The Death of All Things

by Faith Hunter

  A few seconds later the phone rings again. I let it go a couple times before picking up. Before I can speak McCord says, “I’d like to hire you to kill a man so that he’ll live forever.”

  Okay, now he has my attention.

  * * *

  Death is everywhere. Arbitrary, capricious, but honest. It makes one promise and it keeps it every time: no matter how we get there, sooner or later, we all die. Even people like me, for whom death is more of a gray area.

  Death in Vegas is like a clot in an artery, bunched up along the strip stretching back decades. The usual Haunts and Wanderers, ghosts born of trauma either trapped in one spot or walking freely. But it’s the Echoes, mindless recordings of murders, accidents, suicides playing over and over that really stand out.

  Been a lot of years since the first casinos went up. In that time a lot of people have stepped in front of cars, gone through windows, jumped off balconies. A waterfall of bodies pours from the top floors of casinos that aren’t there anymore.

  At five stories the Gold Rush is too small to have jumpers, but some Haunts and Wanderers roam around the parking lot.

  Inside the décor is old west saloon—dusty wagon wheels, wood trim, peeling paint, and threadbare carpets. Half the slots are out of order. I was betting this McCord guy’s another mage and now I’m sure of it.

  Gaming tables and slot machines are arranged with the kind of feng shui that would give a Buddhist fits. Ventilation keeps the smoke from a hundred dead cigarettes curling over tables, screwing players’ luck. Cards have custom rune-etched backs. The house should have one hell of an edge. So why’s it all so shabby?

  I wander the floor, magic prickling across my skin. I’m sure McCord knows I’m here. Besides cameras and run-of-the-mill security, I can feel the magical surveillance.

  Probably how he found Jimmy. Scrying spells slide off him like water off Teflon. But when somebody notices a Jimmy sized hole in a sea of color, one thing leads to another, questions are asked, answers are given and, voila! Here I am. I’m worried about Jimmy, sure—he doesn’t know what’s happening—but I’m here because of McCord’s little immortality request.

  I go to a security guard in a mauve blazer and khaki pants—Jesus, who comes up with these uniforms?—and tell him I have an appointment to see Sebastian. He radios it in and soon he’s escorting me to the fifth floor.

  “Mister Carter,” McCord says as the doors open on what I assume is his private apartment. “Thank you so much for coming.”

  Thick guy, early fifties, way too tan, muscle gone to fat. Got a Rat Pack vibe that fits the apartment. Ten-foot-wide picture window showing a view of Vegas where if you squint you can see the Strip. McCord, his casino, even this apartment, screams “trying too hard.” He’s got a view. He’d rather be in it.

  The thing that does stand out is the girl. Curled up in an easy chair reading a thin, leather bound book about the size of a paperback. Early twenties, maybe? Skin like ebony, black hair in cornrows. She’s got long legs in skinny jeans and a top tight enough to get anybody’s attention. Which is probably the point.

  McCord steps aside. I don’t move. “Ah,” he says. “I can see how you might not trust me.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “He’s onto you, Daddy,” the girl says as she turns a yellowed page. “I told you. You should have just talked to him, first. You never listen.”

  “She’s smart,” I say, stepping into the apartment.

  “Baby, please,” Sebastian says to her. “Not right now.” His smile strains through gritted teeth. “That’s Nicole. She’s…a handful. I’d like to apologize for earlier. I’m used to business negotiations where that’s an opening bid. I hope you can forgive me.”

  “Probably not,” I say. “Speaking of, where’s Jimmy?”

  “In a suite on the fourth floor,” he says. Cooling his heels until I agree to do this thing for him, no doubt. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “No, I’m good.” I claim the only other chair in the room. It’s under the window next to Nicole and facing a couch.

  McCord fidgets, clearly bothered I’ve taken his throne in front of his…girlfriend? Sugar baby? Finally, he sits on the couch facing us, squinting into the desert sun that’s peeking down from the top of the window.

  “Interesting layout downstairs,” I say. “Everything’s arranged just so.”

  “Thank you,” Sebastian says.

  “So how are you fucking it up so badly?”

  “Excuse me?” he says. Nicole lets out a laugh that she quickly tries to hide.

  “It’s designed to give you every edge imaginable. But this place is falling apart.”

  “We’ve had hard times,” McCord says. His face looks about to pop.

  “So, you called,” I say, backing off. “I came. Now what?”

  “We need you to raise a guy from the dead,” Nicole says, before McCord can get a word in. “But you have to kill him first.”

  “This just any guy?” I ask. “Or did you have one in mind?”

  “Oh, it can be any guy,” Nicole says, closing the book with a snap. McCord winces at her carelessness. “You, me, Daddy over here. Doesn’t really matter. But the spell starts while the subject’s alive. Finishes after he’s dead.”

  “Volunteers are gonna be a little thin on the ground,” I say.

  “Something like that,” McCord says. “Nicole?” She casually tosses the book at me and McCord winces again.

  The leather’s tanned. Little too thin. I realize why once I turn it over and see a nipple off to one side of the back cover. Human skin. I’ve seen three necromantic grimoires besides this one. They’re all bound in human skin. One was written in 1994. Necromancers don’t have a bad reputation because we’re creepy, it’s because we’re a bunch of medieval clichés.

  I flip it open, scan a few pages. The ink has gone that shade of brown you only get when you write with blood. Like I said, clichés.

  “It’s a spellbook,” I say.

  “By some medieval monk or something,” Nicole says. “There’s no name, but it’s been dated to around the twelfth century.”

  It’s in Latin, of course. Easy enough. But the trouble is in the diagrams and charts. Any mage can read the spells, but if you don’t know the dead it won’t make much sense. About two-thirds in I spot it. This whole conversation clicks.

  “You want to make an Oracle,” I say, looking over the page. Complicated spell. Lots of moving parts. I can see half a dozen ways to streamline it right off the bat.

  “I do,” McCord says.

  “We do,” Nicole corrects.

  I’ve heard of Oracles. Never seen one. They’re supposed to be able to answer any question, open any lock. I’m sure it’s more complicated—everything with magic is. I’d heard they were a necromancer thing, but never knew how.

  “This is fucked up,” I say. “On multiple levels.”

  “Squeamish?” Nicole says.

  “I had to French kiss a three-day old corpse one time to bring it back long enough to tell me a safe combination,” I say. “So, no. I’m not squeamish. But this? Jesus.”

  “What part do you object to?” Sebastian says.

  “I didn’t say I objected to any of it,” I say. “Just that it’s fucked up. You need a ‘volunteer,’ you cut their head off with a saw while they’re still alive and conscious, and finish up by sealing the soul in the head. A talking Magic 8-Ball for your very own.

  “But can you do it?”

  “Sure. The question is will I? There’s a line about summoning an Avatar of Death. Which one? There are a lot of them. They’re all assholes.”

  Death is a many-headed thing. The gods and spirits that embody it are as varied as the worlds they come from. Bansidhe, dullahan, Oom Hendrik, Azrail, Baron Samedi, on and on. Hard to say whether they came from belief or belief came from them.

  Death is death, but we give it a face.

  “If it’s money—”

  “Please. Mone
y is easy.” I tap the book with my finger. “I want this.”

  “Absolutely not,” he says a little too quickly.

  “All right.” I toss the book into his lap and stand up, slinging my messenger bag over my shoulder. “Have fun.”

  I’ll haggle with demons and spirits. They have rules. But other mages will gut you when you’re not looking.

  “Wait,” Nicole says. “You can have the book.”

  “Nicole—” McCord starts, but she cuts him off.

  “It’s my book,” she says. “Neither of us can use it and the only thing we want from it is the Oracle. So, yes, he can have the book.”

  They glare at each other for a good long while and I wish I had some popcorn to watch this drama unfold. McCord doesn’t break eye contact, but his face tells me he’s lost. I can see the barest hint of a smile on Nicole’s face. Smart money says she shanks him as soon as he’s not useful.

  “Fine.” He tosses the book back to me. Their bedroom talk should be fun tonight. “It’s yours.”

  “Fantastic. Let’s get started.”

  * * *

  It isn’t until Jimmy and I are back at the apartment that it sinks in. I’ve agreed to murder a man for a Twelfth Century book filled with death spells, bound in human skin, and sporting a prominent nip-slip on the back.

  It’s not the skin, the blood ink, even sawing a guy’s head off, but the nipple that bothers me the most. Either it’s because it’s needlessly gauche or it just makes the whole thing a little too real.

  “I don’t understand,” Jimmy says, pulling me out of my chain of thought. “You’re a necrophiliac?”

  “No,” I say. “Necromancer. Big difference. Usually.”

  Jimmy looks the nerdy type; Buddy Holly glasses, pasty skin, kinked up hair that makes his head look lopsided. But he’s not that bright.

  “Mages can all pretty much do the same things, but we all do one thing better than others. I see ghosts, talk to the dead.”

  “So, like fireballs. Healing people? Can you do that?”

  “Fire, yes. I suck at healing magic, though.”

  “But some can,” he says. “They can cure diseases.”

  “Complicated,” I say. “It’s more like getting really aggressive chemo. Only a lot more can go wrong.”

  Jimmy gets a weird look in his eye; distant, considering. “Huh. Okay.”

  Something’s just happened, and I’m not sure what.

  “I know it’s a mind fuck,” I say. Learning somebody can change reality with a snap of their fingers takes some getting used to.

  “No, I’m good. So, what’s with all that stuff?” he says.

  “All that stuff” is a can of red Krylon, some bottles of herbs, and a carton of salt laid out on the floor. There’s more to the Oracle spell, but the opening is to summon this Avatar of Death.

  It could be lot of things. Better I know now than find out when I’m in the middle of chopping somebody’s head off.

  “It’s complicated,” I say. “You might want to stand back.” Jimmy gets behind the kitchen counter, ducking so only the top of his head and eyes peek over.

  I spray-paint a protection circle on the carpet with the Krylon. I make it as strong as I can, pouring the salt and herbs along it, then spray another just to be sure. I drip some blood into each, and use a little power to activate them. The circles glow an iridescent blue.

  “I’m summoning something,” I tell Jimmy, tapping into the local pool of magic to get enough power to fuel the spell. I could use my own power, but this way I won’t be dry if something goes wrong.

  “If it goes bad…” I say.

  “What?” If it goes bad we’re both probably dead and our souls sucked out through our eyeballs.

  “It won’t go bad. Fifty-fifty. Maybe sixty-forty. Just stand back.” I begin chanting lines from the book. It’s mostly repetitive nonsense, but there’s a kernel of power. Reality twists on itself.

  A column of viscous black forms in the circle. Out of it poke arms, legs, ropy appendages that could be intestines, could be tentacles. Eyes and mouths appear, are swallowed up by the oozing black. Talons, wings, sneering faces filled with rage.

  “Shit.” Of all the things this could have been, this is one of the worst.

  Every myth, every monster, every gremlin and goblin story, has a grain of truth. In this case a grain is all you get. This myth is of the Keres, Greek spirits of violent death. Winged women with fangs and talons who hang out at battlefields, ripping out souls of the dying and slurping them down like Hot Pockets.

  They eat souls. The rest is horseshit. They don’t look like winged women, they don’t restrict their diet to the dying.

  “Ðïéïò ìå êáëåß;”

  But they do speak Greek.

  “Dude, English.”

  “Who summons me? Where is my feast?”

  Only an idiot wants to summon a Ker. What makes them so dangerous and unique is that the Keres don’t play by the same rules almost every other entity does. Banish one, it comes back. Like that one ex you can’t get rid of.

  The cost of summoning is a soul. If it doesn’t get it, it takes the summoner’s. Which, in case you haven’t been following along, would be mine.

  The book doesn’t say why the summoning is important, but knowing it’s for a Ker I can see why. Part of the spell feeds the “volunteer’s” soul to the Ker. Keres won’t let go of a meal and that’s where the spell fucks them. Before the summoned Ker can finish its meal, the spell yanks it and the half-eaten soul into the severed head, trapping them both.

  “Is it supposed to get…bigger?” Jimmy says.

  “Preferably, no.” I scan the book for anything that can help. Protection spell, failsafe. Something. What have I learned about Keres beyond ‘They’re assholes,’ and ‘Stay away?’

  “I invoke the law of…” Fuck. FUCK. What is the word? Adjudication? Adjunct? “Adjournment.”

  The roiling black freezes. “Adjournment,” it says, the word coming out slow and disgusted. It’s not happy. “Before the next full moon, then, wizard. I will have my due.”

  The column of ooze seethes and bubbles like boiling pitch, flickering like a busted blacklight. It disappears back into the void.

  “Is it gone?” Jimmy looks intently at the empty protection circle. He didn’t do too badly. Most folks, first time they see a summoning, they piss themselves.

  “It’ll be back,” I say. “When it returns, if I’m lucky, it’ll only kill me.”

  “Lucky?” He looks like he’s just stepped in dog shit.

  “There are so many worse things than dying,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “There aren’t.” There’s venom in his voice. I’ve hit a nerve.

  “You okay, man?” His glare answers my question.

  “I have things to do,” he says. The door slams shut behind him. Of all the weird shit today, that might be the weirdest. Something’s going on in Jimmy’s head. Pretty sure it’s not good.

  * * *

  I’m on the balcony getting away from the stink of spray paint and wondering what the hell I’m going to do now.

  Mages have one thing in common. None of us know when to stop poking the beehive. I was looking at this whole thing as one big academic exercise. Despite evidence to the contrary I’m not really into murder. I was planning on skipping town before I had to actually chop somebody’s head off.

  There’s a knock on the door. Almost midnight, and I don’t remember ordering pizza, so this probably isn’t good news. I slip the book back into my messenger bag and pull the Browning. Guns are useful for mages. If it’s someone or something that can sense magic I won’t give myself away.

  I look through the peephole, Nicole’s on the other side waving.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I say, opening the door.

  “I was nowhere near the neighborhood,” she says. I close the door behind her. She sees the gun in my hand, but doesn’t raise an eyebrow.

  She takes in the squal
id apartment, sits on the threadbare couch. “This is…quaint,” she says.

  I join her, putting the Browning onto the chipped coffee table. “It works for me. To what do I owe the pleasure? Checking up to make sure I haven’t bailed with your book?”

  “Not worried about that. Sebastian is. Had a fit once you walked out the door.”

  “I don’t think he likes me,” I say. “Feeling’s mutual.” McCord strikes me as the kind of guy who beat up kids in junior high for their lunch money.

  “He has that effect on people. No, I’m here because I wanted to float an idea by you.” I was wondering when we were going to get to this.

  “Float away.”

  She leans forward, looking very earnest. “Sebastian thinks small,” she says. “He wants to use the Oracle to get the casino back on its feet, as if it ever had been.”

  “Does seem like small potatoes,” I say. “You can do a lot with an Oracle.”

  “Exactly,” she says. “And Sebastian doesn’t see that. We need a subject, right? Why not him?”

  “I don’t think he’ll volunteer.”

  “Knock him out, strap him down. Start sawing.”

  “You really hate that he makes you call him Daddy, don’t you?”

  She laughs. “God, yes. But he’s got money and contacts, even if he doesn’t have brains or much ability.”

  “And you do?”

  “More than he does. More than half the mages in this town. And they’re running casinos on the Strip.”

  “They’re fucking with his business and he’s not strong enough to fight them,” I say.

  “And he thinks the Oracle will give him an edge.” She leans in closer. I’ve seen this play before. One of these days I’d like to be wrong about assuming the worst of somebody.

  “How’d you meet, anyway?” I turn away and pick up the gun, slide it back into my messenger bag. Whatever moment she was trying to make between us breaks.

  “A dating site,” she says. She leans back, visibly deflated.

  “For mages?” Seriously? They have those?