Blood Samples

by Bonansinga, Jay

  At the end of the corridor was an opaque-glass portal engraved with the SRD insignia.

  Eva touched the biometric pad, and the door whispered open.

  "He's not ready for you yet," the AA muttered across the reception area. A wan-faced Asian woman with bronze corn rows and artificial retinas, she sat behind a com-console with her face buried in a palm book, and she didn't even look up as she spoke. "Said he'd call you when he found something."

  "Tell him his time's up," Eva said as she strode across the lobby.

  "Seventy-seven — wait!" the receptionist called out, springing to her feet.

  Eva was already pressing her thumbprint on the inner door pad.

  The door whisked open, revealing a windowless, cluttered private office crowded with digital storage racks and various counter-measures. Walls stuccoe'd with stalks of St. John the Conqueror Root, ceiling joists festooned with talismanic herbs, a floor shimmering with a parquet of belladonna and fetal tissue. Ionization monitors winking at each corner, and a gun rack filled with elementals near the door.

  SRD guys take no chances; they're common targets of BlackStuff.

  "Sevens! — I was just going to zap you," the division chief said from behind a massive desk laden with piles of flat digitals. He was a shriveled little troll with one bad eye dressed in Hemlock cloth and government-issue specs. His mannerisms were that of an ancient lizard.

  "Sure you were," Eva said.

  "Always with the suspicious tone," the chief lamented, giving her an unhappy glance.

  "What's the deal on this char-dog, One-Four?" Eva said, using the chief's reg-number, following the absurd cloak-and-dagger protocol. Surnames, first names — even nicknames — were verboten. Too risky. Too much exposure. Too easy for some disgruntled BlackStuffer to a pull a name out of the city guide and lock onto it. Nowadays, names were more closely guarded than credit numbers.

  "Always right to the point," the chief said gloomily. Looking down at his plate of read-outs, he cocked his head at the diodes, aiming his good eye and reading. "Let's see. Yeah. Your John Doe's a known Disciple with the Shambler sect."

  A splinter of panic shot through Eva's breast. "I thought they were gone with the wind."

  "Evidently not."

  "What else?"

  The one-eyed man shrugged. "The flame-out was SHNC, aggressive, no source. No next-of-kin."

  "Any priors?"

  The chief glanced at his read-outs. "Just the usual stuff. A couple of ritual felonies, some Black misdemeanors, a few unlawful ceremonies."

  "That's it?"

  The chief trained his good eye on her. "This guy was strictly a think-tanker, a book worm. These types never do the dirty stuff."

  "So why bother shanking him?"

  "What do I know?" the chief said. "I just work here. Besides, isn't that you're job? Figuring all that Black-shit out? What's the problem? Why all the Sturm and Drang?"

  Silence. Eva hadn't told him about the doll, and she had no plans to do so.

  The chief regarded her balefully. "Don't tell me you're dipping into that family tree for inspiration again, working some big apocalypse theory."

  Eva felt a pang of anger. The cops were always goading her about her heritage, and it was getting more and more difficult for her to ignore it.

  Eva Strange came from sturdy New England stock, the generations reaching all the way back to the Salem Witch trials in the seventeenth century. A distant relative of Eva's, Nettie Harrow, was tried for witchcraft in the Essex County Witch House in 1692. Her great-great-great-great grandmother, Mary Holden-Curry, was tried in Providence for crimes against the church. Her great-great-grandmother, Helen Strange, was a white witch and a suffragette who was lynched in Maryland for aiding a burgeoning civil rights movement. And most of the subsequent generations of women — most of whom kept Helen's maiden name — were either involved in witchcraft or victimized by repressed men: from Eva's grandmother, Miersol, down to her biological mother, Sarah. It became a big joke in the department. Who better to helm the new "White Patrol" than Good Witch Eva? But what the cops didn't realize was that Eva Strange was terrified of her own destiny.

  Brewed in the cauldrons of ten generations, engraved into wood-cuts, recorded in yellowed diaries and passed down in oral histories whispered from mother to daughter to granddaughter, Eva's bloodline was the last defense against the infamous Rip. Originally revealed in the gnostic gospels of the Sumerians — thousands of years before Christ — and reappearing in art and religious artifacts down through the centuries, the Rip was exactly that: A tear in the seam of reality, a crack through which an unimaginable force would ultimately pass and consume this world. Way back in 1692, only minutes before she was burned at the steak, Nettie Harrow warned her fellow villagers about it. Helen Strange wrote in her secret journal's about it. Some thought it was merely a reference to the antichrist, the Devil — the fabled Prince of Darkness — returning to claim the earth. But Eva knew better. Eva knew the Rip was worse than Satan, worse than anything dreamt or inspired in religious writings. The Rip was the darkness behind the dark, the unraveling of reason, the end of all physical laws. The Rip was the turning inside-out of the universe. And today, in a world over-stimulated by rampant BlackStuff, Eva Strange was afraid that she would be the last of her lineage, the last line of defense against the inevitable breech, the last —

  "You okay?" the chief's voice broke through Eva's rumination, a splash of cold water on her face.

  Eva rubbed her eyes. "I'm fine."

  "You don't look so hot." The chief's jaundiced eye was on her again. "You oughtta take a vacation."

  "What about the church?" Eva asked.

  "What church?"

  "The AmuLED, the medallion. Belonged to the stiff. It had an insignia on it— Saint Vincent de Paul."

  The chief let out a grunt and looked through his read-outs again. "We chased them out of Spittlefield a year and half ago, shut them down."

  "What were the charges?"

  "Dealing onyx, doing magic, recruiting kids. Bunch of Destroyer cultists."

  "Destroyer?" Eva's stomach clenched. Again, the investigation was getting too close to home. A few years back her ex-boyfriend had ended up an onyx addict, recruited by a splinter group of the Destroyer cult. It had devastated Eva, and she had sworn off men for the rest of her life. Her boyfriend's name had been Anger, Kenneth Anger, his last two reg-digits eleven, and he had looked a little like Edgar Allen Poe with a Bo-Ho haircut. Eva remembered the way he made love, like a mad monk having a religious experience.

  "What's the matter?" the chief asked.

  Something clicked in Eva's midbrain, a memory, a fragment of a broken mirror. All at once she realized where she had to go, whom she had to see: An old associate of her boyfriend, an onyx addict and part time snitch named Lydon.

  Eva was certain that Lydon would have the four-one-one on the latest Destroyer politics.

  "Gotta run," she said, turning toward the door.

  "Wait a second —!"

  "Thanks a lot for the information," she said, palming the door open and slipping out. She could hear the chief's exasperated sigh as she started down the corridor.

  The liquid tungsten made her eyes ache as she hurried toward the stairs.

  It took her forever to get through security and get her elemental back, but she was used to being delayed. She was also used to the hostile stares of other cops. To most of the other uniforms — as well as most other detectives — Eva was a creampuff, a spoiled brat, a teacher's pet with a cushy job. Most regular cops viewed this new "White Patrol" as a joke. A waste of tax payer's' credits. Crime was crime, and justice was justice, and Blackstuff was no different than any other vice.

  But few cops knew the trials to which Eva had been subjected by the mysterious old men.

  3.

  The Committee

  To control a person's destiny: Thread a needle with their hair, then run it through the fleshiest part of an afterbirth, then wind the loo
se end around a magnetized stone of nickel, quartz or silver.

  There were six of them. Hairless old geezers with palsied hands and long faces — bureaucrats, law makers, captains of New Industries. They were there – supposedly — just a few years ago, when the scientists discovered the new frontier of super biology, the connection between neurochemical impulses, subatomic chemical reactions, and remote energy activation. They were there when the newspapers screamed in garish, bold, Day-Glo headlines: "Magic Is Real!" They were there, these six old men, studying the phenomena, setting forth new standards and guidelines. They were there when the crime started, the rash of ritual murders, the waves of black magic vandalism. They were there when the government got involved, outlawing spell casting, outlawing fortune telling and psychic entertainment, even outlawing gambling and sporting events— any activity that relied on chance, faith, or prayer. The elderly men were there. They were there when they tore down the Sistine Chapel, St. Patrick's Cathedral, even St. Peters Basilica. And they were there — these six ancient codgers — when they decided to create a specialized inner-city anti-magic task force otherwise known as the White Patrol.

  Eva remembered that fateful day almost precisely a year ago when they pulled her off her regular shift and had her come down to the Crowley Barrens. It was all shrouded in bureaucratic mystery, and she was paraded in front of these six old men like a prize poodle in a metaphysical dog show. She would be the prototype — the first detective to be recruited into the Patrol. They never really gave her a choice, and they put her through a gauntlet — these six old men in their white tunics and hooded faces — that would have made King Arthur cringe. In fact, in many ways, the initiation emulated the ancient Arthurian rites, as well as the four traditional magical weapons.

  Eva had to complete a series of brutal, exhaustive obstacle courses, laced with holographic predators and intra-dimensional labyrinths. Afterward she was instructed to construct a Rod — a sort of metallic club — in secret, by herself, out of some material that was meaningful and/or sentimentally valuable to her. The Cup, which was meant to serve as a container for Eva's elemental ammunition, was supposed to be given to Eva by a loved one. And finally, the Disk was to be presented by police officials, a medallion embossed with the new mission legend: "Ad Purgare, Ad Capere, Ad Adversari Malevolus." (To Cleanse, To Contain, To Counter the Malevolent).

  Eva chose a family heirloom for her Rod, one of Grandma Miersol's teak wood wands which Eva dipped in jeweler's silver. Her Cup was a petrified gourd that a neighborhood boy had given her, gift-wrapped with his own sticky little hands as a thank you present for helping his family with gang trouble. Eva cried when she got it, and later had it plated in foxglove and arctic silver. And finally, Eva had a ceremonial Disk attached to the inside lining of her duster, just under her detective shield.

  But it was the Sword that was the hardest won, the most densely packed with neural-microbes.

  Eva earned the Sword at the end of her initiation, after confronting the six old men. For thirty solid minutes she screamed obscenities at them, cursing them for putting her through this charade, wailing at them for singling her out for this idiotic exercise. Much to her dismay, the tirade had had the opposite effect than the one intended. The old coots were impressed by her backbone, her passion, and they awarded her the highest honor for a practitioner of white magic. They gave her a Sword made out of a new alloy, as big as a hog's femur, with a perpetual power pak. But it was probably Eva's emotions that truly charged the weapon with SuperMatter. Eva had white-hot rage going for her at that point. Rage at the way she was being treated. Rage at all the secrecy and bullshit. Rage at the state of imbalance in the universe. And rage for all the stress this new assignment would put her under... .

  "Your gun, ma'am," the young cop was saying near the exit door, his voice shaking Eva out of her rumination. He handed over the elemental.

  "Thanks." Eva holstered the weapon and made her way down the air-lock tunnel.

  Eva's car was in the underground lot, waiting in a pool of halogen. A tricked out '41 Suzuki Mongoose with shielded panels all around, the unmarked sedan was standard issue — a big block of brushed black steel. The interior smelled like Eva. Cloves and stale cigarettes and arrowroot and old leather. Where the windshield used to be was a layer of lampblack lead, the sensors connected to view screens on the inside console. Windows were another thing-of-the-past. Nobody went exposed anymore. Too tempting for a random trickster to identify a face, throw a spell through the glass.

  Eva fired up the Mongoose, then pulled out of the complex, emerging from the cold, artificial tungsten into the grey, corrupted sun.

  The city was laid out in a hex pattern — the central district forming five square miles of monolithic office blocks built on blessed bone, positioned in harmony with the planets, the residential communities jutting off like the extremities of a six pointed star. Most these new developments were overlaid upon the rubble and detritus of the old, leaving behind a war-torn patina, a mish-mash of gleaming alloy and shriveled urban decay. Like a painted corpse. From the sky, the city resembled a vast Seal of Solomon — the shape of benevolent magic, the icon of the Good.

  At least that was the theory.

  Eva took the main beltline across the Druid Span and into the east bay area. The blur of chartreuse flames ghosted by her on either side of the thoroughfare, blooming on her thermal screens, coming from inside dark allies. Petty BlackCrimes yielded these hot-spots — 'green fires,' the natives called them — always burning in some corner of some darkened tenement, the residue of magic vandals.

  At Eighty-Seventh Street Eva turned south and roared into Ghetto-3.

  Ghetto-3 was a desolate sector of magic-worn, low-rent housing blocs infested with drifters, BlackStuffers and onyx pushers. On every corner, plumes of stage-smoke from errant tricks rose over puddles of shattered amber-glass, while broken liquid-halogen signs shone garishly over the crumbling storefronts. Most of the passers-by shuffled anonymously along under aluminum-alloy awnings, their faces veiled by shields and visors, their bodies encased in tattered charmsuits. No eye contact. No conversation. And everybody wore static gloves and hair nets in order to avoid any tissue loss. People were paranoid about leaving stray hairs in public. Or fingernails. Or dead skin. Or blood. Or any other discharge that would enable a malevolent practitioner to target them.

  Maccabee Lydon lived in the heart of this sector, in a tiny shotgun flat across a vast courtyard of mangled wreckage and gnarled trees.

  Eva parked the Mongoose outside the entrance, lifted the collar of her duster, pulled down her visor and got out. She positioned the elemental in the small of her back so as not to raise any suspicion, and then adopted the slumped walk of the denizens. Don't look at me. I'm nobody. I'm nothing.

  She got half way across the courtyard when she saw the figure crouched in the doorway. He was wearing a torn reflective charm-tunic and an archaic leather flying-ace helmet. His face was turned away, pressed against the rampart, his back hunched and facing Eva as she approached.

  Eva called out, "Three-oh-three?"

  No answer.

  "Hey!"

  The figure didn't move, just continued crouching there like a little boy who had been naughty and was being punished.

  "Hello?" Eva said, approaching cautiously, her left hand curling inward, her fingertips brushing the tip of the Rod nestled in her sleeve-sheath. She was close enough to see the ashy dust on the shoulders of Lydon's tunic, close enough to see the man trembling faintly.

  Somewhere in the distance a blackbird cawed.

  "Lydon?" Eva said as she drew near the figure, using the man's private name, trying to provoke a reaction. The man just shivered, the back of his head shaking convulsively, the smell of bone dust coming off him.

  Eva touched his shoulder —

  — and her hand passed through the reflective fabric as though it were smoke.

  Jerking back with a start, Eva let out a grunt and reached for her
Rod, but it was too late. The figure spun around to face her and revealed the bleached white skull inside its helmet. A skeletal arm shot out at Eva's throat, but Eva jerked away just in time to swing the blessed length of steel. The Rod passed through the doppelganger's torso with a crackling whisper of static electricity.

  "Shit!" Eva hissed, stumbling backward onto her ass, cursing herself for misidentifying the doppelganger.

  The ghost dissolved into a seething, fizzing mass of spiders that poured across the ground.

  Across the courtyard, maybe fifty meters away, there was a blur of movement.

  "LYDON!!" Eva sprang to her feet, spinning toward the street, reaching for her elemental. Her cover was blown now. Too late to worry about getting made by the BlackStuffers. Nonexistent arachnids were flaking around Eva, sparking and sputtering like shreds of weak video snow.

  Seventy-five meters away, the little junkie named Lydon was racing toward the street.

  "HALT, ASSHOLE!" Eva hollered, then started after the little addict.

  The man in the tunic stumbled over the cluttered parkway, then turned south.

  Eva gave chase, uncertain whether she was pursuing the junkie or being led by him.

  4.

  The Facade

  To kill someone slowly: Make a Witch's Ladder out of a string of thirteen knots, then bury it in soil that's been prepared with moonseed, dimethyl sulfate, scorpion fish, and tissue from the victim's feet. Unless the victim can find the string and untie the knots, he will slowly expire.

  The first thing Eva noticed about the narrow ghetto street was the deepening darkness. Soaring towers of scorched graphite rose all around her, blocking out what was left of the daylight, forming a cavernous channel of shadows. Forty meters ahead of her, the junkie was barely visible, barreling headlong down the cracked pedestrian walk, his skinny legs churning, the leather flaps of his flying-ace helmet bouncing.