Black City (The Lark Case Files)

by Christian Read

  'Do we break in?' asks Bettina.

  'No. We wait. She'll expect us to follow.'

  'But we won't?'

  'She doesn't like magicians. She thinks she's better than us. So she'll be wasting time trying to throw a tail that doesn't exist. That'll make her paranoid when she can't find a damn thing. Then she'll be off to hire muscle then she'll come after me. She won't hide. Not with her pride on the line.'

  We wait in an alley and I smoke cigarettes. The light is sodium stained yellow and there's a buzzing robot-mosquito drone from somewhere.

  'Want me to get a gun or a blade?'

  'Not that kind of muscle I think. And if there is, you'll handle whatever she could throw at us.'

  Bettina looks at me strangely.

  'You're pretty confident in me, man.'

  I shrug. 'You're good.'

  Check the phone for the time. Just gone one. I wait another hour. Bettina is bored. Or rather, she thinks she is. She's dead and her patience is endless. I tell her to wait, tell her to concentrate on nothing. Takes her about fifteen but she gets what I'm telling her. I can see the terrible fact of her death seep into her. Pacing stops. No breathing. Just low-contrast awareness.

  'Just guard this alley.'

  I sit down, cross-legged in the dust, drawing a Gnostic connection to the earth. I focus on a street light across the street and soon it's as big as a moon, as big as a mind. Light floods everything inside me, a klieg light epiphany, shaping my consciousness into a trap.

  I don't know it but I put the icon into my hand, an electric wire connection.

  Time is a thing I'm unconvinced by. It's there, then it isn't.

  Then, I'm aware of an intrusion, some prick soul-projecting at me, lured in by the icon, too stupid to be suspicious of why it's so easy. Which it is, considering I'm flashing the damn thing around like it was a pair of pasties. Here he comes. Some city shaman who'd take the job and scout the astral for a hundred bucks and some trinket Jeancat bought him off with. Hunting down the icon.

  Here's some things to know. This little bastard doesn't know what the icon looks like or what it is. She won't have told him, won't have exposed some family secret. Wherever his body is, then, he'll be touching her, drawing on her recollections, their own circuit, giving him the scent without telling him what it means.

  Another thing to know is that I'm relying on exactly something like this happening.

  Astral trap. I've been meditating on elaborate machines of capture. It doesn't look like anything. It's the idea of a maze, not a maze, ceci n'est pas une pipe, and I don't need to think of bear traps or tubes. He's trapped, easy as that. Immediately.

  Fucking amateur. He came at me all force and hurry. Stupid.

  Now for the mean bit.

  I go through him like a submarine hunter-killer.

  Jeancat. Exposed, I go through this scumbag, and I've got her. I'm in her thoughts like a thief. I pass through sex-fantasies and the stale poison lakes of resentment and the whirling tornados of humiliation and the bright gems of laugher, too few of those.

  Memories. I don't ransack them, although I marvel at the dark metal filing cabinets she keeps them in. Such a strange mind. Don't need to know about her. Just the recent ones she's already thinking of, that's what I want, and I can tell them from their disorganisation. Touch them and she's aware of me.

  I take what I need and leave. Her banshee screams are mounting and I don't need the hassle.

  The magician I slap around, convincing him that he's not going to want payback. Show him a taste of the Ultrascorpion.

  That's it. I'm gone. Low consciousness floods back with a surging disappointment. Garbage water stink and an ache in my legs.

  Bettina stands over me.

  'You alright?'

  I razor grin up at her. 'Yeah. That worked nice.'

  Sixteen

  A man called Ludo. Big man, six four or more and solid through the chest and shoulders. His forehead slopes back on forty-five degrees from his face and his skin is... Coloured. That's Jeancat's perception and so it's mine. Ludo's dark skin, partnered with his thick Afrikaans accent, drags up ugly thoughts in Jeancat's prejudiced head.

  This perception is mine, this guy is a fucking beast. Sharkskin suit and a great bone box of a skull. Soldier's haircut and rings on his fingers. I watch the memory, Ludo buys up her stock in one go, shovelling out bills like they're nothing. Jeancat knows he's up to something, but she's counting dollar signs. I look closer at this Ludo motherfucker.

  There's a way he sets his shoulders, flexes his fingers, and I can tell the rings are an affectation. So's the suit. Just a disguise to distract from who he is. This is monster, come hunting, oozing predator vibes.

  He bought out every last bit of Jeancat's stash. And other dealers too. The Dark Jew, that's how she thinks of him, don't blame me. That Whore. Pearl and Saunderson and all the guys who buy and sell.

  Keep looking. Ludo's come to others, he's spent maybe two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on arcane weapons and eldritch tricks. A surfeit of bad devices, whose only uses are cruel. No healing here, nor blessing, nor even concealment, let alone communion or invocation. Nothing worthwhile. Nothing transcendent. Just tools to hurt with. Ceremonial objects that create discord and violence just by existing.

  I have no idea who this fucker is. That's bad.

  Ludo. No idea at all. Call Scarlet? Not yet. Tomorrow.

  It's dawn, so I let Bettina go for the night. She has friends still and family, although I don't know how. She'll tell them she's back from her job. That's what she tells them, I understand. Perhaps she'll just go slaughter some hobos and feast.

  Sit at my kitchen table, noting it down.

  What have we got?

  1. I don't know this Ludo at all. Never even heard of him. I've been out a while but, at the risk of flattering myself, that's bullshit.

  2. He's got money. A lot of money. Who has this kind of cash? The Library. Gallowglass. No one else I know.

  3. He's buying up weapons, like the lighter I'm tapping on my kitchen table. And if he sold it to the Bleak Electors, he probably sold them to somebody else. Why?

  I'm drinking tequila, rich and bronze and healthy, and it seems pretty obvious. Ludo wants a war. He wants people fighting. Is it a distraction? No, that's shit. People don't spend money and don't go to these lengths for a distraction. The goal is the battle. You don't spend a quarter million dollars on weapons without wanting them on the job. But why?

  Fuck knows.

  Here's my supposition. Ludo is an out-of-towner, looking for anarchy or profit or whatever. But he's got money. Might mean backers. Not many people with money do this kind of groundwork themselves but then, a quarter of a million ain't what it used to be. Maybe this is Ludo's inheritance he's spending, mum and dad's house, liquidated and turned to the cause. I think about the way he walks, the size of the bastard and no, he's not on holidays.

  Too many variables. Too many unknowns.

  I believe I don't know Ludo. I can't believe I've never, ever heard of him.

  New player.

  Bad news.

  Because he's come to the City and smashed it like it was easy.

  I'll call Scarlet tomorrow. I get drunk enough to sleep.

  Seventeen

  WARNING:

  THE FOLLOWING FILE IS CLASSIFIED CRIMSON GLOVE. IF YOU ARE NOT CLEARED FOR STATUS: CRIMSON GLOVE, REPLACE THE FILE NOW AND REPORT TO THE SECURITY CLEARANCE OFFICER.

  NOTE:

  THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT DATED BUT SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN SEVERAL WEEKS AFTER THE FIRST MISSIVES. (CF. DOC #077 CODENAME: WREN)

  Rule 3

  Find your own way

  Work has me meeting a lot of people, mostly young men in spectacles, who crave magical power. They chant out from weird encyclopaedias, lyric sites, lurid Dennis Wheatley paperbacks, fake leather volumes, jabbering on hell, CD covers, anything they can get their hands on.

  Does no good. And it did no good because they weren't
invested. You have to find your own way, shape your own belief. Even if they knew the Gnostic tricks, the style they use doesn't suit them. Find where you locate your own strength and how your strength locates you. If, really, you crave dancing around with good looking men in a forest in a goat-mask, pronouncing Greek words in a black Halloween costume won't do it for you. Arranging letters of books of the Bible, looking for angel names won't do it for you.

  But it's more than that. Each God and spirit you work with, you need to take time to see which are right for you. You need to know if you're going to feel like a prick in that black robe. You need to know if evoking in one tradition is better, but invoking in another is right.

  And, now read carefully, you have to recall that it's all up for grabs. Even if you don't understand it, it isn't the formality of secret wisdom that counts. It's the attempt to feel the same way as a Lakota shaman feels, to shoulder the burden of secret women's business or to have access to the lofty sense of power and privilege that the Ipssissimus high mage does.

  It's all about how you feel as much as what you think and know. Find the point where they collapse into each other. That's magic.

  Honestly, I had the same problem when I was hitting the ground. Weird teenage kid, looking to get the hell out of my foster home, from the series of head-deadening schools, to find girls to subject to my sweaty, adolescent desires. I tried to make anything work. Hoary old Golden Dawn rites that took five hours to get to the good bits. Folk charms. James Bond voodoo. Knots in strings. Got old enough for Datura. Vampire nonsense. Had my share of hanging out with the geek contingent, who liked the robes and the survival shop swords and 'O Fortuna', out in the forests and bush. With the raver kids who were focused on machine elves like they were fucking messiahs. Some of it valuable.

  Some dead embarrassing.

  But I found my way. My way was and is pretty much just piracy and informality. I'm low, empty-handed to the end. If I like something from some Viking Saga I read, I use it. If there's some strange Christian magic I'd like to give a go, I give it a go. I don't believe in God, but Jesus is as real as any other god or thought-form and nicer than most. If I want to drink cheap bourbon and turn on the metal and have a screaming freak rite, I can. Teenage anger magic, kicking through the night.

  This doesn't work for everyone. If you're a strict Taoist, you probably won't be chanting out the Vulgate Latin with much success. Why would you want to? If you identify strongly with the culture, you might go an entire life working with nothing but Orishas, or ancestors. Work the pulp novel tip and stick with your Tunnels of Set. It doesn't matter. All you really need is the desire to work magic and magic will desire you.

  On the other hand, I've seen people stretch out from the comfort. I've seen people invited to witness rituals they were fascinated or moved by. I've taken part in workings in traditions I did not understand and found them exciting and interesting.

  It's not finding a sound for your band or committing to a religion or supporting a football team. It's the most profound personal expression I can think of. Some people will insist on your picking sides, on working only in one tradition or discipline.

  Avoid these people. I fail to see how you can be a close-minded magician. Rest easy, though. They exist. Sure as there's dumb scientists and impious priests, you'll find magicians happy for heresy.

  Eighteen

  While Lark traps some punk-ass magician on the astral pain or whatever the hell it's called, Ludo is hunting.

  He has two guys from the old unit he served with and some local talent. Gangsta niggers, trained from childhood to battle like bastards. Various chinks and even some Arabs. Ludo loves the language of racism. It delights him. Forty years old and he recalls cigarettes put out on his feet when he marched with the ANC and the police caught and questioned him, race-baiting him while he swallowed poison and said nothing. Some people think words have power, but Ludo knows what a ludicrous proposition that is. Power has power and that's as far as that goes. It's all about strength and anyone who says different is a fucking pussy without a scrap of it themselves.

  No one works with mixed-race crews. But these are strange times and Ludo isn't in a position to have an opinion.

  They're in the back of a van, guns at the ready. Locking and loading the SMGs and automatic pistols, they get high on tech rites they all know and love.

  Ludo's been to see the seers. He hates them. Creepy bastards in a room full of crystal balls, stinking of incense and old vomit with shaky-handed freaks dealing out garish cards. Only one of them seemed useful. Automatic writing they call it. Some nervous woman sketched a face and announced this was who had the scroll. Ludo looked it over and went to ask the artist some questions. But she's locked herself away then bit her own wrist-veins out with her teeth in the seer house bathroom.

  'Seems an overreaction,' said Ludo, to their keeper. The keeper, former prison bull and apocalyptic, just shook her head. 'The end times are coming.' Ludo laughed. When aren't they?

  'Take one, pass it on.'

  The hard men take the photocopied sheets and look at the face drawn there. Shaven headed little girl with piercings in her lip, her nose. Her eyes are shaded a pale blue and her lips are thin.

  'Her name is Candle or Lamp or something like that.'

  One of them speaks up. 'He got a crew like this together to hunt down a little girl?'

  'It isn't me.'

  None of them speaks up to that. They all know who gave that order. No motherfucker questions the boss.

  'We don't know where she is but we know she's not uptown. We know she's not down by Violin Bay and we know she's not westside.'

  That leaves three quarters of a city.

  'Yeah, I know. But she stole something from the Gallowglass House, and there's no reason to believe she's running, so we'll work from the mansion, moving out.'

  The Arab says 'Time sensitive?'

  'We're not working to a deadline, but I don't want to go to his place and tell him we haven't found dick.'

  Nods all round. The van travels over a bump and Ludo smacks the driver's window in irritation.

  'We're looking for a piece of old paper with weird writing on it. Or a case, like a scroll case? You know?'

  Not everyone does. 'Like a poster tube.' Ludo isn't angry. He didn't know what it looked like till the boss told him.

  Ludo leans in.

  'We're supposed to capture and contain on this one. But this is the hoodoo stuff. She'll have moves and tricks so don't fuck around. If you have to put this chick down, put her down. But that bit of paper is what we are after and I'm not telling the boss I don't fucking have it. Seriously. And if you're thinking of grabbing it and selling it on, then go ahead. It'll be a good way of learning just how fucking stupid you are before the boss has me drive the end of a steel pipe into your upper fucking jaw real slow.'

  Ludo barks orders at the driver.

  Tries to get the image of the suicide out of his head, that fucking writer in the seer room. It wasn't the blood or the body, as he's harvested floods and crops of that. It was the drive to be dead. The determination of self-slaughter. Biting your own veins out. Jesus these fucking spook jobs are weird.

  Ludo's not a man given to self-doubt and the thought of the money he's making consoles him a long way. But, not for the first time, the nature of his work disturbs him. Thinks of the Old Man, radiating cancer-hate from some higher vibration, sitting there in his wheelchair, looking at everything with a sickness stare. He shakes his head once, dislodging the image, and checks and rechecks his weapons.

  Nineteen

  Wait till seven and call up Scarlet at her home. Between the time and dial the last number and the time she picks up, I realise something:

  These last two years, I've liked being free. Does that include you, Scarlet? Am I right to be free of you? Now I'm reporting to a boss again and it grates a little.

  'Good morning.'

  'Yeah. So, listen,' I say, cool as hell and straight to busines
s. Playing nice and polite never gets me anywhere with her these days.

  'I made some contact last night.'

  'Lark, I'm having breakfast.'

  'Like a citizen. With him?'

  'Of course with -'

  He stayed the night. Shake it off. She didn't say him. Didn't say his weasel name. Doesn't want to let the prick know he's being discussed.

  'Like a citizen.'

  'Yes. That's how I'm having my breakfast. Don't be a tool.' Hear her moving, a door close.

  'Look, I'll be at the Library within an hour and a half. We can talk it over then.'

  'I'll be asleep then. I need information and I'll need you to look it up.'

  'I said -'

  'Later.' Go to hang up.

  'Wait. What do you want?' A sigh in there somewhere.

  'Need a name. Ludo.'

  She pauses but that quick silence could mean anything over a phone.

  'Don't know him offhand.'

  'Yeah. And neither do I and that's a problem.'

  ' Ludo. That his first or last?'

  'No idea. I think he's South-African. He's big. Ex-something, I'd wager. I just need to know more about him and I might need an intro.'

  She waits. 'Anything else to report?'

  'Yeah.'

  She waits.

  'That ain't how it works and you know it. Report when I'm done or I'm ready, otherwise it just muddies the water. You know that.'

  'Call my office when you're up and I'll let you know.'

  'Cool.'

  'And...?'

  'Yeah.'

  'Go through the office. Call my frigging office. We've had this fucking conversation. Don't call my private number, especially not for work. I've asked this half a dozen times.'

  She hangs up and I'm perversely proud to have never had my name mentioned.

  And just like that, it all flows back. I met her when she was working at a public lending library, when I was about twenty and her just shy of that. She wore long black velvet dresses and big glasses and her red hair all slicked back.