The Best Defense by Kristine Kathryn Rusch 9 page

“How?”

Boukai held up the goblet. “Look at this, and we’ll see.”

Eddie turned back to face him. “Why are you doing this?”

Boukai straightened. “Because Kim Lu stole something from me, something very dear. And because he took that, I will take everything from him.” He held out the goblet. “And you’re going to help me. Now concentrate.”

Eddie held his gaze for a moment. Looking at Boukai’s eyes was like looking at rocks. Finally he sighed and lowered his line of sight. The goblet beckoned at him. He concentrated on the goblet’s rim. Lightning flashed outside. The light flickered against the golden cup but didn’t fade. Eddie’s eyebrows rose. The light kept growing. And growing.

Until finally it became so bright and white and the pain replaced everything else.

“Eddie?”

The pain was gone.

“Can you See?” Boukai asked.

Eddie opened his eyes. He was flat on his back on the floor. From the feel of things, lying in his own puddle of rainwater. He squinted as the fluorescents in the ceiling cut at his eyes. And suddenly he was looking at the stars. He snapped his eyes open. Ceiling. Squinted.

Stars.

“Wow.”

“I will take that as yes,” Boukai said. “Can you stand?”

Eddie shrugged and sat up. His head swam a little. He put a hand to the side and waited a moment. It passed. Taking Peeve’s hand, he stood.

“What’s it like?” Peeve asked. Eddie gave him a look. “Sorry.”

“We need to find out what you’ve learned,” Boukai said. “He will be here soon.”

“Why aren’t we running away?” Eddie asked, looking around for the goblet. “I mean, that’s what you do, when someone is chasing you. You run away.”

“We cannot escape the fakir. ” Boukai brought the goblet around from behind his back. “Tell me what you see.” But Eddie had already stopped listening.

The goblet existed in four dimensions. That was the only way Eddie could express it to himself. He saw the goblet in Boukai’s hand, radiant gold against the soft brown of his skin and the deeper black of his coat. But he also saw the ones next to it, on either side, that shifted out of his sight if he tried to look directly at it. “It’s like it’s shaking,” he said.

“That is because this chalice exists in all realms,” Boukai said, looking down at it himself. “You see this one and the two nearest it. When you bring it together with its mate,” he brought his hand overtop the goblet, coverings its mouth, “you can open the way to another place.”

“That’s neat and all,” Peeve said, looking out the window again, “but if we can’t get away from the faker or whatever you called it, what are we going to do?” Eddie looked at Peeve and then at Boukai.

“That’s a fair question.”

Boukai smiled. “We shall take it from him.”

Peeve stared. Eddie stared. Boukai laughed.

“First I need to see what Eddie has learned,” he said. He held up his flask again. “See again.”

Eddie looked at the flask and squinted. The letters appeared before his eyes again… but this time with more meaning. He read them. He could read them. He looked at Boukai. “How did you do that?”

The black man smiled and bowed. “I am not untrained myself,” he said.

Peeves looked at them. “What’s going on?”

“I can read the words,” Eddie said. He looked again at the flask‑through the fabric of Boukai’s pocket this time‑and read them again. “Who is Mariel?”

Boukai’s face hardened. “She is dead.” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and held his breath for a long moment. Eddie waited. Finally the black man exhaled and opened his eyes.

“When Kim arrives, he will have the other chalice.” He held up the one in his hand. “It is important he not join them.” He held the goblet out to Peeve. “You must hide this somewhere out of sight, but somewhere you can reach it when we need it.”

“Where I can reach it?” Peeve asked.

“We?” Eddie asked.

“When Kim comes, he will have the fakir. We must be able to overpower him and get the chalice away from him. If we can, we must get the rings from him as well. They control the fakir. It is through them that he binds it to his will.”

“The thing that ate Gong. The cloud.” Eddie traded glances with Peeve. “You want me to fight that.”

Boukai smiled, a predatory smile a wolf might have worn. “No. I want you to manage Kim. I will handle the fakir.” And then he laughed, a great and terrible laugh, and shrugged out of his coat. He threw the overcoat on the countertop and stopped laughing as suddenly as he’d begun.

“Hide the chalice,” he said. Then he spun to face the door. “He is here.”

Peeve scooped up the goblet and ran behind the counter. Eddie moved halfway down the counter, out of direct line of the door. “What do I do?”

“You must See,” Boukai said, unbuttoning his shirt halfway. His sleeves were already rolled up, revealing blue‑ink tattoos covering both his forearms. When Eddie squinted, the tattoos shimmered as the goblet had. “I will fight his magic. You must fight the man.”

The plateglass window exploded.

Eddie looked out into the storm and screamed.

In Kim’s study the fakir had been a cloud, a hazy harbinger of death and dread. To his new Sight it was much more. It was a wraith. A demon. A creature of mist and malice with wings and talons and great gaping teeth. It wove its way through the window even as the door opened and Kim stepped through, the other goblet clutched in his hand.

“You!” he shouted, when he saw Boukai.

Boukai smiled and gestured. The tattoos on his arms flowed forward, dark and shiny tendrils to duel the fakir. Where they touched, arc‑white sparks danced. Sounds crackled inside Eddie’s head, and he realized he was standing still. What the hell do I do know?

“Get out of here!” Peeve shouted. He popped up from behind the counter with a pump‑action shotgun leveled. Eddie swore and dove to the side. The gun’s explosion was just as loud as the sound of the demons fighting, but this sound shook his chest and echoed through the small shop. Eddie twisted his head to see the shot, expecting to see Kim’s bloody body slumped to the floor.

He was still standing, arms outstretched, watching the fakir duel whatever Boukai had summoned.

Peeve ratcheted the slide and fired again. This time Eddie was looking that way, and he Saw what happened. The buckshot blazed into the fakir’s center and sparkled like fireworks for a brief instant before it disappeared to wherever Gong had gone.

“Son of a bitch,” Eddie whispered.

“You cannot fight it,” Kim screamed.

The fakir circled the black man like a hound on the hunt. Boukai kept his eyes on it, his arms raised. Eddie tried to focus on whatever was growing out of his arms but they moved too fast. Like the goblet, they were there and they weren’t. What if the fakir was like that? He looked at it, but it still appeared hazy.

Kim lunged two steps forward. The fakir advanced, crackling with energy, struck the tendrils along their length. Eddie was forced to look away. The light was so bright it hurt his eyes, but when he looked down he saw it cast no shadow. Just as at Kim’s place.

“Eddie!” Boukai cried.

Eddie looked. The fakir was high off the ground, with just enough of itself lowered to guard Kim from Peeve’s gunfire. As he watched, Peeve ratcheted and fired again, but this shot went the same way as the rest. He squinted, and looked. The goblet was inside Kim’s coat, tucked there as he used both hands with the fakir.

There was a crack, and Boukai fell. The fakir flickered at him, caressing his head and shoulders, but the tattoo tendrils were still there and held it at bay. Eddie’s brow furrowed in amazement as Boukai himself seemed to shimmer and bounce between realities, but he steadied back to one person. Eddie ground his teeth and looked around for something, anything. It was obvious Boukai was losing. He had to do something. He looked around him, around the store, trying.

But there was nothing to See.

“Do something,” he whispered to himself. And then he Saw it.

Kim was holding his elbows tight against himself, holding the goblet secure around its side. Eddie concentrated, squinting with his mind even as his eyes narrowed. A slender chain appeared, trailing off the goblet toward the counter, toward Peeve. Eddie twisted that way, thinking to warn Peeve, when it hit him.

The other goblet. And then he looked again and saw the chain pulse and undulate, toward Kim and his rings. When the pulse reached him, the gold symbol on Kim’s forehead glowed a little brighter. And then the fakir advanced, a bit stronger. It was feeding off the goblets somehow. It was magic.

“I will fight the magic,” Boukai had said. “You will fight the man.” Eddie frowned.

The magic is kicking his ass, Eddie thought. But Kim’s still a man. And that was it.

“I know how to fight a man,” he said, and clambered to his feet.

He charged.

He was within two steps before Kim dragged his attention from the battle with Boukai to see the threat. All he had time to do was shout “No!” before Eddie slammed into him. He hit Kim in the midsection, crushing the goblet between them. The rim of it cut painfully into his shoulder even through the fabric of Kim’s coat. They fell in a pile on the floor.

Boukai screamed. “The chalice!”

Eddie fumbled for the goblet. Kim brought one hand down on it and wrapped his other around the back of Eddie’s neck. His touch burned like fire. Eddie screamed and lashed out. His fist connected with Kim’s chin. The fiery touch disappeared. He looked down. Kim was conscious, but his eyes were wandering. Eddie dug through the man’s coat, found the goblet, and flung it behind the counter toward Peeve. He heard it clank against the floor. He glanced back long enough to make sure the ethereal chain had gone with it and then looked back at Kim.

“Got it!” he called. There was no answer. He looked.

Boukai was on his knees, his arms held above his head. The tendrils that had so adroitly fought the fakir were slender shadows of themselves, and white had leached its way up the tattoos on his arms. Eddie looked at the fakir, writhing above him, probing with taloned wings. He turned back around, cupped Kim’s head in his hands, and slammed it against the floor. The man whimpered. Eddie did it again. And again.

He stopped.

The rings. He reached down and grabbed Kim’s limp hand. He clutched at the ring there. It burned his fingers. He yelped and let go. Checked over his shoulder. Boukai was on his back, but the fakir was motionless, waiting.

“Peeve!” Eddie called.

“Is he dead?” Peeve asked, peeking over the countertop.

“Get over here. I need you to take his rings off.”

Peeve crept out from behind the counter, leaving the shotgun where it was. “Why can’t you do it?”

“Because they burn my fingers.”

“Why are your fingers more important than mine?”

“Peeve, damn it. Just do it.”

Peeve reached out with one finger and tapped the ring. Nothing happened. He tapped again. Then he grabbed it. “It’s barely even warm,” he said.

“Take it off,” Eddie said, watching the fakir. He felt something nibbling at the edges of his awareness. He hoped it wasn’t the cloud starting to gnaw on him the way it had taken Gong’s arm off. “Then the other one. Be careful.”

“Careful of what?”

“I don’t know, do I?” Eddie waited. Peeve got both rings off, and nothing happened. The fakir didn’t move. Neither did Boukai.

“Now what?” Peeve asked.

“The chalice,” Boukai whispered. “Get the goblets.”

Eddie scooted over to where the man lay motionless. His arms were at his sides, all the color gone from the tattoos. The skin beneath them was as white as porcelain. Eddie looked closer, saw the lines etched in Boukai’s face. His breathing was shallow. Peeve came back with a goblet in each hand.

“The rings,” Boukai breathed. “Put one in each cup.” Peeve dropped them in. “Now hold the tops together.” Peeve tipped them against each other. Boukai’s hand came up and grasped Eddie’s wrist weakly. “Now, seer. See the words inside.”

Eddie looked at the goblets, squinted. He saw many goblets, one after the other. Where there had been three before there were ten, twenty, a hundred. He concentrated on the center. He saw inside, saw the rings swirling in a vortex of light. He saw the words flare to life on the inside of the cup. He spoke the words.

There was a great tearing sound, a flash of light and pain, and then cold.

“Ow!” Peeve cried, dropping the goblets. “They’re frozen.”

“It is done,” Boukai breathed, letting his head roll to the side. Tears leaked down the side of his face. “Mariel, it is done.” He looked back at Eddie, smiling. It seemed some of his strength was returning. “Look,” he said.

The fakir was gone. Eddie picked up the goblets, looked inside. The rings were gone. Behind them, Kim moaned. Peeve looked over at him and then stood. “I’m calling the cops,” he said.

“Go ahead,” Eddie said. “They’ll never believe it.”

Boukai shuddered and laughed. “You are right,” he said. “But it does not matter. Without his fakir Kim is nothing.” He rolled onto his side and reached toward his coat. “We must be going, Eddie,” he said.

“Where?”

Boukai sat up. “You’ve learned much tonight,” he said. “Think of what I can teach you tomorrow.” He chuckled and jerked the coat down from where it had lain across the counter. He dug in the folds until he produced the flask. A swig seemed to give him the strength to sit up and start rolling his sleeves down.

“What else can I learn?” Eddie asked, standing. He looked down at the exhausted man sitting beside him.

“You can See,” Boukai said, extended a hand. “Now you must Do.”

After a moment, Eddie took the proffered hand.

Faith’s Curse by Randall N. Bills

They say a body isn’t dead until it’s at your feet. And warm.

Adrian Khol’s eyes traced the outline of the victim, trying to find recognizably human features. No clothing was apparent; the ash that coated everything within arm’s reach? Stranger still, no marks marred the concrete of the connecting tunnel between the Red and Blue lines at the Jackson stop. No signs of a struggle‑unusual scuff marks, high velocity blood spatter or scorching, in this case. Even odder, despite the apparent ash, the body didn’t appear burned so much as… melted. As though someone took one of those exquisite wax figures from Madame Tussaud’s and put it to a blow torch. The arms fused to the chest and legs in a single, long stump, body devoid of hair. And the face? The noseless, eyeless mask runneled and pulled, like taffy, a true horror in the dim, florescent lighting.

“Yeah, that’s warm enough, alright.”

“Uh?” Martinez ’ response barely came through the donut filling his mouth to bursting. His smacking lips echoed in the starkly lit tunnel, the grimy tiles amplifying the sound as though taunting the man’s slovenly habits.

Adrian managed to keep his lips sealed around his reaction to his assistant’s inability to take four steps before tearing off a wrapper from some chemical‑packed sugary bar and slamming it past bleeding gums. A look at his aura almost a year ago during the first interview had been painful, his body tainted with such vileness. How could he ingest such filth? After a year, he knew it wouldn’t do any good to voice such questions.

This is the best I can get? Adrian sighed heavily as he pushed fists deeper into his long overcoat’s pockets against the cold‑with only his assistant around, it wasn’t worth the expenditure of energy to alleviate the discomfort‑and moved around the body to get different perspectives. He carefully stepped to avoid placing his imported leather shoes in the strange ash.

“You say something, boss man?” Martinez managed to speak again, this time without an accompanying crumb shower, though the yawn at the early morning hour ruined the effort.

“Nothing that need worry you,” he replied. Through dozens of assistants across the years he’d learned that nice or curt, it never mattered. What mattered was what their brains could handle. After that prerequisite, his manners were irrelevant. And abrasiveness was so much easier. So much more the natural human state. With everything else he fought with in his life, being nice to people when he didn’t need to be…

The other man shrugged the snappish response away easily.

… point.

Martinez shoveled in the last of the donut and pulled out a liter of Mountain Dew he’d somehow managed to fit into a pocket of his oversized, thread‑bare coat. He started to untwist the cap before he spoke again. “Man, what the hell. Dude’s like a human stick of butter.”

Early, even for you, Martinez… been asleep yet?

“So, what we got here, boss man? Spectral phantasm? Werecreature?”

Adrian glanced toward one end of the tunnel and then the other, noting the uniformed officers keeping anyone from entering. Lips sardonically stretched. Facing away, as ever, well out of earshot. They can head into the squalor of Cabrini‑Green and face the worst horrors that humans can inflict on each other, yet they flinch like schoolgirls watching their first horror film whenever I walk by. They use me to get what they need when it comes to the darkness and the places they won’t tread, but they won’t even look me in the eye. Won’t even shake my hand. But who am I to complain? I use them equally as well. Mutual parasitic whores. The image swelled the bitter smile further.

“Maybe it’s an undead,” Martinez continued yammering. Always yammering. “I keep asking, and you’re never telling. But yeah, could be undead. That’d be cool. Wait, wait,” Martinez said, his mangy beard quivering with excitement, glasses above his blotchy cheeks almost fogging with exhalations. “An unbound spirit?” he softly breathed, as if it were a holy prayer over rosaries at a pew on Sunday.

Adrian shook his head slowly. Where in the world did Martinez obtain such information? He knew to the word exactly what he said around his assistants, especially once they’d been around long enough for him to start mentally referring to them by their names (though he never deigned to voice them). And something as dangerous as an unbound spirit? Never. “Too many movies,” he finally said.

“Huh,” Martinez responded, eyes blinking as he mentally stumbled to a halt, his childish glee fading under confusion.

“Too many movies. Such creatures do not exist.”

A knowing look replaced confusion, a child convinced he’d caught an adult in a lie. “Right. Sure. What ever you say, boss man.” He took another giant swig of his teeth‑killing sugar water and then waved the bottle like a laser pointer, his voice a cable infomercial salesman at three in the morning, deep into the hundreds. “But I’m looking at a corpse that died in no human way. Explain it.”

Adrian stood perfectly still, his smooth, angular face a pale slate statue to house his dual‑colored eyes. Martinez ’ arrogant smile slowly faded, and he gulped several times under Adrian ’s piercing blue/brown gaze before his eyes fell to the floor.

“I explain to no one,” Adrian spoke, voice never wavering off its even keel‑all the more powerful.

“Didn’t mean anything by it, boss man. Just, well, something killed this guy. And it ain’t normal.” The last almost a mumble.

Yes, you did. But he didn’t respond, knowing that despite his distaste, he needed the repugnant man. He reached inside his posh coat. Pulling out a silver‑threaded pouch, he unwound the drawstrings and dipped fingers into the hideously expensive rare metallic dust mixture. With practiced ease he rewound the cords one handed and slipped the pouch away. He then stretched out his hand and waggled his fingers over the body with ludicrously over‑the‑top showmanship that almost brought pink to his ears despite the years (why, for the love of all that is holy, why?!) until he caught Martinez ’ eye. Then he flicked the sparkling dust into the air; he ignored the gleeful, anticipatory look that swept the other man’s face.

Adrian cleared his voice to cement his hold on his audience of one; he struggled to concentrate. Such moments always invoked childhood memories like incantations to raise the unwanted corpses of the long dead. Of make‑believe games with his little sister when they wished to keep their parents ignorant of their talks even when in their presence and the made‑up language that became so much more; of hide‑and‑seek in the back woods when he lost his mind for some time, his spark of talent found and the spirit world revealed; endless time spent honing his craft by trial and error, and all the lonely, desperate years to find someone, anyone, like him. He fought to keep a darkly sarcastic laugh from tearing free at the ludicrousness of it all. He pulled his thoughts back to the moment, all too aware of the dangers of letting his concentration slip. He spoke forcefully, the alien tongue rolling easily off his, a guttural snarl that clawed at the walls and dimmed the harsh electronic lighting. The glittering dust pulsed as though in sympathetic vibration to a monstrous, unheard heartbeat that filled the universe. Susurrations of unfelt wind wafting down the long subway corridor, twisting the dust into a vortex of microstars squeezed into a miniature black hole. He clenched his fist and barked out the final words, the vocal sounds like claws tearing up out of his throat into existence. Abruptly the dust strobed in a pyrotechnic flash of unearthly fury that threatened to etch their shadows into the tiled walls like Nagasaki victims from that long ago nuclear blast: hell’s own flashbulb.

In that instant time ground to a stop as the footprint from the astral plane lay revealed to his trained senses. The last several days lay juxtaposed in a mind‑numbing snarl, like thousands of photos developed onto the same film stock. As each living entity moved through the mundane world, they left a trail, a smear of their own life essence. An indelible mark on the underpinnings of existence and the realm of spirits and so much more: the astral plane. While it faded with time, he’d taught himself to read such signatures, more pure and sure than any biometrics of fingerprints, eye‑scans and DNA samples. He concentrated, quickly stripping away layer after layer of the mundane masses moving about their inconsequential lives, completely unaware of the world beyond their own. The sheer volume took some time, but he knew it was all subjective; hours might pass in the astral plane, and yet it was all just an eyeblink.

He abruptly found the layers for when the man appeared. Late last night, not a soul in the tunnel‑ strange, for a Saturday‑hands deep in coat pockets against the cold as he climbed down from the Red line stop and began to make his way toward the Blue line. Features tired but resolute, marching toward a destination only he could know. If the man still lived, Adrian might expend more energy‑even if only Martinez were present, the energy drain was not significant‑and follow the trail to his living essence, perhaps tweezing out additional details of feelings and thoughts. But the trail ended messily in a hazy, indistinct glob, like a badly fuzzed image on those late‑night cop shows Martinez loved to watch, where the producers only haphazardly paid lip service to a citizen’s right to privacy.

A frown pulled at his features. Deaths‑even non‑mundane deaths‑always left a clean break as the life energy evaporated back into the astral plane, like a rope smoothly cut. And in such deaths a multitude of details could be found. Almost too easy for Adrian and his skills. But this? This was altogether different. No details at all, just an… opacity… almost as though… no, that could not be possible.

His mind traveled down multiple paths simultaneously as he struggled with the problem. All the while something bothered him, as though he should recognize the strange astral print, but nothing came to mind. Though he eventually came up with nothing, he knew one thing for certain. This was new. And Adrian hated new.

He sucked on his teeth momentarily, then braced for the pain and relaxed his fist; he unleashed his iron‑clenched will and slid from astral space, the frozen flash gone in an instant. The pain enveloped him as the clockwork mechanism of the mundane world hammered back into motion and the astral inertia it imparted slammed into the one responsible for its arrest. Despite the years of practice, he staggered under the molten spike stabbing downward through his chakra points across head, spine and finally into the belly, where his intestine stretched under the final throes of the energy until only clenched teeth kept the scream at bay.

“What did you see, boss man?”

Adrian breathed in deeply, nostrils flaring as he sought to extricate his mind from the pain’s tentacles. For once Martinez’ unwashed pungency remained mostly buried under the harsh chemicals used to keep the subways clean, with a hint of sulfur quality behind it all; the victim and whatever had happened.

“Nothing,” he finally rasped out. “I saw nothing.”

“Right,” Martinez responded, voice childlike in its sullenness. “What ever you say, boss man.”

Adrian took another deep breath to finally start the pain onto the path of distant memory, nerves more jangled than ever. But I did not see anything. Anything at all.

God, Adrian hated riding the subway.

Despite such a short distance as two stops, he hated stepping foot on the crowded meat carriers. Hated the occupants and their vacant stares as they tried to pretend they were anywhere but wedged into cars like cattle to the slaughter. Hated their hostile and fearful, surreptitious glances. Most of all, hated that he needed them. Needed every one of them.

They pulled into the Harrison stop, and a new gaggle of warm bodies squeezed in. The bitter December cold‑much more acute above ground, the lake‑effect snow and wind swirling with gusto across the concrete platform‑pushed in as well. Others shivered uncontrollably at the gusts, but with so many about, he remained blank‑faced, coat undone, unfeeling of the cold.

The greatest show on Earth… his sardonic inner voice never strayed far.

Despite the press of bodies, Adrian ’s cool gaze and body stance‑the absolute knowledge in those bicolor eyes that the cold really didn’t affect him ‑kept an invisible shield all around him. A modicum of breathing room, more effective than a real force screen. Despite his obvious wealth‑the subtle hint of silver threads woven with intricate runes along the coat sleeves and down the front and back almost gluttonous in this impoverished part of the city‑no pick‑pocket dared approach. No ganger moved to bully with a raised gun. It’d happened in the past. Still did happen now and then when someone new came along. But these? They were regular commuters. Knew him. He’d made sure of that. Had to make sure of that all the time. Why he chose the stinking cattle car when he traveled throughout Chicago.

God, he hated them.

Despite his best efforts to avoid focusing on any of them, he abruptly noticed a face in the crowd. A female face. One he recognized with a jolt of echoing pain. Regardless of resolve, he swept into motion, the crowd parting like the Red Sea before a mad Moses. He stopped mere feet from the terrified woman, mind finally registering the only passing resemblance to her.

Of a sudden he shivered. Must be the cold. Must be.

The train dragged to a halt at the Cermak‑Chinatown stop, and Adrian was out the door with a flourish of the floor‑length coat (never forget the charade!), the hard air almost burning his lungs as he pulled in huge amounts to banish the stink of the L‑CAR. To forget what just happened. To forget…

“So what do you think’s up, boss man?” Martinez asked, apparently unconcerned with Adrian ’s strange behavior, already over his petulance from the scene of the murder. “I spoke with the cops, and they got nothing.”

As if they’d tell you anything of worth. “Of course they have nothing. If there were even one scrap of evidence that pointed to a mundane murder, they’d hound that trail wherever it led, even if it was a dog chasing its tail round and round. Anything but call in my services.” Now away from so many people, he was forced to cinch his coat up as the cold worked past his shield. Stepping carefully down the stairs, he came out under the El‑no pigeons overhead to drop their surprises during winter‑ Cermak Street running left to right directly ahead. The sand/salt station to the left, across the street, looked like a kicked anthill as trucks and personnel prepared for the coming blizzard. It was nearing January after all, and Chicago almost never failed to deliver its annual dump of two feet of solid cold.

“So, what we doing, then?”

Date: 2015-12-13; view: 574; Нарушение авторских прав