Crossroads

by Stephen Kenson

  “It concerns a man you knew named Jason Vale . . .”

  I took an involuntary step back as the memories relumed in a rush of images and feelings.

  “You did know him, didn’t you?” she said and I hated her right then for forcing me to remember.

  “Oh, yes.” I muttered. “I knew him.”

  How could I forget the night I met Jase, the night I was certain I was going to die? Huddled in a dank corner of an abandoned squat, I didn’t really care whether I lived or not, as long as the strange things I was seeing and feeling would stop. I didn’t know it then, but my newly awakened astral senses were open to all the emotional impressions and ghosts lingering in the Rox, the worst neighborhood in Boston. The place where I grew up. I could sense it all, and I was sure I was going mad.

  The images and sensations had been getting worse and worse. The bliss I took deadened things enough that I was able to ignore them, but I was coming down off my last dose and I’d used up all my meager nuyen to buy that. If I wanted any more of the drug—or anything to eat, for that matter—I would probably have to start selling myself down on the Strip or the Combat Zone, like some of the other street kids I knew. I was sixteen years old and completely alone in the world.

  As the drugged euphoria faded, it was replaced by a dull, throbbing pain. I could see strangely colored shadows dart and flit through the debris, into and out of sight. A faint glow surrounded my body out of the corner of my eye. I felt sick and started to sweat, despite the late autumn chill blowing in through the cracked plastiglass window. It would be much colder soon enough, but the coming of winter was the least of my worries at the time.

  A creak echoed through the squat. Someone was coming up the stairs. My hands fumbled for the rust-spotted switchblade in my pocket, but I couldn’t seem to make them function because of the lingering euphoric high of the drug. It was most likely another squatter, looking for a place to sleep out of the wind, but it could be some chipped-out nutcase or worse. I’d heard, too, that ghouls sometimes came out of the Catacombs at night to hunt and scavenge in the squats and mostly deserted areas of the Rox.

  The sound came closer, and I tried vainly to crawl over to the nearest heap of refuse and hide myself. It was all I could do to raise my head and try to look defiant. The door creaked open and a pair of figures entered, silhouetted by the faint light from the hall. I was going to say something to make them back off, but the after-effects of the bliss made my throat so dry that all I could manage was a croaking cough. It elicited a low grunt from one of the figures, like a chuckle.

  The figures shuffled closer, and I could just see them through the faint neon and moonlight coming through the cracked and dirty windows. They were both hairless, dressed in rags, with scabrous, rough gray skin. Their crooked hands were tipped with dark claws and their mouths lined with sharp, pointed teeth. Their eyes were dead-white and looked out onto nothing, but they moved toward me with unerring accuracy, sniffing the air slightly. Around each of them was a dark glow that sent waves of emotion battering into me: caution, excitement, eagerness and, above it all, hunger, terrible gnawing hunger. Ghouls. I was a dead man for sure.

  They started to close in, splitting up to circle around either side of me. I couldn’t move. I just stared in horror at them. The force of their feelings pinned me to the floor like a mouse facing a snake. A dark tongue emerged from the mouth of one and he licked his lips.

  The figures approached and I tensed, waiting for a ghoulish set of claws at my throat. Instead, I heard a voice that rang out in the silence of the squat.

  "STOP!” it shouted. “Leave him alone!”

  I looked up and saw something that made me sure the bliss was making me hallucinate ... or that I’d finally gone totally wacked. A glowing figure, robed in garments of light and carrying a long wooden staff, stepped through the wall of the room like it wasn’t even there. His presence seemed to light up the room in a cascade of golden light. The ghouls shrank back from the glow and hissed.

  “He is under my protection.” the shining man said in a forceful voice. His features were like a marble statue, pure, refined, chiseled, and pale. Even his flesh seemed to glow from within and his eyes were like pits of green fire. He was beautiful. For a moment I recalled everything I’d been taught about angels by the Catholic Family Mission where I’d grown up. Right then and there, staring up at that shining figure, I was ready to believe they existed.

  The ghouls were startled by the shining man’s initial appearance, but they quickly recovered. They didn’t intend to be cheated of their dinner, and they started moving toward the intruder. He calmly held his staff in front of him in both hands. I noticed that his feet didn’t even touch the floor. He hovered about five or six centimeters above it.

  With a strangled cry, one of the ghouls rushed him and the staff flashed out. The ghoul fell back, screaming in pain. The staff swung again, and again, tracing faint arcs of light in the air where it passed. With each swing the ghouls cried out and backed away from the figure, who glowed like an avenging angel.

  “Out!” he cried, and swung the staff one more time. The ghouls broke and scurried away, whimpering and whining. I could hear the sounds of their retreat fade into the distance as I looked up at my shining savior with little or no comprehension of what had just happened. At that point, I still wasn’t sure the whole thing wasn’t just a bliss-induced hallucination.

  A gentle hand touched my shoulder and I heard the stranger whisper, “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right. You’re safe now.” He started to sing in a low and quiet tone. As I tried to follow the tune, I drifted off to sleep, feeling very safe and secure.

  I awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed. Bed? I was in a bed, a real bed. There was a brightly colored Indian blanket thrown over me. The bliss hangover was gone and I was still weak and sore, but I felt better than I had in weeks.

  I looked around the room. It was the main room of a small apartment. Most of the wall space was taken up by rows of bookshelves made of old bricks and scraps of wood and construction plastic. On those shelves were more books than I had ever seen in my whole life, dozens of them. Real hardcopy books, not just optical chips or CDs, although I saw a small stack of those, too, next to a small chip-reader.

  The rest of the place was done in soothing tones of tan and brown and gold. There were a couple of chairs and a small table that looked like a desk. The bed where I sat looked like it served most of its time as a sofa.

  I began to wonder how I had gotten here, then I remembered the shining stranger and the weird song he sang. I glanced over as the door swung open and a young man entered, carrying a steaming earthenware bowl on a tray.

  He was in his early twenties, I’d say, with a thatch of unruly black hair. He had a pointed chin, an easy smile, and a small scattering of freckles across his straight nose that all hinted at an Irish ancestor. His eyes were a shade of sea green that made them seem to look right through you. He was wearing a pair of well-worn black jeans and a white T-shirt with something written in bold red Japanese characters on the front. Hanging from a black cord around his neck was a small five-pointed star within a circle, made of silver.

  “Well.” he said, “good to see you up. Try and drink some of this. It will help you get your strength back.” He set the tray holding the bowl of steaming broth down nearby. I looked at him for a moment and wondered if I should trust him. He could be a pimp—someone who picked up squatter kids and then got them hooked so that they would work for him—but this place didn’t look like the kind of doss where a pusher or pimp would live, nor did he really look the type.

  “Don’t worry. It’s not spiked or anything.” he said as if reading my mind. “I spent too much effort getting you clean just to try and hook you on something again.” To prove it, he took a sip from the bowl and put it back on the tray. I took the broth and drank it slowly. It seemed like the best thing I’d ever tasted and it did make me feel better. The mysterious stranger just sat silently in
a chair and watched me as I finished it off.

  “Who are you.” I asked, “and why are you helping me?”

  He smiled and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You don’t recognize me, do you? But then you probably wouldn’t. I looked somewhat different last night.”

  I stared closer at his face and I could see the shadow of the shining man. The hair had been a bit longer, and the face more refined, but it was definitely the same face. He wore different clothes and there was no staff. No halo of light surrounded him, but I was sure he was the same person.

  “You saved me from the ghouls.” I said slowly.

  “Yes.” he said, making a face. “I don’t like ghouls in general, but I especially don’t like ones who hunt people in the Rox.”

  I sat up a bit more in bed and set the broth bowl on the table. “What's your name?” I asked.

  “Names have power.” he said sternly and I was taken aback. His expression softened and he smiled again. “It’s not always polite to ask someone’s name. Better to ask what they prefer to be called. They call me Jase. How about you?”

  “Talon.” I said. At his curious look I quickly added, “Er, Tommy. Talon is just sort of a nickname, I... I don't have a real last name.”

  “Okay, Talon.” he said, not questioning me further. “As to why I’m helping you . . . let’s say we’re kindred spirits. I know you’ve been having a tough time with the awakening of your Talent.”

  “Awakening? Talent? What the frag are you talking about?”

  He touched the star at his throat and said, “Magic.”

  I felt a chill go up my spine. I knew, just like everybody, that magic had come back to the world and that magicians, ghosts, and dragons were a reality. The native Americans, led by the Ghost Dance prophet, Howling Coyote, had used their magic to reclaim much of their lost land and form the Native American Nations. Magic was a reality, but few people ever saw a real magician. I certainly never had, until that moment.

  “You’re a . . . wizard?”

  “It’s as good a name as any, I suppose.” he said. “Yes, I’m a magician, but don’t be too impressed. As you'll learn, magic is more a state of mind than anything. Unless I miss my guess, you’re a magician, too.”

  I refocused my eyes on the black pit of the gun barrel and yanked my thoughts out of the past. The woman still regarded me coolly over the gun.

  “That’s how I knew Jason Vale.” I said. “He saved my life when I first discovered my Talent and taught me how to use it.”

  She looked slightly surprised for the first time, and her gaze flicked from my feet to my face as if she were getting a second look.

  The gun barrel dropped about ten centimeters. I decided to take that as an opening. “So tell me, what does all this have to do with Jase?”

  “Someone wants to kill me, and maybe you, too. Because of him and something he was involved with.”

  “What?” I said.

  She took a deep breath and started to explain. “I was hired by a Mr. Johnson to—” The crack of shattering plastiglass cut her off as a small, roundish object crashed through the window and tumbled into the room.

  GRENADE!

  Everything went into automatic as time seemed to slow to a crawl. I hit the floor and rolled behind the heavy steamer trunk I used as a coffee table. There was a dull “wumph” as the grenade went off, and a thick, white mist filled the room. Almost immediately my eyes began burning and I started coughing. Tear gas!

  I crawled toward the door on knees and elbows and nearly bumped heads with my uninvited guest as she did the same. When she reached for the doorknob, I grabbed her hand and shook my head.

  Holding the bottom of my coat over my nose and mouth, I choked out a phrase in Latin, extending my senses beyond the door and the walls of my apartment. Suspicions confirmed I stood up, eyes burning and streaming profusely now, and thrust my hand toward the door, palm out as I coughed out a single sharp word.

  The door exploded outward like it was hit by a bullet train. I heard shouts of surprise and pain as the thugs waiting in the hall were struck by jagged fragments of flying synthwood. A gun roared and blasted chunks of wood and plaster from the ceiling as its startled wielder fell backward, clutching at the bloody piece of door protruding from his throat.

  There were two other attackers awaiting me as I stepped out into the hall. One ork and a human woman who looked to be hyped up on something, whether drugs, magic, or wire, I couldn't say. The third guy was down and bleeding from the throat wound. I turned toward the ork and thrust my hands forward as though holding an invisible ball between them. Pale magelight flickered around them like heat rising off a summer highway, and the ork took a step forward, raising his gun. Then his eyes glazed and blood began to run out of his nose and ears as he toppled forward like a poleaxed cow.

  I began turning toward the woman, but she was too fast. As she brought her gun to bear I started casting a protection spell, knowing I wouldn’t be nearly quick enough. My attacker knew it, too, and she gave me a nasty, feral grin that showed her sharpened canine implants before tightening her finger on the trigger.

  The smile vanished in a red mist as half her head exploded, sending bits of bone and brain splattering all over the hallway. I turned to see my recent guest standing back near the doorway holding the smoking Ares Predator that had been pointed at me only a minute ago. Her eyes were red and puffy and tears steamed down her cheeks as the gas slowly drifted out of the broken doorway. I picked my hat up from the ruins of the door and started dusting it off.

  “Thanks.” I coughed.

  “You’re welcome.” she said. “For the time being, it seems like we need each other.” I wasn’t about the argue with her assessment right then. Especially since she seemed to be right.

  “Looks like you were right about someone out to get one or both of us, and the fact that they hit us with a grenade says they probably have friends outside. Do you have any connections here in DeeCee?”

  She shook her head numbly.

  Frag. That figured. The security for my building was pretty decent, Assets saw to that, so the cops would be here any minute now. Right at the moment, I didn’t feel like giving a long explanation to the authorities and testing out the strength of the legal identity Jane-in-the-Box had set up for me here in DeeCee.

  “My car’s around back.” I told her. “We can try getting out that way. I know a place where we can go and finish our little chat.”

  I reached inside the apartment and grabbed the kit bag I always left sitting near the door. I made a habit of keeping all my “necessities” handy in case I had to book in a hurry. With Assets, there were always runs coming up at a moment’s notice, and I wanted to be able to roll out just as fast. When you ran the shadows, disappearing was a habit you got into.

  My guest ran back to the chair and retrieved a narrow case on a shoulder strap. I had hung with Jane-in-the-Box and other deckers long enough to know it was a cyberdeck carrying case, which only made me more curious about what this lady knew.

  I led the way downstairs to the back door. We didn't encounter any more muscle, and I was grateful for living in Rockville right then. The rest of the tenants knew enough to keep their doors closed and locked and pretend they didn’t hear anything when the shots rang out earlier. They would wait for the cops to show before they poked their heads out, which was just fine by me If I’d lived in a real high-class neighborhood like Ryan thought I should, the cops would already be all over the place. Of course, if I lived in a high-class neighborhood, people probably wouldn’t be tossing grenades in my window, either.

  The back parking lot was pretty dark. Fate had chosen last night for the local go-gang to shoot out most of the working lights, and the building superintendent hadn’t bothered to fix them yet. As we moved over to my trusty steed I hit the remote control in my coat pocket to disarm the security system. I felt my companion come up short behind me.

  “How’s your driving?” I said.
r />   “Why me?” she asked.

  “Because I want to have my attention free in case somebody else wants in on this little party, okay? Doing magic can make it hard to concentrate on mundane things like staying on the road.”

  "So ka. ” She popped open the driver’s door and climbed in while I moved around to the passenger side. I paused for a moment to close my eyes and whisper a phrase under my breath, then got in.

  “What was that, a prayer?”

  “Something like that.” I gave her the ignition code and she punched it into the car’s keypad, bringing the engine humming to life. She opened the small panel to the right of the steering column and pulled out a length of optical cable terminating in a connector, which she plugged into the chrome-lipped jack behind her ear. It gave her access and control over the car’s auto-pilot and other systems. I didn’t use it all that much, myself. Despite the hardware in my head, I preferred to do most things the old-fashioned way.

  “It’s not rigged.” I said, though she already knew that. I didn’t have the complex cyber riggers used to make themselves nearly one with the machines they operated. Aside from the fact that it would probably cripple my magic, the whole idea kind of frightened me. Merging that much with a machine just wasn’t natural, if you asked me.

  She nodded. “That’s chill. I’m not wired for it.” She threw the car into reverse and pulled out of the space. “But I think I can manage.”

  We moved out of the lot with the headlights off. When we reached the street, I directed her to turn right, then hit the lights when we had gone about a block. A Ford Americar appeared around a corner about three blocks behind us. “Should we try and lose them?”

  “Just a tick.” I closed my eyes and traced a symbol in the air with my index finger like I had in my apartment. A strong impression of danger filled my mind.

  “Gun it.” I said. She hit the accelerator and we shot ahead, but the driver of the Americar compensated quickly and gave chase. Suddenly the chatter of automatic gunfire split the night, and the rounds sparked off the pavement as we took a corner.