Blood Engines

by T. A. Pratt

  “Damn,” Rondeau said, reverently, his spinning stopped. “You haven’t worn that in ages.”

  Marla held the cloak at arm’s length, examining it, then shook her head. “It misses me. It misses being used. But I was never sure, wearing it, whether I was using it or it was using me. It’s big magic, and that always comes with a price, or an agenda.” The cloak made her into a formidable killing machine, and she’d used it often during her rise to power, but each use exacted a price in her own humanity. Not in some touchy-feely guilt-and-regret way, but literally—for a short time after she wore the cloak, Marla lost her human emotion, committing atrocities without hesitation if they advanced her goals. During that period of inhumanity, she felt as if she shared her body with a cold, alien intelligence that wanted to take over her life. Each time she wore the cloak, that alien intelligence lingered in her head a little longer, and became stronger. If she’d continued using the cloak regularly, she had no doubt that its intelligence would have eventually supplanted her own completely, forcing her mind and humanity down forever. She’d given up using the cloak, but she’d kept it, of course, because it was too valuable to let go. Marla had only brought the cloak here because her life was in danger, and she couldn’t ignore any advantage that might save her. She prayed she wouldn’t have to use the cloak, and hoped that its influence had waned in the years since she’d used it last. “Just holding it makes me want to put it on again,” she said. “Even though I don’t like what I become when I wear it.”

  Rondeau rubbed his jaw, and Marla looked away. There weren’t many things in her life she was ashamed of—in her line of work, shame could be a fatal emotion—but a long time ago she’d done something terrible to Rondeau during the cold, inhuman time that followed the use of the cloak. When Rondeau was just a boy, Marla had ripped off his jawbone and kept it in a jar to use as an oracle. A few years ago, when Rondeau had more or less saved Marla’s life, she’d returned the jaw to him. It was too small to be put back on his body, even by a magical surgeon, and he’d long since acquired a new jaw anyway, but having it back had comforted him. It had also secured him as an ally, and no matter how honest the gesture had been, Marla was always aware of the advantage to be had from her kindness. She never stopped figuring out the percentages. That was why, even though she had a reputation as a ruthlessly straightforward, point-A-to-point-B strategist, she’d maintained her position as the most capable chief of sorcerers her city had ever known.

  Marla folded the cloak and put it on the bed. She took a long, straight-bladed dagger from the bottom of the box, the hilt wrapped with alternating bands of purple and white electrical tape. “And your dagger of office,” Rondeau said. “You’re planning on going in heavy, aren’t you?”

  Marla admired the knife for a moment, then slid it into a simple black leather boot-sheath. The dagger was quite sharp, a handy close-quarters weapon, but it could also cut through the immaterial. Marla could carve up ghosts with that knife, cut off astral travelers from their bodies, and make smoke-demons bleed. Hamil had told her that, according to legend, the blade had been made from a shard of the Angel of Death’s sword. The cloak was Marla’s personal property, but the dagger only belonged to her while she served as custodian of Felport—it was a weapon of office, passed from one chief sorcerer to another. Though it was seldom passed on willingly.

  “You know I believe in choosing the right weapon for a particular job,” she said. “But I wasn’t quite sure what this job might entail, so I brought everything I thought might be useful. The only two bona-fide magical artifacts I own.”

  “The only two artifacts I’ve ever even seen,” Rondeau said. “It’s not like you can pick them up at garage sales.”

  Actually, sometimes you could—she’d found the cloak in a thrift store—but Marla didn’t correct him. She sank down in an overstuffed armchair by the mini-bar and crossed her legs. “So now we wait.”

  Rondeau looked at her, then at the nonexistent watch on his wrist, then back at her. “Marla, it’s only like seven at night, and this party doesn’t start until ten. You just want to sit for three hours?”

  She frowned. “There’s a gym in the hotel, but it’s all…shiny.” Marla normally worked out at a boxing club, all duct-tape-mended heavy bags and industrial gray paint, air dense with the smell of sweat. “I could use a workout, but I saw a woman in there wearing a leotard, and if she tried to talk to me about her body-fat percentage, I might do something I’d regret.”

  “I’m not suggesting you go work out, Marla.”

  “Then, what? We already ate. You can’t be hungry again, but if you are, there’s always room service.” Marla disapproved of room service—the profit margin for the hotel was too high, and she always felt like a mark when she ordered—but it was better than hearing Rondeau bitch.

  “No, I’m not hungry, either. But I’ve never been out of our city, do you realize that? I grew up in the streets, and then I took over the nightclub, and I’ve been working for you ever since. Today was my first time on an airplane. Now here we are, in the jewel of the West Coast, and I want to walk around, enjoy the evening, do some sightseeing, eat sourdough bread, and ride a cable car, you know?”

  “So go.”

  “Come with me!”

  She sighed. “I’m supposed to be here working.”

  Rondeau grinned. “So call it reconnaissance, if that makes you feel better. You told me when you first moved to our city, you spent two weeks doing nothing but walking around, getting a sense of the borders and the order, finding escape routes, putting a street-level map of the place in your head. Why not do the same thing here?”

  “I’m not planning on living here. Or even staying here.”

  “But suppose things go spectacularly badly with Finch tonight, and we have to stay longer to work things out. It might be nice to have a sense of the place.”

  Marla tapped her foot. She was likely to go stir-crazy if she just sat here, it was true. “Fine, let’s go.”

  Rondeau rubbed his hands together. “It’s not that late yet. Too late to go to Alcatraz or take a cable car tour, probably, but we can maybe hit Fisherman’s Wharf, or—”

  “Let’s just go downstairs, step out into the streets, and walk. See where that takes us.”

  Rondeau sighed. “As long as we don’t wind up someplace that sucks.” He put on a black linen suit with a black shirt and declared himself ready to go.

  Out on the well-lit street, Marla set off confidently in a random direction, walking briskly along the sidewalk. “Hold up, Marla,” Rondeau said. “You got somewhere to be?”

  She slowed down, stopped, sighed. “I’m not good at sightseeing, Rondeau. Maybe we should try to find Finch right away. Beat it out of somebody.” Every passing hour gnawed at her. She had at least a day before Susan’s spell was ready, probably longer with Hamil trying to contact her and interrupting her meditations, but who could be sure?

  Rondeau rolled his eyes. “We know where to find Finch. It’s only three hours, and that’s hardly enough time to beat anybody, even if we knew who to beat. A little patience won’t kill you. Tell you what, let me lead.”

  Marla shrugged, then nodded. Rondeau grinned. “All right, this way. Union Square is a prime shopping district, from what I hear. Maybe a little too yuppie for us, but hey, look at it like an anthropological expedition. And if—when—you totally hate that, we can go over to Yerba Buena Gardens, the Metreon, all kinds of good shit.”

  “How do you know so much about this place?” Marla said.

  “Hamil gave me some guidebooks and maps before we got on the plane. I read them all while you were sleeping. Speaking of which, I was surprised that a control freak like you, no offense, managed to sleep on the plane.”

  She shrugged. “I knew I might not be able to sleep tonight, so it seemed prudent. And if the airplane crashes, I’m dead anyway, so why not relax? Besides, I did have my cloak in my carry-on. As long as I had a little bit of warning, I could have put it on and
saved myself.”

  “Letting me go splat?”

  Marla stopped outside Crate & Barrel and peered into the window. “What the hell?” she muttered. “Kitchen chairs? Wineglasses? I thought it was going to be a warehouse supply store.”

  “And so the disillusionment begins. But seriously—you would’ve saved yourself and let me die?”

  She glared at him. Sometimes he was worse than a boyfriend. “Rondeau, in a situation where I could save both of us, I would. In a situation where I could save only one of us, it would be me. And before you get all dramatic on me, about how you’d sacrifice your life for me and all that shit, you wouldn’t die under the same circumstances. If our plane crashed, the body you’re wearing would die, and your mind would have to float around for a while until you found a new body, but that’s all. If you tried to take over my body I’d spit you out like a watermelon seed, by the way.”

  Rondeau raised his hands, wincing. He didn’t like to be reminded of his essential nature. He could pass for human, and his body was human, but the soul, spirit, ka, or whatever inside that body was something else again, something even Rondeau himself barely understood. “Okay. Point taken. Though we don’t know for sure if that’s what would happen. I took control of this body when it was, what, six years old? And I don’t have any real memories before that. I don’t know what I am. Even Hamil just says I’m a ‘parasitic psychic entity.’ Maybe when this body dies, I die with it.”

  Marla shrugged. “That’s the same deal all the rest of us are stuck with. Even Lao Tsung died, and I thought he’d outlive the sun. Killed by frogs. He should never have stayed in this city. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

  “Speaking of Lao Tsung…what do you think about the old Chinese guy and his apprentice? I know you don’t want to do anything to help them, but let’s say I did. Where would I start?”

  “You want me to tell you how to oust one psyche and reinstate another? Like it’s any of our business anyway! Come on, Rondeau—surely you have some sympathy for the old guy. You’ve done the Thing on the Doorstep trick yourself, and the poor kid whose body you took didn’t even get a shitty old body to replace his young one.”

  Rondeau stopped walking. “Fuck you, Marla. I’m nothing like that old prick. I was floating around, disembodied, with no memories, no sense of self, nothing. I saw—and that’s not even the right word, I didn’t see like I’m seeing you right now—some little street kid in an alley, and I drifted down and settled over him like mist, or I slithered in through his nose, or I put him on like a suit, I don’t know, I can’t describe it. I didn’t do it on purpose, Marla. Whatever I was, that was my nature, that’s all, and I didn’t mean any harm any more than a…than a virus does. This old sorcerer, he stole her life deliberately, and I know that must have taken some serious prep work and planning. You’re always telling me that the body is the mind, that mind-body duality is a fallacy and there is no ghost in the machine, just one combined ghost-machine. That’s why real ghosts are so violent and repetitive and crazy, right? Because they’re just a broken piece of a dead whole, a fragment left behind when the real self goes. But this old sorcerer made his mind a self-contained thing that still works, and he stole a body, with malice aforethought and all that. It’s fucked-up. I’m not like that. I wouldn’t do that.”

  Marla was surprised. Rondeau seldom got so worked up—he was loyal, amusing, and a bit unpredictable, but angst didn’t suit him. Still, if he wanted to talk seriously, Marla could do that. “Yeah, okay. You didn’t take that kid’s body deliberately. But I don’t recall you ever feeling bad about it before, or even expressing the least bit of interest in what might have become of that kid’s consciousness when you ousted it or overwrote it or whatever. You’re getting all worked up now, but you never felt bad about what you did before, accident or not.”

  Rondeau shoved his hands deep in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. “You don’t know everything I think and feel, Marla. You’re not the easiest person to share that kind of stuff with. Besides, thinking about that apprentice getting her body stolen made me think about this body, about what I did, and what I am. I do feel bad now. Which is probably why I want to help that apprentice get her body back, if I can. To make myself feel better. So, no, it’s not altruism. But can you help me?”

  Marla hesitated, then shook her head. “I’m sorry, Rondeau. It’s too hard. You’d need the apprentice and the old sorcerer both, and you’d basically have to reproduce what the old guy did, which I doubt you could do if he was conscious, as he’s unlikely to cooperate. And even then…it can be done, but minds aren’t meant to be swapped, you know? They get worn down. You remember Todd Sweeney, how he jumped from body to body? His own homunculi in that case, but still, there was wear, he got increasingly amoral and crazy, and eventually, if he’d kept on jumping, he would have stopped being human entirely.”

  “But one more switch, Marla. Come on. Would it be so bad?”

  “Probably not. But I have to get that Cornerstone, Rondeau, and get back home. In a day, maybe two, Susan is going to do something very nasty. Hamil will try to stall her, but I’ve got a couple of days, tops, before I miss my chance. I’m not prepared to tangle with the guy who runs Chinatown here, not when I have so much going on. When this thing with Susan is over, if it’s still important to you, I’ll hook you up with someone who can teach you how to switch minds, and put you in touch with some freelancers who can help with the wet-work. Okay? But I have too much on my plate right now.”

  Rondeau nodded, not happy, but apparently satisfied for the moment. “I’ll take you up on that, when this thing with Susan is done. I’m serious about this.”

  Marla put her hand on his shoulder for a moment. “It’s a deal.” Rondeau had never exhibited much interest in doing the right thing before—he was one of the most profoundly self-centered people she knew, though his loyalty to her was real—and Marla found the change intriguing. Seeing Rondeau develop a moral sense was like watching a primordial sea-creature climb out onto the land for the first time.

  “Spare a quarter?” A scruffy young man smiled and held out a paper coffee cup with a few coins rattling around at the bottom. Marla and Rondeau went past without even a glance of acknowledgment.

  “See? This place isn’t so different from home. They’ve got panhandlers here, too.”

  Marla snorted. “He looked like a guy on spring break from college, begging for beer money. Back home, the street people have gravitas, you know? They look like they’ve hit bottom.” She glanced back, once again feeling as if she was being followed, but the college-boy-bum hadn’t trailed along after them, and she didn’t see anyone else, either.

  Rondeau shrugged. “Go to the Mission, or the Tenderloin, and you’ll see plenty of people like that, I bet. This is the chichi part of town, a major tourist destination. The cops probably hustle off anybody who might make the tourons uncomfortable.”

  They turned off Stockton, onto Geary Street. Marla squinted at the buildings lining the sidewalk. “Not a Gucci or a Louis Vuitton in sight! It’s all theaters and art galleries. Those have got to lose money, huh?”

  Rondeau shrugged. “A lot of people come here for the culture. Maybe they do all right.”

  Marla put her hand on Rondeau’s arm to stop him. “That gallery isn’t doing so well.” She pointed.

  On the other side of the street, near the end of the block, a sawhorse barricade had been set up. Glass littered the sidewalk from the broken front window of the gallery, and a bored-looking cop in a uniform stood by the sawhorses, thumbs hooked in the loop of his belt.

  Marla could never resist a crime scene. She crossed the street, Rondeau sighing behind her, and strode toward the breakage. Something yellow near the bottom of an adjoining building caught her eye, and Marla crouched to look at it.

  Another tiny frog, lying on its back, unmoving. Marla reached into her bag for a pencil, and nudged the frog with the eraser end. The frog didn’t move. Lying there dead, it looked impro
bable, like a rubber toy. Marla glanced around and tossed the pencil into a nearby sewer grate. She didn’t want to absentmindedly chew on the end of the pencil and poison herself. Opening the flap on her bag, she fished around until she found a plastic bag with a few peyote buttons inside. She tossed those in the sewer, too. She could always get more hallucinogens, if an altered state of consciousness proved necessary. She spared a moment’s thought for where the things she was throwing away would go—both poisoned pencil and peyote would drain away, probably to the bay, where their effects would be largely diluted. And if a few fish got poisoned or started tripping, well, that was small karma, nothing to worry about, not compared to the vast debit she’d already run up in the course of keeping her own skin intact for so many years.

  Marla carefully scooped the frog into the plastic bag, not letting her skin touch its body. Rondeau, meanwhile, was looking into the window of the gallery she crouched beside. “There are sculptures made of old vacuum cleaners and ironing boards and shit in there,” he said. “Dressed in housedresses and frilly aprons.”

  With the frog neatly rolled up in the bag—one amphibian was smaller than the three peyote buttons had been—Marla stashed it in a side pocket of her bag, where she wouldn’t accidentally touch it while fumbling for something else. She stood and looked into the gallery. “Pretentious bullshit,” she said.

  “Hmm,” Rondeau said. “Let me calibrate your taste in art. Is there a statue you can think of that isn’t pretentious bullshit?”

  “I always liked Michelangelo’s David,” she said. “And that one by Rodin, of the woman trying to hold up a stone and getting crushed?”

  “So you’re steeped in the classics.”