The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy)

by Chris Strange

  He gave my ear a glance. "Does it hurt?"

  "Only when I hear your nasally whine."

  I shuffled past the tattoo parlor and the shop selling black market Ink paraphernalia while Des locked the car. He'd already caught up to me by the time I reached the bar.

  "You don't really think they're going to let you in looking like that, do you?" he said.

  "Quit looking so worried. I'm not going in there. I'm going in there." I pointed to the narrow doorway next to the bar entrance. Inside, a staircase stretched up into the darkness.

  "Well," Des said, "that's ominous. Drug dealer?"

  "Not quite."

  I took hold of the handrail and shuffled up the stairs. The carpet muffled the creaks, but it couldn't hide the way the stairs sagged with every step. Posters lined the walls, half shrouded by the dark: advertisements for local bands printed out by someone's home computer. Faint piano music tinkled down the stairs toward us.

  The door at the top of the stairs was open a crack, light spilling out. I took a moment to catch my breath, then I leaned on the door and stepped inside.

  It was a good thing neither me or Des were big guys, because there wasn’t much room to stand with the grand piano on one side and the row of electric guitars on the other. As it was I had to duck to get under the cymbals hanging from the ceiling. Brass instruments and Vei-made flesh drums filled every available nook and cranny in the shop. Even the door made a musical hum as it swung closed behind Des.

  “You bring me to some weird places, guy,” Des said.

  I grinned and walked past a rack of sheet music to the tiny front counter. “Salin!” I called out. “You in here?”

  A thunk came from somewhere in the maze, and then a creaking floorboard. Salin stuck his head out from the back room. His eyebrows went up a quarter of an inch on his dark, leathery forehead, but the rest of his face remained completely neutral. That was the most excited I’d ever seen him get.

  “You’re hurt,” Salin said. It wasn’t an offer to help, just an observation.

  I shrugged. “You remember my friend Des, right?” I turned to Desmond. “This is Salin, from my band.”

  Desmond nodded. “Double bassist. The only one of you that had any talent. I remember.”

  Salin took the compliment without expression. He came out of the doorway, put down the part of a dismantled trombone he was holding, and wiped his hands on a rag. His polo shirt stretched a little over his belly. A Chewbacca-like carpet of chest hair poked out the collar.

  “You heard about Claudia?” I asked.

  Salin nodded. “The police, they came to talk to me. I did not believe it.” He carefully folded the rag and placed it on the counter. “I did not want to believe it.”

  I clutched the wad of tissues to my ear and stuck my free hand in my pocket. “You know anything?”

  “Only what the police told me. They said it might be some kind of drug. Something she took.”

  “It wasn’t,” I said.

  He nodded again. “I know.”

  “The cops are keeping me out in the cold. But she was my friend. I can’t just let it go. So me and Des here are trying to find out what happened to her.”

  Desmond gave me a glare that should’ve given me a black eye. “Guy—”

  “I hadn’t seen her lately,” I said, bowling over the top of Desmond before he could contradict me. “I’ve been otherwise engaged. But she was always close to you. Has she been acting weird? Scared?”

  Salin scratched the corner of his eye while he thought. “Not scared, no. Sad. Do you know she lost her day job?”

  “What?” Claudia had worked during the days at an upmarket chain clothing store in the central city. It’d be a stretch to say she enjoyed it, but it brought in a decent paycheck. “No. No one told me. How?”

  “The company, it suffered damage during the Chroma Wars.” Was that a glimmer of accusation I saw in Salin’s eyes? “They could not pay everyone,” he continued. “An insurance problem, I think. I wanted to give her a job here, but…” He raised his palms in a gesture of defeat. “…business is not good here either.”

  Was that what she’d called me about? She needed money? I wasn’t exactly rolling in it, but I could have helped her.

  “She get desperate?” I asked. “Starving?”

  “No, no,” Salin said. “It wasn’t that. Her singing, it gave her enough money to live on. The job was for saving.”

  And then I understood. I pictured the first time I met Claudia. To this day I don’t know what the hell she saw in us. Salin was pretty good with the double bass, but Bubbles and I were little more than hacks. The bar audiences we played to were usually more interested in knocking back beers than paying attention to us, and it was a rare night we didn’t get at least one bottle hurled at us. But Claudia had showed up for three gigs in a row, following us from bar to bar, always sitting right up near the stage, watching us with a glass of orange juice in her hand and a faint smile on her face. And on that third night, after we’d finished our set, she came and talked to us.

  I remember that sparkle in her eyes as she approached our table where we commiserated over how badly we sucked. “May I join you?” she’d asked, her accent thick. We said yes. How could we not?

  The first time I heard her singing, I knew she was going to go far. She should’ve been hunting down record deals, not hanging around with low-lifes like us. I asked her once what she was doing in Bluegate, instead of being somewhere—anywhere—else. She told me she didn’t want record deals. She wanted to sing in Heaven. There were enough Vei in Heaven who loved human music that a good musician could travel from town to town, city to city, living entirely off singing. Some Vei even believed that human music helped stabilize parts of their dimension, calming the chaos and allowing their minds to experience peace. Claudia wanted to travel the alternate world, visit Skytown and the Inverse Plains, see the shifting skies, swim the underground rivers, and soar past the floating mountains on an airsnake.

  I offered to smuggle her to Heaven, free of charge. Hundreds of people did it, hiring freelancers like me to travel between the worlds. But Claudia was a good kid. She wanted to do it legit, and that meant saving up for a visa from Immigration and going through the Bore. She was still saving when she died, working that damn job until they fired her. She never set foot in Heaven.

  I sighed and put it out of my head. I couldn’t get her there now. But I could make some people hurt for what they did.

  “You ever hear of a Vei girl called Penny Coleman?” I asked Salin. “A prostitute. Did Claudia ever mention her?”

  “No,” Salin said.

  “Had she been hanging out with anyone new? New guy, or some homeless people or anything?”

  Salin shrugged.

  Damn it. I leaned against the counter and plucked a couple of strings on an acoustic guitar hanging by its strap. “The guys who gave me this papercut on my ear, they mentioned two names. The Collective, and AISOR. Set off any bells?”

  “Of course, I know the names,” Salin said. “They are on the news. One is the gang, the other is the company. A Tunneling company, yes?”

  “Tunneling and lots of other stuff,” Desmond said to me. “They’ve been popping up in the business pages of the paper. They dabble in a bit of everything, manufacturing, mining, rare materials, import/export. The whole shebang.”

  “So if there’s money to be made in Tunneling, they’re interested?” I said.

  Desmond shrugged. “Sure. Lots of these companies are. The paper says they’re a good bet for any investor. They’ve got offices in half the Bore cities, but they’ve moved their main operations here since the Chroma Wars and your little Limbus experiment.”

  I fingered the keys on a shiny silver trumpet, much newer and cleaner than mine. Then I looked at the price tag and quickly let go before I got blood on it and Salin made me pay for it.

  “Any dirt on them?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Desmond said. “They�
�re still small enough that they haven’t gone full evil corporation.”

  “Yet,” I said. “So Claudia didn’t mention them?”

  Salin shook his head. “I am sorry. I wish I knew. I keep thinking what I could have done, if I had talked to her more...”

  I nodded and turned away. Claudia was there with us, strolling among the instruments, laying her hands on the keys and the strings. But they never made a sound.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “Listen, guy,” Desmond said as we went back down the stairs and out onto the street, “I know you mean well. But you’ve only just escaped this whole Chroma Wars thing. You don’t need this right now. You’re not in any condition to go playing detective.”

  “Gimme a break.” I tried not to grimace as I got into Desmond’s car.

  “Vivian can handle it. She’s a good cop.”

  “That’s the problem,” I said. “You said so yourself. Sometimes good’s not good enough. Sometimes you gotta get dirty.”

  “I’m not going to change your mind, am I?”

  “To be honest, I don’t even know why you still try.”

  He sighed and started the engine. We were both quiet for a little while as he drove. I pretended I couldn’t see Claudia out of the corner of my eye, buckled in nice and safe in the backseat.

  “All right,” he said finally. “What do you need?”

  I glanced at him. His jaw was set.

  “No,” I said. “Nuh-uh.”

  “What?”

  “Not this time. I’m doing this by myself.”

  “Like hell,” Des said. “Tania and I are your friends, guy—”

  “Tania? You’re volunteering Tania for this shit too? I nearly got her killed last winter. They turned her into a…a…” I shook my head. “No. Not happening.”

  “She’s not the same girl she was then. She’s grown up a lot in the last few months. Her Tunneling control is fantastic. You should see the things she can do now.”

  The implications of what he just said smacked me in the face like a rotten fish. “You’re teaching her.”

  “Someone has to.” He stared out the windshield with eyes like nails.

  “Damn it, Des. She’s got you twisted around her finger, doesn’t she? Have you got her involved in your goddamn neighborhood watch as well? How much danger are you putting her in?”

  “She’s a smart girl.”

  “She’s a goddamn child!”

  “You’re the only chi—” He cut himself off and twisted the steering wheel in his hands. He was grinding his teeth so hard he must have been wearing them down to the gums.

  We pulled up outside my apartment. I shoved open the car door and clambered out, careful not to brush my ear against the door frame. My apartment building didn’t look any better in the daylight, but at least you knew there weren’t things hiding in the shadows waiting for you.

  “Hey, guy,” Desmond said before I could close the door. He was calmer now. Apologetic, almost. “Seriously, I’d drop this thing if I were you. You got lucky last time with the Chroma thing. If you get in trouble with the law, they might not be so easy-going the second time round.”

  I sighed and kicked at the curb. “You worry too much. I think I’m going to take me a nice long nap first, anyway. Just for a week or two.”

  He smiled, but his eyes didn’t carry it. “Take it easy on the…uh…” He shrugged and glanced away. “Just take it easy, all right, guy?”

  I tapped on the door of the car and waved, and he peeled away.

  Claudia was waiting for me at the door to my apartment building. She watched as I fumbled with my keys.

  “Not now, kid,” I muttered to her. “Not now.”

  SIX

  The cut went from the highest point of my ear down and backward, maybe an inch long. It had sliced right through the width of my ear. If it was much longer they’d be calling me the Half-Eared Tunneler. I wiggled the outer bit back and forth in front of the bathroom mirror with sick satisfaction, bracing myself against the pain.

  Son of a bitch.

  It had stopped bleeding, but now it oozed clear fluid. I carefully dabbed at it with a washcloth soaked in antiseptic, cleaning away the dried blood. Maybe going to the doctor wasn’t such a dumb idea after all. The slice seemed to naturally want to spring open, leaving an empty wedge in the top of my ear.

  I took a long draw from the bottle of whiskey I’d stashed under the kitchen sink and made a face at myself in the mirror.

  I should have known this would happen. Well, maybe not the ear-slicing, exactly, but getting into trouble was something of a specialty. Des was right. This was no place for a guy who let his hallucinations control him. Vivian was good police; she didn’t need some fool bumbling around. Look where that had got me last winter.

  At the top of my bathroom cabinet I found a set of bandages from a first aid kit I’d bought a few years back. I’d got good use out of them, and now there were barely any left. Maybe that was a sign of something.

  I rolled up some gauze, pressed it against my ear, and tried to bind the slice closed with an adhesive bandage. It wasn’t pretty, but maybe it’d keep until I could find a doctor who didn’t mind working for free.

  I grabbed the whiskey bottle by the neck and went to my bedroom. Unwashed clothes lay scattered across my bed, so I shoved them onto the floor. I took another slug of whiskey, letting the bitter taste burn all the way down. It didn’t help. Claudia still watched me, and I still felt like shit.

  I wondered what Tania would say if she caught me here, sucking on a bottle of booze with half my ear sliced off. I’d never hear the end of it.

  In an instant, self-hate spilled out of some dark corner of my soul. Look at me, a sorry excuse for a human being. Too busy blaming Tania for Tunneling on her own to consider that maybe, just maybe, I should have been doing what I promised her. She wouldn’t have to do it herself if I wasn’t so goddamn drunk all the time.

  I sneered at the bottle in my hand, but it didn’t react. Why should it? It was just booze. I used to drink a bit when I was a teenager, but I was never an alcoholic, not like a couple of my foster fathers.

  What the hell was I doing?

  It’s just to get through the worst of it, a little voice inside me insisted. Just to make the nightmares go away.

  Well, I was having nightmares during the day, now. Yeah, I’d killed those gangsters, and it hadn’t been pretty. But I still saw them, drunk or sober. I couldn’t hide from what I’d done. Hell, the damn TV seemed to insist on that, showing photos of the devastation I’d caused every time they talked about the Chroma Wars.

  But I’d done what I had to do. People I cared about were in danger. Fuck the law, fuck doing the right thing, whatever that was. I never had a family, except the one I made myself. And if I had to sell my soul to protect them, well, it was a damn good deal.

  Only, where was I now? Too sloshed to exchange more than a handful of civil words with them. Too goddamn drunk to talk to Claudia when she called. When she needed me.

  My knuckles were white around the whiskey bottle. I glanced up at Claudia’s ghost.

  “Whaddya reckon?” I asked.

  She slowly nodded.

  I went to the window, opened it. The sounds of the city washed in, a constant hubbub of noise, sirens, the chatter of humans and Vei. For better or worse, I’d changed Bluegate.

  Maybe I could stand to change a little too.

  “To you,” I said, holding the bottle up in Claudia’s direction. I brought the bottle to my lips, took one last swig. Then I turned back to the window and upended the bottle. The whiskey splashed through the slits in the fire escape platform and trickled down to the alley below. In a few seconds, it was done. I tossed the empty bottle onto the fire escape and breathed deep.

  I was too drunk to help Claudia once. Not again. I needed a clear head for this. Well, as clear a head as a hallucinating madman can manage, I guess.

  A small smile crossed Claudia’s face a
s I got on my knees to dig my trumpet out from under my bed. It was old and heavy with memory. I put it to my lips and started to play.

  I hadn’t maintained the instrument in the last few months, not since before the Chroma Wars. I was rusty too. But the music still appeared.

  I closed my eyes and let my fingers dance on the valves. It was one of the few songs we’d written ourselves. We called it “Destiny Is No Excuse”. Well, I say we wrote it, but that’s not true. Claudia was always the one with the talent.

  In my head, Claudia was singing, as clear as if she’d never left. Her voice always made me shiver.

  I brought the song to as clean an end as I could manage, leaving the last note hanging in the air. I opened my eyes, and Claudia was gone. Not for good, I didn’t think.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” I said to the air. “I’m too dumb to give up on you.”

  “Who are you talking to?” said a voice behind me.

  I whirled on the spot and found Tania standing in my bedroom doorway, wearing a black-and-white summer dress and clutching a black trash bag. She frowned, staring at the trumpet in my hands.

  “Uh…no one,” I said, shoving the trumpet back into its case. “I mean, you. I was talking to you. Jesus, girl, you ever give knocking a shot? It’s easy, I’ll show you how.”

  “I heard you playing,” she said. She chewed on her lip. “It sounded sad.”

  “Yeah, I guess it was.”

  She frowned and dragged the bag across the floor toward me. “What happened to your ear?”

  “Cut myself shaving.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Look, kid, about last night, I…well…you know.”

  She quirked an eyebrow.

  I sighed. Goddamn apologies. It’d be easier to drag my gallbladder out through my nose. “I’ll try and do better now.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” she said, shrugging.

  “Hell I don’t, after the trouble I got you into.”