Undead to the World

by DD Barant

  “Oh, but I’m going to make them simpler still. You see, there’s yet another reason I can divulge my plans to you: You aren’t going to remember them. In fact, you aren’t going to remember who you are, or what you do, or the fact that I even exist. You’re going to be my plaything, in a very special place I put together just for you.”

  That scares me, worse than any threat of physical torture. The sharpest weapon I own is my mind, and he’s just told me he’s going to blunt it. It makes me feel sick, and angrier than I’ve ever been.

  Cassius has been silent until now. He doesn’t believe in threats or posturing—I know he’s been spending the time studying the situation, evaluating every aspect and considering possible courses of action. “I have taken precautions in the event of my death,” he says to Ahaseurus. “I presume this is not a surprise to you.”

  Ahaseurus favors him with a cold smile. “Of course not. It’s what I would do.”

  “Then you don’t intend to kill me.”

  “Not unless I have to.”

  “Then know this. The price of tampering with Jace’s mind is your own soul.” He says this in a flat, matter-of-fact voice; it’s not a threat, simply a reminder.

  Ahaseurus’s bushy eyebrows go up. He appears to be slightly taken aback. “I don’t think that’s a claim you can—”

  “It’s not a claim, it’s a vow,” Cassius says. His voice has gotten softer, almost casual. “I don’t undertake them lightly. In two thousand years I’ve only made such a thing once before. It remains unbroken. Beings such as you and I tend to view mortals as ephemeral, not worth serious consideration. They simply don’t endure, do they? But hatred does.”

  His voice has an edge to it now, one I’ve never heard before. An amused, bitter tone. “Pledging another’s destruction can give purpose, direction, to a life that stretches across the long, dusty years. You know this all too well. So do I. And I’m telling you that, should you violate Jace’s mind, you will become my purpose. My direction. My reason for continuing to exist. All the many, many years I have spent learning to survive, everything I know of war, every bit of knowledge I possess concerning the profession of tracking, hunting, and destroying other beings—all of it will be brought to bear on ending your extremely long life.”

  Ahaseurus stares at him. So do I. It’s an all-or-nothing declaration, one with only two possible outcomes: Either the wizard lets us go, or he kills Cassius.

  And he’s not going to let us go.

  After a moment Ahaseurus lets out a rueful little chuckle. “So be it,” he says softly. “But you will not perish just yet. You have a role to play in my little drama, a very important one. You will be the father of a new race of vampires, Cassius. Your blood will unleash them on a world where they are only stories, and the African Queen will do the same for thropes. There will be no slow assimilation, no gradual decline of the human race this time; it will be fast and brutal and relentless, driven by a war between the two supernatural species that will demand each propagates as quickly as it can. You will both watch this happen, helpless to stop it, and only when you are drowning in guilt and despair will you finally die.”

  I shake my head. “Why? You’d murder a whole planet, just to make me suffer? Talk about overcompensation—I mean, honestly, after the first million casualties or so, I’m going to be done. Anything past that is just make-work.”

  He turns back to me. “Oh, it’s not just about you. Or even the one Earth. That’s the problem with you mortals: you have such tiny, limited perspectives. An immortal such as myself thinks on a far grander scale; using genocide as a psychological weapon against an individual is simply one gambit.” I didn’t think it was possible to utter a line like that without irony, but, all I hear in Ahaseurus’s voice is arrogance.

  “I find it hard to believe even you could top that,” I growl. It’s a lie, but I need to know what else he’s planning; it’s the sunshiny optimist in me beaming through.

  “I recently discovered a very interesting alternate Earth, with the unique quality of being a sort of natural gateway; it’s much, much easier to cross the dimensional divide to any number of alternities from there, though getting to it in the first place is proportionally more difficult. I’m in the process of solving that problem, though, with the help of my new lieutenant. He’s a collector of negative forces—forces I’m using to break down the barrier between this world and the reality I just mentioned. Once he’s established an entry point under my control, I believe his world will make a fine capital for my empire.”

  His empire. A network of realities, all of them under Ahaseurus’s thumb. It won’t be just the sorcerer jumping from world to world anymore, it’ll be him and a supernatural army.…

  Which is when I start to laugh.

  Ahaseurus watches me, smiling indulgently. He thinks this is a ploy—maybe I’m stalling, maybe I’m just trying to provoke a reaction. But he’s wrong. This is real, genuine enjoyment.

  I get myself under control. “You’ve been out of touch, haven’t you? Sure, holing up in another dimension means you’re hard to find, but it also means you’re out of the loop. Haven’t been able to check your e-mail lately.”

  “There’s nothing I need to check—”

  “You were putting together an army of damned souls—actually, you subcontracted the job, since you were busy with your transdimensional shortcut project. Well, guess what, Sparky? Before I came here, I stumbled across your little project … and oops, clumsy me, I sorta broke it.”

  The look on his face tells me he thinks I’m guessing. I grin and start firing details at him. It may be the last chance I ever get to piss him off.

  It takes all of thirty seconds before he lets loose a roar of pure fury. His eyes flood with an unearthly blue light, and he points a hand crackling with the same energy at me.

  The world fills with lightning, then disappears.

  * * *

  Reality, such as it is, swims back into focus. I immediately look over at the paunchy albino I knew by the name Damon Eisfanger.

  He’s perched on the edge of the recliner, his back straight, his shoulders squared. His features haven’t changed physically, but he’s wearing an alert, focused expression that’s light-years away from Eisfanger’s eager cheerfulness. He considers his own pale, pudgy hand.

  “I see,” he says.

  He clenches his hand and stares at it. The flesh begins to shiver, then blur into translucence, revealing another, firmer fist beneath it. He moves his gaze along the arm, the effect traveling with it; it’s as if he has some sort of Reveal Vision, invisible beams from his eyes burning off the illusion wrapped around his body.

  I know that’s not it, though. It’s just sheer willpower, focused by an experienced shaman, peeling off a layer of decaying magic like a sunburn victim stripping dead skin. I wonder what he’s going to do when he gets to his face.

  He asks for a mirror, of course. As a vampire, Cassius doesn’t show up in it, but the illusion does—for a second or so, anyway. Then it just dissolves, leaving him staring at his nonexistent reflection.

  He puts the mirror down. Glances at Charlie. “Jace. Charlie?”

  “Got it in one, boss.”

  He nods. “Good to see both of you. Sitrep.”

  That’s op-speak for situation report, the kind of shorthand you use in the field when you don’t have time for multiple syllables. I break it down for him, as quickly and succinctly as I can; right now, we’re not lovers, we’re two professionals in a very bad and dangerous place.

  But even while I’m running down the insane events of the last few days, I can’t help noticing that I’m suddenly feeling a lot better.

  He asks one or two relevant questions, but otherwise doesn’t interrupt. When I’m finished, he thinks for all of three or four seconds, then says, “I’m sorry you had to go through all that. However, you needn’t worry about my going feral. I can feel the primal power of this reality—it’s similar to that of Azura’s world, though no
t as strong—but my memories weren’t supplemented with artificial hatred the way the African Queen’s were. Once her own memory implants degrade, she should be able to regain control as well.”

  “Good to know,” I say. “Maybe we should go check on her. We could use another ally.”

  Cassius is already headed for the door. “After which we should proceed to the highway site. We need to get through it as soon as we can; it’s our ticket home, and with Ahaseurus dead it won’t stay open forever.”

  I hesitate. “Are you sure we should run? Ahaseurus’s plan—”

  “Was to overrun this world with pire and thropes, yes. You’ve taken care of the thrope problem, and my status as the so-called “master” vampire should give me a psychic link to any other pires created from my blood. I don’t sense any; whomever my doppelgänger turned, they must have been destroyed.”

  Well, that’s good news, I guess, though I’m starting to feel sorry for the townspeople caught up in this. Okay, a lot of them belonged to an evil cult, but some of them were probably innocents victimized by Ahaseurus, hapless extras suddenly cast as players from my past.

  I shake off the surge of guilt. Wrong time, wrong place. I’ll revisit the feeling later, with a good bottle of scotch, some solitude, and a very dark room. Right now, we have to move.

  We march out to the car. There’s something in the rear window that catches my eye, though it takes me a second to recognize it: fluffy white stuffing from the back seat.

  “She’s free!” I shout, pulling my gun. Charlie has the shotgun up and ready, while Cassius spins around and looks back at the house—which, it turns out, is exactly where she is, perched on the edge of the eaves. She launches herself straight at Cassius, knocking him over with her momentum.

  “Go!” Cassius yells as they grapple. “I’ll meet you there!”

  And then they’re tumbling across the street, Shaka doing her best to claw his head off, Cassius cooly and methodically using kicks, punches, elbows, and knees to inflict as much damage as he can. Our guns are useless; there’s too big a risk of hitting the wrong target.

  I swear, then jump in the front seat of the car. Charlie joins me. I start it up, gun the engine, and swerve onto the road. I have to trust Cassius; as long as he protects his neck and keeps Shaka from getting her paws on anything pointy and wooden, he’ll be okay. By the same estimation, he probably can’t kill her—not unless he finds some silver or manages to decapitate her. Fighting her is a strategic move, designed to stall her while we get away; he’ll disengage as soon as he can, follow our trail out of town—

  Something smashes onto the roof of the car.

  For a second I think we’ve been hit by a falling tree or a meteorite—hey, in this town either one is possible—but then a pale hand gropes over the windshield from above. “Keep going!” Cassius yells.

  I glance in the rearview. An extremely pissed-off werewolf is loping after us. Through cunning or dumb luck—and knowing Cassius, I’m pretty sure it’s the former—he’s gotten his opponent to throw him at us. Or maybe she just hit him so hard it launched him like a missile in the right direction.

  Either way, I’m not going to look a gift pire in the fangs. I stomp on the accelerator, wondering if it’s possible to outrun her.

  The answer is: yes and no. In town, where I have to contend with corners, I can’t get up enough speed; she’s gaining on us steadily. On the highway I’ll stand a chance, but I have to get there first.

  Charlie smashes out his window with the butt of the shotgun, leans out, and blasts away in the African Queen’s general direction. I guess he must have tagged her, because she starts to zig and zag, bounding off mailboxes and vehicles more like an ape than a canine.

  It buys me enough time to get to the main road, the one that connects to the highway. I floor the gas pedal and Shaka finally falls behind in the rearview mirror.

  And then I see what’s waiting for me, just outside of town.

  The road is lined on either side with bizarre, stunted trees shaped like giant candy canes. Each is about eight feet high, composed of different-colored strands wound around each other; the strands start out thick at the base and grow increasingly slender, the whole structure curving over at the top and tapering to maybe half an inch in diameter—the thickness of a piece of rope.

  Rope that ends in a hangman’s noose.

  A body sways from the curved tip of every tree. I recognize Zev first, not from his distorted features so much as the clothes he’s wearing. His toes almost brush the ground, creating the illusion that he’s standing on his tiptoes, maybe about to do a pirouette.

  But he’s only the first. I see Don Prince, the owner of the hardware store.

  Brad Varney, my transvestite mailman.

  Mayor Leo.

  And many, many others … people I knew or thought I did, all the familiar faces you see day after day in a small town. Men, women, children. My paperboy. The guy who drives the snowplow. That plump woman with the five kids. The old couple who always smile when they pass me on the street and apparently don’t know a word of English.

  All dead. All dangling at the end of rope-trees that apparently sprouted overnight: bastard hybrids composed of roots, underground wires, telephone cable, garden hoses, bright orange extension cords. Strangled by the mundane, by the sinews and tendons that hold together modern existence. Crimson lightning dances overhead, now the only source of illumination in a black sky. I feel like I’m driving into hell.

  But I’m not. I’m driving out of it. I keep telling myself that as I check the rearview mirror nervously. The African Queen is barely visible behind us, now in full wolf form and tearing after us as fast as she can. I assume Cassius is still on the roof, though I can’t really tell.

  There’s a single traffic barrier across the road ahead, a yellow and black–striped sawhorse with a blinking orange light mounted on it. It looks absurd and out of place, like a BACK IN FIVE MINUTES sign on the Pearly Gates. Beyond the barricade is … nothing. No bulldozers, no backhoes, just a vast, yawning pit that the storm seems to be belching out of like smoke from an active volcano.

  I screech to a halt, grab the spell books and jump out of the car. Cassius leaps down from the roof and joins me; it takes Charlie a few seconds longer with his bad leg. We’ve got maybe thirty seconds before the furious werewolf catches up with us; I toss the spell books at Cassius, then brace my gun arm on the hood of the car and aim down the road. “Read fast.”

  Charlie is right there beside me, the shotgun snugged to his shoulder. “Scattergun will work best if I try to take out her legs,” he says. “You’ve got the pistol; aim for her center mass.”

  I narrow my eyes and flick a glance at him. “That’s awfully knowledgeable for someone who just learned how to handle a gun.” Charlie, like everyone on Thropirelem, doesn’t know squat about guns.

  “I’m a quick study.”

  “Not that quick. Some of Allen’s memories must be bleeding through—maybe because the magic around here is unraveling.”

  He hesitates. “Could be.”

  I know my partner. I know when he’s not telling me something. And at times like this—all my senses heightened by adrenaline, my instincts going full throttle in sheer survival mode—I know a lot more. Without really thinking about it, I realize exactly what it is he’s hiding from me.

  “You love me,” I say.

  He doesn’t meet my eyes, doesn’t so much as twitch. He could be made of stone.

  “Charlie Allen, I mean. He loves me. He loves me and you can tell and you’re not mocking me.” I say this last phrase in total disbelief, because it implies a whole world—a whole universe—of consequences that I am simply not prepared to think about at this point in time.

  “Maybe later,” Charlie manages. “If we’re both, you know, still alive.”

  Cassius intones three words, none of which I can spell or even pronounce. There’s a noise behind me like a rope snapping taut. I risk a glance.

&nbs
p; Twenty feet away, the Gallowsman hangs suspended over the pit, the rope around his neck extending straight up into the storm itself. He looks much as I imagined him, a long, lean figure dressed in rags, but his head is erect instead of lolling to the side. The noose is sunk deeply into his flesh, and every inch of skin above it is a horrible mottled green and purple, as if his entire face were a single bruise. His eyes bulge from their sockets and his lips are grotesquely thick and distended, like blisters about to pop. His hair is long and black and greasy.

  “Thank God,” I say wearily. “I thought you were going to look like my fifth-grade math teacher or something.”

  “I am not your nightmare,” he hisses. “I am everyone’s.”

  The sound of Charlie’s shotgun going off interrupts our witty banter. I snap my head around just in time to see the black, lupine form of the African Queen hurtling straight at us. She springs—not for Cassius or me or Charlie, but over our heads and at the Gallowsman himself.

  She never makes it.

  From my perspective, it’s like she leaped into an invisible wind tunnel, a blast of air so powerful that it not only makes every strand of fur on her body stream backward, it also stops her in mid-leap.

  The Gallowsman is pointing a single, outstretched arm at her; scarlet electricity crackles down the rope from the storm above, dancing around his neck like a second noose.

  The Queen’s fur isn’t streaming backward anymore; now it’s all pointing straight up, like an angry black cat plugged into a wall socket. Fur is nothing but tiny little strings, after all, and that’s what the Gallowsman controls. He’s got her by the short hairs, the long hairs, and all the hairs in between.

  She snarls, writhing and twisting in midair, and I can see huge tufts of fur pulling right out of her flesh, some of them still attached to patches of skin. Must hurt like hell, but it won’t kill her; she might even have a shot at freeing herself. I make a silent vow never to complain about waxing my legs again.