shadowrun 40 The Burning Time

by Stephen Kenson

  The red-haired woman breezed past her into the apartment before Trouble could stop her.

  "Ian sent me to find you," Bridget said.

  "What is it?" Trouble asked. "Did something happen? Is he all right?"

  "Yes, he’s fine," Bridget said, and her eyes dropped to the ring lying on the table. The way she stared at it made Trouble wonder if the other woman was jealous of her relationship with the leader of the Knights.

  "He gave you that?" Bridget asked. It wasn’t really a question.

  Trouble was annoyed by her presumption and more than a little concerned by her motive for asking. "I don’t see that it’s any of your. . .urk!"

  She gasped as Bridget moved with incredible speed, grabbing her by the throat and pinning her against the wall with inhuman strength. Trouble fumbled for her gun, but Bridget batted it away like a toy. It clattered to the floor.

  "Excellent," she said in a hoarse whisper. "Things do have a way of falling into place. He was here, wasn’t he?"

  Trouble gasped and struggled. She could barely breathe in Bridget’s iron grip. How could she be so strong? Was she cybered up?

  Trouble shook her head. "No," she choked out. "Ian hasn’t been here. . ."

  "Not him," Bridget hissed. "Talon."

  Then Trouble saw the hate glittering in Bridget’s eyes, felt the heat of her skin, like a fever, the inhuman strength.

  "Oh my God," she whispered. "Gallow."

  "That’s right," Bridget said, an evil smile spreading over her face. "He was here, wasn’t he? My dear creator—I can sense his presence, his stink, on you." Bridget leaned closer, her breath hot on Trouble’s face. "And you hate him, don’t you?" she whispered, smirking.

  "Frag you," Trouble said, struggling.

  Gallow tightened the grip on her throat, and her vision started to swim. "Yes," the spirit said, drawing the word out. "You hate him. You think you love him, but you know he can never return your love, not in the way you want, not in the way you long for, deep down inside. And that poisons that little, hidden part of you, doesn’t it? Such a thin line between love and hate. . .Admit it. A part of you hates him, a part you feel so guilty about."

  Trouble glared as defiantly as she could at the spirit in a woman’s body. "Not as much as I hate you," she gasped out.

  "That’s just what I needed to hear," Gallow said. Then it leaned in close and kissed Trouble, Bridget’s lips so hot they seared like the touch of a branding iron. Trouble screamed, but something hot, dry, and burning invaded her mouth, choking off her cry. She struggled feebly against it. Then her struggles subsided as Gallow held her pinned against the wall, slowly slumping against her. Bridget’s clothes and hair began to smoke, then burst into flames. Trouble pushed the limp, burning body away from her, letting it fall to the floor, where it was consumed in flames.

  As the fire spread across the carpet, she calmly picked up her cybercase and her gun, which had fallen to the floor. She slipped the gun back into its holster and went over to get Ian’s ring. Slipping it onto her finger, she admired its gleam in the light of the fire beginning to spread across the room. She opened the door, glancing back into the burning room as the smoke detector in the hall began to blare an alarm.

  "I hope you’ll be happy to see your bride-to-be, Ian," Gallow said in Trouble’s voice. "There’s still much work to be done, and I wouldn’t want to miss the finale."

  The spirit walked out of the building, then stood nearby and watched it burn. Only when the firefighters arrived did Gallow take its leave.

  Talon had Valkyrie drive him home to pick up some things he would need. After Aracos verified that the coast was clear, he ran in and gathered up the items. Back in the van, he directed Val to pick up Trouble at her place. As they drove, he checked his headphone and found a message from her.

  "Tal," it said, "I’ve been doing some digging and I found a Knight Errant report of a Jane Doe burned to death in an alley not too far from here the other night. They’ve labeled it an unsolved crime, possibly magic-related. Call me back."

  He mentally keyed Trouble’s cell number and waited. It rang several times, then the message function came on. He hung up without leaving a message. They’d be at her place soon enough.

  "Holy drek!" Hammer said as they turned onto Trouble’s street. Her building was in flames, with several firetrucks clustered around the building working to put out the fire. It looked like they had it contained and that only the top two floors had been damaged. People were crowded along the sidewalk, and uniformed Knight Errant officers were keeping them back to give the fire-fighters room to work. It looked like most of the crowd had been rousted out of bed and been forced to evacuate the building.

  The mass of people, the barricades, and the rubbernecking drivers slowed traffic to a crawl, even at this late hour. "Keep it casual," Talon said to Val, as they merged into the traffic moving slowly down the street. "Just keep driving past like everyone else and find a place to park a few blocks from here." He leaned back. "I’m going to go and check it out."

  Talon let his head fall back against the seat and sank quickly into a trance. His astral form glided from his body and the van, with Aracos close behind.

  They flew over to the building, passing heedlessly through the streams of water from the fire hoses. When they reached Talon’s apartment, Talon felt a jolt of shock. The interior was blackened and charred, a total loss. The furniture and appliances were burned amid the water-soaked morass. More important was the lingering aura in the place, the distinctive astral residue of magic.

  He floated through the ruined door and looked around. Aracos moved on ahead, alert for any signs of danger.

  "Boss, over here," Aracos said. Talon felt a chill ripple through his being as he saw it too. There, curled up on the floor in an almost fetal position, was a badly burned corpse, charred beyond all recognition.

  "Oh my gods," Talon said, and a terrible fear well up inside him. He reached out with one insubstantial hand to brush his astral fingers a few centimeters from the surface of the body. The aura of the recent and sudden death was heavy in the ether, hanging over the whole room like a shroud.

  "Is it. . .her?" Aracos asked, his voice dropping to a whisper.

  "I don’t know." Talon forced himself to look closer at the body, praying like he hadn’t prayed for a long time. He felt sick, but he forced himself to move closer, hovering over the burned corpse.

  "Thank gods," he said finally. "I don’t think it’s her." He pointed to the head and neck. "Look. There’s no datajack."

  The fire had burned away most of the flesh, but there was no telltale gleam of a datajack’s metal or wires . The body couldn’t be Trouble’s.

  "Then who is it?" Aracos asked.

  "I don’t know, but we’d better find out."

  Talon gave a quick look around the rest of the apartment, but sensed nothing unusual. The damage was too extensive to determine anything more, particularly from the astral plane.

  Nothing more to be done here, so they returned to the van, which Trouble had parked a few blocks away. Talon slipped back into his body and opened his eyes. The others were looking at him anxiously.

  "It looks like the fire started in Trouble’s apartment," he said. "There’s a body in there, but I don’t think it’s hers. I didn’t seen any sign of a jack or other ware."

  "Then who is it?" Boom asked. "And where’s Trouble?"

  Talon shook his head. "I don’t know. Maybe whoever started the fire got careless. Before we got there, I picked up a message from her. She must have called when we were leaving the club. The fire probably started right after that, because the message didn’t sound like she was in any danger."

  "Maybe Cross went after her, too," Kilaro said, speaking up suddenly. "It could have been a bomb or something."

  "It didn’t look like there had been an explosion, just a fire," Talon said. " I think we’ve more than a problem with your corp, chummer." A glance at Boom and Hammer told him they understood what he w
as saying. A fire certainly fit Gallow’s style.

  "What now?" Val asked. "We probably shouldn’t stay here too long."

  "You’re right," he said. "Head north."

  "Where to?"

  "The L-Zone. I know some people who’ll give us a safe place to lie low for a while. I’ve got some magic to do."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Gallow walked through the dark tunnels of the Catacombs in Trouble’s body. As it approached the entrance to Mama Iaga’s lair, a pale-skinned troll covered with warty bumps and nodules of bone stepped from the shadows to block the way. It wore leathers crudely stitched together to fit its bulk and a harness across its massive chest. The troll carried no visible weapons, but its size and strength were enough to tear most opponents limb from limb with his bare hands.

  "Stand aside," Gallow said. "Mama is expecting me."

  The troll reached out a massive hand, but Gallow smiled poisonously, and Trouble’s body was instantly shrouded in an aura of fire. The troll cried out, his scream echoing through the tunnels as it pulled back its burned hand and whimpered. Gallow glared. The troll scuttled to one side, letting it stride through the door and into the inner sanctum of its mistress.

  As the velvet curtain fell into place behind Gallow, a voice spoke from the shadows near the dim hearth.

  "You shouldn’t have injured Albin, my dear," Mama said like a mother scolding a wayward child. "Now I’ll have to heal him after he’s had a chance to think about what happens when you play with fire."

  "He shouldn’t have blocked my way," Gallow said.

  "He was only protecting his dear old mother," Mama said, leaning forward and allowing the dim light to reveal her gaunt and wrinkled face.

  As if the old hag required protection, Gallow thought. It knew better than most just how powerful Mama was. She might command its loyalty for the moment, but Gallow knew that a time would come when they would have to test who would be the master and who the slave. The spirit looked forward to the day. It had no intention of losing that struggle.

  "Besides," Mama continued, "Albin obviously didn’t recognize your new. . .outfit." She smiled, showing her sharp little yellow teeth. "Quite nice. I think it suits you."

  "It does, doesn’t it?" Gallow smiled back. He turned this way and that to show off Trouble’s form. "Still, not as well as Talon’s body will suit me."

  "Soon, my dear, very soon. Is everything else ready?"

  "With O’Donnel and the Knights? Oh, yes, even more than I’d expected." Gallow held out its hand, fingers splayed out, letting the gold ring on Trouble’s finger catch the light of the candles. "It seems dear Ian is quite enamoured of his fair lady."

  "Wonderful," Mama said, clasping her bony hands together in a ghoulish parody of girlish glee. "And I have just the present for the happy couple."

  She picked up a small, metallic cylinder from the table beside her chair and held it out to Gallow. He stepped forward to take it from her.

  "That contains the catalyst for our little Pandora’s box," she said. "See that it’s used properly, and the plans of O’Donnel and his little band will be successful beyond their wildest dreams. Too bad they won’t have the opportunity to see the fruits of their labors."

  "And then I get to take Talon?" Gallow asked.

  "Oh yes, my dear. I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty finding him. In fact, I’m sure he’ll come looking for you."

  "Good," Gallow said.

  "Never let it be said that I don’t try to keep my boys happy," Mama returned with a wicked smile. "Now hurry back to ‘your’ man. I’m sure he can’t wait to hear the happy news from his blushing bride-to-be."

  A slow smile spread across Trouble’s lips, then bowed and withdrew from the room.

  Mama gave a high-pitched cackle. "Soon, very soon," she whispered, alone in the dimness of the room. "Soon, my time will come."

  The Lowell-Lawrence area, or the "L-Zone," as it was known to its inhabitants, had seen far better days, but not recently. The area had been in decline for nearly a hundred years. With the formation of the Boston metroplex, areas like the Rox and the L-Zone were written off as worthless. They were too difficult to police and too expensive to clean up. Left to their own devices, the residents of places like the L-Zone either got out or dug in and did the best they could. Homeless refugees, squatters, illegal immigrants, metahumans, and other outcasts had swelled their numbers over the years. The area was home to a particularly large number of orks, most of whom had been forced out of many of the "nicer" areas in the sprawl. With their faster maturation and birth rates, orks quickly came to dominate the L-Zone, which generated resentment and led to gangs, late-night shootings, and other violence.

  Talon wasn’t as familiar with the L-Zone as he was the Rox, but he knew it well enough. Places outside the metroplex—and outside the rule of law—were havens to shadowrunners. Talon and his team kept an apartment building for occasions just like this one. They didn’t object to its use by squatters and street people because a local gang was paid to keep their own area clean and locked up when not needed. The team had reinforced security with arcane graffiti and by spreading rumors that powerful spells were in place to keep intruders out. Of course, those were tall tales, but most people in the Sixth World knew better than to mess with a mage, so they left the place alone.

  Talon had taken over the living room as his working space, banishing the rest of the team to the kitchen and the two smaller bedrooms. He felt a little guilty claiming the biggest room in the place, but the demands of his work didn’t leave him with much choice. Boom and Hammer had helped him clear out the space and tack up sheets of plastic garbage bags to close off the open doorways from the kitchen and front hall. It was crude, but enough to block out distractions and remind the others not to intrude while Talon was working. The symbolic boundaries were as important as the actual privacy.

  He would have liked to ward off the whole place, but there just wasn’t time. Getting immediately to work, he took some small paint cans and a box of colored chalk from his kit bag. The room, which was about four meters square, was only barely large enough for his purposes, but he didn’t have the time to look for a bigger one. First he painted a large circle in black, then another inside it in red. Between the two circles, he painted four red triangles pointing outward to the four cardinal directions, then four white triangles at the cross-quarters. Inside each triangle went the appropriate mystic symbol of power and warding. At the tip of each triangle, he placed a small white candle.

  He drew a white circle within the red one, then a circle of mystic runes in white and red all the way around. In the center, he painted a white, six-pointed star big enough to contain his body lying down. The top and bottom points were aligned east-west, and he drew magical symbols at each of the star’s points. Finally, he painted other small symbols of mystic power along the ring of the inner circle. As he worked, he focused his intent on the subtle energies of the circle, building it up as a place of power and safety for his magic.

  When he was done, Talon stood back and examined his work. He checked everything twice for flaws or errors in his workmanship. Finding none, he was ready to begin. He stepped into the center of the circle, closed his eyes, and gave a wave of his hand, making the candles spring to life. Then he withdrew a small lock of black hair from a sealed plastic pouch. It was a great token of trust that the other members of the team had allowed him to take magical links to them in case something like this happened. The tiny lock of Trouble’s hair would be his connection to her, the means for using his magic to find her.

  Talon gathered the energies of his spell and began chanting in a low, sonorous voice. He focused his attention on the lock of hair between his fingers, fixing Trouble’s image in his mind. As best he could, he put aside his concerns over what might have happened to her. If Gallow had harmed her. . .

  Talon brought his attention back to the ritual. The working had to be exact.

  After several hours’ work, he lift
ed aside the dark plastic curtain over the doorway and stepped into the kitchen. Boom was leaning back in a chair, staring off into space and mumbling to himself. Talon smiled faintly, realizing that must be how he looked when conversing with someone over his headphone or when trancing to do magic. Boom acknowledged Talon with a nod and a slight wave of his hand. Then he blinked a couple of times, apparently ending his call.

  "Any luck?" the troll asked.

  Talon shook his head, dropping down into a chair. "No. Wherever Trouble is, she’s behind a ward too powerful for me to penetrate. I couldn’t reach her."

  "You did the best you could," Boom said. "We’ll just have to find another way. I’ve been checking around, too, and it sounds like our friend Kilaro is telling the truth about at least one thing. I heard from a friend of a friend that some runners pulled off another job against Cross recently. Seems they got hold of a canister of some kind of bio-agent. Sounds like that catalyst he was talking about."

  "Did you learn anything about the runners who did it?"

  "Just one thing: they’re all dead. Nobody knows who did it, but the street buzz is that they got careless and were double-crossed, probably by their Johnson."

  "And nothing on who that was?" Talon asked.

  "Not so far, but I’m still checking," Boom replied. "It could have been the Seraphim, too," he said, "tying up loose ends."

  "Yeah, like us," Talon said. "It could have been someone within Cross who did the hiring in the first place. They wouldn’t be the first corp to hire runners to pull off a job against their own assets as a cover for something else."

  "Paranoia as a way of life," Boom said, then got serious again. "Do you think it might have been the Seraphim that set fire to Trouble’s apartment? I mean, maybe they went after her, she took one of them out, and they decided to torch the place to cover their tracks."