Poisoned Pearls

by Leah Cutter

  Odin declared the man Vigfus the victorious, and invited him to drink at Odin’s table that evening.

  Then he told all the troops, “Again.”

  The fallen came back onto the field or raised themselves up, like flowers after a spring rain.

  There was nothing like the glory of battle, nothing like leadership of true warriors. Odin found it all magnificent.

  Whatever Loki was doing to train his troops, he couldn’t have raised as successful an army as Odin.

  Odin’s troops lived for the battle; their lust never stopped. They would fight and tear at each other until the long day ended, then spend the night recounting their great victories, taking apart every detail and defeat, determined to do better the next day.

  Yes, whatever soldiers Loki managed to raise, they couldn’t possibly match Odin Val-Father’s slain warriors.

  ***

  The front door of the house opened.

  Hunter cast back his layers of blankets and flew up from his mattress on the floor, his body moving automatically even as his mind dragged itself away from sleep. It took merely a step and a jump to reach the shelf he’d built high on the adjoining wall, then a quick tug to pull himself up onto it.

  Someone was here. In his house. The most recent one he’d been squatting in, since he didn’t trust the government enough to stay in any of their programs. Particularly since they didn’t trust him and had kicked him out of the Army.

  He hadn’t seen anything. He hadn’t had any warning. None of his senses or interior warning bells had gone off. His pre-cog abilities hadn’t shown anything happening in his room, not that night.

  Were the drugs wearing off already? Csaba had sworn the newest batch of Ghost Tripper was stronger. Military grade.

  No one should be in Hunter’s house. No one should be coming to see him. It was early morning, and the long shadows of the Minnesota winter night still hung thick in the air.

  Who was it? Were they here to kill him?

  Hunter pressed his back hard against the wall into the long blue shadows. No one could see him there. He’d checked every angle. He knew all the dimensions of his room, how many steps it took for him to bound across the newspaper-strewn floor, to crawl around the edges where he could be silent, to leap from one wall to the next, flying through the air like the ghosts had taught him.

  He wasn’t safe here, up on this shelf, or even in this abandoned house, but it was safer here, somewhere to breathe between battles. The building was condemned, however; it wouldn’t be torn down until spring.

  Hunter hadn’t seen that—it was just common sense. No one did construction in Minnesota during the winter.

  The door creaked open exactly when Hunter thought it would, after the right amount of time for a normal person to walk through the trash-strewn hallways downstairs, to negotiate the broken steps, to slide past the icy patches.

  But was it really a normal person coming to see him? Or a government agent, pretending to be normal?

  The mattress where Hunter slept was an obvious decoy. Anyone with any sense would know that wasn’t Hunter in the bed.

  Whoever was hunting Hunter didn’t have any sense. Or at least pretended really well.

  The blue shadows bled into blacks as the figure drew closer.

  Then the figure called Hunter’s name softly.

  Hunter stayed where he was, hidden by the shadows, up on the shelf that he’d built. That he could spring off of, landing on his assailant. Always better to have a height advantage.

  None of the regular burglars ever thought to look up. They’d come before, thinking they could easily rob Hunter of his stash of drugs.

  Or maybe it wasn’t a robber, but another government agent. They’d come before too, trying to get Hunter into housing, claiming they could help.

  He knew that was just shorthand for another type of training camp. He was tired of being their guinea pig.

  “Hunter, it’s Josh,” the knife-long shadow called.

  Hunter knew a Josh. The weight and height looked the same—short and round—particularly accounting for winter coat and boots. The voice sounded familiar, too.

  However, Hunter had been tricked before, tricked by false dreams and foul assassins, so he stayed silent on his shelf, coiled tightly, ready to spring.

  Josh spoke again. “Hunter, there’s been a death. A funny one. I came to report, Sir.”

  Hunter didn’t allow himself to move or nod. That was for when he was having a normal conversation, in a normal place and time.

  This was not a normal place or time.

  And why hadn’t his pre-cog senses told him that there would be a death? His abilities weren’t failing him further, were they?

  “Look, Hunter, I know you’re hidden away in this room someplace. I’m tired and fucking cold so I’m just going to go over and sit next to the door. When you’re ready to hear my report, you can come over and do that.”

  The Josh-shadow withdrew from Hunter’s mattress, then did exactly as he said he would. He walked over next to the door and sat with his back to the wall, legs out. He blew against his hands—the heat for the room only came through in a trickle, and only enough so that Hunter wouldn’t freeze to death at night.

  The person’s breath puffed out, white with blue sparks. He patted his hands against his arms, as if trying to keep himself warm or wake his fingers up.

  It was a vulnerable action, admitting the power of the cold.

  Confirmation flooded Hunter, like sunlight bleeding across a snow-covered hill. This was Josh. Weak. Unconscious. He’d wanted to be part of the big battle, but he wasn’t a true blood brother. He shared the Ghost Tripper drugs, but he didn’t see, either.

  While Josh moved his legs up and down, trying to keep circulation and feeling and warmth in them, Hunter flowed off the shelf. Staying in the shadows, he went to the far wall, opposite his cot, then finally approached Josh.

  Josh still didn’t see Hunter and jumped when he appeared in front of him.

  “Shit, Hunter. Why do you have to do that every time?”

  Hunter shrugged. It wasn’t really a question that needed answering. It was part of who he was, as automatic as jumping up on the shelf to give himself an advantage. Like always thinking in three dimensions, being aware of the exits and entrances of any room, knowing how to defend himself against any and all who were there, ghost and human.

  He’d not only trained, but been altered to do this. That’s what the ghosts had told him. The ones from the future advanced enough that they could cross into the past.

  The only thing Hunter still missed was a blood brother, his true companion.

  The ghosts couldn’t tell him if or when he’d find him.

  Josh struggled to get his feet under him and stand. Hunter watched him critically. Josh either needed to lose weight or gain muscle. Probably both. Hunter wasn’t about to suggest that to him, though. That would make Josh think he might actually be able to fight. And win.

  “You said you had something to report?” Hunter asked coldly.

  “Sir, yes, Sir,” Josh said. “Kyle Magnusson was killed in an alley behind Chinaman Joe’s Good Luck Parlor.”

  That didn’t seem very important. “And?” Hunter prompted.

  “Police can’t figure out what killed him,” Josh said.

  “It’s probably a new drug,” Hunter said dismissively.

  Josh shook his head. “Post-cog on the case said no. Said it’s something different.”

  “How do you know what this post-cog said? What the police are doing?” Hunter asked.

  Had Josh been bought out?

  When Josh had first contacted Hunter, asking to be trained for the final, big battle, Hunter had followed him for days, verifying that Josh was who he said he was: a barista at a local coffee-shop chain, wearing ridiculous moose antlers frequently when he opened the shop in the morning.

  “So, I told you, Mike, the cute cop, keeps coming into the shop?” Josh said. “I copied all his radio f
requencies. So I can now listen in on everything the cops are saying when they’re in range.”

  “Good job,” Hunter said automatically, hiding his immediate recoil.

  How stupid did the government agency Josh worked for think Hunter was? A barista wouldn’t have access to that kind of tech.

  Josh was a plant. A government spy under deep cover. Here to bring Hunter back into the program. And Hunter hadn’t seen it.

  “We need to go investigate,” Hunter said. “But first, we need some supplies.” He flowed away from Josh, stripping as he went. He could wear the same clothes he slept in and just add layers, but there was something humanizing about the ritual of changing clothes just to go to sleep. It soothed him, kept him in this place and time, particularly when his dreams soured.

  Josh’s soft chuckle came right on cue. “Damn, you gotta teach me that sometime.”

  Hunter was never sure what Josh meant. How to move and flow through a space? How to practice each movement for even the most mundane tasks until there was never any wasted effort? Josh had told Hunter more than once how graceful he was. Hunter didn’t know how to teach that. It seemed to have come with the training, first at P-camp, then in the Army, then with the ghosts and beyond.

  It took less than a minute before Hunter was ready, a second minute to lace up his extra-strong boots. “Let’s go,” he said as he flipped off the gas heater and put on his dark glasses.

  “Dude, it’s still night out,” Josh pointed out. “Sun won’t show her face for hours. If then.”

  Hunter shrugged. Nights like tonight, or mornings, still had sharp edges. Better to be protected.

  Nothing was safe. Always just a case of safe enough. Particularly with the enemy so close at hand, with Hunter’s inner circle compromised.

  For now.

  Chapter Four

  One of the problems with drug dealers was that they made too much damned money. When there was demand, they could always be counted on for supply.

  That meant that instead of a shithole apartment downtown, or even a cheap place off Lake Street, Csaba had a whole fucking house in northern Minneapolis, in one of those neighborhoods that was trying to pick itself up but hadn’t made it yet.

  And I had no way of getting there on my own. It was three in the morning. Buses weren’t running, and I knew a cab wouldn’t drop me off in that neighborhood.

  Plus, I didn’t own a car. Too damned expensive to gas up, fix, and insure. And I sure as hell didn’t have anyplace to put it. Parking downtown was a bitch at best.

  However. Kyle had a car.

  I knew it was a stupid idea even as I headed toward his place, walking quickly through the empty streets of the warehouse district. All the streetlights had gone to zombie-blinking mode, like the start of the end of the world. I didn’t even smoke as I walked. The cold had settled into insta-freeze. Even out of the wind, my hands would have gotten frostbite in about two minutes without my gloves on.

  Kyle lived south of downtown, between Loring Park and Uptown. Not in one of those new highrises, but one of the few houses that had survived and hadn’t been torn down yet for more new development. The place was a dump and the landlord a slumlord at best. He’d probably sell off Kyle’s stuff if his family decided not to bother to collect it. Maybe even go through and steal what he could before they got there.

  I walked down the back of the block first. It was more sterile than I’d remembered. Most neighborhoods had trees in the boulevard, between the sidewalk and the street. This block didn’t. Instead, the buildings rose up from just a few feet back from the sidewalk, the cold trapped in the concrete and held there, making me feel as if I were walking inside a commercial fridge.

  The warehouse district didn’t have much in the way of greenery, either, but at least the buildings had some sort of character. This neighborhood was “modern” ’70s, all cinderblock and emotionless.

  Just after the corner stood another one of the houses that had survived. The yard had the barest cover of snow, looking like a frozen wasteland. One old tree still grew in the front, but most of the limbs had been cut from it. Was it actually alive? Or just a wasted hulk?

  I slowed as I neared the next corner, looking to my left, down the street.

  Didn’t see any cop cars. No lights flashing.

  Either they’d already been to Kyle’s place and gone, or they’d decided the case wasn’t important enough to work through the night.

  I didn’t know if that meant my luck was finally changing, or if taking Kyle’s car would turn out to be the most stupid thing I could do as far as the cops were concerned.

  Didn’t matter. I needed to go hunt down Csaba, see if he knew anything about Helen, or the other girl, Lizzie, or even Kyle. Maybe he knew if there had been any other killings—he’d pay attention to that sort of thing because that would mean fewer customers.

  Kyle’s hunk of junk was sitting right in front of his house. Must have been lucky whenever he’d parked it—it was normally impossible to find a place to park in his neighborhood.

  The car was an ancient, blue, four-door Ford Taurus, a rust bucket like all the old cars in Minnesota due to the salt thrown on the roads in the winter. Kyle kept replacement insurance on it, along with a spare set of keys underneath an old coffee can on the front porch that also served as an ashtray. He’d joked that he wasn’t so much begging people to steal his car, but that if it happened, well, he was covered.

  Despite the cold, the car started on the second try, turning over and revving up, disturbing the quiet of the neighborhood. I blasted the heater and defroster, shivering as the cold wind blew on me. How long before it blew warm? Knowing my luck, I’d already be up north before the actual heat kicked in.

  I didn’t stay too long, though, warming the car up. Didn’t want the cops coming by, wondering what I was doing in Kyle’s car.

  Particularly since my driver’s license was expired.

  The road was slick, and Kyle had shit tires. I got the car out of the cramped neighborhood—even with cars parked only on one side and minimal snow, it was still tight—and onto the freeway, heading north. Only a few drivers were out—and the few drivers who were out were semis and taxis. The road looked bleached white from the salt, despite the orange glow of the freeway lights.

  Too soon, I got off the easy four-lane and back into the twisting sprawl of the city streets. Fortunately, most of northern Minneapolis had been done on a grid, so the main streets weren’t too bad.

  The side streets were a mess, though. I parked blocks before I needed to, preferring to walk, even though the cold bit into me like a knife.

  The neighborhood here was all houses, boxy and rundown. The yards held old cars, discarded washing machines, and snowy lumps that wouldn’t be identifiable until spring. Naked trees lined the boulevard, stoically carrying their sprinkling of snow and ice.

  A couple of houses bucked the trend—one had strings of bright red-and-green Christmas lights circling the porch, another had a tree decorated in white lights and silver garlands. There weren’t any ostentatious displays like what I remembered from growing up in Minnetonka, with Santa and his whole fucking workshop done in blowup dolls, or the creepy snowmen in globes.

  It was easy to tell Csaba’s place: all the lights were on, the party still rolling along, people hanging out on the front porch. The music wasn’t too loud, though. Had the cops already visited that night? Or was Csaba still trying desperately for some sort of respectability?

  Even from outside, through the cold, the sweet scent of pot lay thick in the air. Two skanky girls shared a bowl on a sagging couch that took up most of the left side of the screened-in front porch, while a solitary guy watched them on the other side.

  No one stopped me from opening the screen door and walking in. None of them even looked up.

  The inside of the house was nicer than I expected. To the right was a squared-off, dark wood staircase going up. Someone had tied a big red-and-white-striped bow around the square end of t
he staircase banister. The place stank of acidic chemicals and spilled beer, but the wooden floors looked clean and there wasn’t garbage piled everywhere.

  Going straight in from the door was a narrow hallway. At some point in the ’70s they’d decided to put red velvet wallpaper on the hallway walls. Half a dozen fake candles lined the floor and reflected the browns and reds darkly, the electric flames wavering in syncopation.

  Underneath the staircase, a door stood propped open. I knew that would go into the basement dungeon—another place I didn’t want to go.

  I turned left instead, entering the living room. Long tubes of black fluorescent lights hung over the windows that looked over the front porch, above the couch where an orgy seemed to be going on. I tried not to look—too much white-boy butt on display.

  Through the archway to the right was a table covered in what had probably been a pretty good spread earlier, judging from the pizza boxes, and the half a rotisserie chicken that remained—hell, there was even a veggie tray. Plus bag after bag of potato chips, mostly empty.

  I snagged a salt-and-vinegar chip as I passed by. There was a dark-haired girl curled around a bottle, sleeping in the corner, her dress pulled up and her panties showing.

  Good thing I wasn’t really Mother Teresa or I might have tried to save her—wake her ass up and get her out of there before one of the boys decided “asleep” meant “yes.”

  But I had find Csaba first.

  Then maybe I’d come back for her.

  The kitchen was a full-on disaster area. All the counters were covered with bottles of booze, glasses empty and not, as well as a glass bowl full of brightly colored pills in every color of the rainbow. Overflowing ashtrays filled the cheap white linoleum table in the eating nook, spilling onto the floor. At least three large black garbage bags were stuffed full of something that reeked. Vomit lay in a puddle next to the back door.

  I knew it was just a matter of time before all that chaos rolled out into the rest of the living space. I’d lived in places like this, before. When I’d been on the street. Crash pads, though they were barely adequate for that.