Shadow Child

by Graeme Smith

  The boy winced. He took another dull glowing red crystal from his pocket and clenched it in his fist. A red haze seemed to rip from his body, soaking into the gem. Again he screamed in agony. As the haze faded into the gem, the gem glowed – and the boy’s eyes were once more dull and lifeless. He put the now burning gem in his pocket, and pulled out a flask. The smell of Unicorn Horn filled the air. The mirror sighed. “You’ve forgotten again, haven’t you Ealdric? The other pocket, fool.” The boy took a sheet of paper from his other pocket. He read it – and drank from the flask.

  * * *

  December 1475, Near Bucharest

  The Angel’s wings were battered, feathers broken and twisted. Above him the sky twisted in a way that hurt even his eyes. It had, he thought, been a right bugger breaking in through the Paradox Storm, even with the Summoning’s power. He shook his head. Fuck it. He shouldn’t have thought the ‘bugger’ word. Adjusting to white wings wasn’t easy. He looked up. “Er, sorry boss.” He sighed. Two dead bodies. That wasn't unusual for anything Jack was involved in. Jack being one of them was pretty much a first. He looked up. The Paradox Storm was getting even stronger. It was going to be a right bug… er, rather a problem flying out again. Only the pentacle’s Summoning had let him find a path through. He sighed. “We’d better be bloody…” He looked up again, and almost apologized. He didn’t. “We’d better be bloody even after this, Shadow.” The Once-Fallen Angel Barbas leaned down and ran his hand over Jack's leather jacket. His fingers stopped on a lump other jackets wouldn’t have had. “Damn…” He looked up. “Sorry, sir. Old habits.” He looked down. “You really are a sneaky bastard, Jack.” A fingernail sliced at the leather. Emerald fragments fell from the tear into his hand. Barbas’ hand tensed, and he crushed the fragments of gem. A cloud spilled from his fingers and settled into the leather. The body coughed. Barbas' wings flapped, and he landed by the other corpse. At least Jack had taken her with him. Then Barbas looked at the corpse again. Something was wrong. The dead girl was lying with her head towards Jack. She'd fallen his way. If Jack had shot her, she'd have fallen back the other way. Which meant someone else had been here. Barbas sniffed. The air reeked of magic. And it was a smell he knew. It was Her. Stupid woman. Well, stupid not-woman. He’d never liked her anyway. But it looked like she'd found a new way to kill Jack now Barbas had never stolen the dragon's gem and - the Not-Fallen Angel winced. Remembering things that had never actually happened made his head hurt. A lot. It was almost enough to make him feel sorry for Haures – but only almost. As Fallen Angels go, the little bast… He looked up again. It was getting to be a habit. “Sorry, boss.”

  He grinned. “Bad call, Lil. You can’t kill what isn’t alive.” He stopped. The Stealer of Children wasn’t that stupid. And anyway, he wasn’t supposed to know about her plans, now he’d never been Fallen. But if She-He-Wasn’t-Supposed-to-Remember wasn’t stupid, maybe her Agents sometimes were. Which meant someone had screwed up. If they’d taken the jacket, he'd never have been able to bring Jack back. But they hadn’t, and the Paradox Storm was really boiling now. Which meant someone had killed Jack – but Jack wasn't dead. Which meant he’d lived, and stopped himself being killed – and hadn’t. Which for sure meant he was going to be pissed when he woke up. And Paradox Storms were a bitch. Nobody was going to get into this moment until Jack had done what he did best – or didn’t. But In was one thing. Out was easy. Barbas took the flask from a pocket he didn’t have, and the smell of Unicorn Horn filled the air. He set it by Jack, where he’d find it when he got round to not being dead. The Not-Fallen-Anymore Angel extended his battered wings. They flapped once - and Barbas was gone. The maybe-dead-but-always-Jack’s body coughed.

  The battle raged on. The Turks threw themselves on the blades and arrows of the Moldavian Guard, determined the one who led them was going to die. Jack frowned. It would have to wait. Right now, he had business to take care of. He just had no idea what it was. He opened the flask and drank.

  * * *

  The burning gem crumbled in the handsome boy’s hand, the fire seeping into his skin as it did. His no longer dull eyes looked round. He looked at the flask in his hand. He read the sheet of paper again. He took another dull glowing crystal from his pocket and clenched it in his fist again. The gem filled with fire, and his eyes dulled. His scream would have made it clear to anyone who was listening that it hurt just as much as last time. Again, the gem crumbled, the fire passing into him setting life in his eyes. They cleared – but they were frightened. It wasn’t just the severe absence of anything resembling a rampaging Turkish army. It wasn’t even the lack of a convenient dead body. Mostly it was the fact that nothing had changed at all. By all the Rules of Magic, still being where he was, in the office, was impossible. And since he was, in fact, where he was, that meant – well. He had no idea what it meant.

  In front of him, the mirror shattered. Behind him – the bullet ploughed into his head.

  Chapter Four

  Kissy, kissy – bang, bang

  Different day, same old same. As I kissed Mom goodbye, I lifted her watch. She went for the knife I keep in my boot. Which was cool – because I’d moved it into a sheath on my back, between my shoulder blades. I grinned. Any day I start out a winner is a good day. She grinned back – and waved my car keys under my nose. I grabbed my keys and pulled a face. We did the kiss-goodbye thing, and I turned the key. Mom didn’t know it – but today I wasn’t the only one going to school.

  The thing with High School, you want to bump into somebody, you don’t do it in class. You don’t hang by their locker, unless you’re either desperate or everyone knows you’re both already an item. But the Lunch Room’s cool. Besides - it gives you more flexibility. It gives you options. The Mystery Meat my ‘bump’ had transferred from my plate to CG’s chest was, if not elegant, satisfying. As my ‘bump’ threw the rest of my tray into his face I tried to stop it with my right hand. Not that I tried very hard. It was just a good way of slipping the note I was hiding down his open collar without being noticed. My foot hooked his ankle, and his jerk-back turned into more of a splat-flat as he hit the ground. I smiled. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I guess I must have missed you there.” I looked down at the Mystery Meat. “Or maybe I figured your dress sense needed some camouflage.” Then I took off. Anybody looking would figure it was just me territory marking. Like dogs, but – I remembered the look of the Mystery Meat nothing on earth was going to make me eat – wetter.

  Recess bell rang, and I made tracks. CG was right where the note had told him to be. Anyone saw us sneaking behind the bike rack shed would draw their own conclusions. Now I knew he was old enough to be my multi-great grand-pop, and young enough to be my kid brother, the thought was faintly eeew. But since no lips were gonna to be locking I shrugged it off.

  Like any guy, CG started off with dumb questions. My knee reminded him why dentists get to take so many holidays, and he switched to smart answers real quick. He wasn’t keen on the deal, but I told him it was the only way it was going to work. I figured if my new boss – and his – wanted Mom bad enough, he’d fold. When he made like wet paper I knew I’d figured right. He pulled a red-gold ring set with a ruby out of his pocket and muttered over it. Then he gave it to me. “This should do it. Just don’t let it fall off.”

  When things go easy, generally it’s time to get worried. “So you, like, just happened to have that ready, huh?” I scratched the back of my neck, just low enough to grab my knife.

  He sighed. “Idiot child. I’ve been casting spells for a thousand years. Hells, I could teach you to…” He must have seen me start to look interested. “Not, you understand, that I’m going to.” He sighed again. “Just don’t lose the bloody thing. And I mean bloody. That gold was yellow when it was dug out of the ground. Now if you’re going to throw that knife, would you like to get on with it?”

  I shrugged, and let go of the knife hilt. I slipped the ring on my finger, and blew her a kiss. It was game on – and momma was the bal
l.

  * * *

  The thing with following a pro is, they’re going to see you. Not maybe see you. Not probably see you. They are going. To see. You. Unless you’ve got a pavement team, and a real good one, it’s a done deal. And Mom was a pro’s pro. I’d followed her all over town and she hadn’t twitched. So I knew she knew I was there. Anyone else, she’d have wasted them or lost them, depending on how bored she was. But me – with me behind her she should have stepped out of an alley by now, and made me feel dumb.

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t followed her before – heck, that was part of why I’d planned it this way. We did it for training at least once a week. But I was supposed to be in school, and Mom was kind of big on at least pretending to be normal. And that wasn’t all. Because Mom wasn’t making it hard enough. She wasn’t stopping near store windows at bad angles, so the glass made like a mirror to check her six. She wasn’t doing the street car shuffle, she wasn’t – she wasn’t being Mom. She was being just about as ordinary as Mom never was. And that rang bells. Real bad alarm bells. Because that meant she was trying to put me off guard – or at least off balance. And that wasn’t all. She’d been trade-crafting. The blob of gum on a store window. The empty soda can thrown into the paper recycle, not the cans. Just the way she’d taught me, but in a code I didn’t know. Which meant – well, I had no idea what it meant, but whatever it was, it spelled t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

  Every trade, it has its little secrets. Like, how the store puts a rack of jeans out at some crazy high price, and nobody buys, and everyone says the store’s dumb. Then a week later, the same rack is there with a huge sale markdown and everyone buys them. Even though they’re the price the store always intended to sell at. And the store smiles to itself, and knows just how dumb to be. Well, momma’s trade was no different. When there’s Bad Guys around and you want to let your friends know, that’s how you do it. Like, if you put the blob of gum on the low end of the store window, then throw the soda can in the garbage, you’re saying everything’s fine. But if you put it, say, on the upper half of the window, and put the soda in the paper recycle, maybe you’re waving your friends off because you’re hot. Or maybe you’re telling them to load up and come running. But the code Mom was using wasn’t the Organisation’s – not the one she’d told me was theirs, at least – and it wasn’t our own private one. Which meant she was either playing with my head, or talking to someone else. And if talking to someone else was bad enough, what was worse was, I hadn’t seen them. The Someone. Or Someones. Suddenly today wasn’t looking as pretty for me as it had started out. Which would have been bad news with a capital oh-shit, if it wasn’t exactly how I’d planned it.

  Mom wasn’t doing what she should be doing, wasn’t using store windows as mirrors, wasn’t jumping buses, wasn’t making sudden changes in direction – nothing that would help her tag a tail. So either aliens had stolen my real Mom in the night and left an imposter, or she knew she had a tail already. Like I said. A pro’s always going to see you. Or in this case – see me. Because I’m good, but this wasn’t my best me. And anyway – once they’ve tagged you, the target always has the edge. So either Mom had given up on whatever she had been intending to do today and turned it into Shadowing 101, or – or she hadn’t. And a Bad Day was about to get a lot worse. For someone, anyway. If things worked out, that was going to be me. If they didn’t – well, it would still be me. But with a lot more blood. And the way Mom was tracking, today wasn’t a training day. If today had been a Jim Croce song (so sue me – I like grandma music), 42nd Street would have been way behind us, and we were headed places Big Jim Walker would have shat in his pants before going. The Middle-of-Nowhere Mom had brought us to this time wasn’t big on much. Even the train tracks held their noses passing through. And on the other side of those tracks were dark alleys even the night didn’t like going down.

  Alleys Mom was going into now.

  Mom had made me read maps of town until my eyes bugged. Maybe it was standard training. Either way, knowing where I was wasn’t anywhere near as good as knowing if anyone else was there, or round some corner. So I was checking my six, my ten – every number on the dial. So busy checking, in fact, I missed the alley Mom ducked down. And now really wasn’t the right time to get stupid. The alley she’d ducked into had to be one of two. Of course, the first one I looked in wasn’t it. Time was getting wasted, and that wasn’t part of the plan. Even though wasting definitely was.

  The other alley was right. Maybe too right. “Hey, SWAB. Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  I shrugged. “Double math, then Games.”

  “So you decided to play a different game, huh?”

  “Well, you always say you can’t ever be trained enough, right?”

  “Why, I suppose I do.” Mom grinned. Then she didn’t. “Bad move, honey.” Mom’s hand didn’t move much, but her gun was in it, pressed against my temple. “Real bad.” Then she pulled the trigger. Once – twice. I fell to the ground.

  That was when the me not lying dead on the ground stepped into the alley. The real me. My hand went under my skirt. I pulled my Glock – and I blew my fucking Mom’s fucking head off.

  Sonata

  Esposizione - Primo Movimento

  Washington D.C. - 350 And Down

  “I’m telling you, P. I knew her!”

  The woman in an elegant evening gown extruded a tentacle and tapped her teeth. “So who is she then, Jack?”

  The man in the leather jacket grimaced. “That’s the thing, P. I knew her – but I’ve absolutely no idea who she is. I’ve never seen her before in my life. And that’s not the problem.”

  The woman with a tentacle raised an eyebrow. “It isn’t?”

  “No. It isn’t. The problem is – I didn’t know she was there. And I always know, P. Always. Comes with the package.”

  “So how? How do you know?”

  “What?” The man in the leather jacket looked confused. He wasn’t very good at it.

  “Jack. So you didn’t know she was there. So she killed you. Which is bad – but you’re still here.” Prowess paused. “Hmmm. That’s two questions. Why are you still here, Jack? I mean, instead of being dead?”

  Jack shrugged again. “That’s the easy one. I can feel the Paradox Storm from here. I must have nudged me. Which is another problem entirely.”

  “Why you, Jack?

  “Because he’s supposed to be the only one who can. And he must have, because he’s here. Alive. And I know that’s true. But since that’s absolutely impossible, he can’t have. So he’s not here. He’s dead. Really, totally dead. And I bloody well know that’s true too. Oh, my head!” The man with the skin of a leopard spat. “Damn you, Jack. If you weren’t already dead, I’d bloody kill you.” Haures, Great Duke of Hell and undercover agent for Heaven, clutched his temple, and looked down. “Bugger. Jack. Do be a dear. Go back and draw this damn triangle I’m standing in?”

  Prowess looked at the floor under Haures. “Er – what triangle?”

  Haures sighed. “Exactly, woman. Or not-woman. I’m here. So someone must have summoned me. And we’d all be a lot bloody happier if that was Jack, yes? As opposed, say, to some mysterious secret enemy who knows all about his secret hiding… Ow! My head!”

  The man in the leather jacket sighed. He pulled a bottle from a pocket. As he opened it, an acrid smell filled the air. Any nearby virgins might have known what it was – but they were getting hard to find. He swallowed from the bottle. For a moment, he seemed to shimmer, then he was solid. A mystic triangle surrounded the Great Duke of Headaches. Haures grinned, if only weakly. “Well. That’s better. A little bit, anyway. One down…” his lips moved, as though counting “Well, one down, and rather too many to go. Headaches, I mean. So, Jack. Where do you want to start?”

  Chapter Five

  Dead girl talking

  “It’s a bloody good thing she likes head shots.”

  The dead me lying in the alley shimmered, and CG went back to looking Cute. As op
posed to looking like me. Not that I’m not cute. Hell, I’m the cutest damn thing there is. CG wasn’t bad either, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Not unless he bought me dinner. Or at least dinner. “Oh, don’t be a wuss. I know” I looked down at dead-mom “Ok, so I knew Mom. She does great head.” As I slipped off the ring on my finger I did my own shimmering, and the nondescript guy I’d been looking like so I could follow CG-me and Mom was gone. “Here.” I tossed him the ring.

  CG snatched the ring out of the air. “Don’t be a smartass.”

  I smiled. “I’m glad you noticed.” I did a bump and grind that would have made Vegas proud.

  He flushed. I made a mental note to make him do it more often. “Never mind that. You screwed up!”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Typical male. If screwing’s what’s on your mind, I’m the best there is. But in this case – things went exactly to plan.”

  “Plan? The hell it did! We needed – L needed – to know if your mother was selling us out! You said we’d follow her and find out, and you’d take care of things if they went wrong!”

  “Oh. That plan.” I grinned. “So I lied.”

  “What?”

  “Look, CG – hey. I know it’s fun and all, but I can’t keep calling you CG. What’s your name?”