Black Blood

by John Meaney

  The next man was slowing, panting. Donal drew near, grabbed the back of the man's coat with both hands, and jerked. Then he hooked his leg in front of the man's shin, causing the bastard to smack face-first onto the pavement, with Donal on his back.

  Then Donal was on his feet, stamping down once, before springing into a sprinter's start. In front of him, a man looked around, calling: “Are you all right back th—?”

  Donal caught his sleeve, hook-punched him in the ear, and the man yelled. He spun around, throwing a punch of his own but with his fist glinting—knife—and Donal blocked with his forearm, while slamming his elbow through a short curve into the man's throat. He used his knee twice, three times, then pushed the falling man away.

  He picked up the discarded blade, and threw it at the next man.

  “Hey!”

  The guy raised his arm to stop the spinning blade, and Donal's shoulder hit him in the stomach. Donal clamped hard around the man's waist, knees bent, then launched himself upward before letting go, peripherally watching the head-first fall.

  A clump of the guy's friends had come to a halt, and they turned around, raising their glass-shard-encrusted sticks and their blades, and Donal yelled as he ran straight at them.

  “Shit!”

  “Fucking—”

  They scattered, running to all sides, except for one, who stood frozen with his stick upraised. Donal ran into him, hitting in rhythm—cross-hook-uppercut—then pulled him around by his clothing and whipped in another three-punch combination—rattat-tat—and a five-punch, and then it was time to move.

  There was another group of men ahead, so Donal ran to one side.

  Good enough. Leave now.

  And he continued to run.

  Soon he was far from possible pursuit. As he relaxed the pace, he wondered just how much the confrontation had been coincidence, and how much his subconscious had wanted the danger, placing him alone in this kind of neighborhood to work out his fears with physical aggression.

  Perhaps zombies could sometimes fool themselves, just like the living.

  Viktor watched while the purple golem stamped on the ground surrounding the hole. Loose rubble broke free, spilling down. As the golem continued to work, the fallen rubble became a slope. Finally, the golem stopped, then took careful steps down the slope it had formed.

  At the bottom, it squatted, hooked its broad arms under the cracked, wounded Phantasm, and stood slowly, powerfully upright. Leaning back to counteract the motorcycle's weight, it began to ascend the rubble slope. Twice, it slipped, and Viktor thought it would tumble down; but soon it was at ground level, ponderously carrying the Phantasm over to the silver truck.

  Viktor followed.

  Harald waited, his gaze fastened on the Phantasm, watching as the golem lowered the motorcycle into the truck. Inside, Alexa was already lying on a stretcher, her head enclosed in a web of white strapping encrusted with amber stones, over which Mage Kelvin was making hand-passes that caused the stones to glisten.

  When Alexa was stable, Kelvin turned his attention to the Phantasm. He produced long silver rods out of nowhere, and laid them across the large crack in the motorcycle's carapace. Again from nowhere, he drew out a length of black cord and wrapped it in a strange configuration around the Phantasm.

  “There.” He stood up inside the truck. “That will hold them for now. Well done, golem.”

  The golem was faceless save for a single horizontal yellow slit that served as an eye. It had no expression as it sat down in place, half filling the truck's interior. But Viktor thought back to the way it had stamped down to create the rubble slope, without being ordered specifically to do so. Mage Kelvin had said merely: “Fetch the motorcycle.”

  Tristopolis was certainly becoming a harder place for nonhumans to live in, but here was a type of being that perhaps had never been treated fairly.

  “Nice work, Mage.”

  “Thanks, Viktor. A spell in Mordanto”—Kelvin smiled—“and they'll both be fine.”

  “You'll be able to prove Alexa was ensorcelled?”

  “It's already obvious. You'll have licensed mages swearing oaths to that effect—in front of journalists, if you like.”

  “Good.”

  Kelvin looked down at Alexa. She had not been unconscious long enough to begin starving to death, but her emotional trauma might be profound.

  “I'd like to know who did this to her.”

  “Hard to tell,” growled Viktor. “We suspect Cortindo, maybe Gelbthorne, maybe another of their friends that we don't know about.”

  Beside him, Harald was sitting on the truck floor, his hands placed palm-down upon the wounded Phantasm. His face was expres sionless.

  “Cortindo,” said Kelvin. “Malfax Cortindo.”

  “You know him?”

  “Of him. Well enough to know you'll need help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  Kelvin glanced at Alexa once more.

  “The kind I can give you.”

  Some five miles into his run, Donal was heading parallel to railroad tracks. Hundreds of stacked, empty freight carriages were all around, and it was dark. Only faint purplish light from the city on either side spilled into the shadowy environment.

  Donal was a black shade running within darkness.

  With a white shadow loping beside him.

  “What—?”

  ~You are Donal Riordan. -

  “Last time I checked.”

  The white wolf was keeping pace.

  -I'm sorry we could not help you more at City Hall. -

  “What do you mean?”

  -If you can mount a search of Möbius Park, you'll find remains among the trees.-

  “Say what?”

  Donal slowed the pace.

  -The assassin you saw. His remains are there. I swear this by the Void-

  “No professional would run where ectoplasma wraiths are waiting.”

  -He was hex-protected. We dealt with it-

  “We?”

  -Myself and one of my comrades. -

  “Comrades. In what army?”

  -We have common enemies. You are not yet strong enough to join us.-

  “Shit.”

  -But you grow stronger with each step. -

  They were running between two lanes of stacked freight con tainers.

  “I'm hallucinating white wolves. Can't be a good sign.”

  -That is funny-

  “What? A wolf with a sense of—”

  Donal stumbled, and slowed to a stop.

  “Shit.”

  He was alone among the freight containers.

  I'm insane.

  No, I'm not.

  He shook his head, then recommenced his run.

  Commander Pel Bowman regarded the young Bone Listener Lexar Pinderwin, then looked at the blue-and-white photographs of Andrea and the kids that stood on his desk. These were bad times, and his family's safety was paramount. But Andrea had told him last night that Arrhennius Vilnar's death demanded justice, and from what she had heard, it wasn't going to happen.

  That had been after Lieutenant Zelashni had left. Bowman had invited him to the house for drinks, and the two men had discussed Donal Riordan's claim: that a professional assassin had been clinging to the ceiling at City Hall. Any written report would end up buried in a cabinet in about-to-be-commissioner Craigsen's office.

  It hadn't been until Zelashni had gone that Andrea confessed she had been standing in the hallway outside the den, listening.

  “Arrhennius was good to us.”

  “Yes. But my duty is to look after you.”

  “Is that what the Colonel would say?”

  The Colonel, long retired, was her father. He had been Pel Bowman's commanding officer over two decades before; and he had exemplified the ideals that Bowman aimed for: not just as a soldier, but as a man.

  “If anything happens … you'll go to him, won't you?”

  “Pop will look after me. But you'll be fine.”

&
nbsp; “Of course I will.”

  Now he stared at Lexar Pinderwin. Could he trust this young man—young Bone Listener—to carry on if he himself failed? It was a key question, of the sort Bowman had always been good at intuiting the answer to.

  “Bone Listener Pinderwin, I have something I must entrust to you. If something happens to me, I have some documents here that you will need to keep safe and very secret.”

  “Yes.”

  Bowman nodded. Then he got up, walked to the blank wall, and placed his hands in two precise spots. After a moment, a cross-shaped slit appeared, and the wall peeled back to reveal a safe. It opened with an ordinary code, and Bowman pulled out a stack of narrow folders fastened with manticore-gut straps.

  He closed the safe, stepped back, and watched as the wall sealed up. Then he put the folders on his desk, picked up his briefcase, opened it, and tipped it upside down over the waste bin. He popped the folders inside the case, fastened it, and offered it to Lexar Pinderwin.

  Lexar accepted it.

  “I'll keep this safe. Is that all?”

  “Someone needs to make use of the names listed in there. Names of allies. Show the documents to Donal Riordan, Harald Hammersen, or Viktor Harman. They're all detectives you happen to know, right?”

  “Yes. I also—”

  “I left Alexa Ceerling's name off that list for a purpose, Bone Listener.”

  “Oh.”

  “If something happens to them, pick one of the people whose details you'll find in there. Use your own judgment. All right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you for not trying to make cheery remarks about how everything will be fine.”

  “No. I wouldn't, Commander.”

  “Good. Now, I'd like you to come with me, if you would.”

  “Of course. Um, is this the dangerous thing you're about to attempt?”

  “It is, and right here in the building.”

  Lexar looked down at the briefcase he was holding.

  “Then I'll never be able to leave with this, will I?”

  “Yes, you will. We're going to have someone with us, and she'll make sure you get clear.”

  Bowman picked up a green callstone from his desk, and squeezed it. When he put the stone back down, it continued to glow for a second before growing dull once more.

  “Who are we waiting for, Commander?”

  “A friend. Her name is”—Bowman looked down, then up—“Aggie.”

  Then a bright-blue translucent form was rising through the floor.

  *You've found the key. Well done.*

  “No.”

  Then you want me for something else. Not for a trip down below.*

  “No. Yes. That is what I need.”

  *I refuse.*

  Bowman rubbed his face.

  “I've got to try now. I got word that an emergency session of the City Council is in progress. They're going to pass a local version of the Vital Renewal Bill, whether it becomes a federal statute or not.”

  “Hades,” said Lexar.

  “I'm sorry, Gert—Aggie. I don't know what status freewraiths are going to have.” Bowman stared at the black telephone he'd received the call on, from a clerk in City Hall who used to feed information to Commissioner Vilnar. “I am sure that zombies and other near-humans are going to be, um, disenfranchised.”

  *Interesting word.*

  “Yeah, sounds almost polite, doesn't it? It'll mean people—sorry, nonpeople—dragged from their homes, and Death knows what else.”

  *I think you're wrong, but I'll do what you ask.*

  “Thank you.”

  One fast descent down an elevator shaft, and they were inside a subterranean chamber in the deepest levels of HQ. Aggie's presence deflected a series of scanfields around which burning energies roiled, desperate to flare into the human continuum. Down here, ancient secrets and forms of sentience unknown to the wider world were kept hidden, sometimes imprisoned, sometimes protected.

  At the far end of the chamber stood a seventeen-sided door formed of blue metal, on which archaic equations composed from an extinct runic calculus were inscribed. The door looked newly finished, as if it had been installed yesterday. It had looked the same when Gertie—as Aggie now remembered—had first seen it, centuries ago.

  “Commander Bowman,” said Lexar Pinderwin. “I agree with Aggie's assessment of probabilities. Please don't do this.”

  “I'm estimating the odds the same way you are,” Bowman told him. “I'm just coming to a different conclusion. It's not only about odds, it's about the cost of failing versus the cost of not even trying.”

  “Whatever is in there, it's attuned to someone. I can sense that much.”

  *Astute, Bone Listener. The someone was Arrhennius Vilnar.*

  “Oh.”

  *Exactly.*

  Aggie was distracted by the Bone Listener. Suddenly, she diverted her attention back to Bowman, now standing with both hands flat against the blue, rune-inscribed door.

  “I'm the designated successor of Commissioner Arrhennius Vilnar. If you scan me, you'll know the truth of—”

  Bowman's corpse fell to the floor.

  In purple darkness, Donal ran the length of Avenue of the Basilisks, the boulevard sided with ancient buildings whose gargoyles, unusually, were now howling, shaking their stone wings.

  He knew something was wrong as he neared Police HQ. Uniformed cops were gathered outside. An unmarked car, parked on the far side of the street, gunned its engine and pulled an illegal U-turn. Donal stared at the windshield, trying to see the occupants through the sliding glare on the hexiglass, then canceled the evasive jump he'd been about to make.

  Halting his run, he wiped silver rain from his face—no longer would he need his annual injection against the rain's adverse medical effects—and waited for the car to pull over. Then he opened the rear door and got in, still wearing his backpack.

  Viktor was driving. Lexar was sitting up front beside him, arms wrapped tightly around a briefcase.

  “What's up, guys?”

  “You think it's good news?”

  “Hardly.”

  Lexar was shaking his head. Donal leaned over and touched him on the shoulder.

  “Hang in there, Bone Listener. So, tell me what's happening.”

  Viktor grunted, pulling the car into the central lane. As he drove on, he gave a sideways nod toward Police HQ. There were angry faces among the uniformed officers standing on the steps.

  “Craigsen's effectively Commissioner Craigsen, pending the legal swearing-in. All nonhuman officers are on suspension, supposedly temporary, and Bowman is dead. Bone Listener Pinderwin here was with him.”

  “Shit. And you weren't?”

  “I saw the Bone Listener standing on the street, and it turned out he was there for the same reason as me. To get hold of you, before you tried to get into HQ.”

  “You think something might happen if I did?”

  “I don't know. It might.”

  Donal looked out at the familiar street rolling past. The buildings might remain the same, but the city was different now.

  “What made you think I'd still be in Tristopolis? The Vixen is long gone.”

  “If you snapped out of whatever happened to you, we knew you'd be back.” He glanced over his shoulder, at Donal's black running gear. “Kinda thought you might use a taxi or something. I nearly let you run past us. Bone Listener Pinderwin has good eyes.”

  “Lexar. I'm Lexar.”

  “Viktor. So, we're going to Darksan Tower, to pick up Harald. We didn't know whether you'd go home, Donal, or to HQ.”

  “Good thinking, my friend. So what's the news on Alexa?”

  “We found her, and the Phantasm. Both in a bad way, both on the mend at Mordanto.”

  “Is she under arrest?”

  “We didn't tell anyone we'd found her. Until she comes around, it's best that way. Professor Steele—”

  Mother.

  No.

  “—has taken care
of the paperwork.”

  “Any likelihood of her coming around soon?”

  “Not according to Mage Kelvin. He went with us to help retrieve Alexa.”

  “I vaguely remember him. The younger mage, right?”

  “He's a good guy. He's also trying to make up for his little faux pas, mentioning the professor's name in front of you.”

  “At least I found out.”

  Viktor concentrated on the traffic for a moment. Then, “We weren't going to say anything, because the professor said it might cause a profound reaction in you. Tell me she was wrong.”

  “Point taken. But I'm okay now.” Donal leaned forward, between Viktor and Lexar. “So what's in that briefcase?”

  “Names, I think. Personnel dossiers. Commander Bowman gave them to me.”

  “All right.”

  “I think they belonged to Commissioner Vilnar.”

  “Information on the Black Circle?”

  “Maybe. There are also names of people to trust.”

  Viktor turned on to 27th Avenue. “That might be more useful right now.”

  “Yeah?” Donal sat back. “I'm feeling a need to hunt the bastards down.”

  “I can help,” said Lexar. “That's kind of why Commander Bowman died. Because I brought matters to a head.”

  “You found something?”

  “The briefcase also contains the hand of a young boy. I severed the hand from his body. It's forensic evidence, but not so compelling if they have time to get rid of the remains.”

  Donal shifted around, removing his backpack. It would have been easier to wait for the car to stop, but this gave him access to the Magnus.

  “You want to explain that a bit more clearly?”

  “There's a dark mage in the Westside Complex.” It was Viktor who answered. “We've talked this through. Those new phones, they have to be routed through exchanges using children's nerves, or something.”

  Donal remembered the engineers waiting near Finross's body, and the quicksilver birds descending.

  “Not standard,” said Lexar. “They removed the nerves while the boy was still living.”