As Lie the Dead

by Kelly Meding

  On the catwalk that overlooked hundreds of cardboard and newspaper nests dotted among steel production vats stood the same yellow-skinned, rabbit-eared, knob-kneed ancient gremlin with whom we’d dealt before. At least, I thought it was the same one. His distended belly hung low to the floor, the tufted fur in his ears and on the top of his head the same shade of green. His sharp red eyes held a hint of recognition as they looked at me, and suspicion for Phin.

  “Favor again?” the gremlin asked, the tiny voice a perfect match for his twenty inches of height.

  “Yes,” I said. “And I brought payment.”

  I crooked a finger at Phin. He stepped inside the room, nose wrinkled and lips pressed so tight they disappeared. Beads of sweat formed on his brow and nose. He crouched and put the boxes on the floor and then backed out the door, into the slightly less smelly stairwell.

  The gremlin didn’t seem to notice, eyes fixed on the boxes. Drool started to seep from the corners of his fanged mouth. I lifted the first lid to show off the chocolate cheesecake hidden within, and the gremlin squealed. He clapped clawed hands together like a delighted child.

  “All three for a favor,” I said.

  “What?” it asked.

  “I need you to hack into the Metro Police Department’s intranet and access the files of everyone over the rank of Desk Sergeant.”

  “Impossible.”

  I blinked. “Why?”

  “Cannot.”

  Okay. Time to backtrack. Dregs tend to think literally, taking words and requests at face value. Sarcasm, humor, and metaphors went over their heads. Something in my request was impossible for the gremlins to accomplish; therefore, my request was deemed impossible in total. Take it down a notch, try again.

  “I need access to the MPD’s intranet system and passwords for secured servers,” I said. “Can you provide the passwords and site keys I need for total access?”

  “Do,” the gremlin said, with a curt nod that set its long ears wobbling. “More?”

  Once I had the passwords, all I needed was someone who knew how to hack those systems and get the information I wanted. Not, apparently, within the scope of a gremlin’s abilities. “No, that’s it.”

  It pointed at the stack of cakes. “Extra. More to do.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Phin, who shrugged in an unhelpful manner. To the gremlin, I said, “Can I take a rain check?”

  The gremlin stared dumbly.

  “Keep the cheesecake,” I said. “I’ll ask another favor later.”

  “Fair,” it said.

  “Yeah, fair. How long until I have my information?”

  “Tomorrow return, sunrise.”

  Terrific. Now to figure out what to do in the meantime. “Sunrise tomorrow,” I said. “Thank you.”

  The gremlin nodded, snapped its gnarled fingers, and took a sideways step. Three smaller gremlins scurried out of the darkness and retrieved the bakery boxes, only to disappear again. Probably to glut themselves. The elderly gremlin gestured to the door; I took the hint and backed out.

  Phin made short work of the stairs. I had to take them two at a time to keep up, relieved to leave the thick alcohol odor behind. He burst through the metal security doors, into the afternoon sunlight, and promptly vomited onto the cracked, crumbling blacktop. Skin paler than white, devoid of any sign of his earlier tan, he retched up whatever he’d eaten that day, and then some.

  I stood to the side while he finished, his entire body trembling with the effort. The violent reaction surprised me—and concerned me a hell of a lot more than I wanted to admit. It stank up there, sure, but not that badly—unless it was more than just stink. On the paranormal food chain, weres and gremlins were pretty far apart, not only in physiology but also in psychology. Weres came in many shapes and sizes and temperaments. Gremlins came in one size and shape, and all acted basically like one another; individuality was rare, if it occurred at all.

  Phin finished, spat, and started to stand, only to stumble and hit his knees. I bolted over, heart suddenly beating a little faster, and squatted beside him. He held up one hand, a simple request to stay back. I acquiesced, resting my elbows on my thighs. And watched him.

  His pupils were dilated so much the vivid blue was overtaken by black. Sweat ran in thin rivulets from his temples to the collar of his borrowed polo. He breathed hard through his mouth, chest heaving with each intake and exhale. A little color had returned to his cheeks, but the rest of his skin retained its pallor.

  I tried to drum up something more meaningful to say, but the old classic tumbled out of my mouth first: “Are you okay?”

  “Embarrassed, I think,” he said, voice stronger than his condition would suggest. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? Puking? Trust me, I’ve done it a few times.”

  He shook his head, eyes forward. Not looking at me. “For not backing you up properly. I showed weakness on our side. The gremlin could have held that against you in your negotiations.”

  “He didn’t.” And I seriously doubted he would have—it just wasn’t how gremlins worked. More proof Phin didn’t know much about them. “Look, it stank to high hell up there. It’s no wonder you got sick.”

  “It was more than that, Evy.” He finally looked at me. A spark of blue began to appear around the wide pupils. “I’ve never felt such instinctual revulsion before. I couldn’t breathe up there. It was in my lungs and my eyes and my ears, so thick. So disgusting.”

  “Gremlins tend to stick to their own kind,” I said, my sympathy meter tilting toward him. “Maybe there’s a good reason for it.”

  “Perhaps.” His lips twisted into a wry smile. “I zoned out during the final bit of conversation. What’s been decided?”

  “I get the passwords I need tomorrow morning around sunrise, but overpaid, so there’s another favor owed us.” That could definitely come in handy down the road.

  “Tomorrow morning? What are you going to do until then?”

  I stood up and offered my hand. He followed on his own steam, apparently too proud to be helped up by a girl. More color had returned to his skin—an odd little side effect of his allergic reaction, if that’s what it was. More fun tidbits about weres I didn’t know.

  “I should check in at the hospital,” I said, “then swing by the apartment and see how Aurora and Joseph are doing. I should also refine my current plan, so I don’t as much feel like I’m flying by the seat of my pants.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with improvisation,” Phin said.

  “There is when so many lives are on the line.”

  “True. And yet I sense that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”

  I wandered back to his car. Even though information was forthcoming, the entire journey to the factory seemed like a waste of time. I needed the information now, not in the morning. Time was in short supply. So what else was new? More lives than just mine depended on my success. Déjà vu, really? I had no idea how I was going to pull off the impossible. I just knew I had to do it, and do it fast.

  Ten days ago, I had my finger on the pulse of the city’s Dreg underbelly. Knew the players, the teams, and how to get in their way. Could find anyone I needed to question in a matter of hours, beat out the answers, and go home to a good night’s sleep. Then my friends were murdered; I was kidnapped, tortured, and killed; my world flipped upside down when I was resurrected into someone else’s body; and just when I thought the threat was over, brand-new shit storms began stirring up all over the radar.

  My two best sources were unreachable. Max, the only gargoyle ever to give me the time of day, had told me he was leaving town before the shit hit the fan. I hadn’t spoken to Smedge since the homeless bridge troll (correction: Earth Guardian) vomited me up in First Break two days ago. His spot under the Lincoln Street Bridge had been tarred over; I had no idea where he’d gone to roost since.

  I gazed out across the old factory’s empty, grass-pocked parking lot, toward the horizon of warehouses, low-rent apartment buil
dings, and half-empty strip malls. The heart of Mercy’s Lot was here, among the ruins of a once bustling part of town. Populated by the hopeless, homeless, and rejected—human and Dreg alike. I knew this part of town. Once upon a time, she knew Evy Stone.

  She didn’t know the new me, but I still knew how to get answers out of her.

  “What are you thinking?” Phin asked, after we’d climbed into the car.

  “I’m thinking of reintroducing myself to the neighborhood.”

  He turned the key; the engine roared. “Sounds like you have a starting point in mind.”

  “Well, a Halfie tried to kill me this morning. Good a place to start as any.”

  “Location?”

  “Go back out to Banks Street, and then left for six blocks until you get to Mike’s Gym.”

  “What’s there, besides a gymnasium of some sort?”

  I smiled. “You’ll see.”

  “You’re scary when you smile like that.”

  I smiled wider. Time to make him uncomfortable for a change. I settled back as he drove, anticipating our destination and the unsavory sort waiting for us there. Stress relief in the form of information gathering. I cracked my knuckles. Best part of the job.

  Chapter Seven

  11:53 A.M.

  Mike’s Gym wasn’t the kind of place where amateur boxers looked for coaches or where wannabe tough guys worked on their muscle tone. It didn’t list in the Yellow Pages, and few people walked back out the door without leaving some blood behind. And not just because Halfies hung out there.

  Phin parked a block over, his little rusty car a perfect fit for the neighborhood, set among vehicles missing hubcaps and with doors painted mismatched colors. The air seemed grayer, the world just a little darker, even though the same sun shone down.

  “What’s that smell?” he asked as we walked down the grimy sidewalk, past newspapered storefronts and neon-lit porn shops.

  I inhaled familiar odors: oil from cars, rot from overflowing trash bins, sweat and soil from unhealthy bodies living unhappy lives. “Smells like home,” I replied.

  He looked at me sideways, as though judging my sincerity. I lifted one shoulder in a quasi shrug. Crap car or not, the Sunset Terrace Apartments had been on the border between the pretty and ugly sides of Mercy’s Lot. Something told me the Owlkins hadn’t ventured to this side very often.

  At the end of the block, I went left onto a one-way street. More cars dotted the parallel spaces. The sidewalk was broken and spotted with grass and dandelions. Down to a scarred wooden door, overlaid by iron bars. Painted right on the door was the word “Gym,” the ancient black letters peeling into nothingness. The door had no handle on our side. A heavy bass line beat through the walls—the only sign of activity inside.

  “Do we knock?” Phin asked.

  “I never use the front door,” I said, and kept walking to the end of the building, which butted up close to the back of another grimy brick building. A narrow alley cut between them, filled with overflowing metal garbage cans, moldering boxes of waste, and a smell of rot so strong my nose tingled.

  “Please tell me there’s a restaurant nearby,” he whispered.

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the smell of rotting meat, and I’d like to imagine it’s yesterday’s uncooked steaks.”

  I snickered and shook my head. “Sorry to burst the illusion, but it’s probably a collection of dead strays. Have you noticed this city has a strangely low population of rats, mice, stray dogs and cats?”

  He blanched. For a split second, I was sure his face went a little green. “You know, Phin, for someone so hell-bent on avenging his Clan and getting involved in my work, you sure don’t know much about how the other species live.”

  “So educate me.”

  It was as much a request as a challenge. “Glad to. Follow me.”

  I didn’t know whether he could handle himself in a fight or whether he’d know what to do if a crazed Halfie charged him with teeth bared. It was a good time to find out. I navigated a path around the leaking, filthy trash heaps to a boarded back door covered in handwritten variations of “Keep Out” and “No Trespassing.” I tested the knob—it turned, opened.

  We entered a haze of cigarette smoke and chilly air, swirled with heavy music and the sharp odor of blood. The tiny back room was the owner’s office—I wasn’t sure of his real name, but I knew it wasn’t Mike—and it was cluttered with boxes of belongings. Coats, wallets, baseball caps, boxing gloves, gym bags, shoes, clothing of all sorts for both males and females. Items probably taken off hapless innocents who’d dared to knock on the door and request entrance to the gym.

  Once upon a time, that evidence alone would have warranted a Triad cleansing of every Dreg inside the place. Today, I didn’t have the time to be bothered. But I made a mental note to pass the information along to Kismet or Baylor, in case one of them wanted to make an example out of the place later.

  Past an overflowing filing cabinet, I pushed through a gaudy beaded curtain into a short hallway that reeked of sweat, mildew, and tepid water. Six feet down on the right was a locker room. Voices trickled out, laughing at a joke about a woman and six vampires. We passed without incident, footsteps absorbed by rubber matting on the floor. Yellowed, peeling posters advertising amateur nights and “survive three minutes for a hundred bucks” matches covered the poorly painted walls.

  A few yards farther, the hall bent sharply right, out into the gym area. I licked my lips, adrenaline kicking in and pumping up my heart rate a few notches. I clenched my fists, unclenched, refrained from cracking my knuckles. Vampires have excellent senses of hearing and smell; Halfies less so, but I was still surprised no one had noticed our presence. Yet.

  I looked back to check on my shadow. Phin’s face had taken on the sharp, attentive look of a hunter. Hands were curled by his sides, shoulders tense, back straight. His eyes met mine; he tilted his chin in a slight nod. The chilly air seemed to shift. His attention diverted past me, eyes widening just a fraction. Shit.

  I turned and ducked. The wind of the missed blow sailed over my head, and I drove my fist up into someone’s bare six-pack. The owner gasped and doubled over, right into my left fist. My underworked knuckles ached. The second hit knocked him sideways into the wall, and the heavy thudding sound announced our arrival.

  A dozen male voices shouted. The music was shut off. Leather slapped leather; feet hit the mat. I stepped over the crumpled body of my first attacker and out into the gym itself. And right into view of at least fifteen able-bodied men.

  A boxing ring took up the center of the space, its taut ropes the only thing in the place less than ten years old. Bruised and patched heavy bags, an array of rusty weights and frayed ropes, and all manner of sparring mats surrounded the ring. The attendees were scattered around the room, every single one of them sporting similar white-blotched hair and luminous, silver-specked eyes. Halfies, just as I’d hoped.

  Phin was behind me and to my left. I wanted Wyatt there, watching my back, not laid up in the hospital. He’d have enjoyed this kind of tussle.

  No one attacked. For half a minute, no one moved.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” I said.

  Glances were exchanged. Most of them just stared. Not the sharpest crayons in the box.

  One finally pushed his way to the front. Thick arms and legs were covered with intricate tattoos that disappeared beneath his shorts and wife-beater T. Even his neck was tattooed. His scalp was shaved clean, all the white-blotched hair relegated to his chin in a thick, bushy beard that looked like it hadn’t been trimmed all year. He cracked taped knuckles and put his hands on his square hips.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked. His voice matched his barrel-shaped body, deep and rumbling from somewhere low in his chest.

  “Would you believe I’m a sports agent, out scouting talent?”

  “Fuck no.”

  “A man after my own vocabulary.”

  Thick eyebrows scrunched t
ogether. “Like I said, who the fuck are you?”

  I cocked my head to the side. “Just a concerned citizen, wandering around town to see who knows why there was a Halfie downtown at St. Eustachius this morning, armed with a .45, a hand grenade, and a bad attitude.”

  “Don’t know.”

  He was too quick on the draw to be telling the truth. “Yeah? How about your friends?”

  “Been here since dawn, bitch.”

  “Now was that nice?” I took three steps forward, still out of arm’s reach of any single Halfie, but close to invading Tattoo Guy’s personal space. “After all, I didn’t come in here calling you names, dickwad.”

  He growled. “You and your boyfriend looking to join up? That it?”

  “Thanks, but I have a gym membership. It’s a nice place. You and your girlfriends should check it out sometime.”

  “Not what I meant.” He bared his teeth, showing off a pair of brilliant fangs. He looked up and down the length of my figure, not bothering to hide his appraisal. His leer gave me the skeevies, but I shoved that particular ick into the back of my mind. Had to keep my head in the fight.

  It occurred to me then that I’d made a deadly tactical error—no weapons larger than my single knife, which was out of reach in my ankle sheath.

  Some flash of apprehension must have made its way into my expression, because Tattoo roared, and the gathered Halfies descended on us in a crush.

  “Don’t let them bite you,” I shouted, and slammed an approaching boxer in the throat with the V between my thumb and first finger. His eyes bugged and he backpedaled, gasping.

  Someone tackled me from behind, sending us both to the mats. I tucked and rolled, dislodging the parasite from my back. Everything was moving so quickly—air, hands, fists, smells, sounds—I could only react. Swept two pairs of legs out from under unbalanced bodies. Knocked a few teeth loose. Split the skin on my knuckles punching someone in the chin. Snapped at least one neck. I was moving on mental instinct, if not quite physical instinct, stretching unpracticed muscles and tottering on unsure footing.

  It was times like these I really missed my old body.