by N. P. Martin
Moira frowned as if she didn’t know what to make of that. "Okay…"
"Yeah, I know it’s weird," I said. "But it’s true. If you were to somehow hitch a lift with me, so to speak, you’d be sharing my body, or astral body, or whatever form this is…with a demon…and I don’t think he’s up for sharing."
"Hell no!" Max stated.
"I see," Moira said as she considered this.
"I would fear for your immortal soul," I said.
"And quite right, too," Max said.
"Shut it, Max," I said. "You’re being an asshole. I’m not sure we’ll be able to navigate this place safely without Moira here, and if we can’t do that, neither of us will get what we want…"
"You don’t need this grayed-out floozy," Max retorted. "I will make sure you come to no harm until this is done."
"Really?" I said. "You think I didn’t notice the reduction in your power when you used it earlier? You’re hobbled here as much as I am. Clearly spells, and not innate magic, rule the roost in this place."
"I have plenty of power left, believe me…"
"No, you don’t. I would feel it if you did, and I don’t feel it anymore." I looked at Moira, who was now staring at me weirdly, like everyone else when they found out for the first time that I was possessed by a demon. "Face it, Max. We need her."
Max sighed. It was the first time I’d ever heard him do it. "Fine, but I’m fucking her up if she tries anything…anything at all."
"Jeez, Max…anyone would think you were starting to care about me. Maybe you’ve been in there too long…"
He made a spluttering sound. "Nonsense. I care for nothing and no one."
"Keep telling yourself that."
Moira made a coughing sound to get my attention. "You look like you are in silent conversation with yourself," she said. "It’s…kinda creepy, actually."
I smiled at her. "You should try being on this side of things. It’s really creepy over here…"
Moira chuckled, and then smiled back. "So do we have a deal…Creed?"
There was nothing more to consider as far as I was concerned. "Yes," I said nodding. "We have a deal. Now maybe you can tell me where a man can get a drink around here…"
21
Cloak And Dagger
"There’s no fucking whiskey in this place? At all?"
I sat staring at Moira as she smiled back at me. "Sorry to disappoint you," she said. "There’s no food or drink of any kind in this hell hole. The souls of the dead have no need for snacks or tasty beverages, I’m afraid, so…"
"There’s no whiskey."
Moira snorted and shook her head. "I know, right? Considering how grim this place is, you would have thought there’d be a bar at least."
"Fuck that. I might have to go home again."
Moira laughed out loud this time. "You might have to."
I sighed. "I can wait."
"When I first got here, all I thought about was coffee. It was all I wanted. Ridiculous, right?"
"Not really," I said shaking my head. "These are the things that make life bearable, after all."
"Bearable, yeah…" Moira looked down and shook her head, the image of sadness in her gray state.
"So what do people do here to pass the time?" I asked her. "At least tell me there’s some good drugs going around?"
She looked up and smiled. "Not drugs exactly…magic."
"Magic?"
"There are spells that can…take you away somewhere else."
"On a trip you mean?"
"Something like that. The trips are quite real. Vivid. It can get addictive." She looked away for a second, as if in shame. I let it slide.
"So who comes up with these spells?"
"Most of them come from LeBron. He basically runs this city, through his minions."
"Who is he?"
Moira sighed as if she didn’t want to talk about it. "Not someone you want to mess with, that’s for sure. He has a way of making people…disappear. Don’t ask me how. People are kidnapped and never seen again."
"Sounds sinister."
"It is. There’s talk that LeBron runs an energy bank inside his mountain lair, which is apparently where he keeps people locked up."
My curiosity peaked upon hearing that. Maybe that’s where my family is? I thought. "What do you mean by energy bank?"
Moira took her two short swords from the scabbards on her back and placed the swords on the floor, stretching her back as she did so. "Energy is currency around here. It’s about the only thing people have to trade, so most trade theirs for spells. This place is junky central."
"Are you talking about soul energy?"
She nodded. "What else? That’s all anyone is here, just a soul manifested in partial physical form."
"Surely it would be detrimental to give away the energy of your soul?"
"Of course it is. You’ll see when you venture outside. Half the souls here have faded away to nothing because they’ve traded away so much of their energy."
"Let me guess," I said. "LeBron acts like a pusher, and get’s people addicted to the trips."
"I saw it all before as a cop," Moira said. "It’s no different here."
"So what does this LeBron get out of it? What does he do with all the energy he takes?"
Moira shook her head. "No one knows. No one has even seen LeBron, as far as I know, not even the people who do his bidding apparently. He lives inside Crystal Mountain, on the outskirts of the city."
"Crystal Mountain? Sounds like something from a fantasy novel."
"I suppose you could say it is. It’s a huge mountain that is partially formed out of crystallized energy, which LeBron has fashioned into a fortress of sorts. As far as anyone knows, he never leaves the place."
"Yet he still manages to dominate the Gray Lands."
"Yes," Moira said. "He has plenty of souls working for him. You work for LeBron, you get all the trips you can handle. That’s the word on the street anyway."
I nodded. "There’s always a tyrant, isn’t there? Everywhere you go."
"The nothingness I expected would have been better than this."
"Who’s to say you won’t move on to somewhere better?"
"I’d be there by now if I was, and anyway, I’m just as likely to end up somewhere worse as better. You hear so many horror stories going around this place about the Underworld and the horrible demons…"
"Why is it always the horrible demons?" Max protested within me. "Humans are more wretched than demons are, and that’s a fact."
"You’ve upset the demon," I said to Moira.
She looked like she didn’t know what to say to that for a moment. "What is that like?"
"Great," I said with sarcastic cheer. "We have fun all day long, Max and I."
"Really?" Moira said looking unsure.
I snorted and shook my head. "Of course not, it’s a fucking nightmare."
"Once again, Creed, I am offended—"
"Whatever, Max."
"What?" Moira said.
"Oh, did I say that out loud?" I said. "I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget…"
"Why do you call it Max?"
"He named himself that."
"Weird."
"You have no idea…"
The conversation lulled at that point, and we sat in silence for a few minutes while I considered this LeBron character. By the sound of things, all trouble in the Gray Lands linked back to him, which must mean that if my family are in trouble, then LeBron must have something to do with it. Quite possibly, he might be holding my family in his mountain lair. I would soon find out anyway, once the Soul Finder took me to their location.
Speaking of Soul Finders, I showed the device to Moira, and explained to her that we wouldn’t have to turn the city upside down looking for my family. The device would take us straight to them.
"That’s good," she said as she handled the device for a moment, before handing it back to me. "This is a big place. You may never have found your family if you h
ad go out there blind. I could’ve used a device like that when I was a cop. All this magic stuff could’ve been helpful, but instead it was kept from people, except those in the know."
"Not anymore," I said. "Things have changed back on Earth. The supernatural is out in the open now, including magic. It remains to be seen what kind of world we end up with because of it."
"You mean everyone knows about magic and…everything else now? Wow…" She shook her head. "That will make things interesting for my return."
Moira seemed to be pinning all her hopes on getting out of the Gray Lands and back to Earth. I felt like mentioning that these situations often don’t work out the way we want them to, but I said nothing because I didn’t want to dash whatever hope she had. Although I was curious about one thing. "Say you make it back to Earth. You realize you’ll be just a spirit on the Earthly Plane."
She nodded. "I’m aware of that."
"You’re happy to live as a ghost?"
"It has to be better than staying here."
I thought for a moment, then said, "There are ways, you know…"
"Ways?"
"Ways to not be a ghost."
"What do you mean?"
I was hesitant about saying anything, but I knew of a way to possibly solve her problem if she made it back to Earth. "There’s a way around it, if you don’t mind living in the body of someone else, that is."
"Possession, you mean?"
Max laughed. "Taking a leaf out of the old demon playbook, Creed? I must be rubbing off on you."
"Sort of," I said to Moira. "You inhabit the body of a dead person."
Moira nodded. "So I’d be walking around in a corpse? I don’t think that would be very…pleasant, do you?"
"No, it wouldn’t be like that. Your life force would reanimate whatever body you’d be in. You’d be very much alive."
Tears suddenly filled Moira’s gray eyes. "I would get another chance…"
"Yes, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves," I said. "There’s a lot to do before that can happen."
She wiped her hand across her cheeks. "Well, then," she said standing, grabbing her two swords from off the floor. "Let’s not waste anymore time, then, eh?"
I nodded, glad to have someone who knew the local terrain on my side. I just hoped nothing happened to her because of me. My past history didn’t exactly fill me with confidence in this regard. Anyway, the deal was her idea. She made her own choices. "Right on," I smiled. "Once we get outside, I can use the Soul Finder to direct us, though I have a feeling I know where it’s going to lead us."
"Crystal Mountain?"
"Right on again."
Once we got outside, the Soul Finder indicated that we should head in a northerly direction, which happened to be right through the center of the Gray City. Before I left Moira’s basement hideout, she tossed me an old gray cloak and told me to put it on. "You need to cover up the fact that you are a living soul," she said. "You’ll attract less attention wearing the cloak."
So now I was walking alongside Moira through the winding streets of the city, which were alive with grayed out people, most of whom seemed to shuffle along with the gait of someone who had lost their purpose in life. The need now was for escapism from the grim reality of their situation, rather than the need to prove themselves in some way. One thing I did notice, was the shady characters who seemed to populate every back alley and street corner, reminding me of drug pushers from Earth. Indeed, after several surreptitious glances in their direction, I managed to catch sight of what they were pushing—small glass vials filled with a glowing substance, the color of which seemed to vary depending on which pusher was selling. In return, the ghostly customers would hand over a vial containing a bright white substance.
"Are those people buying the magic you talked about?" I asked Moira.
"Yes," Moira said, her hood covering most of her face. "Most here have learned how to siphon the energy of their own souls, cutting out the need to go to any energy bank. It saves time, and they can buy their trips quicker."
I noticed many of the customers who bought the trips were almost completely transparent, as if they were fading into nothing. "It’s like they are trying to destroy themselves one trip at a time," I said. "Some of them barely have any energy left to maintain their form."
"That should tell you how fucking grim this place really is." Moira shook her head at the ghostly figures gathered around the pusher. "It’s a slow suicide."
"And the people selling the trips, they work for LeBron?"
"Yes, they are LeBron’s slave monkeys, no better than the poor souls they sell to. They’re only doing it for the free trips."
Many of the buyers didn’t even wait until they were alone to take their trip. Most of them shuffled off and bedded in somewhere on the street nearby. Everywhere you looked, there were people lying around, their eyes closed, their jaws hanging slack as whatever magic they took transported them away to some other reality. That’s all anyone seemed to do. The trip business seemed to be the only business in town. "What’s inside all these buildings?" I asked Moira as we walked down a wide street flanked with grand stone buildings, the Soul Finder still leading us north.
"More escapism," Moira said, a slight note of disgust in her voice. "Anything recreational from back on Earth you can think off: cinemas, strip clubs, casinos, gyms…even fucking shopping malls."
I snorted. "Shopping malls? Really?"
"They’re like virtual shopping malls. None of the stuff you buy is real. This whole place, in fact, is just one big virtual reality simulator, a way to pass the time until you continue on your way."
"Or not."
"Or not," Moira said plaintively. "Some things are real here, though. The cloak you’re wearing, the weapons I have…other things. LeBron started introducing real world items into the simulation. I think he wants to make this world as real as Earth eventually. Lately, I’ve even seen cars driving across the desert."
"LeBron seems to have a real grip on this place," I said. "How the hell is he getting away with it, though? I mean, surely the powers that be in the multiverse wouldn’t tolerate a mere human corrupting a realm like this?"
"Sounds like a conspiracy afoot," Max said. "I actually quite like it here. It’s full of hopelessness, which is my kind of place. Anyone would think we were in the Underworld."
"I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself."
I became wracked with sudden pain at that moment, which sent me to my knees, and forced a scream out of my mouth as I clutched my stomach.
"Creed!" Moira said grabbing onto me to stop me from falling. "Are you all right?"
"No…" I said through clenched teeth. "Max…stop it…"
"I’m afraid it’s not me this time," Max said. "Or rather, it is me, but it’s not intentional. My presence in your physical body back on Earth continues to corrode you from within. You are just feeling the effects here."
"Feels like…acid…burning through me…"
"Yes," Max said. "I hear it’s quite painful. It should pass, though."
"Comforting…"
"Creed!" Moira said. "You need to get up. You’re attracting attention."
I was able to turn my head to see what she was talking about. Two grayed-out young thugs were watching me intently from the doorway of a building. After a moment, they started walking in my direction. Something glinted in the hand of the biggest pusher, and I realized it was a knife. After spitting a mouthful of blood out onto the ground, I hauled myself back to my feet.
"You there!" the pusher with the knife said in what sounded like a Russian accent. "Don’t move!"
Rather than let my would-be assailant get any closer, I decided to take pre-emptive action, and hit him with a magic blast to buy some time so we could make a run for it. But when I went to conjure the energy in my hand, only the weakest of spheres materialized. "Shit…" I said.
"Your power is getting weaker, Creed," Max said.
"Yeah, no thanks to you."
/> "I’ll handle this," Moira said as she reached behind her for her swords.
The two pushers stopped a few feet away, the bigger one now pointing his knife in my direction. "You can’t hide under that hood," he said. "I see what you are…"
At that point, several other of LeBron’s men came out of the mist in various places. We were now completely surrounded.
Fuck it, I thought. There’s no way I’m getting soul jacked or killed by a bunch of grayed-out thugs. My magic may not work, but my pistol certainly does work.
As the knife wielder advanced toward me, I reached under my cloak and pulled out my pistol, aiming it at the guy’s head. "Not another step," I told him.
The thugs were all impressed by the fact that I had a gun, it seemed.
"You shouldn’t have done that," Moira said, her swords now out as she kept looking around her. "They’ll kill you just for the gun."
"Not if I kill them first…"
I shot the thug in the head, the one holding the knife. Fuck it. He was dead anyway, so what did it matter? I was done pissing about.
The fact that one of their own had just been shot didn’t seem to deter the others any, because they all kept moving forward. There was maybe a dozen of them now, most of them holding knives.
"I hope you can fight," Moira said as she readied her swords.
"I may not need to," I said, watching as the chaos bullet I put into the thug started to take effect.
"What?"
"Get ready to run."
I wasn’t sure how great an effect the magic in the chaos bullet would have, given that magic itself wasn’t as strong in the Gray Lands as it was on Earth. But it didn’t have to be that strong. Just enough to create an opening would do, an opening we would need, because the pushers had increased in number, with more emerging from the mist all the time. I even felt one of them attempt a bitchcraft move from afar, using a spell of some kind to try and suck out my soul energy.
"Allow me," Max said as I went to prepare a counter to the spell. Max took control of my body for a moment, and then used his own power to send a blast of dark red energy at the pusher engaged in the bitchcraft, sending the guy flying back into the mist. "That one was on the house."
