High Voltage

by Karen Marie Moning

  The euro still ruled, second to brute-force and black-market racketeering. Dublin had quickly relapsed into that elaborate conspiracy of pretending meaningless pieces of paper were worth something, which worked for me. I’d pilfered a pile of currency I found stashed in a storage room deep in Chester’s. One of ten storage rooms, crammed with currency from too many countries to count, much of it intriguingly ancient.

  Though cell towers functioned reliably for the most part, the Internet was in sad shape, vast chunks of it missing. With so much of the human race gone, enormous areas of the planet lacked both the power and manpower to run things. Compounded by magic making things unpredictable, books once again commanded a premium.

  I needed information about Ireland’s gods and goddesses. I’d never given them much of a thought. I preferred superheroes and had spent far more time poring over comics and graphic novels. Who was AOZ and what was his modus operandi for tripping people up with their own wishes?

  While uncovering their legends perhaps I’d stumble across a story about a god that had long ago been wont to abduct adults, leaving their children behind. Discover the why of it, a name. A way to defeat him. Granted, a contemporary book wouldn’t yield nearly the detailed information of the abbey’s private libraries, but it was as good a place to start as any.

  Beast first.

  I decided, even though BB&B was gone, to head straight there. Not only was it closer, but the wards were decidedly Barrons-esque. Perhaps both owner and establishment had miraculously reappeared; one could always hope. Besides, when I’d discovered it missing the other day, I’d not scouted the lots with my customary attention to detail, aggravated by its disappearance and on the trail of prey. If BB&B yielded nothing, I’d head straight for Chester’s.

  As I moved briskly across Ha’Penny Bridge and entered the south side of Dublin, I encountered my second anomaly of the day.

  It was Saturday, but this morning at seven-thirty the streets teemed with people in suits and dresses who looked suspiciously as if they were going to work. As a pedestrian plowed down the sidewalk toward me—a woman in her late twenties or early thirties who was peering intently down at her cellphone—I said politely, “Pardon, what day is it?”

  She raised her head, absorbed me, noting the hilt of my sword poking over my shoulder, the many bulges in my pockets, perhaps she just didn’t like my face. Her eyes narrowed, she clutched her purse more tightly and darted around me, sprinting off in high heels.

  I glared at her retreating back, “Right, because monsters don’t exist and you don’t need people like me in the world,” I muttered as I reached for my phone. When I’d read my text messages earlier, I hadn’t paid any attention to the date. There’d been no reason to. I sleep a few hours at most and can go days without it. But yesterday was a bit more eventful and I’d slept closer to four hours.

  I gaped down at the screen.

  It was Tuesday.

  I shook it. Hard. It still said Tuesday.

  That was impossible. I narrowed my eyes as the tatters of a dream I’d had last night—or rather days ago—surfaced in my mind. Ryodan. Tracing symbols on me. Murmuring.

  That prick. I’d awakened feeling so unusually fine because he’d spelled me into sleeping from Friday night until Tuesday morning!

  Bristling, I pivoted sharply and stormed in the opposite direction, crossing Barrons off my suspect list. Ryodan had used his powers of “relaxation” on me in the past. This was a Machiavellian move, taking me out of the game so he could leave Dublin on his own timetable.

  If Ryodan wasn’t at Chester’s, I was wrecking the place. Trashing. Maybe torching. No, I wasn’t done searching it. But definitely wrecking.

  Nobody knocks me out for days. Especially not after being gone for two years. Especially not after I saved his ass.

  As I stalked toward 939 Rêvemal Street, my brain processed a third anomaly: an inordinate number of blue-collar workers, laborers from the looks of them, were marching in the same direction, belts swaying, heavy with tools. They were bright-eyed, ruddy-cheeked, talking loudly with excitement.

  I moved in behind the fast-moving throng to eavesdrop.

  “I heard there’s a year’s work, maybe more,” one of the men exclaimed.

  “I heard two. Christ, that’d be something.”

  “Ballocks, it’s good to be working again! The construction business has been deader than a bloody doornail. Too many buildings, not enough people to fill a tenth of ’em.”

  “Nice to see someone willing to put the money into new construction.”

  “Right, that. With folks worrying about what tomorrow might bring.”

  Part of me was pleased by this turn of events. Someone was building. Making jobs for those who had none. Electricians, plumbers, specialty skills were still in demand. But builders, men that cut lumber and hung drywall, metal workers, men who tiled and framed, simply weren’t needed anymore. No one was building anything new and probably wouldn’t for a long time.

  It wasn’t as if these men could get additional training to learn a more useful skill. We were back to low- or no-wage apprenticing, a long way from staffing universities again. There was too much unrest, a deep unease about the future. We were a society fractured in countless ways. Those gainfully employed filled essential positions: food production, crucial technology, law enforcement, news. Jobs were hard to find, hence the high rate of crime in our city. And it got a lot worse the farther out you went.

  “Who’s funding the project?” a newcomer to the conversation said.

  “What’s-his-name…bugger, it’s right on the tip of my tongue. Weird name. Riordan? Same guy that turned things around a few years back, when those black holes were everywhere and we were running out of food. Got the papers out. Put the city back on track. He’s been gone awhile. Glad to hear he’s back. We could use more men like him around this city.”

  I scowled. A bigger part of me was distinctly not pleased.

  I’d been here, humping the grind every day for the past two years, working tirelessly to save my city. And what did I get? Scowled at and run away from, merely for asking a polite question. My hands fisted and my frown deepened.

  I was willing to bet half the money I’d stolen from Ryodan that these ebullient, newly employed men were headed for Chester’s.

  And if my suspicion was correct, that person in the premier spot on my shit-list this morning, that pain in my ass who hadn’t been doing a bloody thing to help Dublin for the past two years, was about to get sainted by my city again.

  COCKROACHES SLITHERED IN STONE-DUSTED crevices, under and over rocks, reassembling beyond a jagged outcropping, deep in shadow, into a squat, gelatinous body with two legs, six arms, and a small head with a beaklike mouth.

  His fragile, uncertain form disgusted the roach-god. He craved a solid existence among men, or at the least, a return to the lofty position he’d once enjoyed.

  When Titans warred, it wasn’t the giants that survived. It was those who made themselves small and inconspicuous that passed beyond their enemies’ regard.

  At this the one called “Papa Roach” by mortals excelled. He’d been the insects beneath humans’ feet, reviled, assaulted merely for poaching small morsels of food for longer than he cared to recall. Modern man found him grotesque and, with caustic, corrosive chemicals, drove him from their bright world, into the darkness of foundations, walls, caves, and sewers. Turned him into a creature of furtive stealth and petty displays of scratching his back on their toothbrushes while they slept, spitting into their glasses, smearing small crusts of feces along the rims, dropping more in their utensil drawers. His beggarly amusements: they shared their world with him whether they wanted to or not, whether they knew it or not. The darkness was his; his exploits began when theirs ended in sleep.

  In his venerable prime, his countless bodies, their enviable enduranc
e, agility, and ability to penetrate the most secret places, had been much acclaimed and sought after. He’d been respected, feared, admired, his counsel deemed invaluable. Women had put out food for him at each meal, beseeching his presence beneath their table, preparing tempting dishes to entice him near so they might importune his aid. There’d been a time he’d benevolently assisted them. Enjoyed them. Cared.

  No more.

  By the blood of the sidhe, what did they expect? When you treated things badly, things behaved badly. Who was inclined to seize moments of persecution to demonstrate their finest nature? Idiots. Fools. He’d been there from the first, long before the Faerie, had watched humans make their first slithering passage onto solid ground. Had applauded them as they’d evolved, become more.

  Now they were so much less.

  Glistening mandibles ground together as he rubbed shiny, black carapace against carapace to grate in a hiss, “My name is Gustaine.”

  It had been thousands of years since he’d said the words. Since he’d called himself anything but “roach.”

  The Titans had fallen, most forever slain, the rare few, the impossible to kill, perhaps a hundred of them, imprisoned in the earth. The handful of gods who’d both survived the catastrophic wars and escaped imprisonment had, like him, found a way to hide.

  Gustaine enjoyed an intimacy with the planet few gods knew. He, who’d once dined on the finest the world had to offer, now subsisted on its refuse, burrowed deep into its septic waste, had come to relish the diverse flavors of shit, for the knowledge it afforded him. He could taste the sickness in human offal; knew what disease was killing them. In days of yore he might have fetched them the right herb, root, or oil to correct the imbalance. Rot faster, he cursed them now. Blow yourselves up, kill your race off and get out of my way.

  He’d even burrowed of late, beneath human skin, dining on the succulent fat of their bodies, nestled within them, privy to many of their thoughts and feelings. He crept anywhere and everywhere, knew all their secrets yet lacked the power to do a damn thing with it. Merely shaping himself into a form that could communicate was taxing. His arms and legs tended to crumble into individual segments if overexerted.

  Yet…the timeless melody had been sung and it had changed the world, waking some things, killing others, but most dazzling of all, giving rise to the possibility of a new order that might restore the position he’d once enjoyed. Elevate him from the gutters and sewers and endless attacks that were his existence. The Earth felt the same as it once had to him, over a million years ago.

  The ancient Song had not, however, improved or altered him in any way. The imperviousness of the cockroach ran deep into his insectile core. Virtually indestructible, he alone remained unchanged by the relentless march of time, by the magic that waxed, waned, and waxed anew. He was, as far as he knew, the sole exception: the obdurate Gustaine.

  He’d pledged his allegiance to a few during his darkest times: a half-mad witch from the Caspian mountains, a dead man who’d risen to hunt the night, an ancient, primal beast that was neither god nor Faerie but possessed the Lanndubh, the hated black blade that could destroy him; and finally, recently allying himself with a prince of the very race that had corrupted and crushed his. With his brothers and sisters gone, he no longer cared who held power, so long as he had a share.

  But now one of his own was back and strong enough to merit attention. Powerful enough to reclaim the Lanndubh and free him. And from what he’d witnessed thus far, quite possibly capable of becoming deadly enough to eradicate the Faerie from their world.

  Gustaine dispersed his many bodies, reclaiming and molding them into a misshapen head atop one of the many corpses littering the stifling cavern, with its glowing rocks and bonfires, and watched the great god command his legion of worshippers.

  The great Soulstealer, Balor, had returned.

  The gods had been tricked by their Faerie enemies; deceived, manipulated, and crushed. But they’d lacked advantages they now possessed, assets Balor had already begun to exploit, as evidenced by a recent acquisition: a dozen women, many of them badly beaten, chained to a column near his altar.

  Even now a slim dark aperture rippled near the towering dark god who’d once been worshipped more devoutly, and with more terror, than any of the others, as he stripped still more human souls from their bodies, increasing in power with each one he claimed.

  Once, the gods had cared about humans. That affection had been destroyed long ago. This time things would be different.

  This time the gods would win.

  Unlike Gustaine, Balor had changed, as had his method of exploiting his—he chuckled dryly at the pun—God-given gift. And why not? With such enormous power, it was a wonder he’d ever been kind.

  He’d watched long enough. This was the master he would serve. A gargantuan, ruthless deity who shared his own grievances, goals, and desires. Who’d already begun drawing other powerful gods near, as even now the devilish, bloodthirsty, wish-granting AOZ danced devious attendance. Balor had a plan, and a fine one. Gustaine was more than ready to see the human race wiped out. And when it was, Balor would be powerful enough to kill even the Faerie.

  Gustaine scattered into a sea of insects, scuttling over the grooves and crevices, making his way across the enormous cavern in a dark, glistening wave. He approached the god, where he stood near the black mirror and mound of bodies. Though many were maimed, they were not beyond repair or prolonged use.

  He waited respectfully while Balor finished removing the paralysis spell from a tumble of bodies before assembling a precarious form and grinding out a formal troth, “I am at your service, great and powerful Balor.”

  The immense god whirled from the bodies in a rustle of long black robes, his limp barely noticeable. Ah, yes, he was stronger than before!

  Half his magnificent face curved in a blindingly beautiful smile, the other half was completely concealed behind an elaborately embellished glossy raven mask.

  As he glanced down at the roach god’s squat form, he laughed. “Ah, Gustaine, my dear old friend, I’d hoped you’d survived and would find me here. Your skills have always been invaluable.”

  “It is a pleasure to see you,” Gustaine said. “How may I serve?” One day he would never say those words again.

  “AOZ has just apprised me of a human who has something that should belong to me. Scour Dublin and find her.”

  “I would be honored to aid your cause. Who do I seek?”

  “AOZ will give you the description. When you locate her, return to me with her location. Take no action. I will collect this body myself.”

  “Have you a name?” Gustaine eavesdropped everywhere, on everyone, invisible at their feet, in crevices and refuse. A name would help.

  “She calls herself Dani O’Malley.”

  I’m awfully underrated but came here to correct it

  SURE ENOUGH, THE BASTARD was rebuilding Chester’s.

  I stood on the sidewalk, hands fisted, a muscle working in my jaw, assaulted by such acute duality that I’d locked my limbs to keep them from ripping me apart, as they attempted to obey polar opposite desires.

  Conflicted is not my natural state.

  I’m an arrow to the goal, focused, unwavering. I pick a side and stick with it where every single facet of my life is concerned.

  Except for one.

  That. Man.

  Half of me wanted to punch my fist into the air and shout, “Bloody hell, my sidekick’s back and it looks like he plans to stick around for a while this time!” while I dashed below to confirm the auspicious event with my own eyes.

  The other half of me wanted to slam my fist into Ryodan’s face and break bones.

  No, I reevaluated my percentages, half wasn’t quite right. Thirty-eight percent of me was in favor of caving to an idiotically happy smile, while sixty-two percent of me was in
censed, infuriated, enraged, with thick plumes of steam threatening to erupt from my ears.

  I don’t get headaches often but I was about to have one. There was too much pressure in my body and no way to vent it.

  While he’d kept me out of commission without my consent, he’d made mind-boggling progress. A framed structure now stood on the previously empty lot above Chester’s underground nightclub. Several hundred workers were rushing to and fro, prepping for the next phase of the project.

  Footers had been poured and were curing, there were steel beams and girders waiting to be placed. Bobcats growled, there was even a small crane maneuvering stuff around. Here, piles of lumber rested on pallets, there, enormous blocks of smoky stone were stacked high.

  He had to be running three shifts a day, working through the night. Ryodan was like that. Once he wanted something, he wanted it yesterday. He’d wait if he had to, with the true patience of an immortal, but if he could bypass that waiting he would.

  Why now? His bloody club had been wrecked years ago and he’d not once made any effort to rebuild the facade aboveground! What message was I supposed to take away from this—you may have worn yourself out helping Dublin for two long solitary years but I’ve gained their fealty in a mere matter of days?

  Not that I thought he was doing it to mess with me, which—given how much he used to mess with me would have been a fair assumption—but I no longer think everything he does is about me.

  Still, my super ears were picking up way too many compliments about him.

  “Hey, miss? Miss?” a man said behind me.

  I ignored him. I was no doubt in his way and he wanted me to move so I wouldn’t delay a single second of the great Ryodan’s planned re-creation of the world, which the bible of Dublin would soon be rewritten to immortalize.