Black City (The Lark Case Files)

by Christian Read

  Danny Tran found a scroll. The Ulama was the only person in the building, and he was disinclined to say 'no' to an American soldier that day. So Danny Tran, who, to be fair, had no idea he was intruding into the stacks, never knew he shouldn't have unsealed the scroll. He read it. It turned something on in his brain and he left that place with a black fire in his head.

  Staff Sergeant Danny Tran later threw himself under a truck. A truck he had heavily graffitied the night before.

  Danny Tran's father was an intelligence officer for the United States Army. He was a smart man and refused to believe his son would kill himself. Mr .Tran was not blind to the life of a soldier, nor was he an optimistic man. He recognised that the right mix of aggression and egotism in his boy simply made that kind of breakdown unlikely.

  Mr. Tran was a twenty-five year veteran. He'd met many, many people in his career. Mr. Tran was known to be a champion of interdepartmental co-operation and had a reputation as a man who got things done. He should have risen higher in his career, but he simply lacked the social skills and the cannibal politicking genes. But he had made peace with that, and many who had climbed over him remembered him fondly, aware he was no threat to seniority and willing to cut him a break.

  Nor did Mr. Tran ever forget the strange manner of his son's death.

  And so, finally, during an international conference on religious terrorism, he immediately recognised people who could help him when the Department of Civil Defence (Religious Division) gave a speech on radical dogma amongst terrorist cells.

  Agent Valier gave that speech. DCD (RD) golden girl. Twenty-four. Higher degrees in languages and philosophy, with minors in anthropology and religious studies.

  Her presentation, in a small, dull white room, was fascinating to Mr. Tran. Agent Valier was trained to recognise heresies and cults in what the West considered foreign religions. She was discovering that the West had little to fear from these organisations, who preferred to prey upon their own religions. Buddhist or Muslim or Orthodox Christian, they all had renegades and rogues, who created cults from apocrypha and anger and chemicals. Schisms and sectarianism was rife in the apparently implacable, overwhelming endless war.

  Mr. Tran recognised one of her slides. A similar pictograph to what Danny had drawn on the truck he'd hurled himself under. From 1832, the early days of some death-religion had used a similar sigil as their symbol.

  They spoke.

  Tracking Danny's movement had been fairly easy. His unit had remembered the Museum well. It had been a memorable day after all. The man walked in sane and walked out fucking crazy.

  Agent Valier tracked down the Museum and, after weeks of waiting, an Arabic translator was assigned. She wrote to the Library, using her academic credentials, asking for a catalogue. Which was duly given her.

  Confirmation.

  The Scroll.

  Fifty

  In the tenth century, a wandering holy man had been in Medina, where he had encountered a sorcerer. The sorcerer was going against the will of God and dealing with terrible forces. Some satanic creature from outside the world.

  The holy man prayed for three days and nights, fasting, until God granted him an answer.

  The holy man was a scribe by trade, a learned man whose calligraphy was admired by princes and artists and scholars alike. He could write in ten languages and had command of esoteric power granted by the most high. He confronted the sorcerer and God put a commandment on the black magician to tell everything he knew about the devil-thing he'd conjured. The holy scribe wrote it all down, creating a new language to capture such blasphemy, unwilling to sully the letters of men with this evil.

  When he was finished, the devil realised its entire being was there on that scroll and had no choice but to inhabit this new language, trapped within it for all time.

  'That's a pretty story, Agent Valier.'

  'Yes. Isn't it.'

  'Turns out its more than a pretty story. By two thousand three, we'd discovered that many fringe groups were interested in the scroll, which had been preserved and traditionally linked with that narrative.'

  'I never heard of it.'

  The Library might have.

  'So we tried to retrieve it. When we joined the Coalition of the Willing, I was in a position to have agents on the ground find it. It had powerful fetishistic and symbolic properties for any number of fringe groups.'

  'Please don't bore me with government phobias of madmen with beards.'

  She frowns. 'It's not like that.'

  'What's it like?'

  'Danny Tran's story was famous among certain army circles, and photos of the weird things he wrote on that truck got around. In time, they came to the attention of one Sandra Saunders, whose brother-in-law was Colonel William Soot.'

  'Skip to the end. No. Wait. Sandra Saunders?'

  'Yes.'

  It hits me. She was Gallowglass. High up. Old money with a passion for antiques. Worshipped money, literally, like it was the biggest ghost haunting the world.

  'She found out about the scroll.'

  'Yes. And while I was looking for it in Iraq, she had the damn thing stolen and smuggled to the city.'

  Where the Old Man, ten years later, found out about it and came for it.

  What's written on that thing?

  I get up. 'I have to go.'

  'Do you know the whereabouts of Sandra Saunders?'

  I look at Valier. The spell is straining at her. I can feel the hostility. I have to give her something or risk it snapping and them freaking out about their sudden urge to talk.

  'She's dead. I don't know where the scroll is.'

  'How do you know this, Mr. Lark?'

  It's Coffee. He's risen. I take a step back. He's staring at Valier. Clearly, she's acting out of character and it's spooked him out of the jinx.

  'You two. Listen. Something bad is happening. That scroll is... something bad is written on it. Leave it alone. Leave it to me.'

  Jim, tieless, is coming back. He's got something in his pocket, too small to be a pistol, so I'm thinking taser or pepper spray. Shit. I take another step back. Spread my hands. Valier flanks me, preventing me getting to the door.

  'What did you do to us?'

  I guess I leaned on the talking conjure way too hard after all.

  Bit of the Ultrascorpion then. I whisper a word I invented long ago. I wrote it out in pain and keep it close. They curse, feeling hooks in their spirits and then cry out. It just hurts, phantom trains on the nervous tracks. Doesn't damage. But it's enough.

  I'm gone, out the door, giving the armed guard some of the same and taking his key. I'm out of the elevator and free of the heavy glass doors by the time they follow me, having taken the fire stairs down. No guns out, but the woman has a taser and no mistake this time. Two fingers for her. Hah hah motherfuckers. Can't catch me.

  Disappearing is easy. I just concentrate and convince them not to be there. Flag a cab and pay him with coins, much to everyone's annoyance. The house is still clear.

  So good to be home. I lock the door and put a stack of heavy art books up against it. No one is coming in.

  I collapse. Three in the morning. I should turn on the lights but I'm worn.

  Spooks. Jesus. This is getting interesting.

  And I think about the scroll. And I think about the timing.

  It had been with Gallowglass for nearly ten years and they never knew what they had. Or if they did, never used it. Why would the Old Man come for it now?

  Why now? What signal lit up in his mad dog brain? What meshed together his sick, frayed dendrites?

  I start. A sound. Wild and high.

  My phone.

  Answer.

  'Hello Scarlet.'

  Fifty-One

  Ten years with Scarlet. Twenty to thirty.

  The first three, pure. The hot librarian who took off her glasses and let down her hair to become the punk rock psychobilly babe who took off the cowgirl hat and the tiny gingham shirt to become the swamp
witch who came down from the mountains. Sex and drugs. I never seemed to stop being thirsty for her. Magic. I'd just joined the Library and, in that first year, she encouraged me to attempt adeptship. And when I was put on a Retrieval team, she laughed and bought me a hundred-dollar bottle of tequila neither of us could afford, and we took peyote in the park.

  That second year, she joined as well. An initiate but curious about her parents' own traditions, she joined and never looked back. Hers was a study of earthy magic, close to the world, Vesta and the Freya became her gods for a small while. She'd go dancing with Jon and slide into bed at dawn, sweaty and exhausted and shining, hungry for me, just for me.

  Then the work got serious. I got promoted and became the head of Retrievals, which meant I had a full-time job, as the Library salaries certain positions. I was out of town one week out of five. Globe-trotting. The golden years for me and Jon. Drinking in exotic bars, sharing techniques with Libraries across the planet, training under some of the greatest magicians in the world. The Europeans, who viewed us with curiosity, and the Americans, who loved our accents, and the Asians, who thought us hopelessly bound up with dogma. Brilliant cases, like when we joined up with five Retrieval teams to deal with the kraken-finger. The Oslo Working, with the bronze tiger in a park full of junkies. Jon doing a duet karaoke version of It's a Family Affair by Sly and the Family Stone with a Bodhisattva in a bar in Taipei.

  And the phone calls to Scarlet in bland hotel rooms, where I was so lonely I might as well have been a sheet of white paper.

  She had an affair then. I was six weeks out of town and we'd left on a terrible flight. She told me on the rooftop of the place I still live. Bitter words. I had one back. It was awful. Two-month break up. Reconcile. Three months later, back together.

  Mully coming to see us as we cleaned up madly, airing the place out of cigarette smells and quickly hiding the empty bottles. Her brother and sister, twins, coming to stay, and me scoring them weed. Their first time a disaster as they became paranoid and sick, their second a night filled with laughter and stories and ending with me burning them a lot of CDs. Scarlet kissing me the night they left, thanking me for being kind.

  'I know that's not easy for you, just talking. I'm glad you tried.'

  A life.

  And while I was gone, Scarlet volunteered in the Library. Archivists are at a premium in our, that, organisation and she showed a talent for organisation that surprised her. Both of us were lucky to join at a time that a lot of the old guard had died, or were looking to put down their duties. Tapped for the Vigilance Committee. Invited into the Steering Committee. The strange first meeting where she sat in on my reports. The day where she came home after they'd opened up my case files. Her laying in bed with me.

  'I never knew what you and Jon did could be so dangerous.'

  'Only sometimes, baby. Most of those files? Just me and Jon going through someone's mail.'

  'Not always.'

  Not wanting to scare her.

  'No. But that's rare.'

  'Do you get scared?'

  And I realise I've been afraid of everything every time I've done a job. 'Yeah.'

  'But you do it anyway.'

  'Has to be done.'

  Twisting around to face me. 'It does. It really does. I'm so glad you do it. I'm proud.'

  And she really is. Nothing like it, the person you want telling you that, telling it true.

  She continued to work for the Library until they offered her a job overseas but not me. Tense time. She was tempted. But we stayed.

  Scarlet outranked me our eighth anniversary, which we spent eating pizza and listening to old records. A little bored with each other, a little too familiar with each other, but happier than not. All that year, I'd been unhappy enough. The work had been more than just protecting. We'd been putting the screws on more regularly, with more violence. Guys who weren't dangerous at all were getting the men in black treatment. Jon was more vocal about it than me, telling the bosses to let us do the job our way and that we knew when to throw punches.

  Soon, we were taking work home. I didn't want to do a job like they told me to do it at all. I resented that and shared it.

  'They're witches, they're barely out of high school. Let them study the damn book. It won't hurt them.'

  'No. They can't be trusted. They are, as you say, just barely out of high school, and they've got a pretty serious tract.' The first time we really differed.

  Over dinner, I shrugged. 'We can't tell everyone what they can and can't read. They'll have some scares. They'll make mistakes.'

  Scarlet put her knife and fork together. 'No. They're dangerous. And you'll do your job. All you've seen and you don't think they're dangerous?'

  Boring fight. Who are you to tell me my work? Why can't you see that these kids can't be trusted? Even if they were dangerous, which they're not, they're only a danger to themselves.

  Then: 'You'll do as you're told.'

  That one caused a scar.

  We got over it, but that rift was between us. I thought she was getting panicky. She thought I'd become blasé. Tension all the time. I took a few more jobs out of town to give us space to miss each other.

  Came back. She talked about moving to a nicer place. 'This has been fun, but we can probably afford a better place.' Aspirational talk I dismissed. She took out her piercings. 'I can't talk to the head of other departments with an eyebrow ring. Especially not the Senatorial Council. It's just not the way things are done.'

  Eight and a half years in, Everett joins the Library. Rich man with a passion for book collecting and a desire to talk to his dead wife. Forty years old. Impossibly old to me. Not to her. He's useful. Comes from the civilian world with banking or something behind him. Good cars and tie pins and wines and estate tax. We have dinner at his house and talk about home renovations.

  We fight that night and, a week later, she buys a two hundred dollar of tequila and we go to bed too drunk for sex. The whole thing feels like a bad cover version of a song you dig.

  I ignore the signs from Scarlet that she wants more than just a house full of weird books and a boyfriend who risks his life for not much cash.

  We fight about my refusal to teach.

  She asks me about children, for real. I brush her off, not taking her serious. She quits smoking.

  I refuse to perform an execution on some mad old woman with a talent for wrangling ghosts and she has me formally censured. We don't talk for a week.

  'That woman is dangerous, Jon. She's dangerous!' Jon shakes his head at her and refuses as well. We both get in trouble.

  That might have been a mistake. That woman gained a taste for human meat and indulged it. We took her out, but only after it was too late for some neighbourhood kids. Perhaps we'd become too used to larger threats. Who knows? We were wrong and Scarlet was right.

  My best friend looks at me, his handsome face so sad. 'I don't care. That wasn't a job for you and me, and I don't like being told my discretion doesn't count. That was for the new guys to handle. She had no juice, magically speaking, and her ghosts were weak as piss. She's changed, Lark. I won't be anyone's thug. Not even hers.'

  More jobs we don't like. When I walk into a meeting of a group of alien-worshippers I rather liked for the Sci-Fi Groovy vibe they have, just for some input on my personal studies, they don't look me in the eye. Fear. I'm no longer welcome. Christmas at the bar where a lot of the various groups say hi, a once a year truce. I'm asked to leave. Doesn't matter. Library calls me to steal from their temples while they're drinking. I'm not a thief.

  Scarlet says, 'Seriously, you just have to do what they tell you, baby. Questions just waste time.'

  That leaves me numb with dread. I start drinking. Drunk on her birthday. We fight. Worse, I fuck up a job.

  Then Jon got taken by the Hollow. Nine years and six months.

  That brings us together for a while. They'd been at odds, but she loved him too. She sat up with me during the sleepless days, telling w
ork she'd be in when she was in. I heard her yelling at Everett over the phone, 'I'll be in when the hell I'm in! I'm taking care of someone and you'll damn well respect that.' She means that. I can hear it in her voice because she doesn't know I'm listening.

  Love all over again. We'll be alright.

  We weren't.

  Deep sadness. I can barely talk. We've stopped touching each other in any way. I can't meditate. She's trying to talk to me, to draw me out. Tries to make me eat but I can't. It all seems so stupid. She sends me on easy jobs. When they realise the rumour is true, Jon is gone, they act up. I overreact, punish people that shouldn't be punished. Set the Ultrascorpions on people like they were hounds. They find me another partner but what good is that? A whole other headache story.

  Jon is out there, getting eaten away. I sober up. Present my case to the Library. I need a team to hunt down the Hollow and I need the resources of the whole damn Chapter to help me destroy it. It's world-league hoodoo, the Hollow. Probably have to invite in top Retrievals from other Chapters.

  They say no. Scarlet, in her suit, tells me after the Assembly, 'He's too dangerous and we need you. We don't think you can defeat the Hollow. At least not yet. Your work is suffering at the moment. We'll study it, find a way. But we need you back at work and back on form. Put it behind you. That's an order.'

  Put it behind you.

  That's an order.

  Standing there in front of them, in the cool marble room, I say to them 'I've given ten years of service. So did Jon. I've stood by as you've turned my job into being the secret police, instead of looking for legitimate occult threats. In that time, I've petitioned the Library for exactly no favours or rewards. I'm telling you. I'm begging you. We have to help him.'