Noir Fatale

by Larry Correia

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I’m sure I don’t. At least not in any way I care to. Your games. Your position of authority within that little gang of yours in Macau. That graft on your hand.” I raked my fingers through my hair, hoping to feel the scars that’d been erased. I spun and glanced at the doorway. No Vic. He hadn’t followed me after all. Guess facing Mace wasn’t his thing. I closed the door.

  Mace’s head dipped, chin hitting his chest. “They’re coming. They knew you’d come here.” Blood-infused drool oozed from his mouth. “You were always a decoy. You never had the real string of pearls.” His body went limp.

  I slapped him. A nice handprint tattooed his cheek. “Mace, who did this to you? Who is coming?”

  He mumbled.

  “I’d like to thank them,” I said, “after everything you did to me. After—” I saw his hand. Oozing blood and it looked like the skin of someone who’d just gotten a tattoo, that sheen. Not even a faint outline of the lotus from the graft. The graft no longer there. “Mace, what happened?”

  “It’s over.” More blood dribbled from his mouth.

  My left hand froze. Arm numbed. Heart seized. “Mace,” I gasped. Fell to my knees and collapsed forward on my face. How? The door swung open. A warm draft hit my face.

  Two pairs of feet. Dirty shoes and clean pumps.

  Sweaty socks. I rolled on my side. Gasped. A vice squeezed my heart. The sweaty sock man and the well-dressed woman stood over me.

  “You’ll need to come with us,” sweaty socks said. “We need to know where your friend Victor is. Take us to him. This one”—sweaty socks nodded at Mace—“has no more use for us now.”

  The woman smiled, those teeth, so white. Her eyes glinted. Green eyes. Her look softened.

  The vise on my heart relaxed. The cold burned as it traced back through my arm. “You assumed Mace’s mantle,” I said to the man.

  “Oh? Did I?” No lotus adorned his hands.

  The woman smirked. “Now, get yourself together and come with us. We have use of you. We need to find your friend. Put an end to this business of tracking the pearls.”

  I groaned. There was no use. They’d ruined the plans I’d had to end Mace. End my pain. Now it’d begin all over again. My hat had settled under Mace’s chair, the clutch beside it, peeking open. The arclight wand. Vic must have put the wand in there at the sanctum. It was slender, but barely fit lengthwise. I rolled onto my hands and knees.

  The door banged again. Everyone looked. It was Vic. I grabbed the arclight wand while Vic went for sweaty socks. The woman turned, her eyes squinted and a smirk played on her lips. I squeezed the wand. Electricity arced, cerulean laced with silver. Enveloped her face.

  She stumbled.

  Pain wormed up my left arm. I held steady with my right. The arc widened. Singed hair. Burning hair. Scorched skin.

  Bergamot and spice overpowered the sweaty socks.

  Fire-warped scream. Her scream. The bracelet on my wrist warped, burned my skin. I held steady.

  “Liz, stop. You’ll—”

  Victor grabbed my right arm. I released my grip on the wand. The woman crumbled. Alive, but gravely injured. The pain in my left arm did not subside.

  The bracelet. A wide scar encircled my wrist where the bracelet had—no, the bracelet had become one with my arm. Now a part of me. The pain. Searing. Forever connected to whom?

  Victor held me. Mace’s breaths ragged behind me. Sweaty socks on the floor moaning. The well-dressed, but ill-mannered woman on her back now. Shallow breaths.

  “There’s something you can do—if you don’t want to be tethered to the person wearing that graft.” Vic broke the embrace and put his hands on my shoulders. He glanced at the woman on the floor, the new leader of the Macau Lotus. “But if you do, I can’t—”

  “I need to know something,” I said. “The pearls. Before I do anything else, the pearls. You have the string of pearls, don’t you?”

  Vic shook his head. “If I find the original strand, they’ll be used for good. This time will be different, trust me.”

  “Why did you say that? The last time ended in pain. Scars for both of us. Inside and out. I’ve a mind to take back my scars. Use this wand on my head.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Vic, if you use the pearls you better make sure they don’t fall into the wrong hands. Not this time.”

  I kneeled beside the woman. The graft on her hand fresh. Assimilating. Not yet fully attached. I dug my fingernails under and peeled. The woman screamed. Writhed. Resisted.

  My left arm chilled.

  I peeled. Ripped the graft from her hand. The lotus hung limp.

  Victor nodded. I raised the wand. Aimed.

  The chill in my arm subsided.

  I dropped the wand and placed the graft atop my left hand.

  Victor’s shoulders drooped. Crestfallen. Defeated. He walked through the door and out of my life.

  Maybe someday. Maybe.

  I stared at the bloody lotus grafting to my hand. No more fire-warped screams. No more burnt hair or scorched skin. No more chaos. But there’d still be booze.

  The well-dressed woman’s chest rose and fell three times. Her clenched fingers opened, releasing a string of pearls. Her chest ceased rising. I snatched them and ran to the door.

  “Victor,” I yelled, “come back.”

  Vic turned. Smiled broadly.

  “Here, you forgot these.” I handed over the string of pearls.

  Honey Fall

  Sarah A. Hoyt

  It was raining. I could hear rain pattering on the roof, singing along gutters. An unaccustomed sound.

  There was an odd smell, a sound of gnawing. And I needed to get out and do—

  I didn’t know what I needed to get out and do.

  I was in a small room. There was a window. Dismal gray light shone through, illuminating a series of hooks on the wall, with clothes hanging on them. I sensed more than saw an unmade bed nearby and a large workbench. Smells were chemical with an undertone of bachelor living quarters, all dirty socks and dust. And I had a run in my silk stocking.

  I stared at the stocking a long time, knowing that was wrong. I was not the sort of sloppy dame who wandered around with runs in her stocking.

  I became aware that I was leaning against the wall, in an uncomfortable position, my legs splayed out gracelessly. The hem of my skirt had gotten torn.

  It felt as though someone had flung me in a corner of the room like a broken doll. I blinked. I did not remember being flung. I remembered—

  There had been a scene with Ale. I remembered that and made a face at it, but I didn’t remember what the scene had been about or what had happened precisely. A quick memory of a shot, and of a bullet… I moved my hand to my left, under my breast, but there was no pain and no wound. A dream.

  I got up. It’s easier said than done. I had to brace myself against the floor, push with my legs, then pull myself up the wall with my hands. I can’t explain it. It’s not like something hurt, or like my legs were broken. My body just felt all prickles, like your legs feel if you sit too long.

  Standing, I looked around. The room was not familiar. It was a largish bedroom, with a workbench, and the man who lived here must be a natural-born slob. The bed was unmade, and it looked like it was never made. There was stuff scattered on it on top of the tumbled blankets. Getting closer, I saw a wallet. Also a broken magician’s wand. A rat was gnawing on it, eliciting sparks for every bite, but not seeming to care.

  I’d never been here. I was sure of it.

  “Honey,” I told myself, “you’re getting sloppy in your old age. A woman should not be alone in a man’s house without knowing the man rather thoroughly, and if you’ve descended to slobs like this, you’ve come a long way since Arty.”

  And then I realized what I’d said, and clutched the bed clothes as memory returned. I was Honey D’Orio, and Arty was Arthur James Arcana, the love of my life, who had left me, to go chase his dreams
—well, chase something, at any rate, in Los Angeles. Not that he didn’t have reason to do it, since the Pater did not approve. Or perhaps it was more fair to say that Arty did not approve of the Pater, and refused to work the family business like a good little boy.

  I let it go. The words came with a feeling of screamed arguments, in which Ale always took his part against Arty, and where Pater for once listened to him. The whole felt not so much like my memories—though I was sure they were, in fact, mine—but the memories of some other woman, that I’d bought piecemeal at a rummage sale.

  The feeling of urgency returned, the one that had caused me to wake. I was supposed to get out of here and go get help.

  Help for whom or what?

  Five long steps to the door, and I found it unlocked. So I was not a prisoner. Help for whom, then?

  I went back to the bed and grabbed the wallet, flipped through it. There were two fifty-dollar bills in it, which made me cast a look around the place again. A lot of money for the owner of this dump.

  There was also a much-folded, greasy-looking driver’s license listing the owner as Donald Griffin. There was an automobile key. At least it looked like an automobile ignition key and the fob said Chevy. I pocketed that. Something nagged me about that license. I’d swear there was something relating to Donald Griffin. I’d also swear I’d never heard his name.

  With no idea where I was going or why it was urgent, I opened the door and stepped out.

  And into a steady downpour.

  Which caused me to blink in confusion. I was a Colorado girl, born and bred, and in Colorado you’re more likely to get wet with snow than with rain. But every ten years or so, we had a year where it wouldn’t stop raining. Spring and summer would come and it kept raining. This had that sort of feel.

  I exited the house onto a garden path that descended in a series of very broad steps among a garden more luxurious than Colfax usually was. There was lush grass and old trees and roses blooming in the moisture.

  But I knew where I was and looking back at the house confirmed it. I was on East Colfax, the street that ran from Denver to Aurora. Twenty years ago or a bit more, it had been a respectable street, home to mansions with large gardens, but the wars had taken their toll on everything. Now the big Victorian mansions that no one could afford, like the one that rose in front of me in tones of need-to-be-painted grayish blue, had been subdivided into apartments. From the looks of it, Donald Griffin lived in the cottage at the back, which had probably once been a carriage house, or perhaps a gardener’s cottage.

  I walked down the path, not even bothering to avoid the dripping from above, then climbed down ten steps to the street level. There was a Chevy parked out front. It was a 1926 Chevy Landau that had seen better days. Its rear back panel had been shoved in at least once, maybe more; there was rust on one of the doors, and the whole car was in dire need of a paint job.

  But all I needed was a car that would allow me to go somewhere where I could think.

  Home, I thought. I wanted to go home. Something in me, some feeling, that same sense of urgency that had awakened me protested, but the urgency could wait. I wanted to go home. And I knew exactly where home was and how to get there.

  Acting as if the car belonged to me and I had a right to do it, I opened the door and sat down. There were a gaggle of children playing across the street, and a couple of women, their bags loaded with groceries, walked along the sidewalk talking. None paid any attention to me as I started the car and followed the route I could follow in my sleep.

  The Landau didn’t purr as I remembered my car purring, my own, beloved Auburn Speedster, painted candy-apple red, that Pater had bought me to celebrate my nineteenth birthday, or perhaps because I’d let Arty go. I still wasn’t sure letting Arty go had been a good idea, but at least, dear Lord, I’d got my Speedster out of it.

  I blinked unaccountable moisture from my eyes, not sure why it felt like the Speedster was long lost, and took a deep breath, looking up at the gray sky where a couple of broom-flyers sped somewhere, darker against the gray. What a day to be flying. I wouldn’t want to try it, not even on the most securely enchanted of brooms. Sure, a lot of veterans flew because they’d done it overseas, but it still seemed like a comfortless form of transportation.

  I drove away from Colfax, towards Cherry Creek and the Country Club district. Pater had built the dear old family home less than five years ago. It’s an almost embarrassing pile, all golden stone and sweeping European-looking turrets and balconies. I suspected it was his Sicilian grandfather’s idea of a palace. The things that get transmitted in the genes!

  Because when he’d built the house, he already could see a day when Ale and I would want to move away, and because Pater is unable to bear anyone leaving and going beyond his control, he’d built two apartments into the house, the sort of place where we could live—presumably even after we married—and pretend to be independent.

  Mine was around the back, through the terrace at the rear of the house, the same terrace that led to the ballroom where we’d had my coming out ball, and where I’d danced all night with Arty, while Ale glowered.

  I hadn’t realized how late it was until I pulled into the broad driveway around the house. I could not have known it, of course, not with the overcast sky. But when I got home it must have been well past dinner time. I toyed with going into the dining room and apologizing, but I had a strong feeling I should not. I wasn’t sure why, but I reasoned that with my impaired memory, it wasn’t a good time to buck my instincts. Not that I had much experience with impaired memory, save a couple of drinking binges, one of them the night Arty left. But even that was enough to show me that sometimes, when you couldn’t remember, feeling was all you had.

  I got out of the car. A man weeding one of the flower beds straightened up and stared at me, mouth half open. Well, he was probably one of the gardeners and wondering what I was doing driving this pile. Let him go on wondering. I ran across the corner of the terrace, up two stone steps, and took the path to the side that led to my door. Then I stopped. I didn’t have my key with me.

  Well, it wasn’t precisely an unheard-of predicament. Sometimes purses got forgotten. I walked around the edge and felt in the flower bed for the peculiarly shaped stone at the base of the yellow rosebush. The key was there, under the stone, feeling weirdly encrusted with dirt. I couldn’t remember when I’d last needed it, but it took me a while to get all the dirt off, so I could put it in the lock and turn it.

  The door opened with a creak that nearly pushed me out of my skin.

  Inside was…my apartment.

  See, I chose all of it when I was barely fifteen, which will have to explain why it was decorated in tones of silver and green. My wallpaper was a tracery of delicate green branches, and the furniture was metallic silver, elfin, delicate constructions. Pater had laughed that it was not at all proper furniture, but he liked to indulge me.

  My front room was a large sitting room with enough sofas and divans for a party of my closest twenty friends. I walked by the piano and trailed my fingers across the keys before going to my room at the back.

  My room was also silver and green, with a soft green coverlet on the silver bed. Next to it was the most expensive bathroom money could buy. I had to make myself decent before going out.

  I didn’t realize how bad it was. Beyond the torn stocking there were dirt smudges on my cheeks, and the fact that my skirt had collected dust from Griffin’s floor. My shoes, too, green patent leather to match my skirt, had become scuffed.

  I undressed, washed, and started dressing again before I realized that my entire room was covered in a layer of dust. It made me uncomfortable in a way I couldn’t explain, but I shrugged. I might have been away for a few weeks, and Pater been busy with his ventures and not paid any attention. Obviously my maid had taken advantage to take a vacation.

  Because it was nighttime and because I had a feeling where I should go, even if not why, I picked a tailored dark green dres
s, which I wore with my jade beads. At least, whatever I’d been doing with myself, my hair passed muster—which wasn’t a given. Left to its own devices, it grew black and in a riot of curls that my father reassured me was exactly the same as his grandmother’s when she was young. Fortunately, in the modern era, a girl didn’t have to sit under that, and I didn’t. Instead, I made it platinum blond and arranged the curls in a stylish fall that blocked my right eye.

  The stockings I put on did not have a run, and I picked new heels from the shelf in my closet. Because I had no idea what this was about, I selected my two guns, the ones that Daddy had given me when I turned sixteen, pearl-handled .22 Baby Hammerlesses. One went into my purse, and one into my garter. Because it was raining and the temperature falls fast in the Rocky Mountains once the sun sets, I picked up my fox fur stole and my seldom-used umbrella. Between the two I managed to stay cozy and warm all the way to the car. And yeah, it was the Landau again. My car might still be in the garage at the back, but I was in a hurry.

  I backed down the driveway and to the Magic Cat. The Magic Cat is at the edge of the Five Points neighborhood, but it is not colored. Not as such. People of all colors came here. Well, mostly the patrons were white and the personnel, including the excellent jazz bands, were colored. But the thing was no one looked very closely at you there. It was a place I could both be myself and something more than Daddy’s little girl.

  The parking lot next to it was full, and my car would have passed more unnoticed than the Landau. But I found a spot all the same and walked out, Griffin’s two fifty dollar notes burning a hole in my dainty purse.

  Coming in from the cool rain, pushing open the polished wood doors of the Magic Cat, with the bas relief of a cat in a fedora playing the trombone, felt like coming home more than my apartment did.

  Inside, the club was cool, but dry, and illuminated by golden lampshaded lights that gave an impression of a tropical night.

  I didn’t recognize the band playing, but the notes wound in a spiral of sound around the usual dancers. Well-dressed, well-coiffed people. Couples who twirled together in every semblance of a passion not acceptable in public. This too felt good. It felt like I’d been away a long long time, and I wanted to warm myself at the fire of human passion and familiarity.