Three Parts Dead

by Max Gladstone

  He leapt from the floor’s edge onto a scaffold and climbed down a quick ten feet through a narrow gap between a wall and a water reservoir. Before reaching the boiler room he stepped off onto a side passage. His hands shook as he unclipped a wrench from his belt and threw it underhanded back into the gap. It clattered off the scaffold as it fell to the boiler room floor, sounding a great deal like a scared young man fleeing a predator. He retreated twenty feet into the side passage, where a ladder descended into another part of the boiler room. With one hand on that ladder’s top rung, he crouched, turned, and set the bull’s-eye lantern before him.

  There had been no light in the hidden room save the glow of what he felt certain Tara would have called Craft. This thing grew in and fed on shadow. Real light might blind or injure it. Abelard had no reason to suspect his plan would work, but he needed to try something. He couldn’t run forever.

  He stilled his breath and readied his fingers on the lantern’s cover. Calm. Careful. Wait.

  Exhale.

  Above, almost inaudible, tiny claws scraped across metal. Closer, descending the scaffold. A distinct inrush of air, amid the hundred metallic sounds of boiler and turbine and piston. Was the creature smelling for him? Could it see in the dark? How well? How smart was it? Why was it taking this long?

  He tried to pray, without bothering to think who might answer.

  Clicking, clattering, closer.

  The hiss of foul breath deepened and grew louder. It had drawn even with the side passage.

  He flicked open the lantern’s lid, and hoped.

  A beam of fiery light lanced through the cloying darkness. Narrow at the lantern’s aperture, twenty feet out the beam was broad as the tunnel’s mouth.

  The shadow creature had grown. It nearly filled the eight-foot-tall passage, and longer, thinner thorn-limbs trailed beyond. Smoke rose from its body where the light touched. Jagged mandibles snapped open, and fanged mouths loosed a horrible, inhuman cry.

  Don’t be smart, Abelard whispered. Be fierce, be cruel, vindictive, but, please, Kos, don’t let it be smart.

  Scuttling on many sharp limbs the creature launched itself down the hall toward the lantern. Shadow-flesh shriveled as it moved. Light tore steaming gaps in its body.

  Abelard breathed a silent prayer of thanks and descended the ladder as if in free fall.

  *

  The vampire’s fangs pierced Cat’s wrist, sharp as a bee sting. The pain was brief; his lips fastened reflexively on her wrist and euphoria spread from the wound as he began to suck. Pleasure tingled into her fingers, back up and around to her heart, from there to her entire body. Perfection enveloped the world. Knots within her soul untied, or else were sliced open by the sword of bliss.

  Were her eyes open or shut? Was she still sitting up, or had she slumped against the vampire as the joy of him took hold? Was she even breathing?

  Paltry, everyday concerns. Ecstasy ruled her soul.

  She wasn’t supposed to be here. She had a duty, someone to protect. A woman. A woman who had told her a story.

  The red sun’s bulk settled beneath the horizon, and the sky outside the window dimmed. Far away there came a crash of broken glass, followed by a cry Cat heard with spiritual ears: the cry of Justice, a summons to all Blacksuits to pursue a Stone Man who had abducted a witness and a Craftswoman.

  Tara.

  Tara had told Cat to check on the vampire. Here he was, unharmed, healthy, glorious. Hungry.

  His eyes were open.

  She saw satisfaction, confusion, and revulsion superimposed on his face. Roused from sleep, he found his teeth buried in a strange woman’s wrist. He was hungry, and his will was weak. He did not push her away. A beast within him woke, stretching and yawning in his red eyes. One clawed hand rose feebly from beneath the sheets and hesitated, uncertain whether to seize her or thrust her from him, unsure whether she was real or a predatory dream.

  Cat tried to think through the rush. Why had she left Tara’s side? Her orders had been to watch the Craftswoman. Cat’s memory was hazy, but she recalled a story, a suggestion, a sudden desire.

  Tara had done something to her. Twisted her.

  The vampire’s hand rose, curved, to grasp the back of her neck.

  Pulling her wrist from his mouth was as hard as turning from the gates of paradise. She fell back off the bed and sat down hard on the tile floor. The vampire snarled and rose to a crouch, silhouetted by the last rays of the setting sun. Her blood stained his lips and his chin.

  “What the hell were you doing?”

  Cat’s mouth fell open.

  “What. I mean.” He wiped the blood off his chin with his fingers and regarded it in fascination and disgust. “Seriously, woman. What is wrong with you? Haven’t you ever heard of consent?”

  She pressed her back against the wall and slowly stood. Blood pounded in her ears. The wound in her wrist had closed when his fangs left it, but it still hurt.

  “I could have killed you,” he said.

  “I…” Words were hard, imprecise. Fog clouded her mind.

  “Wait.” Red eyes flicked from the crown of her head to the bottoms of her boots, and back. “I’ve seen you before.”

  “Before.” She nodded. “When you spoke with … Tara.” She spat the name.

  His tongue flicked out, and the blood on his lips disappeared. He wiped his chin on his wrist, and licked that clean, too. “Where is she? Why are you here?”

  Shaking her head did not clear her mind. “I’m … She made me come here.”

  “You’re an addict,” he said, with the distaste Cat reserved for words like “pusher” and “pimp.” “You’re an addict, but even an addict would know better than to give an unconscious vampire their blood. You’ve been … not drugged.” His eyes narrowed. Vampires could see beyond the normal range of human sight, she knew. “Something’s worked through your mind. Made you vulnerable.”

  “Tara did something to me. I wouldn’t have left her alone otherwise.”

  How could you let someone into your mind, Tara had said with mock horror, before she bound Cat in chains forged from her own need. Gods and goddesses, that bite had felt so good.

  “Alone? Where?”

  Cat didn’t answer. Justice depended on her, and she let herself trust Tara, let herself be betrayed. She shuffled unsteadily along the wall to the door, turned the handle, staggered out, and ran, lurching, down the hall. Justice railed in her mind for control, and she yearned to slip from the dead dry aftermath of the vampire’s bite into her suit’s cold embrace. If she did, though, Justice would know her sin. She could be dismissed for such a lapse, cut off from the the suit forever. She could not allow that.

  “Wait!” The vampire—Captain Pelham—followed her out of the room. He wore boots and breeches already, and pulled a loose, unlaced shirt over his head as he jogged to keep pace. “I’m not staying in that bed one more minute. Something’s happened, and I want to know what.”

  “That,” she said, trying to ignore the clenching nausea of blood loss, “makes two of us.”

  *

  Abelard heard a crash of broken glass above as the lantern shattered. Perhaps he had injured the shadow beast, perhaps not, but at least the light had slowed it. He needed every advantage he could seize. Sister Miriel kept the boiler room dimly lit so as not to damage the night vision of Technicians or maintenance crews bound for darker areas of the Sanctum. There were shadows enough here to nourish his pursuer.

  He took his bearings, compression chambers to his left, yes, good, and the coal bins to his right, and ran. His cigarette he plucked from his mouth and gripped between two fingers. He needed fresh air in his lungs. Metal distended and tore behind him as the creature descended the ladder.

  Winding through tubes and pipes, Abelard chose his escape path, clockwise through the compression chambers that ringed the boilers, and in through a narrow gap between a compressor and a stone wall. His heart lurched in fear as he imagined squeezing through a tight pass
age with the creature bearing down on him, but the next opening was three hundred feet farther along. Too far.

  He turned a hard corner as a mass of shadow scrambled, slipped, and fell to the floor a few hundred yards behind him. Enough of a lead, he hoped.

  He ran fifty feet. A legion of centipedes chased after, legs tickling rock and metal, the floor, the walls, the ceiling. A hundred feet, and the shadow’s speed redoubled. It smelled him. Two hundred feet, made in a mad rush, cigarette in one hand and the crystal dagger stuck through his belt.

  The dagger had pinned the shadow creature to the altar. Could it harm the thing again, hold it down? Abelard hoped he did not have a chance to learn the answer to that question.

  Two hundred fifty feet. Breath hissed through numberless mouths, near, so near. There, the narrow gap. He leapt into it. Cobwebs parted before him. A spider landed on his hand and fell away.

  The centipede army drew even with the narrow crack and stopped. Its bulk closed out the dusk-red light. Long, thin arms slid through the crack after Abelard.

  Metal caught his robes and he pushed through; fabric ripped as he tumbled into the room beyond. Or, as his torso did.

  Long hooks of shadow snared his legs, and pulled him back.

  Screaming, he fell. In desperation he planted one foot on either side of the crack and resisted the creature’s pull with all his strength. This only slowed his slide. He clawed for the dagger at his belt. His fingers closed around its hilt, and he stabbed at the tentacle gripping his left leg.

  The crystal blade slid through the shadow and cut Abelard’s shin. He cursed, but did not drop the dagger. The creature’s strength grew as his faded. Nightmare mouths gaped above him, filled with nightmare teeth. Living shadow bubbled out through the passage, swelling in the vast dim space.

  He was about to die.

  In such moments, time expands. To Abelard’s surprise he found the sensation almost pleasant. He was about to be eaten by a giant shadow beast, through no particular fault of his own, and there was nothing he could do.

  As the night-mandibles reared to descend, he raised his cigarette to his mouth and inhaled.

  Its tip flared.

  Flared.

  Light hurt this thing, enough at least to anger it. What would fire do?

  As the mandibles struck, Abelard plucked the cigarette from his mouth, held it as if the ember were a blade, and stabbed blindly into the shadow.

  A roar shook the boiler room. Abelard sprawled back, legs his own again, cigarette still clenched in his fingers. The creature convulsed, outlined in orange flame that chewed its slick sharp edges to crumpled ash. The fire died as it consumed, and Abelard doubted it would kill the shadow, but he didn’t care. He was free, and safety near.

  Lurching to his feet in a confusion of ripped robes and bloody limbs, he sprinted for the ladder to the maintenance office.

  *

  The sun set as Tara crouched in the basement stairwell. She imagined the chase above, Blacksuits swarming over rooftops in search of their winged quarry, who hid and ran, zigged and zagged, fast and brilliant. Night deepened and behind thick clouds the moon rose, granting Shale power and speed. The Blacksuits could not match him. When Professor Denovo defaced Seril’s Guardians and rebuilt them for police work, he would have reduced their dependence on the moon for power—a sensible design decision that left the Blacksuits slower and weaker than their stone adversaries at night.

  When enough time had elapsed, Tara touched a sigil on her wrist. It glowed with inner fire, and she saw in her mind’s eye a map of the city from above, marked with a bloodred dot: the location of the tracking glyph she had cut into the back of Shale’s face.

  He would never have told her what she needed to know. Nor could she hope to follow him across the rooftops when even Blacksuits could not keep pace. Besides, she believed him when he claimed not to know where his Flight was hiding. They planned to seek him when night fell.

  Night had fallen, and Shale moved within her mind, hunting his people. When he found them, Tara would find her answers. Judge Cabot, Kos, and the gargoyles were involved in some deep, secret Craft together, of that Tara had no doubt. Of those three, only the gargoyles survived. Their testimony could prove the Church was not responsible for Kos’s weakness, and help Tara defeat Denovo. Tonight, she would convince the gargoyles to tell her what they knew. Or they would kill her. That was also a distinct possibility.

  Tara stood, scaled the basement steps, and walked to the street. Carts and carriages rolled past on their private business. Across the rough cobblestones rose a soaring glass edifice bearing the red tau cross insignia of a Craft firm.

  She squared her shoulders and lifted one hand.

  A driverless carriage pulled to the curb. The horse eyed her ripped clothes and general disarray with suspicion as she climbed into the coachman’s seat. “Don’t give me that look,” she said. “We’re going to the waterfront. Now giddyup.” The horse didn’t budge. “I’ll tell you where we’re going when we get there,” she said, exasperated. “Can you please move?”

  With a toss of its mane, the horse surged forward, and the carriage shuddered into motion behind.

  *

  The unified chant of “God is dead!” had faded by the time Cardinal Gustave emerged from the small door set into the Sanctum’s looming main gates. It was replaced, after the manner of mob cries, by a host of other slogans, which degenerated in their turn to meaningless roars. A few protesters regained their former ardor when they saw Gustave’s priestly robes, but these were outnumbered by the ones who fell silent when he raised his head and looked upon them with his hard gray eyes.

  “Citizens of Alt Coulumb,” the Cardinal began. His voice suggested dark rooms and hidden mysteries.

  “Citizens of Alt Coulumb,” he repeated. “I should say, rather, children of Alt Coulumb. What right, you may ask, have I to come before you? My God, they say, is dead, and with Him my authority. I stand before a tower raised to a vanished ideal, and I wear the livery of an absent Lord.”

  These things were all true, yet when he said them the crowd beyond the cordon of Blacksuits did not scream their assent. Silence infected them, spread by those who stood near enough to feel firsthand the weight of the Cardinal’s presence.

  “Children of Alt Coulumb, ask yourself: what burns even now within your hearts? What fire dances through the pathways of your mind? When you look at me, do you feel the hot flame of righteous wrath that devours brush and brambles and soon gives way to soot and dust? Do you feel the sickly greenwood fire of treason or the slow coal-burn of contempt?”

  The crowd was silent, yes, but their silence was dangerous. Cardinal Gustave had placed a shell of words around their anger, and their anger bucked and surged against it.

  “Children of Alt Coulumb, that fire is your God!”

  Cries rose from the audience, disbelief and half-formed epithets.

  “You claim to know the mind of God, you claim to know His nature and His shape, His truth and His power. You claim He is dead when you yourselves are the proof of His glory. What citizens of any other nation would hear such news and come before me, to protest in the shadow of God’s own temple?

  “Children of Alt Coulumb, a fire burns within my voice. Within my mind. Within my heart. It is the fire of incense: a fire cultivated and refined through contemplation, strengthened through long practice and given proper fuel.

  “That fire is Lord Kos’s breath within me. It burns quietly, and its burning is a pleasure to the wise. Children of Alt Coulumb, that fire is gentle. But do not mistake me,” he roared over a tide of angry voices. “Do not mistake me, it still burns!”

  Before him he thrust his staff. His brow furrowed, and he drew in a measured breath.

  A curtain of flame erupted from the staff’s tip, red and orange and yellow, and rose into the evening sky. It was the color of leaves in autumn, but it was not autumn leaves. It was hot like the sun, but it was not the sun. It was the fire of divinity. It ecl
ipsed the world, rippled over the reflective skin of immobile Blacksuits, and cast the shadows of the mob upon the ground.

  The frontmost protesters fell automatically to their knees, from awe and to avoid the searing heat. Some near the back scrambled to escape.

  Quickly as it came, the fire dissipated. The Cardinal lowered his staff. Its copper-shod tip settled with a clearly audible tap against the Sanctum’s basalt steps. His body swayed, but within him, a thing that knew no age or weakness stood indomitable.

  “Children of Alt Coulumb, your God slumbers within you. In days to come, He will rise once more. Only your faith is weak.”

  The crowd remained bowed. Some, at the edges, slunk away.

  Cardinal Gustave withdrew into the Sanctum shadows, and closed the door behind him.

  *

  A Blacksuit guarded the door to the faceless witness’s room, and only let Cat and Captain Pelham pass when she flashed the badge of Justice that hung around her neck. They found the room a mess of broken and burned furniture. Tara’s shoulder bag lay open on the floor, the silver and crystal apparatus it once contained spilled out among splintered wood and shredded fabric.

  “What happened here?” the Captain asked.

  She had listened to Justice’s mind on the walk over, gripping her badge to hear as if through a layer of cotton the stream of deductions and observations that resounded clear and bright within her skull when she wore the Blacksuit. “A Stone Man burst in, abducted Tara and the witness, and fled.”

  “Talon marks on the floor,” Captain Pelham observed. “On the wall, here, and around the bed.”

  “The Blacksuits heard a scream, came running, found this.” She paced. “Godsdammit.”

  “What? It makes sense, doesn’t it? You saved Tara from the gargoyles last night, and this guy”—he pointed to the broken bed where the faceless man had lain—“witnessed their crime. They came to clean up.”

  “Tara invaded my mind to send me away. She must have had a reason.”

  “Maybe the gargoyle interrupted her while she was doing whatever it was.”