by Andy Hyland
We were now onto the heavy-duty stuff. This was for if anything decided to forgo niceties, kick in the door or gain access in some other way, and come after me. You turned them on and off, like any other security system. The witchfire wasn’t a bad idea, but I shook my head. “Used witchfire in my last place. It did the job but the fire damage cost me thousands – couldn’t risk an insurance claim. And, like you say – the smell….”
“See what you’re saying,” Zack nodded. “What about ice then? Freeze the intruders.”
“Tempting, but I’m thinking more off the beaten track this time. Throw in a mesmer and a paralyzer – stop the mind and the body. That gives me time to make a call on what steps to take next. It’s possible I’ll want to interrogate them before I go in for the kill.”
“We’re going to talk about this, right? That’s the deal. Those are my conditions.”
“Get this done and we’ll get some beers out.”
“Agreed. Okay, how to use that combination…”
We settled on a threefold design, two runes on the wall either side casting the paralyzing hex and one directly above hitting whoever or whatever was coming with a mesmer. With the strength of it, anything trying to gain access, magical or otherwise, would spend at least ten minutes wondering why on earth they were even here, all their plans temporarily forgotten. Great thing about runes – the capacity to customize them was almost without limit. These were set to ignore both Zack and me. A significant show of faith on my part, but no less than the guy deserved. My small way of saying thanks for everything, without having to go through a man-hug.
Half an hour later we were finished, and so was Zack. He tried to hide it, but I saw his hands shaking as I passed him the bottle of Bud. “Give me a few minutes and we can try some more,” he suggested, but I shook my head. “We’ve got the main entry covered. That’ll do it for now. Let’s call it a night.”
“You sure? You could try sending me a boost again, that’d charge me up. We could really go to town on this place.”
“It worked once, but there’s no guarantee I could pull it off safely a second time. I was completely out of control back in that yard.”
“I hear you. Still, we’re alive, so don’t kick yourself too hard. Speaking of which. Sem’ki? Going to spill?”
We sat on sofas on opposite sides of the room. The radio was pumping out classic rock. I was here with my friend, and beer. If I was going to revisit those memories in any way, this was a safe place.
“Sem’ki is a term they used for slaves in Molech’s camps. It’s a pet name. The equivalent of ‘bad dog’ I suppose. If you heard it, you knew trouble was coming. It would be whips, or claws, or…”
“I get it. They didn’t have bugs on you?”
“Not at first. They took time to grow and bond.” Bugs were parasitic hellkind, a sort of imp, that rode on the backs of humans, controlling them. If you still had a mind and the bug was riding, you were a passenger, a prisoner in your own body. “The first few marches after they took us, we were in chains. They used more conventional means to motivate us. And then, at the other end, no need for bugs anymore. You don’t want to hear about how they get them off.”
“So the demon in the yard that recognized you. You know him?”
I shook my head and took a slug of the beer. “No. It’s too long ago, and I was young. There were so many of them – a different crew at every camp along the way. They’d work in shifts on the marches, split the slaves off for different purposes, re-routing them as we went deeper.”
“Purposes?”
“Yeah, you know. Like the healthy females for breeders. They were separated early on. We’re talking girls of ten years old. You didn’t know this stuff?”
Zack’s face had gone pale. “Suppose I…I mean I’ve only seen the slaves at Sitri’s palace, before it got wrecked.”
“That was lightweight stuff. Decoration, for status. The hardcore stuff you never see.”
“Man. How long was it for you?”
“Took me when I was sixteen. Got out three years later.”
Zack let me think, sensitive enough to let the memories play without pressing.
“And now they’re back,” I said eventually. “Nearly nine years. Maybe that’s the cycle. Or maybe that’s just how often they hit this place. Maybe there’s no pattern at all. Do it too frequently and red alerts would be going out all over the shop. You’d hope.”
“How many were with you?”
I shook my head. “Not sure. I’d guess at a hundred. No, it was more. Hundred and fifty at the least. That’s a conservative estimate.”
“Bloody hell.”
“And they take healthy stock. If there’s a homeless kid who fits the bill, they’ll take them. But they’re not beyond sneaking into bedrooms at night, snatching from gardens and parks. They’re your worst nightmare come true.”
“We’ve got to do something.”
“Agreed. But apart from one encounter I’ve got nothing to go on.”
“Mercy? Liberty?”
“I’ll tell them at some point, but I want control over this, so we keep it tight. Very tight. At the moment that means you and me. Until we figure out what Valen’s doing and how far he’s dragged Arabella into it.”
Zack held up his empty Bud bottle. “How many do we have of these?”
“Not nearly enough. But let’s see what we can do.”
*
It was the light that woke me, blazing in through the window and stabbing into my eyes. My head was pounding and my throat felt like a small furry animal had taken up residence when I wasn’t looking. And then crapped all over my tongue. That’s the problem about drinking in Benny’s: you can turn off the alcohol whenever you want, imbibe all you wish and remain hangover free. Makes it all the worse when you go on a bender Earth-side and have to face the full consequences of your actions.
“You awake?” I croaked.
“I’m awake,” Zack said, much more clearly. “Have been for a few minutes. You need to see this.”
“If you’re talking about daytime television, I’m going to be very disappointed in you.”
“Seriously, get your eyes open.”
There was something about his tone that snapped me into alertness. I pulled myself upright on the sofa where I’d slept, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Zack was still across from me, his sofa surrounded by the beer bottles of the night before, along with a few bottles of wine that we must have moved onto afterwards. I didn’t remember those. He was leaning forward, inspecting something on the coffee table that lay between us. I followed his eyes.
“That’s new.”
“Well none of it was here when we crashed,” he confirmed.
On the table lay a single white rose, on top of a cream envelope. We both sat there, staring at it.
“I suppose it’s not a bad thing to wake up to, is it?” I asked.
“Normally no. But all those runes we activated yesterday failed completely. Did you hear any alarm go off? And there’s nothing standing paralyzed in the hallway. Either we created worst runic defense system ever put in place, or…”
“Or whoever left this managed to bypass it completely. Think we should open it?”
Zack shrugged. “May as well. If they wanted us dead, we’d be very dead by now.”
I reached forward and tugged the envelope, flicking it open and upending it. Two photos fell out onto the table. One was of David Lamarchand – a larger version of the one inside the cover of his book. I turned it over. Three words written on the back in a copperplate script: “Keep Your Distance”. The other photo was of someone I’d not seen before. A middle-aged woman crossing a road carrying two bags of shopping. She was portly and hadn’t made any effort with her hair or makeup. On the back of the photo a name in the same handwriting: “Alice True”.
I handed it to Zack. “You know her?”
He looked at the picture and shook his head, but raised his eyebrows when he turned it over and saw the na
me. “Hey, Alice True. Never met her, but this guy I work with down the docks has her on the radio every morning. Digital channel – strictly local to Manhattan. She does this clairvoyance thing with callers, tarot readings as well. Impresses the hell out of him, but he’s an idiot.”
“She Aware?”
“No idea. Don’t even know if it’s her real name. Not exactly keeping a low profile though.”
“Maybe she’s hiding in plain sight, like Becky. What better cover could you wish for than a hokey charlatan psychic?” Becky had, until her death, hidden beneath the persona of Madam Morgana.
“Why have we been given this?”
“No idea.” I rolled out my senses towards the photos and the rose. Nothing magical about the objects at all. “Let’s get cleaned up and check her out. You say she broadcasts of a morning?”
“Yeah, small studio in midtown. Converted apartment that some radio nut set up his own outfit in. Let me make a call and get the address.”
He got to work while I hit the shower. Ten minutes and some paracetamol later I was feeling slightly more human, and almost ready to face daylight. “Got it?” I asked.
“Ready when you are. Sure we’re not walking into a trap here?”
“Reasonably. The warning on the back of David’s photo – keep your distance – same words exactly that Benny and Liberty used. Can’t be either of them – they’d trip the alarms, and set the other hexes off as well. Not that Benny couldn’t handle them. Still, I reckon it’s someone on our side. Only one way to find out.”
We inspected the runes again on the way out. Still active, and working perfectly as far as we could tell. Curious.
Chapter nine
“This is?” I asked. We were standing outside a building that was set back from the others on this street. It was noticeably more dilapidated. Two floors up, one of the windows had been smashed, and fixed by stretching some cellophane across the shattered pane of glass. “I’m thinking we haven’t got the best quality of tenant here.”
“And yet they’re still paying through the nose for it. Probably interns and junior bank employees. As many to a room as they can get away with. Put up with it during the week and vacate the place at the weekend if you can. Happens a lot around here.”
“And this is where the radio show gets made.”
“That’s what I’m told. Odd guy, name of Titch McCarthy. Not Aware, but obsessed. Anything slightly off the wall, anything involving a conspiracy theory – he’s on it like flies on shit.”
“We haven’t got another David Lamarchand on our hands here, have we?”
“No chance. This guy’s a lone wolf. Nobody takes him that seriously. It’s light entertainment for the paranoid. Alice True is the biggest star on his little network, and she’s still as obscure as they come. Shall we head in?”
“Oh, let’s.” I looked at the list of occupants, wondering which buzzer to press, but as I leant against the front door, it gave way. That made life easier. We moved in to a small lobby area – some pigeonholes for post lined up on the left, and the stairs on the right. Obviously too low-rent a place to have anything as luxurious as an elevator. Mind you, if they had one it would be as decrepit as the rest of the place and I wouldn’t trust it enough to set foot in it.
There was no stench of sulphur, one of the hallmarks of hellkind activity in enclosed spaces, but the hairs on the back of my arms were dancing. “You feel that?” I asked.
“I feel it, I taste it,” said Zack. I knew what he meant. There was a coppery tang to the air. Blood. Metal. “You ever had that before?”
“Sometimes at the scene of some pretty heavy casting. Even then it wasn’t this strong. Let’s head up.”
“You don’t want to wait for backup?”
I shook my head. “No point. Whatever’s going down here is already happening. If we wait, we’ll miss it. Come on, let’s go. But be prepared to turn tail and leg it if things get ugly.”
“They always get ugly,” Zack muttered, but followed me up the stairs to the third floor. The corridors we saw were grimy, and the stairwell itself smelt of piss. Not exactly value for money for the rent the occupants were shelling out. The place looked and sounded deserted. Clearly, everyone had left for work already.
The door to apartment nine was locked. I raised my hand to knock but Zack stopped me, cocking his ear. I rolled my own senses forward, only to rock back on my heels. Whatever was in there, even sensing it at a distance was like getting punched in the face. “This isn’t good,” I whispered. “I’m thinking backup might be the better option after all.”
That was when the scream came. A woman’s voice, high-pitched, shrieking, a mixture of pain and outright terror. A slight pause. Then another scream.
It wasn’t a particularly strong door, but then we weren’t particularly strong people, so it took three joint kicks from the two of us to break the lock and get inside. It looked more like a junk shop than a radio studio. Cabling and connectors trailed along the floor, with stacked boxes of obsolete-looking equipment in the rooms to either side. The scream came again from further ahead.
Zack pushed past me and took the lead. “If we can’t handle this, I’ll throw up a fixed-point ward,” he whispered. “That’ll give us time to get out. Hopefully.”
“I could try -” I started to say, but he cut in.
“Not in a confined space, you bloody well won’t.”
We stepped forward, the taste in the air, the sense of rankness, growing stronger with every meter made. Entering a small, dark, control room with mixing desks and monitors lining the wall, we crouched low. A long window ran the length of the wall, starting at waist height. Presumably, the studio itself was on the other side, through the door to our right.
“You see that?” Zack said.
I nodded. A wispy black smoke moved in the studio, curling and stretching, reversing direction, a living thing. This side of the glass was bad enough – the equipment was dead. One solitary executive chair faced the window. I span it round gently. “Titch?” I asked.
“Must be.”
The occupant of the chair, and former radio producer, was drenched in his own blood. Probably drowned in it as well. A large wide gash had opened his throat. The look on his face was halfway between horror, confusion, and the disappointment that claims us all in those final moments when you stare down the reaper.
We edged as close as we could to the window and slowly stood until we could peer over and into the studio. Nothing had prepared us for this.
What furniture there had been lay crumpled and smashed to the side. Alice True, recognizable from her photo, lay on her back in the middle of the floor, her arms and legs unmoving, as if they were pinned down.
Above her, on her, crouched a figure of black smoke, long-limbed, like a living tree. What passed for its head leered over her face as its arms slashed at her body, tearing clothes without marking the skin.
“What the hell?” breathed Zack.
I was moving before he’d finished talking, yanking open the door, only to have it pulled from my hands and slammed shut. Zack was pulling Titch out of the chair that he no longer needed, and together we heaved it through the window, the glass shattering and falling to the studio floor.
The chair passed straight through the smoke of the being, landing on the far side of the room. I started climbing through the window, ignoring the jagged edges of glass still remaining that cut into my thigh. The shadow, the smoke, the whatever, paused momentarily. It had no eyes, but the head turned and looked straight through me. Then, while it still held my gaze, it reached down into Alice’s mouth, curled its fist around her tongue, and pulled it out.
The flesh of the tongue tore slowly. Agony in Alice’s eyes, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything. “Wind,” I shouted at Zack. “We need wind.”
One of the benefits of working with someone for a few years is that they catch hold of the way you’re thinking pretty quickly. Zack flexed his fingers and s
tarted shifting the air, a whisper becoming a breeze becoming a gust, in a matter of seconds. The wind started howling as it chased its own tail around the studio and the control room. I put my arm up over my face to protect it against the glass shards that were being picked up and carried through the air. One large piece ripped through my coat sleeve and carved into the flesh of my forearm.
But it was working. The creature was trying to hold itself together, compressing its form, becoming shorter, squatter. Even that wouldn’t stand against the gale that Zack was creating. It might have screamed at me, or it might have been my imagination and the sound of the wind as it looked – glared, I swear – at me one final time. Then it was gone, the smoke curling, dissipating, escaping.
Zack let the cast die out, and the air settled back down. Glass tinkled as it fell to the ground like rain. The tang had gone from the air.
I scrambled across to where Alice lay. Now able to move, she covered her mouth with her hands, eyes wide in terror. The blood poured out from between her fingers. “I think we’re going to lose her,” I shouted.
Zack came crashing through the door, skidding to a halt beside me. “Let me,” he said, pulling her hands away, putting his own in their place. She started convulsing, sick syrupy gulps instead of breaths. Zack used what magic he could to stem the flow of blood. It wasn’t going to be enough. The damage was done. All I could do in the end was hold her hands, look into her eyes as she passed, let her know she wasn’t alone.
It was over relatively quickly. I sat back on the floor. Zack fell back against the wall. We looked at each other. Nothing to say. As a final check, I rolled out my senses towards the body. Yes, Alice had been Aware, though the imprint was fading fast now her soul had departed.
We used the bathroom to wash up before leaving. I’d get a message to Mercy. She’d have to get things cleaned up as best she could, make it look like a botched robbery or something similar. It was only a matter of time before someone came knocking – maybe only a few hours. Last thing we needed was the police getting it into their heads there was a deranged serial killer on the loose and going after them.
