Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8)

by T. A. Pratt

  “Who’re you calling mortal,” Marla muttered, shaking his hand off.

  “Well, you’re mortal at the moment. Here, let me clear your head.”

  “No thanks.” She ducked her head and stomped down the path toward the ruins. Bradley probed into her mind, gently, just tapping into her senses because he was wondering how the spell felt to her, and it was awful: the stink making her eyes water, the wind battering her, the fear that she would slip and fall and be swept away and die (even though lately she couldn’t die) growing ever stronger until –

  – she broke through the bubble of the spell and blinked at the calm sea, breathed in the brisk salt air, and didn’t worry about death a bit, as usual. Bradley stepped up beside her. He pressed the rag of seaweed to his face, sniffed, then pointed. “Down there, by the waterline, there’s a cave. I’m pretty sure there’s not supposed to be a cave, but somebody made one.”

  “Cave invasion time, then.”

  They picked their way down the rocks to the beach, and Bradley saw the shadow in the cliff wall where the cave must be. Marla drew her dagger and stepped forward carefully, boots sinking into the soft sand, toward the darkness. “Fiat lux,” she muttered.

  Bradley knew she was activating her enhanced night vision, but she didn’t need it: the blackness of the cave mouth was an illusion, and once they stepped inside, the space was lit by battery-powered camping lanterns resting on rocks and hanging from pitons hammered into the cave walls.

  An old man wearing a pair of black swim trunks and nothing else was snoring in a brightly-colored hammock swaying in a metal stand, next to an iron cauldron that would have done the witches from Macbeth proud.

  Marla glanced at Bradley. He shrugged and leaned against the damp wall of the cave. This was more her kind of thing than his.

  Marla walked over, put her boot on the hammock, and dumped the old guy out.

  He sprang up, sputtering. “What the shit?” His eyes – they were red-rimmed, matching the burst veins in his nose – went wide and he shouted “Llyn!”

  The contents of the cauldron bubbled up into a fountain, which turned into the watery semblance of a girl, translucent except for a few scraps of seaweed that sort of looked like hair, and teeth made of shards of shell. The nixie hissed, the water around her mouth boiling in the process, and started to climb out of the cauldron.

  Marla lashed out with her dagger, right at the thing’s face. It screamed and fell back when the blade cut across the indentations it had for eyes. Marla slashed down in a looping s-curve through the nixie’s body, and water splashed everywhere, seaweed and shells splattering back down into the cauldron. The old man gaped. “What – what did you do?”

  “This knife was made for me by the god of Death,” Marla said. “Forged in an awfully hot Hell, a lake of fire conjured by the imagination of a dead guy with a lot of guilt but not much imagination. This blade can cut through anything I want it to. Stone, steel, astral tethers. Water molecules. Don’t worry, your nixie will get her shit back together eventually, but right now a large portion of her anatomy has been reduced to hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and it takes a girl a little time to recover from that.” She held up the knife. “Now, what should I cut you into?”

  “I won’t fight.” He held up his hands. “Did Sanford Cole send you? I – I don’t recognize his authority, you know. I’m a sea witch, Alexander Thelonious Shaw, my people have been here since the Egg Wars, and – “

  “Hush. The hierarchy of the city’s magical community could not interest me less. You were murdering innocent people with your little water goblin there. Why?”

  He hugged his arms around his pale pigeon chest. “These new people. They’re destroying the whole culture of the city. Altering the city’s personality. Driving out the artists, the creative people, the ones who make it a world-class place to live. Soon it’s going to be nothing but young technocrats, consuming without creating.”

  Marla snorted. “This new wave of people moving in isn’t any different from the old waves of people moving in. The hippies pouring in here in the Sixties changed the whole nature of the city, too. The Beats changed things before that, in the Fifties. The people who came for the gold rush in the 1850s – I assume those were your people, Mr. Egg War – changed the hell out of the city too. Unless you’re Ohlone, bitching about the arrival of Spanish missionaries in the Eighteenth century, I don’t really want to hear it. Some of these new tech people are assholes, I’m sure, but some of them are perfectly nice people who heard San Francisco was a great place to live, and wanted to move here, so they did. Didn’t you just have a tech boom like ten years ago? Gods. You should be used to this. Stop bitching and move to Oakland until the next inevitable bust in the economy drives the programmers out of San Francisco again if you hate it so much. Seriously, there’s gotta be more to it than that. What made you start murdering people? Did you get kicked out of your apartment so some douche-bros could move in?”

  Shaw lifted his chin. “I am a sorcerer. I can live wherever I choose.” He sighed. “But my favorite bar, where I went every day for decades, was closed and replaced by an artisanal toast restaurant.”

  Bradley whistled. “Damn, dude,” he said. “That is rough. I mean, murder’s still wrong and everything, but... damn.”

  “Call Sanford Cole and tell him we caught his murderer,” Marla said. “Tell him if he wants to reward us with riches and resources they’d be welcome.” She sighed. “And then I guess we get back to work.”

  •

  Marla and Bradley sat on the steps leading down to the beach at Aquatic Park in North Beach, watching the sailboats cruise around the bay, and looking at the fog-shrouded towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. They were eating double-doubles, animal style, that they’d picked up from the In-N-Out Burger a few blocks away.

  “Wow, I missed cheeseburgers,” Bradley said. “Being an omnicognizant super-god living in a pocket watchtower dimension overseeing the complexity of the multiverse is great, but there’s a real dearth of local restaurants. I should do something about that.”

  “Just visit us mortals, and part-time mortals, more often,” Marla said.

  “Should’ve gotten sodas,” Bradley said. He reached toward her bag. “Let me get a drink of–”

  She slapped his hand away. “That’s not water for drinking.” He raised an eyebrow, so she picked up the plastic liter water bottle and shook it up, stirring the sand, flecks of seaweed, and jagged shards of seashell at the bottom around. “While you were talking to Cole’s people about securing Mr. Sea Witch, I was having a chat in the cave with Llyn, who’d mostly reconstituted herself, and she’s agreed to go traveling with us.”

  Bradley laughed. “You’ve got a nixie in a bottle?”

  “Well, I’ll have to dump her in a pond, or at least a full bathtub, if I want her to appear in human-sized body again – she needs more volume for that kind of thing – but, yeah.”

  “You haven’t had the best luck in the past, taking on murderers as allies. Squat, Nicolette, your brother...”

  “Oh, Llyn’s not a murderer – she was a murder weapon. She was under a compulsion to serve old what’s-his-egg, Shaw. I broke the chains of his spell with my dagger, and she’s promised to repay me with a month of service, and then she’ll go jump in a lake somewhere.”

  “Mmm. Don’t nixies historically drown people just for fun?”

  Marla stashed the bottle back in her bag. “She assures me she’s entirely harmless. You know I’ve got a trusting nature. Besides, some creatures need to be drowned. We need all the allies we can get if we’re going to face the Outsider and deal with my other problems. Me, you, and a magical knife are great, but more options don’t hurt.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Marla’s phone rang. Cole. She handed it to her former apprentice. “You talk to him. I’ve been thanked enough.”

  Bradley spoke, listened, grinned, and then handed the phone back to Marla. “Cole gave us a line of credit, so we
can afford to sleep in the kind of motels that don’t have bedbugs without having to steal or mind-control people first.”

  “Good. Being a wealthy patron is more fun than having one, but I’ll take what I can get.”

  “Better news,” Bradley said. “Cole tasked his whole psychic corps over to me, the ones he uses to detect threats to the city, impending earthquakes, stuff like that. I’ll get their brains networked together and make them look for dead spots – places they can’t see.”

  Marla whistled. “The Outsider blocks divination, but if you can find those blank spaces on the psychic landscape...”

  “Yep. The Outsider is hiding in the places we can’t see. So this approach should give us some –”

  “Hello, Marla.” A dreadlocked shirtless white boy hippie in a rainbow knit cap and frayed corduroys and hemp shoes sat down on the steps beside them. He reeked of patchouli sufficiently to make Bradley’s eyes water. “I just wanted to thank you for tracking down the man killing my people.”

  Marla gave him her most epic side-eye. “Reva? You’re uglier than you were last time I saw you. Smellier, too.”

  “My bodies are constructed randomly to match local norms,” he said. “This isn’t my idea – it’s just the nature of my corporeal manifestation.” He looked Bradley up and down. “Dude. You are way far from home.”

  “He’s from the universe next door. Don’t worry about it.” Marla put her arm around Reva’s shoulder. “You’re just the god I wanted to see. How do you feel about being bait?”

  Reva frowned. “I feel... not good?”

  “See, there’s this thing, we call it the Outsider, and –”

  “Whoa.” Reva shook off Marla’s arm and rose abruptly to his feet. He extended a long arm, pointing a finger at a figure in gray walking toward them along the waterline. “I thought your friend was a stranger here, but that guy is from way out of town.”

  Marla jumped to her feet, and Bradley wasn’t far behind her. “Reva, you need to take off. Discorporate, turn into a flock of starlings, whatever you do, just go.”

  “Marla, there are people around, I can’t just go around disappearing...” He trailed off. The approaching figure’s body appeared to be smoking, now, black tendrils drifting up from its shoulders and head, surrounding it in a cloud of shadow.

  “That’s a thing that eats gods, Reva. Discretion is a privilege of those who aren’t about to be devoured.”

  “I’ll, uh, see you around.” Reva took two steps backward and vanished, leaving nothing but the smell of patchouli behind.

  The thing down the beach howled, a noise like an air raid siren, making the tourists and joggers and beachcombers and wave-watchers and sunset hunters all turn and stare.

  Marla went to the packed sand at the edge of the surf and scuffed something in the dirt with her heel: a nasty keep-away sign, probably, based on how quickly everyone on the beach scattered, all of them practically running inland.

  Marla drew her dagger. “Get your psychic arsenal ready, B. If this thing’s got a body, maybe it’s got a brain you can fuck with.”

  “On it.” He followed Marla as she walked toward the Outsider, closing the gap from fifty yards to forty to thirty to twenty to ten. The thing had pulled its shadows back in by then, and it appeared much as Marzi had described it: waxed mustache, Old West suit, low-crowned top hat, face of a sphinx. It approached them, just a bit warily, which Bradley appreciated. The Outsider stopped, then turned and stared out at the bay and the islands and the sailboats. It took a deep breath, closing its eyes. “Ah,” it said. “That’s nice.”

  “Hey, Dapper Cthulhu,” Marla said. “Eyes on me.”

  The thing in the suit turned its head, just a degree or two farther than should have been anatomically possible, and regarded her. It closed its eyes and inhaled again, like a gourmand presented with a bowl of exquisite consommé. “Mmm. Hello, old friends. I can see you so much better than I could before. You’re touched by what passes for divinity in this abominable universe.” Its head turned toward Bradley, twisting even more unnaturally, though it still didn’t open its eyes. “And you... A psychic, yes, but mmm, there’s something else, what is it? A hint of an echo of something more... do I see a gazebo? In a park, far away? Where does that lead? I can taste the residue of its power all over both of you.”

  Bradley did his best not to let the alarm show on his face. If this thing could sense his connection to the center of the multiverse, if it could somehow follow that thread back to Fludd Park, fight through the defenses and reach the realm where the over-Bradley dwelled....

  “If you’re done hallucinating, we can get started,” Marla said.

  The thing shook its head. “These flavors are exquisite. I didn’t get everything emulated properly in this body, I don’t think – I can taste sounds, hear scents, and everything bleeds into everything else. The two of you are so rich. Too delicious for this filthy world.”

  “Our world wasn’t so filthy until you showed up,” Marla said. “You’re the cockroach in the candy bowl around here. We came to squish you.”

  Less bantering, more murdering, Bradley thought. He reached out for the thing’s brain, to see if he could squeeze a few pathways shut, maybe cause it to pass out, but the Outsider wasn’t really human, it was just disguised as one. Maybe if Marzi were here, imposing her worldview on the monster, his powers would have worked, but not in the current circumstances.

  “I see.” The Outsider opened its eyes and nodded at them, almost beatifically. “I should say, in the interests of common courtesy, that you have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

  “Oh, I’ve dealt with things from beyond this universe before,” Marla said. “They’re not around anymore. I am.”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve reviewed the footage.”

  Bradley frowned. What the hell did that mean? This thing had capabilities they hadn’t even considered.

  The Outsider went on. “You refer to the thing you thought was a cloak. It came from the same place I do, yes. My people keep those creatures as pets. Your cloak couldn’t even survive in this universe without latching on to a living host. As you can see, I am rather more adaptable.”

  “We’ll see how you adapt to being cut into little pieces. You know, you should have stayed locked up. Putting you away in that desert was me trying to be merciful. It’s something I’ve been working on lately. But screw it. Vindictive it is.” She shrugged out of her coat and handed it to Bradley.

  The Outsider didn’t look particularly worried. “Can’t we talk a little while first? I haven’t had many opportunities for conversation. Something about inhabiting this body, taking on a semi-divine form, makes me chatty. Besides, there are some things you should know, before I eat you.”

  “Last words are acceptable,” Marla said. “Just don’t ramble on too long. I react badly to boredom.”

  It sketched a little bow. “Regarding your threats, I would normally say, ‘Do your worst.’ Perhaps you are capable of killing me. It seems improbable, but I found it improbable that Neolithic tribesmen could imprison me in a void embedded in the earth, and that happened. Perhaps you could even slay me. But this universe is a multiverse – that’s part of what attracted me here in the first place. This is a place where anything that can happen, does happen. You might kill me, but the moment of my death would split, creating branches where I escape, and other branches where I kill you instead, and so on. This multiverse truly does have remarkable properties. I don’t wish the end of my present continuity of consciousness, but I would die somewhat more peacefully in the knowledge that another version of me moved on to continue my work, and that in some branch of this universe, I will succeed. I must succeed, if there is even the slightest chance of success.” It sniffed. “The place I come from is less... forgiving. Not a multiverse. Failure there has greater consequences.”

  “I don’t concern myself with every facet of the glittering sphere of the multiverse.” Marla shifted her stance, dagger in hand. “Let th
e worlds behind the looking glass take care of themselves. I’m concerned with the present moment and the present place, what we like to call the here-and-now. Though I admit, I do take comfort in knowing that, if it’s possible for me to kill you, I’ll kill you in some universe. I think there’s a good chance I’ll kill you in all of them.”

  The Outsider chuckled. “That’s the thing I wanted to tell you. Your sensitive friend must realize. Surely he feels it, even if he doesn’t understand what he feels. This particular branch of the multiverse has been rendered acarpous.”

  Marla frowned. “What does that mean? ‘Without fish’?”

  “Sterile,” Bradley said. “It’s a botany term. A plant that can’t produce fruit anymore.” The Outsider wasn’t supposed to know this branch of the multiverse had been cut off from the rest. What kind of senses did this thing have?

  “Yes.” The Outsider bowed its head a fraction in acknowledgment. “The tree itself continues to thrive, I suspect, but this branch has been sterilized. What happens here, now, is the only thing that can happen. No more branches. No more possibilities. I wonder if it’s a natural defense mechanism of the multiverse, when faced with a creature like me, to freeze the infected portion to protect the whole from my depredations? I don’t think so. I suspect there is... an agency... guiding this phenomenon. An intelligence. Something as high above your gods as the gods are above mortals.” It rolled its head on his neck, like a wrestler limbering up before a bout. “If so, I will continue to gain ontological mass until I become sufficiently powerful to perceive that agency. To threaten that agency, and force it to open this universe to me.” The Outsider grinned, and though they weren’t shark fangs this time, they were all canines. “Wait. That’s what the gazebo is, isn’t it? A physical portal to a metaphysical place. Oh, my.”

  Fuck fuck fuck, Bradley thought. And then, for good measure: Fuck.

  “Oh, how wonderful.” The Outsider shivered all over, face transported with ecstasy. Seeing that made Bradley’s guts clench. It was like watching a genocidal madman achieve orgasm. “Devouring you, my sensitive boy, and you, my demi-god, will be a good start toward making me strong enough to eat whatever lives beyond the gazebo. I could content myself with consuming this tiny branch of the universe, I suppose, but why limit myself? In a multiverse, the energy available is functionally, if not technically, infinite. I can suck this entire cosmos dry, and then tear my way through the tissue-thin membrane separating it from the dimension next door, and drain that one, too. My universe is a husk, sucked dry. This one... well. I’ve always been something of a glutton, when left unchecked, and I see no need to check myself.” It opened its arms wide, and black smoke trickled out of its pores, its nostrils, its eyes, its ears. “And so, you see, I cannot simply let you do your worst. I can’t risk the chance, however infinitesimal, that you might succeed. I –”