by John Meaney
He came to the next door and stopped. Its necromagnetic lock looked huge, and Donal realized that he had not thought the problem through adequately.
Then power coils hummed and heavy bolts slammed back.
The door swung open.
“Shit.”
Two huge men with zombie-pale faces raised their submachine guns—Grauser Howlers with disk-shaped magazines—straight at the center of Donal's body. One twitch of a finger and a stuttering burst of fire would rip Donal in two, the bloody halves would fall with a wet thump to the floor, and that would be that.
Disaster whirled in upon Donal, tumbling on all sides as he admitted the depths of his stupidity. Without the chaos he'd intended to cause, there would be no reason for Temesin's officers—even assuming they were outside Gelbthorne's mansion—to break inside under the pretext of rescuing the councillor.
Laura. I'm sorry.
Sorry that he'd let her down. That he would never see her again.
Thanatos.
And then the strangest thing happened, the likes of which Donal had never seen during a police operation.
Both zombie guards lowered their weapons, stared at each other, and shook their heads. Then they turned to Donal and one of them said, “You have the touch of black blood. It is upon you.”
“Er . . .”
“This house,” said the other, “is a place of turbulence and mischief.”
“Say what?” Donal felt he should not be arguing, but what exactly was going on?
The first zombie handed his weapon to his colleague, then pulled open his own shirt and pressed his fingertips against his white chest in an exact sequence. There was a wet, soft ripping sound, and Donal could not turn his gaze away as the man's chest split open.
Inside, black and glistening, was the zombie's rhythmically pumping heart. The zombie placed his fingertips against its pulsing surface and said, “I will not harm you, brother.”
The zombie's colleague placed his Grauser Howler on the floor, then straightened up and likewise touched the other's beating black heart.
“I, too, swear that this human shall be my brother.”
The zombies looked at Donal.
“Um, thanks. I mean . . . thank you.”
“That is good enough.”
The zombie pulled his chest together, and the wound—or access orifice, or whatever—sealed up immediately. The zombie buttoned his shirt back up.
“We've just resigned from Councillor Gelbthorne's employ,” the other zombie guard told Donal. “By our actions, we've resigned. We have never liked this place.”
“Gelbthorne,” said the other, “disturbs the darkness.”
Donal still could not process what was happening.
“My name is Brial,” said the first zombie, “and this is Sinvex.”
“I'm . . . pleased to meet you,” said Donal.
Then both zombies turned away and walked off along a featureless passageway. Donal stared after them, bemused, wondering what the Thanatos had happened here.
A submachine gun still lay at his feet.
“Hey, you forgot something.”
But the zombies were already gone.
“Waste not, want not.”
Donal picked up the submachine gun, checked its magazine and action—full and perfect—and grinned, remembering the time he'd come in second in the battalion shooting competition in the machine-gun category. He'd always thought it was an accident: he was hopeless with this kind of weapon.
Perhaps this time he could come in first.
It was Gertie who rescued them, her wraith form slipping through the walls to check their condition, then accessing the trip switch contained beneath Eyes's desk. Beneath Marnie Finross's desk: Laura was still angry with herself for having missed the obvious.
The big door reappeared.
Wraith-enabled furniture scampered out of the office. The living metal chair exited first, followed by a cloud of assorted items surrounding the big lumbering desk on its stubby legs. Finally the humans, when they were sure it was clear, hurried out after the furniture.
Behind them, the portal to the commissioner's office sealed up once more.
*Sorry, Arrhennius.*
“What for?” said Commissioner Vilnar.
*I think your office is lost forever.*
The commissioner smiled.
“I can always get another one.”
Laura blinked. The commissioner was on first-name terms with an elevator wraith? Perhaps she had misjudged the man.
“Commander Steele,” the commissioner said. “What are you waiting for?”
“Um. . . Sir?”
“I want you to arrest Marnie right now.” He gestured at her empty desk. “Find her and bring her in.”
“Yes, sir.”
Laura left the room fast, followed by Alexa. The R-H officers exchanged glances, then nodded to the commissioner and exited.
The commissioner reached inside his jacket and pulled out a big blue-steel handgun, checked the safety, and reholstered. Then he went to the coat stand, got down his heavy overcoat, and pulled it on. As he did so, he noticed a discarded tissue in Marnie's wastepaper bin, stained with lipstick. He picked up the tissue and pushed it into his overcoat pocket.
“Gertie?”
*Yes, Arrhennius?*
“Can you drop me down to street level the quick way? Just like the old days?”
*My pleasure.*
“Then let's do it.”
* * *
A strange presence was prowling the lower corridors of Councillor Gelbthorne's mansion. Pulsing waves of coldness passed through the air.
Maids and other personnel were scurrying along the corridors, hurrying into offices or hidey-holes and locking the doors, as Donal passed amid the chaos. Donal saw two hulking gray-skinned men, with mosaic armor woven into their skin, who were squeezing their bulk into a linen cupboard, glancing down the corridor.
Whatever had been set loose in here, Donal didn't want to see it.
Donal took a short flight of steps up to an open red-brick landing. It was a vast atrium of white walls and red tiles and fifteen or more balconies arranged at odd angles. Donal caught a glimpse of dark scales, and then he was moving again, racing up steps as silently as he could manage.
More staff bolted out of his way as he hurtled toward double glass doors. Then he saw a tiny red button that reminded him of the fire alarm in the theater, so he did the natural thing: he hammered the thing with his fist.
Nothing happened.
“Shit shit shit.”
It had to be a fire alarm. What he hadn't figured was that it would be silent, broadcasting by some means to the house staff but not wailing sirens that might bring outsiders to investigate. But that had been the whole point of—
A metal barrier was rising up out of the floor, cutting off access to the suite of rooms ahead.
Move.
Donal reacted by instinct, trusting his intuition—I am the music—and sprinted forward—fast—feeling a wash of stinking coldness rise up in the atrium behind him—faster!—and then he was hurdling the rising steel, foot touching the carpet beyond, catching it, and he stumbled.
Ceiling and walls rotated past him, and he continued the roll to one side, catching one hallucinatory sight of a vast, dark reptilian eye focused on him as the steel barriers slammed shut, cutting off the outside world.
Donal was safe.
It sings . . .
He felt a cold, eerie singing deep in his bones and knew what it meant. A mage was very close.
Commissioner Vilnar came down the outside of the building like a descending bat, his overcoat billowing capelike as he dropped onto all fours. Startled deathwolves could see the glowing bluish form that enveloped him: Gertie, the wraith whose servitude in police HQ had always been associated with a certain . . . latitude.
Gertie billowed and fluttered back into the safety of the vast dark tower. Around the commissioner, the deathwolves growled, their a
mber eyes glowing.
“FenSeven,” said the commissioner. “And FenNineBeth. Are you ready for the hunt?”
“Grrr . . .”
“Come on.” The commissioner led the way, moving fast for his bulk. “Let's check—Damn it.”
The Avenue of the Basilisks was filled with people spilling out of theaters, heading for the restaurants. Marnie could be anywhere among the thousands of people along the vast canyonlike thoroughfare or in any of the two-hundred-story-high towers that walled it.
“She's got dark hair,” muttered Commission Vilnar, “and this is her scent.”
From his overcoat pocket he drew out the tissue that he'd retrieved from Marnie's trash can.
“Unless she's hexed this with some kind of trick,” he added to the deathwolves. “So you be careful, boys.”
The deathwolves flitted off into the crowds, lean and dangerous and scarcely visible to rich folk who were unaccustomed to seeing true predators. They would not have cared to realize that there were dangers deadlier and more immediate than wheeling and dealing in boardrooms and clubs.
Laura and Alexa ran out onto the street. Alexa stopped dead, seeing the commissioner, her mouth opening though she was unable to speak.
Then the Vixen came hurtling toward them and spun sideways in a squealing hand-brake turn, its doors popping open as it slewed to a halt. The car was empty inside.
Laura looked at the commissioner.
“Go on.” He made a pushing gesture. “Go after her!”
Blinking, Laura jumped inside the car and got moving before Alexa could even react.
“All right,” said Commissioner Vilnar to Alexa as the Vixen moved off into the traffic. “You're with me.”
Alexa turned to follow the Vixen, then stopped.
“No,” said the commissioner. “We're going back inside.”
Donal entered a gallery of bones. Unmoving, they dragged at him.
Petrified skeleton hands, some gold-framed displays (lit by soft spotlights) that were only a single knucklebone, then some isolated ribs, and, in a special triptych arrangement, three entire skulls that grinned at Donal as he stumbled past.
They sang.
Unfocused visions swirled around Donal, and he dropped the submachine gun without even noticing as the pains and cramps shifted through him, a warning against fighting the beautiful dreams.
They sang to him.
No. Help . . .
All around, the bones were calling, promising their wild, seductive, artistically sublime dreams.
Diva, help me.
Or was she the last person who would want to help, even if she were alive to come to Donal's aid? Perhaps he deserved to fail, to die immersed in a wondrous trance.
There were inner doors with ornate handles, and Donal had already grasped them in his bare hands before he realized his mistake—for the handles were of carved bone, the bones of long-dead artists.
No . . .
A maelstrom of visions pulled him down.
There were ruby seas where the song of small-breasted mermaids lured him to—
No.
—the living forest, where flowers breathed scents such as he had never—
I will not . . .
—their myriad hands trailing softly down his skin, cupping his—
. . . allow this to . . .
—pulling him into—
. . . happen.
—swirling pastels and the feel of—
NO!
He broke the visions apart.
Because . . .
And stood there, panting, soaked with sweat, having thrown the doors open to reveal the final chamber within.
I am the song.
By his own will, Donal had thrown off the bones' ensorcellment, but it was far too late as he saw what lay inside the chamber.
He fought back the urge to vomit.
Three men stood around a flat altar: Councillor Gelbthorne and Alderman Finross, and another whose shock of white hair and photogenic features were familiar, as of someone famous seen only in newspapers. Donal thought he might be a politician. But the corpse that was stretched out on the altar was more than familiar, since it was at Donal's hand that the man had died.
It was the corpse of Malfax Cortindo.
While all around . . .
Sweet Thanatos, no.
. . . lay the pale discarded detritus of the components they had used up in their work, the power source that had fueled whatever strange hex they had cast and shaped. It was almost an anticlimax when the corpse's eyelids twitched, because it had to be worth it, even for the perverted mages of the Black Circle: worth it to have used up the resources they had.
The floor was littered with dozens of dead children, their blank eyes open, never to see anything again.
Gelbthorne raised a hand and pointed at Donal. Orange lightning spat across the room . . .
. . . and burst apart as it struck Donal's chest. He took a half step back, knowing he had no time to run into the gallery of bones and retrieve the submachine gun he had dropped while the visions had clutched him.
Last chance . . .
But that was the moment when Malfax Cortindo's corpse jerked into movement, spun on the altar, and sat up, then stepped down onto the floor, his bare feet squashing the dead children on which he stood.
There would be no complaints from those soft corpses.
“Fuck you,” said Donal, and ran.
Laughter followed him as he threw himself out through the doorway into the room where the bones' attraction pulled like riptides through his soul. But it was a second's work to snatch up the submachine gun, turn, and squeeze the trigger.
The deafening, stuttering crash of automatic fire banged and reverberated in the enclosed space. Donal's teeth were clenched as round after round poured back through the doorway, clustered on the targets: the corpse and the three men who . . .
There was a click as the magazine emptied.
. . . were still on their feet.
A mist of black powder hung before the trio: the remains of the bullets dissipating as they struck whatever shield the mage, Gelbthorne, had gestured into place.
The gesture that now pulled back the lips of Cortindo's dead face was anything but human. The decayed tongue inside the blackened teeth moved. There might have been a glimpse of maggots within, before the corpse closed its mouth once more.
At least this thing could not yet speak. By the time it had regenerated that far, Donal would be dead.
Oh, Laura. I'm . . .
All four mages, Cortindo included, raised their hands to destroy him.
. . . sorry.
An explosion behind Donal blew the steel doors open. The percussive pressure hammered Donal through the opening, back into the chamber where the mages stood.
He fell atop dead children.
In the doorway, a pale figure stood with a heavy hexzooka over one shoulder. Beyond, revealed in the great atrium, a riderless bone motorcycle was harrying prey, darting at a great scaled reptile that was spitting in fear.
“The marines have descended.” Donal smiled.
“We always do,” said Harald.
Orange lightning gathered around the four dark mages as they prepared to counterstrike—but in that moment more motorcycles, dark-green with flashing lights, growled and screeched into the atrium.
Officers on foot in dark-green uniforms with white helmets, automatic weapons held at port-arms, flooded in after them. And bringing up the rear, looking calm and relaxed, came the narrow figure of Temesin, smoking a cigarette, holding his detective's shield out in front of him.
Donal looked at the four mages.
“Game over,” he said.
“Aaah . . .” The sound that came from Cortindo's dead mouth was horrifying.
But then Councillor Gelbthorne and the white-haired man took hold of the reanimated Cortindo, wrapping their arms around him in a kind of bizarre group hug.
The white-haired man spared time for
one malevolent glance at Donal before they lowered their heads and concentrated. The air shifted and wavered and began to rotate. Strange geometries were manifesting themselves.
“No. Don't leave—” This was Alderman Finross, terrified.
But the trio of mages had formed a conglomerate whole that was revolving, faster and faster, until it twisted, turned through an angle that was entirely impossible, orthogonal to every axis of Donal's experience . . . and was gone.
All that was left was the broken, weeping alderman, leaning against the abandoned altar, surrounded by two score dead children, maybe more.
Donal got to his feet.
“No! It was Blanz. He . . . he ensorcelled me!” Alderman Finross was almost babbling. “Please, please don't kill . . . I'll tell you everything. They left me no choice but to—”
He stopped as he realized how much he was incriminating himself.
“Senator Blanz,” said Donal. “That prick.”
Alderman Finross toppled to the floor and lay outstretched.
“I think he fainted.” Temesin had walked inside, unnoticed by Donal. “Too bad. I was enjoying the sound of his voice.”
Donal's nostrils flared, and he gestured around the room. “Doesn't this bother you?”
Temesin considered the small corpses. “I've seen worse.”
“Shit . . .”
Then Temesin turned to Harald.
“Impressive entrance,” he said.
“Yeah.” Harald spat to one side, then grinned. “Want me to bust up any other buildings while I'm here?”
Laura, inside the Vixen, cruised along the Avenue of the Basilisks, scanning the crowds, looking for the dark-haired figure of Eyes—Marnie Finross.
The problem was that Laura could only envision the woman with those silver cables hanging from her eyes, attaching her to the refractive apparatus that led to the rooftop mirror system. Actually recognizing the woman's features would be impossible.
And there were so many hundreds, thousands of people on the street. If she'd fled inside a building . . .
“I give up,” Laura told the Vixen. “I don't see any chance of spotting the bitch.”
But then she saw two low shapes flitting among the people's legs and a sudden scuffling, and the deathwolves had pulled a woman's coat off with their fangs. The woman's long white hair swung as she sprinted away from the deathwolves.
