Necessary Monsters

by Richard A. Kirk

  Imogene did not respond. Her eyes were locked on the girl's face.

  "Get out of here," she said. Her voice was husky with suppressed anger. Elizabeth narrowed her eyes into inhuman slits, and settled her weight as though planning to leap.

  "Now!" Imogene edged closer, the gun at shoulder level. She fired at Elizabeth, catching Moss off guard. The bullet passed through the girl's raised palm and lodged in a stuffed ibex with a puff of dust. Blood was slow to come. The doors to the attic opened. He could not see it from where he stood, but heard the automata roll into the opening and begin its garbled greeting. It was silenced mid-sequence.

  "Over here," shouted Moss. Seconds later, Irridis appeared in an opening between two plastic-shrouded displays. Imogene dropped the gun to her side and offered no protest as Moss eased it from her hand. Over Irridis's head, the ocelli flew in a tight circle. Elizabeth remained motionless, clearly waiting for the form in the tank to reach an apotheosis.

  The creature had elongated and now looked down on them. The ocelli left Irridis and flew to the glass, where they hovered and dodged near the handprint. The bee-like behavior of the ocelli struck Moss, once again. He had seen the ocelli used to deadly effect in the past, though what they could do against the thick glass and the creature suspended behind it was uncertain. Without warning one of the ocelli darted away and struck Elizabeth, who had turned her back on the creature to look at Irridis. She pitched forward with a deranged scream that echoed through the hall. The form in the tank immediately lost its cohesion, leaving the dazed creatures to scramble or swim away as best they could through the blood-tinged water.

  Imogene ran toward Elizabeth, clearly thinking her dead. The girl struggled to her feet, clutching her shoulder. A dark fluid pooled in the hollow of her clavicle. Imogene reached forward and grabbed her arm. Elizabeth cast her off with surprising strength. Imogene recoiled at this preternatural display of power, balling her fists, but uncertain how to proceed. In the meantime, Irridis had recalled the ocelli to him.

  Moss raised the gun while his mind raced, trying to make sense of what had happened.

  Elizabeth crossed the floor until she stood a few feet from Irridis. She looked up, examining him quizzically. Irridis was trapped by her gaze, his expression one of intense scrutiny as though he could see through her to some almost attainable greater truth. His features were marble. Elizabeth inhaled and opened her mouth, speaking words in a sibilant language Moss had never before heard. Her eyes rolled under their lids. Irridis's skin was more translucent than ever before, but he remained calm in the face of this bizarre onslaught. The stream of words trailed off. The girl opened her eyes.

  "Who am I?" asked Irridis. It was not what Moss expected him to say. He felt the hair rise all over his body.

  Moss had followed Elizabeth at a safe distance and now moved to the side. This was to prevent a bullet from passing through her into Irridis.

  "Aurel," said Elizabeth.

  Irridis's expression darkened. He turned his face from Elizabeth. Moss could see that he was deeply affected by the name she had spoken.

  "She has a knife," whispered Imogene, who had come up behind Moss. Moss cleared the few remaining paces and pressed the gun against Elizabeth's temple. "Drop it."

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes toward Moss. Her tongue wagged obscenely as she laughed.

  "For God's sake Moss, pull the fucking trigger," said Imogene.

  Moss was an instant from complying with her wish when he heard the footsteps of several men spilling from numerous narrow corridors between the stored museum collections. Irridis was seized around the neck and jerked backwards in the opening gambit of a coordinated strategy. Even as two men dragged him out of sight, the ocelli were attacking.

  The sweeper from the dance floor ducked through an opening, followed by Lamb and three others in succession. Behind them Oliver lurked, clutching a hat, his face blood-smeared. The sweeper lowered his scarred head and made for Imogene, arms outstretched like a man rushing through waist-deep water. Something in his purpose told Moss that he had been instructed to attack her specifically. Moss fired at his head but succeeded only in shredding an ear. Elizabeth had thrown off his aim as she shoved past him. He was peripherally aware of Lamb seizing Elizabeth by the wrist as another man thrust a bag over her head. Valuable seconds had been lost. The sweeper seized Imogene by her hair and struck her across the cheek. She crumpled without a sound. Moss had almost reached her when the sweeper turned to face him. He felt the man's fist come down on his head, fast and hard. White light exploded, as blood and mucus sprayed from Moss's mouth and nose. He lost balance. A booted foot caught him in his injured calf on the way down. Moss rolled onto his back and fired the gun to the left of the man's sternum. He rolled out of the way as the man toppled. The wind of the sweeper's fall covered them both with sparkling dust from between the floorboards.

  Moss laid on the floor, semi-conscious, and unable to move. The handle of the awl dug into his ribs. He heard a nearby struggle and several voices shouting. Oliver's in particular rose up in panicked protestation and pleading. It was silenced with a gunshot that left Moss's ears ringing. Jolted, he clambered to his feet, skating in blood. Oliver lay on the ground dead, eyes half open. The three men who had killed him were throwing plastic sheeting to the side in order to leave. Moss chased after them. The first two disappeared from sight, but he body-checked the third against a crate. He struggled to pin the man, but lost his grip. The man danced backwards and ran after his accomplices. After several steps Moss realized that even if he caught them, he was in no shape to fight three armed men.

  He turned around to look for Imogene. He expected to find her unconscious, but she was already sitting forward, spitting blood into the V formed by her legs. There was no sign of Lamb or Elizabeth.

  Moss checked Imogene for wounds. She had a red mark on her face from the sweeper's assault, but otherwise her injuries were minor. The blood came from a bitten tongue. He sat down with his back to the aquarium base and made her lie against him with her head in his lap. He held her hand, fingers entwined. Before him the sweeper lay prone, face pressed to the floorboards. Rivulets of dark blood followed cracks in the wood. Oliver was on his back, the holes in his head forming a neat colon. It was his blood Moss had slipped on. He rested his head against the base and closed his eyes. In a low voice, he told Imogene of the events following their chaotic exit from Seaforth's apartment house, about the deal and Oliver's fears about the witch. By the time the ocelli whooshed ahead of Irridis's return, Moss was unconscious.

  SQUEALER

  Imogene wiped dried blood from Moss's face with a moistened cloth. The daylight was unbearable. Shading his eyes, he tried to make sense of where he was. Oliver's body was suspended in the aquarium. With a larval hunch, arms tucked, the bookseller turned on gentle currents, trailing a reddish plume. Precious little remained of the softer tissues; a marker of how long Moss had been unconscious. Oliver's avian legs lay on the bottom of the tank. Moss pressed a palm to his forehead and for a few seconds his world became the coolness of its pressure. His thoughts turned to Irridis. He looked around but his friend was nowhere in sight.

  "Moss," said Imogene. She pointed at the tank without looking at it. "I'm sorry, Oliver came to a bad end."

  "Who did that?"

  "Irridis. I helped," she said. "It was the quickest way to deal with the bodies. It looks gruesome but it's really not that much different than what happens if you bury a body in the ground, or at sea."

  Moss looked at her with incredulity, but she turned away chewing her cheek.

  "Where's Irridis?" asked Moss, at last, trying not to look at the floating body.

  "He's out there," said Imogene. She pointed to the end of the hall where daylight fell between the doors leading to the aviary. Moss groaned as he stood. Imogene watched him carefully. "Thanks for what you did. That goon would have killed me." She stood up, wringing the damp cloth in her hands.

  "I'm sure he thought he had," s
aid Moss. "I have to talk to Irridis." He walked toward the aviary. Imogene followed.

  The aviary had been the pride of the museum repository, a geodesic glass and metal dome that had been used to raise specimens for the Hall of Birds. Hundreds of birds from all over the globe had lived among the lush vegetation. From the ground, the aviary's glass and copper flashing had glowed in the sunrise like a captured star. Since the war, it had fallen to ruins.

  Moss and Imogene walked between the doors onto a large deck that glittered with broken glass. The view was spectacular. The Irridian Sea was a calm sheet of blue. Closer in, the great staircase swarmed with people going about their early morning routines. Cable cars positioned at intervals along the steps were moving people and goods back and forth from the city to the docks hundreds of feet below. Scars from the war were still in evidence on the steps. Craters in the limestone, slopes of rubble, and the ruined artillery fortifications visible from the top of the Cloth Hall offered a view of the city's history not available in the innumerable books written on the subject. Erosion had softened many of the scars, carving the stone into whorls and caves. In places they had become reservoirs for marine life, replenished with each tide. Irridis stood against this panorama. He was dangerously near the edge of the deck that jutted out over the rooftops of the Cloth Hall.

  Imogene remained by the door. The air was raw on the open deck. Hearing Moss's approach, Irridis turned from the city to face him. His weathered coat was splattered with blood. It was the same coat he had worn on the day Moss had met him for the first time, outside Brickscold Prison. Back then, Irridis's head had been concealed under black cloth, but now it was bared to the intense daylight.

  "Irridis, what happened?"

  "I freed myself of the two men who grabbed me from behind and tried to follow Lamb, but he escaped."

  "I meant, what was all that with the girl?"

  "I'm still trying to understand that myself." A breeze came off the ocean. Irridis's coat flapped around his legs. "I wanted to be outside. I came out here to look."

  "At what?" For the first time, Moss had a clear look at the sixth ocellus. It was darker than the others; smoky was the word that came to his mind.

  Irridis reached up and took the dark ocellus between his fingers. He placed it in Moss's hand. It felt warm, like an egg taken from a nest.

  "I want you to take this, and protect it." Irridis folded Moss's fingers around the ocellus. "I found it in the traveling bookcase. I don't yet understand what it means, but after what happened today, I need to place it with someone I trust." He squeezed Moss's hand. "You are the only one I trust, Moss."

  "I'll look after it," said Moss. He placed it in his pocket. It seemed like an insufficient gesture, but he was at a loss what else to do.

  "I came out here to look at the ocean," said Irridis. Moss stood for a long time beside his friend before he felt Imogene's hand on his back.

  "We have a visitor," she said.

  Andrew stood in front of a cabinet filled with brachiopods. He was dressed in a shabby, oversized coat. His blue eyes tracked around the mess created by the fight with Lamb's gang.

  "A shambles," he said.

  "You said you had something to tell Moss," said Imogene.

  Andrew ignored her and addressed Moss directly. "He sold you out." He pointed at Oliver's body floating in the aquarium.

  "I put that together," said Moss.

  "I was with him when Mr. Lamb came to the old bakery last night. Croaker told him that's where Oliver hid when people were looking for him." Andrew sat on the edge of a chair and crossed his legs, seemingly inured to the streaks of dried blood on the floor. This was not a squeamish boy.

  "Oliver told him everything, about the case of old books and how he'd bullshitted you about kidnapping this lady." He thrust his thumb at Imogene. "Just to get you to give it to him. It didn't work, though. Mr. Lamb said he never could abide a squealer."

  It made sense. Moss believed the boy.

  "Where's Lamb now?" Moss asked.

  "They took that weird girl back to the bakery. Mr. Lamb thinks she's a witch. He said that she might know something about some other lady he's looking for." He levelled his gaze at Moss. "Is she?"

  "Is she what, Andrew?"

  "The girl, a witch?"

  The word rankled. Witch was not a word that Moss liked. His own sister, Jenny Sugar, was a healer, a student of magic as well as science. She often called herself a witch, without irony. Moss knew there were many others of her ilk. He also knew that he did not have time to parse the meaning of the word for this wide-eyed boy.

  "The evidence would seem to support that conclusion," said Moss with a sigh.

  "Fantastic!"

  Andrew left with scarcely a backwards glance at Oliver Taxali. Moss sat on the chair vacated by the boy, pondering the exchange with Irridis. The ocellus rested in his pocket. Irridis had remained where they had left him. While Moss was looking in the direction of the aviary, trying to decide his next move, he felt a weight drop into his lap. He knew without looking that it was a gun.

  "It was on the floor. I'm surprised one of them didn't take it," said Imogene.

  He picked the gun up and balanced it in his hands thoughtfully. "I have to find him. By now his men will have told him that we are still alive. You know he won't let this stand."

  "I know that better than anyone," said Imogene. She sat on a stack of shipping pallets.

  "That's just it, isn't it? Lamb is a threat to all of us, you, me—Memoria."

  "For the moment, he's distracted by Elizabeth, but that won't last. Thanks to Oliver he also knows the bookcase still exists. He'll want that too. Where is it?"

  "Hidden, near the entrance. They ran right past it."

  "Then we need to leave, and take it with us," said Imogene. "As much as I don't want it, I want Lamb to have it even less, and we can't afford to let it fall into Elizabeth's hands. At the house I overheard you talking to Irridis about traveling to Nightjar Island to look for Memoria. I'm coming."

  "I have to kill Lamb first," said Moss. "How else can I be sure that he will leave us alone and never find Memoria?"

  "Then kill him," said Imogene. "He's a monster, and he turned me into one too."

  "You had no more of a chance with Lamb than Memoria had under your father's influence. It's not just one person you're fighting, it's your whole reality in the moment. You're no monster. You were just trapped in a maze with one."

  "I'm coming with you," said Imogene.

  "You should stay here. Gather what you need. We'll have to leave quickly—after. Talk to Irridis if you can. Something has happened. He's not the same."

  A LETHAL SUSPENSION

  After his conversation with Imogene, Moss left the Cloth Hall and stepped into the biting wind of the streets. He longed to stand on the great steps, in the mist and glare of the sea, to calm the roil in his mind. Instead, he walked by backways and gardens until he emerged near Taxali's bookshop. The shop was dark, the contents beyond the glass indistinct, like a groping memory.

  Moss trotted to the rear, following the slope of a lane barely wider than a delivery van. Standing in the cardboard detritus of the back entrance, he thumped on the door with a hand reddened from the cold. He waited for several minutes, wind blowing at his back, conscious of the heaviness of the gun and the awl in his coat. Eventually Oliver's maid opened the door. She heard the news with no greater display than the clenching of a handkerchief in her chapped hand.

  "You better come in," she said.

  For half an hour, they sat at a cluttered table breathing the smell of gas and stale cooking oil. It was covered in toast crumbs and pressed to the wall of a tiny kitchen. Moss drank tea that tasted of dish soap as the woman wept, pinching her thin cardigan against her throat. Oliver's parrot sat in a cage that hung from the ceiling, grinding grit in its crop and occasionally shrieking.

  "Thank you," she said. "He wasn't as bad as you might imagine."

  Late that afternoon, as th
e light was dying, Moss returned to the Blackrat Bakery. It loomed, fractured by shadows that felt like a sly reference to Lamb's presence within. Moss kept to the narrow arteries of darkness as he approached. He had no wish to revisit the coal cellar. Plashing through puddles that reflected the sky like polished steel, he dodged surreptitiously to an adjacent administrative building. Several stories above the ground, a pedestrian bridge connected it to the bakery.

  A fire escape ladder led to the third floor, where a rusty padlock proved no match for the awl. Inside, he navigated dusty offices as much by touch as by sight, and soon located a central staircase. He ascended, stepping at the edges where the boards were least likely to squeak, with his hand on the bannister rail. At the head of the stairs he encountered a warren of offices strewn with moldering paper, upended furniture and raccoon droppings.

  Moss searched for an opening to the bridge. He had not brought a light, which would have broadcast his movements. Instead, he relied on the building's internal logic and whatever clues his exploration revealed. A current of air led him to the last of several interconnected offices. The bridge entrance lay behind a wall of splitting records boxes and a hand-lettered admonition not to enter. Moss took hold of the nearest box and hurled it to the side. In ten minutes of sweaty work he had cleared a space wide enough to squeeze through. On the other side, less a button on the shipwright's peacoat, he confronted the pedestrian bridge.

  The bridge, exhibiting a state of advanced neglect, spanned nearly thirty feet. Moss's first thought was to revise his plan, but the idea of approaching Lamb from the cellar struck him as a disadvantage, something easily anticipated. A hole in the bridge's floor gaped in the moonlight. The wood splintered and sagged around its fringe. Moss wondered if someone had fallen through, necessitating the closure. Closer inspection revealed the entire structure was rotten. Broken glass covered the floorboards. Innumerable bats colonized the ceiling above conical accretions of guano. Moss would have to leap the hole by a generous margin, with unlikely athleticism.