I smirked at the trick. “I need to talk to your boss.”
The ork eyed me warily. “What for?”
“Su Cheng sent me.”
The ork looked like he knew how to keep his cool, but he flinched slightly at the name, pointing down the hall to a door marked Manager. I nodded my thanks as he returned to his magazine without another word.
The door opened without any resistance to a pitch-black room. The light from the hall and my thermographic vision picked out two figures inside, one warm and dying, the other hunched over him, teeth at his throat, heat spreading from the mouth out to the rest of his cool body. The illusion of the old man melted away from the figure on top, revealing the sallow features and dark hair of Ivchenko, his concentration lost in the rush of draining the brothel master. I threw my hand out in a quick stun spell, only to see the bolt unravel as a blood spirit materialized beside its master.
His face caked in blood, the dark mage rose, licking it from the tips of his elongated canines with an indulgent expression. He flicked his wrist at me almost casually, throwing a manabolt spell that came apart as my own ally appeared beside me in a shimmering splash to counter it. She glared at the blood spirit as it gnashed its long, toothy beak and gave an inhuman, fluted growl.
Ivchenko cleared his throat, a wet gurgle of stolen blood, murmuring in a thick Russian accent. “Another Triad dog? Not one of their Wu Jen, though...” He was almost speaking to himself.
I didn’t have words for him. He went on without prompting, inhaling through his nose deeply, tasting the air and astral.
“Mmmm...brother, perhaps. Perhaps we are all brothers, yes? Perhaps you have come to kill your brat, drugh?”
“You could just surrender and come with me.”
“Hmmm. I could. But I like what I am doing now. I like the path I am walking.”
“Where could it possibly lead?”
“It does not matter, brat. The journey is all that matters.”
I smirked. “That’s ironically Taoist of you.”
“Our tradition embraces all philosophies. All the world. Makes it ours, da?”
I pressed my thumb against the guard of my katana, pushing it free of its scabbard for a quick unsheathing. He dropped the corpse of the Triad pimp and drew two long, wicked blades from their forearm sheaths. The grips were wrapped in pale human leather, the metal blades etched in obsidian.
We spoke as one, intoning the ethos of our tradition. “Until someone stronger takes it away.”
For him, he was speaking pure, elemental truth. To me, there were only the sorry memories of learning magic in such a selfish form, power driven by ego and nothing more. Power through the self-deceptive illusion of power. But for us both, it meant there could be no other outcome but this.
Masking dropped, astral eyes opened, we appraised one another. The grasping darkness and swirled crimson of our auras revealed our natures and traditions, but his was drenched in blood and souls, awash in stolen anima. The blood spirit hunched beside him in the astral, anchored to him in spiritual chains that slowly fed it some of the essence he had pulled from his victim. He had somehow made a familiar out of it, and they sustained one another in their mutual thirst. He looked more like it now than he did me. I was ashamed at how relieved that made me feel.
With a telekinetic boost, he kicked the desk toward me, data cards and counterfeit credsticks flying as I jumped up to stand on it. He followed it in a blur, his blades flashing, and I could see the tell-tale patterns of weaponized athame foci in the astral.
His pet blood spirit flooded him with excess essence, and he channeled it into his quickness, slashing over and over with inhuman vigor while I backpedaled off the desk and into the hall. The bouncer had long since run, and I pulled my sword in a fast iaijutsu draw to parry where I could. My own reflexes began matching his speed as my ally wove an enhancing spell, and the world slowed so that his attacks became manageable once again. I backed to the stairwell, going up another floor into disused hallways and splintered, half-painted plasboard, hanging plastic tarps, and empty sealant cans.
His blood spirit familiar seeped into existence, bleeding from the astral into the physical, a bloated, beaked tick of crimson and gristle filling the space behind him. Ivchenko’s bloody, fanged smile widened as the horrific spirit flowed around him to rush at me. I winced right before the wave of sanguine horror broke against a crystal blue wall, my own spirit appearing before me. Their features were alien, yet their hate for one another was obvious. The blood familiar’s scream whistled like steam combined with a lion’s roar even as my ally held fast, her aquatic features solemn and set.
Ivchenko dashed to his left, through the thin plasboard and into an adjoining room. I followed through a gap in the construction material covered in grimy, transparent plastic, the hallway behind us beginning to vibrate with the familiars’ conflict. From the corner of my eye I spotted Ivchenko speeding toward me, athame held in a reverse-grip. I ducked to counter, only for my blade to pass harmlessly through him. I had just enough time to realize it was an illusion before I felt the slash of his athame. My coat and underarmor did little against the edge of an enchanted blade, and the physical pain was nothing compared to the agony of the knife pulling some of my life force away. Clutching the wound, I heard a thump on the ground and glanced down to see a grenade at my feet. I twitched my hand, sending it flying away with telekinetic force. A heartbeat later, the detonation shattered most of the bare bones of the renovation and threw me onto my back. The already-weakened roof collapsed, burying me and allowing the tainted rain to fall in.
“Do you not like what you are, brat?”
I pushed against the rubble, heaving it off and rising to my feet, leaning on my sword.
The knife slash wasn’t closing, naturally. I pressed my free hand against it, whispering small blasphemies in Latin, quietly and self-consciously extolling my supremacy over magic and flesh. The depths of my heart still swelled at the daring to spit in the face of the divine, and I felt the spell knit the wound shut. Only the gash in my coat and suit to show for it—and the small emptiness that had been torn away from my soul.
Across the expanse of rubble stood Ivchenko, his broad, fanged grin splitting his face like a demon in the Seattle neon and rain. He shook his head and laughed, stinging chemicals flying off his greasy black hair.
“You fear what you are?”
I clenched my fingers on the katana handle and flicked the thumb switch. The hum of its serrated teeth scattered water in all directions, and began steaming.
Ivchenko spread his arms, knives in hands, taking in the scene, almost as though to embrace me. “We are not unalike.”
I grunted. “Funny. That’s how Su Cheng convinced me to come after you.”
His wide smile melted. His arms dropped, and he began striding at me, boots crunching on the crumbled debris. I matched his steps, and we began chanting.
Forty steps apart.
Stunbolt. Counterspelled. Thirty steps apart.
Manabolt. Counterspelled. Twenty steps.
Blindness. Counterspelled. Ten.
Powerbolt. Counterspelled.
My katana flashed out in Ono-ha Itto-ryu form, slashing down from the high left to low right.
He caught the blade between his own pair, but the buzzing metal spat them back apart, the edge slicing with technological power and magical precision through his armor and biting into his chest. He pulled back, mitigating the damage. The cut was shallow, his vest and shirt stained with a quick splash of blood.
A riposte, Wildcat style, aimed at my right shoulder. My sword arm. I turned, avoiding the strike, blooming the fingers of my left hand upward with the whispered hiss of a powerful word. Electricity arced from them, searing his face as he howled. I could see the astral call to his familiar, see the power he had fed it funneling back into him to restore his strength as he called upon its healing arts. With every drop of stolen soul he channeled into himself, the spirit grew darker, weaker,
thinner.
He spat his Latin, and I met him word for word. The wounds sealed only by the smallest of fractions, and he roared his frustration. I had spoiled his one chance at magical rejuvenation.
Ivchekno thrust his palm out, reaching with a telekinetic grip. Before I could react, I felt a hammer blow on my kidneys, and looked down to see a shard of broken wreckage that had speared through my gut.
I coughed up blood, gripping the sharp edge. Ivchenko caught his breath, smiling and wiping an arm across his mouth before sheathing his blades and putting a hand on my shoulder.
“Da...Da. It’s okay. You fought well. You became much.”
He slid his hand into my hair, yanking my head back and exposing my neck. Baring his fangs, he whispered in my ear, “Until someone stronger took it away.”
I closed my eyes.
Let the world fade away…
The blood-soaked debris impaling my chest clattered to the ground as I melted into mist, right out of Ivchenko’s hands. I rematerialized behind him, fingers outstretched to cast a potent stunbolt. His familiar, already weakened and held captive by my ally spirit, could not help him. The spell slammed into his back, knocking him almost senseless to the ground. I rolled him over face up, and his unfocused eyes fought to see me.
“That...wood...” he slurred.
I wove another bolt in my fingers. “Plasboard doesn’t have any wood in it.”
I held the spell’s blue glow in my hand. It seemed eager to leap into him and rob him of consciousness.
“I know what I am, Ivchenko.”
The bolt leaped quickly, and his head thumped to the ground, out cold. I relaxed my hand, ran it across the hole in my stomach, rapidly regenerating. My fangs had extended in response to the pain. I winced until the flesh finished knitting, leaving me whole again.
“I just don’t enjoy it like you do.”
4
The Draco Foundation’s Seattle headquarters was quiet at this time of night, but the two armed guards had their SMGs at the ready when I walked in dragging a known assassin behind me by the boot. They kept their guns trained on me and Ivchenko as I dropped him unceremoniously on the fine marble floor, smiling at the receptionist who, to her credit, did not seemed fazed in the slightest.
“Is there still a bounty on practicing blood mages?”
She pushed up her Novatech I-L glasses and smiled politely. “Yes sir, pending results of metamagical analysis by our experts to verify the telltale astral signatures of blood magic use. You’ll have to fill out some forms while we make sure you haven’t dragged an innocent man in. Do you have a valid SIN?”
I pulled out a credstick with this month’s fake SIN of choice, Malcolm Weaver, on it.
Two hours later, I was presented with another credstick, this one loaded with a substantial amount of credit. I thanked the Draco representative, deposited the cred into an anonymizer account for laundering, and sent Malcolm Weaver into a homeless man’s beggar cup with a couple hundred nuyen loaded on it. Anyone who went looking for Malcolm and his payday wouldn’t find me at the end of their trail.
3
A beautiful young woman walked into the Temple of the Yellow Lotus until a wave of my hand dropped the illusion, and I stood there instead. It didn’t matter to Su Cheng, of course; he could pierce even my masking effortlessly. I did it for the benefit of the watchers from the other powers of the underworld. With this kind of shakeup, all eyes would be on each other, and showing up here now wouldn’t do me any favors.
He rose from his position, the chamber empty as before. His smile was serene, smug. “Our accounts are settled.”
I nodded. “And mine are considerably healthier.”
He considered me a moment, contemplative. “Did you find what you sought?”
“My maker could be dead and gone for a long time now, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think he has answers I couldn’t find for myself.”
“What would you ask?”
“Why he did it.”
He nodded. “The oldest question.”
“It wouldn’t matter, though. Not really. Besides, it wasn’t him. I couldn’t have asked, anyway.”
“Then what do you seek now?”
I sighed, my eyes wandering over the statues. “How should I know? Try to build a normal life? Right now I should probably get out of town until the mob shakeup calms down a bit. Travel, maybe. Find some measure of peace.”
“I think you may find that peace is a luxury our kind are rarely afforded.”
2
Seattle spun above, below and around outside, a lazy, panoramic orbit in the 2 a.m. acid downpour. It might have been unreasonable of me to expect my niece to join me at the Eye of the Needle at that hour, but I tried to make up for it with the view. The private room’s opaque black glass door opened silently in the reflection in the window, and I turned with a smile to the only family I had in the world.
Gizelle was the spitting image of her mother, my sister long passed from VITAS for forty years, with long red curls, pale skin and deep blue eyes. Only the touches of elven expression marred the similarity. Her clothes were crisp and professional, though she looked at least a little tired by this hour. As one of the premier experts in parapsychology in the Sixth World, she was endlessly in demand as a “spirit lawyer,” handling important conjurations and bindings, overseeing spirit pacts, and brokering the delicate, byzantine, and alien rules of negotiation with free and ancient beings. She made excellent money, took very good care of herself, and as a freelancer, was protected by some of the most powerful spirits I had ever seen bound to service. What’s more, they always seemed entirely glad to be doing it. Someone who could do that was a valuable extraction target. Whoever tried would pay dearly.
She sat across from me by the window, a waiter in tow with something green and smelling vaguely of fruit in a martini glass. She knew my nature, and knew not to wait for me to order with her. As soon as the waiter was gone, I smiled.
“No coffee, then?”
She laughed, the drink inches from her lips. “Oh, spirits, no. I’ve been up for eighteen hours cross-examining an Oath of Youth for some Wuxing exec and his ancestor. As soon as we finish, I’m off to bed, and well-earned, too.”
I grimaced ruefully. “I’m sorry to have called you up so late.”
She smiled and squeezed my cold fingers across the table. “Don’t you worry about it. I’m always happy to see you. And you can’t help your hours any more than I can mine.”
“Fair enough.”
The door opened again, the waiter bringing a fine crystal bowl of fresh fruit. Gizelle was perpetually on a diet. I couldn’t imagine why. Moments like this, as she speared chunks of melon and strawberry with fine silver, I missed the entire process of eating and drinking. I’d have given a lot to toast her with a cocktail of my own. It was just one more detachment from the people around me.
“So, Rick, not that I don’t like seeing you, but this is very short notice, and the Eye of the Needle is very nice surroundings. Is something going on?”
I folded my hands. “I did some business tonight that might see me in trouble shortly. I need to get out of town for a little while, lay low.”
She arched a brow. “What do you mean, trouble?”
“There was a favor that needed repaying.”
Gizelle sighed, setting down her fork and steepling her fingers. “Uncle Richard. Let me be entirely clear: I know exactly what you do for a living. You know this. I don’t mind it. I don’t speak against it. I don’t even ask you to keep me out of it. What I do ask is that you be smart. So if you need to get out of town, why in Ghost’s name are you not on a plane right now?”
I smiled. “I called in some favors. Right now, there are several records of my departure from the metroplex by different means. When I leave this room, I’ll look like someone else, check into a coffin doss, and be out of town tomorrow night by black cab to someplace nice and quiet for a few months.”
“So, why ar
e you here now?”
“Because you’re my only family, and I don’t want you to worry.”
She smirked. “You’re an idiot, and I love you, too. Can I trust you to stay out of trouble?”
“I plan to be a tourist and catch up on my reading. I’m long overdue for a vacation.”
She curled one finger in a beckoning motion, and my ally manifested in a swirl of metaplanar water. “Can I rely upon you to look after my trouble-finding uncle until he returns?”
My ally bowed her head with the deepest respect. “You can rely upon me, mistress.”
“You have got to show me how you do that.” To this day, Gizelle is the only person I have ever seen who could co-opt a mage’s own ally into her service.
She grinned at me. “You’ve got forever to figure it out.”
“Gizelle, if there is one thing I can tell you, it is that the passage of time doesn’t always make us smarter. In fact, in my experience, it takes away much more than it gives.”
1
Stuck was a great place to get away from attention in Seattle. A little city within a city due to some legal loopholes, the metroplex police held no jurisdiction there, and old man Stuck, the mayor and millionaire ruler of this corner of the sprawl, had connections to the Mob. This suited me fine, since it was the Yakuza who would be gunning for me, and they’d want to steer clear of a place like this. A smuggler haven in the city, I could probably get anything I wanted here, most importantly a ride out of town.
I checked into Stuck’s Sleephouse on 88th, a no-frills coffin motel amid the bustling predawn streets and lay back on the mattress, considering where I wanted to go. There were a lot of places I’d always wanted to see, and plenty of old friends to visit all over the world. When my work had taken me to new countries, I was generally too busy to have any time as a tourist. Vampirism only added to the difficulties of seeing the sights, even in an age when most businesses stay open all night.
I was debating enrolling in another college somewhere when the PocSec rang. Activating the anti-trace programs, I picked up.
Shadowrun: Crimson Page 2
