Twenty Palaces: A Prequel

by Harry Connolly

  He made me retell Wally's part of the story, and the trip to Nettle Philip's house, too. We talked about where Wally might have gone and what he looked like. I had the impression my old friend was a new priority for the Twenty Palace Society. Good. I hoped they made life interesting for him. Interesting and short.

  We also talked about the cousins, how they behaved and what they looked like. Maybe he was putting together a pamphlet.

  Again I expected to be put out of my misery at the end of the meeting, and again it didn't happen. This time the friend left me alone with his associate. I had a lawyer.

  We worked out a story that played off the throwaway comment I'd made to my uncle and Skullface: Jon and his friends had gotten a mysterious designer drug from their pal Wally. It made people hallucinate and eventually drove him cannibal crazy.

  What the hell. It wasn't too far from the truth.

  Finally, at my arraignment, all the charges were dropped. If there's an ultimate improbable miracle in my whole story of magic and strangeness, that's it.

  The police had too many loose ends they couldn't explain. Jon's, Macy's and Payton's bodies were in a condition no one could satisfactorily explain. The police reports said he was running across the field but the coroner's report said he was a corpse without a brain, and that he'd been one for days--days in which he'd appeared on the news, on hotel security cameras and in which he'd killed his whole family.

  Autopsies on Jon, Macy, and Payton revealed human flesh in their stomachs. While I was unconscious, my stomach had been pumped, too, but nothing had been found but bile.

  The police car I'd stolen was full of bloody fingerprints, but apparently none of them matched mine. They even ran DNA matches, but for whatever reason--their own incompetence, I assumed--they couldn't place me in the stolen cop car. What happened to the footage of me waving at the news camera from behind the wheel, I never found out.

  Finally, there were the numerous witnesses, from the homeless guy at the copy shop to Hank. I found out Skullface had spent an afternoon sipping lemonade with Aunt Theresa, and whatever she told him, he left believing that I'd saved him and his daughter from madness and cannibalism. He'd been the one to hire a hand surgeon from somewhere back east to reconstruct my hand.

  I learned all this after the fact, when my lawyer let me watch the video testimony he'd given. He even did a couple bedside TV interviews, going on the news several times to call me a hero.

  That was not something I expected to hear. No one should be called a hero because he'd killed his oldest friend. No one should be called a hero because he promised to save someone and failed.

  Of course, if I'd turned Jon and his friends over to the society right away, I would have saved the lives of Andrea, Oscar, Bingo, and thirteen other people--some I hadn't known anything about. But I couldn't betray my friend.

  I didn't feel like a hero. Still, I never got the chance to thank Skullface; his cancer took him before I got my walking papers.

  So the case against me was full of holes, I had a wealthy supporter, and a high-priced lawyer. On one sunny spring afternoon, I walked out of the courthouse as free man, squinting from the sunlight. The lawyer (I had never thought of him as "my lawyer") shook my hand and hustled down the steps, no doubt to make up his bill.

  I looked around, amazed to be a free man again. There, at the curb, leaning against her motorcycle, was Annalise. She was watching me. Waiting for me.

  I wasn't surprised. The society sprung me from jail so they could dispose of me in private. Fine. I expected it.

  Uncle Karl and Aunt Theresa met me at the bottom of the steps. Uncle Karl shook my hand. Aunt Theresa threw her arms around me. The cast had come off her arm, but it still looked like skin stretched over bare bone. She didn't complain.

  She pressed a ring of keys into my hand. It was a copy of the keys to their rebuilt house. I gave it back. "I'm sorry," I said, and I walked toward Annalise.

  She scowled at me as I approached. I wondered if she would kill me right there in front of the courthouse or if she'd take me somewhere first. "Thank Callin for my lawyer," I said.

  "Thank him yourself." She took my ghost knife from her pocket and offered it to me.

  I didn't accept it. "You're not going to kill me?"

  She took a helmet off the back of the motorcycle and tucked it under her arm. "No. Those are my orders--my punishment, actually, for attacking Callin a second time. And, according to the peers, you've earned a second chance. You're still my wooden man.

  "But," she continued, "if you refuse to work for me or don't do what I tell you to do, I have the society's permission to kill you."

  I took the ghost knife. I felt something that might have been relief, but it was too mixed up for such a simple label. I noticed she had a second helmet and I put it on. It sorta fit.

  "I have a job right now," she said as she pulled on her own helmet. "It's a dangerous job. Very dangerous." She looked at me like I was an undercooked piece of meat.

  I climbed on. She revved the engine, sped off down the street and we headed into traffic.

  THE END

  Child of Fire, Harry Connolly's debut novel and the first in The Twenty Palaces series, was named to Publishers Weekly's Best 100 Novels of 2009. The sequel, Game of Cages, was released in 2010 and the third book, Circle of Enemies, came out in the fall of 2011.

  Harry lives in Seattle with his beloved wife, his beloved son, and his beloved library system. You can find him online at: http://www.harryjconnolly.com

  Praise for the Twenty Palaces novels:

  "[Child of Fire] is excellent reading and has a lot of things I love in a book: a truly dark and sinister world, delicious tension and suspense, violence so gritty you'll get something in your eye just reading it, and a gorgeously flawed protagonist. Take this one to the checkout counter. Seriously." -- Jim Butcher

  "Connolly doesn't shy away from tackling big philosophical issues . . . amid gory action scenes and plenty of rapid-fire sardonic dialogue."--Publishers Weekly (starred review), on Game of Cages

  "An edge-of-the-seat read! Ray Lilly is the new high-water mark of paranormal noir."

  --Charles Stross

  Sample of

  CHILD OF FIRE

  CHAPTER ONE

  It felt good to sit behind the wheel again, even the wheel of a battered Dodge Sprinter. Even with this passenger beside me.

  The van rumbled like a garbage truck, handled like a refrigerator box, and needed a full minute to reach highway speeds. I'd driven better, but I'm a guy who has to take what I can get while I'm still alive to get it.

  The passenger beside me was Annalise Powliss. She stood about five foot nothing, was as thin as a mop handle, and was covered with tattoos from the neck down. Her hair was the same dark red as the circled F's I used to get on my book reports, and she wore it cropped close to her scalp. It was an ugly cut, but she never seemed to care how she looked. I suspected she cut it herself.

  She was my boss, and she had been forbidden to kill me, although that's what she most wanted to do.

  "Where are we going?" I asked for the fourth time.

  She didn't answer. She wasn't talking to me except to tell me where to drive. To be honest, I didn't blame her. She had good reason to hate me.

  At the moment, though, she and I had a job to do and all I knew about it was this: Annalise was on her way to kill someone. Maybe several someones. I was supposed to help.

  Because she wouldn't talk to me, I was not entirely clear who had ordered her not to kill me or why they would bother. I was just the driver, and I didn't even know where we were going.

  "Quarter tank," I said as we approached a gas station. I hated to drive on less than a half tank of gas, but so far the boss had refused to let me fill up. Since she had the money, the title, and the physical strength to tear my arm off, she made the decisions.

  She glanced down at the scrap of wood in her hand--unpainted and unfinished except for the twisted nonsense shape made of s
everal colors on one side--and said nothing. I stifled my irritation and drove past the pumps.

  We were westbound somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula. There were no other cars on the road. The streets were slick with misting rain, and the sky was growing dark as evening approached. After my years in Southern California, I'd forgotten how long it could take for night to fall in this part of the world.

  The road was one of those rural highways with one lane in each direction and a speed limit of fifty-five. I was staying below the limit because the van, with its balding tires, whining brakes, and load of equipment in the back, wasn't equipped for the twists and turns of backwoods driving.

  I was enjoying the drive anyway. I had a key to the door and I could see the sky. It felt good to be a free man again.

  Up ahead, I saw a big cedar right up close to the road. Annalise was not wearing her seat belt. I was wearing mine. The speedometer on the Sprinter shuddered at the fifty-miles-per-hour mark. All I had to do was swerve. She and her little scrap of lumber would fly through the windshield and slam against the tree, while I would be safe in the arms of the shoulder harness and air bag.

  I didn't try it. It wasn't just the motorcycle Annalise kept on flimsy mounts in the cargo area behind me. In truth, I doubted that slamming face-first into a tree trunk would do more than muss her thrift-shop clothes. And piss her off. She'd survived worse. I'd seen it.

  I was pretty sure Annalise wasn't a human being. She had been, once, I thought, but I wasn't sure what she was now.

  A Volvo station wagon with luggage strapped to the roof drove eastbound toward us. As it passed, the painted scrap wood in Annalise's hand flashed like a camera flashbulb. The design painted on the face of the wood began to twist like a nest full of snakes.

  Annalise lunged toward me. "Turn around!" she yelled. She had a high, funny voice more suited to a cartoon squirrel than a grown woman. "Turn around and follow that station wagon!"

  I was already doing it. I hit the brakes and twisted the wheel, letting the clumsy van fishtail as much as I dared. I heard crashing noises from behind me as Annalise's things toppled over. We came to a rest, and I threw it in reverse.

  "Let's go! Goddammit, hurry up!"

  "Keep your shirt on."

  I backed up onto the shoulder, swung the wheel all the way around, and stomped on the gas. We crept after the station wagon.

  "Goddammit, Ray," Annalise growled. She was very close to my ear, and I could hear the hate in her voice. "If you let them get away, I'm going to tear you apart."

  "Oh yeah? Who are you going to find who can reach the gas pedal?" I said. My voice betrayed too much fear. When Annalise threatened to tear someone apart, she meant it literally. "This is your broken-down van. If we don't catch them, you can blame yourself for not buying better wheels."

  She settled back into her seat and glared through the windshield at the empty road ahead.

  I forced myself to smile at her. "Isn't this nice? Our first job together and we're getting along so well." It was stupid and dangerous to taunt her, but I was afraid of her and I hated to show my fear.

  She ignored me, for which I was secretly grateful.

  We picked up speed, rounding curves and topping hills the van could barely handle. Night was coming and the forest around us was filling with shadows. I switched on the headlights, but Annalise snarled at me to turn them off.

  A red light flashed from between the trees on the right. I slowed. Annalise started to protest, but I shushed her. She didn't look pleased about that.

  We came to a break in the forest--a gravel parking lot with a row of abandoned wooden stalls at the back. It looked like it had once been a roadside farmer's stand. The station wagon was parked at the far end, red brake lights glowing.

  I parked a couple of car lengths away from the vehicle and jumped from the van as quickly as I could. Annalise was a little faster. She walked toward them, holding the fist-sized scrap of wood in her hand like a Geiger counter. The design on it writhed wildly; something about the car or the people in it was setting it off.

  All the wagon's side doors stood open. A man and woman had their head and shoulders in the back doors, and they were working frantically at something. I checked their stuff. Among the things strapped to their roof was a vacuum cleaner in a clear plastic trash bag beaded with rain. These people weren't on a camping trip. They were skipping town.

  All I could see of the man was a pair of extra-wide Dockers and the pale skin that peeked above his sagging waistband. Office worker, I thought. He must have heard us approach, but he didn't turn to look at us. Was he completely engrossed, or did he have a weak survival instinct? Out of unshakable habit, my next thought was: Victim.

  No, no. I pushed the thought away. That was not part of my life anymore.

  From what I could see through the car windows, the woman was also wider than strictly necessary and also dressed for casual day at the office. They continued to struggle with something in the backseat.

  I felt a pressure against my chest, just below my right collarbone. Strange. I tried to ignore it and said, "Do you folks need any help?"

  The woman glanced up, noticing us for the first time. She had a terrified look on her face, but I knew it had nothing to do with Annalise or me. Her husband glanced back as he came out of the backseat. His glasses were smeary from the drizzle. "No," he said too quickly. "We're fine."

  The pressure against my chest increased.

  Then their little boy climbed out of the car.

  He was a good-looking kid, maybe eight or nine years old, although I'm no judge. His hair stuck up in the back, and he had scrapes on both elbows. "I feel funny, Dad," he said. He laid his hands on his chest and pressed. "I feel squishy."

  Flames erupted around his head.

  I felt light-headed suddenly, and the pressure against my chest vanished. Before I could think about it, I ran toward them, stripping off my jacket.

  The woman screamed. The flames around the boy's head spread downward past his crotch. In an instant, his whole body was ablaze.

  The father fumbled for a jacket draped over the driver's seat. I heard Annalise's footsteps behind me.

  "Wow!" the boy said. "It doesn't hurt, Daddy. It doesn't hurt at all."

  The father lunged at his boy with the jacket, knocking him to the gravel, then beating at the flames. I got there a half second later and slapped my jacket over the boy's face and head.

  Rain steamed off the burning body. Beside me, the father made a noise like a strangled dog. I tried not to think about that. I tried not to notice the black scorch marks where the flames touched the ground. I tried not to think about what was happening. I just worked at the flames. I slapped at them, smothered them, wrapped them in my jacket.

  It was no good. The fire flared up and my jacket erupted in flames. I threw it aside and started to drag my shirt over my head.

  The kid laughed as though we were tickling him. Then his skin turned silver-gray and his whole head came apart.

  The flames roared. A wave of heat forced me back. The father rolled back onto his padded behind, almost bowling over his wife as she rushed around the car toward us.

  I let my backward momentum roll me onto my feet. Annalise stood nearby. She had unbuttoned the fireman's jacket she always wore, revealing colored ribbons alligator-clipped to her clothes. She pulled a green one free. The small sigil drawn on the bottom glowed with silvery light.

  I turned back to the family. The boy's head, arms, and chest had come apart and been transformed into a mass of fat, wriggling, silver-gray worms, each about the size of my pinkie. Then his stomach came apart, then his hips. It happened so fast I had no chance to think about it. I saw the worms twisting themselves against the packed gravel, trying to burrow into the earth. They swarmed over one another, heading west. Everything they touched turned black with scorched, greasy soot.

  I felt a tightness in my throat that might have been the urge to vomit, but there was nothing to bring up. I was com
pletely hollow inside.

  The father struggled to his feet, and his wife tried to move around him to her son. The expression on her face told me she already knew the truth, already knew her son was gone, but she could no more stay away from his disintegrating body than she could leap up into the clouds.

  I tackled them. My shoulder sank into the father's broad, soft belly, and I grabbed the mother around the waist. With all my strength, I pushed them away from the car.

  I didn't look back at Annalise. I didn't have to. I knew very well what those green ribbons did and how little she cared about collateral damage.

  The father and mother stumbled backward and fell over each other, hitting the gravel hard. I landed on their legs.

  I heard a whoosh of fire behind me. Annalise's green ribbon had hit its target. I glanced back and saw flames, green ones this time, roar up around the wriggling mass that had once been a boy's body. Where the flames touched them, the gray worms burst apart.

  The sphere of green fire expanded. I pulled in my legs, trying to get away, but I was too late. The cold green fire washed over me.

  I sucked in a lungful of air to scream my life away. It was too soon. Too soon. I looked down at my legs, expecting them to burn away to blackened, smoking bones.

  It didn't happen. There was no pain, no damage to my legs, nothing. My clothes didn't even burn. I felt nothing more than a slight pressure below my collarbone--a place the flames did not even reach.

  The flames receded. I was undamaged. So were the parents. I had pushed them out of range just in time.

  The worms had not fared so well. There was nothing left of them but gray slime.

  "Holy God," the mother said, her voice thin and strained. Her face was slack and her eyes were glassy. If I hadn't pushed her away, she would have been killed along with her son--another person struck down for no other reason than she was next to someone Annalise wanted to kill.