by Andy Hyland
Shit.
A woman screamed. I was on my feet and moving before Mark’s body toppled from the chair. Sheila stood across the living room when I left the study, mouth open, another scream building. I sprinted across and out the front door, taking the stairs down as the elevator signaled it was on its way up.
The lobby was empty and I made it to the street without anyone trying to tackle or otherwise stop me. Outside, sirens were wailing, coming from the west, so I ran east towards my own apartment. A block from it, I stopped, ducked into a doorway, and reconsidered. If I made it there, I’d be holed up for hours at least, waiting for things to die down out here. Too risky to be this close. Sheila had seen my face clearly. Trauma can scramble memories like eggs, but until I was sure that nobody was wandering around with an artist’s impression of me, I had to be careful. If I was going to be stuck anywhere, it was going to be back at base – 310 Central Park West.
Taking a deep breath, I looked around, checked nobody was paying attention, and slid.
I was getting better – pretty accurate for such a quick slide with no prep. Just across the street in Dark Manhattan from where I’d been standing on Earth. Seeing where you live transformed from a lively, vibrant place to a desiccated, lifeless shell is a disconcerting experience. I’d seen Central Park and Julie’s building transformed in the same way, but this was my own street, my own block. It brought it home.
No time for sightseeing. I set off south at a jog. A distinct but understandable lack of cabs here, worse luck. I kept my eyes moving, ever alert for movement from above as well as to the sides. To be safe, I kept to what would in our world have been west of Central Park, avoiding direct contact with that place and the scuttling, biting horde that had set up camp there.
At first I thought I was imagining it, but the longer I stayed, the further I ran, the clearer it became. A chant, a song. Carried on the acrid air, settling into my mind, almost bypassing my ears to get there. I stopped, tried to shake it out of my head, but it wouldn’t budge. So familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Slowly, carefully, a numbness crept into my legs, starting at the thighs and worming down, wrapping itself around the bones.
Nothing and nobody in sight, but I knew strong magic when I felt it. Too late for a ward – it was already inside of me. There was a way to battle that kind of cast, but it was a trance-like meditation that would take time I didn’t have, and leave me completely open to a physical attack here on the streets of the Fades.
I took the only option I had, the lesser of two evils, and slid back Earth-side. The song disappeared, leaving me with an aching sense of loss, but the energy and feeling returned to my legs. I took in my surroundings, disappointed to find I’d only made it a few blocks. Still, far enough to get a cab. To be safe I put a call in, and stepped into the shadows. A few minutes later Rick pulled up in his cab and waved me over.
“You okay?” he asked when I got in. “You look kind of out of it. Got the flu? Sweats? It’s going around. You want to get yourself in bed and stay there.”
“It’ll pass,” I said, slightly out of breath. “Let’s get moving.”
Arabella was the only one around when I arrived at the apartment. She was on the sofa, eyes closed, brow furrowed. “How’s it going?” I asked, closing the door gently behind me.
“Slowly,” she said without moving. “Takes some getting used to, but I’ve got it cracked. No pattern yet.”
“Shout when you’ve got something. I’m going to take a lie down.”
One eye opened. “Feeling bad again?”
“Nothing I can’t shake off. Get me up when everyone’s back.”
The bed in the guest room had by far the most comfortable mattress I’d ever encountered, and the world faded soon after I closed my eyes.
A voice spoke in the darkness. Cool. Confident. Slightly mocking. “You’re taking your time. I was expecting you to have come by now.”
The light shifted subtly. Pitch black became dark gray, faint light through a thick mist. Shapes moved and crawled at the edges of my vision. A figure strode towards me out of the mist. He still had his human guise, but it shifted and wavered, offering glimpses of the coarse, raw flesh beneath.
“So it was you. The song.”
Balam nodded, smiling. “Of course. My call to a lost child. Playtime is over, my pet. It’s time to come home now.”
Chapter twenty-three
“That’s not happening.” I stared Balam in the eyes, daring him to blink first.
“No?” His mouth turned down at the corners as he looked around. “But here you are, aren’t you? You’ve grown in strength, admittedly, or I’d have had you by now, but you can’t fight for long. You won’t.” He came close, his face only inches from mine now. I smelt the blood on his breath. “You won’t, because even if you don’t admit it to yourself, you want to return. You know where your place is. We taught you that much.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I? Perhaps. But I think not. No matter. Come, let me show you how things are progressing.” He turned on his heels and stepped briskly forward. I followed, not wanting to but having no choice. The mist parted before us as we moved. Stacked rusted cages appeared on either side, as we walked a narrow path between them. Figures moved inside them – human, probably. The light wasn’t good enough to tell.
“Here,” said Balam, stopping and indicating to his right. A line of children, naked and grubby. Eyes glazed, mouths open, arms hanging limply by their sides. “I remember you, like this. You were older of course, but still.”
“You’re not taking them,” I muttered. It was getting harder to talk now. I forced the words out through gritted teeth. “They are not yours.”
“Of course they’re mine,” he protested. “They belong to whoever takes them. I can do as I wish with them. Look, pick one, any one.” I couldn’t move. His smile widened as he saw this. “Oh, very well, let’s take this one.” He reached forward and pulled a small boy out of the line. Nine years old, ten maybe. Mousy hair with a snub nose and freckles. The same empty face as all the rest. “Now, if he wasn’t mine, could I do this with him?”
Balam reached forward, held the boy’s face in his hands, and violently yanked the neck to the side. The eyes fluttered once before he let go and the body dropped to the ground. I couldn’t do a damn thing, not even scream and curse.
“That’s one wasted I suppose,” he said. “But we’ll take another one to replace him. And more after that. And you won’t, you can’t, stop us. Very soon, you’ll be one of them. No, actually I think I’ll use you to herd them. My Sem’ki put to good use. You’ll enjoy that. A fitting end for a runaway – your penance for your crime.” He leant forward again, his eyes searching my face. “You’re close now. So close. Do you feel it. Come, a few steps more.”
“Malachi!”
The voice was like cold water thrown in my face. Balam and the children and the mist were gone. The last image was of his black, bottomless eyes.
“Malachi, snap out of it.” Something hit my cheek. Hard. Then a similar force struck the other one. Groggily, I willed my eyes open. Julie was sitting astride my chest, swinging down slaps on my face like an MMA fighter raining down punches on a grounded opponent. Zack was off to one side, eyes closed, arms outstretched, lips moving, concentrating on his cast. Arabella was on the other side. She had my arm in a vice-like grip, pulling something tight around it.
“Enough,” I called out, my voice only a croak the first time I tried it. “Enough. What the hell?”
Julie stopped hitting me and leaned forward, checking out my eyes. “He’s back.” She was breathless from the exertion. “We’ve got him. He’s with us.”
“About bloody time,” said Arabella, letting go of my arm and slumping onto the floor. Julie climbed off and I got a good look at the room. Things had changed in my absence. The pictures that were on the wall now lay on the floor, frames cracked and glass shattered. Pieces of the bedside cabinet were spread halfway across the ro
om, now only fit for firewood. A smoldering pile of blackened bedsheets was over by the door.
“Did I miss something?” I asked.
Zack opened his eyes. “Man, you need to get up and get caffeinated. We have a serious problem.”
He wasn’t joking about the caffeine. Julie stood over me with a pot of coffee while the other two practically forced the mug to my lips. Five minutes and most of the pot gone, and I was buzzing. “Please stop,” I said for the tenth time.
“Safe?” Arabella asked Julie, who looked at the pot, thought about it, and nodded.
“For now,” said Zack. “Damn it, Malachi, we nearly lost you there.”
“So what happened?” I asked. “Anyone going to tell me yet?”
They looked at Arabella. “You must have been asleep for half an hour, maybe, when I heard it,” she said. “Rattling, like you were jumping on the bed or something. I was hacked off because I was really getting the hang of the cast by then, but I went to check on you anyway. Good job I did. You were above the bed, like that girl in the exorcist, rolling over and over in mid-air. Moaning, like you were talking to someone, but I couldn’t make out any words. I tried to drag you down but you blasted me back through the door. Hurt like hell, but no harm done.”
“That’s when we got back, lucky for you,” said Julie.
“Every time we got near you, you let off something at us – witchfire, some hexes I didn’t even recognize – nasty stuff,” said Zack. “But that’s when it got really bad.”
“You started sliding,” said Arabella. “Not like normally, not like the here-and-then-gone slide we all do. You were fading out, gradually.”
I nodded, starting to piece together what was happening. “Go on,” I said.
“I contained your magic,” said Zack. “Not easy, but I had to get you quiet for long enough for Arabella to save your life.”
She held up the cord that she’d been bound with when we rescued her at the fountain. “I remembered this,” she said. “Thought it might work. It did.”
“Thank you,” I said, looking straight at her. She blushed and looked away. “Seriously, Arabella. I’d be Balam’s now if you hadn’t been so quick off the mark.”
“Balam?” said Zack. “That would have been my guess, but how are you so sure?”
I told them. About what happened in my sleep, and also the music in the Fades on the way here. Tying it up with my apparent illness on the way back here from dealing with Valen, and it all added up to one thing. “I’m under direct magical attack,” I said. “He’s calling me back. I don’t know how he’s doing it, or how to stop him. In the Fades I’ll last for a while but not that long. Best avoid that for now. But if I sleep…”
“Not sure we can go through that again,” said Zack. “Took nearly all I had the first time round. Even then, one lucky strike from you and I’d be out cold, and you’d be…well. Gone.”
“So sleep’s out,” I said. “Great.”
“Certainly puts a time limit on things,” said Julie. “Did you get anything from our corrupt Deputy Chief Hatfield?”
“Confirmation, but nothing more,” I said, and filled them in. “Tell me someone else has some good news.”
“We’ve had people chase up those leads from Valen all over town,” Zack said. “Everyone moved quickly. If you lay it all out on a map you’re looking at secured locations from every major area of Manhattan, and some other areas, like Queens. All running in fairly straight lines into Hell’s Kitchen. You want my opinion, they’re being carried Earth-side, mostly by humans like Valen, slidden over from a central location in Hell’s Kitchen, and they’ll make the run to the hellplains from there.”
“Hell’s Kitchen,” I muttered. “Should have guessed. Still, it’s a big place. Nothing more focused than that?”
“Sorry, no.”
“What about Balam?” I asked, looking at Julie. “I need some really good news about weak points. If you could make it nice and straightforward, like being allergic to cats or having a gluten intolerance, that would be really great.”
“Nothing so easy,” she said, shaking her head. “He got to where he is by being a tough, mean son of a bitch. Undefeated in battle, but he prefers inflicting pain to fighting. That’s how he gets his kicks.”
“Tell me about it.”
“But if he does have to fight,” she continued, “I’m pretty sure none of us could take him. Including you, even if you are all Becky’d up.”
“So there’s nothing? You and Mercy found absolutely nothing?”
“Pride,” she said simply. “Mercy said his pride is his downfall.”
I put my head in my hands. “That’s not helping.”
“It’s all we’ve got.”
“Mercy’s got a point,” said Zack. “He’s proud. He thinks he’s got you wound round his little finger. That you going back is a done deal, inevitable. He’ll make a mistake. We’ve got to watch out for it.”
“Well let’s hope he makes it soon,” I said, holding out the mug towards Julie. “Come on, fill me up. And put some in a thermos flask. We’re going to need it.”
“Where are we going?” asked Zack.
I looked at Arabella. “I don’t know yet. But she does.”
*
We stood at the end of an alley in Macdougal Street, Lower Manhattan.
“Sure it was here?” I asked Arabella.
“Yep. He circles this area. Must be his patch. Comes back here pretty regularly. That’s if your cast is working.”
When I patted Valen on the chest before letting him go, I’d put a tracer cast on him. With a bit of guidance, Arabella had been able to use it to map his movements over the last few hours. He’d been active, and localized. The advantage to us of Balam having a scaled-up operation was that his operatives became predictable. Hell, they thought they were untouchable, and they had the cops on their side, so why not?
There were three dumpsters in the alley. None of us wanted to open them, but one of us was going to have to. Time to step up. The first one was, mercifully, empty. The second was full of trash bags. I tore a few open. No surprises. I took a breath before opening the third dumpster, because there had to be a reason Valen kept tracking back here, and my luck wasn’t going to hold.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
“How many?” asked Zack, looking at the ground.
“Five or six. Hard to tell in the dark, without moving some of them.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Julie. “Why abduct the kids, then kill them before they can be moved off?”
“You really don’t want to know,” I told her, turning away and letting the lid of the dumpster drop.
“What was that?” Arabella asked. “Did anyone cough?”
“Didn’t hear a thing,” I said, cocking my head. Not that I’ve ever had the most sensitive ears. I blame the rock n’ roll.
“Quiet,” said Julie. We all stood there silently for a few seconds.
“There it is again,” said Arabella, walking back into the alley. “Someone or something is down here.” She reached for the third dumpster.
“Don’t,” said Zack, too loudly, before dropping his voice to a whisper. “You can’t go tampering with that.”
“Why not?” Julie asked.
“Because,” I said, “they’ll have arranged things in a certain way. If it’s not as it should be, then they’ll know someone’s onto this location and they’ll shut it down. They’ll also be very, very careful which will stop us following them.”
“And us following them is the whole point of being here,” said Zack. “Valen can’t help, so we use this location to tail people, see who they meet, and so on. Sooner or later we get lucky and find someone high enough up who knows where the end of the trail is.”
“Hopefully,” I said. It wasn’t an ideal plan, and took longer than I’d like, but it was all we had for now.
“Again,” said Arabella, pacing around with her eyes closed. “There it was. Once more.” She
stretched out her hands and let her head fall back as she rolled out her senses to test the area.
“Anything?” Zack asked.
She turned back to us. “They’re not all dead,” she hissed. “Something’s alive in there. It’s faint, barely there. But alive. Come on.”
“Oh great,” muttered Zack. “Look, it’s probably a rat or something.”
“Don’t you dare.” Julie rounded on him, almost jabbing a finger into his chest. “If one of those kids has a chance -”
“Hey, I’m here to help,” said Zack holding his hands up in surrender as he moved over to the dumpster. “Come on Malachi. I don’t fancy doing this by myself.”
“Scratch one plan,” I said under my breath as I walked over to help.
We had to move three bodies before we found him. All were young, all stripped bare. Blue, tinged with green, veins running black up the arms and across the chest. They couldn’t have been dead long, but there was a fetid smell that crawled down your throat. Arabella hovered. Julie stayed well back, head in her hands. Didn’t blame her. It was grim.
“No chance of this working now,” Zack said to me in a low voice as we worked, carefully lifting the bodies out and placing them on the floor of the alley. “Got any other ideas?”
“Give me a few minutes,” I said. “Not exactly thinking straight at the moment.”
The boy was a little older than the others. The rot was spreading quickly but as we laid him out his chest moved. Barely. But it moved. Zack placed his hands on the boy’s temples, reaching in, trying to get to the bottom of the problem.
“You won’t find anything,” I told him, lifting the boy’s arm and running my hands over the elbow joint.
“You’re right,” said Zack, pulling back. “He’s fine. Well, nearly dead – you know what I mean. Everything’s in place, but his systems are shutting down.”
“I need a knife,” I said to nobody in particular. “Doesn’t need to be charmed, but I need it sharp.”
