev
en in death Ferdinand had given his heart to his girl, but even though I can't experience nausea, I didn't have the stomach for such gallows humor right then. The minotaur might've been a jerk, but he hadn't deserved to die like that.

  Up and down the street the same scene was played out again and again as the dead made violent, bloody war on the living. It was the same in the street as well. Vehicles that contained any part of Victor Baron's fleshtech, such as Agony DeLites and Meatrunners ignored their drivers' commands and crashed into other cars, running them off the road or into each other, engines roaring with bestial joy.

  "This is most definitely not good," Overkill said.

  "I didn't realize that understatement was one of your many skills," I said, unable to take my gaze off the chaos that surrounded us.

  I heard Overkill rack the slide on her P-90 and when I turned to took at her I saw she had the weapon trained on me.

  "So if all the deaders in the city have gone psycho, why haven't you?" she demanded.

  I opened my coat to show her the Loa necklace Papa Chatha had given me.

  "This makes me immune to magic. It's why your bargain basement Obeah charm failed. Its primary purpose is to prevent anyone from finding me with a tracking spell, but it blocks all magic – including that of Osseal, it seems."

  "Maybe," Devona said, "but I'm not sure that's the only reason." She was still looking out into the street. "Have you two noticed something about which dead are attacking?"

  Overkill frowned, though she didn't lower her weapon. "What do you mean?"

  I turned to look at the mayhem once more and this time I saw what Devona was talking about. It was so obvious that I felt stupid for not having realized it before.

  "Only Victor Baron's creations are attacking," I said.

  Overkill swept her gaze up and down the street as she more closely examined the fighting taking place.

  "Maybe it just seems like that," she said. "There's more of Baron's flesh tech in the Sprawl than there are other types of dead." Still, she sounded doubtful.

  "This may not be the Boneyard, but there are numerous ghosts, revenants, liches, reanimated skeletons, zombies and the like around," Devona said. "Do you see any out there?"

  "No," Overkill admitted. "So if it's true, and only Baron's monsters have gone crazy, what does that mean?"

  "It means that whoever stole Osseal is using it to control only Baron's creations, and he's making them attack," I said.

  The thought would've chilled my blood if I had any running through my veins. Baron's fleshtech was everywhere in Nekropolis, and I thought of all the businesses that employed his monsters, all the vehicles that incorporated his technology – voxes, Mind's Eye projectors, the Overwatchers in Tenebrus, even David's ravens… I imagined the scenes of death we were witnessing being played out all over the city, in clubs, bars, restaurants and homes.

  And then, as if my thoughts were a cue, a chorus of piercing shrieks filled the air around us, and we looked at each other as we tried to determine where the deafening noise originated from.

  "It's our voxes!" Devona shouted, though I could barely understand what she said, so loud was the din issuing from our phones.

  The three of us pulled out our voxes and flipped open their covers. Their mouths were wide open and screaming at top volume, but once they were exposed they began snapping and gnashing their teeth, as if desperate to bite us.

  Without consulting one another, the three of us dashed our voxes to the ground and then stomped on them. The plastic cases broke and pieces of electronic components spilled out, along with copious amounts of blood. Voxes incorporate Victor Baron's fleshtech and it seemed they were just as susceptible to the influence of Osseal as any other reanimated creature.

  "Who would want to make Baron's creatures riot?" Devona asked.

  "Who else but Baron himself?" I said. "For years there's been talk of making him the sixth Darklord, but Father Dis has always refused. So Baron worked hard to spread his creations throughout Nekropolis, getting his army in place so that when the time was right, they could strike. Now with Dis and the Darklords still sleeping to recharge their energies after the last Renewal Ceremony, that time has finally come."

  Overkill opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment Jigsaw Jones – who'd just finished snapping a witch's spine by slamming her against his knee – turned to look at me. He discarded the screaming witch and came striding toward us. His scarred flesh was splattered with blood from his victims and from the expression of violent lust on his face, he was looking to add even more gore to his collection. I wondered if Jigsaw Jones and the rest of Baron's creations were listening to a mystic melody that only they could hear, music that drove them to go forth and kill.

  Overkill turned her P-90 away from me and trained it on the approaching wrestler.

  "Hold on," I said. I drew my .45, aimed, and put a bullet through Jones' right eye. His head jerked back, blood sprayed the air, and he staggered backward. He didn't go down, though, so I sent a second bullet to follow the first through the same hole, and that did the trick. Jones hit the ground like a giant slab of scarred, bloodied beef.

  I felt bad for having to put the big lug down. After all, I'd made more than a few darkgems betting on him over the years and I knew his homicidal rage wasn't his fault. Still, in Nekropolis, kill or be killed isn't just a saying. It's a way of life.

  I turned to Overkill. "No point in wasting ammo we might need later."

  "That was good shooting," she said.

  "Being dead means my hands don't shake. Makes my aim steadier."

  "Still, that was impressive," Overkill insisted. "I'm not sure I could've done it." She looked at me then, reappraisal in her gaze, as if she were somehow seeing me differently.

  I wasn't sure how to take it, and it made me uncomfortable. Devona didn't like it either, for she gave Overkill a hard look as she stepped forward and took my hand.

  "We can't keep standing out in the open like this," Devona said. "Come on."

  Without waiting for either Overkill or me to reply, she started leading me around the side of Nosferatomes and into the alley between the bookstore and Matango. Overkill followed, frowning slightly, though I couldn't guess what she might be thinking. The alley was blessedly free of Victor Baron's creations eager to tear us apart, and if only for the moment, we were safe.

  "I still have a hard time believing Baron's behind this," Overkill said. "I mean, he's already rich and powerful. What more could he want?"

  "The operative word in your question is more," I said. "What else is left for someone like him to want? Power can be like a drug, Overkill, and its addicts need ever greater doses in order to get the high they crave."

  "Christina," she said.

  I frowned. "Excuse me?"

  "My real name. It's Christina. Christina Butts, actually."

  "Seriously?" Devona said.

  Overkill's finger tightened on the trigger of her P-90. "You got a problem with that?"

  "Not at all," Devona said in an overly sweet tone.

  "Look, I don't know what's going on between you two, but can you at least put it on hold until we can figure out what the hell is happening out there?" I gestured toward the mouth of the alley where the sounds of violent mayhem continued to filter in from the street.

  "Nothing is going on!" Devona and Overkill said in unison and then turned to glare at each other.

  I sighed. "Let's get back to business. Baron is the perfect suspect. Who else has the know how to cut off my head, animate my body, and use it to steal Osseal from Edrigu?"

  Devona gave Overkill a last dirty look before turning to me. "I get how he found out about the mark on your hand. He doubtless saw Acantha's interview with you at Sinsation. But how did he know it could get you – I mean your body – past Edrigu's security at the Reliquary?"

  "And how did he find out about Osseal and what it could do?" Overkill put in, as if she were determined not to be left out of the conversation.
r />   "Baron's a couple centuries old, and he's extremely intelligent and well connected," I said. "He might've found out about Osseal any number of ways. Maybe from research into different reanimation techniques or maybe from Edrigu himself. He told me that Edrigu is one of his best clients. However Baron learned about Osseal, he probably learned about Edrigu's mark the same way. He just needed to find someone who possessed the mark that he could use."

  "And when he saw Acantha's interview, he knew he'd finally found what he'd been waiting for," Devona said.