Death Dealers

by M. G. Gallows

  She nodded. “If it’s okay with you, I don’t want to go home again. Not yet.”

  “Yeah. You can stay at my place for now. Assuming I’m not arrested.”

  “Arrested?” She asked. “Ah.”

  “Or explode,” I reminded her.

  “Or that.” She offered a weak smile. “I guess I’m not the only one with a gun to my head.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I sighed.

  The ride home was quiet. Madelyn watched the icy rain sloshing over the windows, but the thousand-yard stare had faded. As weary as she was from life’s hard turns, seeing that little ember of inner-strength was reassuring. She didn’t seem so frail or nervous.

  As we pulled up in my driveway, I wondered about the etiquette of summoning a Loa. I had what I needed for an attempt, but not the where or when. Outdoors at night? I couldn’t leave the city with the hex on me. Riverside Park? Not worth the risk. The summoning looked to be a noisy affair, and it would draw attention, even at night, in the pouring rain.

  We entered through the back door, and I flicked on the kitchen light. “You can stay in my room.”

  “The bed I bled out in. Kinky.”

  “I, uh-”

  Madelyn smirked. “I’ve crashed on a lot of couches. But don’t get any ideas, or I might get peckish.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You want some coffee?”

  “Coffee would be nice. I wanted to ask if it’s okay for me to drink beer?”

  “Well, inebriation and lowered inhibitions aside, you can eat any regular food you want. It won’t satisfy your hunger, but it’s something.”

  “No, I meant, I’m still not old enough to drink,” she said. “Shit, I’m gonna be getting ID’d for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”

  “It didn’t look like your first drink.”

  A guilty smile crept over her. “What about these?” She lifted her arms, showing the Stig-marks on her wrists.

  “I’m not sure. Stuff injected into your bloodstream doesn’t work, because your circulatory system doesn’t function anymore. But Stig is also magic, so if you feel any weird compulsions, let me know.”

  “Like wanting to eat people?” She winced. “Sorry. Bad joke. It’s been awhile since I took a hit. I keep waiting to crash.”

  “Count your blessings.” I started making her a cup of coffee.

  Madelyn sat on my couch. “So… I don’t have a pulse. I don’t need to breathe. What do I have?”

  “Your digestive system still works. And it’s a good idea to eat and drink regularly.”

  “Why?”

  “Your body doesn’t need food energy, but it’ll still lose or gain mass. And if you don’t keep moving things through your stomach, corpse gases can build up. It’s uncomfortable, for all concerned.”

  “Great,” Madelyn said. “Will I sweat?”

  “Yes, and spit, and cry. Dehydration won’t kill you, but keep drinking fluids to avoid turning into a mummy.”

  She chewed her lip. “Can we, I mean, can wights still have, y’know-?”

  “You can still have sex. But you won’t be having any more periods.” I puzzled over the idea. “I don’t know how male wights get a hard-on without a heartbeat, but they do. Muscle action, I guess. But none of them have functioning swimmers. We can go to a doctor, see if you still have viable eggs. Could be a good idea to freeze some, if you still want kids, but you’ll have to find a surrogate.” I snorted when I saw the way she was looking at me. “Sorry. I’m not pushing the idea. Professional curiosity. Just want you to know that you have options.”

  “Hm. How do I regulate body temperature?”

  “You don’t. Near as I can tell, you can’t freeze, either. Did you meet Ichiro?”

  “The one who kept talking to air?”

  “Yeah. His Yakuza buddies dropped him in the river. Spent most of the winter there, unable to move. Luckily, the spot counted as his grave.”

  Madelyn smirked. “Is that why he talks to himself? Poor guy.” I handed her a cup of coffee and she sipped it with her eyes closed. “Shit. That’s good.”

  “So, you want to tell me what happened at home, or do you want me to demonstrate my keen powers of deduction?”

  “Go ahead, Holmes. Wow me.”

  I smirked and sat down. “So you haven’t been home in a while. You were in college, but I’m guessing you haven’t been there in a while, either. You like music. Not the safe stuff. You went hardcore. Underground. Bands I’ll never hear of, playing music no record company would sign. Wasn’t long before someone put a needle in your hand, and you were willing to go deeper.”

  She stared at her reflection in the coffee.

  “My guess is that’s how you met Max, before all this. Someone who shared your love of music. But he didn’t go down the rabbit hole you did. Max didn’t have any kind of drug problem before he died, so I’m guessing you pulled away from him before he vanished. And it didn’t matter anymore, because the drugs were doing the thinking for you. Then he reappears. He wants to see you, you think he’s trying to drag you away from the life you were getting hooked on. You don’t realize he’s got his own addiction now. You fight. And you have the worst night of your life.”

  “Last night of my life,” Madelyn said. “You’re not bad at that, but you’re a bit of an asshole about it.”

  “Yeah. You want to take over for me?”

  Madelyn stared at her coffee. “Weed first, then Ecstasy, then Stig. It was all experimental, but Stig blacks you out, and I wanted to be blacked out. I told mom I was still going to school so she would keep sending me checks, but I hated everything. Me. Max. Lying. Eliza- I-” She shook her head and wiped her eyes. “My life. I don’t know why. The things I liked hurt me. I couldn’t deal with it. I wanted to stop feeling anything.”

  She shuffled in her seat to face me. “And then all of this happens. It’s like even when I’m dead, I’m not free of it. I wanted to be anywhere but here, so I went home. I forgot how much time had passed since I’d talked to them. I wasn’t at school. They thought I was dead.” She snorted. “I expected mom to yell and scream and threaten me. But she cried. And I cried. I had to tell her my mascara was running.”

  I imagined the scenario and smiled.

  Madelyn pulled her knees to her chest. “I didn’t care about anything at that moment. I was home, you know? My mind was clear again after so long. I thought it was a second chance. That everything had been a bad dream. I could tell mom I was a user. Go to a clinic, get clean, walk away from the bad shit in my life.”

  Her face darkened. “My sister Katie is thirteen. She was angry, because I never- I promised I’d write to her every week, and I didn’t. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be giving your sister a hug and then all you can think about suddenly is biting? It would be so… so soft…”

  She gagged, spilled her coffee, and was on her feet in a flash. She made it to my kitchen and vomited into the sink. After retching a few times, she sank to the floor and hugged her arms.

  I washed the vomit down my garbage disposal and let it run for a minute.

  “Do I have to eat m-more?” She asked.

  The pain in her eyes made me want to hug her, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I had been ready to kill her an hour ago. Instead, I sat beside her on the floor.

  “It’s not the meat you need,” I explained. “From what I’ve read, you either absorb lingering life-force from the flesh, or the act itself is purely symbolic, a ritual to keep the magic working. Digestion isn’t necessary.”

  She shuddered. “Isn’t there any way to do this without eating?”

  I wanted to do something, anything, so she wouldn’t have to suffer like she did. But I’d done everything in my power. It wasn’t enough, it never would be, but her life wouldn’t be any easier if I treated her like a broken bird with a clipped wing.

  “If there were, I wouldn’t make you do it,” I said. I cleared my throat. “So after you got hungry, you ran?”

  She nodded. “Found
my way back here. Shit, I should call them. I should let them know I’m okay.”

  “What will you tell them?” I asked.

  She wiped her face and rested her chin on her knees. “I don’t know. I feel like I should tell them… I mean, all this magic shit? How come no one’s ever heard of it before?”

  “Chances are you have,” I said. “On TV or the internet. But you never question it, because you know there’s no such thing, right? It has to be special effects. Computer editing. Hell, a lot of the fake stuff out there looks better than the real thing. And the Society buries the real stuff in it. Waters the truth down so much you believe it isn’t real.”

  Madelyn thought it over. “And anyone who knows is probably happy to be in on the secret, huh?”

  I smirked. “Even before I met the Society, I was careful about hiding my talent. I knew it would scare people, and it did feel kind of good to know something they didn’t. To have a deeper understanding of things.”

  “Sounds like a wizard to me,” Madelyn said.

  She laughed. I did, too. We sat together for a while, the idiot necromancer and his unwitting creation, trying to come to terms with the events that had brought us together.

  “You said you wanted to summon a Loa?” Madelyn asked.

  “That’s right. It isn’t my first choice, but I need a fresh lead and I don’t have a lot of options. What about you? I don’t suppose you know anything about Stig that would crack this case open?”

  Madelyn frowned. “Sorry, you kept me alive for nothing.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Yeah, you did. You operate on an ‘Alex first’ mindset, you know that?”

  “I like to think I’m pragmatic,” I said. “With a healthy case of self-preservation considering the world I live in.”

  “Was it pragmatic to let Max run free?” She asked.

  I winced. “You got me there. I’m sorry, Madelyn. You’re right. I’ve got all this shit on me right now, and I’m not giving you the time you need to deal with it. I wish I could.”

  “I don’t mean to be a bitch,” she said.

  “It’s fine. I deserve it.”

  We both chuckled again.

  “Well, we both have one thing in common,” she said. “Self-depreciation.”

  “In spades,” I agreed. “You don’t have to like me, Madelyn. You can hate me. But don’t ignore what I tell you. And if we get through this, if we find some moment of calm, I’ll do everything I can to help you deal with this.”

  She offered a weak smile. “You can call me Maddie. Everyone else does.”

  “Sure, but I’m not everyone else,” I said. “I like Madelyn.”

  Her smile grew. We sat for another moment.

  “So, anything you can tell me?” I asked.

  She huffed out a laugh. “I was on Stig for about three months. The pushers show up to all the raves, and a few underground concerts. They have other drugs too, but the Stig is so cheap it’s like they want to get rid of it.”

  “Yeah, they’re not after money. Who’s your pusher?”

  “His name’s Tyler. I don’t know where he operates or anything like that. Whenever there’s a rave or a concert, the kind that the cops don’t know about, he’s usually there. Him and a few others.”

  “Anything distinct about them, appearance-wise?”

  Madelyn shook her head. “He’s kind of short, black, shaved head. Acts like a player, but he’s a dick. Likes to feel up girls. Made me cringe.”

  I remembered Mr. Handy from the Arlington. “Small world. When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Dunno. A week? He wasn’t at the concert when this happened.” She touched her neck.

  “No, he was elsewhere. What about his buddies?”

  “Big guys. But quiet. They weren’t so bad. For drug dealers, anyway.”

  “Haitian?” I asked.

  “Uh, they were black. Is it racist if I say I don’t know?”

  I shrugged. “Until they hear me say ‘about’ most people don’t know I’m from Canada.”

  “Aboot?” She grinned. “Oh my God, you’re Canadian?”

  “I don’t hear ‘boot’,” I said. “I say ‘about’ like everyone else.”

  Madelyn laughed. “I hear it. Aboot. And you said ‘eh’ earlier! I heard it!”

  “Uh-huh,” I grunted. “Do you know any way to contact these guys?”

  She thought it over. “You got a computer around here?”

  I led her to the PC in my room.

  “Shit, this thing looks more expensive than your house and your van.”

  “I like video games.”

  “Nerd,” she muttered. She rolled her eyes and started logging herself onto social media sites and chat rooms. Not the usual hangouts grandmas post pictures of their cats.

  “This crap won’t dump viruses and spyware on my PC, is it?”

  “You only get that from super-weird porn sites,” she said. “If I look up your browser history, what’ll I find?”

  “What are you, a cop? Plus-sized gingers with big booties. Focus on your dark web nonsense.”

  She snorted. “This is gonna take a while. You don’t walk into these chatrooms and ask where the next illegal venue is going to be, you know? Maybe go make me some more coffee?”

  I gave her a cockeyed stare, then left her to do her thing. “I’m serious, don’t go looking at my porn.”

  “Perv.”

  “You were gonna look.”

  “No doot aboot it.” She giggled.

  I let her. Tender egos about my proud Northern heritage aside, she’d had a rough couple of days. No reason to sour a rare moment of levity. I cleaned the spilled coffee and made her another cup. She hugged it close, with her knees pulled up to her chest.

  It wasn’t fair that I had trapped her in my shitty world. I was glad she had something to distract her, because the weeks and months to come would be hard. How would she handle it, I wondered, when she already had an addictive personality? Would she seek relief from her hunger the way she had sought escape in drugs? What would she be willing to do to get it, if I wasn’t around to provide?

  I turned my mind back to my Loa-summoning project. I wondered if it was possible to find some place in the city that had a connection to the Loa, one untainted by the Brothers Midnight. It might make the ritual less offensive.

  Summoning is always a tricky business. Imagine a cockroach putting a bullhorn to your ear and demanding your attention. The Loa were old entities, regardless of their origins as ascended mages or otherworldly spirits. They couldn’t manifest on Earth without help, but the ritual would create a link between them and I. They’d be well within their means to punish me if they decided I was being discourteous.

  Then again, if you sit here on your hands doing nothing, you’ll still die, I thought. Better to apologize later than ask permission now. At least you’ll have died doing something about it.

  “Give me a hand here, kid,” I said to Madelyn. “We’re gonna perform some authentic necromancy.”

  TWENTY

  I gathered the ritual materials I needed and carried them into my basement. Madelyn kept her distance, but craned her neck to watch from the kitchen.

  “You’re gonna do it now?” She asked.

  “You bet. No time like the present. There’s a sound file on my desktop. Turn it on and turn the volume up. It’ll play on repeat.”

  She did as instructed. A blaring mix of drums and wordless chants came from the speakers. “What is this?”

  “It’s called banda. Vodou practitioners use it as part of their rituals.”

  She followed me into my basement, and her eyes lingered on the mortuary slab. “Um, I don’t want to say this is a red flag, but…”

  “I don’t carve cadavers in the Gallows.”

  She grimaced. “Um-”

  “Relax, I keep it spotless. And we’re not dismembering anything today.”

  “Okay, but if you do anything like that, tell
me first? So I don’t have to be here for it.” She looked like she could vomit again.

  “I promise. That’s why I work here. You guys have it hard enough without having to see that part.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

  I showed her a printout. “This is a veve. It’s a religious symbol that identifies one of the Loa. This one belongs to Baron Samedi. Heard of him?”

  “From a few movies, sure.” Curiosity won over, and she approached the slab.

  “Yeah, he’s among the most well-known in pop-culture. He’s the Loa of gravediggers, like me. And he hates necromancers. Also like me.”

  “Oh. Good.” She hugged her arms.

  “Yeah. But we’re hunting another necromancer, one who’s worse than me, and I’m hoping Samedi will hear me out.” I produced the other items for the ritual. “Some witches I hung out with on the road once called forth Sarah the Black for guidance and knowledge.”

  “Witches, like, Satanism?” Madelyn asked.

  “No,” I said. “Saint Sarah is Romani. Point is, most of the old gods and pagan spirits were just mages like me, who got real strong and Ascended into the Layered.”

  “Which is?”

  I thought it over. “The Layered is… eh, think of it like an onion made up of different dimensions. There are dozens of sub-realities that overlap our own, flowing through and around ours, shaping and shaped by our very minds. Space and time are arguably infinite, but they’re part of the triangle. The Layered is the third infinite: Thought, or Soul. Whichever you prefer.”

  Madelyn made a face. “I don’t get it.”

  “Technically, you can’t. Ordinary humans aren’t able to perceive the Layered. For magic, intention and symbolism are what’s important. It’s about the willpower of the mage and the potency of his magic that makes spells work, not an understanding of formulas and principles. Belief, for lack of a better word. Mages just have souls strong enough to make those beliefs real.”

  Madelyn looked over the ritual implements. “So what is all this, then?”

  “To call Samedi, we need a beacon. Each of these items is something that symbolizes him. By attuning my magic to them, I can get his attention. The veve is important. It’s his magemark, like this-” I drew my simple anchor mark in the air, and Madelyn’s eyes lit up.