Black Blood

by John Meaney

  Two men in dark suits were heading for the kitchen door. Donal didn't recognize them, but the two uniforms on guard simply nodded as the men drew near.

  Not them. Somewhere else.

  Then Donal caught the flicker of motion, high above the bright chandeliers.

  Impossible.

  A shadow that looked like a man was spidering across the ceiling.

  “O'Doyle!” called Donal, but the panic-chaos of yells drowned him out.

  Hades.

  One of the sharpshooters might manage this shot, but from the floor, using a handgun with blazing chandeliers in the way—

  Relax.

  Donal slipped the slick eyeball inside his jacket pocket, and stood calmly erect, raising his right arm in the classic target-shooter's stance, so rarely appropriate for combat.

  Exhale.

  Emptying his lungs, calming his zombie metabolism, Donal's aim moved through a slow arc, ready for the—

  Automatic gunfire exploded from Donal's left.

  Hades.

  He threw himself sideways to the floor, rolling, gunhand rising as he fixed his eye on two white-garbed men—zombies—with machine guns in hand, one spraying across the men trying to guard the mayor's corpse—the bodyguards screamed as rounds tore through their bodies—while the other zombie whirled, firing into the howling crowd, and he was the one that Donal took aim at.

  And stopped, statue-still.

  He's ensorcelled.

  But the dozens of other guns in the hall swept into motion. In the next second, crashing gunfire built to a crescendo as both zombies blew apart in gray sprays of dark blood, and then they were down and the threat was gone, and finally the shooting ceased.

  Donal rolled to his feet and took a few paces toward the remains. Both uniformed cops who'd been guarding the kitchen entrance were sprawled across the floor. They'd perhaps been the first to die.

  Shit.

  Whipping his head back and his weapon up, Donal took aim at the ceiling. But there was nothing there.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  He glanced back at the stage, now so piled with bodies that he could no longer see the dead commissioner. Touching his pocket, feeling the strange contents, he tried to work out what to do.

  Curtains hung down beside the high boxes. The walls were covered with ornate decorations.

  “Thanatos. I must be insane.”

  But the civilians were still pressing and crushing one another at the entrances—lying flat would have been more sensible—and there was no way to move fast, not by any normal means. Donal knew for sure that no one else had spotted the moving shadow.

  Glimpsing Dr. Thalveen, who stared from a crouching position beneath a table, Donal holstered his Magnus as he began to run. There were tables in the way, laid crosswise in his path, and Donal jumped, and tucked his chin down, shoulder-rolling over the first table, across the cutlery, and smashing plates. A discarded chair stood in front of him and he used a jumping lunge, one foot on the chair seat, launching himself to land on the tabletop, leaping to the next table, and from there to the wall, grabbing hold of a heavy purple curtain, and hanging for a second, to check if it could bear his weight. Then Donal began to scramble upward.

  The assassin sprinted along an empty corridor, came to a gallery, and ran straight through, knowing he had no time to—

  “Stop!”

  A policewoman stood before him, her firearm trained on the center of his body mass, her grip two-handed and steady.

  But the assassin twisted, rolled across the floor toward her, and came up whirling, slapping the weapon as he whipped a scything kick into her lower ribs—they cracked—and brought his other hand up in what could have been a devastating palm-strike to the jaw, but stopped just before contact.

  There was a tiny nozzle inside his wrist, and the vapor it sprayed was colorless.

  As the woman toppled, the assassin was already moving again, across the gallery, then leaping to a high windowsill. The window was tall and narrow, and he used counterpressure to ascend, fluidity and strength in perfect balance, until he reached the narrow, louvered opening at the top.

  No normal person could slide through that opening.

  Smiling, the assassin reached with one hand, twisting and writhing his way through, just as he had so many times in the practice gymnasium. He'd begun his training at age five.

  He was through, hanging by one hand, a hundred feet above the ground, at one side of the great skull. The administrative wing arced out, and he was close to the corner where it met the central skull. It took thirty seconds to reach that corner.

  Then it was a simple matter of counterpressure, where the two walls formed a hollow angle, to control his descent.

  As he climbed down, he was still smiling.

  When Donal hauled himself onto the balcony, there was no sign of Sergeant Parnex, nor of the sharpshooters who'd been stationed in the next two boxes. They'd rushed outside to help, not realizing that their target had been above them all the time.

  Donal rushed through to the corridor, drawing his weapon as he ran to the gallery, scanning in all directions, recognizing the fallen woman some twenty feet away.

  Two uniformed cops were ascending steps from the atrium. One was bulbous-eyed with fear, but the other, huge and muscular, looked so calm he might have been about to doze off. It was one of the Brodowskis.

  “Hey, Al,” called Donal.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “That's Detective Gilarney on the floor.”

  “Shit.” Brodowski thumped his partner on the upper arm. “Check her pulse, then call down for help.”

  “Um, sure. What are—?”

  “I'm going to help the Lieutenant.”

  Donal nodded as he jogged on, then came to a halt at a balus trade. Leaning over, all he could see was the swirling mass of well-dressed civilians in disarray, all he could hear was panicked shouts, and all he could smell was fear.

  “There was a shooter,” he told Al Brodowski.

  “I heard it was two zombies. Kitchen staff.”

  “Shit.” Donal realized he'd missed a trick: the two dark-suited men heading for the kitchens. “I think they were ensorcelled. The shooter who took down the commissioner was someone else.”

  “They got the commissioner too?”

  Donal was still scanning everywhere, and seeing nothing that mattered.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Two for the price of one. Mayor Dancy went down first.”

  Nothing.

  “If some bastard got the commissioner, every cop on the force will—Say, there's an open window.”

  “Huh.” Donal looked up. “A five-year-old might get through there. It wasn't a child I saw.”

  “You saw the shooter properly?”

  “I wouldn't go that far.” Donal reholstered his Magnus, then stared down at the crowd. “I saw a shadow. That was it.”

  “So what do we do, Lieutenant?”

  “I haven't a fucking clue.”

  The assassin crouched at the foot of the wall, observing the people who'd spilled out onto the graveled roadways, waiting for the moment. When it came, he launched himself into a near-silent sprint across gravel, and in ten seconds reached the unbroken darkness of the trees.

  Then he was inside, covered from sight by the black trunks and branches and leaves, moving fast, navigating through darkness. Within two minutes he'd already passed a floating ectoplasma wraith, its colors flaring white and crimson as it sensed the panic from beyond the trees, where it was forbidden to go. But it failed to sense the assassin sliding through the trees, and the assassin's smile returned as he realized his bodysuit's shadowhex protection was holding up.

  In his tactical philosophy classes, the assassin had learned to think of fate as an ever-bifurcating waterfall to navigate by reflex-fast kinesthetic feel in moments of danger. He had a choice now: to hole up or to try for the perimeter of Möbius Park. The shadowhex protection faded over time, and he had been hidden inside City Hall for
two days. He chose straightforward flight.

  Beyond the darkness of the trees, the police would concentrate on the gravel roadways, or else assume the killers were already dead. Every one knew the ectoplasma wraiths were deadly, and always hungry.

  The assassin continued to run through darkness, among the trees. A white shadow, not a wraith, moved somewhere to the assassin's left, and was gone.

  He accelerated.

  Far off to the right, another patch of whiteness flicked through shadows.

  Faster again, the assassin ran. He was no longer smiling.

  A black root tripped him, and he went down rolling, but came up running, fluid once more. Increasing speed meant more risk.

  There was another glimpse of whiteness, and he sped up once more.

  And faster …

  Then whiteness burst from the undergrowth and it was on him, fangs into his thigh, tearing, and the assassin threw himself into a sideways roll, flinging the wolf free, and came up onto his feet. He had momentum still, enough to continue his run at speed. He was two paces forward before the other wolf hit him.

  Snarling, the assassin smacked a palm-heel at its head—the neuro-toxin spray would be useless—and attempted a knee-strike, but that was when the first white wolf recovered and thumped into him from behind. The choices of fate had narrowed down to one, forever.

  He was on his back and still fighting, knowing that he would dish out pain until the end, using his fingers to tear at one wolf's mouth, a thumb hooking at its eye, even as it snapped and bit and ripped and its mate did likewise. The assassin kicked, rolled, and tried to scissor his legs around the wolf, but there was a blur of movement and pain exploded through his nervous system as his femoral arteries split and hot blood spurted into darkness, a darkness that grew bigger and enveloped him as vision faded before touch, and then sensation was a distant thing, soon to be gone, until the world was nothing but the sound of slavering and rending, of snarling and—

  When the wolves were finished, they stepped back and looked at each other. One nodded. Then they loped off into the trees.

  Behind them lay the assassin's blood-wet corpse, from which the shadowhex-saturated bodysuit had been torn. Deliberately torn. It took perhaps five seconds for the first glimmer of white and crimson to show amid the darkness. Then a second ectoplasma wraith drifted overhead, then a third, and more were rising from the ground.

  They congregated on the still-warm corpse.

  Detective Alexa Ceerling stumbled into a walkway in the garage level. She was splashed with crimson, holding something in her right hand. As she entered the walkway, all four deathwolves stationed there looked up.

  “Quick. Back there … It's Sam.”

  The biggest deathwolf, FenNine, growled. Then he ran past Alexa, followed two seconds later by his smaller pack comrades. Alexa watched them run, then reached for a yellow diamond-shaped button on the wall.

  Inside the main garage, reserved for the maintenance of police vehicles only, a gray-skinned man lay facedown in a widening pool of blood. FenNine reached the dead man first, then all four deathwolves were sniffing, tongues lolling. Suddenly, FenNine snarled, and his muzzle lifted up.

  From the walkway, Alexa looked straight into his amber eyes.

  “That's right,” she said.

  Her fist, clenching a long scalpel, hammered against the yellow button. It took half a second for the defensive door to drop from the ceiling, blocking her off from the deathwolves inside.

  Ten seconds later, she was jogging through the parking bays where cops left their private cars, looking for one she could—there.

  In bay number 317, a familiar bone motorcycle waited. Quiescent, the Phantasm IV maintained a sense of heavy power, of massive speed and maneuverability.

  “It's … Harald,” said Alexa. “He's in trouble.”

  The Phantasm's headlight flicked on, green and bright.

  “You know me, right? I'll take you to him, if you let me ride.”

  A growl from the engine revving up was her answer.

  “All right.” Alexa tossed the scalpel aside. It clattered on stone. “All right.”

  Then she swung her leg over the Phantasm's saddle, which altered shape to suit her. By the time she'd grasped the handlebars, the Phantasm had already drawn its parking-stand up inside its body, and was rolling into motion.

  It reached the upward-sloping exit ramp, already moving fast. As it shot up the slope, Alexa leaned forward, gripping hard.

  “Fast as you can!” she shouted. “To Shatterway Quay!”

  In seconds, the Phantasm erupted onto Avenue of the Basilisks, wove between two swerving taxis, then straightened out, hammering along the straight boulevard, faster and faster, while Alexa crouched close to the bony fuel tank, eyes squinting against the slipstream, mouth pulled back into something that might have been a smile. The people on the sidewalks whipped past in a blur.

  The Phantasm IV accelerated harder.

  Sister Felice had been asleep for perhaps three hours when a percussive thump woke her. Immediately, as she sniffed the air, there was a suggestion of dust, perhaps the faintest tang of smoke. Then the banshee wails of emergency alarms split the air, and her ears twitched as she threw back the coverlet and rolled from the bed.

  She pulled on her clothes quickly, and was still barefoot with shoes in hand when she pulled the door open. In the corridor, the dusty smell was strong. Then she was down the stairs, running toward the Acute Ensorcellment Ward. Suddenly Sister Lynkse was at her side, also running.

  “Is it the new equipment?” she said. “The stuff Kyushen put in?”

  Sister Felice shook her head.

  “Get back!” called someone from far ahead. “No!”

  There was a crunch, then a lumbering shape was visible inside a cloud of smoke, a black-coated figure lying at his feet.

  “Oh, shit.” Sister Felice grabbed Sister Lynkse's sleeve, pulling her to a halt. “That's Gross Haughton.”

  “Who?”

  “Cannibal, rapist, you name it. He's supposed to be a secured patient.”

  “Thanatos.”

  The two Night Sisters backed away, just as one of the janitors came barreling out of a side corridor, swinging a dark-gray fire extinguisher.

  “No, Fred!” called Sister Lynkse. “Stay back!”

  But the big patient, Gross Haughton, had already dropped his heavy hand on Fred's shoulder, and elbowed him in the face.

  “We can't allow that,” said Sister Felice.

  “No, we can't,” said Sister Lynkse.

  They extended their claws, and pulled back their lips from teeth that were longer and more pointed than they normally appeared. Both Night Sisters hissed, then ran toward the big figure, who was too focused on hitting Fred to realize the danger he was in.

  Seconds later, they were upon him.

  By the time a hospital security team arrived on the scene, Gross Haughton was down and still, his arteries torn but neatly bandaged after he'd lost sufficient blood to render him comatose. The two Night Sisters had propped Fred against the wall, sitting, his expression bemused.

  “Nice work, ladies,” said the security man. “That's one less to worry about.”

  “How many got out?” asked Sister Lynkse. “How many from the Sucker Wing?”

  “All of them.”

  “What?” Sister Felice, who had retracted her claws, now showed them again. “How can equipment failure take out the whole wing? It's supposed to be—”

  “This isn't equipment failure.” The security man gestured at the dust cloud thickening in the corridor. “This is a jailbreak.”

  Sister Lynkse hissed and spat.

  “Is anyone else injured?” asked Sister Felice.

  “I don't know,” said the security man.

  “Come on. Let's go look.”

  They checked that Fred was going to be all right, then set off toward the Sucker Wing, nostrils closing against the dust. Sister Lynkse grabbed a resuscitation kit from a w
all hook as they walked past.

  “A jailbreak?” she said then. “For which patient?”

  “No idea.”

  Sounds of groaning came from up ahead. Whatever the remaining danger, there were people in trouble and this was her job: looking after the injured and making them well.

  “Perhaps you'll get to talk to your police lieutenant,” said Sister Lynkse, stepping over a fallen cupboard. “When they come to investigate, I mean.”

  Sister Felice followed her.

  “Yes,” she said. “Perhaps I will.”

  It was an orderly with a broken arm who was moaning, and they hurried toward him.

  A young fleshy man with slicked-back hair, crying, followed the stretcher that bore Mayor Dancy's corpse. Donal figured the younger man for the mayor's son. He watched as they crossed the atrium, and uniformed cops pressed back, forming a clear route through.

  “I want SOCD here now.” The man who spoke was Captain Craigsen, a uniformed senior officer. “Screw the traffic. Ambulances and SOCD vehicles are priority one. Tell Dispatch.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You. Zelashni.” Craigsen gestured to a bearded detective lieutenant. “Tell me about the questioning.”

  “I've got three truthseers up on the staircases.” Lieutenant Zelashni pointed. “See? They've got a line of sight on every conversation, while the interrogating officers are working there.”

  Around the circumference of the atrium floor, uniformed and plainclothes officers were questioning shocked-looking guests, some bloodied, their expensive tuxedos and gowns ripped and dirty. It was a neat setup, Donal realized: over twenty conversations taking place simultaneously, with only three truthseers watching from above, covering them all.

  “Huh. All right.” Craigsen was giving no praise.

  “That's a good arrangement.” Donal walked up to them. “Process the civilians fast, get 'em clear, but make sure we learn everything we can.”

  Zelashni nodded, but Craigsen's face hardened.

  “You, Riordan, I mostly need to stay out of the way. You're a material witness.”