by Rhys Ford
Those were now lying on the street, shattered like a confessional wafer when pressed too hard by a drunken priest.
“You don’t have to take me in, Spade,” the rabbit lisped as he spit out a mouthful of blood and saliva onto my boot. I ignored the insult. I’d had worse, and at the moment, I wanted to get him out of the rumbling crowd before they forgot he’d been shooting at them and fully remembered who I was. “You could just let me go and tell Jean Michel you couldn’t find me. I just need a little time to get back onto my feet. I’ll pay him. Hell, I’ll pay you to let me go. I used to be someone, you know. Someone big. I’ll be big again.”
“Yeah, the problem with that, rabbit, is this,” I reminded him in a soft voice while I tucked the golden watch that dangled from a chain on his belt into his front pocket. “You don’t pay, and I hate to tell you this, but we all used to be big.”
DANA WAS shrugging on her trench coat by the time I made it back to the office, and she gave me a long, steady glare over her pinched-on spectacles. There was still an odd grace to her movements, although she was long past her prime. She’d ravaged her sleek feline body with a variety of pharmaceuticals and slung her trade at brothels that had little care for their workers and kept all their attention on how much they could wring out of their skins before they tossed them onto the street. She’d never been pretty, not in the way some cats were, but her green eyes were striking still, even if her face was off-kilter from the abuse she’d lived through and her coat was patchy in places.
She’d come to me on a work furlough, participating in a social program meant to get former sex workers on their feet instead of returning to working on their backs.
I don’t know if the program worked, but she’d been with me for two years, and from what I could see, even though her wardrobe still shouted hooker from a hundred yards away, she’d stayed clean. I pretty much paid her to sit on her butt, do my billing, and run my errands, and I didn’t care if she watched television or buffed her nails at work. I didn’t even give a shit when she combed fleas out of what was left of her tail—its end was amputated after it was chewed on by the skittering dust creatures that lurked in most tenement walls.
The only thing I cared about was the work. She got it done and took messages for me. And if she made me a pot of coffee before I got in, I bought her lunch.
Dana was smart in that cunning way that survivors have, and there hardly was a day when I didn’t buy that cat lunch. She was fearless and stood down anyone who came through the front door, because she literally had nothing to lose.
So I was surprised to see her hands shaking while she buttoned up her coat.
“You’ve got a visitor,” she mumbled around the set of keys she had clenched in her mouth. “I put him… whatever that is… in your office. I wasn’t going to let it stay out here with me. If you’re dead when I come in tomorrow, I’m going to empty out petty cash and sell everything I can. You okay with that?”
“Sure. More than okay,” I replied as I gingerly moved out of the doorway to give her room to get out. There wasn’t a lot of space in the front office, enough for a couple of comfortable chairs, Dana’s desk, and a bank of filing cabinets we used to prop up the coffee machine and a few other things. “Want to tell me who you think’s going to kill me?”
“The devil that brought you here,” Dana snarled, and she wrinkled her nose when she caught a whiff of sour rabbit smeared all over me. “Oh, make sure you leave the gun out where I can find it. Because if that bastard offs the one person who gave a shit about me not killing myself, the least I can do is murder him right back.”
Two
THEY ALWAYS say better the devil you know than the one you don’t.
I don’t know who they are, but they don’t know what the shit they’re talking about.
“Well, if it isn’t Xander Spade. It’s been a long time.” Az’s husky, multi-octave voice poured over me and tickled every desire and temptation I’d ever had.
Sprawled out in my executive chair, leaning it back until it thumped against the wall, and with his shoes on my desk, Az was as liquidly graceful as his voice. He was beautiful in a way that hurt the eye, and there was no part of me that believed he was human. His eyes held the stars—a sparkling universe—in their blue depths, and the metallic strands in his long blond hair glinted when he tilted his head back and brought his face into the light. My inner office’s overhead fixture was a poor substitute for the sun, but Az worked with it anyway, basking in its beam and reflecting it back at me.
There was no denying he was a fallen angel. I didn’t need to see the smoky, transparent feathered wings shadowing behind him to know that. As beautiful as he was, he was pure sin, with a wicked mouth and a cunning mind that I knew I could never match.
And since he’d already gotten everything he could out of me—like my soul—I was wondering what the hell he was doing there.
“You look good.” He wiggled his fingers at me, sweeping up and down my body. “Healthier than the last time I saw you. Still rocking the ‘lead guitarist from a hair band’ thing you had going back then, but it works for you.”
“I don’t think a leather jacket and jeans is all that different from what most people are wearing back there now.” I didn’t trust myself to get any closer, but I was tired, and my knees hurt. I’d be damned if I sat in the visitor’s chair in my own office, but sitting on the edge of the desk would bring me too close to him, and I would either want to fuck him or kill him. And since I couldn’t do either, I chose the chair. “Or at least that’s what I got off of the last human I ran into. He said they’re doing things now that I used to read about in sci-fi books. Said his name was Sal. Was he one of yours?”
“Was? I don’t remember a Sal, but it’s not like I really pay attention to everyone’s name.” Az tapped his cheek with his pointed fingernails. “It amuses me that you spend your time playing guess which human is from home. So he was killed before you got to talk to him for long?”
“Yeah, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bad night at a rough club to pick a fight with a minotaur. I only got to chat him up for about five minutes, and then he was gone. He was wearing a T-shirt for a group I used to listen to, except it was for their twenty-five-year reunion tour. I didn’t get much out of him, but what I did….” I left off the thought. The memory of that brief conversation made me ache for home. “Sometimes it’s age. Nobody really gets ancient here, but then again, maybe they do and I just assume they came over from the other side because they wanted to live forever.”
“Just like you did,” he replied smoothly.
“No, I just didn’t want to die.” It was a fine line but one I liked to remind him about. “Your feet are starting to smoke. So either you’re going to have to get to the point or maybe you’re the one who’s tired of living.”
The most ironic thing about being shoved through the looking glass into Wonderland City was that the devil who’d taken my soul and saved my life from the cornucopia of drugs I’d taken that day couldn’t exist here.
Or at least not for very long.
I didn’t know if it was because God didn’t exist here, or maybe angels—fallen or otherwise—couldn’t survive the realm’s natural law, but my own personal devil had to keep his visits short. I got them every once in a while, mostly when he was bored out of his mind. He had the universe at his fingertips, but Az got restless and usually sought me out for company.
He didn’t look bored this time. No. Even as he fronted a detached attitude, his shadow wings fluttered behind him and left ghostly trails of soot in the air. I was going to have to ask Dana to dust. She hated dusting, but she hated the vacuum more, which I found hilarious.
“I need you to do me a favor.” He purred out the words in a way that even Dana would envy. “I’ll even make it worth your while.”
“The last time you did me a favor, I ended up here,” I shot back, rubbing at my knees.
“This time it’s different.” He lowere
d his legs and planted his smoking feet on the cracked linoleum floor. “You do this for me and I’ll give you back your soul.”
AFTER SECURING the rabbit, I turned the him over to the blustery cop who manned the intake desk at the station and got the payout chit for the bounty. The piece of paper was really more of a tradition than anything necessary. By the time I was done with the devil in my office, word had spread that I’d taken down the White Rabbit.
He wasn’t popular, not by any means. He was a cheat and a liar, and if you listened to gossip, possibly had twenty or so kids he wasn’t supporting. I doubted the gossip, because kids weren’t a natural thing in Wonderland City. They were few and far between, and by all accounts, disruptive to the existing tapestry. There was something about them that made things go crazy behind the looking glass, and as insane as the place was, no one wanted chaos in an already-unstable environment.
That’s why Az’s favor nearly scared me half to death.
My mind was still reeling when I arrived at the Painted Rose gambling hell. Despite Az’s unexpected boon dropping into my lap, I still had to pay the rent. I usually went out of my way to avoid the Painted Rose. Its owner and I had a… complicated relationship, to say the least. He’d tried to rescue me from my indentured servitude to his grandmother, the queen, and I’d tried to end it by killing her. I believed we both kind of got our way—I was free of her, he didn’t have to feel responsible for me anymore—but Jean Michel didn’t agree.
I usually avoided picking up bounties from the Painted Rose, but White Rabbit’s ticket had been high enough to make my mouth water, and I really need to pay rent. Problem was, the police station didn’t pay out. Bounty hunters actually had to go to the guy on the other end of the ticket to get paid, and while it wasn’t a problem for most jobs, Jean Michel had laid down his own law. Any payment from the Painted Rose to me had to come from him personally.
So if I wanted to eat, I was going to eat out of his hand.
I was on the wrong side of the street. I’d left the Central District and crossed over into the rarefied air of Regent Park, which was a far cry from the ghettos I’d lived in ever since the queen died. To me, the gutter felt more comfortable. Sure, the air had a certain stench to it, but at least its filth was honest. I couldn’t say the same about Regent Park.
Wonderland’s aristocrats were a scheming, conniving nest of snakes, and those were the nice ones. Belonging to the queen had given me an interesting position among them. I was a muzzled wolf among rabid jackals. I was a symbol of both betrayal and resurrection for them. Still, I got as many filthy looks from the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who climbed the stone steps that led to the Painted Rose’s massive front doors as I had back home walking through a five-star restaurant.
I really didn’t want to climb those steps.
Jean Michel had to know I was coming. He would’ve got a notification when the bounty was issued. I was going to have to walk on his carpets, cross over into his turf, if I wanted to get paid, but the elegant three-story mansion he’d converted to a gambling hell was the last place I ever wanted to be.
It would be like walking back into the palace and its spiderweb of treachery and backstabbing. Only this time, the person who wanted me in their bed was the same person who’d wanted me free. Unlike the Queen of Hearts, Jean Michel truly believed I’d be free from his hold, even if I shared his bed.
He was wrong. I was, in essence, a weapon, and no matter what anyone promised, sooner or later they would always pick the gun up off the mantle to take care of one problem or another.
And as much as I wanted to be in that bed, I wasn’t willing to trade my freedom for him.
Blue pressed his small furry body against my shin before I heard him bark at me. My sporadic companion had returned to my side. He looked the same—a scruffy spotted terrier with a foxy face, a stub tail, and squat legs that I knew were powerful enough to launch him over a six-foot fence.
He also glowed a light blue.
“Where the hell have you been? I could have used you with the rabbit,” I lightly scolded him.
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t talk—or if he could, he never did to me. Wonderland City and its surrounding lands were home to a bizarre mix of creatures. Some animals had a level of consciousness and sentience, and others were like the ones from back home. The gamut of creatures ran from human, like Jean Michel, and hybrid human-animals like Dana, to fully sentient but much larger animals like the hedgehog and the White Rabbit.
Eating meat was dicey sometimes. There was a lot of trust given whenever I ordered food, especially down in the Stews. Usually pubs and restaurants had a guaranteed-meat-source license, but there were times when I suspected the hamburger I was eating was the pub owner’s husband, especially when he’d been reported missing by his friends and his wife didn’t seem to care.
Like I said, dicey.
Blue was pretty much a dog, despite the glowing blue fur and the occasional disappearing act he did. He showed up one day and bit the hell out of a guy I was trying to take down but who seemed to have an uncanny ability to punch me in the face despite everything I did to avoid it. Blue latched on to his nose, and as soon as I pried him off, he rarely left my side.
Except for when he did and I wouldn’t see him anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. But he always came back, smiling and ready to do battle.
The steps of the Painted Rose weren’t getting any shorter, and the evening was getting longer. In about half an hour, the place would be packed and Jean Michel would have me kicking my heels up in his office while he dealt with whatever it was hell owners did at work.
Blue barked a short, quick “shit or get off the pot” reminder that he probably was hungry and either I fed him or he’d take matters into his own paws.
I didn’t want to deal with that in the middle of the “velvet and lace” crowd. I was already drawing attention, and I didn’t want to have to explain to the district’s private security force that my dog was only chewing that pig’s face off because I hadn’t gotten him dinner and Blue had a difficult time distinguishing an actual person from food.
I’d had that conversation more times than I could count.
I don’t know what I was afraid of. It wasn’t like anybody inside of the Painted Rose would hurt me. Jean Michel would skin them alive if they did. But staring up at the building’s white marble columns and sparkling windows, I was man enough to admit I was scared on some level—or maybe I wasn’t scared about going in, but scared I’d never come out.
“Okay, Blue.” I took a steadying breath and squared my shoulders. “Let’s go step into the lion’s den and see what he’s got for us to eat.”
THERE WERE a few forms of entertainment in Wonderland City. A lot of board games—played either life-sized or on a table—had a very strong following. Books were available, but the subject matter sometimes left a lot to be desired, and understandably, fiction and nonfiction blurred behind the looking glass, so it wasn’t always easy to tell what I was reading. Most of the technology in the realm was cobbled together from knowledge that people brought over with them, and even its weapons were machined from the few that made it through the glass. It wasn’t that science didn’t exist, but the need for technological advancement wasn’t necessary. Though satellites and televisions were probably a long way off, we had landline phones, telegraphs, and motor vehicles fueled mostly by magic, steam, and occasionally natural gas.
Still, regardless of what side of the glass they were on, people liked to gamble.
And the Painted Rose took it to a level of lush hedonism that made losing your shirt feel worthwhile.
We lived in Vegas for a few years when I was a kid, and I snuck into the casinos more than a few times to marvel at the custom carpets, glitzy chandeliers, and snappily dressed gamblers. We’d been the kind of poor that made people tell their kids not to play with us, and if I hadn’t already known what my mother did to pay the bills, getting locked in the house
while she entertained the next-door neighbors’ husbands would’ve been a good clue. Casinos were a place to pick up spare change and sometimes the occasional chip someone could get cashed in if they knew a guy.
I knew a lot of guys, so sneaking into the busy casinos to sweep the floors was profitable but sometimes dangerous, because I would get sucked in by all of the sparkly surfaces.
Vegas had nothing on the Painted Rose.
The front room was open to all three stories and pure marble and gilt. Enormous crystal chandeliers hung from the impossibly high ceiling painted to look like daylight—a cloud-frosted cerulean blue sky we never saw in the industrial-smog-cloaked slums. Two enormous mountains of flesh guarded the front door—one human and one bovine—and discreetly to the left was the skinny, bespectacled green lizard who guarded the Painted Rose’s membership book as though it were the Holy Grail.
The lizard hated me, and the feeling was mutual.
It was busy. I would give him that. But considering I stood a good few inches over most of the people in the roped-off entrance area, I was hard to miss. I hadn’t known contempt was an expression a lizard could actually achieve until I landed on that side of the looking glass, but the Painted Rose’s maître d’ had certainly mastered it.
I didn’t blame him. His tiny lizard-brain standards had to be met in order to be a member of Jean Michel’s elite and exclusive gaming hell. The clothes, jewelry, and footwear of the people around me would have landed them naked or on a menu if they took a wrong turn in the Stews. It was still considered cannibalism, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and some people were more desperate than most.
I was not one of those people, but the longer I stood among the aristocratic crowd, the more uncomfortable all of us would get.
“The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, all on a summer’s day” came a whisper through the tightly packed crowd. I couldn’t see who was speaking, but the hissed rhyme carried across the low-level chatter of the people waiting to get in. “The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, and took them clean away.”
