Revenant

by Kat Richardson

  The platform announcement system made a noise and someone spoke in Portuguese, followed by English, French, and Spanish repetitions of the information that a northbound train was approaching the platform and everyone should remain behind the safety lines. All subways seem to have the same message. I made my way down to the platform, barely staying in the rush of people hoping to make this train while I kept an eye out for the MUAs. One was pacing at the end of the platform nearest me and the other was at the opposite end, covering both exits. I wondered if they’d spot me without an alert from their bony alarm system. . . .

  I didn’t dare slow the traffic flow by stopping since that would only call attention to me before I was near the train. I wished I had my hat, but without it, I’d just have to rely on another technique. I eased closer to the stair edge on the open side of the platform so I’d be as close to the train as possible when I reached the next level. By slowing just a little near the wall, I forced other passengers to flow around me, blocking me from the sight of the man at the bottom of the stairs.

  The train rushed in and sighed to a stop, the doors opening on a trickle of passengers—not enough to make a good screen, but not enough to clog the cars, either. I stepped down onto the platform and walked without a glance past the man who was looking for me. He apparently wasn’t able to see my aura, so at first he didn’t notice, but I heard him shout, followed by the sound of feet and cursing as he pushed someone aside to reach me. I dodged into the nearest car and ducked into a seat by the door.

  The MUA lunged into the car and paused to look for me. I dropped to the floor and he ran up the aisle as I popped back up and sat down as if nothing had happened. He stepped out of the car through the next door, looking around as if not sure how he could have missed me. He was about to turn back into the car, when his partner ran up to him and distracted him long enough for the doors to shut them out. Both men stood there, staring into the car, annoyed. I turned my back and hunched down in the corner of the seat, making myself smaller, just another brown-haired woman on the metro. . . .

  I don’t know if they saw me or if they just called ahead on general principle, but I had to make several transfers and jump through a complicated change to the Red Line at Alameda station, then another change to the Blue Line at São Sebastião before I lost them. At first, I was surprised at the resources Purlis had put into bottling up the transportation hubs, but this unspeakable project was the object of his years-long ambition. He’d already tried to sacrifice thousands of innocent people in Seattle to move it forward. It appeared he’d engineered other acts of equal horror throughout Europe to keep his plans on track, so placing a few spies in transit stations wasn’t such an outrageous idea, though I knew his resources had to be limited. He seemed to have everything he needed except the right bones, though, so maybe it was a matter of putting the nonspecialists to the grunt work, even if they weren’t that well suited to it, while Rui and his cronies did the magical dirty work alone. There had to be a limit to the number of men Purlis could place in metro stations, however, and it looked as if I’d finally exceeded it.

  Although I was braced for more of the MUAs at the Jardim Zoológico metro station, I didn’t see any. Maybe it was too far outside the downtown core for Purlis to cover, or bother with, since he’d located us in Alfama, which lay a good distance in the opposite direction. I hoped the lack of Men with Ugly Auras and creepy bone-based cantrips and alarms didn’t mean they were busy elsewhere, lying in wait for Quinton or Carlos.

  But I’d underestimated Purlis.

  I came up from the metro station on the side next to the zoo and started to the crosswalk to go under the elevated highway to the bus and train station on the other side of the road. A dark blue sedan with tinted windows pulled in awkwardly at the curb, partially blocking my path. I started around it, looking for other trouble, and had to scramble back a step as the rear door opened and Purlis unfolded himself from the backseat.

  He wasn’t quick and I could have just run back down the metro stairs to elude him, but it was obvious he had agents with him—and probably a lot of others around that I hadn’t pegged because they weren’t magical or unusual in any way. He must have figured out that I could detect paranormal elements and pulled the MUAs and mages back out of the area. Ordinary spycraft was all he needed here unless I wanted to make a scene. I couldn’t be sure he didn’t have Rui, another bone mage, or even the dreamspinner in the car, since the steel and glass of an automobile make a pretty good filter for Grey effects. On the other hand, if he was wasting time with me, he wasn’t chasing Quinton or Carlos.

  Purlis closed the car door and leaned on his cane, looking at me with a benign expression that sent a chill over me. “Hello, Harper. I thought we might have a little chat.”

  Even with his aura going green and red as an Italian flag, he was still keeping it under tight control. He looked so much like Quinton, it was startling, though he was older and not in the best of health. His skin was an unpleasant color even in the sunshine, and the tension in his shoulders could have held up a bridge. Tiny lines of pain etched the corners of his mouth and eyes, and a faint odor of putrefaction clung to him.

  “I think the last chat we had didn’t go very well. Why should we have another?” I asked, trying to devise an escape without giving him any sign of what I was thinking. The area was completely unknown to me in both the Grey and the normal and I had no idea what resources he had on hand. I needed a break. . . .

  “Well, this time no one’s trying to kill anyone.” His voice was almost identical to Quinton’s, but it was flat and devoid of emotion. It made the skin at the back of my neck crawl.

  “Strike one.”

  “Pardon me?” he asked.

  “It’s like baseball,” I said. “You get three strikes and then one of us is out of here. Every blatant lie you tell me is a strike, and you just whiffed one in a major way.”

  “Will you simply walk me if I tell you some uncomfortable truths?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then perhaps you’d stroll with me to the zoo.” It was like talking to Quinton’s evil doppelganger and the experience disturbed me. But turning would give me a chance to look the situation over and I could stand his disquieting presence a little longer for that.

  “I’d rather not, but if you insist, I’ll go as far as the gate—if your leg is up to it.” He could have anything waiting in the emotional chaos of the zoological gardens. Here on the street, I was in public view, but the pedestrian crossing was a little more public than I thought our conversation could handle—especially if I had to make an escape through the Grey.

  “It’s a small price to pay.” He waved to the car and it pulled off to park not too far away, but certainly not close enough to overhear us without equipment. I backed up a few steps and Purlis closed the distance in lurching strides. He covered a grimace with a strained smile that didn’t light his eyes.

  “So, what happened?” I asked before he could own the discussion. “Your knee was healing fine the last I heard.”

  “I don’t find your question germane to the discussion at hand, so let’s say that my work has taken a toll on my health and leave it at that. But I have been asking a lot of questions about you. . . .”

  “Me? I’d say I was flattered, but that would be a strike for my team,” I said, crossing the dark paving stones of the parking area and onto the white stones of the walkway.

  “You almost had me fooled. If you hadn’t shown up with the vampire, I might still have thought you were just a bit odd.”

  “I’ve always been a little odd. Vampires are just the icing on the weird cake that is my life.”

  He forced a well-practiced laugh that in some other circumstance might have been charming. “You interest me, which is why I wanted to have this little talk.” His words came out in small puffs as he walked, each movement jarring them into the air as he lurched on his unstable pro
sthesis and put too much of his weight on the cane, watching the grooved and patterned ground as much as he watched me. “You see, I don’t understand you. Everything I hear about you—even from your enemies—indicates you have a strong sense of what is morally right, that you’re driven by a desire for justice, without worrying too much over the letter of the law. I understand that position—I’ve been there, am there, myself. What we do may look unfathomable—even wrong—to outsiders, but we know it’s the right thing to keep the world in balance.”

  “Are you implying we’re of the same moral type?” I wasn’t sure if it was his presence, the situation, or just the conversation, but I felt nervy and overwound as if the air were filled with static.

  “From different approaches, but yes.”

  “Hmm . . . And yet I’ve never felt there was any excuse to kidnap and kill a child. You not only thought so; you took your own granddaughter. I think that’s pretty far out of the ballpark of moral rectitude.”

  Jagged red sparks flew in Purlis’s aura. He didn’t like what I was saying, but he continued to keep his cool and replied in the same low, featureless voice, “Any true sacrifice is painful.”

  “It’s not a sacrifice when you force someone to do it against their will—that’s just murder. Why would you even consider such an action reasonable? What ‘sacrifice’ did you need a six-year-old child to make for you?” The electric feeling on my skin was intensifying with my anger.

  “Necessity—”

  “Strike two. There is nothing reasonable and necessary about kidnapping and murdering a six-year-old girl for spare parts. Your own granddaughter!”

  He stopped walking just where the walkway divided to head for the zoo and turned to face me directly. “It was a hard choice, but Soraia is special and Sam has another child.”

  His face was calm, but the colors in his aura were now heaving and flickering in a polychromatic display I’d seen only once before. In the past year, Purlis had progressed from a fanatic who believed in his cause without wavering, to a full-blown psycho. For the first time in my life, I was certain that the world would be better off if I shot a man in the head and bore the consequences. And I didn’t have a gun.

  “She is special, but she’s not a box of Tinkertoys for whatever unholy purpose your friend Rui and his ilk have in mind. And without her, you . . . what . . . would have settled for Martim if you could find him?” My disgust was heightened by the irritation of his energetic presence.

  “No. He wouldn’t have suited the work.” As if anyone should have understood that without having to be told.

  “He wouldn’t . . . Oh yeah, because Soraia is a special little girl as well as your granddaughter, so she becomes a piece of the construction, along with your left leg and all the other bones you’ve looted from ossuaries all over Europe.”

  “There’s always a price for the acts that redefine a nation—or the world.”

  “So your leg was the buy-in for world domination? Surely you don’t think the Kostní Mágové are going to give you any real control over whatever it is they’re making?”

  He didn’t give any sign in his expression that I’d hit home, but his energy corona sparked and he shifted his weight off his bad leg by the tiniest bit. “I’ve been at this game long enough to know how to control my assets.”

  “Assets? This bunch of religious fanatics? You told me you were a patriot.”

  “I am.”

  “I’m not sure how you square that ideal with plans to bring down some kind of apocalypse. It just seems to fly in the face of individual liberty.”

  “Individuals rarely stand high enough to achieve the scope of vision that will allow them to see what’s truly the greater good.”

  “But you do, standing on your pile of bones with the likes of Rui Araújo.”

  “We can’t always choose our allies.”

  “I’d bet Trotsky said the same thing about Stalin.” Purlis gave me a sideways glance but held his tongue as his aura gave off a shower of annoyed orange sparks. “And since you’ve lost her, I suppose now you’re looking for something to replace Soraia. . . . What kind of diabolical engine are you building, Purlis, that you need the bones of children and family? Are you planning on killing your wife or your son for this, too? Bear in mind I feel pretty strongly about his continued existence.” There was no need to tell him how much I knew. If I didn’t find a way to get out of the area, I might have to go with him for a while, and every piece of information Purlis and Rui didn’t have was to my advantage.

  “I don’t need them. We have more than sufficient supplies of betrayers and spies.”

  “And you’re both. So what else are you after? The innocent? The pure? The unbaptized babies of women born in a full moon? Or maybe those with a gift your skeleton-sucking friends don’t have?”

  The mad strobing of his aura shut down suddenly, becoming a tightly controlled spiral of blood-red and gold energy bound in white bands of force. “Some of those, yes, but the talented and pure prove much harder to find. Sadly, you don’t have the vision I thought you did. You could have been useful to me, but associating with monsters seems to have derailed your sense.” I could see him shift his weight and reset his grip on his cane.

  I made a more subtle shift—reaching for the Grey. “The only monster I know is you.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I had no more time and saw no other way out. I dropped toward the world between as fast as I could, not worrying about the location of temporaclines or what paranormal things might be nearby. Purlis was about to do something and I had to get away from that—before I strangled him with my bare hands. If he had traps for me in the Grey, so be it, and I hated that my precipitous vanishing act would probably give him more information about my own abilities than he already had.

  But as I fell, something jerked me hard back toward the normal world and down to the ground. Purlis’s cane slashed, gleaming oddly, through the air where I’d been standing, and he stumbled as he recovered from my sudden flicker. The force of the strike alone would have broken my legs, but the trail of oil-slick glisten it left in the Grey told me there’d been more to his attack. That cane wasn’t just a bit of steel and wood, and I didn’t know if it was connected to the cold or the breathlessness that now held me against the white paving stones.

  Something pulled me down like a net drawn tight. I cursed myself as much as him, and I could feel the spell digging into me the same way the floor of the bone church had tried to do. I snatched at the ivory lines of the trap that I could now see inched in bones between the cracks of the white paving stones. This was plainly some work of Rui’s and I hadn’t seen it. Purlis had done an expert job of maneuvering me and keeping my attention on him, not on a potential pitfall. I ripped a piece of the spell out, but that left me with no better escape route.

  I struggled toward the deepest layers of the Grey, down near the Grid where energy rules and the world devolves to wire frames of light and color in the void of physical matter. I could see it, but I was unable to drop any farther than the most superficial layer, my physical form refusing to sink or soften into the realms of mist and shadow that lie just outside of normal. It felt as if my own body were holding me back and my every move toward the Grid made me ache in every bone and joint. Usually I travel through the realm of ghosts and shadows securely housed in the armor of my physical body. However tiring it is, my ability to bestride all three planes—the normal, the paranormal, and the Grey—intact and whole is my one unique attribute. Everything else I can do or see or experience is within the power of someone or something else, as well. That ability is what defines me as a Greywalker—and now I couldn’t do it.

  I knew, much as it galled me, that I could lie struggling on the sidewalk, growing colder in the grip of Rui’s bones and exhausting myself, or I could give up, save my energy, and hope to find another way to extract myself from the situation later. Not
a great choice, but there was no better alternative and prisoner is still a better position than corpse. I didn’t think Purlis or Rui—wherever he was—cared which they got.

  I let go and was yanked back into the normal world. I slumped on the sidewalk as if my own bones were water.

  “Welcome back,” Purlis said, looking insufferable. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t help you to your feet.”

  “No,” I muttered, unable to raise my voice any louder. “You’re unforgivable.”

  “You’ve an interesting set of talents. It’s a pity we have to be enemies.”

  “Who says we have to?” I asked.

  “You don’t like me and I can’t trust you. . . .”

  “Oh, but we won’t be enemies forever. Eventually one of us is going to be dead.” I found I was looking forward to it, since I had a much better chance of giving death the slip than Purlis had.

  Purlis chuckled in spite of his physical discomfort as people who were obviously working for him converged on our position. “True. And sooner rather than later, I suspect.”

  He limped away as his team encircled me, hiding my strange, crushed posture from public sight. In a moment, Rui Araújo parted the circle and stood looking down at me. He seemed pleased, the red spikes in his aura jumping. He made a small gesture, murmured a word in Portuguese, and the force pulling me to the ground vanished.

  I unfolded and stood slowly, wincing more than was strictly necessary, brushing the dirt off my dress and a few drops of blood off my abraded knees. He watched me with eyes brighter than one would expect of someone who had to be more than two hundred fifty years old. The penetrating quality of his gaze was disconcerting. I stood still and looked back at him, saying nothing, doing nothing.

  Rui studied me a few moments longer. “You are not injured,” he said. His voice was at odds with his appearance, low and soft, moving slowly, but not old at all, rather the opposite. He also had clear English, but a strong Portuguese accent and though there was nothing unpleasant in his tone, I felt like I was listening to a scorpion discussing the pros and cons of stinging me to death.