Shadowrun: Another Rainy Night

by Goodman, Patrick

  “I’m Dr. Thomas McAllister,” he said. “I’m meeting my wife here.”

  Without appearing to look anything up anywhere, the woman said, “Of course, sir; Mrs. McAllister told us you’d be arriving soon.” She pressed a couple of keys on a touchscreen—finer hotels knew that having desk clerks waving their fingers in empty air was unnerving—and a slot on the counter silently disgorged a keycard, which she handed to him. “You’re in suite 1703; I hope you enjoy your stay.”

  He accepted the keycard and muttered his thanks, then made his way to the elevators, where he found Lydia waiting for him. “I’d like to go on record, again, as saying that this is a really stupid idea,” she said. “Of course, I’m not sure which is worse, you going in there or me coming along to back you up.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind if I wind up having to complete a survey on our time together,” he said. As he spoke, Thomas reached into his pocket and pulled out a cheap-looking silver ring and a pair of military dog tags on a beaded chain. The ring he placed on his right middle finger, and the tags he hung around his neck. He pushed the elevator call button, and while they waited for the car to arrive he closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.

  As the car arrived, Lydia noticed the ring begin to glow softly. Thomas seemed not to notice the door open, and Lydia had to guide him through it. The ring’s glow began to fade as the doors slid shut, and then the dog tags took their turn. When he made no move to push a button, she reached out and pushed the button for the seventeenth floor. The car began to ascend. As they passed the eighth floor, he finally opened his eyes.

  He was surrounded by a dimly glowing aura; in the brightly lit elevator, it was hard to make out. “You’re glowing,” she said, her tone slightly annoyed.

  He nodded as he tucked the dog tags under the collar of his shirt. “Armor spell. Unfortunate side effect that I haven’t been able to do anything about.”

  “So much for stealth.”

  As the door opened, he looked down the hall and muttered under his breath. Then he shook his head. “Probably wasn’t possible in the first place. She’s in there, waiting for me.”

  She looked at him dubiously. “You’re sure?”

  He gave her a sidelong glance and nodded. “I’m sure.”

  Lydia drew her Predator from its place on her hip. “Then I guess the fact that you’re also twitching just a bit doesn’t make a lot of difference, does it?”

  Reaching under his longcoat, Thomas pulled out his Viper and racked the slide. “Not really, no.” He pointed to her pistol and said, “Aren’t you going to chamber a round?”

  “I always keep one in the pipe,” she said. “They only rack the slide like that in sims and trids.”

  “I see,” he said sheepishly. “I’ll keep that in mind; I’m still kind of new at this.”

  “You looked very dramatic, though.” She bowed her head slightly, and then looked up at him. “Thomas, none of these murders are your fault, you know.”

  He didn’t meet her gaze. “I wish I believed that.” Without waiting for a response, he started down the hallway with Lydia close on his tail. He paused in front of the door to suite 1703. He moved his keycard toward the door.

  The door opened of its own accord.

  Lydia looked up at him. “I’ve been a cop for twenty-one years,” she said quietly. “That’s never good.”

  He was about to reply when a woman’s voice called out from the other side, “Come in, Thomas. And please, bring your friend.”

  Thomas pushed the door open and entered, his pistol held ready. Lydia followed close behind, her gun moving ahead of her. She stopped a couple of steps inside the door and pointed the Predator squarely at Teresa Castillo. Thomas walked a few more steps into the suite’s luxurious sitting room. “Hello, Teresa,” he said. “I got your invitation.”

  She was leaning against the doorframe leading into the bedroom, dressed in a billowing blouse and a knee-length skirt of blue silk. Her long red hair was loose and cascaded over her left shoulder. She stepped out of her high heels, walked to a lavish armchair, and sat down. Despite her elegant clothes, she settled into the chair like a little girl, legs curled up underneath her. “I’m very glad you came,” she said, her voice as cold as the rain that still fell outside. “Though with the guns you and your friend are carrying, you’d think I was some sort of monster.”

  “You are a monster, Teresa,” he said, working to keep his voice level. “A killer, without remorse or conscience.”

  The vampire looked at him thoughtfully and shook her head. “Neither of those traits encourages survival when you’re a vampire,” she said. “I’m a predator, Thomas, hunting to survive, that’s all. And these people you seem to be mourning are just like you. They’re food.”

  “You are such a damned cliché, lady,” Lydia said. Her pistol never wavered from its position. “Regardless of your opinion of her, Corinne Lawrence was a person, not a kebab from Stuffer Shack, and you murdered her. I plan on Mirandizing you and taking you in, once the doctor here’s through talking to you.”

  Teresa laughed. “Don’t bother trying, Detective,” she said.

  “Why, Teresa?” Thomas asked. “Nine people we know are dead, at least as many SINless we don’t know about to keep your energy up along the way …”

  She smiled, her green eyes sparkling. “Fourteen SINless, actually. A couple of the ones you know about put up a hell of a fight.”

  “I saw,” he said, his voice cold. “Why? Why the message?”

  She turned in her chair to face him. “To remind you where you stand on the food chain.”

  Thomas cast a pained look at Lydia; she shrugged, but she didn’t take her eyes off Teresa. “I know what the message is, Teresa,” he said, shaking his head. “But you haven’t told me why you’re sending it.”

  She stood up from the chair and walked toward him slowly. Lydia followed her with her Predator, but Thomas raised his hand. “We don’t want your sympathy,” Teresa said. “We don’t want your second-class SINs. We don’t want ‘Infected rights’.” She stopped in front of him and stroked his chest with her hand. She smiled at him, a smile evenly divided between seduction and menace. “We want you to remember that you’re prey. We want you to be afraid of the dark again.”

  “Not happening,” Lydia said.

  Her smile turned into a smirk as Teresa turned her head and asked, “How do you propose to stop us, detective? With that?”

  “The thought’s crossed my mind.”

  “I’m sure it has.”

  It was true, Thomas thought later, what you see in action trids: when your reactions are cranked up to ridiculous levels, things around you really do slow down. He’d noticed the sensation ever since he’d cast the spell on himself in the elevator and given himself heightened reflexes. Even with his vastly improved reaction time, however, what happened next was hard for him to comprehend.

  Before Thomas realized what was happening, something alarmingly solid struck him in the chest and sent him flying backward; Teresa’s hand, which had been stroking his chest, suddenly became a battering ram. He struck a wall with enough force to knock the wind out of his chest and the pistol out of his hand. The protective spell he’d cast, combined with the longcoat’s armor, prevented any real damage, but the impact was enough to leave him momentarily dazed.

  The space between Lydia and Teresa was, perhaps, five meters. As Thomas flew backward into the wall, Teresa crossed the room in a blur of copper and azure. As she reached the halfway point, Lydia got off a shot; the Predator’s report was startlingly loud in the confines of the room. Thomas figured she must have missed, as Teresa didn’t slow down at all. He saw Lydia start to squeeze the trigger again when Teresa stopped in front of her and casually back-handed the detective’s right hand, sending the pistol flying across the room.

  The two women began fighting hand to hand, and Thomas saw that Lydia must have some augmentations giving her a boost; she was, for the most part, able to keep up
with Teresa. He shook his head to clear it and stood up from where he’d fallen. He watched them, mesmerized for what seemed like ages but was probably less than a second. It took him forever to retrieve his Viper, stand up, and aim it; as he did so, he could tell that Lydia Bowden was losing the fight. Her nose was bleeding, and her breathing was ragged. He hoped that whatever body armor she was wearing would protect her from his pistol’s specialized ammunition should he miss.

  He held his breath and squeezed the trigger.

  The two women were locked together in combat, Teresa with her back to Thomas and Lydia’s right wrist gripped in her left hand. Lydia had taken too hard a swing at her opponent and had lost her balance; she was falling to the floor when the three-round burst Thomas had fired struck Teresa. She was wearing ordinary clothing, he realized; the lightweight flechettes tore through her blouse like it wasn’t even there and buried themselves in her flesh. Blood oozed from the wounds and she stiffened as the pain started. Thomas heard a sickening crunch as her hand clenched around Lydia’s wrist, breaking it. She brutally tossed the detective against a wall as she spun around to face him; he watched Lydia crumple in a heap on the floor as Teresa turned.

  She was on him with the same blinding speed she had used on Lydia; he found himself slammed against the wall, staring at Teresa as she truly was. The lovely young woman from before was gone, replaced by the monster she’d become. Her face was drawn, hungry-looking, and her lips were pulled back in a grimace, revealing her fangs. Her green eyes seemed to burn from within. He fought to regain his breath as she grabbed him by the throat and picked him up off the ground with one hand, and used the other to snatch the pistol away from him and toss it away.

  “What did you do?” she demanded.

  He grabbed her wrist with both hands, trying to pry himself loose. “Specialty round,” he told her, his voice harsh and raspy. “It costs a fortune, but I found someone who can make the flechettes out of ash wood instead of metal. I imagine it burns like a son of a bitch.”

  Tears began rolling down her cheeks. In spite of popular lore, they seemed to be ordinary tears, not tears of blood. “Why, Thomas?” Her voice sounded almost forlorn as she lowered him slowly to the ground, and raised her green eyes to look into his gray ones. “I loved you! I was going to let you live, let you be the messenger,” she said as she locked her gaze with his. “But I can’t do that now.”

  Thomas realized his mistake a heartbeat too late. She was making the connection; their mutual anger was making it possible for her to align her aura with his. She’d begin tearing it away from him in a moment. He could feel the warmth of her breath as she pulled him closer, her fangs almost at his throat. He saw the glint of light on his bracer …

  His bracer. Knowing he had nothing else to lose, he let go of her wrist, held his breath, and jerked his hand back hard, triggering the device.

  Bracers like his were normally loaded with pepper spray. His was loaded with sawdust. It exploded in a nearly-silent cloud around their faces, and the effect was almost instantaneous. Teresa shrieked in pain as the wood dust seared at her eyes and her throat; she dropped him as she clawed at her face, trying to rid herself of the burning powder.

  He fell to the floor, coughing and gasping for breath. He looked up to see the horror that Teresa’s face had become looking down at him in fury. She started to reach for him.

  Two gunshots erupted in quick succession, and Teresa Castillo fell to the floor. Looking to his right, Thomas saw Lydia sitting up, slumped against the wall, with her Predator in her left hand, braced on one knee. Turning his gaze to look at his former student, he saw that both of Lydia’s shots had taken away the back of her skull; she was well and truly dead this time, a look of sad surprise locked on her face. He knelt down and closed her eyes, then strode quickly over to Lydia. He dropped the spells he’d cast in the elevator as he approached her.

  “Nice shooting, Tex,” he said as he knelt by her side. “How are you feeling?” He put a hand on her shoulder and closed his eyes as he began to assess her injuries.

  She chuckled ruefully, then regretted it as she curled up in pain, coughing and gasping for air. “I’ve been better,” she said finally, her voice weak and breathy. “Next time that bitch turns her back on me, though, she’d better make sure I’m dead.”

  He opened his eyes and looked down at her. “She came closer than you want to know,” he said. He helped her into a more comfortable position. She had multiple internal injuries and several broken bones, and if he didn’t do something very soon the internal bleeding would kill her. Placing both hands on her shoulders, he poured all of his power into a healing spell. Golden light poured out of his hands and flowed down the length of her body, enveloping her, filling her with warmth. Her eyes opened wide as she gasped in surprise as his magic repaired her body.

  They stayed like that for several minutes that felt like an eternity. Eventually, the spell subsided and Thomas slumped down beside her, unconscious. Lydia sat up, still tired but no longer in pain. She checked to make sure he was still breathing, then retrieved her pistol with her now-usable right hand. She kept the weapon ready, and sat vigil over her friend for the next few minutes until a Knight Errant patrol arrived to investigate the gunshots.

  28 October 2073

  In many ways, it was a very old-fashioned room. Rows of shelves filled with books lined two full walls and much of a third, and were interrupted there only by the door through which Deacon entered. The old-fashioned appearance was shattered by the huge trideo system on the far wall, which was currently playing one of the countless Neil the Ork Barbarian trids her employer seemed to enjoy. She’d never quite understood his fascination with the character, but it wasn’t her place to question his tastes.

  The volume was high. She had entered almost silently, and he never turned his chair around. Regardless of that, however, he greeted her as she approached the massive desk in the center of the room. “Good evening, Deacon,” he said, his voice neutral. His voice was always neutral; he never seemed to get angry, or happy, or anything else. At least not in her presence.

  “Good evening, sir,” she replied. “I have news from Denver. Castillo has been killed.”

  There was a brief pause, but he didn’t interrupt the trid. “That’s unfortunate. How did it happen?”

  “The doctor was assigned a competent escort. Apparently, Ms. Bujold allowed her personal feelings for one of her detectives to override the suggestions she was given by her superiors at Knight Errant.”

  Another pause; she could imagine the look on his face as he considered the matter. “I suppose I should have seen that coming,” he said eventually. “Her temper has gotten the better of her in the past. Still, it shouldn’t cause any insurmountable problems. Did Dr. McAllister survive?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Excellent. The good doctor and I have a great deal in common, and I’d be very disappointed if I didn’t get the chance to discuss that with him before this is all over.”

  She nodded, though he couldn’t see her, and said, “Of course, sir. Will there be anything else?”

  “Send me the compiled report from this detective once you receive it from Knight Errant. Good evening, Deacon.”

  “Yes, sir. Good evening, sir.” She turned and walked toward the door.

  She was about to exit when he said, “Deacon?”

  She stopped and turned. “Yes, sir?”

  “Send the word to begin the second phase.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and left the room.

  31 October 2073

  Thomas McAllister leaned back in his desk chair in his office at Texas A&M&M University. The last several weeks of consulting work had interrupted his teaching duties, and in spite of his very competent teaching assistants, he had a considerable amount of work to do as the semester began its final assault on the students. He smiled as he prepared to dive back in. The last several weeks had helped him remember what he loved best in his work and his life, and it was
n’t chasing clues, criminals, or consulting fees.

  He had just opened a student’s paper when his commlink chimed. He pressed a key and said, “McAllister.”

  “Thomas, it’s Lydia.” Her voice sounded subdued, almost shaken.

  He turned away from the research paper and gave the call his full attention. “Hey, Tex! I hadn’t expected to hear from you quite so soon. Are you all right?”

  “Fine, Doc, I’m fine. Physically, anyway. You patched me right up, remember?” She paused, then said, “You haven’t seen the news today, have you?”

  He picked up the commlink and spun his chair toward the small trid he kept in his office. “No, actually, can’t say that I have; I’ve been grading papers since I got up.” He bought the trid to life and scanned for a news station.

  “Grading … ? Oh, right. You’re a teacher. In all the excitement, I forgot.” She paused. “Keep looking. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  Thomas raised the volume as an attractive blonde talking head came into view. “This morning’s killing here in Atlanta would not be so noteworthy, even with the death of a famous chef like Conor Roland, were it not for the ten other killings across North America, all with the same modus operandi, most notably the words ‘Be afraid of the dark’ written on the wall in the victim’s own blood. These killings have been reported in Cheyenne, Bellingham, Cara’Sir—“

  He muted the volume and sat there, numb, as Lydia spoke again. “There was a murder, or attempted murder, in every capital in North America last night,” she said, “fifteen in all. All of them by vampires, all of them using Teresa’s MO, and all eleven of the successes had that tag on the wall.”

  The lack of sensation spread all through him until he felt like he was floating, drifting out of control. “That was the last thing she said before everything went straight to hell,” he said, his voice a monotone. “She said, ‘We want you to be afraid of the dark again.’ We want you to be afraid.” He turned back to his desk. “I thought she was being figurative. Obviously I was wrong. Something like this takes coordination, planning.”