Dead Matter

by Anton Strout

  “Reason?” Allorah exploded. “How long have you been in the field? Maybe a year . . . ? And you want to tell me what’s reasonable . . .”

  I looked to Jane off in the crowd, my eyes begging her for some kind of guidance. Should I? I wanted to ask. Jane shook her head and her eyes were full of understanding.

  I turned back to Allorah. “I understand what you’ve been through,” I said, “but I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

  One of the other Enchancellors spoke up, a senior member of Greater & Lesser Arcana. “Son, what makes them so special that you feel so strongly about protecting them?”

  “Well,” I said, knowing how bad it would sound, “they kind of see me as their savior. It’s some sort of prophecy in one of their books . . .”

  Allorah laughed out loud. “So you’re the Chosen One now, are you? Somebody has a superiority complex. Chosen Ones, prophecies . . . I’ve heard it all before. It’s the stuff of fiction.”

  “That may be,” I said, “but that doesn’t change where I stand. Look, just because something is prophetic or religious or what have you doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea whether you believe in it or not. Take the Ten Commandments, for instance. Thou shalt not kill. Seems a pretty good rule to live by, if you can help it, no matter what your belief system is. Do I really think I’m a savior? Right now, I don’t seem to be doing so hot on that account, but I do know this . . . If I let you know where those vampires are, especially you, Allorah . . . this city will be a graveyard. I can’t allow that.”

  Allorah took in a deep breath. “Then you’ve made your choice . . . and I’ve made mine.” She looked at the four Shadowers guarding me. “Take him out of here.”

  The four men lifted me up, a little rougher than before, their hands digging into my arms as they pulled me up the stairs leading toward the back of the room.

  “Inspectre . . . ?” I said, trying to turn around. The Inspectre was on his feet and crossing to Allorah.

  The crowd was in an uproar now. Whether they were for me or against me, I wasn’t sure, but from the way I was being manhandled, I had an idea.

  “For goodness’ sake,” the Inspectre shouted. “Allorah, where are they going with him?”

  “For goodness’ sake, Argyle?” I heard her say. “Goodness has nothing to do with him. He’s chosen his stance. There’s nothing for him but pain and misery. And Thaniel Graydon will hold him just fine while we decide what to do.”

  My heart sank at the mention of that name. The Thaniel Graydon Center, the floating prison barge named for the F.O.G. agent who brought down the necromantic Benjamin Franklin centuries ago. Some of the more bizarre and paranormal offenders in New York were kept out there. Just the idea of being held at the floating prison made me weak in the knees. Still, given the alternative of starting a major bloodbath in the streets of New York? I could live with it. That was, if I could live through my stay there.

  28

  During the entire trip out to the Thaniel Graydon Center, the rain pelted down hard on the security boat, the staccato beat slowly driving me crazy. The captain of the boat found the prison barge, which was constantly in motion, out on the Hudson River, the distant Lego-like stack of structure growing larger by the second as we approached, the old refurbished shipping crates matching the same red, blues, and yellows of the toy bricks.

  While the Shadowers went inside to check me in, I was left out in the freezing downpour in a small open pen just inside the docking station. As dreary as the place was on my last visit, the fact that I was now on the receiving end of punishment amped up the drear factor by ten. I was soaked to the bone by the time the Shadower team left, not one of them looking me in the eye. A solitary guard built like The Thing led me inside a small, bare room that held only a single bench. On top of that was a folded orange jumpsuit.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you look like that bald guy from The Shield, only with a mustache?” I asked, filling the deafening silence of the room with small talk.

  The guard just stood there.

  “Strip down,” he said, folding his arms across his chest, “and put that on.”

  “Do you think you could turn away?” I asked.

  The guard smiled. “Feeling modest, are we?” he asked. “Tough shit. Just put the clothes on.”

  I stripped down as I had been told and put on the jumpsuit. Despite the fact that I was in common prison garb, I was thankful that it was dry and didn’t weigh a ton like my own waterlogged duds. The guard threw a clear plastic bag at me. “Gather your belongings and leave them on the bench. They’ll be checked in later.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll have a nice moldy sheen to them when I get them back.”

  The guard looked pissed. “Are you finished?” he asked.

  I nodded, for once making the wise decision to shut the hell up.

  “One last thing,” the guard said, stepping out of the room. When he reappeared he was holding what looked like a brown leather version of a sleeves-only straight jacket. Long buckles hung from the back of it. “In you go, sunshine.”

  “Are you for real?” I said, feeling claustrophobic just looking at it.

  “Do I look like the kind of guy who kids around?” he said, coming toward me. One of his meaty hands spun me around until my back was to him.

  “Where the hell do you even get restraints like those?”

  “We have a shop that puts this shit together,” the guard said, sliding my arms into the sleeves and working the straps across my back. “A lot of special cases come through here. We have several other residents who also trigger powers off their hands, so this is fairly standard issue.” He leaned in close and whispered into my ear. “Guess that don’t make you all that unique and precious a snowflake, now, does it?”

  The metal clasps of the straps dug into my back as he pulled them tight. I was surprised to see that the two sleeves were actually connected in the center, making one continuous tube and limiting any use of my hands considerably.

  “Comfy?” he said, patting me on the shoulder.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Right at home.”

  “Speaking of home,” he said, shoving me toward the door. “Let’s get you settled in, shall we? Then you can meet the neighbors.”

  As the guard led me off into the heart of the Thaniel Graydon Center, I shuddered. I could already think of a few “neighbors” I really didn’t want to run into here.

  When the guard threw me in my cell and locked it down, the trauma of the past few hours finally caught up with me. Dismayed as I was by the confining starkness of my new home, my body started to shut down and I fell asleep within minutes of the guard walking away. I welcomed it because then I didn’t have to think about my friends, the bind I was in, or vampires.

  I awoke hours later to a rapping on my cell bars, still exhausted and building up a nice wave of depression. Another guard just as big as the last one started unlocking my cell, telling me that the Inspectre was here to see me. The thought of having a visitor actually made me feel a little better. The guard let me out of my cell and escorted me through a labyrinthine maze of corridors for what seemed like forever. We were moving into an area of the Thaniel Graydon I hadn’t even been in before.

  “Where the hell are we going?” I asked, finding it hard to walk with the dull rocking of the ship throwing off my every step. “I haven’t seen another prisoner in forever.”

  “Never you mind,” the guard said, pushing me along in front of him. “You think we can have you meeting in public with anyone?”

  Being shoved along like a common criminal, I couldn’t help but feel despair. I still felt like one of the good guys, and to have another good guy—a guard—acting like this toward me, blew. Instead of saying anything, I walked on until he put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Right here,” he said, turning me toward one of the metal doors nearby. He keyed into it, unlocked it, and it swung open with a long, low creak. The inside of the room was about fifty feet across
and open like some kind of exercise room.

  “You sure this is the right place?” I asked.

  “Inside,” the guard said, and pushed me in. I stumbled forward into the room. “Wait here.” He swung the door shut behind me.

  “Do I get a choice?” I whispered to myself. “Fine . . .” I called out, louder. “I’ll just wait here. then.”

  Even though I hadn’t been at the Thaniel Graydon Center all that long, I already felt tiny and alone in such a large space compared to my cell. My footsteps echoed as I paced around the room, and when I finally heard the door opening again, I felt my spirits rise just for having some company.

  “Inspectre?” I said.

  The doorway filled with the silhouettes of several figures. The first of them spoke. “Not quite,” the voice said. The figure stepped forward out of the shadows, and my heart sank. It was the one man I had been trying to avoid since checking in here.

  “Hello, Faisal,” I said.

  Faisal Bane, ex-head of the Sectarian Defense League and all around cultist, chuckled with that thick European accent of his. Beneath his dark, unkempt swirl of hair, his eyes lit up. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out about you being held here?”

  “I had hoped,” I said, shrugging in my leather arm restraints. “I’m an optimist, after all.”

  Faisal looking at the long leather sleeves that ran up both my arms. “Nice mittens,” he said.

  He moved forward to let the other figures into the room. They were giant men, their eyes full of menace. They moved next to Faisal two to a side.

  “I see you’ve brought some of the extras from HBO’s Oz with you,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’re all here to talk to the Inspectre, too?”

  “About that,” Faisal said with an evil smile. “I’m afraid that was a little bit of a fabrication.”

  My nerves went on end. “That’s what I was afraid of,” I said. “Well, good to see you, Faisal.”

  Faisal nodded cordially. “When last we chatted, I seem to recall you promising me something,” Faisal said, stepping closer.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Oh, I think so,” he said, stepping even closer. “Remember the night you came out here to visit me the first time . . . ? You came here desperate for information when Cyrus Mandalay went into hiding on you, before the whole zombies-at-Fashion-Week debacle.”

  “I remember,” I said. The hunt for Cyrus was hard to forget, especially considering he had been the one who had caused the vampire Perry to become Patient Zero thanks to prolonged captivity.

  Faisal’s eyes were even colder than I was used to. He narrowed them at me. “I gave you what you what you came for,” he said, slow and deliberate. “I gave you answers. I practically gave you Cyrus Mandalay wrapped in a big red bow, and all I asked was one thing . . .”

  It all came back to me as he said it. “To be relocated to the mainland facility at Rikers,” I said. “You look pretty good right now, for a guy who gets as seasick as you do. The Thaniel Graydon Center, if I recall, had you a little green around the gills.”

  “Exactly,” he said, his voice full of smugness. “And if you had followed through on that, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation right now because I wouldn’t be here.”

  “So that’s what this is all about?” I said. “I couldn’t get you into a first-class room?”

  “I wanted off this ship,” he hissed, “and you’re the one who promised me that.”

  I did my best to look hurt. “I put in the request,” I said, “and don’t think that wasn’t painful for me. It took me days to fill out the proper forms for it, but in the end, the Enchancellors denied the transfer.”

  Faisal was inches from my face now. “A promise is a promise,” he said, shaking with rage.

  The guy had me nervous. You never knew what an incarcerated cultist was capable of. “So you’re going to kick my ass for that?” I asked. “Or is it because I humiliated you more than once by defeating your precious Sectarians and then besting Cyrus? I think this is more about you suffering defeat after defeat than anything, so go ahead. Kick my ass.” My nerves were on end. I held up my sleeved arms, showing them to him as I tried to pull them apart from each other to no avail. “Hardly seems like a fair fight, though.”

  “Who said anything about fair?” Faisal said, then turned and walked back toward his companions. With each step he took away from me, I felt a little more at ease.

  “So you’re not going to beat me up?” I said, wary.

  “Oh, I don’t beat people,” Faisal said. He stopped and spun back around to face me. “I have people that do that for me.” He looked at the four men on either side of him. “Gentlemen . . . ?”

  “Shit,” I said.

  As Faisal’s brutes came toward me, I backed away as fast as I could across the empty space, but soon found myself pressed up against the icy coldness of one of the metal walls. With nowhere farther back to go, I dashed toward the door they all had come through. Four against one might have been survivable with my trusty bat at my side, but in these prison-issue restraints and not a weapon in sight, I was screwed. I got about five running steps toward the door before one of the goons had me by the arm strap and used my own momentum to spin me around into the rest of his friends. The leather restraint tore, but didn’t come apart, giving me little in the way of dispensing any form of twofisted justice.

  Not that I was going down without a fight. I balled my fists together inside the sleeve and threw them into the one who had snagged me. I hit the side of his head hard, staggering him back and leaving an opening for me to run. And I would have, if two of the others didn’t start swinging, hitting me in the gut and doubling me over. The fourth pushed me over and the one I had staggered came back over and kicked me hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me and driving me to the ground. Then everyone started kicking at me, explosive spots of pain lighting up all over my body.

  “Enough!” Faisal said. His men stopped their assault on me, leaving me to writhe in pain against the cool metal of the floor. “On second thought,” he continued, “I’ve changed my mind. Why should my thugs get all the fun? Stand him up.”

  Faisal’s men grabbed at me and dragged me to my feet, holding me up because they weren’t sure if I could stand on my own. I wasn’t sure, either. Faisal came in hard with his fist to my stomach and I felt like throwing up at the impact. His next blow smashed hard against my cheek, knocking me out of the arms of the other prisoners. I hit the floor hard again.

  “I’m just going to stay down here for a bit,” I said, coughing and tasting a little blood in my mouth.

  Thankfully, the sound of the door clanging open rang out. Like it or not, Faisal and his goons were being walked in on, hopefully not by reinforcements but by guards. I turned my head to face the doorway and opened my eyes, feeling pain in my cheeks from the simple gestures. It wasn’t more goons, but it also wasn’t guards. In the doorway stood several figures, but at the front was a familiar one in a hoodie covered in skulls.

  “Aidan . . . ?” I croaked out.

  Connor’s brother stood there, nodding. Beatriz stood directly behind him, along with a few other faces I had seen around the castle grounds.

  “Aidan?” Faisal repeated, looking over his shoulder at them. He reached down and grabbed me by my hair and pulled me to my feet, spinning around until we were both facing the door. “Who the hell are you?”

  Aidan held a single finger up to his lips. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “This will be less painful than what happens to you in the prison shower.”

  Faisal wrapped one arm around my neck and pulled a makeshift knife from one of his pockets, pressing it against my neck. “Don’t be too sure about that.” He pushed the knife until I felt a trickle of blood run down my neck. “Now, why don’t you and your crew turn right around and head out that door? I’d hate to kill Simon. Well, not really . . .”

  Aidan hesitated and held a hand up to keep his posse i
n place.

  “I don’t think this is going to look good in front of your parole board,” I croaked out to Faisal.

  Faisal tightened his arm around my neck, causing my vision to blur as the pressure made it harder to breathe. “I think this is all a bit beyond that, don’t you?”

  “By the way,” Aidan said, holding up one of his hands. He held several rolls of Life Savers in it. “Connor says hi.”

  Seeing instant salvation in candy form, I knew I could chance a shot of using my power, if only for a distraction. Using my psychometry on the undead ferals back at the castle was one thing. Using it on the living was a sure way to push myself to almost immediate unconsciousness, but at least if I did that, it also took its toll on who I was reading as well. I raised my arm, my fingers finding the torn opening in the long leather sleeve. I grabbed Faisal by the exposed flesh of his arm and pushed my power into him, knowing this was going to hurt me a lot, but I figured it was better than a knife in the throat. As my power flared to life, I fought like hell to stay conscious as my mind’s eye opened up and caught fleeting glimpses of Faisal Bane’s past.

  Visions of my ex-thieving partner, Mina Saria, flashed by from when she had been a prisoner here, the two of them sharing their mutual hatred of me. I felt my body weakening as my psychometry wigged out from reading the living, but I pushed further, attempting to pull forward more Canderous-centered memories like the Come-As-Your-Favorite-Dead-Celebrity Ball at the Met. Weakness tore at me and I struggled to stay conscious. Flashes of Jane dressed as Marilyn Monroe came forward from that event and I latched onto that image of her to pull myself back to the reality of the prison, hopefully before I passed out. Letting go of Faisal’s arm, my power faded away and I opened my eyes. I could barely keep conscious, but Faisal looked even worse than I did from the toll it took on him.

  Before Faisal could recover, Aidan sped across the room and blurred into action. He was moving so fast that when he attacked Faisal it looked like Faisal himself was flinging the knife out of his own hand, then throwing himself to the floor. Five other blurs came into the room and the four goons suddenly found themselves fighting for their lives. The dark laughter of all the vampires echoed off the walls as Aidan put his foot on Faisal’s neck. He handed me the Life Savers.